My First Million: 5 Questions that Will Change Your Life

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All right.

Back to the show.

I don't want to show the check on screen, but this is a $13,000 check that's just been

sitting here for like six months and then it expired.

And so now I just have to go like get a new check.

And then I got this is the new check after the other one expired and I still haven't deposited

this one.

I don't know how you want to, how you want to get back through this, but I'm listening.

I was midway through telling a story and then it got crushed.

Yes.

The technology failed and my story got aborted and that's okay because it was a little long

winded.

So we're just going to redo it.

And that was for the best.

That's right.

I felt like it was going on.

So basically you lived with a guy who wanted to have a Rudy story.

He didn't make the Duke basketball team.

So the first year he became the water boy and he was the best water boy there was.

And then year two happened.

You're to happen.

So he's told himself, look, I've seen the movies.

I know how I know what gets rewarded being the hardest work.

I'm going to show up first.

I'm going to stay late.

I'm going to do everything better than anyone does.

When they say lay out the uniforms, I'm going to make sure they're all perfectly aligned

and crisp when they said, Hey, you need to make the Gatorade.

He would create his own formulas.

When they needed somebody to come in and rebound, he would throw perfect passes with the seams

lined up always in the shooter's pocket.

Like he was just never taking a second off.

He did all these things and it looked like he got his break right.

Year two now, he's been a water boy for a full year and I'm using water boy to make

it sound negative.

They call it manager.

Basketball manager.

It's water boy.

Let's be real.

It was a water boy position and that's okay.

He's a boy who fetches water.

By the way, I was also water boy for the football team for one day and then I quit.

So anyways, he comes home one day and he's like, Dude, this so and so player on the team

is getting kicked off.

He showed up drunk or he was drinking and got in trouble or something like that.

He's kind of a bench guy and the 15th man on the team is getting booted.

There's only me and one other manager who's any good here.

It's got to be me.

I'm way better than this guy.

I kick his ass every day in practice in these like extra games.

Everybody knows I'm a better player than him.

There's like five managers.

Totally sick.

It's between me and this other guy, but it's going to be me.

And sure enough, he gets a phone call and I just see him put his head down.

I'm like, there's no way.

And he's like, yeah, yes, sir, you know, thank you, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Hangs up the phone and he's like, basically they gave it to number the guy number four

who doesn't even play basketball because his dad is a big booster for the team.

He owns the Magiano's restaurant or something like that.

And so he gets on the team, even though he's like, you know, very average, you know, like

an average rec player compared to my guy who was like, you know, the best Mr. basketball

in the state of Wyoming type of thing.

So anyways, he gets crushed again and he's like, oh, you know what?

He goes, you know what, like this is just another setback in my Rudy story.

And so he keeps going, he keeps going.

And then the final straw, you know what the final straw was?

He was at one of the games and they have to dress up in a suit, first of all, so they

can't wear like athletic gear.

They have to wear a full suit for no reason to a basketball game.

It's hot as hell if you've ever been to Duke's basketball stadium.

It's a tiny stadium.

It was super hot.

The fans going crazy.

And so he's standing there sweating and they have to stand perfectly still with their hands

crossed, waiting for the moment when like, let's say, you know, somebody falls down and

their sweats on the court.

You have to go run and wipe it up.

And something happened.

We made a three or we scored or something like that.

We were going to win the game and he smiles.

The day after he got in trouble for smiling.

And I just had to sit him down.

I had to say, bro, no job or you're getting docked for smiling is a job that you should

have.

Who?

Who?

Who did it?

Who yelled at him?

The like manager's manager, basically like some guy who's like, basically a power trip

type of person.

So he was like, you know, we are meant to be the ultimate.

It's like they basically want them to be like Secret Service.

And you know that, you know, that Naval quote, play stupid games, win stupid prizes at that

moment, my best friend realized he was playing a stupid game and he was winning the prize.

He was the best.

And they all loved him.

And, you know, he had all these stories like, you know, Coach K always, he always, he,

he, you know, if you don't know Coach K, he's like the legendary basketball coach.

This is his last season.

So he's getting a big farewell tour.

Yeah.

This is his last season, last game.

As soon as he loses in March Madness, that's it.

But he's like also the men's Olympic coach.

He's like the most winning coach, whatever.

And Coach K was great.

So I would hear all these great Coach K stories, but there was also these quirks like my friend

had to always carry a Diet Coke at all times because like if Coach K needs a Diet Coke,

you got to have the Diet Coke ready.

And like, he needed like a special salt shaker or something like that because like he really

loves salt on his food.

He had to have extra salt at all times because if the caterer didn't put enough, you got

to have the Diet Coke and the salt.

That is so weird.

That is so weird.

Ridiculous things.

And I was like, bro, we're about to go study abroad in Australia.

You want to come because I think you're going to get the smile there and it's going to be

okay.

So, you know, fuck the Rudy story, like don't play that game anymore.

And so, yeah, so that was the kind of the end of that for him.

That's weird to me.

I would have bailed too.

Do you?

Yeah.

Dude, so I added a few things.

I added the feedback that we got from my tweet.

So you drive.

You tell me you want to go there.

Do you want to go to this thing font?

I think it's called font.

Or do you want to go?

We got to do these 10 questions things.

But maybe last.

Let's do the 10 questions.

You want to do it now?

Let's do it now.

Yeah.

Go ahead.

Let's make Ben ask.

I think it'll go.

Yeah.

I think it'll go a little long on these questions.

So let's just give ourselves enough room so we don't run out of time and we'll fill the

rest with that.

So this is a segment I'm calling the boys go to therapy.

Basically the premise of this is sometimes your boys don't have time to do a lot of research

and we don't have, you know, enough ammo in the chamber and what do we do when we don't

have ammo in the chamber?

We invent a segment and that's what we're doing today.

We invented a segment where we get to talk about shit that's going on in our lives instead

of like cool, interesting things that we've researched about the world.

And I think it's going to turn out great because usually like it's when you kind of need to

pull a rabbit out of your hat is when you do get the most creative and have the best

stuff.

So that's my prediction.

I'm a bold prediction that this is actually one of the episodes people really like even

though we had the least amount of research ready beforehand.

So I haven't seen any of these questions.

So it started out from a tweet where someone said like here's 10 questions to get to know

people.

Is that is that right?

Yeah.

And I think your friend Blake, Blake Burge, I think is his name.

He had tweeted out a thing like, you know, whatever, there are many questions, but few

will change your life.

Here's 10 questions that will change your life.

And you know, thread goes viral.

So normally it's kind of like I roll.

No, it's good.

There's this thing.

Ben, you'll have to look it up again.

No research here.

There's this thing I remember years ago.

It was called like the New York Times, like 21 questions.

And it was like here.

Ask these 21 questions on your first day.

Right?

Well, on the first date, I thought, and it was like, here's how you get intimate with

people.

And like as a single 21 year old, I read that and I was like, oh, like you're so I can hook

up with girls.

And I remember those questions and they're very similar to what these guys' questions

are.

But it was like, when did your father make you cry?

Or like, like it was like pretty deep questions like that.

And so I'm done with these questions.

So I actually read these questions and I was like, these are actually good questions.

But the way he presented it, I think, you know, no offense, this is how most people

do Twitter.

It's like, here's some general advice or some general questions.

What's interesting to me is not the like the question, but it's kind of seeing somebody

struggle with their their answer to that question.

So for example, he would ask a question like it and I'll give you give you the first question,

which is which is going to come out here in a second.

So Ben read, read question number one.

I'll explain how he tweeted it and how I think we should answer instead.

Question one is in what areas of my life am I settling?

Okay, so what areas of my life am I settling?

That's a powerful question.

It's a good thought provoking question.

Now his the rest of his tweet was like, you know, just enough or just okay is not good

enough.

Identify the areas of your life you're just settling.

So to me, that's the part where it was like, no, no, no, Blake, I want to hear your answer.

