0:00:02 How’s everything been? How’s your family been? How’s life been?
0:00:04 People are gonna wonder, like, “What’s Alex been up to?”
0:00:06 – God, yeah! – Please welcome back to the show
0:00:08 Kevin Rose and Alex–
0:00:10 – ♪ La-la-la-la-la ♪ – Watch the floor.
0:00:13 – Oh, fuck me, help me! – We probably encouraged
0:00:15 an entire generation to drink way too much.
0:00:18 – I mean, yes. (laughs)
0:00:21 – I didn’t realize I couldn’t be like, “Hey, hi, everybody.”
0:00:24 – We were backstage, and it was, like, 3,000 seats,
0:00:27 and they were all filled in this big British guy
0:00:29 who’s, like, the security guard. – Yeah.
0:00:31 – He’s, like, “What are these guys doing here?”
0:00:32 And we were, like, “We do the show.”
0:00:34 And he goes, “They’re just here for the beer.”
0:00:36 And we were, like, “Okay, dude, just chill.”
0:00:38 And that’s when we finished the show.
0:00:42 So all 3,000 people start getting onto this platform.
0:00:44 The giant security guard grabs both of us,
0:00:46 and he was, like, “You are serious?
0:00:47 They were here for you!”
0:00:49 And we were, like, “Yeah, dude!” – For a photo.
0:00:51 – “I’ve never seen anything like that.”
0:00:56 – This week’s episode is brought to you by DRAM.
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0:02:17 So it’s happened again.
0:02:20 Last week, I got a notice in the mail, another data breach.
0:02:22 This time, it was with my healthcare provider.
0:02:23 I’m sure you’ve been here.
0:02:26 Sadly, this problem is not going away.
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0:03:34 – Remember back in the day
0:03:36 when we would have to work around the holidays,
0:03:38 we’d like try to figure out how to like gang shoot.
0:03:39 – Gang shoot?
0:03:41 – Gang shoot, where you shoot four episodes in a row.
0:03:42 – Oh yeah, ’cause we had to like bang ’em out.
0:03:45 – Yeah, so we figured this out with half hour happy hour,
0:03:47 where we were like, shit, ’cause we were doing once a week,
0:03:50 and we were like, well, what do we do for like the holidays?
0:03:52 And so we came up with this concept
0:03:53 called the 12 Days of Drunks Miss.
0:03:57 And so what we did was we shot a day
0:04:00 and got so drunk because we would have guests come in
0:04:03 and we shot 12 45-minute episodes back-to-back.
0:04:04 – And by the time you’re done,
0:04:05 yeah, it’s like all just blurry.
0:04:06 – It was bad.
0:04:08 – I mean, we had some dignitaries that were like that.
0:04:10 – All of them were like that, for the most part.
0:04:13 Any live one was just, I don’t remember most of them.
0:04:14 I mean, Reno, come on.
0:04:19 That was by far my worst alcohol experience
0:04:21 of my entire life.
0:04:22 – Really?
0:04:23 – Oh, dude, dude.
0:04:25 I can’t even watch the Reno episode.
0:04:28 – I remember taking you to the bathroom.
0:04:29 – And it was all the way down the thing.
0:04:30 – And I took you down the thing,
0:04:32 and then you threw up immediately after the episode.
0:04:33 – 100%, oh, 100%.
0:04:35 I stood up and fell down.
0:04:36 – Oh, Prager’s here, by the way.
0:04:37 – Yeah, hi, Prager.
0:04:39 I mean, I know we haven’t started the show, but.
0:04:42 – Yeah, I’m just having some champagne to start.
0:04:43 We did get some penultimate as well,
0:04:44 for Alex to have a little bit.
0:04:46 – And by the way, thank you very much for allowing me
0:04:48 to have some of your fancy wine.
0:04:49 – Well, this is gonna be good.
0:04:50 I’m gonna try some of that when we actually.
0:04:51 – It’s already.
0:04:52 – Is it good?
0:04:53 – Yeah.
0:04:53 – It’s amazing.
0:04:54 – It’s amazing.
0:04:56 – So, Reno was the most hardcore.
0:04:59 I remember specifically, do you remember
0:05:01 that there was this chick that was hitting on you there?
0:05:04 – I don’t remember any of the end of, here’s the thing.
0:05:07 After we did that episode, after we did,
0:05:11 I mean, weeks after, I finally tried to watch it.
0:05:16 And the first line of speaking out of my mouth
0:05:20 was so slurred and drunk.
0:05:22 And then we had an hour show to do.
0:05:23 – Did we start early?
0:05:24 I don’t remember. – Of course we did.
0:05:26 Remember, we got there and they were giving us
0:05:27 those fruit bowls with like,
0:05:29 remember with like two, three straws
0:05:31 and everybody’s taking shots and we were like,
0:05:32 this is so fun.
0:05:34 ‘Cause they were huge fans, so they just got us ripped.
0:05:35 – That’s right.
0:05:37 – And then people started sending us stuff during the show.
0:05:38 – Okay, there’s been a few times
0:05:40 where fans have been very generous.
0:05:43 – And they sent us– – Which I appreciate.
0:05:44 I always have and I always will.
0:05:45 (laughing)
0:05:47 – They would send us shots and be like,
0:05:50 dude, we love you guys, here’s some Yeager or whatever.
0:05:52 – And they always sent Yeager.
0:05:53 – Yeah, it was always Yeager.
0:05:54 I just like, thank you.
0:05:56 And back then I felt like, yeah, I had to do it.
0:05:57 – I mean, back then we did.
0:05:59 – And they did it too.
0:06:00 – Yeah.
0:06:02 – But they did one with us and then we got
0:06:04 seven people come out. – That’s right, right, yeah.
0:06:06 – Oh, I do, I don’t remember.
0:06:10 Quick cloud of thoughts that I remember from Reno.
0:06:13 I remember standing up and falling to the ground.
0:06:14 – I remember you fell immediately.
0:06:17 – In front of everybody that was there
0:06:18 at the bar for the live show.
0:06:19 – They loved it, they loved it.
0:06:20 – Of course, I mean, part of it was,
0:06:23 there’s no world in which I added any flavor on it
0:06:24 for comedy purposes.
0:06:28 I literally just stood up and fell to the ground.
0:06:33 Then I remember taking pictures with some fans.
0:06:36 – Please, if you have those pictures, send them in.
0:06:39 – Oh, God, oh, I have like a whole folder called Reno.
0:06:41 – And it’s all photos of us just like…
0:06:47 Then I remember saying, I need to go to the bathroom.
0:06:48 – Right, I remember I had to help you.
0:06:49 You were like bathroom.
0:06:51 – I was like, I don’t know where I am.
0:06:53 And it wasn’t anywhere near where we were.
0:06:55 – No, it was one walk. – And it was through the casino.
0:07:00 And I just remember following you and serpentine.
0:07:02 – There was probably a closer bathroom.
0:07:03 I was hammered too.
0:07:06 – I was literally the blind leading the blind.
0:07:08 I don’t know why I chose you of all people.
0:07:13 – And I got to the bathroom, threw up and then made it back,
0:07:15 got some like my stuff, I guess.
0:07:17 And then I went back to the hotel room.
0:07:19 I remember having shrimp cocktail.
0:07:20 – I remember that phone call.
0:07:24 I remember I was on the floor in my hotel bathroom.
0:07:26 – I called. – Hugging the toilet.
0:07:26 My phone rings.
0:07:30 The hotel had a bathroom phone for emergencies, I’m guessing.
0:07:32 I grabbed it, I picked it up.
0:07:33 And I just remember… – What type of works?
0:07:35 It’s like you have the bathroom phone.
0:07:37 – I’m lying on the ground and I have the phone.
0:07:38 And I just remember you going,
0:07:41 “Dude, we got to order the shrimp cocktail.
0:07:44 I’m having the best shrimp cocktail I’ve ever had in my life.”
0:07:45 – It was so good.
0:07:47 – I was like, “I’m on the ground.
0:07:48 I got my hand with it.”
0:07:49 You’re like, “Oh, okay.”
0:07:51 – And I think we had to go to the snowboarding thing
0:07:52 the next day.
0:07:53 – Yeah, it was brutal.
0:07:55 And I remember we were getting those big punch bowls
0:07:56 with the straws.
0:07:58 There was this one really attractive girl.
0:08:00 And I know you had Heather at the time, you were dating.
0:08:02 – Yeah, ’cause I remember talking to her the next morning
0:08:04 and she thought I was cheating on her that day.
0:08:07 – I mean, this girl wanted some albrecht.
0:08:09 – I literally don’t remember any of that.
0:08:12 I appreciate that there was some albrecht want,
0:08:16 but I was in no capacity to even know what was happening.
0:08:17 – There’s no amount of like,
0:08:19 Cialis that could have resurrected you.
0:08:21 – Oh no, I was literally on the floor, I get you.
0:08:24 But I do not recall that there was a lady of,
0:08:25 there was a lady of interest targeting.
0:08:26 – Yes.
0:08:27 – Yeah, that did not.
0:08:28 – She did not care that you had a girlfriend.
0:08:31 – I wasn’t conscious enough to even know
0:08:32 that that was happening.
0:08:33 – It was fun times.
0:08:34 – You know, the one time,
0:08:37 my biggest hangover was actually our last episode.
0:08:38 – Really?
0:08:39 – Yes.
0:08:42 – I drank so much that, and this is,
0:08:45 we probably encouraged an entire generation
0:08:46 to drink way too much.
0:08:48 – I mean, yes.
0:08:49 (laughing)
0:08:51 – There are some fault on our shoulders, but–
0:08:52 – If you’re watching this and you’re like,
0:08:55 I’m an alcoholic, I’m the cause of you.
0:08:59 – Don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t, follow us on Instagram.
0:09:01 – I will say that after that episode,
0:09:03 I had never done what was called,
0:09:06 like when you do the chasing the hair of the dog.
0:09:08 – Yeah, I’m not the hair of the dog guy either.
0:09:10 – But I woke up so bad.
0:09:13 My head was hurting like it had never hurt before,
0:09:16 and I picked up the phone, and it’s like a room service.
0:09:17 This was like 8 a.m. or something like that.
0:09:18 – Yeah, ’cause we were in LA.
0:09:20 – Dari was with me, and I go,
0:09:25 I need two Bloody Mary’s doubles, ’cause she was hurting too.
0:09:26 And I had never done this before,
0:09:28 and the guy on the phone is like,
0:09:31 I’m not sure we can serve alcohol at this hour.
0:09:32 And he’s like, let me–
0:09:33 – Buddy, yes, you can.
0:09:33 – He’s like, let me check.
0:09:36 And I’m like, you got me, but it was the only thing
0:09:39 I could do to get through that morning,
0:09:40 ’cause I was hurting so bad.
0:09:44 – So, I had a very weird thing,
0:09:48 which was I had to wake up the next morning
0:09:51 and get in a car and drive to Redding, California.
0:09:52 – That’s where I was born.
0:09:53 – Yeah, I know, I know.
0:09:58 I had to drive up to Shasta Mountain in its long drive,
0:09:59 and so–
0:10:00 – That’s a long drive.
0:10:03 – It was a long drive, and I was beyond it.
0:10:04 I mean, we both were just out there,
0:10:05 ’cause it was like–
0:10:06 – Not while you were driving.
0:10:07 – Friends and family, no, no, no.
0:10:08 This is like the night before, right?
0:10:09 It’s like friends and family,
0:10:11 and it was just great, and fans,
0:10:13 and it was such a joyous atmosphere,
0:10:16 and just drinking, drinking, drinking.
0:10:19 And we got into the car, and I turned to Heather,
0:10:22 and I said, you need to take me to McDonald’s.
0:10:23 And she was like, what?
0:10:25 And I was like, take me to the drive through McDonald’s.
0:10:28 I got two filet-of-fish, and two cheeseburgers.
0:10:30 – Oh, the filet-of-fish are the worst, dude.
0:10:32 – Not for hangovers, because guess what?
0:10:36 I was out of bed, 6.30 in the morning,
0:10:37 shippers can be, and I was like,
0:10:39 oh my God, it’s the magic of McDonald’s.
0:10:40 – Yeah, oh yeah.
0:10:42 The only time I would clutch McDonald’s
0:10:43 would be at the big muffin. – Oh, I haven’t had McDonald’s
0:10:46 in years. – Yeah, exactly.
0:10:47 – I was in Italy.
0:10:49 We went to Florence, we were super fun.
0:10:51 Recently, yeah, like a couple of weeks ago.
0:10:54 I thought I was gonna love the food in Tuscany.
0:10:55 I was so excited, because we’d been to Rome,
0:10:57 we’d been to Postano, and done the Mediterranean stuff,
0:10:59 which was awesome.
0:11:02 And I was like, Tuscany, and wine,
0:11:04 the countryside, and all this stuff.
0:11:07 Bro, they do not cook their meat.
0:11:09 They just don’t cook their meat.
0:11:10 – Meaning like it was like raw.
0:11:12 – Yes, meaning it was like raw.
0:11:14 – Why do you, oh, you always like your steak’s done.
0:11:16 – Because I love, well, not done, done.
0:11:17 And that’s the thing, I was like–
0:11:18 – You’re not a medium rare guy, though.
0:11:19 You’re more of a medium guy.
0:11:21 – I’m more medium rare.
0:11:23 Heather’s more medium.
0:11:24 – You started to get more medium rare.
0:11:25 – Yep, I got there.
0:11:27 So then I was like, oh, we’re, you know, Florence.
0:11:29 This is a plate Tuscan beef, you know, beef florentine.
0:11:30 – Yeah.
0:11:30 – Beef steak florentine.
0:11:31 I want some of this stuff.
0:11:32 – They got some beef carpaccio.
0:11:33 You had some–
0:11:35 – Well, we had come from Serbia.
0:11:37 – Right, which I don’t know why you went to Serbia.
0:11:39 – Well, so Buddy of Mine was making a movie in Serbia.
0:11:41 He’s made a couple of movies there in Serbia,
0:11:43 and he was, and we’re working on putting some movies together.
0:11:44 And so he was like, you gotta come to Serbia.
0:11:46 You gotta see, and it really is true.
0:11:48 Serbia’s great for making movies.
0:11:50 And they have a bunch of movies that there was a big elbow
0:11:51 movie that just went through there.
0:11:53 They just did this beautiful sound stages
0:11:54 that were just built.
0:11:57 The librarians reboot on CW just shot there.
0:11:59 It’s a place to go.
0:12:00 They don’t cook their meat.
0:12:01 – In Serbia.
0:12:02 – In Serbia.
0:12:05 I got a hamburger, I got a hamburger,
0:12:06 and my wife and I split it.
0:12:08 Heather and I split it.
0:12:10 It came, and I thought to myself, I went,
0:12:12 I should tell him to like cook it.
0:12:13 That thought came to my brain.
0:12:15 – You also don’t want to, like, remember when in Japan,
0:12:16 you don’t want to install like a local cult.
0:12:18 – 100%, 100%.
0:12:19 And I was like, it’s a hamburger.
0:12:20 It’s not a steak.
0:12:23 Who makes a raw hamburger?
0:12:24 Serbians do.
0:12:26 – Yeah, raw hamburgers are actually way more dangerous
0:12:27 ’cause it’s ground up bits of everything
0:12:29 versus like one big chunk of meat.
0:12:31 – And by the way, I took a bite from the edge
0:12:33 ’cause I was like, I’ll just get the edge
0:12:35 ’cause that has to be cooked, right?
0:12:36 It was like bag of knuckles.
0:12:40 It was like, remember when we had conk in Japan
0:12:41 and it just, it felt like–
0:12:42 – Was it the semen stuff?
0:12:44 – No, I don’t know what that is.
0:12:47 – No, we have like a sack of semen eggs or something.
0:12:47 There was like–
0:12:48 – I don’t remember the semen.
0:12:49 – You don’t remember that?
0:12:50 – I don’t remember the semen.
0:12:51 – It was that they called it small,
0:12:53 it translates into small white children.
0:12:55 – I don’t think so.
0:12:56 – I’m serious.
0:12:57 What’s that called?
0:12:58 – I don’t remember this.
0:13:00 Do you remember the conk that lays it?
0:13:02 – Oh, bring it for your sake.
0:13:03 – Yeah, that’s right.
0:13:04 – Prager, you remember that?
0:13:05 – We’re zooming, Prager.
0:13:06 – There was something that we tried.
0:13:07 I don’t think you tried it, but anyway.
0:13:08 – I mean, that does not surprise me.
0:13:09 – Yeah.
0:13:11 – But I did, but the conk where it was like chewy
0:13:13 in an uncomfortable way.
0:13:15 It was like, that feels like knuckles.
0:13:16 Like where I would assume a knuckle.
0:13:18 Yeah, like cartilage, yeah.
0:13:20 That’s what this burger felt like.
0:13:23 And I was just like, but then of course I felt bad.
0:13:23 It’s all we ordered.
0:13:25 I tried to nibble as much as I could.
0:13:27 So then we go to Tuscany.
0:13:30 So now I’m already sort of like, I don’t want raw food.
0:13:32 And I was a moron.
0:13:34 We went to Cortona, which is glorious.
0:13:35 Like Medieval City.
0:13:37 Do you remember Under the Tuscan Sun?
0:13:38 Movie Under the Tuscan Sun?
0:13:39 See it.
0:13:40 I know you’re not a big movie guy, but see it.
0:13:41 – I’ve done movies.
0:13:42 I’m doing a theater.
0:13:43 You saw the movie.
0:13:43 – I know, I saw that theater.
0:13:44 It’s great.
0:13:45 – Under the Tuscan Sun.
0:13:46 Gorgeous.
0:13:47 – The deal was great.
0:13:48 – They go to Cortona.
0:13:51 It’s like this medieval mountain town
0:13:52 or not like hilltop town.
0:13:53 Gorgeous.
0:13:55 I go, everything’s so cheap there.
0:13:56 They have a sliced steak.
0:13:58 So I was like, I’m going to get a sliced steak, you know,
0:13:59 whatever.
0:14:00 I know I keep ordering.
0:14:01 They have Wagyu.
0:14:03 A5 Japanese Wagyu.
0:14:04 40 euro.
0:14:05 – So 40 euros.
0:14:06 40 bucks?
0:14:07 – Of course I did.
0:14:08 I was like, this is the cheapest.
0:14:11 And the guy goes, just so you know, it’s Wagyu.
0:14:12 We can only serve it rare.
0:14:13 – Yeah, you used to-
0:14:14 – And in my mind I was like,
0:14:16 I’ve had seared Wagyu.
0:14:17 – Yeah.
0:14:18 – This would be great.
0:14:18 – Yeah.
0:14:21 – Bro, that shit did not touch a fire.
0:14:22 – It was just a sliced wagyu.
0:14:24 – That was just sliced raw.
0:14:26 Not even like carpaccio.
0:14:27 It was just-
0:14:28 – But there’s so much fat in that.
0:14:29 – Oh bro.
0:14:30 – That’s when you get that pastry fat.
0:14:32 – But again, I came from Serbia
0:14:34 eating knuckle sandwiches, literally.
0:14:36 – All right, where were we going with this though?
0:14:38 But how does it go back to the Ignatian?
0:14:40 We’re talking about the best Ignatian, the worst Ignatian.
0:14:43 – Hold on, we can get there.
0:14:44 This is like our senior moments.
0:14:46 – Yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:14:47 Well, we never tried to get back on
0:14:48 (laughing)
0:14:49 on the Ignatian.
0:14:50 Was it Japan?
0:14:51 – Okay, so we don’t go to Serbia.
0:14:52 Japan was amazing.
0:14:53 – We had-
0:14:55 – Oh, it was Tuscany, it was food.
0:14:56 – I had fun in Japan.
0:14:57 – Japan was awesome.
0:14:58 I mean, you had a lot of fun.
0:15:01 You had, what was it, 10 plus plus for something like that?
0:15:02 – What?
0:15:03 – The code, remember?
0:15:04 – What was the code?
0:15:05 – Do you remember?
0:15:07 – Not for public consumption, but there was a code.
0:15:09 Maybe you left early.
0:15:10 – I don’t know what you’re talking about.
0:15:11 – You left today early.
0:15:13 – Okay, I assume you’re saying that’s correct.
0:15:14 – This is correct.
0:15:17 So Prager and I, we stayed back.
0:15:20 – No, I had a friend out there that I met out there,
0:15:23 a female friend that was very nice.
0:15:26 – Yes, we were like, oh, you’re leaving tomorrow?
0:15:28 That’s crazy, we’re gonna stay for another day.
0:15:31 And we were like, but we wanna communicate
0:15:34 how fun your evening was.
0:15:36 – Oh, and I texted.
0:15:38 – Yeah, well, no, I think you left it somewhere.
0:15:41 And all we got was 10 plus plus.
0:15:43 And we just high-fived and said, that’s amazing.
0:15:44 That’s a great way to put it.
0:15:45 – I don’t remember.
0:15:46 I mean, I do remember certain things,
0:15:49 but like the Japanese people, that was so nice.
0:15:50 – What was the cock-takey?
0:15:52 – Cock-takey was a…
0:15:55 It mistranslated something for us.
0:15:58 – Well, there were a bunch of, so like the guy who–
0:16:00 – This was our first time in Japan, by the way.
0:16:01 – It was my only time in Japan.
0:16:02 – Okay, it was–
0:16:03 – I’ve yet to go back.
0:16:03 I fell in love with it.
0:16:05 I was like, I wanna go back so much.
0:16:06 – This was a long time ago.
0:16:07 – Long time ago.
0:16:08 – Yeah.
0:16:10 – You emailed me or texted me
0:16:13 because United was doing a special,
0:16:18 which was like $4.99 round-trip SFO or LAX to Tokyo.
0:16:21 – Yeah.
0:16:22 – And you just texted me–
0:16:23 – It was like economy or something.
0:16:24 – Yeah, yeah, sure.
0:16:25 But you just texted me and you were like,
0:16:27 dude, we gotta go to Japan, do a show.
0:16:29 We went on the show and we were like,
0:16:30 does anybody wanna help us go to Japan?
0:16:31 – Yeah.
0:16:35 – And what was the guy’s name who was working with Nick?
0:16:36 Who was a friend?
0:16:36 Do you remember his name?
0:16:38 – The American Monarchy.
0:16:40 – Yes, Numeric, yeah.
0:16:41 – No, but he went by something else.
0:16:43 He had like a nickname.
0:16:44 – He did have a nickname, however.
0:16:45 – Mm.
0:16:47 – He had an American nickname,
0:16:49 but he was the one who connected with us.
0:16:50 – No, I know.
0:16:51 Numeric, he was like–
0:16:52 – That was the reason we met that guy, Ron Richards,
0:16:55 because we got to Starwood and hooked up for free.
0:16:56 – Oh, that was through Ron?
0:16:58 – Ron, yeah, we helped us with that.
0:16:59 – Yeah, we got a nice hotel.
0:17:01 There was an earthquake there.
0:17:02 – Oh my God, there was an earthquake
0:17:05 while we were at the top floor of the hotel.
0:17:07 Getting that crazy dinner.
0:17:09 – We got to bring this back to Dignation in some way.
0:17:10 We had a good day at Dignation.
0:17:12 – We were there for Dignation, so that’s subtle.
0:17:13 – That’s perfect.
0:17:13 – Technically.
0:17:18 Oh, should we tell the story of the party we went to?
0:17:20 – Oh, we were in T-shirts and we felt totally awkward.
0:17:21 – Yeah, ’cause everybody was in like furry outfits.
0:17:25 – Yeah, we got invited to this high rise in Tokyo.
0:17:27 – So, Mikkozai, what was his name again?
0:17:28 – Umenachi was his last name.
0:17:29 – Umenachi?
0:17:30 – And Numeric, yeah.
0:17:31 – Numeric.
0:17:32 – I remember the Mikkozai.
0:17:34 – So, Mikkozai was the head of Kozai Animation.
0:17:36 And this was back, I mean, this was early days.
0:17:38 – Yeah, this was like 15 years ago.
0:17:39 – For sure.
0:17:40 There were a lot of people that were like,
0:17:43 what’s this podcast thing going on in America, to be honest.
0:17:44 And maybe even in Europe, I don’t know,
0:17:47 we didn’t really know a lot about what was going on there,
0:17:50 but Mikkozai was the head of Kozai Animation,
0:17:52 or is the head of Kozai Animation, I had no idea.
0:17:55 We got connected with him and he really wanted us
0:18:00 to talk with the lady that ran all of the radio in Japan.
0:18:01 Remember?
0:18:02 – Yes.
0:18:03 – And the way that we were gonna meet her
0:18:06 was we were gonna go to this party.
0:18:07 Like a house party.
0:18:08 – Like a house party.
0:18:10 – Yeah, and so I was in a shirt
0:18:11 that I had been wearing all day long.
0:18:12 – Of course.
