The Most Valuable 80 Minutes You’ll Hear Today

You mentioned there about um some of the prices that people need to pay in order to be who they are. I'm fascinated by this question. I'm fascinated by the cost of entry, price of doing business to be a person that other people admire. What do you wish more people knew about the price of success in life? — Right. Because there's if you turn around and look back with open eyes at your life, you see all the scars, you know. I mean, you can't the only way you cannot be humble in old age is when you refuse to look at the reality of your life up to today. I you know, that's the only way — because nobody's skating through it perfectly. — But this is what drives my business endeavors today. This is the core of what drives me. Okay. There is no business out there that I can take on. There is no monetary endeavor that I can take on that is worth the gamble of me losing me. Because most people think I'm just some grand animal who runs and yells and just says [ __ ] all the time. And that's nowhere near the truth. That's maybe what they see in a one minute video and that's what we believe. But there's a lot of thought behind a person being a born loser becoming who I am today. You don't just wake up and just Rocky. You got to wake up and think about, you know, there's a process to getting better. And that process is never finished. understanding that there isn't anything better that can happen to you than what happens if you tell the truth, right? No matter what it looks like to you in the moment. It's a strange thing, but I can't see how it could be otherwise because you'd have to hypothesize that you're going to align yourself with life, with nature, with society, with God, with yourself by lying. No one believes that. You might think you can get away with it. That's way different, right? But no one believes that. But the it's so much easier to figure out who you're not. Then if you start eliminating the who I'm not by sheer mathematics, you end up moving towards who more of what feeds you and who you are. And it's a hell of a lot easier thing to go, how can I get rid of some [ __ ] in my life than it is to go, well, how do I go to my true self? I was not always this strong guy. You see, I went through a lot of hard times in my life to get here today. All I wanted to be was an uncommon man. And my whole life, I was not that. I was 6'1 and 300 lb. I walked in the recruiter's office and he looked at me and he said, "You're fat and you're black. " He said, "I basically had to lose 106 lbs in less than 3 months. " I came back 3 months later, 106 lbs lighter. Thank you. You have to wake up and you have to give yourself belief. It's about gaining control of your mind, putting things back in the proper perspective, and then saying, "I really do want to be here. " with every obstacle I look at as friction. Now, without friction, there is no growth. You have to have friction in your life to grow. So, I start looking at all these different things versus the wo is mentality like, "Oh my god, look at my life. My life's soed up. I come from this up family. I'm being beaten. I'm being abused mentally, physically. " I started looking at it as a perfect trial ground. So, I had to flip it upside down. I said, "Okay, I'm suffering tremendously mentally. use this to your advantage versus your disadvantage. So that's what I did versus looking at it as like, oh my god, wo is me. I'm never going to get out of here. I looked at, okay, hang on a second. If I can overcome this, if I can find some power in this, some way to get through this, that right there will be the fuel for the rest of my life. And so I found great strength in suffering. It showed me even more of what we have as as humans if we're willing to go there and we're willing to push that extra step. A lot of people, man, how do you do what you do? At the end of the day, I ask myself one question, can I take one more step? And usually the answer is yes. So if you can answer that question and not take another step, that is real failure. That is real quitting. A lot of people can take one more step, but they choose not to. I don't know if you can take two steps. You got to answer that question after you take the first step.