Like you tell me, like if you're going to put out one of these bullshit ass threads,

like, you know, generic, generic, generic thread to try to get likes.

I think that the next level of this like bullshit thread thing is people get a little more

vulnerable.

They're going to put their actual answers in the thread rather than general advice.

Who's invented this this theme I'm seeing.

So like Upworthy was like, here's 10 things, you're not going to believe number seven.

This new one that I'm seeing on Twitter is there's 8,000 of this thing.

Here's the four best 8 billion humans on this earth.

Not all of them are worth following.

Here's my 11 friends that are worth following.

Who created that?

Did one of our buddies create that or is it?

I have no idea who started that, but that's whatever that is the formula.

Well, Ben, all right.

What's the first one?

I just read it.

It's in what area of my life you go first.

Okay.

So what areas of my life am I settling?

And by the way, this is called the boys go to therapy because we got to open up a little

bit.

We got to see what the answer might be.

I would say two come to mind.

The first is fitness.

I think I got kind of comfortable with my workout routine and diet and I was like, oh,

okay, not as fat as I was.

I'm on my way to getting fit.

And I just kind of got okay with like, I was kind of settling for like, wow, you're much

better than before.

But I've been writing that for like 12 months now.

And now the before is the same as the current because it's like been a while, like six months

of like the same.

And so I just realized this recently and was like, why did I settle here?

This isn't the destination.

Like I basically was on a road trip and I stopped at the gas station and then unpacked

my bags instead of being like, no, no, no, this is not the destination.

This is the pit stop.

I got to get to the hotel.

Why is my suitcase open?

You made a lot of progress though in a relatively short amount of time.

You just got to keep going.

Yeah.

So I would say I'm settling there.

And the other one I'm settling, I think is me and my wife, like we have two little kids

and there's like, you know, this feeling of like, you know what, like we put a lot into

work.

Okay.

Then you put, you're putting a lot into your fitness.

You're putting a lot into your kids and it's like, oh, whatever's leftover at the end

of the day for each other.

Like, you know, we take what we can get as the scraps of like, you know, the energy,

the kind of like just the effort we put into kind of your relationship.

Because I think we've both kind of settled on that, which is like, it's fine.

They're not, they're not leaving.

They're not going anywhere.

It's fine.

We can always do this.

Will she listen to this?

Where the kids grow up?

Is she going to listen to this?

No.

That's the beauty of it.

You should have her listen to this.

I think that that's good that you, you said that maybe, uh, maybe that will make her like

you more.

Yeah.

Especially because I didn't say that she is doing all this.

I said we are doing it, which is, you know, the key.

All right.

What about you?

What are the areas of your life?

Do you think you're settling?

Um, uh, my consistent diet needs to, I think I could, I like to improve that.

I looked at my goals over the last 10 years.

So I created a goal tracking thing 10 years ago when I was about 21 and I hit all of them

except for wanting to weigh 190 pounds.

I've always struggled to lose 10 pounds and I just, I've always wanted to do it and I've

never done it.

And so I've, I'm sucking at that.

The second thing career wise, I've settled a bit.

So I purposely set out a period where I was like one year, the sale and plus one year

I'm going to chill.

I'm just going to read.

I'm going to learn.

And I still am not ready to like go all in on something.

I'm not there yet.

And so I'm kind of being a little bit lazy and I feel a little guilt around that.

And then I'll do a relationship one, dude, I'm super dependent on Sarah.

Like, uh, if someone like wants me to come speak somewhere, I'll be like, Sarah, can

you just like handle this?

Or like, do you want me to go speak here?

Like let me know.

And oftentimes, because I don't like to fly, I'll be like, uh, by the way, I'm only going

if you're available.

Like if you don't go, I don't want to go because I enjoy being around her.

And I think, uh, I should learn to do a few things by myself a little bit more than I have

been lately.

I just tend to rely on her so freaking much that I need to, I need to go do stuff by myself.

Give me one.

That's, give me one.

That's a settle that I feel like all those settles, maybe that both of us said are like

settles that we're kind of cool with.

What's a settle you're not cool with?

The weight thing.

Yeah.

The weight thing.

I'm not cool with that.

Like I get upset.

Like I'm pissed off.

I'm like, why can't I just be consistent?

If I was just consistent for like five months with an eight, a certain amount of calories,

I'd be good.

I'm, I would be good.

I would hit it, but it is so freaking tempting and I just give into that shit and that pisses

me off.

Um, what else?

I don't know.

What am I?

I think that, so tell me if this is a settling thing.

I create, I've created a couple of little small products in my free time and I get so

excited about making like $500, $100, $1,000 a day.

I get so much joy from that and I'm like, dude, I could crush this if I want to.

I can build, I can build things that are huge.

Why am I not?

Why don't I have the motivation to do this?

And so I feel like, I feel soft and like I'm settling in that aspect.

Yeah.

I think one, uh, one that I've seen in myself and by the way, I don't think that that was,

uh, I forgot what you said.

You said, tell me what you think about this.

Like I agree with you.

So, so I think that was good.

Um, I'm thinking more and more that the, the, the settling thing, the easiest way for me

to pinpoint where I'm settling is when I see the contrast, when I see somebody who's

not settled in this area and I'm like, oh, hmm, they, uh, well, they're really pushing

it beyond, beyond where I am right now in this, like, and it doesn't mean I'm always

going to just chase and do what others do necessarily, but it kind of takes me seeing

that for me to be like, Oh word, like that's, this isn't, uh, this isn't the kind of the

spot to just settle down and dig my heels in.

And so that's happened to me with money.

Like for example, I've seen people's lifestyle or I've seen people's just people talking

about stuff.

It's like somebody will be like, um, yeah, we, you know, we picked up this project and

then we, you know, like a real estate deal, we picked up this, this deal and we're going

to flip it, you know, basically four months later and, you know, we should make one and

a half million on that.

And I'm just sort of like, Oh, okay.

So like they're normal where they have settled for their normal is like, what would have

been, let's say an outstanding outcome for me, but like to them, that's the normal course

of business.

And then I just sort of check myself and I say, all right, do I care?

And usually I, usually I do care.

Usually I do care when I notice those things because that's why they stood out to me in

the first place.

And like, sometimes they don't stand out in this way that I'm saying where I'm saying

it all calmly.

I'm just sort of like, usually it's like I'm jealous of them or I'm like, um, I find myself

trying to come up with a reason why that's not good.

And then I got to hold my, I got to pull myself back like, Oh, or maybe instead of coming

up with reasons why that's not good.

I should just admit that it's probably good and something that I actually want for myself.

And I'm just trying to kind of like mentally in my own justification, tear their shit down

a little bit to make myself feel okay.

But in reality, maybe I should just say, Oh, cool, they showed me something I want.

Um, and maybe I've, I've, I've actually just kind of settled here, but I could go further

than I, than I currently have.

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Do you, do you journal?

Do you have a history of journaling or goal setting at least just like writing down like

thoughts or targets that you want to achieve for different ages?

Not ages, but like, do you like kind of have ideas in mind, but it's not, it's not based

on how old I am.

Like I, I've done this before.

And I don't mean like in the future, what, what I mean is like, when you're 21, were

you like, all right, this year I want to accomplish this.

When I was 21, I did, I said, okay, by 30, I used to say by 30, I want to have a million

dollars in the bank.

And I had a couple of goofy ones, it's like a million dollars in the bank.

I want to have gone on survivor and I want to like, you know, I had like two other, like

I don't remember what they were at this point.

And then like as I got older, I was like, Oh, well, that number needs to be bigger.

And then the second one time isn't really a factor and like, Oh, I don't care about Forbes

30 into 30.

That's actually all bullshit.

And like, you know, I kind of adjusted my like goals once I like wasn't 21 anymore.

Well, I think it's good to look at those things because I'll look at all my old journaling

and writings and I'm like, what, what energy was I putting into there?

What was I bummed about?

What was I excited about?

And then oftentimes I do one of two things.

