Young and Profiting with Hala Taha - Tucker Max: Tales of a Bad Boy Gone Good | Human Behavior | E55

Episode Date: February 3, 2020

It feels so good to be bad. Until it just feels bad. In this episode, Hala yaps with Tucker Max, the inventor of the literary genre 'fratire' and author of 4 best selling books including the mega hit, “I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell,” which documents the wild and scandalous times he had during his 20s. Tucker holds accolades like snagging a spot in Time Magazine’s 100 most influential list in 2009, and there’s even a movie based on his life. The former bad boy is now a grown family man who has assisted many successful startups. Currently he’s the founder of Scribe, a company that helps people write and publish their own books.  Today we’ll uncover how Tucker achieved fame in 2002 on the internet, in an era when blogs didn’t even exist yet, why he hired JT Mccormick to be his CEO at scribe instead of holding that position himself and how plant therapy and MDMA has helped to transform his life for the better. If you liked this episode, please write us a review! Want to connect with other YAP listeners? Join the YAP Society on Slack: bit.ly/yapsociety Earn rewards for inviting your friends to YAP Society: bit.ly/sharethewealthyap Follow YAP on IG: www.instagram.com/youngandprofiting Reach out to Hala directly at [e-mail] Follow Hala on Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Follow Hala on Instagram: www.instagram.com/yapwithhala Check out our website to meet the team, view show notes and transcripts: www.youngandprofiting.com

You're listening to Yap, Young and Profiting Podcast, a place where you can listen, learn, and profit. I'm your host, Halitaha, and today I'm chatting with Tucker Max. Tucker is the inventor of the literary genre, Fratire, an author of four best-selling books, including The Mega Hit, I Hope They Served Beer in Hell, which documented the wild and scandalous times he had during his 20s and sold a whopping 2 million copies. Tucker holds alkaliads like snagging a spot in Time magazine's 100 most influentialist in 2009, and there's even a movie based on his life. Tucker is now a grown family man who has assisted many successful startups. He's the founder of Scribe, a company that helps people write and publish their own books.

Today we'll uncover how Tucker achieved fame back in 2002 on the internet, in an era where blogs didn't even exist yet. While he hired J.T. McCormick to be his CEO at Scribe instead of holding that position himself, and how plant therapy in MDMA has helped to transform his life for the better. Hey, Tucker. Welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast. Thank you. Thanks for having me.

We are super excited to have you on the show. I think it's going to be a really fun conversation. You're probably one of the most unique guests I've ever had on the show so far. You're the founder of Scribe and also the author of three best-selling books, but you're not the typical author by any means. You self-published Chronicles of Your Wild Times on the Internet, and this was back in 2002, a time before blogging or social media was even a thing. So honestly, that's so impressive. Could you just share your story of how emails to your friends in law school spiraled into fame and multiple bestselling books?

It's a long story. I'll give you just the highlights. But basically, I was fired from being a lawyer within three weeks, which is pretty hard to do. but I managed it. And then I was, my dad fired me from the family business in six months. So I basically got fired from like the two things that I trained for in my life, law on business. And at the time,

I was writing emails to my friends that were, you know, I lived in South Florida, which is kind of the art, the cultural armpit of America. And I was having a terrible time and still, you know, being a drunk and idiot like every 25 year old.

And so I wrote emails to my friends about all the dumb things I was doing. And they thought those were, like the funniest stories they'd ever read and they loved them and they started forwarding them around to their friends and then from there it just kind of blew up and I it it I well actually I tried to get a publishing deal I got no traction from any publisher and so then I put my stuff on the internet and then from there like I mean it was a long hard road but basically from there I published a book that book was I hope they served beer and hell which sold you know millions of copies and became kind of a big multi-generational bestseller,

and then everything kind of sprung from that. Let's backtrack to your college years. You actually did really, really well in college, but yet you were this, like, party animal, who seemed like you also had a lot of fun in college. So explain that. I heard that you hacked school. Like, what did you do?

How did you end up getting good grades, but then also, like, partied and had fun? Yeah, well, so, I mean, to be clear, I went to the University of Chicago. like that is a nerd school and so partying I was definitely a party animal there but being a party animal there is like being a bookworm at like you know an SEC school so it wasn't that big of uh I actually partied and drank way more in law school than I did in undergrad but they're both the same the way to hack school is here's the thing people don't understand about school school is just a system right

and like where you have a bunch of people who are play acting their parts and of course they don't realize this. They think, they believe all the stories that they're told about like, oh, I'm educating and kids are learning and, and this is, you know, objective knowledge and all that nonsense. I figured out really early that all of that was just not true. And that the way to hack school is to understand, okay, the teacher is looking for a certain thing. And so it's like, what is that thing, right? So instead of trying to actually learn the material, I learned the mind of the teacher, right? And then I understood, okay, they believe, you know, X. So every question they ask is in relation to X, whatever X is. So then I just need to answer in relation. It was figuring out a puzzle.