0:18:13 – It was a black T-shirt, obviously.
0:18:14 – Shocker.
0:18:15 – Shocker.
0:18:18 And I just remember I was like hot and sweaty.
0:18:19 – Yep.
0:18:20 – Sweat was underneath my arms and stuff.
0:18:23 And I was wearing like shitty kind of jeans.
0:18:26 It’s travel gear, I was like, you walk around Tokyo.
0:18:28 And then we walk into this place.
0:18:32 – Well, first off, we go to this crazy high end
0:18:34 like Beverly Hills, Tokyo.
0:18:35 – Tokyo, yeah.
0:18:37 – And we go to a door that has an elevator
0:18:39 next to like a Chanel store.
0:18:40 – There’s a Louboutin.
0:18:41 – Louboutin store, right?
0:18:42 – Yeah.
0:18:45 – And then we go to the penthouse of said condo.
0:18:46 – We were like, oh, we’re just going to somebody’s house
0:18:48 and everyone’s gonna sit down around like playing Nintendo
0:18:49 or something.
0:18:50 – Yeah.
0:18:53 – It was like the highest in crazies.
0:18:55 And I’m like sweating.
0:18:57 I felt so out of place, dude.
0:18:58 – Yeah, you think?
0:19:00 We opened the door and there’s literally
0:19:03 a dance floor of people in costumes.
0:19:04 – Yeah.
0:19:06 – And there was like a record scratch.
0:19:07 – ‘Cause we’re the only white people in there.
0:19:10 – And it’s me, you, and Prager, and Mikkozai.
0:19:11 – Yeah.
0:19:13 This was when there was like very little white people
0:19:14 in Tokyo. – In Japan?
0:19:15 – ‘Cause I remember I got pissed
0:19:16 when I saw another white person.
0:19:17 – Oh yeah.
0:19:18 – ‘Cause I was like, get out of here.
0:19:19 I wanted to like doll myself.
0:19:20 – Well, remember how they,
0:19:23 ’cause we went out to that place that like art school
0:19:24 out in the sort of country.
0:19:27 Remember when we got off and everybody was staring at me?
0:19:27 – Yeah.
0:19:29 – ‘Cause it’s not just white people, blonde hair, blue eyes.
0:19:30 – Oh, that’s right.
0:19:33 – They were like, what is this weird thing walking by me?
0:19:34 – Yeah. – Who’s crazy?
0:19:36 – Your hair is still, you don’t have any grays.
0:19:37 – Do you dye it?
0:19:37 – No, not at all.
0:19:38 – Here’s the funny thing.
0:19:40 One day we were doing a donation
0:19:43 and the next week you came in and I’m like,
0:19:44 what’s wrong with you?
0:19:45 – White dye. – You had a white.
0:19:47 – Yeah, I still have it. – A white streak.
0:19:48 It was us just getting old.
0:19:49 – Yeah, of course.
0:19:51 – And I looked at you and I was like, what happened?
0:19:52 – Oh, no.
0:19:54 – And you were like, I don’t know, like I woke up.
0:19:56 – It’s just there. – And I just had white.
0:19:58 It was like a white tiger streak or something.
0:20:00 And I was like, what the hell?
0:20:01 It was us getting old.
0:20:02 That was the first sign.
0:20:06 Remember how I didn’t know if guys undergarments,
0:20:08 the carriage would turn gray?
0:20:09 You remember that?
0:20:11 I used to ask that in a podcast.
0:20:13 We had a podcast about that and I was like,
0:20:15 I didn’t know that’s a thing.
0:20:16 – It is a thing?
0:20:17 – Well, a couple of hairs will do that.
0:20:18 – Really? – As you get older.
0:20:20 Yeah, I found one too.
0:20:21 – That’s not happened to me yet.
0:20:22 – None. – No.
0:20:23 – At your age.
0:20:24 Well, how old are you now?
0:20:25 – Thank you very much for that, Kevin.
0:20:26 I think I’m older than you.
0:20:28 – So I’m 47.
0:20:29 – Yeah, I’m 48.
0:20:31 – Oh shit, and not a single gray down there.
0:20:33 – Amazing.
0:20:34 (laughing)
0:20:35 – What are you doing?
0:20:36 – Nothing?
0:20:39 You have no grace.
0:20:41 No, but you have nothing.
0:20:42 – Really?
0:20:43 – I had like two.
0:20:44 I had to turn them in immediately.
0:20:45 – I mean, that’s what you do with them.
0:20:47 – No, but I just like, it was confusing.
0:20:50 Anyway, the champagne’s going straight to my head.
0:20:52 – Much about Ignatian we’ve been talking about.
0:20:53 – Yeah.
0:20:56 One of my promises to all of you out there
0:20:58 is that when I take on advertising partners,
0:21:00 I want them to be actual products that I use,
0:21:01 things that are battle tested,
0:21:03 things that aren’t just somebody
0:21:04 that’s pitched me something,
0:21:07 but I’ve used them for months or years,
0:21:09 and I can recommend them with complete confidence.
0:21:13 And today’s sponsor, Copilot, is just that.
0:21:15 Copilot is how I track my spending,
0:21:17 it’s how I do my budgeting.
0:21:19 Back in the day, I used to use an app called Mint.
0:21:21 That’s no longer, they shut it down.
0:21:23 By the way, if you’re a Mint user
0:21:24 and you have all your data back there,
0:21:26 Copilot has a really easy way
0:21:29 that you can import all of your old Mint data.
0:21:30 But the reason I like Copilot
0:21:32 is because they use machine learning.
0:21:36 So they categorize things very accurately,
0:21:40 and they have this engine that you can actually train
0:21:42 and automatically apply rules to transactions
0:21:43 as they come in.
0:21:45 So everything just neatly gets categorized,
0:21:47 and you don’t have to spend a ton of time doing that.
0:21:50 But I actually think that this might even be cooler.
0:21:53 I really like that they bring in Amazon
0:21:54 and Venmo Transactions.
0:21:55 So you can actually see the items that you’re buying
0:21:59 with inside of Amazon, doesn’t just say Amazon.com.
0:22:00 And of course, you can zoom out
0:22:02 to see your entire live view.
0:22:04 You can get two months completely free
0:22:06 with coupon code KevinRose.
0:22:09 So visit KevinRose.com/copilot,
0:22:12 and you’ll see why I’m ranting and raving about this.
0:22:14 It’s a great product, it’s beautiful, it’s easy to use.
0:22:19 KevinRose.com/copilot, coupon code KevinRose.
0:22:22 All right, this next mention is not a sponsor.
0:22:23 However, I am an investor,
0:22:25 but I want to give them a little bit of love
0:22:29 because I’ve greatly benefited from using this app,
0:22:30 and I think you will as well.
0:22:31 Let’s talk about meditation.
0:22:34 In my opinion, and I’m just speaking for myself here,
0:22:35 this is not coming from the company,
0:22:38 meditation has turned into a pretty big enterprise.
0:22:40 So most of the apps that are out there these days,
0:22:42 they’re jam-packed with shorter meditations,
0:22:45 they have sleep content, just more and more stuff.
0:22:47 I think this is great
0:22:49 because these companies have huge marketing budgets,
0:22:52 they’re great at introducing meditation to the masses.
0:22:53 There’s a saying in meditation
0:22:55 that the only bad meditation is the one that you don’t do,
0:22:57 which I fully subscribe to.
0:23:00 But if you’ve tried these apps
0:23:02 and you’re looking for something else,
0:23:05 you’re looking for a little bit more depth
0:23:06 in a clearly defined path
0:23:09 from an authentic, fully accredited Zen master,
0:23:11 then you have to try out the way.
0:23:13 You’ve probably heard of Henry Shookman,
0:23:14 he’s been on my podcast before,
0:23:16 talking about all things meditation,
0:23:17 talking about enlightenment.
0:23:18 Henry is amazing.
0:23:21 His app is available for both iOS and Android.
0:23:24 You can find it at thewayapp.com.
0:23:26 I’ve been studying with Henry for several years now
0:23:28 and it’s absolutely changed my life.
0:23:31 I’m so glad that he’s bringing these teachings
0:23:32 in the form of an app
0:23:34 because typically you would have to go to a Zendo,
0:23:36 travel out to Santa Fe, New Mexico,
0:23:38 and now it’s fully ready to go on iOS and Android.
0:23:40 So with this app, you’ll get to enjoy
0:23:43 30 free guided meditation sessions
0:23:44 and they’re all different.
0:23:47 They’re fantastic, there’s no credit card required.
0:23:49 Check it out, download it for iOS and Android.
0:23:50 And like I said, with this,
0:23:52 you’re gonna get focused training,
0:23:55 you’re gonna get depth and you get quality over quantity.
0:23:58 Thewayapp.com, it’s the change in depth
0:24:01 that I have a feeling that you’ve been looking for.
0:24:03 – Let’s cover a couple of other topics
0:24:04 and then we should probably transition
0:24:06 to a better location.
0:24:07 How’s everything been?
0:24:08 How’s your family been?
0:24:09 How’s the life been in general?
0:24:10 People are gonna wonder like,
0:24:12 what the hell, what’s Alex been up to?
0:24:13 – God, yeah.
0:24:16 – ‘Cause you were, dude, you were huge into Bitcoin.
0:24:17 – Was, yeah.
0:24:18 – Like 10 years ago or whatever.
0:24:20 You had a whole mining operation.
0:24:21 I remember calling you up and being like,
0:24:22 dude, what’s, but I haven’t copied lately.
0:24:25 And you’re like, I’m out of state.
0:24:28 You were like doing some kind of like weird mining operation
0:24:31 and like a place where it was power efficient and shit.
0:24:32 – Right outside Reno.
0:24:33 – Yeah.
0:24:35 – We had a mining operation, bought a bunch of miners.
0:24:36 I mean, it’s like we were talking about, you know,
0:24:38 if you bought an iPhone instead of buying the iPhone,
0:24:39 you just bought Apple stock,
0:24:41 like you have millions of dollars or whatever.
0:24:42 It’s very much like that.
0:24:45 I have been in and out of Bitcoin,
0:24:47 not as early as it started,
0:24:49 ’cause I remember talking about on Dignation
0:24:51 when it was like five cents a coin.
0:24:52 – It was nothing.
0:24:53 It was nothing.
0:24:54 I remember I looked back at,
0:24:59 my first purchase was at about $10 a coin, which is crazy.
0:25:00 – And again, I go back to it.
0:25:01 – I remember when it hit a hundred, I was like,
0:25:03 oh, cash out, bitch, I’m out, son.
0:25:05 – It’s always a good idea to sell
0:25:07 until it’s not a good idea that you sold.
0:25:08 – Exactly.
0:25:09 – And again, it’s the same thing.
0:25:12 It’s like, had we not put the money that we put into
0:25:16 the mining operation and just bought and held Bitcoin,
0:25:18 so much money, like so much money,
0:25:20 but also wouldn’t have been as fun.
0:25:22 It’s the same thing as like putting money in the stock market
0:25:24 and just sitting there and watch it kind of do some stuff.
0:25:26 That’s just not fun, you know what I mean?
0:25:29 Yeah, me and some partners got together.
0:25:31 I built my own miner.
0:25:33 – Like ASIC miner or like what were you doing?
0:25:34 – No, no, no, no, no, this wasn’t mining Bitcoin.
0:25:37 So like I was doing stuff, this is way back in the day,
0:25:38 like Bitcoin was probably like a hundred.
0:25:39 – Okay, yeah, yeah.
0:25:41 – 75, something like that.
0:25:43 And I built myself a graphics,
0:25:45 like one of those things it was like in a milk crate.
0:25:46 – Yeah.
0:25:47 – You know what I mean?
0:25:51 – Yeah, yeah, and then you stack up the GPUs, yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:25:52 I would like tunnel into it.
0:25:54 My buddy had an office.
0:25:55 His electricity was included in the brain.
0:25:57 – People used to do that.
0:25:58 – Hey!
0:25:58 – Yeah, people used to do that.
0:26:01 They’d take and plug them into their employers electricity.
0:26:02 – A hundred percent.
0:26:04 So I was like, this is free money, you know what I mean?
0:26:06 I bought the stuff, set it up, and you know,
0:26:08 I mean, computer scientists from way back
0:26:10 and a computer nerd from my entire life,
0:26:12 like building this was super fun
0:26:15 and downloading the miners, then setting up the miners,
0:26:18 setting up the like drilling in and all the like tunneling in
0:26:20 and being able to do all that stuff was super fun.
0:26:23 So I had weeks of tinkering, which was super great.
0:26:25 And then I started doing this thing
0:26:29 where I would go to these Chinese exchanges
0:26:33 and I would find altcoins that I could mine
0:26:37 that were trading for Bitcoin on these exchanges.
0:26:39 You know, one point I was mining like Federation coin,
0:26:41 which was like a Star Trek altcoin.
0:26:46 But in this Chinese exchange, you could sell that coin
0:26:49 for a coin that on a regular exchange,
0:26:51 not the like Wild West exchange,
0:26:54 you could then sell that for Bitcoin.
0:26:56 So I was doing this kind of arbitrage,
0:26:58 but at the same time I was mining.
0:27:00 So I’d be like mining Fed coin.
0:27:02 I like was mining UFC coin at some point,
0:27:03 like just these weird coins.
0:27:05 And it wasn’t even associated, it was like, I get it.
0:27:07 – I mean, that meme coins are the thing now,
0:27:08 but this is way back in the day.
0:27:09 – Nobody even called the meme coins.
0:27:10 It wasn’t even a thing.
0:27:12 Just some guy was like, I’m gonna make a coin.
0:27:14 And then people were like, I’ll buy some of that.
0:27:15 You know what I mean?
0:27:16 And then there was an exchange where they were like,
0:27:18 well, I’d trade that for this coin.
0:27:20 And it was like, oh, that coin you can send over here
0:27:22 and trade it for Bitcoin.
0:27:25 So I did that for like, I can’t even remember how long,
0:27:29 built up a little stockpile of like three, four Bitcoins,
0:27:29 something like that.
0:27:31 ‘Cause I was making a third of a coin here.
0:27:32 – Yeah, yeah.
0:27:35 – And then that was sitting on an exchange that went bust.
0:27:36 – Oh, fuck.
0:27:38 Well, I lost it. – What kind of exchange was it?
0:27:39 – I can’t remember.
0:27:40 – Not Mt. Gox.
0:27:41 It was before that.
0:27:43 It was before Mt. Gox, something else.
0:27:44 – And you just lost it all.
0:27:45 Oh, shit, dude, I’m sorry.
0:27:47 – But again, I was like, yeah, it’s 800 bucks, whatever,
0:27:48 at the time.
0:27:49 – Yeah, at the time.
0:27:51 – And now I’m like, I’d like that $200,000 back then.
0:27:53 – Yeah, exactly, seriously.
0:27:55 – And then I got into the mining stuff.
0:27:57 And so I was always sort of dipping and dipping out.
0:27:58 And I was just like, whatever.
0:28:00 So we got a couple miners and then a partner was like,
0:28:03 hey, I’m opening a place.
0:28:05 We put it there and then ran that
0:28:06 for months and months made some.
0:28:09 I remember I was in Hawaii for Thanksgiving.
0:28:12 And I remember when Bitcoin hit 20 for the first time.
0:28:15 And I was getting alerts from the miners.
0:28:16 And so I get an alert that was like,
0:28:18 you just made $700.
0:28:19 – That’s amazing.
0:28:22 – You just made bubble, and it was like, yeah.
0:28:25 And then we sold everything, liquidated it all down.
0:28:28 And then it dipped down to like eight again.
0:28:30 And the miners are just underwater.
0:28:33 We sold them all for like nothing.
0:28:35 And then I walked away from that with like three,
0:28:38 two and a half Bitcoin, which at the time I was like,
0:28:41 yeah, it’s fine, you know, you made a little money.
0:28:43 And then I put it into BlockFi.
0:28:45 – Oh, shit.
0:28:47 – Started to make an interest on it, which is great.
0:28:48 I had my credit card, which is awesome.
0:28:50 – But you got the back now, right?
0:28:51 – They went bankrupt.
0:28:55 And when the whole FTX thing happened.
0:28:55 – Right.
0:28:57 – And I was like, well, it happened again.
0:28:58 – Didn’t they return all of it?
0:28:59 – I got all of it back.
0:29:01 I was flabbergasted that I got all of it.
0:29:02 – Yeah.
0:29:03 – But I got all of it back.
0:29:04 – My buddy Brendan had the same thing happen
0:29:06 when we had all of his shit locked up.
0:29:08 ‘Cause everyone was getting like 5%, 6%,
0:29:09 whatever was amazing.
0:29:11 – Better than a wallet, just not a secure.
0:29:12 It was a company, you know what I mean?
0:29:14 Chris was the one that told me at your party.
0:29:15 – Yeah, I mean–
0:29:16 – He was the one that was like, dude, you gotta–
0:29:18 – I had a BlockFi account, I was earning interest.
0:29:21 And there was one time where I was just like,
0:29:23 there was something that made me a little uncomfortable.
0:29:25 I’m like, how can this just exist forever?
0:29:25 – Yeah.
0:29:27 – You know, I remember just like earning a bunch of interest
0:29:30 and be like, am I gonna, something?
0:29:31 And I just withdrew all.
0:29:33 And I got really lucky, I avoided it by like one month.
0:29:35 And it was just pure luck.
0:29:39 We lucked out too, ’cause I had convinced Heather, my wife,
0:29:43 to put a not crazy amount of our savings
0:29:45 into like USD coin or something.
0:29:47 – Yeah.
0:29:48 – On BlockFi, and we were making a good interest.
0:29:50 I mean, it was like north of 5%.
0:29:52 And it was like, hey, it’s tracking the US dollar.
0:29:54 So it’s like, you don’t really have to worry
0:29:56 about the fluctuation in the price of the coin.
0:29:57 It was like, it all made sense.
0:30:00 And we had made some good return on it,
0:30:01 but at a certain point Heather was like,
0:30:02 yeah, I’m not super comfortable.
0:30:03 I was like, dude, then I’ll pull it out.
0:30:05 And I pulled it out a year
0:30:08 before all the stuff went down and knock on wood.
0:30:09 I mean, thankfully BlockFi was really good
0:30:11 about giving that money back to people.
0:30:13 ‘Cause again, it was assets under management, right?
0:30:15 It wasn’t like, or not even assets under management.
0:30:16 They were custodial wallets.
0:30:19 So they were like, we don’t think this is our money.
0:30:21 We think this is your money.
0:30:22 We just can’t give it to you
0:30:23 because we’re going through a bankruptcy.
0:30:24 – Interesting.
0:30:28 – Yeah, at every step they were like, this isn’t ours.
0:30:29 This is a custodial wallet.
0:30:31 We think of it that way.
0:30:32 Because again, I got burnt on that other exchange.
0:30:34 So I still was like, if, you know.
0:30:35 – Yeah, it happens, it happens.
0:30:36 – It happens, but I got it back.
0:30:37 And it’s been really good actually
0:30:40 because now I’ve gotten to this point where
0:30:45 there are things that I will go, that seems cool.
0:30:48 I’ll just sell a little Bitcoin and we’ll do it that way.
0:30:49 You know what I mean?
0:30:52 So like we did an investment in like a little friends
0:30:54 and family investment in a ready to drink alcohol brand
0:30:55 called Art and Rev.
0:30:57 – Is that the little tiny guys?
0:31:00 – No, it’s a can, but it’s like really high end.
0:31:02 We make our own liquors out of Minnesota.
0:31:04 – Why didn’t you bring some of that tonight?
0:31:05 – Well, I should have, I’m sorry.
0:31:07 Next time, yeah.
0:31:09 But it was great because it was like really small amount.
0:31:11 But I was like, let’s just take it out of the Bitcoin
0:31:13 ’cause Bitcoin was like at the point,
0:31:15 you know, where it was making some money.
0:31:17 And we’ve made all that back now, it’s crazy.
0:31:19 We keep a little bit and then when we wanna do like,
0:31:21 let’s remodel a bathroom, we’ll take it.
0:31:23 Because I never used it.
0:31:24 You know what I mean?
0:31:25 And that was always the thing where I was like,
0:31:27 I would always tell my buddy Jerry, I was like,
0:31:30 dude, I just made 10 grand in like 20 minutes
0:31:31 ’cause Bitcoin’s go crazy.
0:31:33 And he was like, did you?
0:31:34 I was like, I mean, yeah.
0:31:35 – Right, until you actually saw it.
0:31:35 – And he’s like, are you gonna sell it?
0:31:37 And I was like, no, you’re gonna hold it.
0:31:38 And I was like, well, then you didn’t make 10.
0:31:40 It’s just fun to watch the numbers go up.
0:31:43 So with this, now I’ve kind of gotten to this thing
0:31:46 where I’m like, when it’s time to do something fun,
0:31:48 like we’re gonna try to redo our own bathroom.
0:31:51 I don’t know why we’re doing this, but we’re gonna try.
0:31:51 – Yourself?
0:31:52 – Yes.
0:31:54 – I’m addicted to these Instagram accounts
0:31:56 that have like all the woodworking tools and tips
0:31:57 and shit like that.
0:31:58 You watching that shit?
0:32:00 Oh dude, it’s so good.
0:32:03 – No, but we actually do like a Instagram account on us
0:32:05 attempting to redo, we’re just doing our half bath.
0:32:07 It’s just like a little bath.
0:32:08 When we were in Tuscany, I was like,
0:32:10 I wanna move to Tuscany.
0:32:12 This feels so cool, not Tuscany specifically,
0:32:14 but like, I love the vibe of Tuscany.
0:32:16 – Yeah, well, people should know you don’t have kids.
0:32:17 – Don’t have kids, no.
0:32:19 – And you’re not planning to have any kids.
0:32:20 You got that freedom, dude.
0:32:21 That’s what’s cool.
0:32:22 You could do that if you want to.
0:32:26 – I mean, honestly, like it’s funny that the freedom thing,
0:32:28 for us now, the anchor is friends.
0:32:29 – Yeah.
0:32:33 – Like, so we’re gonna move to Tuscany
0:32:34 and not see our friends.
0:32:35 But then it’s sort of like,
0:32:37 yeah, we don’t really see our friends all that often anyway.
0:32:38 You know what I mean?
0:32:41 Even local friends will see ’em once every six months.
0:32:42 We’ll be like, oh, we haven’t seen each other.
0:32:43 Like, we gotta get to dinner together.
0:32:46 Yeah, it’s like, they’re gonna come if we’re like,
0:32:48 hey, there’s a free, just get yourself to Tuscany.
0:32:50 You can stay here for a week, for free.
0:32:51 – What’s funny is like, now that I moved to LA,
0:32:53 we’ve seen each other twice now,
0:32:55 which is just like ridiculous.
0:32:56 – So stupid.
0:32:58 – I mean, you did move to the other side of Los Angeles.
0:33:00 – Which is another city altogether, practically.
0:33:02 Yeah, it is ridiculous.
0:33:04 – But yeah, so it did a bunch of Bitcoin stuff.
0:33:06 And then our mutual friend Ben,
0:33:07 I was an advisor to his company, Caffeine,
0:33:08 that he launched.
0:33:11 And then he got a big investment from Fox to do,
0:33:12 and this is a live streaming service,
0:33:14 to do content to make it on the studio.
0:33:15 – And you were running a bunch of shows over there.
0:33:16 – I ran a bunch of shows.
0:33:18 Yeah, I was running original production for them
0:33:20 for a while, just creating shows, running them.
0:33:22 Super fun, had a blast.
0:33:25 I had a live, weekly, interactive animated series.
0:33:26 It was like a comedy animated show,
0:33:28 but it was live and interactive,
0:33:31 which was just like so fun problem solving all that stuff.
0:33:34 And then we did a live interactive Dungeons & Dragons show.
0:33:35 – I remember that.
0:33:35 – Dude, it was so fun.
0:33:37 We had an animatronic host.
0:33:40 The puppet was like an animatronic puppet was the host.
0:33:42 And we would do our breaks for the thing.
0:33:44 We’d literally just chat, talking to an animatronic puppet.
0:33:47 It was some of the best time ever.
0:33:49 And then oversaw productions for them for a while.
0:33:51 And then you had just kind of stepped away
0:33:53 and was like, what do I want to do?
0:33:56 And to be honest, I don’t have an answer.
0:33:57 You know what I mean?
0:33:57 – Yeah.
0:34:00 – I just enjoyed doing stuff, doing weird things.
0:34:02 I just did my first loop group session.
0:34:03 – I don’t know what that is.
0:34:04 – It’s so weird.
0:34:05 – Is it like wife sharing stuff?
0:34:07 – No, that’s different.
0:34:08 That’s a different loop.
0:34:10 No, that’s the loop you know of.
0:34:11 – Yeah, the loop I know.