I either try to impress my past self or try to make my future self pumped where I'm like,

what, what, what will I be really excited that I did now in 10 years?

So there's this thing.

I don't know if you've heard of it.

So Chris Saka, who is, you know, one of the kind of best investors of all time, who's

one of the biggest investors in Twitter and Instagram and a couple of other bad ass companies,

he, he had this thing, which was like, he, he read out somewhere.

I think it was like on the Tim Ferriss podcast, something he like, he read out a note that

he had written to himself, a note that he'd written to himself when he was 20 years old.

And, and he goes, I actually, I just found it while we were talking here.

So this is perfect.

I found the transcript.

Do you know what I'm talking about?

Do you know what I'm about to say?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I remember it.

I remember it.

What did he say?

I don't remember exactly what he said, but I remember this episode.

He goes, he goes, something about, you know, what do you want to be when you grow up?

He goes, so here I am.

I'm 20 years old.

I was born in Cork, Ireland, and we'd start the day drinking at 1130, blah, blah, blah.

And I'd never heard of an investment banker.

I've never heard, at that point, I had never heard of a venture capitalist.

And so I just wrote in there, I don't know what the job is called, but I know it's going

to involve a lot of talking on the phone, a lot of negotiating, a lot of yelling at

people, high risk, high reward, unbelievably high stakes.

And I'm going to do it part time from the mountains, part time from the beach, whatever

it does, whatever it is, I'm going to be done with it before I'm 40.

And then he's like, you know, fast forward, he, this was, you know, just, I think he was

40, 41.

And he basically a billionaire.

So it was exactly that.

Yeah.

So he's like, he's now a billionaire who does exactly that makes deals.

He didn't know what a VC was, but he became a VC, which is that deal.

He has a house and truckie and, you know, another one on the beach.

So he had the mountains and the beach thing.

And it was like, literally it all played out and he retired from the game and he was like

done with it.

And he moved on with his life and he started doing other things.

And so, so I always thought that was really cool and I thought it was cool because it wasn't

like these fucking lame goals.

It was a description of his life.

It was like a painting of his life.

It was like a movie scene of his life.

And I've noticed that the people who kind of do this, like they kind of call their shot

and they manifest it, they don't really call their shot with like some, like it doesn't

feel like Excel.

It feels like an iMovie.

It's not like a bullet point analytical thing.

It's like a vision for how their life is going to be and what life is going to feel

like and they don't even know the words to describe it or the route to get there.

They're like, but that's it.

That thing at the end, that's how it's going to feel.

That's what it's going to look like.

That's what it's going to sound like.

I'm going to do that.

I'm doing this tonight.

I'm doing this.

This is good.

iMovie, not Excel.

That's a good one.

If you were going to do like, let's do a kind of off the cuff shitty version, right?

Again, we do it for the entertainment.

We do it for the people.

What do you think would go into that?

What are you, what's your, what comes to mind as your version of that?

I like physical places as opposed to internet places.

So I like, it would really, I want to have a, I really want to own, I want to have some

type of physical land or buildings throughout the country that I can entertain all of my

friends all at one time and pay for all of it.

Can I propose something here?

Yeah.

Can I propose we do a two minute thing where we just jot down on our note here what we

think it is and we'll just cut that out.

No, because I'm not prepared.

I'm not prepared.

You.

What's yours?

You gotta do it.

I don't know.

That's what I'm saying.

We got to write it down.

We got to figure it out.

Okay.

So I think.

No, I'm not ready.

All right.

Look at that reaction.

This tells you that's the, that's how we call resistance when the boys go to therapy.

That's we have identified some resistance.

I have to figure this out.

This is like such a hard thing to do.

Next question, Ben.

Fuck.

Are you guys ready for the next question?

Okay.

Let me, let me give you my, let me give you my scene right now.

Okay.

My scene that I have in my head is.

You're already living.

I don't know where I'm living.

No, dude.

My house is like this.

I already know the house.

It's this big ass house that everything's fucking white inside my, I'm at this.

I have the same.

I have a chef like I have today, but it's like on this like giant area.

There's people just coming in and out of my house because we're like the fucking lobby.

Like my whole life and work is so integrated that like my trainer's showing up.

They're having brunch with us and then the, you know, I'm having this meeting with this

other person, but they're also going to work out with us and the whole thing is just integrated

into one big ass thing.

My mom's over, my sister's over cause we all live nearby cause we all made it.

The second thing is I take a nap midday with no guilt.

So zero guilt midday nap.

I already know that that is like, that is the, that implies that the rest of the shit

worked itself all out.

And then the last piece is all I get to do is just meet interesting people and be super

curious about them. And then I just either, I don't know, record or type or something

like kind of like what we're doing right now.

I just take the interesting bits, I put it out there and it's in millions, it's in a

million people's ears or eyes, you know, the next day because they are following it.

They love the content, like they love the content packages I put out and I never meet

those people.

I don't have to talk to them.

I'm not their consultant.

I'm not their motivational speaker.

I just kind of, I'm taking little bits of what I'm curious about and I'm putting it

into a million people's ears every morning.

I think you're almost, I think you're practically there.

I don't know.

You got to get the house and the fancier chef, dude, you can take a nap now.

I'm sure.

The midday nap right now with kids, that's indulgent.

If you take it like two years, that's like, that's like giving the middle finger to your

spouse.

I'm going to go take a nap right now.

What's the next question, by the way, that million people's ear things, that was old.

And I had said that before we started this podcast.

I had told Sully, he was like, what do you want to do next when I was selling the company?

And we were on like a fucking 10 mile walk.

We just kept walking in the middle of the night and he was like, tell me more.

What are you thinking?

I said, dude, I think what I want to do is I just want to have some way that I could

just get my thoughts out there and it gets in a million people's, I remember calling

it ear balls.

I said, it's in a million people's ear balls in the morning.

I said, I just think that that would be so cool if I could just be your ears while they

are on their commute to work or whatever else.

And that was before the podcast.

Now, the podcast is getting close to that.

Yeah, you have that.

All right.

Question two.

And you can go out of order, Ben, pick the questions that are interesting to you.

All right, let's go, let's go with something because question two is very similar to what

you were just talking about.

Let's go with question 10.

You should choose your battles wisely.

What battles do I choose?

Oh, dude, I choose so many petty battles.

Like if I when I'm driving and I see someone behind me and they're driving like an asshole

and cutting other people off, I like go out of my way to slow down and purposely like

block it.

So I'm going just as fast as the fast light so they can't get by me.

Also, I reply like I go to their destination.

Yeah, dude, I'm really I'm just pisses me off at someone's root.

I also reply to the just so many comments that I shouldn't reply to where I think someone

has said something and it's just kind of ridiculous and I reply to it and there's no reason why

I should be doing that.

So I pick a lot of really, really, really dumb battles.

Your HOA battle that you had, I would die on that one.

That would that would that this would not stand.

That's what I would.

I mean, I would go hard on that one.

What was the question?

What what battles do you pick that you shouldn't?

And basically, it says, choose battles wisely.

What battle do I choose?

So which really, which is saying what battle do you want to be choosing?

Another way of looking at it is what you said, which is what are the shitty what battles

am I stupidly choosing right now that I need to not I did I choose so much small stuff.

Like I just for some reason, I stay like hardcore in the dirt.

Like for example, I'm out at my ranch and I've got people here like setting up my Airbnb

and stuff.

And like people are like doing the stuff.

But like, I just have to be here and I'm like putting shit together or like, fuck it.

I guess I'm going to go rent a car and go to Costco.

It's like, no, we're already doing that.

I choose the smallest stuff as opposed to leveraging my my skill set.

And so that is an unwise battle that I should not be picking instead.

I need to be thinking about much bigger things.

And I just I simply don't I think having kids might change that.

I think there's a world where that were I'm praying that having a child is going to like

somehow like show me the way you guys could tell me if I'm wrong.

But dude, I picked the smallest.