That's all it is, right? And it's almost like, it's why I'm so good at sales and marketing, because I'm good at modeling the minds of other people. That's all school is. You just have to break that. And it's funny, man, because I know so many entrepreneurs who were terrible at school. And they look at me like I'm some weird unicorn because I did amazingly. I mean, I went to one of the hardest undergrads in the country. I graduated summa cum laude in three years, which is like highest honors. And then I got an academic scholarship to Duke Law School, a top 10 law school. And I'm like, guys, I'm no smarter than any of you. I hacked that system. And then like once I explained it to him that way, they're like, oh, wow, I never would have thought about it like that. It's obvious as

soon as someone explains it to you. But the system is really good at brainwashing the kids and telling them that like if you don't learn the way the system tells you and you don't respect the things the system says are important, then you're stupid, right? Which is just clearly not true. Yeah. That's really interesting that you say that. And it's so true that it's really just about understanding the person who holds the keys to whatever you're trying to get.

And if you understand their psychology or motivations, then you can kind of, like you said, hack the system. So really cool. I was just going to say, we actually have a lot in. comment. So I know you had a show on MTV, and I almost had a show on MTV. I used to host a blog site called Strawberry Blunt.com in my 20s, and it was run by the sorority of hip-hop. And so I had like 50 female bloggers under me, all pretty talented girls, and we used to host parties and concerts, and we had an online radio show where we used to interview celebrities. But both times we did the pilots with MTV.

They signed us and like handpicked us, but we didn't get it. And that's a long story. But I bring this up because we actually used Twitter to our advantage. It was when Twitter, it was like 2010, Twitter was still like kind of new. And we used it in a way that nobody else had done before. So we used to like at message celebrities automatically from our blog posts and then they would retweet it because like 50 girls would tweet them in a row. And like everybody started doing that afterwards. But we were the first ones to do that. And that's why we blew up really fast. So that's over now. But I just thought it was really funny because you used to blog essentially. and you got so popular because you started these blogs on the internet before blogging was even a thing, right?

And each era of the internet has these different, like, these different, like, lanes that you could use to, that are kind of, like, wide open that you can use to kind of blow yourself up if you're just creative and look closely at what you could take advantage of or use things differently than what they were actually meant to do. So explain how you in 2002 use the internet to your advantage. And then maybe after that we can talk about what we think we could do now to take advantage of the internet. Yeah. So in 2002, it was both really easy, but totally non-obvious. Because in 2002, it was like the Wild West. I mean, this was before Google existed, really. I think it may have existed, but it was like, no, it did exist. But it was tiny and no one knew about it.

And, like, Yahoo was the big player there. And Yahoo doesn't really even exist anymore. Like, I had to put my site on GeoCities. this is back in the ancient, like the ancient scroll days of the internet. And so, like, it was easy because there was no competition, right? And so if you did something good, you got known really quick. The problem at the time, though, was that there were only, like, 30 million people on the internet or something.

Like, it was, like, basically kids who went to college and people who worked at big corporations and academics. Like, that was it. And so at least when I very first started, 2000, 2001, 2002. And, you know, it was expanding rapidly. Don't get me wrong, but it was still a tiny, tiny market. So, like, you could be really internet famous, but no one actually knew who you were, right? It was just a bunch of weirdos on the internet.

That was back when you might, I don't know if you're old enough to remember this, but, like, there was a day when, like, you didn't meet people from the internet where that was, like, creepy. It was only weirdos in their basement on the internet. You know, now, like, a third of couples who were married met on, like, the internet somehow, right? It's a totally normal thing. But so I didn't really have to do a lot of hacking.

The thing that I did then that no one else was doing was I put really quality stuff out, right? And so like, because at the time, the internet like didn't have a profit model, right? Unless you were maybe selling porn or something. Like, and so there was like no one, people thought it was a play thing. And so I was like, no, I'm just going to take it seriously. I'm going to publish my stuff and I'm going to, I put up an email capture and I had an email list. And then, like, that was before people really realized how valuable audiences and email lists were. And so that's, I kind of got lucky in a way.

But I just, I was just okay being a pioneer and being out there out front, right? Whereas it's a very different thing now. There's a lot more competition. But what's funny is there's a lot more people on the internet. And there's a lot, I think there's a lot more opportunity now. It was easy then, but no one saw the opportunity. Now a bunch of people see the opportunity, but it's actually like, in a weird way, it's easier. You know, like, I would rather there'd be more buyers than less buyers in the market, even if there's more competition.

Yeah, I couldn't, when I heard your story, I couldn't even believe it that, like, basically email forwarding got you famous, like those email chains and then and then draw traffic to your website or whatever. But it's just crazy because it probably, like, there was no social media sites even back then. So I just, it's pretty incredible what you did. So how about now in 2020, how would you go about getting noticed on the internet? So, okay, it depends on what I wanted to be noticed for, right? But generally speaking, what I would do is I would actually start with video. I think video is the future. Like we, in my company, we just were building our video wing right now and our YouTube channel.

I think it's funny, man. People are like, you hear people like, oh, YouTube's like already peaked. And I'm like, you idiots, like YouTube as a channel may have. I doubt it. But video is in its infancy. Yep. Because humans biologically are visual, auditory, spatial creatures, right? We see and hear things.

That's how we interact. Reading stuff is not sort of our thing. And we can do it, but it's not the main way we do it. And so, like, people ask me all the time. If I started today, what would you do? And like, my answer is they're like, oh, you know, like the world's changed, you'd have a much harder time. I'm like, no, dude, it'd be way easier.

Because what I would do is I would basically set up like a three camera shoot, like in my apartment. I'd put in like a circular little, like almost like a poker table. And I would have like darker lighting. And then I would like just have beer with my friends. And we would all tell stories on video. And then the magic comes in editing. Right.