But I can always take one more step. So if I choose not to, that's on me. And I got to live with that. There's a lot of people in graves who have lived 100 years and have never started their real journey. Your real journey starts when you go outside that box and you start climbing mountains. And it goes on and it goes on. And just when you're getting ready to quit, you crest that final mountain. You get down and you look and there you are. But you cannot find your peace you're looking for in yourself until you've overcome yourself. Sometimes progress is the W. Like maintaining in some seasons is winning. This has been my big focus right now. Um, and I'm not the first person to say this, but just winning the day. And Bill Aman had this hard season where he was getting divorced. He just lost $4 billion. And he was not him today. He was earlier on his career. So, I mean, it was just the worst. And it was just a terrible slog. And he said, one of the difficult parts about that period is that there was no one thing that was like, oh, I can tackle this today. Like, you're not going to finish the divorce today. undo the $4 billion loss today. And so it's like when you have these larger, more complex negative things that do scale, it's like how do you how do you navigate through that? And for anyone who's listening right now, it's like maybe it's the bad breakup, maybe it's the or maybe you're getting divorced, right? Or maybe it's like the business isn't working the way you want. It's like and there's like 10 things that you have to fix. And so he had this very tactical advice which I liked a lot which is he just tried to make progress and that was it. And he said, you know, in a day it's almost negligible, right? But at 30 days, you're like, "Okay, I moved this. " And at 90, you're like, "Wow. " Does this mean that our mood is still being dictated by circumstance? Yes, I'll be honest. Yes, it does. But I think many of us have this ideal. We'd love to be in a great mood in the absence of things about. But I had this one great podcast today. I'm going to make that thing the thing that's making this a great day. And then if I can make that great day, then maybe it could be a great week. and then trying to expand those basically like let those good moments eat up the season in actively trying to minimize all the down things and super focus on those moments and be like cool I had that good moment that's my day days made and I'm trying to even say that more basically I've had to recalibrate my entire scale to how little of a thing can happen that makes my day week how little of a thing can make my How crazy would it be if a year from now I say that was a great year? I'm putting a huge amount of my discretionary effort into this because it's my belief that right now what will prevent me from achieving my ultimate goals cuz that motherucker is not gone is running out of steam because I don't need to do this like work this hard. I have to I'd prefer to make the ride more enjoyable. — Realize it never mattered to begin with. What's that? — If you want it all, life will give you nothing. We're willing to sacrifice everything that we have for the thing that we want. And then once we get the thing that we want, we want back the things that we sacrificed, which really just goes to the heart of the human condition, which is we want it all. And we're not willing to make trades. And so one of the reasons that I've actually I would say largely tossed out the deathbed regrets of most people is that what they do typically is they will have the bias of wanting the other path they could have taken without considering the cost of that path. So they say, "Hey, I was really successful and I did all these things, but you know, I would give it all up today to have my family. " It's like, well, yeah, but you didn't because you actually chose the path that you were on and you weren't willing to do that. But what you are saying right now is that you want it all. Sure. So does everyone. And so I've had, you know, a few moments of clarity over the last, you know, year or so, but we want everything without the cost. And everything has a price. And you will never be able to get the sufficient price tag paid on everything to achieve a mod of success in any domain unless you are willing to trade from another. And I think that has significantly minimized my regret. We give up our 20s for our 30s. 30s for our 40s, our 40s for our 50s. And we trade everything we achieved in our 30s, 40s, and 50s to get back to our 20s. We give up the thing we have most of for the thing that we have least — and we give up the thing that we want for the thing that's supposed to get it. I I will become happy when I'm