0:34:14 – No, it’s this voiceover thing that you do
0:34:17 with a group of people where you do the ancillary voices
0:34:19 and like fight battle noises and stuff
0:34:22 for animated series, video games and things like that.
0:34:23 It’s crazy.
0:34:26 I was like speaking, I was speaking Icelandic at some point.
0:34:27 It was super fun.
0:34:29 – It was an iPhone app?
0:34:30 – No, no, no.
0:34:31 The one we were doing was for an animated movie
0:34:32 that my buddy’s been doing.
0:34:33 – Oh, cool.
0:34:36 – Yeah. And it was just like, I was speaking Icelandic
0:34:38 and we were like Vikings and it was crazy.
0:34:39 It was so much fun.
0:34:40 – That’s awesome.
0:34:41 – It was so much fun.
0:34:42 But it’s like, that was cool.
0:34:43 I mean, I’d do that again if somebody asked.
0:34:46 Thankfully, I personally have done enough where like,
0:34:48 not that I don’t need to work ’cause I need to work.
0:34:49 You know, everybody needs to make money,
0:34:52 but it’s not like an immediate need where it’s like,
0:34:54 before it was like, I need to work
0:34:56 so I can go to the grocery store.
0:34:57 You know what I mean?
0:34:58 And then once that need became,
0:35:00 I need to work so that I can go to the grocery store
0:35:02 in 15 years, right?
0:35:03 – Right.
0:35:04 – It was still a need.
0:35:05 And now it’s like, I need to work
0:35:08 because I think in like 20 years,
0:35:10 I don’t know if I can go to the grocery store,
0:35:12 but I think I might be able to go to the grocery store.
0:35:13 You know what I mean?
0:35:13 So it’s like…
0:35:15 – And then you’re checking your age and you’re like,
0:35:18 okay, will I be fed or will I be…
0:35:20 – My buddy screwed me up so bad.
0:35:21 – Why?
0:35:22 – We were talking about just,
0:35:24 we’re playing video games talking bullshit
0:35:25 ’cause that’s what we do.
0:35:26 And it’s great, it’s great life.
0:35:28 And he goes, I can’t remember what we were talking about.
0:35:32 And he was like, look, if we’re lucky, we’re lucky,
0:35:36 we’ve got 20 more years of being healthy
0:35:37 and AI do whatever we want.
0:35:39 Yes, yeah.
0:35:41 – You’re 48?
0:35:41 – Yeah.
0:35:43 – 68, I hope you can still do them.
0:35:46 – No, if we’re lucky, by 68, I hope so too.
0:35:49 But by 68, those years are gonna be the same as my years.
0:35:51 He’s 74.
0:35:52 – How’s he doing?
0:35:54 – He’s doing good, but he’s slowing down.
0:35:56 He’s got some back issues.
0:35:56 You know what I mean?
0:35:58 – But like, he can go have a nice dinner and hang out.
0:36:01 – Sure, 100%, 100%.
0:36:03 But again, he’s lucky.
0:36:03 – Yeah.
0:36:04 – You know what I mean?
0:36:06 – Yeah, my dad went down at 73.
0:36:07 – Right, yeah.
0:36:08 – At your house.
0:36:09 I got the phone call at your house.
0:36:11 – Dude, I will never forget that
0:36:14 ’cause I remember Prager knocking on our door
0:36:16 at like seven in the morning.
0:36:18 And I was like, why is Prager knocking on my door?
0:36:19 – I was laying in your spare bedroom.
0:36:21 We recorded “Dignation” the night before
0:36:23 and my sister calls me.
0:36:24 It was like seven a.m.
0:36:26 My phone I had on vibrate is like zzzz.
0:36:28 And then in my head, I’m like, oh, fuck.
0:36:31 Why would she be calling me this early?
0:36:32 Why?
0:36:33 Why?
0:36:34 – No good reason.
0:36:34 – No good reason.
0:36:35 – Only bad reasons.
0:36:36 – Only bad reasons.
0:36:37 And then I picked up the second time she called
0:36:40 and she’s like, dad’s passed and she was in tears.
0:36:43 And I was at your house, dude.
0:36:44 And so what did Prager say?
0:36:45 I don’t even remember.
0:36:46 That whole thing was a blur to me.
0:36:47 – Oh, dude, Prager knocked on the door
0:36:49 and I was like, what did they need at seven?
0:36:50 ‘Cause you guys had a flight.
0:36:51 Like, it was all gonna be–
0:36:52 – That flight was like nine or something.
0:36:53 – Yeah, it was gonna be like–
0:36:55 – We were going back to SF.
0:36:56 – Yeah. – Oh, yeah.
0:36:57 And I remember I opened the door
0:36:59 and Prager was just like, dude,
0:37:01 Kevin’s father had a heart attack, we gotta go.
0:37:04 And I was like, okay, and I just put–
0:37:04 – Yeah.
0:37:07 I remember when you walked me out to the front room
0:37:08 and I was just like, she’s passed.
0:37:10 And I was just like in a daze.
0:37:11 – Yeah.
0:37:12 – And I had to go to the airport.
0:37:14 I had to call a taxi.
0:37:15 – Oh, yeah.
0:37:16 – Oh, yeah, no Uber’s, yeah, for sure.
0:37:18 – Yeah, and then I just went to the airport
0:37:19 and then booked a flight.
0:37:20 It wasn’t until I was on the flight to Las Vegas
0:37:22 that I kind of broke down ’cause I was in such a shock.
0:37:25 – Oh, dude, well, that’s always what happens, right?
0:37:25 – Yeah.
0:37:27 – You’re just kind of like a zombie through,
0:37:29 ’cause then you’re in work mode, right?
0:37:31 You’re like, okay, I’m not going to SF.
0:37:34 Gotta go to Vegas, gotta get to the airport,
0:37:35 get on the flight, get a ticket.
0:37:37 Who flies to Vegas right now?
0:37:39 – Exactly, I was like Southwest, okay.
0:37:40 – And then the moment you’re on there,
0:37:42 you’re like, oh my, this happened.
0:37:45 – I know, I was sitting next to this younger girl
0:37:47 and I remember that I had put my hand over my face
0:37:49 and wiped some tears away.
0:37:50 I just remember her, it must’ve been like,
0:37:53 what the hell is this guy all fucked up about?
0:37:55 You got engaged on stage at Dignation,
0:37:57 well, I mean, you announced it, actually,
0:37:58 and surprised me.
0:38:00 – I was smart enough to not get engaged
0:38:03 during the crazy London live show.
0:38:04 That was that crazy show where like,
0:38:06 you remember the security guard that they gave us?
0:38:07 – No.
0:38:08 – The big British guy?
0:38:10 – Oh, dude, remember when I got a death threat
0:38:11 to be shot and we had to have those guys?
0:38:12 – Oh, that’s when–
0:38:13 – ‘Cause those were Israeli guys.
0:38:14 – I think that’s when that was.
0:38:15 It was during that time.
0:38:16 That was so weird.
0:38:18 – No, this was a different one.
0:38:20 – ‘Cause, oh, the Israeli guy.
0:38:21 – Yeah, for people that don’t know,
0:38:23 there was a death threat that came in to dig
0:38:28 that said, you’re promoting too much left-wing content.
0:38:29 – Right, yeah.
0:38:30 – Like, a long time, obviously, a long time ago.
0:38:33 They said, I’m gonna come to the Dignation and shoot you.
0:38:35 We had to file with the FBI,
0:38:38 got two undercover Israeli–
0:38:39 – Yeah, it was like ex-Musad guys.
0:38:41 – Yeah, and they had guns on them.
0:38:42 – Oh, yeah.
0:38:43 – And we were doing a lot of Dignation,
0:38:44 and I was like sitting there in front of the crowd
0:38:47 being like, let’s party, please don’t shoot me.
0:38:49 – Yeah, I thought you had to bring the shots.
0:38:49 – Yeah.
0:38:51 – Like, that was tough.
0:38:52 – Totally crazy tough.
0:38:54 – But this guy, I remember,
0:38:56 ’cause it was at the O2 conference center
0:38:57 where it was like,
0:38:59 I might have been WebEx, maybe?
0:39:00 London?
0:39:01 Might have been the future of WebEx.
0:39:02 – It was Ryan Carson saying.
0:39:05 – And we were backstage, and it was like 3,000 seats,
0:39:06 and they were all filled,
0:39:07 and we were just getting psyched up.
0:39:11 And this big British guy, who was like the security guard.
0:39:11 – Yeah.
0:39:13 – He was like, what are these guys doing here?
0:39:15 And we were like, oh, we do the show,
0:39:17 and there’s like a platform with a couch.
0:39:18 He was like, you do a show?
0:39:21 And I was like, yeah, we sit and we drink and talk.
0:39:21 Yeah.
0:39:25 And he goes, oh, he was like, aren’t they getting free beer?
0:39:26 And I was like, yeah, I think we got them all free beer.
0:39:29 Like we made it so that people would get beer on the end.
0:39:30 And he was like, oh, they’re just here for the beer.
0:39:33 And we were like, okay, dude, just let’s go.
0:39:35 Like, we’re about to go on stage in front of these people.
0:39:36 Could we just chill?
0:39:39 And that’s when this guy, our friend,
0:39:43 who sometimes has good idea, we finish the show.
0:39:45 And that’s the one where Heather came,
0:39:47 and I announced that I got engaged,
0:39:48 everybody crazy, it was so super fun.
0:39:50 It was really a special time.
0:39:51 And at the end of the show,
0:39:53 everybody’s losing their mind.
0:39:54 It’s so great.
0:39:57 And of course, everybody rushes up to get a picture.
0:40:00 And they’re all in front of the little stand
0:40:01 where there’s a couch.
0:40:02 – It lists up like four feet or whatever,
0:40:04 like not even that three feet.
0:40:07 – So Prager goes, get up on the couch with the guys
0:40:08 and take a picture.
0:40:12 So all 3,000 people start getting onto this platform.
0:40:14 And then it was like, no, don’t get on the platform.
0:40:15 And they were like, get off the platform.
0:40:16 – Yeah, ’cause it was collapsed.
0:40:17 – It was collapsed.
0:40:18 I mean, there were so many people.
0:40:19 And then people were jumping on this thing.
0:40:20 And we were just like, okay.
0:40:23 And all of a sudden, the scruff of my back
0:40:25 gets picked up by this British guy.
0:40:28 The giant security guard grabs both of us
0:40:30 and starts walking us out through the privacy curtain.
0:40:32 And he’s like, get out of the way, boys.
0:40:33 Get out of the way.
0:40:34 And he’s like pushing people out of the way.
0:40:35 – Oh, shit.
0:40:36 I don’t even remember anything.
0:40:37 – And then he throws us back into the thing.
0:40:39 And he was like, holy hell.
0:40:41 He goes, you were serious.
0:40:42 They were here for you.
0:40:43 And we were like, yeah, dude.
0:40:44 – For a photo.
0:40:45 That’s what they were doing.
0:40:47 He was like, I’ve never seen anything like that.
0:40:48 – That was amazing.
0:40:50 – Oh, it was so much fun.
0:40:52 Oh my God.
0:40:54 – Well, we’ll do another live show at some point.
0:40:55 – Well, shit, why not?
0:40:55 – Yeah, why not.
0:40:56 We’re in LA.
0:40:57 Pretty sure we can find a venue
0:40:59 and just do like a little 50 person,
0:41:01 just no Yeager shot, please, people.
0:41:02 No Yeager shot.
0:41:02 – That’s not gonna be a thing.
0:41:03 That’s not gonna be a thing.
0:41:04 – Definitely be a Yeager shot.
0:41:06 – Our liver is gonna die.
0:41:08 Oh, speaking of livers and not drinking.
0:41:09 – Yeah, how your liver ends up.
0:41:12 – See, you went to, I don’t look at those things.
0:41:15 – So you went 90 days without drinking?
0:41:15 – Give or take.
0:41:16 – 20 days?
0:41:17 – No, no, no.
0:41:20 I actually, I’ve made it 45 days and then I had to go.
0:41:21 – Had to go get a drink.
0:41:22 – No, no, no, no.
0:41:23 Honestly, these wines.
0:41:28 – Kevin is like, this is why I don’t drink,
0:41:29 but I do interviews.
0:41:30 – Exactly.
0:41:32 The one thing that’s fun about Parliament of State
0:41:33 and NAPA is like, I get to help them out
0:41:35 on the advisory board.
0:41:38 And so we were doing an advisory board meeting up in NAPA.
0:41:41 So I flipped there and they’re like, oh, guess what?
0:41:43 Today’s the blind tasting day.
0:41:44 Well, we’re all gonna do a blind tasting.
0:41:46 We’re gonna pull out like 10 wines to blind taste.
0:41:47 – Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:41:48 The like library stuff.
0:41:52 – And I’m like, oh my God, how can I not have a sip?
0:41:53 – No, no.
0:41:54 – And so I kind of broke down at 45,
0:41:55 but I’ve been really good.
0:41:57 I’ve been very good at cutting back a lot.
0:42:00 I think it’s very difficult.
0:42:03 – I think it’s very difficult.
0:42:05 – Well, I mean, you know how it is.
0:42:06 – I do.
0:42:07 – Because I like to drink,
0:42:10 but also I feel so much better when I don’t drink.
0:42:11 – When you go for like a week?
0:42:13 – So this summer I went four months.
0:42:14 – Ooh.
0:42:17 (laughing)
0:42:19 – It’s like I just showed you a pie.
0:42:22 – I did, I went four months.
0:42:25 – I did, I went four months over the summer.
0:42:26 – This summer, that was last summer then.
0:42:28 – No, it was summer.
0:42:29 Was it last summer?
0:42:30 – Yeah, we’re not in the summer yet.
0:42:31 We’re just starting summer.
0:42:33 – Right, yeah, so last summer.
0:42:35 The most recent summer we did.
0:42:39 I just had, oh man, it’s one of those things where like,
0:42:40 the way I talk about it,
0:42:41 it’s the same way I talk about eating, right?
0:42:43 – Did Heather have to stop by the way or did you?
0:42:44 – She tried.
0:42:46 – She tried, how long did she make it?
0:42:47 – Couple days.
0:42:48 Also it wasn’t about that for me.
0:42:50 It was like, I love that you filled mine up
0:42:51 and not yours out.
0:42:52 – Well, I’m waiting ’cause I’m gonna switch to red
0:42:53 once we move to the couch.
0:42:54 – Oh, spoiler alert.
0:42:55 – Sorry.
0:42:58 – So I’m very much a binary person
0:42:59 when it comes to things like that.
0:43:00 – Yes, same.
0:43:02 – I’m either on program or I’m off program.
0:43:02 – Yes, yes.
0:43:04 – If I’m eating healthy, I’m eating healthy.
0:43:06 If I’m not eating healthy,
0:43:08 I’m gonna eat like a garbage man.
0:43:09 – Yes.
0:43:11 – Just like a garbage troll.
0:43:12 – 7-Eleven.
0:43:13 – Oh, I will go that far.
0:43:14 – Oh, dude.
0:43:15 – If I’m not doing anything, I’m off reservation.
0:43:16 – So here’s my thing.
0:43:18 This is, I will tell you, this is the truth.
0:43:20 The worst version of myself is,
0:43:22 we’ll go out to a nice dinner.
0:43:25 We’ll have like a nice dinner and we’ll get the kids.
0:43:26 Kids are being a little bit like loud
0:43:28 and kind of like, you know.
0:43:29 – Kids.
0:43:31 – Yeah, you know, where you’re just like, okay.
0:43:34 Okay, yes, she can have the red crayon.
0:43:35 Now give it back, okay.
0:43:37 And I’m like, Martini, you know?
0:43:38 And I’m just doing Martini.
0:43:41 And then, you know, this is maybe your second Martini.
0:43:45 And then you take an Uber home and self driving.
0:43:46 No, I’m just kidding.
0:43:49 No, you take an Uber home and then when you get home,
0:43:50 I order a pizza.
0:43:52 (laughing)
0:43:54 And then I’ll eat the whole pizza.
0:43:55 – Okay, but where do you order the pizza from?
0:43:56 – A good place.
0:43:57 – Okay.
0:43:58 – Like Emmy squared.
0:44:01 – I’ll order pizza hot pizza when I’m in garbage mode.
0:44:02 Heather hates it.
0:44:03 – I can’t do that, dude.
0:44:04 Why don’t you treat yourself?
0:44:07 – It’s like $4 more for a good pizza.
0:44:10 – Because I want the experience of eating crap.
0:44:12 Like that’s part of it for me.
0:44:13 I don’t know why.
0:44:14 It’s just part of my psyche.
0:44:15 – You just don’t wake up feeling like shit.
0:44:17 – I always wake up feeling lovely.
0:44:17 That’s the problem.
0:44:18 – You do?
0:44:19 – Yeah.
0:44:20 – You don’t ever get a hangover.
0:44:21 – Okay, it happens periodically,
0:44:22 but rarely ever get a hangover.
0:44:23 – What’s your secret?
0:44:24 – Genetics, I don’t know.
0:44:29 But I will say what got me going was,
0:44:31 this is so bad, I shouldn’t even tell people this.
0:44:32 When the garbage man comes out,
0:44:34 it’s usually when Heather is out of town.
0:44:37 – Mm, well with friends who sit by yourself at home.
0:44:38 – By myself.
0:44:39 That’s the worst.
0:44:40 – Okay.
0:44:41 – And this is what caused me to go,
0:44:42 why am I doing this?
0:44:43 – Yeah.
0:44:44 – So it was a Friday night,
0:44:46 and I know this because Saturday night,
0:44:49 I went to this like crazy networking event
0:44:50 with a friend of mine
0:44:52 and I didn’t drink at the networking event,
0:44:52 which was like a big deal.
0:44:53 – That’s tough for me.
0:44:54 – It was a big deal.
0:44:55 – Lots of people, I can’t do that.
0:44:56 – Yeah, so it was a big deal.
0:44:58 That night, I ordered like,
0:45:00 I don’t know what the hell I ordered first.
0:45:02 Garbage food.
0:45:03 Started drinking Jack Daniels.
0:45:05 Started at like six, you know what I mean?
0:45:06 ‘Cause again, Heather was out of town.
0:45:07 – That’s not that late.
0:45:09 – Our dog Montana had passed,
0:45:11 so we didn’t have a dog in the house.
0:45:13 So it literally was like, I was a bachelor again,
0:45:14 you know what I mean?
0:45:15 – Yeah.
0:45:16 – And we got another dog now, Bindi,
0:45:17 who’s sweet and lovely.
0:45:20 But I ordered food, started drinking Jack.
0:45:24 Nine, 9.30, I’m like hungry.
0:45:27 I’m not, but my brain says I’m hungry.
0:45:30 I order this like sloppy burrito and quesadilla,
0:45:33 whatever, eat that, didn’t need to.
0:45:34 Started feeling like nausea,
0:45:37 like I just ate too much, kept drinking Jack.
0:45:38 Went to bed.
0:45:39 Oh, Heather might’ve been in town, actually.
0:45:40 Now that I think about it,
0:45:43 I think she was just out doing something.
0:45:45 At one point, I like woke up at like three or four
0:45:48 and it felt like I had just almost thrown up in my mouth.
0:45:50 And I was like, and I like went into the bathroom
0:45:51 real quick to be like, did I need to throw up?
0:45:53 And I was like, no.
0:45:55 And I went back to bed and I just woke up
0:45:57 and I was like, what the fuck am I doing?
0:45:58 – Yeah.
0:46:01 – What the fuck do I think I am doing?
0:46:02 This is bad.
0:46:03 This is not cool.
0:46:07 By myself, I ate five meals.
0:46:09 I’m at this point where I’m like,
0:46:12 almost vomiting in the middle of sleep.
0:46:14 Is this gonna be Friday night for the rest of my life?
0:46:16 It was a weird feeling.
0:46:19 And so I just woke up that next morning
0:46:21 and I told Heather, I was like, I’m done for a bit.
0:46:22 I’m just done for a bit.
0:46:24 And that lasted four months.
0:46:24 – That’s amazing.
0:46:26 – Yeah, it was just, I’m done for a bit.
0:46:28 It wasn’t, I’m never drinking again.
0:46:30 It was just, that was an experience
0:46:31 that I don’t wanna have again.
0:46:33 And then the holidays came around
0:46:35 and it was like Thanksgiving.
0:46:36 And I was like, ah, then we saw some family.
0:46:38 And then we were like, ah, and I was like,
0:46:39 and then we literally saw some family
0:46:40 and it was a wine tasting.
0:46:42 And I was like, I can have a glass of wine.
0:46:43 Like I would sip people’s wine.
0:46:46 It wasn’t like, it was allergic to alcohol
0:46:47 or it was like very anti.
0:46:50 And then it was just like, not like back into it,
0:46:52 but it’s just hard.
0:46:54 Like we always say, well, it’s just not gonna drink
0:46:54 during the week.
0:46:57 And then one of us, I mean, it’s a little bit like,
0:46:59 it’s hard with both of us and no kids, right?
0:47:00 ‘Cause then it’s like.
0:47:01 – Well, it gets harder with kids, dude.
0:47:02 – Oh, well, yeah, I get that.
0:47:03 – Because then you’re just like,
0:47:05 you’re dealing with chaos at this age.
0:47:06 – Yeah, yeah, yeah.
0:47:08 – And then it’s like, okay, you know,
0:47:11 Dariah gets done with a really like long day
0:47:13 and helps put them to sleep, like to be fair.
0:47:16 Like she, mama is more important than dad at this age.
0:47:19 And they lean on her more for a lot of the stuff.
0:47:21 And you know, she’ll come down
0:47:22 and pop a bottle of champagne or something.
0:47:25 And she’ll be like, you want a glass?
0:47:29 And I’m just like, glass, the cool thing I will say
0:47:34 is that I don’t ever drink to like where I’m like a hammered.
0:47:39 Like I’m a kind of like 2.5 drink person, 2.75.
0:47:40 – Interesting, okay.
0:47:43 I drink a bottle of red wine almost every night.
0:47:44 – Oh, shit.
0:47:46 – And it barely affects me.
0:47:47 – That’s amazing. – At this point.
0:47:48 – Yeah.
0:47:49 – I’m curious what your liver enzymes look like.
0:47:50 – Probably good.
0:47:51 – Yeah.
0:47:52 – I think probably really good.
0:47:53 – We talked about this before that show.
0:47:54 We’re gonna do a whole makeup on you.
0:47:56 We’re gonna do your A4B test.
0:48:00 – I am a head in the sand.
0:48:00 – I know.
0:48:02 – I mean, do you remember when I first got–
0:48:03 – High cholesterol.
0:48:04 – High cholesterol?
0:48:05 We were in Austin.
0:48:06 – You were like 22 or something.
0:48:07 – Yeah, thankfully, I was a little bit older.
0:48:08 But you remember we were in Austin.
0:48:09 – I was like, what the fuck are you talking about?
0:48:11 – I didn’t order fries.
0:48:14 I was me thinking I was gonna knock that out of the way.
0:48:17 But then I lost a bunch of weight somewhere in there.
0:48:18 And my cholesterol was fine.
0:48:20 – Yeah, but dude, we gotta get your A4B tested
0:48:23 and LP Little A as well.
0:48:25 For people that are curious, go get those tests.
0:48:26 That’s very important.
0:48:27 – Yeah.
0:48:28 – We’ll get you on the program.
0:48:33 – Hey man, I’m happy to learn all the things about the things.
0:48:34 – There’s lots of things to learn.
0:48:36 – Yeah, so I did four months.
0:48:37 – That’s amazing.
0:48:40 I hear that at three months, it gets a lot easier.
0:48:45 – I will say, if it hadn’t been for a wine tasting event–
0:48:48 – Stam wine tasting.
0:48:51 – With family, I get it.
0:48:53 Had it been a wine tasting event with other people,
0:48:53 you know what I mean?
0:48:56 Probably would have been able to not go, you know what I mean?
0:48:57 To be fair.
0:48:59 There’s a world in which I would have
0:49:00 gotten through the holidays.
0:49:02 ‘Cause I got through a lot of things that I’ve,
0:49:03 ’cause that’s the thing with not drinking
0:49:07 is there’s so many reasons to drink.
0:49:09 – Well, it’s funny, ’cause I–
0:49:10 – This is a perfect example.
0:49:11 – This is embarrassing,
0:49:14 but I’ve read a couple of those cut back on drinking books.
0:49:15 It’s not embarrassing.
0:49:17 I’m really allowed to say that, I guess.
0:49:18 – What would be embarrassing about that?
0:49:21 – Well, it’s just like people,
0:49:24 there’s a stigma around having a problem around alcohol.
0:49:26 And like, for me, I’ve always been like,
0:49:29 can I cut back to, like, my Dr. Peter Tia is like,
0:49:31 okay, he’s always told me like, you know,
0:49:34 five or less drinks a week is like where you wanna be at.
0:49:35 – Well, a week.
0:49:36 – Yeah.