Once you get the lighting and the shooting right, then we would edit it. And like, my same stories would be 10 times, maybe a hundred times bigger if they were on video. They'd be huge on video. And so, like, I would, whatever I was doing, I would probably, there's a few exceptions. But almost anything I was doing, I would start on video. And I would just, like, dick around and play around until it got good. And I was good at it. And then I would just start going from there, figuring it out from there.

But I'd be video native. Yeah, I totally agree. videos are still the place until like VR is like mainstream I think videos is totally where you need to focus and even like YouTube ads are so cheap right now and people aren't taking advantage so I agree definitely I would focus on video and that's what I'm doing for my strategy in 2020 so really quick before I want to talk about your rejection but before that to kind of give it some color I'd like you to talk about how big you got once you know your stuff went viral that period of time when you were on MTV and everything.

Just like give us some color to like how big your stories got. I mean, you know, like any, it wasn't a flash in the pan, but I wasn't Brad Pitt, you know? So I was like in 2009 was really the peak. That was when the movie about my book came out. And that was when Time magazine put me on the 100 most influential list. And so like 2009 was like that was kind of the peak. It was weird. It was so weird because like it was like I went from being ignored.

by the mainstream media, and it was like almost overnight. I went from being ignored to being, like, everyone just being like ubiquitous. You know, it's like when someone's been around so much or like tired of them, it's like I never got that period where like I was a star. I went from ignored, ignored, ignored to like, oh yeah, everyone knows who he is, you know, whatever. Like, of course Tucker Max is famous. And I was like, wait a minute, no.

Like, I didn't get the cool part. Like, I didn't get the, like, this doesn't make sense. it was so frustrating to me because it was like, because, you know, part of it was the content, part of it was like, I came up in a day when the mainstream media refused to recognize that anyone who did shit on the internet was like a valid, legitimate person. And so like, in terms of media, and now, of course, they would never in a million years.

But back then it was like, nah, like, you came from the internet. You're not a real person. It was one of those things. And so, like, it's like I didn't get the cool, fun toast to the town phase. It was very annoying, to be honest. But, like, honestly, here's this thing about it. It doesn't really change your life that much. People think being famous changes your life.

It doesn't. It is weird when you go to a college and there's 2,000 people in the audience waiting to hear you speak or 3,000 or whatever many people. That's unusual, right? And it can be really invigorating at first, but then it just becomes a job after a while, right? And then not only that, but like the thing no one anticipates is not the pressure, I never really felt a lot of pressure, but it was more like the judgment. Like every, you are not a person to people.

You're an object to them. You represent something to them. And so, like, they get upset if you don't represent what they want you to represent. I'll give you a really good example. I live in Austin, Texas, and, you know, the big Whole Foods is here. And I go, my family and I go there shopping all the time. And, like, it used to be happening more, but it still happens every now and then. Some dude will come up to me.

It's always a dude. Because women never approached me like this. They always like just talk to me like a normal person. But the dudes will come up and be like, hey man, like you're Tucker Max. Like yeah. Like, oh, I loved your books. And they kind of look at me like, hold on. I'm confused.

Why aren't you drunk laying under a table screaming curses of people? And I'm like, dude, it's 10 a.m. on a Tuesday, man. Like what's wrong with you? And 10 years later or whatever. Right. 10 years. Not only that right, but 10 years. But even at the peak, even at my peak, it's like everyone just assumed like,

I was a monstrous drunk curse word person all the time. And I'm like, no, that doesn't even make sense. You know the saying don't meet your idols, right? That comes from the, that doesn't come from because the idol's a bad person or a letdown. It's because you have built them up in your head to be something that is inhuman, that is godlike. And that's, which is, you're an attractive woman. So you know what it feels like to be objectified. Guys don't know what it feels like because no one cares about us, right?

until we become famous. Women don't get it. They get it a lot more. But that was the weird thing for me about that is the way people would just look at me like a piece of meat. And I was like, no, I'm a person. This doesn't make sense. It took me a long time to really understand that.

Yeah, that's funny. So you're being really humble, right? Your books ended up getting huge. And you built a whole career off of this. You became a writer. You started your own genre, fratire. and you were actually rejected by 500 publishers and you decided to self-publish.

Why do you think that nobody saw your vision because they could have made a lot of money off of you? Why do you think that nobody like sold into your idea of fratire? Well, so it's the same answer to the question. Why did nobody, why did everyone think the browser market was full when Google was started? Or the, sorry, the search engine market. And like why, I mean, go down the list.

Why did everyone think anything? Most people can't see anything beyond what's right in front of their face, right? And so even though traditional publishing, book publishing, is supposed to be about finding great books and publishing them, I mean, for Christ's sake, J.K. Rowling got, Harry Potter was rejected from 21 publishers. She had to go to Scholastic three times, right? And this is the best-selling novel series of the 20th century. Their only job is finding great books and publishing books.

them, they're bad at their job. Right? No, seriously, that's just the truth. If they were good at identifying what was going to be good before it was written, they would write it. Because you've got to think about the people that work at publishing companies. And I mean

this without any, I'm not trying to insult them. All of them wanted to be writers and for some reason or another all of them failed at it. And so they went to become editors or other things. They went into the industry because they love books. And that's cool, it's noble even. I'm not putting them down. But why would you expect someone who didn't

have the capability to write something millions of people want to read? Identify what that looks like if it's new. I heard you in the past say that you judge content by the demand it generates and not the quality of the content. And I love that because it's so true. At the end of the day, selling books is a business. It's not really like, yeah, it's great to be artistic or intelligent. and if it sells, it sells. At the end of the day, it's a business, right? Well, I don't think the two things are, it's a little more subtle than that.