sufficiently successful and I will sacrifice my happiness in pursuit of success so that I can become sufficiently successful so I can finally be happy. We spend our 20s wanting to be richer and older and have a family. Then we start that in our 30s and we gain more wealth and do the family thing. And then we get back to get to our 40s and we've got more responsibilities. We've accumulated all of this stuff and then we think, "God, if only I could go back to my 20s. " But you wereing miserable in your 20s. You hated it. You had no idea whether you were going to be successful. You were constantly concerned about money. You were desperately needing validation from all of these people around you. You were permanently in dissatisfaction about this stuff. We already know how the movie ends when we go back and say we want to relive it. And you can't relive it into the same context because uncertainty is the largest part of the story. Perhaps golden years can only happen in our memory. Nobody believes that we're living through a golden era right now. — We never think we're in the good old days, but the good old days are always now. I have spent a huge amount of mental resources accepting suffering and not saying that there's something wrong with something bad. like a huge amount of mental resources has gone to this because I've been better and faster at correcting the loop of like oh I am not happy with this particular thing and therefore there is something wrong. — Yeah. So fix the story that I tell myself as opposed to fix the thing. — And that's been um super helpful with the addition of everything that I remember will always be better than it was. And the nice thing is that there's tons of science that backs this up, which is that we learn uh through reward and punishment. Punishment fades with time, no matter how bad it was. Like you get drunk, you get hung over, you say, "I'll never drink again. " 7 days later, you're out drinking again. Why? The punishment of the hangover fades quickly. You are with somebody for a while, you're like, "This just crazy or this guy is crazy. " And then you break up and then all of a sudden, what do you remember? The good times. Because reward sticks and in some ways there's a little bit of a hopeful message there which is that when you look back on your life you will disproportionately remember the good times but it only becomes a problem if you limit the present which is the only thing you've ever actually lived in. when I think about a business and I want to grow it for example I would think okay what are all the things that can destroy this business and this is Charlie Mer this isn't me um but basically he says invert always invert and Einstein said that too and it's because like you get to use this way stronger horsepower engine of like how do I grow my business that's you could obviously think that way but the alternative would be like how would I absolutely destroy this business in the fewest possible moves and then when you list out those moves you're like cool now let's do the opposite of that And that has been um honestly a lot of the some of the sources of my greatest kind of creative moments have come from these apparently obvious things that would kill us. Well, what if we did the even more obvious thing and did the opposite of what would destroy us. Um and it's worked better than I deserve. Figure out what you want. Ignore the opinions of others. Do so much work it would be unreasonable that you fail. Realize it never mattered to begin with. Help others once you get there. you've already achieved the things you said would make you successful. — Yeah, the first five steps there is my um is basically my master life plan. I had a pretty terrible first out of college experience of work. But from that I learned some of the most important life lessons that I still take to this day. And uh that boss particularly said one thing to me one day. She said figuring out what you want is 99% of it. She said, "Once you know what you want, getting it is the easy part. " And I kind of adopted that as a worldview because it's like once you're really clear like this is what I want, then everything that's not that is what I'm willing to give up to get it. Now, that thing can change. And I think that's the part that people miss. And I think we should all have permission to change what we want in any given moment. and not having basically sunk life bias of like I put 10 years into this thing and that's okay and that's what I needed to do at that time and today I'm willing to I'm going to change everything. It's been super helpful for me to not think of my changes as permanent because it's been it's allowed me to make such dramatic changes in my life or my business much faster than I think most people have been willing to because there's this weight of forever on top of everything. Like I can do this for today and tomorrow if it still works I will do it for tomorrow. And if 5 days from now or 25 days from now if I work this way I then say you know what I need today. People like oh he's burned out. It's like I took a day cuz that's what I needed that day. And I think giving myself permission to have that freedom has allowed me to take significantly faster action because who am I apologizing to?