0:49:37 – I thought you were gonna say at night,
0:49:39 and I’m like, I’m in.
0:49:41 Four glasses gets you a bottle, that’s good.
0:49:44 – But like, you know, it’s one of those things
0:49:47 where when you read the literature on it,
0:49:50 and it’s like, I just, it’s pretty poison.
0:49:52 It’s pretty bad for your body.
0:49:53 – Yeah.
0:49:57 – Yeah, so, but it’s hard because you are not used
0:49:59 to these social situations.
0:49:59 – Yeah.
0:50:01 – Where like, when I was doing this, you know,
0:50:04 45 days of being sober, I went to several like,
0:50:07 you know, functions that were like networking events
0:50:08 or get together or whatever.
0:50:11 And you have to like, relearn a muscle
0:50:13 or build a muscle that you didn’t have,
0:50:15 because you were so used to being hammered.
0:50:16 – Social networking.
0:50:17 – Oh, 100%.
0:50:18 – Yeah.
0:50:20 – Dude, I went to this crazy dinner
0:50:22 where I shit you not, and I learned a bunch of crazy shit,
0:50:25 but like, I was sitting next to the CTO of Microsoft.
0:50:27 This was like a month and a half ago.
0:50:27 – Yeah.
0:50:29 – And dude, he used to be like a fan.
0:50:30 – What?
0:50:32 – Yeah, he’s the most tech TV and shit, like fall-
0:50:33 – Amazing.
0:50:36 – I was like, oh, there was some, like, I didn’t even know.
0:50:37 – That’s amazing.
0:50:37 – Yeah, it was so cool.
0:50:38 He’s a really nice guy.
0:50:40 His name’s Kevin, he’s a super nice guy,
0:50:42 but nobody was drinking at the table.
0:50:43 And like, but they were serving wine.
0:50:45 There’s like one guy that had like a half glass of wine.
0:50:46 – Interesting.
0:50:48 – And I was like, do I want to be the guy
0:50:50 that was like giving me a glass of wine, you know?
0:50:53 And so I didn’t do it, but it was challenging
0:50:55 because I was surrounded by like the other like four or five
0:50:58 people were all just like, you know,
0:51:01 I would put them on the top tech pedestal
0:51:03 in terms of people.
0:51:05 And I was just like, it’s a nerve-wracking thing.
0:51:06 – Of course, 100%.
0:51:09 – ‘Cause like, you know, and there’s no easier way
0:51:10 to get relaxed, obviously.
0:51:11 – 100%.
0:51:13 – You’re an alcohol or heroin, and it’s just like–
0:51:15 – It’s just like, no, I don’t drink.
0:51:17 – Roll out, it’s like heroin.
0:51:18 – Exactly.
0:51:19 I was just kidding about that.
0:51:20 I’ve never tried heroin.
0:51:22 Anyway, should we shoot a Dignation?
0:51:23 – Yeah, fuck it.
0:51:24 – Let’s do it.
0:51:24 – Yeah.

0:00:01 – What was that aha moment for you?
0:00:05 I see something the rest of the world doesn’t see yet.
0:00:05 – Yeah.
0:00:06 – Well, I mean–
0:00:08 – Simon Sinek, popular at 50 million views on it.
0:00:10 – My initial conclusion was,
0:00:12 the good partnerships, you love the partner
0:00:13 and they’re offering you the ability
0:00:15 to expand your vision.
0:00:17 Though it won’t be perfect, no relationship is,
0:00:18 you still love coming to work
0:00:20 because you feel like you’re still advancing
0:00:21 the greater good in building this business.
0:00:23 Those are the partnerships we should be pursuing.
0:00:25 Discomfort is one of those things
0:00:26 that to learn to be uncomfortable
0:00:28 is nobody who’s ever achieved anything in the world
0:00:29 did it smoothly.
0:00:33 We all came close to zero if not hitting zero first.
0:00:35 And when you’re coming up to a stranger,
0:00:37 can you help me get out of this?
0:00:38 My answer is always the same as,
0:00:40 why would I get into mud with a stranger?
0:00:41 – Right. – I don’t know you.
0:00:43 Go ask somebody who loves you.
0:00:44 It’s safer to be vulnerable with me
0:00:45 because I’m a stranger.
0:00:46 It’s hard to be vulnerable
0:00:48 with somebody who actually knows me.
0:00:50 I don’t know the three most important words
0:00:52 that a young entrepreneur can ever learn.
0:00:53 It’s your story, it’s also my story.
0:00:55 I thought I had to have every answer
0:00:56 and if I didn’t, I thought I had to pretend that I did.
0:00:58 Let me tell you, you are who you are
0:00:59 and the rest of your life is simply an opportunity
0:01:01 to live in balance with that wire.
0:01:03 I’ll show you another way to find your wire.
0:01:04 Which is, and this is.
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0:02:06 Happy Father’s Day.
0:02:08 So I’m absolutely addicted to rocking.
0:02:10 That’s where you put this weighted backpack on.
0:02:13 I’m doing four miles, probably five times a week.
0:02:16 I actually saw a rattlesnake eat a lizard the other day.
0:02:17 No joke, it was insane.
0:02:19 Anyway, at the end of these workouts,
0:02:22 as you can imagine, I’m just sweating an absolute a ton.
0:02:26 It’s great cardio, but I need to replenish my electrolytes.
0:02:28 But sadly, most of those replacement powders out there,
0:02:31 they’re just packed with sugar that goes straight to your gut.
0:02:34 Spikes are glucose, there’s nothing good about that.
0:02:36 And that’s the reason why I use Element.
0:02:39 There’s no sugar and it has the science-backed ratio
0:02:41 of 1,000 milligrams of sodium,
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0:03:32 Huge thanks to Element for sponsoring today’s show.
0:03:34 – Simon, thank you for joining me.
0:03:35 – Thanks for having me.
0:03:36 – So great to have you on.
0:03:38 I’ve been a fan from afar.
0:03:39 – Thank you.
0:03:40 – Watching what you’ve done over the years
0:03:42 and your content and preparation for this interview.
0:03:44 I had to go and just check the numbers
0:03:47 of how you’ve blown up over the years.
0:03:51 I mean, it’s insane, so 56 million views or so
0:03:53 on Start With Why.
0:03:56 Did you have any idea it was gonna be that big?
0:03:57 – I mean, of course not.
0:03:59 It’s winning the internet lottery.
0:04:00 I knew that the talk resonated
0:04:02 because it wasn’t the first time I gave it.
0:04:04 I’d been giving the long version of that talk
0:04:05 for a few years.
0:04:09 I knew the content was resonant with people.
0:04:12 I knew it was a different way of seeing the world.
0:04:13 But of course, I could never have known
0:04:15 that it would do what it did.
0:04:17 Combined with the fact that the audio quality
0:04:19 is terrible and the video quality is terrible
0:04:23 and it’s living proof that it slick comes second.
0:04:24 – Yeah, I look back on that.
0:04:25 It’s not even HD.
0:04:26 – That’s terrible.
0:04:29 – Yeah, my microphone breaks in the middle of my talk.
0:04:30 – Yeah.
0:04:32 There’s a handful of books that have really changed
0:04:34 my thinking, especially around entrepreneurship
0:04:36 and leadership, zero to one.
0:04:38 There’s a handful of ones where I’m just like,
0:04:41 oh wow, there was some great insight there that happened.
0:04:43 Where did this come from?
0:04:45 Where was that aha moment for you where you’re like,
0:04:49 I see something that the rest of the world doesn’t see yet.
0:04:54 – Like most of these ideas, they’re rarely an aha moment.
0:04:56 It’s more like evolutionary steps.
0:04:59 The realization after many steps and this was no different.
0:05:01 I came from an advertising and marketing background
0:05:03 and I was always curious why some marketing worked
0:05:04 and some marketing didn’t.
0:05:07 I wasn’t the creative teams ’cause I could have
0:05:10 the same creative team make good stuff and bad stuff.
0:05:11 And it wasn’t just the clients.
0:05:13 I had clients that made good stuff and bad stuff.
0:05:14 And so I looked at sort of the great marketing
0:05:18 that I admired and I recognized that there was a pattern
0:05:21 that it all started with why they did what they did.
0:05:24 And I articulated the concept way back then
0:05:25 just to explain why some marketing
0:05:26 worked and some marketing didn’t.
0:05:28 That’s all it was.
0:05:29 And the original model was why, what, how.
0:05:31 The definitions were the same as they are now,
0:05:32 but it was why, what, how.
0:05:33 And I used to use that.
0:05:34 I started my own business and I used to use that
0:05:36 as my sort of pitch, you know.
0:05:38 And it wasn’t until much later I went to an event
0:05:40 at this black tie affair and I was just sort of
0:05:42 coincidentally seated next to somebody whose dad
0:05:45 was a neuroscientist when we just started talking,
0:05:46 making small talk.
0:05:49 Yeah, and she was telling me about Neuroscience 101.
0:05:50 And I was curious about it and came back
0:05:52 and started like Googling like crazy.
0:05:54 And I realized this little model that I had discovered
0:05:56 and the neuroscience perfectly overlapped.
0:05:58 I hadn’t discovered why marketing worked,
0:06:00 I discovered why people do what they do.
0:06:01 So I reached out to a famous neuroscientist
0:06:03 named Peter Weibrow, who was the head
0:06:05 of the Semmel Institute at UCLA,
0:06:07 which is the largest neuroscience institute in the world.
0:06:10 I don’t know how I got hold of him, but I did.
0:06:12 And I basically said, I need you to look at this stuff.
0:06:13 I’m gonna say this is related to neuroscience.
0:06:14 I need this blessed.
0:06:15 Yes.
0:06:18 So I like went to his house for a weekend,
0:06:20 just basically talk nonstop.
0:06:24 And I came in on Sunday morning and he was like fidgety.
0:06:25 And I’m like, what’s the matter?
0:06:27 He goes, it doesn’t match the neuroscience.
0:06:28 I’m like, well, what do you mean?
0:06:31 He goes, you need to switch what and how.
0:06:32 I’m like, done.
0:06:33 Yeah.
0:06:34 Maybe came why, how, what?
0:06:35 Yeah.
0:06:36 The definitions are always the same,
0:06:38 but to match the neuroscience of how brain work,
0:06:39 that’s what it was.
0:06:41 And then I started to realize that this thing had power.
0:06:45 At a later point, it saved me because I lost my passion
0:06:48 for my own work and hit sort of a really dark period.
0:06:50 And I realized that I knew what I did.
0:06:52 I knew how I did it, but I didn’t know why.
0:06:54 So these things all sort of collided.
0:06:57 Personal depression plus my exploration here.
0:06:58 And it all sort of came together.
0:07:00 I have at least a half dozen friends right now
0:07:03 that have landed in what they thought
0:07:05 was gonna be their dream job.
0:07:07 It typically happens via an acquisition.
0:07:08 It’s a tech entrepreneur.
0:07:09 They get acquired by a big company.
0:07:11 They’re now inside the belly of the beast
0:07:12 of something large.
0:07:14 And they have a couple of sayings.
0:07:15 It’s like vest in peace.
0:07:17 Or it’s just like, you’re just vesting
0:07:19 and kind of showing up and quiet quitting, right?
0:07:20 Which I’m sure you’ve heard about.
0:07:22 What’s going wrong there?
0:07:23 What’s happening?
0:07:25 Why are they feeling this way?
0:07:28 You’re asking something that’s,
0:07:30 something that happens two or three steps prior.
0:07:31 Okay.
0:07:36 The number of young, idealistic entrepreneurs
0:07:40 who start businesses and ethics matter to them
0:07:42 and treating their people right matters to them
0:07:43 and culture matters and all the things
0:07:45 that I write and talk about matters to them.
0:07:49 And they build these beautiful businesses
0:07:52 and then they sell them to the highest bidder,
0:07:54 not to the company that believes in their values
0:07:57 and has to maintain the culture, the highest bidder.
0:07:58 Right.
0:08:01 And the company goes to shit.
0:08:04 They change the ingredients of the product
0:08:06 because they go for something cheaper, et cetera, et cetera,
0:08:08 et cetera, you go down the line.
0:08:11 And they can rationalize it because they cashed out big.
0:08:13 They can rationalize that, no, we did it right.
0:08:14 And they didn’t.
0:08:15 That’s, be honest, they didn’t.
0:08:17 Why not take a little less money and sell it
0:08:19 to the right company who believes in the values
0:08:21 rather than just sell it to the highest bidder?
0:08:23 And so if they’re stuck in a place
0:08:25 where they don’t wanna be there,
0:08:27 well, that was their choice.
0:08:29 Like they chose that partnership.
0:08:32 That’s like marrying somebody just ’cause they’re pretty.
0:08:32 Yeah.
0:08:33 Right?
0:08:34 And then complaining that my marriage isn’t working
0:08:35 and we don’t get along.
0:08:39 I’m like, yeah, I don’t know how many marriage advice for you.
0:08:43 It’s hard though too ’cause you have stakeholders, right?
0:08:44 Well, that is another thing.
0:08:46 It’s the same trauma, which is, you know,
0:08:49 so many entrepreneurs who are looking for capital,
0:08:51 they take the biggest capital
0:08:53 from the most famous venture capitalist,
0:08:56 not less capital from the right venture capitalist.
0:08:57 That’s right.
0:08:59 So they chose their own partners
0:09:01 and then they’re surprised whether partners
0:09:02 are applying massive amounts of pressure on them
0:09:04 to make decisions that they don’t wanna make.
0:09:05 Yeah.
0:09:07 I don’t have a lot of sympathy, you know?
0:09:08 And we have reached the point now
0:09:10 where, and I can’t remember the statistic,
0:09:10 it’s overwhelming.
0:09:13 It’s something like 80% of companies are, you know,
0:09:15 venture capital or private equity backed.
0:09:18 And so we used to mock the public markets
0:09:20 that the pressure exerted by Wall Street
0:09:22 would force CEOs to make decisions
0:09:24 they knew were bad for their companies.
0:09:25 And we’re now at a point where private companies
0:09:27 are basically functioning like public companies
0:09:29 where the external pressures are so great.
0:09:30 That’s right.
0:09:32 That the number of young, brilliant,
0:09:35 fantastic, talented CEOs getting fired from their own companies.
0:09:37 I have a friend who just got fired from her own company
0:09:39 because she didn’t have control of it.
0:09:40 Yeah.
0:09:41 And she couldn’t make decisions.
0:09:42 They fired her because she was trying
0:09:45 to do the quote unquote right thing and follow the vision.
0:09:47 And they wanted to do the thing that made it prettier
0:09:49 to sell in a short period.
0:09:51 There’s an element of like, you made your bed.
0:09:55 And so there’s even a degree of,
0:09:57 look, I’m not in their position,
0:09:59 but there’s even a degree of irresponsibility.
0:10:00 Yeah.
0:10:02 There’s no choice to take the deal.
0:10:04 And now you’re dissatisfied with the deal.
0:10:06 You have sort of sellers remorse.
0:10:09 And so you’re going to quiet quit because you’re pissed off.
0:10:11 I’m like, they didn’t do anything wrong.
0:10:12 Right.
0:10:13 You took the deal.
0:10:15 I think there’s some soul searching to be done
0:10:17 in business writ large,
0:10:19 which is who we take money from and who we sell to.
0:10:19 Yeah.
0:10:20 Because I think a lot of good companies
0:10:23 actually don’t survive the founders
0:10:24 because of who we sell them to.
0:10:26 I can almost count it like clockwork
0:10:28 because I’ve seen so many of these deals
0:10:29 and I know what it is.
0:10:30 It’s a three year vest.
0:10:31 When you sell the company,
0:10:34 they put golden handcuffs on you for three years
0:10:36 and you can almost just mark the date.
0:10:37 And then you see a founder being like,
0:10:39 I’m leaving and it’s of course
0:10:41 right at the three year anniversary, right?
0:10:42 And they’re out.
0:10:43 And then if they were holding it together
0:10:45 with any duct tape or whatever else,
0:10:47 like everything seems to fall apart from there.
0:10:48 Unfortunately.
0:10:49 Good partnerships.
0:10:50 You love the partner.
0:10:52 You love the buyer.
0:10:54 And they’re offering you some sort of ability
0:10:56 to expand your vision.
0:10:57 You couldn’t do yourself,
0:10:58 which is why you took the deal.
0:10:59 That’s right.
0:11:01 Fundamentally, you come to an arrangement
0:11:02 where even though you have a boss now
0:11:04 and you didn’t have one before,
0:11:05 that there’s a degree of independence you have
0:11:08 to build this brand, which is what they want as well.
0:11:12 And though it won’t be perfect, no relationship is,
0:11:15 you fundamentally still love coming to work
0:11:16 because you feel like you’re still advancing
0:11:18 the greater good in building this business.
0:11:19 Right.
0:11:21 So those are the partnerships we should be pursuing.
0:11:22 Yes.
0:11:23 Yeah, that makes a ton of sense.
0:11:25 It’s almost like feel for the fire at that point.
0:11:26 Like you’re joining forces with someone
0:11:29 to help you expand and grow a lot faster.
0:11:31 What about individuals that are,
0:11:34 I see as individual contributors to an organization
0:11:36 and I see some of these resumes
0:11:38 when I’m looking to hire, say an engineer,
0:11:39 and you see bouncing around.
0:11:40 You see bouncing around
0:11:43 between different employment opportunities.
0:11:45 What advice do you give them
0:11:46 and how do you help coach someone
0:11:49 through finding their why?
0:11:51 Well, there’s a couple of different questions there.
0:11:53 You and I, when we were younger,
0:11:55 even if we hated our job,
0:11:58 we would never dream of quitting in less than one year.
0:11:58 Oh, 100%.
0:11:59 We couldn’t.
0:12:00 It would look so bad.
0:12:01 And we all knew that if you did that,
0:12:03 it would destroy your resume.
0:12:03 Yes.
0:12:05 It would create a bad narrative
0:12:07 about what kind of employee you were.
0:12:09 And I mean, it would have to be pretty toxic
0:12:11 for you to leave it under a year, right?
0:12:14 And so we held our nose and we made it to a year.
0:12:16 And this predominantly younger generation,
0:12:17 though it’s not exclusive,
0:12:19 but predominantly younger generation
0:12:21 is very comfortable quitting quickly
0:12:24 and sometimes for not good reasons.
0:12:25 And I’ve seen it happen,
0:12:27 which is the young people who are so confrontation avoidant,
0:12:29 they’d rather quit than go through the discomfort
0:12:31 of asking for a raise, for example.
0:12:33 For every action, there’s an equal opposite reaction.
0:12:34 There’s a finite mindedness to it,
0:12:37 which is how do I solve the immediate problem in front of me
0:12:40 without considering the long-term impact of that decision?
0:12:42 I’m not for or against the decisions.
0:12:44 I’m saying consider the long-term impacts.
0:12:45 And I’ve been public about this,
0:12:47 and I’ve been criticized for it by young people,
0:12:51 which is flash forward five or six years
0:12:54 and you’ve had seven jobs, right?
0:12:55 And whether you’re bouncing
0:12:57 because you think they’re all toxic
0:12:58 or whether you’re bouncing
0:13:00 because you’re just dialing for dollars, whatever it is.
0:13:02 In five or six years,
0:13:03 the new employer is looking at you
0:13:04 and you’re a certain age now,
0:13:07 which means I expect a certain level of maturity
0:13:08 and accomplishment.
0:13:09 – Yes.
0:13:11 – You haven’t had it
0:13:12 because you haven’t gone through the shit.
0:13:13 – Right.
0:13:14 – You keep jumping shit.
0:13:16 So I don’t even know that you’re qualified
0:13:18 for the senior position you’re applying for
0:13:19 that somebody else with seven years experience
0:13:21 could apply for, number one.
0:13:24 And number two, if I’m given two resumes,
0:13:27 one with somebody who’s bouncing around
0:13:30 and one who’s had two jobs over seven years,
0:13:31 I’ll take the one with two
0:13:33 because I’m not gonna trust
0:13:35 that this person’s gonna stick around
0:13:37 after I’ve trained them up and got them all in.
0:13:38 We have a few years
0:13:39 before we start seeing the repercussions,
0:13:41 but the repercussions are coming.
0:13:43 And again, I’m not saying don’t quit.
0:13:47 I’m saying just be cognizant
0:13:49 that there are implications
0:13:52 and maybe be a little slower.
0:13:53 – Do you think the problem there
0:13:55 is that they’re picking the wrong profession
0:13:58 and wrong job from the get-go
0:14:00 or they don’t have the grit to stick it out
0:14:02 during the hard times?
0:14:04 You mentioned this confrontation avoidant.
0:14:05 Is it because they are like,
0:14:07 this makes me uncomfortable.
0:14:08 I can’t handle it.
0:14:09 I’m out.
0:14:11 Or did I just pick wrong right away?
0:14:12 I know we’re generalizing, but–
0:14:13 – I mean, who knows?
0:14:16 But this idea of dream jobs is a funny thing, right?
0:14:17 – Yeah.
0:14:19 – Ain’t no such thing, number one.
0:14:20 Every job is imperfect,
0:14:22 like every relationship is imperfect.
0:14:24 And we live in a world that idealizes
0:14:26 both relationships and jobs.
0:14:29 And so when my relationship isn’t perfect
0:14:31 and my partner doesn’t do all the perfect things
0:14:33 and then I ban in that relationship
0:14:34 and I’m doing the same thing,
0:14:36 this job isn’t perfect and I have stress
0:14:38 and they want me to work late on a Thursday,
0:14:40 there’s a problem with pursuing the dream job
0:14:43 because it doesn’t exist.
0:14:45 Now, that’s not to say we should suffer either.
0:14:47 I believe you should have joy at work.
0:14:49 I believe you should be fulfilled by work.
0:14:50 I believe that you should be inspired
0:14:51 by the company you work for,
0:14:53 but you don’t have to like every day.
0:14:54 You can love your children,
0:14:56 you don’t have to like them every day.
0:14:56 You can love your job,
0:14:58 you don’t have to like it every day.
0:14:59 I think we confuse the two,
0:15:01 that there are days that I don’t like my job
0:15:02 and that’s the reason to quit.
0:15:05 But fundamentally, are you working in a place
0:15:06 where you feel seen, heard and understood?
0:15:07 Are you working in a place
0:15:09 that you feel like you’re growing as a human being,
0:15:11 that you actually are a better version of yourself
0:15:13 because you work here?
0:15:15 Are they pushing you and challenging you
0:15:17 to take on more responsibility
0:15:19 than maybe you even think you’re capable of?
0:15:21 And that’s uncomfortable.
0:15:24 And if you go back to Steve Jobs, for example,
0:15:25 and I know we herald him,
0:15:27 but he was pretty remarkable, right?
0:15:29 One of the things that Jobs did
0:15:31 is it was uncomfortable working at Apple.
0:15:35 And it wasn’t uncomfortable because he was mean,
0:15:38 although he wasn’t the nicest person in the world,
0:15:40 it’s because he saw potential in people
0:15:42 that they didn’t necessarily see in themselves.
0:15:44 And he pushed and pushed and pushed people.
0:15:47 And people who didn’t like being pushed, they quit.
0:15:49 But the people who were okay being pushed,
0:15:53 they all said I achieved more at this company
0:15:56 than I ever would have imagined.
0:15:59 Johnny Ive, this sort of middling designer,
0:16:00 Jobs sees something in him
0:16:03 that maybe he does or doesn’t even see in himself.
0:16:05 And he gets pushed and pushed and pushed and pushed.
0:16:07 He becomes one of the greatest designers
0:16:08 in modern history.
0:16:10 – I had a really long conversation with Tony Fidel
0:16:12 about this, working with Jobs.
0:16:15 And the growth comes from the discomfort.
0:16:17 – The growth comes from the discomfort.
0:16:19 I mean, look, there’s so many metaphors and analogies,
0:16:21 I love the one about the lobster.
0:16:22 – I haven’t heard the lobster one.
0:16:26 – So lobsters, the soft mass inside the shell
0:16:28 is what grows, that’s the origin.
0:16:30 The shell itself doesn’t grow.
0:16:35 It’s this hard thing that excretes out and hardens.
0:16:37 And as the lobster grows,
0:16:40 it starts to get very uncomfortable in its own shell
0:16:41 ’cause it’s now bigger.
0:16:43 It’s like wearing clothes that are too small.
0:16:45 And only when it gets to that point,
0:16:48 does it then shed the shell and build a new one.
0:16:51 In other words, you can’t grow without being uncomfortable.
0:16:52 – Right, right.
0:16:52 Yeah, that’s so good.
0:16:53 – And that’s true.
0:16:55 I like to equate everything to personal relationships
0:16:58 because corporate relationships are relationships, right?
0:16:59 – Yeah.
0:17:03 – Which is every fight or uncomfortable situation
0:17:04 I ever had with my girlfriend.