I don't think the two things are in conflict, right? Whenever someone tells you, well, my stuff is artistic, that's why it doesn't sell. That's their way of feeling good because what they made sucks. Period. No, seriously, it just is, right? And there are very, very few artists

who are truly misunderstood in their own time. Like Van Gogh was a good example of that, right? They exist. Don't get me wrong. But like Picasso was celebrated in his own time. Miro was celebrated in his own time. Matisse. I go to the list, painters.

Most great writers were celebrated in their own time. Not all of them. John Kennedy Tool wrote an amazing book, rejected everywhere, killed himself, got published, won the Pulitzer. So those things happen, right? That's why it's very, that's the whole point of the movie, Ratatooie is that the point of a critic is not to destroy, but to raise up the things that are amazing that no one's reading. And that's what I think most people, the argument between popular and

artistic is a bullshit argument. I don't think, I think if it is popular by definition, there is, there is at least some artistry there. Now, I'm excluding things that are just like rage popular. Like if you post a meme about Donald Trump, good or bad, that's not about art. That's just people's status signaling, right? Or tribal signaling. That's different. I'm talking about things that are solely creative endeavors. For those things, I don't see the difference between great art and great commerce.

Great art is something that touches, that helps humans see who they are and reflect their humanness back on them. So like people who criticize Kim Kardashian, they're just making, they're trying to make a status argument that they don't think she should be high status. will millions of women disagree with you, you know? And like, sorry, you're just wrong. That's just all there is to it, you know? Totally.

You make really valid points. It's really just what the market believes to have status or to have value, right? The market decides. Exactly. Which is, all the market is is a collection of individual people making decisions about what they want in their life. Let's switch gears to current day. We'll get back to your story, but you are currently the founder of Scribe Media, correct?

Yes. And could you explain what your company does? We help people write, publish, and market books. Like, we're the company that I wish existed when I started writing. I actually interviewed the CEO of Scribe, J.T. McCormick. He was back on my show in episode 30, and honestly, he's such a nice guy. He's so humble. He's got the craziest background story.

And we still keep in touch. He's great. And I was curious, you know, a lot of founders are the CEO of their company. So what made you decide to hire one instead? Because I was real bad at my job. That's just straight up. Like, here's the thing that a lot of people don't understand. Being a visionary, right?

Like seeing that a company could exist that doesn't or a product is a very specific skill, which is a distinctly different skill from understanding how to grow a company around the product. Right? Like, I don't know how to grow a company. And honestly, when I got into figuring it out, I really just didn't like any part of the job.

Like, it was just not interesting. It was energy draining to me. I kind of hated it. And I wasn't good at it. And so once I realized that, then it was like, JT was a client of ours and he loved our company and our product. but like we he saw like all the problems we were having and so like I was trying to have him coach me a little bit and eventually I was just like look dude will you just do this like why don't you just do it and he's like what do you mean I'm like I'll hire you he's like you can't afford me I'm like let's figure it out then because you're really good at this and I'm not I want to just spend my time with the things I'm good at and so that's where we are now as a company is I spend my time building kind of new products like we're building a

a whole new product workshop for memoir. Like our business is mainly for prescriptive nonfiction, like business and personal development nonfiction. You know, like we did David Goggins book and we did those sorts of things. But there's almost everyone wants to write a book. And when they say write a book, what they mean is they want to tell their story, right?

Which is not about business. It's not about teaching people something. It's they believe they have a story to tell and they want to tell it. And so I'm building that now, right? And that's all I do. Like I do that. I'm working on two other books. And so it's amazing, like, because I just, and then I do some of this stuff,

podcasts, whatever. These are the things I'm good at, right? I'm not good at, like, you know, coaching people on accountability. You know, I don't know, like the P&L and, ugh, kill me. I'd rather die than doing that stuff. It's incredible that you were so self-aware. So many people are so egotistical that they would not be able to be like, well, I'm not right for the CEO position and I'm going to hire somebody else.

So that's really cool that you realize that. And that's probably why I scribe is very successful. So congrats on that. It took a lot of work to get there. Yeah, it was not easy. I was not, yeah, I was not always that emotionally mature. Yeah. I own my own company right now with this podcast that I'm like, maybe I suck.

Maybe I need to hire CEO. I'm just kidding. So do you have plans to write another book anytime soon or have you like retired from being an author? You know what's funny is I never, I've retired from Frattson. at the end of my last fratire book, then that was, you know, I don't know how long it was,

maybe five, six, seven years ago. No, it was at least eight years ago. So I knew I, I'm not writing any more of those. I mean, obviously I hadn't retired

from writing books because I wrote a couple of books after that that were totally different. I wrote the book, The Scribe Method, which is like the way our company teaches writing books. And so,

and I've helped some other people like Tiffany Haddish, who's a real famous comedian. We did her book and sold millions of copies. But here's the thing. I hadn't officially, retired but I hadn't really thought about writing anything mine and then uh I like it was the weirdest

thing it was like in one week I had three people kind of that I knew well and that I trust almost mentors or peers of mine call me out on not writing anymore and they're like I'm like what do you mean they're like dude you need to write your story on how you went from fratire to where you are now to a husband and a father and a company founder and all and I'm like really and then like, what is wrong with you, man? Like, you help people all day see, like, their books and you don't see this amazing book in front of you. And then I thought about it for a while.