Did you ever secretly want to quit before, but you stuck around due to expectation? — I did announce privately that I was retiring after my fifth win. I had a video on my phone I recorded of me like crying in my gym after a workout being like, this is my last Olympia. That was really the only moment where I was like, I'm done stepping away. And then I had to come back and be like, I'm not done. I'm doing this again. your reigning sixtime Olympia champion Chris Bunstead. When I started about it, it was kind of just like the gym was a beautiful place for me to go and escape and enjoy it. And I loved it. Started to see progress and it changed over time. It just kind of like shifted into a bit of a pressure and I started to tie my identity to it and like kind of like I needed a lot of aspects of it and I never wanted to. But like I made the decision to compete in bodybuilding. I'm making the decision to stay technically. But is it a free choice if I feel like I have to do it to be good enough? If I feel like my self worth and my identity is attached to competing now. But this goal I have, this journey I have now has this intense tension because it's not a positive choice. It's not a free choice of like this is wanting to do this. It's like I have to do this to be good enough. I wasn't getting anything from it anymore that was serving me. And then I had to like really be honest with myself. Clearly you were attached to that and now you may lose it all. Would you be okay with that? it all gone before it was like the love of the sport. It was love of bodybuilding and then it became this attachment to this like need of like what came with it. — And going into the last year I didn't even I wasn't enjoying it. It was more of an attitude of like I have to go work out so I can win the Olympia. — Mhm. rather than like I get toing train today and they have the opportunity to be the best in the world if I do it right. It was just this different mindset shift that I realized in myself of why I was like this isn't for me anymore. It's time for me to get off the stage because this isn't serving me and this isn't the proper reason. You know why you start something typically changes over time. might have driven you, but now if it drains you, it's time to reevaluate what you're doing. All the stuff are incredible. Don't get me wrong. It's not like I don't value having money and attention. Like I'm human. I enjoy it. But it's not what was making me feel good dayto-day. It was taking away from my ability to be at home. And I would be like, I have to eat again. I missed a meal. I came to an event and I lost a pound. Am I going to be are my legs big enough this year? I feel like my waist got bigger. Like on that day, 10 minutes on stage, am I going to be good enough to be the best in the world? That pulls you away from being present in your day-to-day life cuz you're constantly worrying about that. And that's because I became more attached to the outcome than just the love of the game. — You said, "I found greater fulfillment in the journey of pursuing my goals than in the moment of achieving them. Why? " I'd say that comes to like the question I asked you of discovering what I was capable of. You know, there's been so many times where I've been in a prep and I felt way too far behind to win and I'm had an injury last year when I tore my lat, tore my bicep, I was in the hospital, like all these different things going on and I'm like, there's no way that I can do this. Like, it's impossible. And if I were to ever ask myself in the past, like, do you think you could win or get through this and do this? And I'd be like, no way. It's impossible. But I was in it and I did it and I accomplished it and I was like, I'm capable of so much more than my mind understands. And I think that's just the greatest part of the journey that I've achieved is like that understanding of what I'm capable of and that belief in myself to what I can accomplish. And it only came through the journey. It didn't come through the winning. It come through the challenges that came along the journey and fighting through it and the beauty of all that. And on top of that, there's just been so many moments in the midst of things where like it's a workout or it's a diet or I'm starving or I'm doing check-ins or something and I'm just like this is incredible. Like I'm peak conditioned in the world right now fighting to be the best in the world and I'm living in that moment right now. I'm doing the this is what it takes when people see something on stage. This is what they don't see or that what I'm feeling in my mind what no one will understand what it takes to get there. I get to experience this every day and I think it's just part of the human experience of feeling in life that's just so beautiful. — What does pressure is a privilege mean? — I think I first heard it from Tim Grover. His book, Relentless, put my mindset into like the focus on my mindset in competing rather than just my physical body because I knew that's what it would take to like get to the next level. And I think after winning an Olympia, I was like, "Oh, like I just showed my cards. I had people know what I'm capable of now. There's no one I got to beat. There's no like second place, third place. " Like flow. It's like, "No, you're the best. And unless you're the best, we just forget about you. " So, it was like this pressure I felt on myself. And it was coming externally for a while and I was trying to like understand how