0:17:06 Though I did not enjoy it,
0:17:07 though I wish we’d never had it.
0:17:09 Though sometimes I was to blame,
0:17:10 sometimes she was to blame,
0:17:13 more often than not, we were both to blame.
0:17:14 And when I say that just a quick aside,
0:17:16 usually in an argument,
0:17:17 we start accusing each other of who started it.
0:17:18 – Right.
0:17:19 – The reality is, yes,
0:17:20 absolutely somebody always started it
0:17:22 and the other person almost always poured gasoline.
0:17:23 – Yes.
0:17:25 – So you both have a culpability,
0:17:26 it doesn’t matter what started it,
0:17:27 you both made it worse.
0:17:28 – Right.
0:17:31 – Invariably, every uncomfortable conversation
0:17:33 or fight that we ever had,
0:17:35 though I hated every moment of it and so did she,
0:17:37 we ended up stronger and closer because of it.
0:17:38 – Yeah.
0:17:40 – Because there were lessons that were learned,
0:17:44 there were triggers that were realized,
0:17:47 there was language that was dissected.
0:17:50 And what we did was learn to fight,
0:17:52 not against each other, but against the problem.
0:17:53 – Mm-hmm.
0:17:57 – And I think it’s the same at work, right?
0:18:00 Which is when there’s pressure exerted,
0:18:02 is it me versus management?
0:18:04 Or is it management and me
0:18:05 versus whatever we’re trying to accomplish?
0:18:06 – Right.
0:18:08 – And good leaders know that
0:18:10 and good team members know that.
0:18:11 – Mm-hmm.
0:18:13 – It’s when it becomes adversarial,
0:18:14 us versus them.
0:18:15 – Yeah.
0:18:16 – And by the way, I blame leadership
0:18:18 as much as I blame employees.
0:18:21 Team members will go out for drinks and vent about work,
0:18:23 which I’m, by the way, totally healthy.
0:18:24 – Yeah.
0:18:24 – And I’m talking with that.
0:18:25 But sometimes narratives,
0:18:28 and especially in virtual and distributed workforces
0:18:30 where everybody’s wherever they are,
0:18:32 the rumor mills can spin out of control a lot quicker.
0:18:33 – Yes.
0:18:36 – And we blame management for what they did to us
0:18:37 or whatever.
0:18:39 But it happens at leadership as well.
0:18:41 The number of times I’ve sat in leadership groups,
0:18:42 including my own.
0:18:43 – Mm-hmm.
0:18:46 – Where we label someone dumb or lazy.
0:18:47 – Mm-hmm.
0:18:50 – Or inconsiderate or one foot out the door.
0:18:52 And we make jokes about,
0:18:55 ugh, here we go again.
0:18:57 We’re entitled or just go down the list.
0:18:58 And we label them.
0:18:59 We create a narrative about them.
0:19:00 And now we treat them that way.
0:19:01 – Mm-hmm.
0:19:03 – And though they may not know our narrative,
0:19:05 they know that they’re being treated a certain way.
0:19:06 – Mm-hmm.
0:19:09 – And so one of the things that is imperative
0:19:10 in any leadership team,
0:19:13 which is when one person finds themselves venting
0:19:15 about somebody where it’s creating a narrative
0:19:16 about another human being,
0:19:18 it’s imperative that somebody else on the leadership team
0:19:20 interrupt that narrative.
0:19:20 – Mm-hmm.
0:19:22 – And say, they could be lazy.
0:19:24 True, that’s definitely a possibility.
0:19:26 Or they’re overwhelmed.
0:19:27 – Right.
0:19:28 – Or we haven’t given them good instruction.
0:19:29 Or they’re struggling at home.
0:19:30 – Yeah, I was gonna say,
0:19:33 they’re going through something that we don’t know about.
0:19:34 There’s a list of things.
0:19:36 And so we treat them with empathy
0:19:37 and maybe check in on them.
0:19:38 I expect leadership to go first
0:19:40 ’cause they should know better.
0:19:41 But whether it’s in a group of team members
0:19:45 about each other, more about management,
0:19:46 management about team members.
0:19:48 And again, I hold the leaders to a higher level
0:19:50 of accountability and if they act appropriately,
0:19:51 the team will act appropriately.
0:19:53 But we have to interrupt each other
0:19:54 with these kinds of narrative.
0:19:57 Discomfort is one of those things where
0:20:02 it’s good to be transparent about discomfort.
0:20:04 And it starts, again, leaders set the tone.
0:20:06 – Because it’s disarming.
0:20:07 – When you lie, hide and fake.
0:20:09 When you pretend that you got it all figured out.
0:20:11 People will think you got it all figured out.
0:20:15 And so they will pile on more and push you more
0:20:17 and give you more and expect more
0:20:20 because you said everything’s good.
0:20:22 And that’s when it becomes overwhelming
0:20:24 and that’s when you start blaming management
0:20:26 for mistreating you.
0:20:28 But hold on, right?
0:20:29 Whereas I’m a great believer
0:20:31 in just being totally transparent about discomfort.
0:20:33 And sometimes it’s real
0:20:34 and sometimes it’s perceived, for example.
0:20:35 And I had it happen recently.
0:20:38 One of my team members, she’s wonderful,
0:20:40 we’re a distributed workforce
0:20:41 so we don’t get a lot of face time, right?
0:20:43 So she’s never had a lot of one-on-one time with me.
0:20:45 You know, I see her corporate off-sites and stuff like that
0:20:46 and I see her on Zoom all the time.
0:20:48 But she’s never had one-on-one time with me.
0:20:50 And so we brought her out to LA
0:20:52 to have a one-day hackathon with me.
0:20:58 She’s young, she’s in her early mid-20s junior employee.
0:21:02 And she came clean.
0:21:04 She said, “I just need to tell you,
0:21:06 “I was really nervous about today.
0:21:08 “I don’t get us a lot of face time with you
0:21:09 “and I want to make sure I do right.”
0:21:13 And I got really prepared, but I’m really nervous.
0:21:16 And giving me that information was magical
0:21:19 because if she had come in all like ego and everything,
0:21:21 I would have ripped her writing apart
0:21:24 a lot more aggressively because she’s good.
0:21:26 But now I could just be like a little softer
0:21:28 or it’s a, “You’re doing great.
0:21:29 “I can just reinforce.”
0:21:32 ‘Cause I know she’s feeling a little intimidated or fragile.
0:21:36 So saying, “I’m really excited about this project.
0:21:37 “I’m really excited about this new responsibility.
0:21:39 “If you’ve given me, I’m a little uncomfortable
0:21:41 “because I’ve never had this amount of responsibility.
0:21:42 “I really don’t want to screw it up
0:21:43 “and I want to do right by you
0:21:44 “and I do want to do right by me.”
0:21:46 And I don’t want to fail.
0:21:50 And simply just saying that means that a good leader
0:21:54 will be like, “Got it, I’m here, you’re good.”
0:21:56 And you feel supported in that discomfort.
0:21:58 – Yes, right?
0:22:00 – Uncomfortable isn’t the problem.
0:22:01 It’s feeling alone and uncomfortable.
0:22:02 It’s the problem.
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0:24:24 – A good leader can see the signs.
0:24:26 Virtual makes it much more difficult.
0:24:27 Yeah, working in a distributed workforce
0:24:31 makes it much easier to hide, lie and fake.
0:24:34 Body language doesn’t come across as easily.
0:24:36 Somebody’s a little bit fidgety, you can’t really see.
0:24:38 Doesn’t really show up on a Zoom call.
0:24:39 But I think discomfort is one of those things
0:24:41 that to learn to be uncomfortable
0:24:43 is probably the single greatest asset you could ever,
0:24:46 you know this, ’cause nobody’s ever achieved anything
0:24:50 in the world did it smoothly.
0:24:54 We all came close to zero if not hitting zero first,
0:24:55 all of us.
0:24:58 And Lionel Richie talks about this.
0:25:01 When he was younger, he had crippling,
0:25:03 debilitating stage fright.
0:25:04 Lionel Richie.
0:25:05 – Yeah.
0:25:08 – And he says there’s two types of people in this world.
0:25:11 Nobody has the absence of fear.
0:25:13 The two types of people in the world
0:25:15 are those who have fear and they take a step back
0:25:16 and there are those who have fear
0:25:18 and take the step forward.
0:25:19 And I always took the step forward.
0:25:20 – Yeah.
0:25:22 – Courage isn’t the absence of fear.
0:25:25 It’s being afraid and leaning into it.
0:25:28 And so to be uncomfortable and step forward
0:25:30 is perhaps the single greatest thing you can ever learn.
0:25:31 And what you discover is you’re surrounded
0:25:32 by people who wanna help you.
0:25:33 – Yes.
0:25:34 – 100%.
0:25:36 – Which is the most amazing thing to discover.
0:25:37 – This is one of my biggest mistakes.
0:25:39 You know, when I was in my early 20s
0:25:40 and I had my first startup,
0:25:43 I was pleasantly surprised in that it was my first go,
0:25:46 it was dig and it was the first social news app
0:25:49 and it exploded to tens of millions of users in six months.
0:25:50 – Yeah.
0:25:52 – And I was afraid. – That’s uncomfortable.
0:25:53 – Oh my God.
0:25:56 Well, here I am, college dropout, moved to the valley.
0:25:59 I was so intimidated by everyone around me,
0:26:01 the VCs I was getting introduced to, everyone else.
0:26:04 And I was scared to raise my hand
0:26:07 and say, “I don’t know the answer to this.”
0:26:10 Because everyone was looking to me as like someone
0:26:12 that had created something new and exciting.
0:26:14 And it wasn’t until actually two years into the company
0:26:16 where it was really strange.
0:26:17 It was a very small period of time
0:26:19 where dig was bigger, traffic-wise than Facebook.
0:26:22 And so Mark came to my office, Zuckerberg.
0:26:25 And he just asked a thousand questions.
0:26:28 And he was really probing me on so many different things
0:26:32 and admitting so many things that he just didn’t know.
0:26:35 And I was like, “Wow, I need to be more like this.”
0:26:36 – Exactly.
0:26:40 – Because here I am operating in this silo,
0:26:43 afraid, ashamed, and it’s not doing me any good.
0:26:46 I’m actually doing more harm to my business.
0:26:48 And once you have that unlock
0:26:51 and you realize it’s a massive strength
0:26:53 to have vulnerability and to raise your hand
0:26:55 and say, “I don’t know the answer to this.”
0:26:56 It’s a huge, huge unlock.
0:26:59 – I don’t know is the three most important words
0:27:01 any young entrepreneur can ever wear.
0:27:03 It’s your story, it’s also my story.
0:27:07 I had a small business and I was chief cook and bottle washer.
0:27:08 And I started having employees
0:27:09 and I had to be in every meeting
0:27:10 and I had to make every decision.
0:27:12 I thought I had to have every answer.
0:27:15 And if I didn’t, I thought I had to pretend that I did.
0:27:17 And A, the business doesn’t do well with that model.
0:27:20 But B, it’s crippling, like depression set in.
0:27:21 – Oh, 100%.
0:27:24 – Because you feel so alone in the hiding.
0:27:26 And it wasn’t until I learned to say,
0:27:28 “I don’t know or can you help me?”
0:27:30 Or learn to accept help when it’s offered.
0:27:33 The amount of help we’re offered on a daily basis
0:27:38 if you just counted it’s tons to say, “I’ll take that.”
0:27:39 And it is humiliating by the way.
0:27:41 Like I have some very successful friends
0:27:42 and they asked me what I’m going through
0:27:45 and I’ll talk about the stuff that I’m stuck with
0:27:46 or don’t know.
0:27:47 And these are very successful people
0:27:49 that I want to look good in front of.
0:27:52 The amazing thing is by being open to them,
0:27:54 the amount that they are there for me,
0:27:56 like that day of humiliation
0:27:58 was the greatest investment I ever made.
0:28:00 And I think that’s what you need to think of it is.
0:28:01 Like it’s an investment which is,
0:28:03 when you make an investment, you pay money, it hurts.
0:28:04 You take it out of your bank account,
0:28:06 it was a high number and it was a low number.
0:28:08 And you’re like, “Oh, this works.”
0:28:09 It’s an investment.
0:28:10 And sometimes it pays off.
0:28:12 I can’t say that it pays off all the time.
0:28:13 Sometimes it’s just humiliated.
0:28:14 – Yeah, right.
0:28:14 But that’s okay.
0:28:15 – And that’s okay.
0:28:17 – What was your personal story?
0:28:18 What was that moment you mentioned
0:28:20 where you didn’t want to go to work anymore?
0:28:22 And then how did you dig yourself out of that?
0:28:25 – Not ironically, I didn’t do it alone.
0:28:26 I reached a point where
0:28:28 I didn’t have the skillset to build the business.
0:28:30 I’d reached a certain level of growth
0:28:32 that I could achieve by myself
0:28:35 and needing to let go and not be in every meeting
0:28:36 and not make every decision.
0:28:37 That’s a critical point
0:28:39 because you literally can’t grow beyond a certain point
0:28:43 of if only one person can make all the major decisions.
0:28:44 I couldn’t let go.
0:28:48 And so I couldn’t grow, which means frustration.
0:28:51 Did not build systems, did not ask for help.
0:28:52 Ego was out of check.
0:28:54 And I don’t mean like, I thought I was everything.
0:28:57 I mean, I was pretending that I was everything.
0:28:59 And depression set in.
0:29:00 Didn’t want to wake up.
0:29:04 Didn’t find the joy in business ownership anymore.
0:29:06 And was really good at lying, hiding, faking.
0:29:08 I could pretend that I was happier, more in control
0:29:10 and more successful than I felt.
0:29:11 And by the way, so good that nobody could tell.
0:29:14 I mean, I was phenomenal.
0:29:18 And one friend could see through the armor.
0:29:23 One friend came to me and said something’s not right.
0:29:26 I don’t know what it is, but something feels off.
0:29:27 And for whatever reason,
0:29:32 probably ’cause she is really good at making a safe space.
0:29:33 I started to open up.
0:29:37 And she didn’t try and fix anything.
0:29:39 She didn’t have suggestions.
0:29:44 She simply let me be vulnerable.
0:29:46 And it’s not the act of being vulnerable per se.
0:29:50 It’s the act of not feeling alone in that vulnerability.
0:29:53 And that she could hold space for me so effectively.
0:29:55 I now had the courage to take all that energy
0:29:57 that I was using to lie, hide, and fake.
0:29:59 And I could take that energy to find a solution
0:30:01 to my malaise.
0:30:02 And the solution that I found was sitting right in front
0:30:03 of me the whole time, which is this thing
0:30:05 that I called the golden circle.
0:30:06 And that’s when I made the realization
0:30:07 that I knew what I did.
0:30:09 I knew how I did it, but I didn’t know why.
0:30:12 And that was the reason that I was stuck.
0:30:15 ‘Cause I had no sense of purpose, cause, or belief.
0:30:18 And I became obsessed with understanding my why.
0:30:20 I learned my why, but more important,
0:30:22 I learned how to help others find theirs.
0:30:24 And I helped my friends find their ways.
0:30:26 Just because I wanted, it’s like you see a great movie.
0:30:27 You tell your friends to go see it.
0:30:28 No other reason, right?
0:30:30 There’s excitement.
0:30:31 And my friends, they quit their jobs
0:30:32 and started their own businesses,
0:30:36 or they found renewed joy in the jobs that they had.
0:30:40 To the same levels that I was experiencing, way higher.
0:30:42 And they asked me to talk to their friends.
0:30:44 And I would go to someone’s apartment in New York City
0:30:44 and stand in the living room
0:30:46 and talk about this thing called the why
0:30:48 and help people find their why for $100 on the side.
0:30:51 And my career took a weird turn completely by accident.
0:30:52 It was all organic.
0:30:54 But the point to the question was,
0:30:56 it was one person who held space.
0:30:59 We forget that we are social animals
0:31:03 and our very ability to survive
0:31:05 requires the help of other people.
0:31:06 If you fall asleep, you need someone
0:31:09 to watch for wild animals.
0:31:10 We just know good by ourselves.
0:31:12 We can’t solve complex problems by ourselves.
0:31:13 But in groups who are remarkable,
0:31:15 human beings hunted woolly mammoths.
0:31:16 – Yeah.
0:31:19 – No other animal could take down a woolly mammoth.
0:31:22 But we frail, weak human beings could.
0:31:26 Because the asset that we have that is our superpower
0:31:28 is our ability to cooperate.
0:31:30 And if you know that and you remember that,
0:31:32 that no human being can survive or thrive alone,
0:31:34 that we are fundamentally social animals,
0:31:35 you have to learn to ask for help
0:31:38 and you have to learn to offer it.
0:31:39 And that’s what I did.
0:31:40 That’s where I learned that lesson.
0:31:42 – One of the things that you said that struck me
0:31:44 is, and this is the mistake I make with my wife a lot,
0:31:45 I’ll admit it publicly,
0:31:47 is that I go into problem solving mode.
0:31:50 She’s got an issue and rather than just sit there
0:31:52 and hold space and have some empathy
0:31:54 for what she’s going through
0:31:57 and how something lands on her.
0:31:58 I’m like, let’s fix this.
0:32:00 And I’m like throwing out solutions and all this.
0:32:03 And then that’s not always the best.
0:32:05 – Men are particularly bad at it.
0:32:07 Men are usually in solution, not exclusively,
0:32:09 but tends to skew that way.
0:32:10 – That’s correct.
0:32:11 That is not a good idea.
0:32:13 And there’s a great video on YouTube
0:32:14 called It’s Not About the Nail.
0:32:15 Everybody can go look it up.
0:32:17 It’s one that has a bazillion views.
0:32:18 It’s many years old,
0:32:20 but it basically sums it up absolutely perfectly.
0:32:22 And by the way, you’re the same.
0:32:24 When you have a problem and somebody says,
0:32:25 well, why don’t you do this?
0:32:27 You end up being defensive and fighting with them
0:32:28 because you don’t actually want them to solve the problem.
0:32:31 You just want to feel safe in your stuckness.
0:32:32 And when somebody comes to you and says,
0:32:35 I’m struggling, just go tell me more.
0:32:35 What else?
0:32:37 By the way, you know how to do this
0:32:40 because you read all the books to do it with your children.
0:32:42 And when they say, daddy, I’m afraid.
0:32:43 That’s okay, you can be afraid.
0:32:45 But daddy this and you’re like, that’s okay.
0:32:47 You don’t try and fix their fear.
0:32:48 You hold space for their fear.
0:32:49 When they’re nervous,
0:32:50 you don’t try and fix their nervousness.
0:32:52 You don’t have to be nervous.
0:32:53 Don’t be nervous.
0:32:54 We’ve learned that that’s a terrible thing to do
0:32:55 with children.
0:32:57 You go, oh, I know it’s scary.
0:32:59 You affirm the feelings.
0:33:01 Well, why did you stop doing that
0:33:03 just because somebody is an adult?
0:33:04 Like you still have to affirm their feelings.
0:33:05 – It’s a great point.
0:33:06 – Honey, I’m nervous.
0:33:07 Honey, I’m scared.
0:33:08 Honey, I’m confused.
0:33:09 Honey, I’m angry.
0:33:10 – Yeah.
0:33:12 My girlfriend and I were,
0:33:13 she said something about something
0:33:16 and I had done something that upset her.
0:33:19 And I basically was like, well, that’s ridiculous.
0:33:20 And clearly I didn’t mean to.
0:33:21 How can you say that I did that?
0:33:23 Of course I didn’t do that on purpose.
0:33:24 – Right.
0:33:25 – You know, I’m full on defense mode.
0:33:28 I’m in full on like, it’s not really gaslighting,
0:33:29 but it’s a form of gaslighting,
0:33:30 which is like, I’m saying,
0:33:33 you can’t feel that way about that, right?
0:33:38 And after many rounds, I finally said,
0:33:41 if I were in your shoes, I would have felt the same.
0:33:43 And she said, thank you.
0:33:45 And the funny thing is what preceded that was,
0:33:46 I just need you to see it.
0:33:47 What if you were me?
0:33:49 Like she literally gave me the instruction.
0:33:50 – Right.
0:33:51 – I’m like, well, if I were in your shoes,
0:33:52 yeah, I probably would have felt the same
0:33:53 where you’re feeling now.
0:33:54 – Right.
0:33:55 – That was it.
0:33:55 – No, you’re right.
0:33:56 – Argument over.
0:33:57 – I’ve been there.
0:33:58 I’ve been in this exact conversation.
0:33:59 – Argument over.
0:34:00 – Yeah, 100%.
0:34:02 I’ve had it happen where I’m in a bad place
0:34:03 and I call a friend and told him basically like,
0:34:04 hey, I’m not feeling good.
0:34:06 And they start fixing and I get off the phone.
0:34:07 – Yeah.
0:34:08 – ‘Cause they make it worse.
0:34:10 – So true.
0:34:12 – I talk about this a lot, which is the idea
0:34:15 of sitting in mud, which is when we or our people
0:34:18 we love are in a bad place, they’re sitting in mud.
0:34:20 And our instincts, well intention,
0:34:21 is to pull them out of the mud, right?
0:34:22 To fix it.
0:34:24 Well, oh my God, that looks horrible.
0:34:25 Nobody wants to be in mud.
0:34:26 Let me pull you out of the mud.
0:34:27 And they don’t want to be pulled out of the mud.
0:34:28 – Right.
0:34:30 – But they don’t want you standing on the sidelines.
0:34:32 What they want, what loving friendship,
0:34:33 what loving relationship means is,
0:34:36 I’m gonna come and sit in the mud with you.
0:34:37 – Yeah.
0:34:37 – I don’t want to sit in the mud with you.
0:34:39 It’s no fun being in the mud with you,
0:34:41 but I’m gonna get in the mud with you.
0:34:44 – Well, that act alone will allow them to dig themselves
0:34:45 or climb their way out of the mud.
0:34:47 – Or, turn to you and say,
0:34:48 I think I’m ready to get out of the mud.
0:34:49 – Yeah.
0:34:50 – And then you can go into solution mode.
0:34:52 If a friend is depressed,
0:34:54 they just don’t want to get out of bed.
0:34:55 And we can’t make them get out of bed
0:34:57 and tell them they have to get out of bed.
0:34:59 Go to their house and get into bed with them.
0:35:03 And watch TV, watch movies all day, be depressed with them.
0:35:05 It’s not fun, it’s not productive,
0:35:07 but it makes them feel not alone.
0:35:08 – Right.
0:35:12 You’re matching their spirit at the moment.
0:35:13 – You’re making them feel not alone.
0:35:14 – Yeah.
0:35:16 – And usually when we try and fix someone’s problem,
0:35:19 usually when we try and pull them out of the mud,
0:35:20 what that makes them feel
0:35:22 is that they’re in the mud by themselves.
0:35:26 ‘Cause we’re standing on high ground, on dry ground,
0:35:27 saying, let me pull you out.
0:35:28 – Right.
0:35:30 – Oh my God, look at you down there in the mud.
0:35:31 Let me pull you up here to the dry land,
0:35:33 which all that does is remind them that they’re alone.
0:35:34 – Right.
0:35:38 You must have just given everything
0:35:40 that you’ve been through in all your talks.
0:35:42 I’d imagine people come up to you randomly
0:35:45 or at talks, after talking to the line forms
0:35:47 and people wanna ask you questions.
0:35:51 If a young person comes to you looking to be pulled out
0:35:53 or in some way, it’s like, give me advice on this or that.
0:35:56 How do you empower them to make their own decisions?
0:36:00 How do you equip them to figure out their why?
0:36:03 ‘Cause I’d imagine you can’t do that in two minutes.
0:36:05 – You can.
0:36:06 – Tell me.
0:36:08 – So finding the why is the easy part.
0:36:11 It’s like college graduation is called commencement.
0:36:12 – Yeah. – Beginning of something.
0:36:13 – Yeah.
0:36:14 – Well, finding your why is easy.
0:36:16 That’s why I called the book Start With Why.
0:36:18 ‘Cause once you have it, now the work begins.
0:36:19 – Right.
0:36:21 – So again, there’s two questions there.
0:36:23 One is how to find the why and which I’ll tell you.
0:36:26 And the one is when you’re coming up to a stranger.
0:36:28 I mean, they don’t know me and I don’t know them.
0:36:29 – Mm-hmm.
0:36:30 – And they come up to me and say,
0:36:32 can you help me get out of this or, you know, hey.
0:36:33 – Right.
0:36:34 – And my answer is always the same as,
0:36:35 you don’t know me.
0:36:37 You know the image of me.
0:36:39 You know the image you’ve built of me.
0:36:42 I could be the worst qualified person to help you with this.
0:36:44 Go ask somebody who actually cares about you.
0:36:46 You know, you’re not my friend.
0:36:48 Like I like you, you’re seem very nice,
0:36:50 but why would I get into mud with a stranger?
0:36:52 – Right. – I don’t know you.