I'm like, okay, yeah, I guess it makes sense. I get it. And so I started on that. I hope I can get it out by early next year. But basically, it's the story of, like, how did I do? It's funny. It's a good follow up to the last question. How did I do all the emotional work to get to the point where my ego, I could let my ego go

and step aside as CEO of my own company? Right? Because that's not just something you do. Like there's a lot of emotional work that took to get there. And so like, how do I do that? It's a lot of, it's telling that story, right? I've done it. You know, I spent all kinds of time in therapy. I've done all kinds of unusual therapies, plant medicines, like energy work, all this other stuff. And some of it works. Some of it hasn't. But it's kind of that whole story. at Yap, we have a super unique company culture. We're all about obsessive excellence. We even call ourselves scrappy hustlers. And I'm really picky when it comes to my employees. My team is growing every day. We're 60 people all over the world.

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Terms and conditions apply. Hiring, Indeed, is all you need. Okay, so this is the perfect segue. Back to your story. Your parents, according to you, they met at a Coke party. And you had kind of an isolated experience as a child, according to you and your different writings. So how do you think you're up? bringing kind of reflected in your adolescent years or college years and your rambunctious and

wild style. Do you think that had a lot to do with it? I mean, it was the cause. Yeah, it didn't just have a lot to do with it. It was the thing. Look, it's pretty simple. Here's the rough outline. My parents, they were not very good at being parents, right? Like, I wasn't sexually molested or beaten or anything like that, but they just, they were, they didn't really care much. and I was very lonely as a kid, which is for a small child is like extraordinarily terrifying. You know, even though I was safe, but as a kid, you don't understand that. Like, all you understand is, are your parents paying attention to you or are they not, right? And it's not like, I'm not talking about like one of those kids that needs constant attention.

I'm talking about left alone for long, long periods of time as a young kid, right? And so that wounds you a lot. And the story, I think, you know, you developed stories in your head as a kid about that. stuff, like why you're being left alone and what to do about it. One of the stories I think, it was obviously completely unconscious was like, okay, my parents aren't going to pay attention to me that I'm going to get attention, right? And so it's the reason, anyone who is intentionally trying to become famous has at their core some sort of wound from either their parents or someone else where they felt insignificant,

unloved or no attention, and that's the strategy they are trying to use to compensate for that. And I say that as someone who did it, right? Like, I'm not excluding myself. I'm very much in that. That's why I, it's not why I started writing, but once I started writing and I realized I got attention for it, I like, I picked up that football and I ran. Like, I mean, I ran with it, right? And that's why.

It was like, I'm going to become, okay, you're not going to pay attention to me. I'm going to show you I'm worthy of attention, you know? And again, all unconscious. It was not a conscious thing. Like, if you told me in 2007, I was doing this to prove to my parents that I was worthy to love, I've been like, get it out of my face. That's nonsense, right? But that's the core emotional truth.

It's only looking back. Yeah. In high school, you were voted most egotistical and you've called yourself a narcissist. So just describe, like, how big of a narcissist you were in your 20s. Well, you know, what's funny is narcissism is just a defense to lack of attention. You know, and so both my parents were extraordinarily narcissistic, right? When you have narcissistic parents, there's basically two, there's two big ways to defend against that wound. You can try and be everything they want you to be, right?

Or you can be like them, right? Now, I was the opposite of my parents in a lot of ways, but like I was still basically emotionally being like them. I was being narcissistic. Most egotistical, it was just most arrogant, most, most, Like everything I did was, oh, I'm awesome. Oh, I'm cool. Look at me. All that kind of stuff.

Which is just a compensation for not getting that from someone who loved me. That's it. Yeah. Which is really all it was at its core. So I went on your website and I started reading the stories because I never read your stories from before. I've heard of you and I've seen you like on other, you've been on a lot of my friends' podcasts and stuff. But I hadn't read your stories. And I was like stayed up so late reading your stories because I was like just like it was so

funny, but at the same time, they were pretty mean. And you would talk about like nerds at Duke and, you know, you'd call like a woman you met chunky girl. And it was so funny at the same time. And like, I know how to take a joke. But do you regret anything that you did? And were all those stories like 100% true? Or did you like just make them more funny in your writing? If I can make those more funny than they were, I would be writing fiction that sold millions of copies. Tens of millions of copies. I'd be like James Patterson doing $100 million a year if I could tell fake stories well. No, those are all true. I wish I was good at that. No, yeah, they're all true. I don't really regret. Look, it's a weird thing. I definitely don't regret writing any of it. That's my

truth. I live that truth. I don't regret speaking my truth ever and I never will. What I do regret is some of the things I did. There's definitely times where like I hurt people or I was mean or whatever. Yeah, of course. I mean, you can't read the books and be like, oh, no, I didn't do anything wrong. It's like, come on, stop it. Like, of course I did. They were definitely, man, like, the things actually I regret the most, honestly, though, are not like talking shit to some girl at a bar.