I focus on tiny, tiny, tiny issues.

That's like I have a friend who the like they're a couple, they're like kind of going through

problems right now as a as a relationship.

And then she said something.

She was like, I just feel like I need to have a kid and then that's going to like help

us.

And I was like, oh my God, no, that is not the answer.

Like I understand why you think that that will make this relationship better, but it

is going to do the exact opposite.

I think it could be the answer to be honest.

Having a dog is like 2% of having a child, not in the sense of I'm taking care of it,

but it's like I've got something that I need to protect and take care of.

And it makes me a little bit happier.

I imagine properly having a human being where you're like, oh, I have to dedicate my my life

to this person.

It's beyond me at this point.

I have a feeling that is that can be very inspiring.

And that's why I think a lot of like 35 and 40 year olds who are childless and are like

getting messed up on psychedelics all the time and feel depressed.

I'm like, dude, just fucking pop out some babies.

I bet like you won't be asking yourself, how do I find myself?

You're going to say, how do I just like make this kid happy?

And like when you dedicate yourself to others, I think you're happier.

Can I read you something cool by the way that I just do disagree with that?

No, I think you're right in that in two ways.

So I think you're right that having a kid definitely takes the focus off yourself.

So that that eliminates like a huge number of worries that you have, but it replaces

that with new worries.

If your habit is to worry, guess what?

Whatever situation I put you in, you're going to find something to worry about.

It's just better to worry about other people, though.

It's more.

It's an improvement.

It is an improvement.

The other thing is that, yeah, some bullshit just gets thrown out the window because you

don't have that bandwidth.

You don't have that extra time to think about stuff and do stuff and make that trip to Costco

because it's just off the table.

You don't have the time.

And so so that's one thing, but it doesn't fundamentally change the nature of the problem.

The root cause of the problem, which would be, you know, like a focus on minor things

because guess what?

I'm going to start to focus on, you know, why your kid's, you know, pinky toe is a little

bit crooked and why they have this little rash on their knee and like why they're not

eating, why didn't eat all, you know, a balanced lunch and like there's a million, there's

a zillion things you could worry about with a kid and you could even justify them further

because you're I'm a martyr, I'm a great parent for doing so.

So you got to be careful with that.

I don't think it goes away, but I do think it like changes the problem a little bit.

So what's yours?

Okay.

I'll answer the question.

I'm going to read you this thing.

So the battles, um, the battles I should pick, I should pick the battles I want to choose

are, um, health.

So being in the best health that I can be and having a healthy lifestyle for me and

the people around me.

Is your wife healthy?

Cause does she eat healthy?

Yeah.

She, uh, she's in and out.

She can be when she's on it.

She's super clean.

She doesn't have the problem I have of discipline.

Like once she flips the switch, she'll just never eat bad again until she flips the switch

off.

Uh, and then she'll eat Oreos all day.

And so it's like, you know, one or the other, um, and so, but, and same thing with working

out.

She's like hardcore intense about that and hardcore intense about her diet.

Um, and like, she doesn't waver at all.

So, uh, but it's just a matter of what, what mood she's in, um, like, and the mood is like

a year long mood, not like a daily daily fluctuation.

So I think health is the first one cause I've seen that once your health goes a little sideways,

nothing else actually matters.

None of the other battles have like any relevance anymore.

Uh, I think the second one is like, probably the, probably the second battle to choose

is like, uh, I don't know, probably something about parenting, but I don't even know how

to phrase it.

I don't know, being like not constantly, um, trying to like rush through parenting, parenting

and like getting the job done.

Uh, that's probably the second one is like the battle of enjoying being patient with

my kids.

Uh, and then the last one is probably like, I do too many projects.

I have so many fucking projects at once and they're all good projects, but they're probably

collectively together a bad number of projects.

And so that's probably the worst one.

I know I always say it, but how many people criticize you about that?

Uh, I don't know if my friends and people who actually care about me, like, I don't

know, like the people who know me and care about me, they don't are like, Oh, that's

cool.

You do so many things.

And my friends are like, that's not cool.

All these things could be cool, but you got to do them.

You got to do them right.

And if you're not going to do them, you got to figure out how to like hire somebody who's

going to do that thing for you.

Dude, I would, if I was you, I would only do three things.

I would do the podcast because that's not that hard.

And it kind of drives the other thing.

I would do milk road and I would do investing.

Yeah.

The problem is I'm too deep in on e-commerce.

And so I got to like either hire my way out or sell this thing or I don't know what, I

don't know what the other option is.

You got to sell it.

I think you sell it or something.

I think that when everyone talks about hiring someone to run shit, you're still like involved

somehow.

Like you're not actually, I think that that's actually really hard to do.

When you did it for the hustle, you were pretty good about it.

Right?

Yeah.

I mean, I still felt like I was working there, but yeah, I didn't do other projects though.

I want to read something to you real quick.

This is a thing from Naval.

That's, I don't know.

You said something that reminded me of this little, I have a Slack channel called wisdom

and this is in there.

So he goes, he says, the only true test of intelligence is if you get what you want out

of life.

It's the only true test of intelligence is if you're getting what you want out of life.

He goes, there's two parts to this.

One is, are you able to hack reality to get what you want?

And the more important one was, were you smart enough to figure out what you should want

in the first place?

Dude, that's the hard part.

That's the hard part.

Exactly.

And like, you know, you read this and you nod and then it's like, have I been smart enough

to figure this out in the first place?

What do I even want?

And then do I, do I like both you and I, we have developed the skills of hacking reality,

but we get a little loose on remembering what, what we actually want and what doesn't matter,

what we don't care about and like remembering which game to actually play.

Yeah.

Bending reality is, in my opinion, the easy part, what knowing what you want is the way,

way harder.

I don't know.

Right.

One other part, one other part that I really liked, he goes, you live in a society which

has a bunch of people in it.

So that will train you to play the bunch of people game, the multiplayer game, but only

an individual, only as an individual, do you get to stumble on the hidden game, the single

player game, and that is the real game, and he goes, he says a couple of things, he goes,

he goes, if you had no adversity, it would be a very boring game.

So remember, you got to play the game, it's your game, you get to design the board, design

the challenge, you get to design the victory condition.

And that is the creativity that is like, you know, sort of, you get to decide the purpose

of your own life in the same way, you get to design what game you're going to play,

what the rules are and what the victory condition is.

And if you have intentionally done that, you're, you know, you're not, you're not playing it,

you know, you haven't actually started playing that game consciously yet.

Where did he write that?

He said this on like a Twitter spaces or something like that.

This guy's Zach, Zach Pogrob tweeted it out.

I liked it.

That's good.

Let's do another question.

What's another one?

All right.

I think this is an interesting one.

What are you letting in?

So in other words, like he says, turn off the news, don't read the comments, quit interacting

with negativity, think of it as mental fitness.

Like what, what things are you letting in?

What noise are you letting in that you shouldn't let in?

Oh, that you shouldn't have a, yeah, what, what are you letting through the, through

the window or the door that actually, you know, you shouldn't be, shouldn't be getting

through the, what are yours?

Well, I had, you had written something on the doc that I think is interesting.

It was about feedback.

So let's just zoom it into feedback.

What was your question around feedback?

So I have a few ways that I go about doing this, but you could do this when building

a product or when just asking people about your personality, which I think you should

do it.

Like, what do I, what do I suck?

Where do I rock?

And what you'll notice, and it's very clear.

I tweeted out, what do you like about the podcast?

What do you want more of?

What do you want less of?

And for every person who says they want a longer podcast, there's an equal amount of

people who say they want a shorter one.

There are some people who say more guests.

There are some people who say no guests.

And that makes things really hard to, to, to figure out feedback.

And so I was going to ask you, uh, how do you decide which feedback to listen to and

which to ignore?

So I started off like, well, I used to, the way I used to think about this was feedback

is the key.

You need a feedback loop.

You need to talk to your customers.

You need to know your audience.