I could gravitate that a little bit better without it kind of bringing me down and slowing down my progress. And I had to kind of function into the reality that the pressure was really coming from myself rather than externally. And that it's a good pressure. It's a pressure to be better and to become the best version of myself. And it's something that if I choose to use it properly, it's going to push me to be a better version of myself, to grow mentally, physically, my relationships, however I want it to grow. If I choose to take control of the aspects I have control over, it's a choice to put your perception of the privilege rather than a burden. And it by taking the power back in that choice pushes you in a direction of being better rather than holding you back. — What else does it mean to have a champion mentality? — Again, something that definitely elevated over time. Originally, it was like just winning and it evolved into just like a no quit mentality. It's accepting these fears I have, this doubt I have, this everything that goes through my mind. But regardless of that, not quitting and not giving up on myself. No matter how hard is the time of what I'm going through and whatever [ __ ] I feel, it's I'm going to still put in the same work because champions are not controlled by their outside circumstances. They're they control their own mind and side and how they act and then the world goes on around them. I the whole time thought it was bad to be driven by like, oh, I'm not good enough, so I need to accomplish X to be good enough. And it's I don't think that's the way to live. But maybe that's a good way to start. A lot of people are driven to high levels of success by doing that. And maybe that puts you in a position of abundance, of success, to show you the things that are important to you, to give you enough confidence, life experience to go inside and reflect on ways that you can find lasting genuine selfworth. You know, maybe if you're like, "Well, no, you shouldn't do something because you're not good enough. " Well, then maybe you never start, you know, or maybe it makes you an incredible bodybuilder. You go on this huge run and you're able to go on this journey of self-discovery and then figure it out in the end. But I wouldn't have changed that going back of whyever I started even if it was coming from a insecure or bad place because it got me to the place I am now. It's easier to do the things that you want to do so that you no longer need to do them than it is to try and release yourself of the desire overall. I've always connected with the Jim Carrey versions of that. He has like a couple quotes of it where one of them is specifically I wish for everyone to achieve their hopes and dreams so they can realize that it doesn't make them complete. It's like damn. And in the other one was his like ironic I think it was Golden Globe. He goes up there and I don't remember it word for word, but he's like, — I'm twotime Golden Globe winner Jim Carrey going to get some well-needed shutye. And when I dream, I don't just dream any old dream. I dream about being threetime Golden Globe winning actor Jim Carrey because then I would be enough and I could stop this terrible search for what I know ultimately won't fulfill me. And then the whole crowd just starts laughing and they're all just ah he's funny and like a few people you can see like whoa he's beyond it now and he's just like when's enough you know — if you hadn't won would you have still retired — this year? That's an incredible question. I actually haven't even thought about that every year and my sister one year looked at me in the Olympia. She's like are you ever going to believe you're going to win? It was like in between prejudging and night show when I just dominated the show. She's like so you feel good about I was like, "I don't know. Like, maybe I'll win. " She's like, "Are you ever going to [ __ ] believe that you're going to win? " Like, and I was and I didn't. And then the last year I went into that prep and I like I had those moments of, "Do I love this? Do I not? " And I worked my way back to a point of like, "This is the last time. " And I enjoyed it and I like loved the experience. But the whole time it was just like, am I going to win or not compete? — That was what was in my brain. I didn't even think. And it was finally that point where I just believed in myself, where I knew like I know what to do. I know my what I'm capable of. And like I'm going to come in and win if I do it. So I never even thought about it. But — that is a champion mentality, right? — But no, yeah, I like to believe that I would have retired, you know, and it, like I said, it's very different because my mind did just like release all these focuses where it opened up the ability to realize all these things that I had been holding that might have been creating tension in my life. So, I'm in a state right now where I can't imagine trying to lock in and focus on being so selfish at something with life changing like it is. Modeling somebody's rise, not their result, I think, is a really important insight that hasn't fully caught everyone's attention yet. Most people that have the platform to be able to give advice have got the platform because they're successful. And if they're successful, that means that they have done something for a sufficiently long time at a grand enough scale for people to consider them an authority in one form or another. — But the problem is you are at the beginning of your career and they are the person at the top of the mountain. They can't remember what it was like to be a beginner.