She was probably talking just as much shit to me. I mean, that's what you do with bars, right? Those are just two messed up people being messed up together. It's like a game. The thing that I probably regret the most are more like the girls who I was in either relationships or whatever you want to call it, quasi relationships with that like approached me in a genuine way trying to like get to know me and connect with me and I just wouldn't let them. I never did anything like I wasn't lying to women

for sex or manipulating them or that nonsense. I don't do any that. But it's more like I mean I can think of at least three or four girls I met when I was in that phase that were amazing women that I that if I had any emotional maturity at the time or any ability to connect with my emotions, I would have shut that shit down and married them. You know? And like I ended up hurting them, not because I was trying to hurt them. It's just like, that's just who I was at the time. Like I couldn't really be any different, you know?

Hurt people, hurt other people. I absolutely regret specific actions I did that were messed up and wrong. Of course. I don't regret writing about any of it because that's my truth. Totally. You left behind your rowdy lifestyle and you just alluded previously that you went through therapy, I think psychotherapy. What was that process like?

What triggered that journey for you? Could you just talk about that? Yeah. So it started, so after the movie came out and then I was in L.A., and I hated L.A. And so I moved to Austin and Texas, which is where I still live. I thought it was going to be there six months. I was going to finish a book and leave, go back to Chicago, which is where I lived before. And I loved, but Austin was just too amazing.

Anyway, so I was pretty upset after the movie didn't do well. And so I fixed kind of like everything in my life. I got in amazing shape. I like got my life totally dialed in. I had plenty of money from my book. So like I was fine. Everything in my life was great. But like I wasn't happy.

And I don't get me wrong. I was way happier than when I was broke and poor and anonymous, right? But like I wasn't in a good spot. I was in the spot I wanted to be. So I had fixed everything externally. and so there was only one place left. Like, that's me. I've got to look at myself and explore myself.

And so I did and I realized, all right, I've got some issues. I've got to deal with. And it's, man, I had to go see 20 therapists before I found one that I really liked and I connected with someone who I thought was smart enough and strong enough and capable enough to kind of deal with me because I'm a real good arguer. Like, I'll beat your ass in one side of the argument. And then I'll take the side you lost in and beat you with that side. Right.

I'm one of those. And so I had to have someone who like could reframe me and could beat that stuff in me. And so I found her and then therapy was great. She's a psychoanalyst, which is just a specific type of talk therapist. It's just, you know, like lay on the couch or sit on the couch and talk, all that and stuff. And I went four years, four times a week. And it was great. But it wasn't, it only gave me a map of my emotions in my head.

It didn't really help me get in and solve any of the issues because the end. issues are unfelt feelings. I had a lot of emotions and a lot of feelings that I had buried very deep and I refused, I mean, traumas, whatever you want to call them. And I had refused to kind of, I'd lock them away and I wasn't willing to access them. And so I had to, you have to feel your way into healing. You can't think your way into it. Thinking is important, but it's not like feeling is the main thing. For me, like it was great, but I stopped after four years. And for the me, the thing that really unlocked me was more plant medicines, things like MDMA therapy, psilocybin therapy, things like that really helped me get in and feel my emotions better.

So, MDNA therapy, I know nothing about this stuff. My boyfriend does like microdosing of mushrooms and he loves it. I'm always curious, but I may try it. For MDNA, like, is that like legal? Is it like a medical dose that they gave you? And like, how does that work? It's not legal at all. Oh.

No, hell no. I thought it was legal. No, no. Well, okay, so it's MDMA. MDMA is the active ingredient in ecstasy. Three methyl-dioxy methamphetamine, I think, is the actual name. Right now it's in stage three clinical trials in like 11 sites around the world. Most of it in America, but some in Israel and Netherlands and some other places.

It is a miracle cure for treatment resistant PTSD. So like war veterans, rape victim. people who have serious PTSD who have tried everything, usually what they're finding in these studies is that three MDMA sessions, psychotherapy with MDMA, basically. It's about six hours, three hours of just medicine, three hours of medicine and talking,

and is enough to essentially cure people of PTSD in most cases, which is like this is one of the breakthroughs in psychology in the last century. This is one of the gold star breakthroughs. And so there's an organization called Maps that's leading this research. And it'll probably be legal in the next year or two in America. But I'm not a patient person. So there's, there are, I'm not going to say there are a lot, but there are some

underground guides in America who've been leading people on these journeys for, because it used to be legal, like I forget 40 or 50 years ago. And then all the drug scares and all that nonsense. And so it was made illegal. There's always been a group of people who understood what this did and how. how it helped people. And there's been like a few people who were out in the wilderness still helping and gleating. And it's funny because those people were like, you know, the pioneers for so long and now everyone's finally catching up to them. And so I found one of

those guides and she led me through my first session and it was amazing. And then since then I think I've done, I've done a lot. I've done, I think, eight MDMA sessions in 18 months, which is pretty aggressive. Probably not the wise course for most people, but it worked for me. And then I also started pairing the MDMA with psilocybin. Not simultaneously, but usually like the same day. There's reasons I did that. The guide I worked with, there's a reason that she thought it made sense. So we were doing that.