And there was all these like, you know, books written about how important that stuff is.

And so I became fucking Mr. Feedback.

I would, you know, if I had a project idea, I'm taking the designs out to a mall and I'm

stopping people and say, Hey, will you give me feedback on this idea?

And, you know, every coworker, I was like, Hey, I would love some feedback.

What do you like about me?

What do you hate about me?

What's good about me to work with, et cetera.

I was fucking Mr. Feedback.

And then I started to get what you, what you just described, which is information whiplash,

which is it's like information overload, but it's not just an overload.

It's the total opposite.

Contradictory information.

Yeah.

And so then I'm like, Oh shit, what to do?

So then I got paralyzed.

I went to Steve Jobs mode, fuck feedback.

People don't know what they want.

Why would I ask them what they want?

They don't, they don't even know what they want for breakfast.

So how could they tell me what they want out of this, out of this app they'd never heard

of?

How could they tell me how to be a better boss, blah, blah, blah.

People don't know what they want.

And I became Mr. Steve Jobs in the turtleneck and I sort of realized, well, that's not good

either, right?

Because now I've isolated myself from actually getting feedback.

So I have no signal to go off of.

And so now I've come up with a better balance, I think, between the two, which is I seek

out feedback from people who I think are going to give me relevant feedback.

So I don't just ask everybody.

And then the last piece is the feedback is not the answer.

It's the question.

So when I hear feedback, I'm not looking for the answer to what we should do more of,

what we should do less of, how I can be better, how I can be worse.

I'm just looking for the feedback to just surface a couple of questions.

So for example, if they, if the feedback said, you know, longer podcast, some people will

say, oh, I want longer podcast, some people said, I want shorter podcast.

It's just a question that comes up, which is, what do I think is the right length of

the podcast?

What podcasts are great when they're long?

What podcasts are great when they're short?

It will be the, what would be a great short version of our podcast?

So I use the feedback to ask myself a better question.

And then it's my job to come to the answer.

It's their job to just give me their opinion, which, which gives me a question that that

can ask.

And so the same thing goes with products, which is when I asked for feedback, we both

like this book called the mom test.

And the central principle is I only get to ask them about their problems.

They don't, I don't get to ask them what solution they want.

And so similarly, when I go ask for feedback now, I'm just looking for them to say things

that's going to get me to ask a better question that will get me to, to come up and then it's

my job to come up with the answer to that.

So that's the main principle.

When in doubt, there's one final thing, which is at the end of the day, I got to like trust

myself and I got to know that ultimately, if I just do the thing I think is right over

and over and over again, I will happen to, I might, some people might not like it, but

I will ultimately attract the people who love what I do.

So that comes back to that, that saying my, my trainer gave me, which is who are my customers,

the people that love what I do.

And it became that simple for me.

So that, that's what I, that's what I fall back to.

So it's like, if it was like an if else statement, it's like, if the, if their feedback gives

me a clear question and an answer that I know what to do with, great, I'll make an adjustment

but if not, then I'm just going to do what I do and I know that that will attract the

type of person who loves what I do.

I think that I, I think you can, I always call it like excel sheet your way to creating

a big business.

So I think that like, you could just say like, where's the opportunity based off of like

traffic demand and I just hired these people and you could create wealth that way.

So I, and I, and I don't like when people say you have to be passionate.

You don't really have to.

You can just excel your way to this, but what I've learned throughout the years is like,

it's a lot more fun just to do things that you think is are cool.

And typically I can, that's more of the feedback that I'll listen to is just like, do I think

this is cool?

And the second thing when I get feedback is I don't actually care.

Like you said, what they're saying, I care more about why they're saying it.

And so for example, when people say, make the podcast shorter, they're not saying make

it shorter.

They're saying it's not always that interesting.

Right.

Exactly.

And so the question, because if something's, you know, really long, it doesn't matter as

long as it's badass.

Or if I did a mid a three hour movie about Sean, you're Sean's going to watch it.

And so it's really not about listening to the actual feedback, but why do I think they're

saying it?

So that's what I listen to.

Totally.

Ben, let's do another one.

All right.

This one, you guys get to talk about some other people.

This one is, am I surrounding myself with the right people?

Who are the five I want to spend time with?

Oh, powerful question.

That is a powerful question.

So let's just, we'll make it, I think it's a heavy question.

So let's make it light.

So tell me right now, who are the five, if you just said, I spend my time the most with

these five people, who are the five people you currently just spend the most time with?

Why Sarah?

Why Sarah, uh, Neville Madora, my best friend and lives next, next door to me, uh, Ramon,

who you feel a lot of people know Ramon Vamir and then, um, Jack Smith.

That's four.

You got one more?

I wouldn't put anyone else in those categories.

No, that's your dog.

Well, you know, like you guys kind of like, that's pretty in depth, but I would say that

that's that I would edit there.

And all right.

So then let's, let's, let's just add one more.

Who's somebody you wish was in that five that is, that you're not spending as much time

as you, like in an ideal world you would be.

Uh, Steph Smith, I would add Steph Smith to that.

Yeah.

Nice.

I think Steph Smith is, is amazing.

Just like what?

I was like, just like our podcast listeners, they also want more.

Every time I talk to her, I like, damn, she's brilliant.

She's a very special person.

So maybe her, uh, anyone else, like, uh, I sometimes I do wish like I had like some

baller, baller, baller friends.

A lot of my friends are like pretty great, but like fucking hanging out with like a Russian

oligarch just to see how like some of these crazy people think who are like extreme.

I would like, I like extreme people.

So even though I may think they're a bad person, I would like to hang out with some of these

extreme people who are just on extreme ends of success, or it could even be an athlete.

Like what's it like to hang out with like the person who holds the world record in the

marathon?

So it would be nice to be around more extreme people.

That's a, that's a really good actually twist to this, which is, I think a lot of people

have heard this idea of you are the average of the five people you spend the most time

with.

And that's true.

But there's two other groups of people that I think really matter.

One is like the equivalent of a bender.

It's like, you don't want to go on a bender every day or every weekend, but like twice

a year, a bender is a lot of fun.

And if you don't do a bender twice a year, if you're not really having like one amazing

party or, you know, just an all nighter or some kind of experience that's like a little

out there, you kind of are leaving a little bit of life on the table.

And so there's some people that are amazing in that capacity that you just, you would

never want in your, your everyday, but they're amazing twice a year, twice a year hangs with.

And I think there's some people that are like that.

And the other one is, who have you just not even encountered yet?

Like who's just outside of your bubble that it's like, you don't even know what you don't

know yet because you just don't hang out with anybody like that.

And so you, you have zero exposure and therefore, you know, it's just like, it's not part of

your worldview.

It's not part of your mental model yet.

So I think that's another two categories on the five or those two new categories.

Do the five and then the other.

All right.

So my five would be Sonya, my wife and my kids, I'll just put it all together.

My mom is the next one.

So I spend, my mom comes over one week out of every month.

She stays with us.

Ben, who's kind of like my, my right hand man, my, my business partner across milk road

across in the fund.

He helps with the podcast.

He does a bunch of things.

So I talked to Ben hours a day, Andre, who, I don't think you've met Andre, right?

No.

No.

Andre's like kind of like the new Ben.

He's like the next Ben.

So he's a new guy in the fold on that level.

And Andre's kind of amazing because Andre's got this story that he had some illness that

he had something.

He caught some bug or got some infection that like he gave him like kind of like chronic

fatigue syndrome or something like that.

Like he basically like couldn't get out of bed for like, I don't know, like two years

or something like that.

Like he was in a wheelchair and nobody, nobody knew what it was.

And it was just like, and then he kind of like recovered from it, but it was like this

multi-year thing.

And so this motherfucker is the most like grateful person you'll ever meet because he's like,

dude, I walked today and I'm like, you know, like, it doesn't take much for Andre to be

like high on life.