— So when you ask somebody what is the key to success in business and they say well you know it's all about work life balance. I think it's very important. You know, you need to be using your intuition and your gut and you go, "Huh, what did you do when you were at my stage? " It's like, "Oh, everything was completely planned out and I didn't have any time for my friends or family. I should probably do what you did when you were my stage, not what you do now that you have the luxury to do whatever you want. " What happens when it feels like that's being taken away from you? You — kind of that old adage of you don't know what you got until it's gone. valued until it starts to decrease a little bit. — Yeah. So, — I'm still unraveling why I wanted to quit before one year prior to when you actually did it — in that and that was the year I had a really bad injury. We had discovered Courtney was pregnant. There was all this stuff going on. There was some personal all this like chaos in my life that was pulling me away from focusing on competing. And I was like, I couldn't handle all of it in the moment. And I was like, I can't do this anymore. And I was stepping away from it. And I realized it in fear. And because I had so much external things muddying my decision of is it because I don't love competing or is it because of all these other things going on right now? The injury that almost made me lose. I should have dropped out. I kept pushing through all these things that I wanted to give myself an opportunity to try again and be in it and be like is this still for me? And I feel like one of the most important things I've done the last few years is like consistently ree re-evaluate my values and try and make decisions based off the highest ones even if in the moment I really feel like it's what I want. And the funniest little thing of what has made me feel better recently was working out again on a schedule and eating five meals a day and weighing out my food and having that little bit of structure of like and not having to as well. It's like all this stuff's going on my life. I don't know. I'm kind of lost. What can I do? Well, I can go work out again and I don't have to. So now I'm choosing to. Well, why you still work out so hard? Why are you training so hard? It's like well just cuz I love it. And then all of a sudden I start to feel better dayto-day. And it's these little changes and I realize this is truly how I fell in love with the gym and why I'm such a big advocate of weightlifting. Like I honestly kind of hope I don't inspire people to get into bodybuilding cuz it's tough. It's up. It's not good for your health. But I do want to inspire people to go lift weights, get in the gym and want to get jacked because it's such like, oh, I'm lost. I don't know what to do. Just go work out. Apply some discipline. Work hard. Find something you love that's difficult that shows you progress, builds confidence, and just go do it. and finding that next goal and working towards it. And I'm so grateful that I'm back to a point of like loving the gym. — Because what you're talking about, it's going to be difficult and things will be hard and you won't have the um the drive or the goal that you used to in the past. All of those things that kind of fluffy concepts, but they come into land. They actually sort of meet reality with I woke up on the morning and didn't know what to do. I felt tired a lot. I didn't want to train. I was short and snappy with my business partners. I found myself getting distracted with lots of little tasks because it made me feel important and like people needed me. I packed my calendar out and did cuz a lot of the time in advance of something happening, we probably have a good idea about what it's going to be like in the macro, but what we don't know is how it's actually going to appear, manifest in life. And it's navigating those things. — I needed to treat myself like a science experiment of like taking and removing pieces and see what's important. It's like, okay, bodybuilding was creating a bit of pressure and stress in my life. Is it everything related to that? I'm not competing anymore. I don't need to eat on a schedule. train at the same time. I don't need to leave my phone outside the gym and be locked in and focus as much. I don't need to wake up with my alarm. I can kind of sleep. I can do all these little things that I can let go of because now I don't have to because the goal is different. But then I start to not feel good. And it was like, okay, it wasn't those things that weren't making me feel bad. Those were actually making me feel good. It was the outcome. Like I said before, oh wait, the structure and the discipline makes me feel better. It filled me with more confidence and ability to go do other things rather than taking — regardless of whether it's in service of becoming Mr. Olympia. — Yeah. And I mean, I know those things, but like you said, it was I feel like [ __ ] I don't want to do anything. and you're way harder to pull yourself out of that than if you caught it earlier. — That's life though, you know? There's no direct descent to the top. It's ups and downs and — building a new self as you go. — What would you say to anybody that's lost direction in life in the way that you have? I would say I'm still in the midst of it, but I do believe it will be for the better. I feel like the path I was on wasn't I knew when I was on it wasn't the best for me. So, if I stayed on that path, might not be lost, but I'm not discovering anything else. And at least in being lost, you might discover something new that's better. Nothing will be like the Olympia, but things will be incredible in my life. The gym has been like the thing for me