And it's been pretty amazing. And it's absolutely changed my life. Like I'm... In what way? Man, I used to be just, I had so much anger and so much sadness and so much grief in me. And I held it all down and I pushed it down. And basically what... So without getting super deep...

into it. What MDMA does is that it triggers your brain to dump all the serotonin reserves at once. And so what you get is this amazing feeling of like overwhelming love and safety and content. And so then your brain basically feels safe. And so because your brain feels safe, all of the the unfelt feelings, the negative emotions have space to come up. And so you can feel them and process them in a safe, caring way, right? And sometimes a therapist will help talk you through that. Other times you just sit and take a meeting with yourself and just feel it. So for me, a lot of my trauma was in the body. So it's called somatic release. So like my arms and legs were shaking, right? Have you ever maybe like almost gotten in a car wreck or someone yelled at you and you felt like your body was

very shaky and trembly? Yeah. That's, okay, that's trauma, right? And so that if you don't release that when it happens, then it basically, again, I'm being very simplistic, it basically stores in your body. There's a really good book about this. This sounds kooky to you. This is like very well-established science. There's a book about this called The Body Keeps the Score by a guy named Bessel Vandal Kirk. And there's a ton of books about it. That's the best one that explains how trauma works in the body. And then how most problems that most people have, not all by any stretch, but a good portion of problems that most people have are essentially unfelt feelings and that result from trauma that hasn't been processed.

And that's really what plant medicines, what things like MDMA and psilocybin are used for in a therapeutic setting is helping you access those emotions so you can deal with them and then let them go. Does that make sense? It does make sense. And so I interviewed Emily Fletcher, who's like this meditation guru. And it reminds me of so much that she was saying in terms of like meditation, that like, meditation can help you kind of bubble up your feelings in a safe space and everything like that.

So I wonder if it like puts you into the state, but it's just like a medicated way to put you into that state. It's very interesting. Well, okay, so she's right. Meditation absolutely will do that. There's a couple problems with meditation though, is that one, it often takes a long time. Two, it requires you to spend a lot of time meditating, which is very difficult for most people. and three, it doesn't really give you any instructions or help on processing stuff that comes up. So for some people, meditation is absolutely fantastic. For other people, it does not work.

Like meditation people, they say, no, meditation works for everyone. I'm like, look, I'm sorry. Like, I take nothing away from meditation. It's a fantastic modality. But like, and the reality is most people do it wrong. And I'd say this is someone who used to meditate for years and I realized I was basically, I had wasted all that time. I thought the goal of meditation.

And I'm sure Emily would probably tell you. A lot of people do it wrong. And if you do it right, it's actually really hard. And all this emotional stuff comes up. That's why I quit because I hated all that. What makes psychedelics and MDMA, which is not actually technically a psychedelic, what makes, let's just call them plant medicines. What makes plant medicines work so well is that not only do they give space for the stuff

to come up, but they help you process it. Now, it's not a magic pill, right? That's why you've got to pair MDMA with therapy. and you've got to do what's called integration, which is like basically therapeutic work before and after, it's maybe 20 or 30% of a solution, right? It's not the whole solution. But like, if you can get there with meditation, great, do it.

I couldn't. And most people can't, or at least a lot of people can't. Yeah. But it is very similar, though. You're right. Meditation is getting at the same problem that psychedelics are getting at. It's just doing it in a different way.

Totally. It's very interesting. And like, I think everybody has their own path to get to where they need to be mentally. And as long as, like, you're not hurting anyone, you're not hurting yourself, go for it, in my opinion. I think that's really cool. And I'm very interested to learn more about that. Let's switch gears and talk about your tips on your tips with women. You actually had a podcast a couple years ago all about helping guys with dating advice. So what is your, like, top couple of tips for the guys listening right now in terms of snagging a job?

date or improving their relationships? Honestly, they all boil down to improve yourself. Most dudes that I know that are young and single are young and single because I'm going to say this harshly, and it's a little unfair, but it's true. They're young and single because no woman in her right mind would want to date them, right? And it's not that they're bad dudes. They could be really great guys. But it's so young guys especially, it's, man, I've seen this.

It's my favorite thing on the internet. When some dorky young guy will like see a picture of some stunningly beautiful actress and be like, oh yeah, she's like a high seven, low eight on a good day. And I'm like, dude, are you like you would pee your pants if she talked to you. She's a 20 for you. Shut up, you loser. Let's say she is. Let's say the girl is an eight, which by the way, eights are very pretty.

So let's say she's an eight. That dude's a four usually. And so it's like, okay, you're. Even if you're right that she's an eight, you're half of that. You need to get your shit together, dude. And most guys actually, it's really simple to get their stuff together. It really is. And they don't do any of it.

They don't even think about the fact that, like, they need to be that, like, yes, it's absolutely their right to demand a partner, a woman who has, you know, like, who's attractive to them and smart and whatever they want. That's cool. but then they also have to be worth that woman. And none of them think that way and then they don't understand why they don't have any dates because it's like their fours looking for eights.

And it's like, no, dude, to get an eight, you need to be, you know, maybe a rich six will get away with it, right? Generally, you need to be a seven or an eight to get an eight, right? And you could be, I mean, you could be physically unattractive as a dude and get all kinds of great women. You just have to be smart and funny and support. Or even, fuck, man, even just be one of those things. Be really smart.

You'll be all right. Be really successful. You'll be okay. I mean, maybe not as good as you could be, but be really funny. You're going to do it. And so the whole, the whole podcast was basically teaching dudes how to get their shit together so that women would like them. Because most women I know are so frustrated because like they want, they're super into dudes.