And because Andre's around me all the time, I'm, I get that secondary high, you know,

the contact high off of Andre and like, you know, cause he, he kind of like was just battling

and got out of it.

And so now he's like every day he like, you could tell he's just savoring every day, like

as if you, you haven't eaten in like two weeks and you're having your first meal.

That's how Andre is like.

And so I love that.

And who are the other two?

The other one is Sully, who's our mutual buddy.

And I don't hang out with him that much cause he moved, but he's a partner in one of my

businesses.

And so I talked to him, you know, because that, but the one downside is now that he's

like an official business partner, we don't really just like talk to shoot the shit anymore.

It's like, we kind of, anytime I'm talking to him, I'm sort of talking to him always

as he's, as if he's my investor or business partner instead of just catching up, you know,

so I guess that's probably the downside.

And then so those are the, those are the five that I'm currently hanging out with the most.

I would put you next as we hang out, you know, two, three hours a week doing this.

So that's more than most people.

And then the one I wish I hung out with more was Ramon because Ramon is like the best human

on earth.

You know, the more Ramon in my life, the better human I would be just, you know, by default.

I completely agree.

When he teaches me a lot, he, uh, he's a very thoughtful person.

I learned a lot from him.

And then the, the, the category that I was saying, the people I have no exposure to is

like, I basically have no exposure anymore to people that are in high school and college,

which is like actually pretty important as an investor and like, you know, person of

the world to know like, what, that's like, oh, I forgot.

I used to think about these stupid things and they were the most important things in

my life.

Or like, oh, wow, you know, we didn't have phones so we couldn't do these things, you

know, that they're doing now in high school or college.

So I have like zero exposure to that, um, you know, like people in third world countries,

like, you know, when I went down to Mexico, I was like, oh, wow, like I kind of forgot

like just how simple and like different life is for most people on earth.

And like, you know, I used to live in Indonesia and China and stuff like that.

So like, I definitely was in it every day, but now, you know, I'm just sitting in the

burbs in California.

So it's easy to forget that.

So I think I have a lot, like my bubble is pretty tight right now.

And I think I should pop that intentionally once a while.

Do you want to do one more question, Ben?

Yeah, we're doing five questions, five questions, seems like a nice, uh, round number.

And you, Ben, you can remix it because some of these are sort of the same.

So you could just ask a different question.

You're a good question asker in general, so you can ask a different question.

So, um, what's on your heart?

Let's, I've been thinking about, uh, one of these.

So let's go with this one.

Um, I think it'd be interesting to hear from you guys in what ways am I in my own way?

Oh, I can say that one easy.

I lose my temper and follow my, I get very emotional where I'm like, no, fuck this.

This is wrong.

We have to do it this way.

Um, and I have lost a lot of money for doing that for like, uh, let's just say like it's

an employee who I think like has, uh, maybe underperformed, uh, even though they talk

like they're hot shit, I would just fire them as opposed like, well, we could definitely

salvage this.

Like there's lots of ways to salvage things and make things better.

And so it's a net positive, but more often than not be like, well, no, I just, I'm out.

I don't want to deal with the headache.

I'm over it or, and that is a very emotional decision.

I make so many emotional decisions.

Oftentimes it's sometimes it's ego, oftentimes it's temper or, but mostly if it's like, oh,

I think this person is trying to get one over them on me, like, fuck him.

I want to crush him.

No, I'm not doing.

You know what I mean?

I make a ton.

Yes.

I make a ton of emotional decisions as opposed to practical decisions.

That's interesting.

Uh, all right, I got two, I have one that's real, but.

But is that true?

Have you ever seen that with me?

Yeah, for sure.

You've been mad at me sometimes and I'm like, because you think I'm trying to like get one

over on you.

And I'm like, dude, I'm really not.

And then once you realize I'm not like your whole perspective changed right away.

And I was like, oh, that's what you thought.

Like, oh, I had no idea because I wouldn't like it's so different than the way I think.

So I didn't, I just never, I couldn't understand it basically.

It was not like.

We can give a real, we can give a real example, I got mad at you for being late and I'm like

in my head.

I'm like, you don't care.

You don't care about this.

He thinks he's better.

And it was reality was like, no, dude, my baby was sick or like, you know, I like that she

was in the bath and it took forever to get her out.

And that's like.

Even the bad excuse, which was just like, dude, I just, I literally, like I was sitting

here.

I just lost track of time.

I'm not doing anything.

I'm not more important.

I'm not like a diva.

I'm just trying to do that like I feel horrible every time I do.

Like I sometimes I literally don't even have a good excuse, but, but even that was fine

with you.

It was just like, as long as you don't know, I was sort of like actively doing it.

It didn't bother you.

You know what I mean?

No, it didn't bother me or another thing that I do all the time.

And I think everyone should learn from me and I'm working hard at it and I made this

mistake is we're replying really quickly to text based messages.

So whether that's an email, anything where it's like, dude, it's okay if you sit on this

for an hour or even a day or even five days.

Sometimes I'll get shit like a text or an email and I'm like, oh, no, at that.

And I quickly reply and I'm like, oh, I should have just sat on that for like three hours.

What was I thinking?

Yeah, I'm that's actually a great one.

That's a great answer for me too.

I'm massively disorganized, which affects everything.

So it's like replying like there are so many emails and text messages that like people

are either like offering me something, they're trying to help me and I'm just not replying

and people take it very personally as, you know, maybe I would too if I felt like I was

getting blown off by this person or I'll just miss a deal that like is just like a clear

win for me because I just don't reply.

Yeah, I don't see it.

I would say fuck them, you know, I actually don't think you should.

I've been struggling with that too.

And lately I'm just like, I'm just not going to feel bad about replying to these people.

Like this is the most but listen, here's the most douchiest thing I could say, but just

subtract this by like a lot and that's the reality.

Imagine you're Justin Timberlake and people like are always presenting you with stuff.

You're just like, dude, I don't care.

I'm going to do what I want to do.

Of course, we are not that big a deal, but like a much, much smaller version where there's

like lots of opportunities and I'm just like, I'm just going to ignore all of them.

I don't expect JT to reply to a DM.

Do I?

Yeah, that's true.

But I'm talking about like people who I'm doing business with or by their my friends

or something like that.

Like those are people I do intend to be replying to or I've asked them for something and they

gave it to me and I forget to do something with it.

But what do you think Joe?

What do you think is there like on my desk right now?

Imagine you're Joe Rogan.

How much is that?

I don't want to show the check on screen, but this is a $13,000 check that's just been

sitting here for like six months and then it expired.

And so now I just have to go like get a new check.

And then I got this is the new check after the other one expired and I still haven't

deposited this one.

Another month has gone by.

Like that's how shitty I am.

And it's just sitting here because I'm just disorganized for no reason or the same thing

with like my company's book.

So here's the bad way it plays out, which is I don't like I'm never hired a bookkeeper.

And so I'm like, oh, yeah, like, I don't know, like aren't the transactions just like on

the credit card?

And like, no, they've got to ask you to the end of the year, I'll just I'll just cram

for my taxes final and just figure this out.

And so now I'm like learning, oh, how do people do this?

Oh, they hire bookkeepers and then they like, okay, gotcha.

So like there was just things that are just messy in my world.

That's me getting in my own way.

You know, it cost me a lot of money to have messy books or not reply to certain certain

emails.

So I think that's me getting in my own way.

The other one was just staying up late, which is again, this is so boring cliche, I'm almost

embarrassed to even say it on the podcast because how late do you stay?

It gives a fuck.

Like on average, I was staying up till two or three in the morning and then I'd wake

up at nine.

And I just started like last week, I was just like, fuck, I'm going to sleep early and it

solved like five of my biggest problems.

It's like my diet cleaned up because I'd no longer late night snack or eat like junk,

which is all I would do, right?

And if I had dinner at seven and now it's one a.m. and I'm hungry, like, guess what?

I'm not eating.

Nothing good happens after midnight.

Nothing good happens after midnight.