0:36:54 You know, go ask somebody who loves you.
0:36:57 Because it’s safer to be vulnerable with me
0:36:58 because I’m a stranger.
0:36:59 – Right.
0:37:00 – It’s hard to be vulnerable with somebody
0:37:01 who actually knows us.
0:37:02 – Mm-hmm.
0:37:04 – But that’s the thing you gotta do.
0:37:06 – Yes. – They’re asking the wrong person.
0:37:09 I’m sympathetic, but I’m the wrong person.
0:37:09 – Yeah.
0:37:12 – So where does a therapist fall on that?
0:37:13 Because you don’t know them,
0:37:16 but yet you can be vulnerable around them.
0:37:19 How do they fit into your thinking?
0:37:21 Like obviously it’s a useful tool to have a therapist.
0:37:24 – Therapists have said that I professionally
0:37:25 hold space for you.
0:37:26 That is my job.
0:37:27 – Right.
0:37:29 – Depending on the therapist, some of them have tools
0:37:31 to help you with whatever you’re dealing with, right?
0:37:33 So they can equip you with tools.
0:37:36 And I think therapists are one of the things that we need.
0:37:38 I don’t think they’re the only thing that we need.
0:37:40 I believe in therapy, I think it’s a good thing.
0:37:42 And the practice of being open with someone.
0:37:44 But I hope that you use that skill set with your friends.
0:37:46 Like what’s the point of learning the skill
0:37:47 if you’re not gonna apply it in other places?
0:37:48 – Right.
0:37:49 – And I think somebody who really struggles
0:37:51 with vulnerability should do therapy
0:37:55 because it is a good way to practice being vulnerable
0:37:58 with the people you really need to be vulnerable.
0:38:00 If you’re only vulnerable with your therapist and no one else,
0:38:02 I think that’s as much of a problem
0:38:03 as not being vulnerable to anybody.
0:38:06 It’s an education as much as it is a catharsis.
0:38:07 – Right.
0:38:08 – So going back to your question about finding your one.
0:38:09 – Yes. – Okay.
0:38:10 I’ll give you two answers.
0:38:11 – Okay.
0:38:13 – There are many ways to do it.
0:38:14 We’ve tried to make many tools available.
0:38:16 We have things in our website
0:38:18 that people can do to find their why.
0:38:19 I wrote a book called “Find Your One.”
0:38:20 – Yeah.
0:38:22 Your website’s got some great thank courses
0:38:25 and things that people can sign up for, which look awesome.
0:38:26 – Thank you.
0:38:28 – But there’s something called the friends exercise
0:38:30 which anybody can do and it’s fun.
0:38:32 Basically find a friend who loves you and you love them.
0:38:34 The kind of friend who,
0:38:35 if you call them at three o’clock in the morning,
0:38:36 you know that they would be there for you
0:38:37 and you would be there for them.
0:38:38 – Okay.
0:38:40 – Do not do this exercise with a spouse,
0:38:41 with a sibling, with a parent.
0:38:42 It does not work.
0:38:44 Those relationships are too close.
0:38:45 – Okay.
0:38:48 – Do it with a best friend and ask them the simple question.
0:38:49 Why are we friends?
0:38:52 And they’re gonna look at you like you’re crazy.
0:38:53 Because the part of the brain that controls
0:38:56 all of our feelings, love, loyalty, trust,
0:38:58 the limbic brain doesn’t control language.
0:39:00 It doesn’t control rational thought.
0:39:03 And so it’s very hard for us to
0:39:05 rationally articulate emotions,
0:39:07 which is why we use metaphors.
0:39:08 – Yeah, we’re hard-tempering in the words.
0:39:09 – Yeah, of course.
0:39:10 It’s a biological problem.
0:39:12 And so then you immediately convert the question,
0:39:14 because why is an emotional question?
0:39:16 And you start saying, “Come on, come on.”
0:39:19 What specifically is it about me
0:39:22 that I know that you would be there for me no matter what?
0:39:23 And again, they’re gonna hem and ha,
0:39:24 it’s very hard to put into words.
0:39:25 – What if they just give you high level like,
0:39:26 “Oh, you’re funny.” – They will.
0:39:27 They will.
0:39:28 That’s what they will do.
0:39:28 They’ll start describing you.
0:39:32 You’re funny, I trust you, you’re always there for me,
0:39:33 and you have to play devil’s advocate.
0:39:35 Great, that’s the definition of friend.
0:39:37 What specifically is it about me?
0:39:39 Or great, yes, all true,
0:39:41 but you get that from lots of other people.
0:39:43 What specifically is it about me?
0:39:45 Then I know you’d be there for me no matter what.
0:39:47 And they’re gonna go through a few rounds of this
0:39:49 where they’re just describing you
0:39:52 and describing this generic best friend archetype.
0:39:56 And eventually, because of discomfort, they will give up.
0:39:59 And they’ll go, “Look, man, I don’t know.
0:40:02 “All I know is,” and they’ll start describing themselves.
0:40:04 And this is what my friend said to me
0:40:04 when I did the exercise.
0:40:06 “Look, Simon, I don’t know.
0:40:09 “All I know is, I can sit in a room with you.
0:40:11 “I don’t even have to talk to you when I feel inspired.
0:40:13 “And I got goosebumps.”
0:40:16 So what they’ll do is they’ll say something about themselves
0:40:18 and you will have an emotional reaction.
0:40:20 You’ll get goosebumps, you’ll well up with tears,
0:40:21 because what they’re doing is articulating the value
0:40:24 having their life, which is the thing you give to the world,
0:40:26 which is your why.
0:40:27 And if you do this with multiple friends,
0:40:30 you will get very similar, if not the exact same answer,
0:40:31 because who you are in the world
0:40:35 is the space you fill in all of these people’s lives.
0:40:37 – And so is this idea what you give to them
0:40:38 or what you give to the world,
0:40:41 are you looking for a cross-section of agreement
0:40:42 amongst friends?
0:40:43 – No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
0:40:44 This is not subjective.
0:40:45 This is objective.
0:40:46 – Okay.
0:40:47 – Find as there’s common themes.
0:40:50 And your why is the value you have in the world.
0:40:52 It’s why not everybody likes you.
0:40:53 It’s not everybody wants what you have.
0:40:54 There are plenty of people who think
0:40:57 that my entire existence is cheesy.
0:40:58 I mean, I talk about inspiration.
0:41:01 I mean, literally what could be cheesier, right?
0:41:02 And are very dismissive.
0:41:03 Well, I’m not for them.
0:41:04 That’s okay.
0:41:05 It’s like some people like chocolate,
0:41:05 some people like vanilla.
0:41:06 It’s like, it’s all good.
0:41:08 But the people who love what I have to offer,
0:41:12 well, those people are either part of the movement.
0:41:15 They either, you know, buy, read a book
0:41:17 or watch a video or they’re my friends.
0:41:19 And we’re all kind of the same kind of person.
0:41:21 It’s like when Apple says think different,
0:41:22 who are they describing?
0:41:23 The answer is yes.
0:41:25 They’re describing their employees.
0:41:26 They’re describing their founders.
0:41:27 They’re describing their customers.
0:41:29 They’re describing the answers.
0:41:30 Yes.
0:41:33 They’re describing everyone who believes in that thing.
0:41:34 Well, it’s the same.
0:41:35 Your why is the thing you give to the world
0:41:37 and the people who value that
0:41:38 are the ones who want to receive it.
0:41:39 But it’s always gonna be you.
0:41:42 – Can we have different whys, multiple whys?
0:41:44 When do these whys form?
0:41:46 – Your why is fully formed by your mid to late teens.
0:41:49 The youngest why Discovery ever did was a 16 year old
0:41:50 and it worked perfectly.
0:41:53 We are all the products of our upbringing.
0:41:55 You are who you are based on the experiences you had
0:41:55 when you were young,
0:41:58 which made you quote unquote who you are.
0:42:00 And you don’t have a why for work and a why for home
0:42:03 because then how would I know which one’s the real you?
0:42:06 And one of those two places you’re lying, right?
0:42:08 And you can’t change your why every year
0:42:08 because then again,
0:42:10 how would you ever form trusting relationships
0:42:11 because I’d never know who you are.
0:42:13 Are you authentic this week?
0:42:14 But last week was a different why.
0:42:16 So it’s the concept of authenticity
0:42:19 literally couldn’t exist if your why could change.
0:42:20 You are who you are and the rest of your life
0:42:22 is simply an opportunity to live in balance
0:42:23 with that why or not.
0:42:26 I’ll show you another way to find your why,
0:42:27 which is pattern recognition.
0:42:31 I want you to tell me something you’ve done in your career
0:42:32 whether it was commercially successful or not
0:42:34 does not matter.
0:42:35 But something, a project you’ve worked on,
0:42:37 something specific that you did in your career
0:42:40 that you absolutely loved being a part of.
0:42:43 And if everything you ever did for the rest of your life
0:42:44 was like this one thing,
0:42:45 you’d be the happiest person in the life.
0:42:50 – I would say one of the things that I’ve enjoyed is-
0:42:51 – Loved.
0:42:53 – Loved, okay.
0:42:56 One of the things that I’ve loved is then
0:42:57 this is probably ego loaded.
0:42:58 So let’s just take it with that.
0:43:02 So I’ve loved getting the recognition from others
0:43:05 for discovering things earlier than anyone else.
0:43:08 – Tell me something specific that you did
0:43:12 that you loved the process, you loved being a part of it.
0:43:14 That if all of your projects were like this one,
0:43:16 ’cause you’ve started multiple business,
0:43:19 many of them have had commercial success.
0:43:21 Some of them you enjoyed more than others.
0:43:24 And within those projects, there were things that happened.
0:43:25 – Sure.
0:43:26 – Things that went right or wrong,
0:43:27 new clients you landed, whatever it was.
0:43:31 Tell me one specific thing throughout this entire career
0:43:33 that you loved, you didn’t necessarily like it every day,
0:43:36 but you loved every, like this is the most exciting thing.
0:43:40 – I would say that is the invention of things that-
0:43:42 – Specific, invention of what?
0:43:45 – When we created social voting for the first time
0:43:48 and you could see the number go up
0:43:50 on a piece of content on the web,
0:43:51 this was before likes.
0:43:54 And because of something called asynchronous JavaScript,
0:43:57 you could actually watch as people socially voted
0:44:00 on things in real time and inventing that
0:44:04 and seeing that come to life and watching humans
0:44:07 in real time gather around articles
0:44:11 and watch them socially spread information.
0:44:16 That moment of creating that and seeing it take off
0:44:20 was just the creation process was a highlight
0:44:22 you would probably never get anywhere else.
0:44:27 That was a great just accomplishment for me and my team.
0:44:29 So of all the amazing things you’ve done
0:44:31 and you’ve had exits and all of the things
0:44:33 that people dream of, right?
0:44:35 What specifically was it about that,
0:44:40 about social voting that stands out in an entire career?
0:44:42 I think it’s because historically my kids
0:44:43 will look back on that and said,
0:44:47 dad did something that changed the world in some small way.
0:44:48 – Could say that about other things you’ve done.
0:44:50 Dad did something with dig,
0:44:52 dad did something with all those things.
0:44:54 My dad did was precursor to this or precursor to that.
0:44:57 Mark Zuckerberg came to my dad for advice.
0:45:01 So that, what specifically was about social voting
0:45:01 that was so exciting.
0:45:03 – Probably because it had the biggest impact.
0:45:05 I would say there’s been other things
0:45:07 like when I made the first intermittent fasting app,
0:45:10 severely obese people, my dad died of a heart attack.
0:45:12 We’re losing a lot of weight
0:45:13 and we started getting emails saying
0:45:14 it changed their lives.
0:45:18 And that was another aha moment where I was like,
0:45:20 this makes me feel so good.
0:45:22 Just because I know that I’d give anything
0:45:23 for another year with my dad
0:45:26 and to like think that I’m giving somebody else’s son
0:45:29 or daughter an extra year with their mom or dad
0:45:31 is a huge one for me.
0:45:33 So I think that’s another huge one.
0:45:35 – No, that’s good.
0:45:37 Tell me an early specific happy childhood memory,
0:45:38 something I can relive with you.
0:45:40 – Saturday mornings, my dad–
0:45:41 – One memory.
0:45:45 – One memory, catching a fish with my dad out on a boat.
0:45:47 – So this is a specific time you were at?
0:45:48 – Yeah, 100%.
0:45:50 – Okay, tell me about that day.
0:45:51 – Got up early.
0:45:52 I had never been fishing in the sea,
0:45:54 only kind of on lakes.
0:45:56 And my dad drove me about,
0:45:59 it was a multi-day trip to get up to the state of Washington.
0:46:00 We went out on a boat.
0:46:03 I was probably 10 years old
0:46:07 and I helped reel in like a 45 pound salmon.
0:46:10 I obviously couldn’t do it myself ’cause it’s tiny.
0:46:11 – Actually, I take that back.
0:46:14 The better memory was laying in the back of our truck bed,
0:46:17 looking up at my dad show me satellites for the first time.
0:46:19 And I saw a satellite camping with my dad.
0:46:21 That was like just a magical moment.
0:46:22 – Okay, tell me more about that.
0:46:24 – I just realized how much I loved my father.
0:46:26 And I just realized how special it was
0:46:28 that I got to spend some one-on-one time with him
0:46:31 and that he would take time out of his busy schedule
0:46:35 to show me attention, to teach me things.
0:46:37 It was difficult because my dad was a very verbally abusive
0:46:39 father to my mom.
0:46:40 And so he was always angry.
0:46:44 And so to see him being tender with me
0:46:47 was just a beautiful thing
0:46:51 because I got to see my dad in a place of like happiness,
0:46:52 which I didn’t see that often.
0:46:56 – And what was it about showing you the satellites?
0:46:57 – More one-on-one time.
0:47:00 And I just didn’t even know those things existed.
0:47:03 My late 40s satellites were a big deal way back in the day.
0:47:05 And now I will go watch SpaceX launches
0:47:06 outside of my balcony.
0:47:07 But back then it was like,
0:47:09 I just didn’t even know you could see him with a naked eye.
0:47:11 And if you’re laying on a clear enough night,
0:47:13 you can look up and you can actually track them
0:47:14 and see a satellite, which is amazing.
0:47:16 – Yeah, okay.
0:47:18 So what’s interesting about those stories,
0:47:20 seeing satellites with your dad
0:47:22 and when you talk about the intermittent fasting,
0:47:26 you use very similar language in both of them,
0:47:28 which is you talk about the opportunity
0:47:30 to have these moments, right?
0:47:31 My dad was an angry man
0:47:33 and I got to see him in tender times.
0:47:35 You talk about giving somebody else
0:47:38 the opportunity to spend more time with, right?
0:47:40 It’s about the discovery of beautiful things
0:47:42 that you didn’t know existed.
0:47:43 An angry man who could be tender.
0:47:46 A satellite you didn’t know you could see with a naked eye.
0:47:49 The discovery of changing and intermittent fast.
0:47:51 Even the uploading of things.
0:47:55 It’s really about, it’s recognizing that there’s community,
0:47:58 like there’s other people who connect.
0:48:02 And I think your why sort of exists in this arena.
0:48:04 I’m struggling to find the exact words for it.
0:48:05 – Yes, that feels right to me.
0:48:07 It’s very right to me.
0:48:09 Where the things that bring you joy
0:48:11 are when you give somebody the opportunity
0:48:13 to make a discovery that has a positive impact
0:48:16 in their lives to see something they didn’t see before.
0:48:17 And in all of those examples,
0:48:20 there was an element of like, I didn’t know that before.
0:48:22 I had never seen that before.
0:48:23 I didn’t know that could have an impact.
0:48:24 And there was a positive impact
0:48:26 whether it’s spending time with your dad.
0:48:27 And you said it beautifully,
0:48:29 which is giving somebody opportunity to spend more time
0:48:33 with their mother, father that you didn’t have.
0:48:34 And to some degree,
0:48:36 you’re becoming the best parts of your father,
0:48:39 which is to take quiet moments,
0:48:40 show somebody something
0:48:42 and let them discover something magical.
0:48:42 – Yeah.
0:48:44 I think that’s why I like playing with my kids so much.
0:48:46 – The things you get to show your kids.
0:48:47 – Yeah, and see through their eyes.
0:48:48 – See through their eyes.
0:48:49 – Yeah, it’s beautiful.
0:48:50 – It’s beautiful.
0:48:52 And even in the way you talk about social voting,
0:48:55 which is to see through other people’s eyes
0:48:57 what they find interesting.
0:48:59 So there’s discovery for the person
0:49:00 who’s learning it for the first time,
0:49:01 but there’s discovery for you who’s teaching them
0:49:03 because you don’t know where it’s gonna go.
0:49:04 – Right.
0:49:05 – And so there’s discovery on both sides.
0:49:06 – Yeah.
0:49:07 – So I think discover or discovery
0:49:10 is sort of your magic place, your magical place.
0:49:11 Anyway, your Y exists somewhere in the–
0:49:12 – No, that’s awesome.
0:49:14 I do wanna talk about what you do professionally for people
0:49:16 because I think this is important.
0:49:19 I noticed your site has some ways that people can sign up
0:49:22 and actually learn how to be coached through this.
0:49:24 More people need to do that.
0:49:25 And I wanna take it further now.
0:49:27 What do people do on your site?
0:49:29 – So we started the optimism company
0:49:30 with a very specific purpose,
0:49:33 which is to advance the idea of human skills.
0:49:36 I hate the term soft skills, hard skills and soft skills.
0:49:38 First of all, hard and softer opposites.
0:49:40 These things do not work against each other.
0:49:43 And also there’s nothing soft about soft skills.
0:49:45 There are hard skills and there’s human skills.
0:49:46 Hard skills are the skills you need to learn
0:49:48 to do the job you need to do.
0:49:50 And human skills, the skills you need to learn
0:49:51 to be a better human being.
0:49:54 And there’s a great irony in being human, right?
0:49:56 Like cats don’t have to work very hard to be cats.
0:49:58 They’re just naturally good at being cats.
0:50:00 But we have to actually do a lot of work
0:50:01 to be good human beings.
0:50:03 It’s frustrating and annoying.
0:50:05 And we built the optimism company
0:50:08 to completely focus on teaching people
0:50:12 the human skills they need to be better human beings.
0:50:15 And to advance that ability to cooperate and socialize.
0:50:17 – Is that both personally and professionally?
0:50:18 – It’s you, right?
0:50:20 So when I teach you better listening skills,
0:50:23 when I teach you how to have a difficult conversation,
0:50:26 when I teach you how to have an effective confrontation.
0:50:28 Now we teach it in a work context
0:50:30 because that’s where the people are.
0:50:32 But the reality is those skills are useful everywhere.
0:50:33 I like to make the joke that in the,
0:50:36 there’s an entire section of the bookshop called self-help.
0:50:38 And there’s no section of the bookshop called help others.
0:50:41 And what we need is to advance the help others industry.
0:50:43 And that starts with teaching people the human skills
0:50:46 of how to not only be a better version of yourself,
0:50:50 but more important, which is how to be a good partner,
0:50:54 friend, colleague, coworker, boyfriend, girlfriend,
0:50:55 brother, sister, son, daughter,
0:50:57 mother, father to somebody else.
0:51:01 Because all of these relationships, boss, employee,
0:51:05 dad, mom, brother, sister, they’re all cooperative.
0:51:07 None of them are solo.
0:51:09 They all involve a relationship.
0:51:10 Almost every label we have for people
0:51:12 involves some sort of relationship.
0:51:14 You can’t be a leader if nobody’s following you.
0:51:17 You can’t be a follower if there’s nothing to follow.
0:51:18 All of these things is a relationship.
0:51:20 Even when people talk about their faith,
0:51:21 I’m a follower of X.
0:51:22 Well, that’s a relationship.
0:51:24 That’s how they describe faith.
0:51:27 And so that’s what the optimism is singularly focused on,
0:51:28 which is how we teach people the human skills
0:51:29 to be better human beings.
0:51:30 That’s awesome.
0:51:33 I was picking to the website and I noticed
0:51:36 there was a couple of things you mentioned on the site
0:51:40 that you teach people the courage to lead
0:51:41 and then also conflict resolution.
0:51:44 How do you teach someone to resolve conflict?
0:51:47 So many of these skills, the foundational skill
0:51:49 of a lot of them is listening, right?
0:51:51 Like we talked about it before with you and your wife,
0:51:52 you fix everything.
0:51:54 One of what you need to do is learn to listen.
0:51:57 You work really hard to learn to listen to your kids,
0:51:59 but then you abandon the skill at work
0:52:02 or in your adult relationships, right?
0:52:05 And so conflict resolution, we have conflict at work.
0:52:07 We have disagreements, we have misunderstandings.
0:52:09 We feel triggered by certain things that people say,
0:52:11 whether they said it on purpose or by accident.
0:52:14 We feel pressure, we react badly.
0:52:16 There’s conflict everywhere.
0:52:19 And I don’t believe that world peace, for example,
0:52:21 is the absence of conflict.
0:52:23 I think that’s nonsense, right?
0:52:26 We live in a world with no conflict or war.
0:52:28 No, not gonna happen, right?
0:52:30 To me, world peace is the ability
0:52:32 to resolve conflict peacefully.
0:52:34 There’s gonna be conflict,
0:52:36 but how do you resolve it peacefully?
0:52:37 And you see it at work all the time.
0:52:38 People yell at each other, people quit out of anger,
0:52:40 people fire out of anger.
0:52:42 Conflict is gonna happen.
0:52:44 How do we resolve our conflicts peacefully?
0:52:45 You’re gonna have conflict in your relationships.
0:52:47 How do you resolve conflict peacefully?
0:52:51 So for me, conflict resolution is that very difficult skill
0:52:52 of when you’re angry,
0:52:54 you still have the skill to hold space for somebody else.
0:52:57 That’s so hard because when someone is triggered,
0:52:58 everything goes out the window.
0:53:00 And it’s just like, all of a sudden it’s all about emotion.
0:53:03 How do you train yourself to say,
0:53:06 let me pause this emotion and set aside for a second
0:53:08 and listen, what’s the process like?
0:53:09 Part of it is you have to have a game plan
0:53:10 going into every conflict.
0:53:13 You wanna make these decisions before you get to conflict.
0:53:14 You don’t wanna be in conflict
0:53:16 and then having to come up with strategy.
0:53:18 You need to master these skills before the conflict
0:53:19 so you’re prepared.
0:53:20 Whether they’re athletes or military,
0:53:21 they talk about muscle memory.
0:53:22 Then you practice and practice and practice
0:53:23 and practice and practice.
0:53:26 You don’t quote unquote, have to think in the stressful time
0:53:29 because you can just quote unquote, rely on your training.
0:53:30 – Interesting.
0:53:31 – Very similar.
0:53:32 – So you offer that type of training?
0:53:34 – Well, I mean, if you do these kinds of trainings,
0:53:37 then you’re doing them in artificial environments.
0:53:38 – Is it role-playing?
0:53:39 What type of training is it?
0:53:41 – The role-playing, we expect people to go do themselves.
0:53:42 But the point is all of these things,
0:53:44 even if you learn the skill, you have to go practice it.
0:53:45 So I’ll give you one example.
0:53:49 My girlfriend, we talk to each other very openly
0:53:51 when we’re not in conflict,
0:53:55 that when we fight, we don’t want it to be me versus you,
0:53:57 we want it to be us versus the problem.
0:53:58 So we know that.
0:54:00 So both of us have that mindset.
0:54:04 So when conflict does arise, we both have the right mindset.
0:54:06 And sometimes it takes us a little to get back to it.
0:54:09 Or we can say to each other, hey, hey, hey,
0:54:10 I’m not trying to be right here.
0:54:11 I’m trying to solve this problem.
0:54:12 And then we’re the minds of the person.
0:54:13 But I’ll give you a real-life example
0:54:15 that actually happened where we went down
0:54:18 that horrible rabbit hole of who started it.
0:54:20 If you hadn’t done this, then I wouldn’t have done that.
0:54:21 Well, if you hadn’t done that,
0:54:21 then I wouldn’t have done this.
0:54:23 I mean, it sounds like some Middle East conflict,
0:54:25 which is like we’re both blaming each other
0:54:26 for what had started.
0:54:29 And it was getting worse and worse and worse
0:54:31 and more aggressive.
0:54:33 And it occurred to me in that fight,
0:54:34 this is going nowhere.
0:54:36 This is intractable.
0:54:37 – This is gonna end up on–
0:54:37 – This is just not–
0:54:39 – You on the couch or something.
0:54:40 – This is one of us is gonna storm out.
0:54:42 If you just flash forward 10 minutes,
0:54:47 there’s no peaceful resolution to this journey we’re on.
0:54:48 Where we’re pointing out what I did right
0:54:49 and what she did wrong.