They want to date guys. And they're realistic, too. Most women, not all, of course. But most women I know are fairly realistic. Maybe, you know, if they think they're a seven, maybe they're a sixth. But they're not thinking they're tens when they're sixes, like a lot of guys do. They're fairly realistic about where they fit. All they want is a guy who, like, doesn't dress stupid, who, like, is decently emotionally

aware, who, you know, has his shit together in life, who, can, you know, like, I walk through the whole thing in the podcast. It's funny. That podcast, we haven't, like, I stopped it five, six years ago. It's done three million downloads just in the last six years with no updates. Because so many dudes are so lost about this stuff. Here, I'll give you a really good example. Okay.

Here's the number one thing that guys don't understand about women. And I'm talking about women that they meet out in a public place. So like not Tinder. Tinder's great and Bumble and those places, things are great. But let's say you're at a bar or at a club or at a restaurant or just anywhere you're going to meet a woman that you don't know and you don't have anyone to introduce you. Most guys have no idea how physically afraid of most men women are. And it makes sense because most women are shorter than most guys and smaller and less strong.

And so they have to worry about their safety, right? Because guys are bigger, stronger. And even though the vast majority of dudes are super good guys, the one who's not is the one she's worried about. And she doesn't know who that is until she knows you, right? And so most guys never think about this because we don't really, unless you're around some huge physical guy yelling at you, trying to beat you up, you don't think about your physical safety very much. It's just not a thing that comes into guys' minds, right? And so like, like just explaining that to them and then walking them through the implications of that just blows dudes minds. And then now they understand this is why you don't do things like look at a girl and then divert your eyes real quick because that codes is predator to her, right?

And this is why you don't just walk up to a girl and grab her because aside from being assault, she doesn't know who you are and she's afraid. And like, and we just basic things. And good dudes, great dudes who would never do anything to a woman are like, oh, man, now that you describe all these things, I do all these things. I had no idea. No wonder girls don't want to talk to me. It's like, yeah, man. Right. Yeah. So we have to like, the podcast is still amazing. It's still up. It still helps. I get emails every week from guys who use it. Yeah. I listen to it and I was like, this is like really good. What made you decide to stop that? Because at some point it was just repeating myself. And like, I'm not good at

repeating myself. I hate it. I don't like it at all. And like I basically I said everything I had to say. Me and this guy, evolutionary psychologist, Jeffrey Miller, wrote a book called What Women Want. You can Google it. It's on Amazon. It is the best book for guys, let's say, that are 15 to about 30. It's the best book, although it actually is really good for guys over 15 to 35. Yeah. And it's the book. We don't have anything else to say about it because if you read that book and do what, it says, you're going to be great. Very cool. Yeah, I would definitely recommend if you're a guy, I know 80% of my listeners are male.

So if you're a guy, you don't have a woman yet, go check out Tucker Max's podcast. What was it? What's it called your podcast again? It's called the Mating Grounds podcast. Mating Grounds. Yeah, you can easily, if you just search Tucker Max on Apple Podcast or wherever you'll find it. So the last question that I ask all my guests on my show is, what is your secret to profiting in life? All right, I'll take it in more of a business direction, because my guess is that's what your audience is looking for.

If you want a profit, and I mean in the broadest sense in business, and it definitely includes money, but in all business sense, then understand one thing. The only point of business is to meet people's needs. That's it. Right? If you understand the goal of business is not to sell. It's not to make money. It's not to do any of these things. The goal is to meet the needs of people.

Then if you understand that and your business does that, then sales are easy. You're going to make a ton of money. You're going to be really successful, right? A lot of people back, like a lot of dudes especially, it's like they don't really think of it that way. And once you understand that, once you unlock, oh, my goal is to meet people's needs, then you start listening to your customers. You start listening to the problems you have. you solve their problems and then you make a lot of money. Make sense? Yeah, I love that. Awesome. So I had a

great, this was such a great fun conversation. I can't wait to put it out. Where can our listeners go to find more about you and everything that you do? Well, I'm on all the normal social media platforms, you know, Instagram, Twitter, whatever, Tucker Max, my handle on pretty much all of them. Or if you want to, if you want to write a book, my company is scribewriting.com. We have all of material, like everything we do, we're pretty expensive. Like our packages are 10 to $100,000. But if you want to write a book on your own without our help, just go to scribebookschool.com. And literally our entire process we use with our $100,000 clients, we outline every single step. So you can do the whole thing without us. Like if you don't have money or your, you know,

whatever, you don't need to work with us. We give all our information away for free. That's amazing. I'll put the link in my show notes for sure. And honestly, I'm going to write a book one day. I don't think I'm ready yet, but maybe in a couple years and I'll definitely become one of your clients. So looking forward to that. Tucker, it was so great to have you on. Thank you so much. Of course.

Thank you for having me. My pleasure. Thanks for listening to Young and Profiting Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, don't forget to leave us a review or comment on your favorite platform. Follow you up on Instagram at Young and Profiting. And check us out at Young and Profiting.com. And now you can chat live with us every single day on Yap Society on Slack. Check out our show notes or young and profiting.com for the registration link.

And if you're already active on Yap, share the wealth and invite your friends. You can find me on Instagram at Yap with Hala or LinkedIn. Just search for my name, Hala Taha. Big thanks to the Yap team, as always. Stay blessed and I'll catch you next time. This is Hala, signing off.