It could be eating or it could be fighting.

Exactly.

It's like my sleep was shitty.

My work was shitty.

I was editing the milk road at night.

Now I just, I sleep at like 10, 30 or 11.

I wake up at six or seven in the morning, I write the milk road and it's, I edit the

milk road and it's done.

But and like by the time the kids wake up, like I've already like finished my work day

almost.

And so I just cleaned that up and it cleaned up like five other things.

But again, so fucking cliche to say, sleeping early that I bleep this whole thing out, make

it mysterious instead.

Do you remember how regimented Rob Giardic was about tracking his time and like waking

up at six a.m. or five a.m. or whatever he did?

I actually like, like I, if that's what makes him happy, do it.

And I also respect how crazy is about that.

I think I like extreme people.

Part of me was like, oh, but that's like, you don't need to do that.

But then the other part is like, that would be kind of cool to do for like two or three

weeks just to see what would happen.

What would happen if you do get up at six a.m. and you are like, you have a very strict

schedule.

I actually do think that that sounds kind of fun to try it once in a while.

What time do you sleep and wake up typically?

Last night I couldn't go to bed.

I went to bed at one or two and I got out of bed at seven.

You'd normally always get out of bed at seven.

I'm not productive though, usually I'm not productive until about nine or 10.

My yeah.

So my baby wakes up at six in the morning usually.

So that's when I'm up and I try and go to bed around like 10, 10, 30.

And then once or twice a month, I'll go to bed at like three a.m.

Cause I need to get something done.

That's when you go to bed at three a.m.

You're not like going on doing shit.

Wait, do you drink or do you drink or do you do drugs?

No.

It's usually like I.

God, this is the lamest trio ever.

When I do how to take over the world episodes, I usually do a bunch of it in one sitting

that I'll do from like nine p.m. to like three or four a.m.

I'll do that twice a month.

So let me recap these five questions.

Do you drink or anything?

I drink if like the occasion calls for it, but not with any regularity.

No, but to get drunk.

I used to.

But no, like last five years, I have not been getting drunk.

And do you do any drugs?

No.

God, that's crazy.

What a bunch of dude.

I just drink green smoothies, bro.

I don't even drink coffee.

We are so lame.

All right, go ahead.

All right, go ahead.

All right.

I'm going to recap the five questions.

So the five questions were in what areas of my life am I settling right now?

The next one was.

Am I surround?

Oh, no, that's not it.

Oh, yeah.

Choose your battles wisely.

What battles am I choosing right now and what do I want to choose?

So what areas of my life am I settling?

Choose your battles wisely.

What battles do you want to choose?

Number three, what am I letting in that I need to shut out?

That's noise and information and opinions from the outside world.

And then am I surrounding myself with the right people who are the five people I want

to spend the most time with?

And what was the fifth one?

Did we do five?

Yeah.

Question five was in what ways am I in my own way?

Oh, yeah.

In what ways am I in my own way?

What are the things you're doing that gets in your own way?

Those are the five.

Ben, which one of those questions when we said them, did you go off on a tangent?

Think it for yourself what your answer is.

Which one shook you?

One of these questions should shake you.

The first question shook me in what areas of my life am I settling?

Okay.

You guys are looking at me.

I thought maybe I'd get away with not actually giving you the answer because that's one that

penetrates to your soul, but you both are just like you're going to answer right now.

And for you, both of you talked about health and fitness stuff.

And one area in which I settle a lot in my life is like I get super concerned about environmental

pollutants, especially like plastics and microplastics and like stuff like that.

And I always feel like a psychopath when I talk about it because everyone else is like,

oh, what?

Like plastics.

And I feel crazy because I'm like, no, actually, like this isn't a conspiracy theory.

Like the research is out there that like all these microplastics are like crashing our testosterone

levels and like disrupting our endocrine systems and stuff.

Like I'm not crazy, but the fact that everyone else is like, eh, whatever makes me feel even

crazier.

And so a lot of times weird obsession, I just like settle.

I compromise and I'm like, look at my baby, like putting this plastic toy in her mouth

and like a part of me dies and I'm just like, whatever, I settle.

I'm not going to fight this fight right now, but it is something that you have plastic

Tupperware.

A plastic toy.

We have plastic Tupperware that I wish we would just like throw away.

Yeah.

So just do it.

Dude, that is not at all where I thought you were going with that answer when you first

said it because you were like so, it was like weighing so heavy on your heart that's what

it was.

It matters a lot to me, Sean.

It was a fucking random answer.

Is rubber, is like a, like a, what do they call like a binky, what are the pacifier thing?

The pacifier.

What is that rubber?

I don't even know what that is.

Is that plastic?

Uh, yeah.

So most of the time, no, they won't do plastic in pacifiers.

So they'll either do silicone, uh, which is better or they'll do rubber.

Yeah.

Which is also better.

And rubber is okay, right?

Silicon I like have my doubts about, um, but it does not have like the same proven track

record of disrupting your endocrine systems the way plastics do.

Do you, do you reuse water bottles?

No.

In fact, I try not to use disposable water bottles because a lot of times they leech a

ton.

What do I go watch or read?

That's going to scare the shit out of me about, there's a Joe Rogan episode that I'll link

up in the show notes where he talks with, she's a Harvard researcher who does a bunch

of this stuff and she's really good.

Uh, and it will.

They will scare you a lot.

Yeah, dude, plastics pretty bad.

Like I, you don't know that Sean, do you?

You microwave plastic.

Don't you?

This podcast.

Yeah.

I, I microwave everything and I, everything's in plastic in my house.

So I'm like, Oh shit.

Okay.

Um, so I've heard this, but I've like never, I'd never got shook yet where I'm like, Oh,

make action in this, um, but that's, that's why I asked, what do I need to go watch?

That's going to like trigger me where I'm going to, I need to be like, I will go and

you know, make a like dramatic change in my house.

I'll link it up, but like the short of it is basically like our testosterone levels

are decreasing at 1% per year.

Fertility levels are just like crashing and it's not just people want to have children

less.

Like people who are trying to have children are able to have them at much lower rates

than in the past to the point where it's like, and our plastic use is increasing so

much that they're like, in 50 years, we're not sure that anyone is going to be able to

have, uh, unassisted, uh, children anymore.

Like, um, but, but how do they know plastics cause that, you know, versus just two lines

because they do studies of with rats and, um, they're able to demonstrate it, the, the

correlation.

Good answer.

That was a very good answer.

And, um, what do you, what's, what's an example of something you swap out?

That's like a big culprit for plastic.

Like most people are doing this, but if you swap this, that solves like, you know, 20%

of the balance, right?

Well, so the biggest thing that she said was never heat plastic.

That is like, if you can do one thing, it's never heat up plastic.

So like if you have a water bottle, uh, with water in it, like, yes, that will leach some

plastic into your system and it's not great, but if you leave it out in the sun that heats

up to a hundred degrees, you're going to get like 10 times as much plastic.

So it's, it's not eating things hot from plastic.

But how do you reconcile that fact with the fact that you smoke?

You told me that you smoke a pack of cigarettes today.

Uh, yeah, uh, noted chain smoker, uh, Ben Wilson.

That's what people know me for.

Um, yeah.

You know, how do you, how do you, how do you, how do you, how do you, how do you, how

do you do both?

Well, and how do you, how can you have, how do you have 24 new ports a day?

You're telling me not to microwave plastic.

You know, it's just one of those mysteries, Sam.

I don't know how to explain it.

So, and how do you, uh, can you test to see how much plastics?

I don't know.

That's a good question.

I would love to do it if you can.

I don't know that you can.

I got a new business that we're going to talk about on Monday.

That's going to address that, by the way.

I was all prepared for it today.

Really?

Did you say it now?

I don't want to.

It's called float.

Uh, did you see it in the doc?

It's called float.

No.

What is it?

What's the URL?

Is it, is it called float, Ben?

Where's my fucking read?

It's called, um, no, it's called fount.