0:54:50 And she’s pointing out what I did wrong
0:54:53 and what she did right, right?
0:54:54 And I literally interrupted.
0:54:58 I said, okay, this is going nowhere, new rules.
0:54:59 We’re gonna reverse the script here
0:55:01 because right now I’m pointing out everything
0:55:02 I’m doing right and you’re doing wrong
0:55:04 and you’re doing the same, new rules.
0:55:07 From now on, I’m gonna tell you what I did wrong
0:55:10 and what you did right and I’ll go first.
0:55:11 – Wow.
0:55:12 – And I said, here’s what I did wrong
0:55:14 and here’s what you got right.
0:55:16 And she goes, well, yeah, here’s what I got wrong
0:55:17 and here’s what you got right.
0:55:17 – That’s beautiful.
0:55:18 – And I said, well, here’s what I got wrong
0:55:20 and you got right.
0:55:22 – And in five minutes or less,
0:55:25 the tension had been released.
0:55:28 We realized that both of us were trying.
0:55:29 Neither of us was evil.
0:55:32 Both of us were doing things right
0:55:34 and both of us had accountability.
0:55:35 – Yeah.
0:55:37 – And in that moment, it just petered out.
0:55:38 – That’s beautiful.
0:55:40 – You’re taking the knob and just turning it down enough
0:55:43 to where you can have a sensible conversation again.
0:55:44 – But I created rules.
0:55:45 – Yes.
0:55:47 The rules of engagement are this.
0:55:49 We’re gonna continue to fight
0:55:51 but we are operating from this script.
0:55:53 Me right, you wrong.
0:55:54 I’m just gonna flip the script.
0:55:55 Me wrong, you right.
0:55:56 – Yeah.
0:55:57 – And let’s just see what happens.
0:55:58 – Do you use that every time?
0:55:59 Or is that just–
0:56:00 – No, I didn’t.
0:56:01 That was spontaneous in the moment.
0:56:02 – That’s amazing.
0:56:02 – I’ve never done that before.
0:56:03 But I’m gonna do it again.
0:56:04 – Yeah.
0:56:08 – But the point is, is like doing it once even,
0:56:10 the next time you go down that path,
0:56:13 I don’t have to go down the path and get it really tense
0:56:15 ’cause I can stop it immediately like, look,
0:56:16 I hear what you’re saying
0:56:18 and I definitely have some culpability here.
0:56:19 – Yeah.
0:56:21 – I definitely did this wrong and you did this right.
0:56:23 I can do it immediately now.
0:56:24 But the point is, these are skills.
0:56:25 – Right.
0:56:27 – Learnable, practicable skills and they’re muscles.
0:56:30 If you don’t use them, they’re gonna atrophy.
0:56:31 And this is what we’re trying to teach.
0:56:34 We’re trying to teach a host of these skills
0:56:37 that by themselves, they’ll help a little bit.
0:56:39 But the more of these skills we master,
0:56:41 the better colleagues,
0:56:42 – Yeah.
0:56:44 – Boyfriends, girlfriends, brothers, sisters, fathers,
0:56:46 mothers, sons, daughters, leaders, employees,
0:56:49 the better we become team members, colleagues,
0:56:51 any kind of human relationship.
0:56:53 – It was a big blind spot for me for a long time,
0:56:56 which is, I was a computer geek as a kid.
0:56:59 So back in our day, it was not cool to be a computer geek.
0:57:00 So I always made fun of a lot.
0:57:01 – Sure.
0:57:04 – So I was socially awkward and I had a really hard time
0:57:06 getting into my teens and then 20s,
0:57:10 going into a new situation without applying alcohol,
0:57:13 because alcohol for me was like a crutch, right?
0:57:14 I’ve since course corrected that,
0:57:17 but I’ve had to realize that when I stopped alcohol,
0:57:19 I have to build new muscles again.
0:57:22 I have to build new muscles around social interactions.
0:57:23 One on one, I’m fine.
0:57:25 I can turn it on for a while and I’m fine,
0:57:29 but there’s things that you have to kind of
0:57:31 figure out how to build that muscle around
0:57:34 so you can become proficient in it.
0:57:37 When you meet someone that is like,
0:57:38 I’m socially awkward.
0:57:42 I am not advancing my career,
0:57:43 the classic one is afraid to ask for a raise,
0:57:45 but let’s just say I’m not outgoing enough
0:57:50 to inspire confidence by the leaders of my organization.
0:57:52 Is that something that you believe
0:57:54 that we can learn and improve upon?
0:57:57 – So social awkwardness is not the problem.
0:57:59 I’m discomfort asking for difficult things
0:58:00 is not the problem.
0:58:01 I’m socially awkward.
0:58:02 You see me in a crowd, I’m useless.
0:58:04 I’m the one standing in the corner.
0:58:04 – So am I.
0:58:07 – I’m an over-sharer, mainly out of discomfort.
0:58:10 You know, talk too much, come on too strong.
0:58:12 It’s all discomfort.
0:58:13 Years of failed dates, you know?
0:58:14 – Yeah.
0:58:16 – Just social awkwardness.
0:58:21 And what I’ve learned is that those are not the problems.
0:58:23 The problem is confidence.
0:58:28 And I use social awkwardness or ADHD or introversion
0:58:33 or any of these excuses for whatever weirdness that I feel.
0:58:36 Right?
0:58:37 And I’m a great believer that none of these things
0:58:40 are right or wrong, they just are, you know?
0:58:41 You can be socially awkward as an extrovert,
0:58:43 you can be socially awkward as an introvert, right?
0:58:44 They just are.
0:58:45 And again, it goes back to asking for help
0:58:47 and just owning it, right?
0:58:49 Let’s be vulnerable, let’s be open
0:58:51 about our social awkwardness.
0:58:52 Let’s put it out there, let’s let people know.
0:58:54 I say it all the time, like I’m really socially awkward.
0:58:55 I say it on dates.
0:58:57 It’s a release, right?
0:58:58 It’s like putting it on the table.
0:59:00 So if I have a moment,
0:59:02 I’m not beating myself up in my head, right?
0:59:03 – Which can compound, right?
0:59:06 – And now it’s all me, it’s all me in my narrative, right?
0:59:06 – Yeah.
0:59:09 – And so the most important thing
0:59:10 is just owning it with confidence.
0:59:12 So here’s an example.
0:59:15 I’m really uncomfortable asking for a raise.
0:59:20 This is really hard for me, right?
0:59:22 That’s not owning it.
0:59:24 How about, hey, I’m so uncomfortable
0:59:25 having this conversation with you right now,
0:59:27 like I know I need to ask for a raise,
0:59:28 but I don’t wanna ask for a raise
0:59:29 ’cause it makes me really uncomfortable,
0:59:31 but can we have the conversation anyway, please?
0:59:31 Right?
0:59:32 Yeah.
0:59:33 Or when you’re out with somebody,
0:59:34 meeting somebody for the first time,
0:59:36 like I’m really socially awkward and I’m an introvert
0:59:37 and I’m probably gonna say something
0:59:38 that’s gonna make you uncomfortable.
0:59:40 Like that’s just got creeper vibes only.
0:59:41 – Yes.
0:59:42 – Right?
0:59:42 – Yeah, that’s like I’ll follow you
0:59:43 out of the bar in a situation.
0:59:45 – Yeah, that’s so uncomfortable to even hear,
0:59:46 even though it’s well-intentioned
0:59:49 in its explanation, versus just so you know,
0:59:51 I’m probably like totally socially awkward.
0:59:52 I’m probably gonna say something
0:59:53 that’s gonna make you uncomfortable,
0:59:54 make me uncomfortable.
0:59:56 It’s gonna happen ’cause I’m just socially awkward that way.
0:59:58 You can hear the difference in tone.
0:59:59 – Right.
1:00:00 – When you just own it.
1:00:01 – Yes.
1:00:03 – When you’re just confident about who you are.
1:00:04 – It’s a great point.
1:00:06 – And so all the things that we talk about,
1:00:07 we’re trying to fix the symptoms,
1:00:10 but the cause is that you’re just not owning who you are.
1:00:11 – Right.
1:00:12 – And you can own your strengths
1:00:14 and you can own your awkwardness.
1:00:14 – Yeah.
1:00:15 – Just as an aside, I don’t believe
1:00:17 in strengths and weaknesses.
1:00:19 I believe we have characteristics and attributes.
1:00:22 And in the right contexts, those things are strengths.
1:00:25 And in the wrong contexts, those things are weaknesses.
1:00:27 So nothing that we have in our personalities
1:00:29 is inherently a strength or a weakness.
1:00:31 It’s all contextual, right?
1:00:35 So I work hard to be aware of my characteristics
1:00:39 and attributes, and I work hard to learn
1:00:40 when those things are to my advantage
1:00:42 and when those things are to my disadvantage.
1:00:44 And I work hard to put myself in situations
1:00:46 where who I am is more likely to be an advantage
1:00:48 than a disadvantage, right?
1:00:51 So for example, I’m disorganized,
1:00:53 chronically disorganized, right?
1:00:56 And I remember I was a young entrepreneur
1:01:00 at a networking event, socially awkward, introvert,
1:01:01 not very good at the stuff.
1:01:04 And I met a guy who, he’s like,
1:01:06 this time what you have to say is amazing.
1:01:07 I want to work with you.
1:01:09 Here’s my card, right?
1:01:10 Amazing.
1:01:13 And if I was organized, I would be texting him
1:01:14 from the taxi on the way home
1:01:16 or at least emailing him the next day.
1:01:17 Pleasure to meet you.
1:01:18 All of that stuff.
1:01:19 Well, I lost the business card.
1:01:21 Yeah, I don’t know what I did with it, right?
1:01:23 I had it and I lost it.
1:01:26 Two weeks later, I found it at the bottom of a briefcase.
1:01:27 And so I emailed him.
1:01:29 I don’t know if you remember when we met a couple weeks ago.
1:01:30 I just wanted to reach back out.
1:01:32 And he wanted to work with me more
1:01:33 ’cause he thought I was busy.
1:01:34 That’s amazing.
1:01:36 So is being disorganized a strength or weakness?
1:01:38 The answer is it depends, right?
1:01:41 In some contexts, it is really not helpful.
1:01:44 In some contexts, it’s an accidental strength,
1:01:46 introverted and a little bit quiet, right?
1:01:48 And intimidated by, like you don’t know
1:01:50 what to say in a room, strength or weakness.
1:01:53 Well, at a networking event, it’s not gonna help you, right?
1:01:54 When you have to go around the room
1:01:55 and do all that kind of stuff.
1:01:57 But if you’re in a meeting and you’re the quiet one,
1:01:59 nobody knows if you’re an idiot or a genius.
1:02:02 And you’re the listener.
1:02:03 And they’re just waiting.
1:02:05 So a huge strength.
1:02:08 And so all of the things that I know about me
1:02:12 and when I thrive and when I fail,
1:02:14 when I’m happy and when I’m struggling,
1:02:18 I figure out what the characteristics and attributes are
1:02:20 and work very hard to put myself in situations,
1:02:23 find jobs, find clients, find opportunities
1:02:25 that are more likely to result in me
1:02:27 having those characteristics and attributes
1:02:29 work to my advantage
1:02:30 versus simply chasing the money,
1:02:32 chasing the client, chasing the opportunity,
1:02:34 finding myself in a situation
1:02:37 where this is not gonna work to my advantage.
1:02:38 – And do you believe those characteristics
1:02:41 and attributes can be enhanced?
1:02:43 Some people I know, they just can’t make a decision
1:02:43 for the life of them.
1:02:45 They can’t move forward.
1:02:46 Is that something where you look and say,
1:02:47 well, that’s kind of your DNA.
1:02:49 That’s an attribute or a characteristic.
1:02:50 That’s who you are.
1:02:53 Or we can actually take who you are
1:02:54 and enhance something
1:02:57 to make that a better, more smoother process for you.
1:02:58 – Yeah, I don’t think that’s necessarily
1:02:59 characteristic or attribute.
1:03:00 – Okay.
1:03:03 – What’s underlying that is risk tolerance, accountability.
1:03:05 – Yeah, so how do we improve risk tolerance?
1:03:06 – So risk tolerance and accountability
1:03:09 come from the relationships, believe it or not, right?
1:03:12 So this is why people say, the lawyers say we can’t do that.
1:03:13 – Right.
1:03:16 – The lawyers don’t make the decision on this.
1:03:17 – Right, right.
1:03:18 – The lawyers said I can’t do it.
1:03:19 That’s not a lawyer’s job.
1:03:20 And any lawyer who says you can’t do this
1:03:21 is actually not doing the job.
1:03:24 Lawyers have one job, advise you on risk.
1:03:25 There’s a lot of risk if you do that.
1:03:28 And you’re the one who’s supposed to assess the risk reward
1:03:30 and decide if the risk is worth it.
1:03:30 – Yeah.
1:03:31 – And if it’s not worth it, then say no.
1:03:33 But if you think it is worth it, then say yes.
1:03:35 – Every time I hear a CEO say that, it’s such bullshit.
1:03:37 – And when anybody says, the lawyer said we can’t,
1:03:39 they’re abdicating the responsibility
1:03:40 of making a decision.
1:03:41 – Yeah.
1:03:42 – It’s a weak leader, right?
1:03:44 Yes, take counsel from your attorneys.
1:03:45 – Right.
1:03:46 – Absolutely.
1:03:48 But ultimately, you’ve got to take a risk or not.
1:03:49 – Right.
1:03:50 – It’s your choice.
1:03:51 – Right.
1:03:51 – If you want to have a high or low risk tolerance,
1:03:52 I don’t care.
1:03:54 – But ultimately say, own up to it and say,
1:03:57 I listen to our lawyers and I agree with them.
1:03:58 This is too risky for our business.
1:03:59 – This is too risky.
1:03:59 – So I made the call.
1:04:00 – I made the call.
1:04:01 – Right.
1:04:03 – I made the call, they spooked me.
1:04:04 – Right.
1:04:05 – And I just don’t think it’s worth it.
1:04:06 It’s palpable.
1:04:09 And if it goes sideways, I think we can deal with the fallout.
1:04:12 That’s the conversation of which the lawyers are part of it.
1:04:15 So being decisive, I think, is about relationships.
1:04:19 When we have relationships where somebody says to us,
1:04:22 I believe in your vision, you got this.
1:04:24 The world needs what you’re trying to do.
1:04:28 You will find your courage to make decisions skyrocket.
1:04:28 – Yeah.
1:04:32 – When you don’t seek relationships and support from others,
1:04:35 you will gonna be alone in all your decisions.
1:04:38 And that’s where the fear creeps in.
1:04:39 – Yeah.
1:04:41 – Because you feel like you’re on an island.
1:04:43 You know, and I think the more senior you get
1:04:44 in an organization, whether you’re a young founder
1:04:47 or whether you’re a senior in a large corporate organization,
1:04:50 you know, it’s a very lonely place.
1:04:51 And we all know it.
1:04:52 We all talk about it.
1:04:53 When you’re not in those situations,
1:04:54 you don’t understand it.
1:04:54 – Yeah.
1:04:57 – And there, it is an incredibly lonely place
1:05:00 because there’s not a lot of people you can confide in.
1:05:04 When you have moments of crippling doubt,
1:05:06 are we doing the right thing here?
1:05:08 That last decision I made, that I just blow it,
1:05:11 you can’t go to your team and say,
1:05:13 I think I’ve completely screwed this one up.
1:05:14 You have to be vulnerable and open with your team,
1:05:16 but you can’t share that.
1:05:17 But you have to share it with someone.
1:05:18 – Right.
1:05:20 – And to be able to call a friend.
1:05:20 – Yes.
1:05:22 – And be like, dude, I think I completely screwed this up.
1:05:24 – Yeah, yeah.
1:05:25 – This is relationships.
1:05:27 Human beings need human beings.
1:05:28 – Yeah. – Done.
1:05:30 And the more human beings that you have in your life
1:05:31 that love you, care about you, trust you,
1:05:34 and you love them, care about them and trust them,
1:05:36 you will find yourself with a courage
1:05:38 and a confidence that few others have.
1:05:39 By the way, people who have that confidence
1:05:40 without relationships.
1:05:41 – Yeah.
1:05:42 – That to me is like psychotic.
1:05:43 – Right.
1:05:44 So if we want to unpack that a little bit
1:05:46 and say, okay, I’m in my late 40s.
1:05:48 Yeah, I just moved to LA six months ago.
1:05:51 Building a new network of trusted friendships,
1:05:54 relationships, it’s harder to do as you get older
1:05:56 and couples establish patterns.
1:06:00 They have kids now, there’s more responsibilities.
1:06:02 What if someone’s listening to be like, okay, great guys,
1:06:03 you’re telling me over and over again, I need relationships.
1:06:04 I get it.
1:06:06 I don’t have a whole heck of a lot.
1:06:07 – Right.
1:06:07 – What do I do?
1:06:09 – So I’m in the same place as you.
1:06:10 I’m a COVID transplant.
1:06:13 I’m gonna have friends in LA, some good friends in LA,
1:06:15 but expanding my networks proved to be very hard,
1:06:18 partially because LA doesn’t have serendipity.
1:06:20 I come from New York where you bump into people
1:06:21 all over the place at the time.
1:06:25 Here I go from my couch to my car to an office
1:06:27 or a conference room and then back,
1:06:28 or then reverse back away.
1:06:30 And you never bump into any, there’s no serendipity.
1:06:31 – Right.
1:06:34 – And so meeting people has to be prescriptive
1:06:35 and it’s very hard.
1:06:37 It’s very hard to meet people here.
1:06:40 And it’s Hollywood, so everybody’s a little bit aloof.
1:06:41 You get people’s cell phones,
1:06:42 but you’re not allowed to use them.
1:06:43 It’s a weird place.
1:06:44 – It is, yeah.
1:06:46 – So one of the things I’m doing,
1:06:47 and it’s imperfect, but I’m doing,
1:06:51 which is I’m leaning on my friends from not from here.
1:06:52 – Yeah.
1:06:53 – When I’m calling them up more.
1:06:54 – That’s what I’m doing as well.
1:06:55 – Yeah.
1:06:58 – And I’m finding ways that we can meet up somewhere,
1:07:01 or can you come out here or let me come out to you,
1:07:03 or why don’t we go away for a weekend together.
1:07:04 – Yes.
1:07:06 – When I’m realizing that a couple of days
1:07:08 of precious time is better than lots of fleeting moments.
1:07:09 – Yeah.
1:07:11 – And I spent a lot of time on the phone
1:07:12 with my friends who aren’t here.
1:07:14 – So funny how the phone’s made a comeback.
1:07:16 – I do more phone calls with friends remote now.
1:07:18 I actually want to hear them than texting.
1:07:19 It just feels more intimate.
1:07:21 – Also, I don’t like Zoom.
1:07:23 I don’t think well sitting.
1:07:24 I’m a pacer.
1:07:26 And so on a phone, I can pace.
1:07:27 – Yeah.
1:07:28 – I go for a rock.
1:07:29 I put on one of those weighted backpacks
1:07:30 and just go on some of these trails
1:07:32 and just call a friend, chat for a half hour.
1:07:33 – We now live in a world where, you know,
1:07:36 it’s considered rude to call without texting first.
1:07:38 I mean, really just don’t answer the call then.
1:07:40 – Right, I just call, yeah.
1:07:40 – I just call.
1:07:42 – If they’re that close a friend,
1:07:43 you should just feel the call.
1:07:44 – But I do with people I’m not that close with either
1:07:47 because I just think the phone is a beautiful magical
1:07:49 to hear voice.
1:07:50 – One more question for you.
1:07:52 We started off the conversation
1:07:52 talking about great leaders.
1:07:54 You mentioned Steve Jobs.
1:07:55 One of the people that I’ve been fortunate enough
1:07:58 to have on this show is Elon Musk a while ago.
1:08:00 He really admired him and, you know,
1:08:02 got to watch his career unfold
1:08:04 and him build some great companies.
1:08:07 Seems like he’s found his why.
1:08:12 That said, Twitter slash X was a huge head scratcher for me.
1:08:14 Do you think he kind of lost his way?
1:08:17 So let’s just take one step to the left
1:08:20 and say why is Elon Musk important?
1:08:21 Right?
1:08:24 There are plenty of very successful entrepreneurs
1:08:28 who, their success, they won the lottery.
1:08:32 You know, like right place, right time, right partner.
1:08:33 And some of the ones we admire
1:08:35 weren’t the ones who came up with the idea.
1:08:36 They’re just the ones who are leading the company.
1:08:37 – Sure.
1:08:39 – And then we’ll leave the names of those companies out
1:08:41 but you and I both know who they are.
1:08:43 And they won’t be able to repeat it.
1:08:46 Even if they’ve made hundreds of millions of dollars,
1:08:48 they won’t be able to repeat it, right?
1:08:53 Elon is important because he’s repeated it multiple times.
1:08:54 He’s the real deal.
1:08:55 – Real deal.
1:08:56 – Real deal, right?
1:08:57 So that’s important.
1:08:58 – Yes.
1:08:59 – He didn’t win a lottery.
1:09:02 Absolutely people bet against him
1:09:05 and he had so much passion and vision for what he was doing
1:09:08 that he proved all the naysayers wrong.
1:09:11 He made a very bad decision on Twitter, right?
1:09:14 He got backed into a corner, he backed himself.
1:09:15 – I don’t think he wanted to buy it at the end.
1:09:16 – I don’t think so.
1:09:17 I think he backed himself into a corner.
1:09:18 – Yeah.
1:09:22 – And he tried to get out of the deal, couldn’t.
1:09:24 Just as a side, I think it’s really funny.
1:09:26 The board members of Twitter and like leaders
1:09:27 that were like, we would never sell, how much?
1:09:28 Okay.
1:09:29 – Yeah, totally.
1:09:31 – How’s that idealism doing for you guys?
1:09:33 Turns out everyone’s got a price.
1:09:35 Anyway, I think Elon backed himself into a corner
1:09:39 because he’s always beaten the naysayers in the past.
1:09:41 People are saying, well, never doubt Elon.
1:09:42 – Right.
1:09:43 – Well, no, you can doubt Elon.
1:09:46 In this case, he doesn’t have a passion or a vision.
1:09:46 – Yes.
1:09:47 – Like he did for the others.
1:09:48 – The others were his ideas.
1:09:51 – Others were his ideas or, I mean, Tesla wasn’t his idea,
1:09:52 but he saw the potential.
1:09:53 – Right.
1:09:55 – The decisions he made were clearly to advanced
1:09:56 a greater good and he was willing
1:09:58 to take tremendous financial risk to do it.
1:10:01 In this case, he’s trying to make a company
1:10:03 that doesn’t make money, make money,
1:10:05 as opposed to advance some sort of greater good.
1:10:07 And it’s clearly, I mean, he keeps talking
1:10:09 about freedom of speech, but that’s not it.
1:10:10 – Yeah.
1:10:11 – He’s trying to look at the decisions that are being made.
1:10:12 – Yeah.
1:10:13 – I think he screwed the pooch.
1:10:14 I think he made a mistake.
1:10:18 And the sad part is, because I think he has a brand
1:10:21 and his brand is, look at the shit I get right.
1:10:25 I think he’s too intimidated, shy, embarrassed to say,
1:10:27 I blew it, right?
1:10:28 – Yeah.
1:10:30 – And if he would just come out and be like, look,
1:10:32 I made the biggest mistake in my career.
1:10:34 I got wrapped up in the excitement of it all.
1:10:37 I find myself buying something I didn’t want to buy.
1:10:39 We’ve all done it, but when you’re the world’s richest man,
1:10:41 it’s just a lot more expensive.
1:10:44 And at the end of the day, I don’t really want to do this.
1:10:45 It’s not my passion.
1:10:47 And I’m willing to sell Twitter to somebody
1:10:50 who actually has a vision for this thing.
1:10:51 You know, I don’t want to lose my shirt on it,
1:10:52 but you’ll get a good deal.
1:10:53 – Yeah.
1:10:54 – And I need to unload this thing.
1:10:55 And I screwed the pooch.
1:10:57 I don’t want to go back and focus my time energy
1:10:58 on the things that I actually love and care about.
1:10:59 – Oh, man.
1:11:01 – If he just said that, we’d all be fine with it.
1:11:02 – Yeah.
1:11:03 – We’d all be like, cool.
1:11:05 – Everyone would stand up and applaud.
1:11:06 – Everyone would stand up and applaud.
1:11:07 And what he’s doing, it’s unfortunately,
1:11:11 it’s very the times, which is deny, deny, deny, deny, deny.
1:11:12 – Right.
1:11:13 – Right?
1:11:14 Like nobody does anything wrong anymore.
1:11:16 If we look at all of his companies,
1:11:18 you can see there’s an idealism and that you can see
1:11:21 they kind of like fit a portfolio.
1:11:24 Like they kind of all belong in this fund.
1:11:24 This one doesn’t.