Uh, fount, fount.

Sorry.

Fount.bio.

Fount.

It's basically a $5,000 a month concierge service where they test your blood and tell

you all about your body.

It's very expensive, but sounds incredibly cool for $5,000 a month, you better be talking

about it.

Well, we'll see maybe for five that maybe it'll make women to actually want to touch

your body.

Maybe that's, maybe we'll do one better.

Uh, we're getting tested over here.

Five grand a month.

Why five grand a month?

That's such an absurd number.

You're doing this.

No, I'm not doing it, but I think it's close to beta, uh, five grand a month.

When I do it, I would sign up for three months for sure.

I think you could do it in three months in increments.

For $15,000, yeah, I would try that.

Dude, I had a concierge doctor at one time for like a year when I was really sick and

it was 25 grand for a year and it was mostly amazing.

Also, I understand why rich people and how rich people can get access to so many drugs

because like, if I wanted to, I could just like text the doctor and be like, Hey, uh,

can you refill this, uh, the Xanax for me or like, Hey, I need some more oxy.

Like is like, and you're paying them so much money that it seems like they're willing to

do that.

It is kind of crazy.

Gotcha.

This took a turn.

Hey, can I, do we have our way over time?

Do I have time to ask you guys one more question?

As long as it's five minutes or less.

Okay.

I think you can be five minutes or less.

I'm just curious about this.

I don't know why this, I thought of this as we were asking the five questions, but if

you were to like simulate your life a thousand times, what do you think the ceiling is and

what do you think the floor is?

In other words, like, are there a few little things, if they broke in the wrong way, like

Sam Parr is working at a McDonald's in Missouri right now, or like a few breaks where if things

have broken the wrong way, you would, uh, be like a worth a hundred billion dollars,

one of the richest men in the world.

Like, what do you think your floor is?

What do you think your ceiling is?

And do you think you ended up about what your average is?

I think, in my case, I could tell you, I think my floor is-

Let's set the ground rules.

The ground rules are same genetics and same, like, I'm not like I'm born in a different

country.

Yeah, it's just like a few little random variables get changed, you make a few different decisions

as you go through life, but same family, same situation, same person.

I think I was not far from being like homeless, alcoholic, drug addict.

Like I think that was actually potentially in the cards, or just like in jail because

I would con people and steal.

I think a lot of people honestly could say that though, like, if they like, if they like

got it, if you ever like do certain drugs, like, oh man, like the, it's actually, I could

see myself, uh, living on the streets, uh, the best of like the limit, um, uh, I think

like a really attainable thing is I could have not sold my company and I think it could

have been worth hundreds of millions of dollars and I could have been worth many hundreds

of millions of dollars by the time I was 50.

I think that could have done that.

I think I could have pulled that off if I was willing to put it in, put the work in.

Yeah, but you'll probably end up there now.

Anyways, you're 30 now.

That's 20 more years, Jim, where you're at now, it's pretty likely that you end up

over a hundred million dollars.

It's very likely that I'll be worth it.

It's almost guaranteed I'll be worth it.

I mean, it's almost certain.

At age 50.

Yeah.

So then, I don't have a good answer then.

So you got one of the good, good rolls of the dice.

Um, I don't think, I mean, obviously there's some scenarios where you end up, you know,

in jail, drug addict, whatever, but I don't think that's like the realistic floor for

me.

I think the realistic floor for me is, was probably like, um.

Working at Twitch, you know, no, not even like, you know, working at, uh, working as

a lab assistant at fucking, you know, uh, you know, Greenville universities, like biology

department or some shit like that.

Like, you know, basically some, some job that was like, I got on some track that didn't

really have a merit based system.

It was a time based system.

Um, so like, you know, you basically just get rewarded for how long you've been in the

game and not like how much impact you've been able to make.

And um, and it might have been in a very kind of like, not a complete, I was very close

to a complete non-business field, right?

I was like, about to go to med school.

So you know, I was very likely going to be in a different thing, but like, even if I

hadn't done the med school path, you know, just being a engineer somewhere or being a,

you know, project manager somewhere was extremely likely for me, um, had I just made one or

two different decisions kind of at some point.

The more interesting question is like, how far off the peak am I?

And I think I'm pretty far off the peak to be honest with you.

And in fact, you know, uh, Ben, you were there when we had, uh, David freeberg on the, on

the podcast and I told him, Sam, I was trying to butter him up.

I was like, dude, so you've created not one, not two, but pretty much three billion dollar

companies.

Um, if you, you know, he created climate, which is a billion dollar company, he created

a Metro mile, which is basically a billion dollar company and he created the production

board.

It's a billion dollar company.

And I said, you've done that.

And you know, if I went back to you at age kind of 18, 19, 20 year in college and I told

you, Hey man, this is how it all shakes out.

You're going to create three billion dollar companies, three separate billion dollar companies,

uh, in like this, like kind of space, science space.

Uh, what would you have said with that have been unbelievable to you?

Would you have, could you have believed that he goes, I'll say, I'd probably have been

disappointed.

I was like, what?

Hey, because I think two things, like one is he wasn't really like money, wasn't the

like the driving force.

And then the second piece is like, I don't think he feels like he's had a big impact

on the world yet.

Um, like, okay, it's a mile exists and okay, climate exists, but like, you know, what he's

trying to do now with like Canada and other stuff like that is like, he's like trying

to find like, be like, the way we produce food is going to change or like the way we

produce pharmaceuticals.

It was going to change.

Like that's not now the like, the type of swing he goes for, which is like the world

used to produce things in factories and farming and blah, blah, blah.

And now we do it in a laboratory, blah, blah, blah.

Like that he's trying to fundamentally change the means of production.

And so I think that's what he meant, but, um, I was kind of blown away by that answer.

And that's the type of thing when I remember I said, like, you hang out with that X factor

person who like just sort of like stuns you into a different, like what I said, when do

I realize I'm settling is when a guy who's created a $3 billion company says, I probably

would have been disappointed if I knew this was the, this was the outcome.

Um, it makes me think, wait, what is this guy even going?

What is this guy's scoreboard?

If he doesn't think this is a win and then what does that make me think about my scoreboard?

How could I update my scoreboard?

Not to match his, but to like, let's, let's definitely question it.

Right.

Like let's, let's not see the same as it's been for 10 years personally.

A billionaire knows probably like a hundred million.

In that ballpark, I think he said on the podcast that he, that he hasn't hit a billion.

So I think close by on these, isn't that funny?

How you can achieve just what most every single person on earth, we consider like the top

of the top of the top of the top and you're like, eh, eh, that's funny.

Once I Googled my, uh, my mentor and kind of miss my investors net worth and I remember

being like, and then I Googled a whole bunch of celebrities, like, so I think, I think

at that time, like his, his kind of like my ballpark approximate, like my triangulated

net worth for them was like 700, 800 million.

And then I Googled like Britney Spears and it was like 25 or 50.

And then I was like, great, I was like, he's like more than 10 times richer than Britney

Spears.

I was like, okay, Alex Rodriguez.

I remember when he signed the biggest MLB contract ever was a 10 year, $225 million

contract or $250 million contract at that time.

And I remember being like, oh my God, he's getting three, he already has three times

a routes contract.

And it just like, I just Googled every celebrity I could think of and he was more than all

of them.

I was like, did you know that you're richer than Ryan Sheckler?

I think I literally said that I was like, you're 15,000 germane dupris.

Dude, he's probably even richer than Denzel Washington.

This guy's amazing.

That's what I'm saying.

Oh, easily.

Watch, you know, Denzel net worth.

Dude, I bet you Denzel has got to be worth a hundred at least.

All right.

Denzel Washington net worth.

Been in the game for a while.

Piss poor 280.

He's a double Denzel.

You know, like, come on, man.

That's awesome.

All right.

I'm out.

I feel like I can rule the world.

I know I could be what I want to put my all in it like no days off on a road.

Let's travel never looking back.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.