1:11:25 – It doesn’t.
1:11:28 Also, it’s a social product that I find
1:11:29 that it’s a different beast.
1:11:30 – Yeah.
1:11:31 – It’s not science.
1:11:33 – Guy with ass burger shouldn’t be running a social.
1:11:34 – Exactly.
1:11:35 – Look, it’s so fraught with irony.
1:11:37 One of his things that he said at the beginning was,
1:11:39 I think it’s irresponsible and bad
1:11:42 that one company should be deciding
1:11:45 what we say or don’t say.
1:11:47 So I’ve replaced that company with a person.
1:11:48 – Right.
1:11:51 – One person decides who we should be saying or not say.
1:11:51 – Yeah, I know.
1:11:52 – I mean, whatever.
1:11:53 We can talk about it.
1:11:56 Like he screwed up and I can’t imagine the pressure
1:11:58 he feels more importantly that he puts on himself.
1:11:59 – It’s gotta be so tough.
1:12:00 – You know, he’s still a human being.
1:12:01 – A hundred percent.
1:12:02 – Give the guy a little grace.
1:12:03 He screwed up.
1:12:03 We all do.
1:12:05 His was more expensive and more public
1:12:06 than the rest of ours.
1:12:08 – I’d much rather him working on
1:12:10 neuroscience related issues and working on this.
1:12:11 – Yeah, they exactly.
1:12:14 – Like every moment or day that he spends working on this,
1:12:17 he’s not helping us find solutions to energy problems.
1:12:19 He’s not helping us find solutions
1:12:21 to mental health problems.
1:12:22 – Which he’s damn good at.
1:12:24 – I want Elon to do the stuff that he’s great at
1:12:25 and I don’t want him to do Twitter.
1:12:26 – Yeah, same.
1:12:28 – We’re completely aligned.
1:12:29 – So what’s next for you?
1:12:32 You’ve got several successful bestselling books
1:12:35 that could just be your jam for the rest of your life.
1:12:39 – I’ve all but stopped doing in-person public speaking.
1:12:41 I do them occasionally,
1:12:45 but it’s basically not happening anymore.
1:12:48 Because it doesn’t work like it used to.
1:12:50 I believe in impact.
1:12:52 Impact is more important to me than money.
1:12:54 And when I was starting, I was proselytizing.
1:12:58 I was preaching a point of view in a way the world worked.
1:12:59 And most people in the room had never heard of me
1:13:01 or my ideas.
1:13:04 And so I came into preach and the delta
1:13:05 of how people felt when I came in,
1:13:07 when people felt when I came out.
1:13:08 And the lifestyle that I was living,
1:13:12 which was on the road all the time exhausting,
1:13:13 the pain was worth it.
1:13:15 And I’m a great, people like, you know,
1:13:16 you should never quit.
1:13:16 You have to have grit.
1:13:18 Or people like, well, you have to know when to quit.
1:13:19 My standard is very simple,
1:13:23 which is if the struggle or the sacrifice is worth it,
1:13:24 then keep doing it.
1:13:26 If the struggle or sacrifice doesn’t feel worth it,
1:13:28 then stop doing it, right?
1:13:30 You know you have cause
1:13:31 and you know that you’re doing the right thing.
1:13:35 When this sucks, but it’s worth it, right?
1:13:37 And so I hated it, but it was worth it.
1:13:39 I hated the lifestyle.
1:13:42 Now the delta is much smaller.
1:13:44 I’m coming to talk about ideas
1:13:46 that people have already read about or heard about.
1:13:49 Or I’m no longer proselytizing a group of people
1:13:50 who’ve never heard of my work.
1:13:53 And so I’m in this magical period of exploration.
1:13:55 I actually don’t know what I’m gonna do next.
1:13:56 And so I’m saying yes to things
1:13:58 that have no financial gain whatsoever,
1:14:00 but I’m just kind of like giving it a try
1:14:01 to see if I like it or not.
1:14:03 I know that it won’t be what I’ve been doing.
1:14:05 I like steep learning curves.
1:14:06 This is the curse of 10,000 hours.
1:14:08 Glad while I made this whole 10,000 hour things
1:14:10 that you have to achieve 10,000 hours or something
1:14:11 before you can achieve mastery.
1:14:14 And we all are in quote unquote pursuit of the 10,000 hours.
1:14:15 But what we forget,
1:14:18 and I firmly believe that everything is balanced.
1:14:19 Everything in the world is balanced.
1:14:20 Every advantage you have in the world,
1:14:22 there’s a disadvantage that comes
1:14:24 with whatever that thing is, always.
1:14:26 The world is always balanced and nature pours a vacuum.
1:14:29 And so there’s a downside to the 10,000 hours.
1:14:30 You talk to lots of people who have mastery.
1:14:34 You’ll find the same pattern is only one of a few things.
1:14:35 Boredom is one of them.
1:14:38 It was so exciting when the steep learning curve was steep.
1:14:41 And I have met directors and producers and VCs
1:14:44 and entrepreneurs and they’re so good at what they do.
1:14:46 They’re considered the best in their industry
1:14:47 and they’re out there.
1:14:48 They know how to make money.
1:14:49 They know how to make movies.
1:14:50 They know how to write books.
1:14:51 They’ve got bang, bang, bang.
1:14:54 And if you get them on a quiet night
1:14:55 when they’re a little bit tired,
1:14:58 probably a glass of whiskey or two in them,
1:14:59 they will absolutely all admit
1:15:01 that they’re bored out of their skulls
1:15:03 because there’s nothing exciting
1:15:04 about what they’re doing anymore.
1:15:05 It’s just rote.
1:15:07 – Just because it’s become second nature?
1:15:08 – Because it’s 10,000 hours.
1:15:09 They’ve got so much mastery.
1:15:10 It’s not exciting.
1:15:12 It’s the excitement of gaining 10,000 hours.
1:15:14 It’s actually more enjoyable for the human being.
1:15:16 I meet these really, really senior successful people
1:15:18 that privately admit that they’re bored.
1:15:20 – I wonder how Steph Curry does it.
1:15:22 I wonder how those professional basketball players
1:15:24 when they’re just like the top of their game,
1:15:25 how they stay motivated.
1:15:26 Like Kobe was really good at this.
1:15:28 If you saw the last dance,
1:15:30 Michael Jordan created narratives that were fake.
1:15:31 – Yeah, that’s right.
1:15:32 He was making shit up.
1:15:33 – He was making shit up.
1:15:35 He was making enemies.
1:15:36 – Yeah.
1:15:38 – He was not this great infinite minded guy
1:15:38 that we all thought he was.
1:15:40 He was the consummate finite player.
1:15:41 He was the best finite player in the world
1:15:43 where he would produce conflict that didn’t exist
1:15:44 to make himself so angry
1:15:46 that he was gonna can take you down.
1:15:48 – I mean, it was, that was crazy.
1:15:49 That was insane.
1:15:50 – It was crazy insight.
1:15:52 And I do think they get bored as well.
1:15:54 And I think it’s just like the next ring
1:15:55 and become the winning most of this
1:15:56 or the winning most team.
1:15:59 They just keep setting finite goals.
1:16:00 And that’s exciting for the short term,
1:16:02 but do they have long-term joy?
1:16:03 – Yeah, I don’t know.
1:16:06 – So boredom is one thing that I think a lot of people,
1:16:07 when you reach 10,000 hours,
1:16:10 I think the other thing is you find yourself,
1:16:12 like when you’re hammer every problem’s a nail.
1:16:14 And when you have mastery of something,
1:16:17 you see the whole world through that one lens.
1:16:20 And I think it creates a closeness to new.
1:16:21 And you see this a lot.
1:16:25 You see very successful CEOs, entrepreneurs
1:16:29 that miss significant changes in technology, for example.
1:16:30 And the number of CEOs who like,
1:16:32 didn’t see the internet as a thing.
1:16:33 – Right.
1:16:33 – I mean–
1:16:35 – Yeah, you look back and look at those old quotes
1:16:36 and they’re hilarious.
1:16:38 – Hilarious or like bomber who like,
1:16:40 shit all over the iPhone, like it’ll never be a thing.
1:16:41 Because no one’s gonna spend that amount of money
1:16:42 on a phone.
1:16:43 – You’re smarter than that.
1:16:45 But the problem is, it’s not because he’s dumb.
1:16:46 – Yeah.
1:16:48 – And it’s not because he’s blind.
1:16:49 And it’s not because he’s stupid.
1:16:52 It’s because when you have mastered something
1:16:54 and you’ve been doing that thing the same way
1:16:57 for 30 years, to the point where it’s made you rich
1:16:59 and famous and the top of the organization,
1:17:01 it is very, very hard to see the world
1:17:04 through any other lens than that lens.
1:17:05 – And whether you know it or not,
1:17:07 you’ve created a walled garden for yourself.
1:17:09 When I was at Google, the first thing I did,
1:17:11 when I landed inside and I was assigned
1:17:13 to their social products team and I was running mobile
1:17:16 for Google+, which ended up failing.
1:17:17 – Well done.
1:17:18 – Listen, I bounced.
1:17:21 I was speaking of leaving jobs quickly.
1:17:22 I was there for like four months.
1:17:24 And I went to Google Ventures.
1:17:25 And I just became an investor.
1:17:27 I knew there was no future there.
1:17:28 But yeah, that was horrible.
1:17:30 But one of the things I realized is like,
1:17:31 I’d gone to these product meetings
1:17:33 and there was like 30 people in the room.
1:17:36 And I’d start talking about what we were doing
1:17:37 that was novel and different
1:17:40 and that just wasn’t feature parody with Facebook.
1:17:45 And it was like, they were so of the mindset
1:17:47 of like, we’re Google, we can do anything.
1:17:49 We have scale.
1:17:51 They didn’t even use anyone else’s tools.
1:17:53 They were never installing other apps
1:17:54 or other competitors.
1:17:55 They weren’t playing.
1:17:55 They lost all of that.
1:17:57 They had their free lunches.
1:17:58 They had their soccer campuses.
1:18:01 They even had a half pipe on Google’s campus,
1:18:03 which I rode, which was actually pretty awesome.
1:18:08 But it was like, you’re so surrounded by like-minded people,
1:18:11 you don’t think to play and there’s no discovery.
1:18:13 And so I think that’s what happened with Bomber and others
1:18:15 when you don’t get a chance to actually get out there
1:18:16 and be a real person.
1:18:17 – And that’s the thing that made you successful
1:18:19 in the first place was the open-mindedness
1:18:20 of the childlike one.
1:18:21 – Play, yeah.
1:18:22 – You’re 100% right.
1:18:23 It’s the curse of the 10,000 hours.
1:18:26 It’s 10,000 hours plus, plus, plus,
1:18:30 which is why publishing didn’t invent the e-reader.
1:18:32 Amazon invented the e-reader, not publisher.
1:18:34 – Right, very confusing.
1:18:37 – Why is it that Netflix made streaming a thing
1:18:39 and not the movie and TV industry?
1:18:41 How did you guys miss that?
1:18:43 You could have, but you didn’t.
1:18:44 You can’t blame companies or industries
1:18:46 ’cause companies and industries don’t make decisions.
1:18:50 It’s human beings who have achieved mastery,
1:18:51 who are now running organizations,
1:18:53 who are decision-making positions,
1:18:56 who literally cannot perceive the world
1:18:58 outside of the 10,000 hours of mastery
1:18:59 that they’ve achieved.
1:18:59 – For sure.
1:19:02 – And I’m at that point where I have 10,000 hours
1:19:04 of mastery in one little space
1:19:06 and it scares the shit out of me.
1:19:08 And so if there’s one thing I know,
1:19:11 which is to go be an idiot again.
1:19:11 – I love that.
1:19:13 – I need to start with four hours.
1:19:15 Okay, I’m gonna learn about venture.
1:19:18 I don’t know and understand anything about money, right?
1:19:20 I’ve never been motivated, I’m the money idiot.
1:19:21 And I’m sitting in these meetings
1:19:23 and they’re all using all this jargon.
1:19:25 And I am so clueless.
1:19:28 It is not fun, it is not comfortable, I feel dumb.
1:19:29 Everybody thinks I’m smart
1:19:30 because I’ve achieved something,
1:19:33 they think I know everything about everything, right?
1:19:35 And I’m trying to be dumb.
1:19:37 And I’m trying to find what I’m passionate about
1:19:40 that is worth really working hard
1:19:43 to not be dumb with the thing that I’m dumb about.
1:19:44 – What’s your point earlier?
1:19:45 I mean, it’s about asking questions
1:19:46 that you don’t know the answer to again.
1:19:47 – You’ll appreciate this.
1:19:50 So I got to know James Kars
1:19:52 who was the originator of the concept
1:19:55 of finite and infinite games before he died.
1:20:00 And when I first met him, of course, the burning question,
1:20:01 how’d you come up with that?
1:20:03 Right now, just as an aside for those
1:20:03 who don’t know what I’m talking about.
1:20:04 – Yeah.
1:20:07 – So Jim Kars was a philosopher and theologian.
1:20:10 He worked at NYU who wrote a book
1:20:12 in the mid-1980s called finite and infinite games
1:20:13 where he defined these two types of games.
1:20:15 It’s a cookie little philosophy book, right?
1:20:17 He defined these two types of games.
1:20:19 The finite game is defined as known players,
1:20:22 fixed rules, agreed upon objectives, football, baseball.
1:20:24 If there’s a winner necessarily,
1:20:25 you have to have a loser or losers.
1:20:28 But more important, there’s always a beginning,
1:20:29 a middle, and an end.
1:20:30 Then you have infinite games.
1:20:33 Infinite games are defined as known and unknown players,
1:20:34 which means you don’t necessarily know
1:20:36 who all the other players are
1:20:38 and new players can join the game at any time.
1:20:39 The rules are changeable,
1:20:42 which means every player can play however they want.
1:20:43 And there’s no such thing as winning.
1:20:45 You can only perpetuate the game.
1:20:47 The goal is to stay in the game as long as possible.
1:20:48 – Right, so life basically.
1:20:51 – Business, nobody wins business.
1:20:52 When Circuit City went bankrupt,
1:20:54 Best Buy didn’t win anything.
1:20:55 The game will change forms.
1:20:57 You don’t know who your competitors are necessarily.
1:20:58 New competitors can join.
1:21:00 Every company can run however they wanna run.
1:21:02 And no one’s ever declared the winner of business.
1:21:04 This is what Kars put out in the world.
1:21:07 And it dramatically impacted my work.
1:21:09 ‘Cause I bought into his philosophy,
1:21:11 Hogan and Sinker, and I started to realize
1:21:12 if you listen to leaders,
1:21:13 they talk about being number one,
1:21:15 being the best or beating their competition.
1:21:17 Based on what?
1:21:18 Based on what agreed upon metrics,
1:21:19 objectives, and time frames.
1:21:22 So when you play to win in a game that has no finish line,
1:21:24 turns out you make a lot of stupid decisions
1:21:27 and you end up destroying trust, cooperation, and innovation.
1:21:30 And if you look, most companies today,
1:21:32 most large companies are not innovative.
1:21:34 They just buy smaller and more innovative companies.
1:21:37 The average lifespan of a company I think is 17 years,
1:21:39 which is abysmal, right?
1:21:41 Look at the damage that companies are doing
1:21:42 because they’re so short termist.
1:21:44 It’s all because they have a finite mindset
1:21:45 in the infinite game of business.
1:21:47 What Kars articulated was a truth.
1:21:49 A lot of people have theories,
1:21:50 finite game of games is a truth.
1:21:52 That is how the world works.
1:21:54 You have to play for the game you’re in.
1:21:56 So I got to know some.
1:21:57 And of course, when I met him the first time,
1:21:58 I sat down with him and was like,
1:22:02 I gotta ask, how did you come up with this?
1:22:05 And he was telling me that in the 1970s,
1:22:06 there were all of these salons.
1:22:08 So there were these intellectual salons
1:22:09 of which he was a part of,
1:22:11 where they would bring in people from different disciplines,
1:22:13 like mathematics and philosophy and engineering
1:22:17 to debate the topic of the day, which was game theory.
1:22:20 Game theory was all the rage in the 1970s.
1:22:23 And lots of theories were coming out of these salons, right?
1:22:24 So for example, the prisoner’s dilemma,
1:22:26 which many of us are familiar with,
1:22:29 that came out of one of these salons in the 1970s, right?
1:22:32 So he was in these salons and it occurred to him
1:22:35 that in all of these discussions,
1:22:37 they were always talking about winning and losing.
1:22:38 All of them.
1:22:40 Nobody was talking about playing.
1:22:43 Even the prisoner’s dilemma is about winning and losing.
1:22:44 And then he sort of like went home
1:22:46 with this problem he had stuck in his mind.
1:22:48 And he watched his kids.
1:22:50 And he saw when his kids played ping pong,
1:22:52 there was always screaming and yelling,
1:22:53 there was always fighting,
1:22:55 and there was always accusations of somebody cheating.
1:22:55 Every time.
1:22:57 – That doesn’t change with adults by the way, right?
1:22:58 – But yeah.
1:23:00 – But when his kids were like playing Lego,
1:23:03 they would sit there quietly for hours.
1:23:05 And one of the kids would leave for a little bit
1:23:06 and then come back later.
1:23:09 And the game would, the Legos would last for days.
1:23:11 And they would start and stop and start and stop.
1:23:12 And there was never any fighting.
1:23:13 And there was only cooperation.
1:23:15 – Mm-hmm.
1:23:17 – And he realized that we’re so obsessed
1:23:18 with winning and losing that we’ve forgotten
1:23:23 the value of playing and not all games have an end.
1:23:26 And business should be treated like a game
1:23:27 rather than a competition.
1:23:31 It should be treated like Lego more than baseball.
1:23:32 – Yes.
1:23:34 – And we overuse sports and war analogies
1:23:35 in business all the time.
1:23:36 – Yeah, hit a home run.
1:23:37 – ‘Cause we treat it like a game.
1:23:38 – Yeah.
1:23:39 – We have launches.
1:23:40 We have campaigns.
1:23:41 We have wins.
1:23:42 We have losses.
1:23:44 We give bonuses for accomplishment.
1:23:45 We talk about performance driven,
1:23:47 but we never talk about creativity.
1:23:47 – Yeah.
1:23:49 – We never talk about joy.
1:23:53 We never talk about cooperation or cross-pollination.
1:23:55 And this is the magic of great innovation
1:23:57 and great businesses.
1:23:59 And so you talk about the magic of play.
1:24:00 – Yes.
1:24:01 – Right?
1:24:03 One of the problems with 10,000 hours of mastery
1:24:06 or any kind of mastery is you become so good at something.
1:24:08 Now you wanna win every time you’re playing
1:24:10 because you’re the expert.
1:24:10 – Right.
1:24:14 – And there’s a joy in not worrying about the outcome.
1:24:15 – Hmm.
1:24:18 – There’s a joy in just playing.
1:24:23 And so I am looking for few opportunities to play baseball
1:24:24 and more opportunities to do leg-up.
1:24:25 – Hmm.
1:24:26 That’s interesting.
1:24:28 A few years ago, I picked up studying Zen
1:24:30 with a great Zen master out of Santa Fe.
1:24:32 And one of the things about Zen
1:24:34 is it is a dedicated practice.
1:24:37 You wanna get in your reps in terms of hours,
1:24:39 but you cannot have an outcome
1:24:41 because that pushes away.
1:24:43 – It defeats the point.
1:24:46 The West is more obsessed with finite
1:24:47 and I think Eastern philosophies
1:24:48 are more obsessed with infinite.
1:24:51 I learned that you are actually not present
1:24:53 until somebody else says you are.
1:24:54 Right?
1:24:55 Because you can’t be present by yourself.
1:24:57 I mean, you can, that’s one of the side effects,
1:24:59 but the true value of being present
1:25:01 is as a gift to another, right?
1:25:02 So let’s think about meditation.
1:25:04 For those who’ve ever practiced meditation,
1:25:06 what you’re supposed to do is sit still
1:25:08 and focus on one thing.
1:25:09 Whether it’s something you stare at,
1:25:11 whether it’s a mantra or a sound,
1:25:14 or the ocean or whatever it is,
1:25:16 you’re supposed to focus on one thing.
1:25:17 – Right.
1:25:18 – You can’t clear your mind, it doesn’t exist.
1:25:19 You focus on one thing.
1:25:20 And you learn to clear your mind
1:25:22 of all other thoughts except this one thing.
1:25:25 And if you have a thought about work,
1:25:26 you label it a thought.
1:25:27 You say, “Ah, that’s a thought.
1:25:29 “I’m gonna push that aside and we’ll deal with that later.”
1:25:31 And you find this tremendous calm and focus
1:25:33 and tremendous relaxation.
1:25:34 Okay, what was the point of all of that?
1:25:35 Just so you can feel good?
1:25:38 No, that’s the unintended by-product
1:25:40 that you feel good and you have all the health benefits.
1:25:43 The true benefit for me of practicing meditation
1:25:45 is that when I’m sitting with a friend,
1:25:46 they wanna tell me something amazing
1:25:47 that’s happening in their life,
1:25:48 or they wanna tell me something
1:25:49 that’s horrible that they’re dealing with.
1:25:51 I’m focused on one thing and one thing only,
1:25:53 what they’re telling me.
1:25:55 Every other thought, the car that just screeched,
1:25:56 don’t hear it anymore.
1:25:58 I have thoughts of things I wanna say,
1:25:59 and I label them thoughts.
1:26:00 I’m gonna say, “That’s a label of…”
1:26:01 I’m gonna deal with that later.
1:26:02 – You’re bringing it to real life.
1:26:03 – I’m bringing it to real life.
1:26:04 And at the end of the conversation,
1:26:06 I know that I have been present,
1:26:07 that all of that practice,
1:26:08 we call meditation a practice,
1:26:10 that all of that practice was worth it.
1:26:12 For this one moment when my friend says to me,
1:26:13 “Thank you for listening,”
1:26:14 or, “Thank you for being present,”
1:26:16 or, “I really feel heard.”
1:26:18 Thank you.
1:26:19 Now all of that meditation was worth it.
1:26:22 And all of the benefits that I derive are secondary.
1:26:24 The true benefit is the gift that I get to give
1:26:27 from working really hard in my own practice.
1:26:31 So we’ve made so many of these eastern practices
1:26:34 that are pro-social selfish.
1:26:35 We’ve made them checkboxes.
1:26:36 – We’ve made them checkboxes,
1:26:37 and we’ve made them only for us.
1:26:38 – Yes.
1:26:42 – And perpetuating that imbalance that America is so good at,
1:26:44 which is we’ve over-indexed on rugged individualism,
1:26:47 Maul Burma, and with hero-ized CEOs,
1:26:50 as if they did everything by themselves, right?
1:26:51 We’re all striving to be the hero.
1:26:52 We’re all striving to be influencers.
1:26:54 We’ve created heroes out of individuals
1:26:57 of which none of us succeed without groups of people
1:26:59 who believed in us, took bets on us,
1:27:00 were there for us,
1:27:01 let us cry on their shoulders,
1:27:04 or just cheered us on on a rainy day.
1:27:08 We’ve forgotten that the more we can focus on each other
1:27:09 and taking care of each other,
1:27:11 and what it means to be a good friend,
1:27:12 to be a good partner, to be a good leader,
1:27:15 to be a good follower, to be a good employee,
1:27:17 to be a good boss, to be a good,
1:27:19 all the relationship, friend,
1:27:21 that’s where true joy and success lies.
1:27:22 And play,
1:27:27 play, I think is the most magical of all,
1:27:30 play without a required income.
1:27:33 You start drawing, you start playing with Lego,
1:27:36 and a few days later, you decide to put it away.
1:27:39 Yeah, arbitrary, yeah.
1:27:40 And I’m trying to do that with my career.
1:27:41 I’m trying to play again.
1:27:43 That’s great, I love to hear that.
1:27:46 Must feel good, why it’s nerve-wracking.
1:27:47 You know, we talked about being uncomfortable,
1:27:49 I’m uncomfortable, I have no idea
1:27:50 what my future is gonna be.
1:27:52 But I’m okay with that.
1:27:53 That’s awesome.
1:27:55 What you did with me was beautiful.
1:27:56 Thank you again for that.
1:27:59 That was just a fun little few minutes of unpacking that.
1:28:02 Well, let’s just say, I wanted to go deeper on that.
1:28:03 Where do I go on your website?
1:28:04 Is there a specific course?
1:28:07 Yeah, yeah, there’s a whole thing about finding your why.
1:28:09 Okay, so that’s the one to sign up for.
1:28:09 That’s the one to sign up for.
1:28:11 Okay, awesome.
1:28:12 Simon, thank you so much.
1:28:13 This is great.
1:28:13 Oh, my pleasure, thanks for having me.
1:28:14 This has been great.
1:28:15 Yeah, it’s a joy, thanks.