of when I'm lost, it's always there. So having a constant in your life, having something within your control when things feel out of control to just go do, I think is so crucial. Just go work out, go lift weights, just get jacked and figure it out. If you turn around and look back with open eyes at your life, you see all the scars. The only way you cannot be humble in old age is when you refuse to look at the reality of your life up to today. I you know that's the only way because nobody's skating through it perfectly. — But this is what drives my to it sounds ludicrous in my ears but my business endeavors today this is the core of what drives me. Okay. There is no business out there that I can take on. There is no monetary endeavor that I can take on that is worth the gamble of me losing me. It took me years of a lot of grief and pain and work to get to be who I am today in spite of who I was. And I don't want to lose that. myself in business. trying to earn a better living, in trying to get a name, and trying to do this. It's like I have turned down so much because I've looked at it and I've asked myself, who's this going to make me be? turn me into even a little bit? And it's like, it's just not worth it. It's just not it's not worth it. And so I'm right now trying to find the balance in undertaking something that's alter me, that I'm not going to lose myself, and then not succeeding at something because I was too afraid to try it. Never been afraid of failure before. But now I've got something I don't want to lose. And that's myself that I actually like. a me The person that you have to spend the most time talking to in your life is yourself. Try not to lose that respect. How have you learned to have a better relationship with yourself, the voice inside of your head to be kinder if things go badly? I like me. I would buy me a dream. I look at me now and I see all the warts, okay? negatives more than anybody else does. I see the positives. And over the whole balance of stuff, I like me and I can give myself the same grace if you and I were friends. I can give myself the same grace I can give you because I like me. I like me in spite of my understanding and the reality of my weaknesses and my warts and my scars and everything. But, you know, all in all, I'm a pretty good dude. And uh, man, you got to get to that point. Arrogance is pride mixed with ignorance. All right, that that's the definition of arrogance. I'm not talking arrogance. I'm talking about, look, as a human being, I've failed at this. I've succeeded at that. I've wrecked this, but I've built that. And all in all, you know, I've tried, but I like me, so I'm going to give me some grace. And how many people can say that? How many people say I like me? they would give more grace, more care, more attention, more love to somebody else — than themselves. There's a statistic around — I think on average the likelihood that you are going to complete a course of antibiotics yourself — is about 50%. — Right? — The likelihood of your dog completing it is 95%. Yes. — So, we're literally capable of caring for a pet — nearly double as well as we can for ourselves. Remembering that if you die, no one can look after the pet. Serving others from a cup which overflows around your own is important. Tell me, how would you like yourself? Find somebody that you like, that you genuinely like, and figure out what it is about them you like. I like that. That's something I like. That person is uh they're understanding.

They're gentle. They're hardworking. They're honest. This is what I like about that. And incorporate that stuff into your own life. If that's the stuff you like, then incorporate that stuff into who you are. And then you like yourself. It's not rocket science. But if we become the person that we like, I have come to the place in my life where when I meet somebody and they don't like me and you can tell I don't care. I like me and it's enough. You know, this was a lesson that I realized toward the end of my 20ies, where I'd accumulated a lot of success and status in maybe the way that modern society tells a young man that he should with freedom and notoriety and and women and stuff like that. And that was cool and to look back on fun. Uh but it was beginning to get to the stage where I didn't like me all that much. I hadn't done anything bad, but I just felt like there was I was built for more. different, built for something else, — right? — And I realized that I wasn't keeping promises to myself, — right? — That if I said I was going to wake up at a certain time, the snooze button would be hit three times, — right? If I said that I was going to stick to my diet or go to the gym or do this thing, maybe it would happen, but it wouldn't happen quite the way that I'd meant it to and there would be some negotiating and some cajoling and some falling short. You know, how can you have faith that you're going to go and do all of the things that you want in life when you can't not hit the snooze button, — right? — Or you can't not cheat on your diet. You can't not do you are constructed by the tiny decisions that you make every single day. — Well, I'll just say I came to a place in life where I just didn't like me anymore. I wasn't a very nice person and I was just very on edge, very angry. So, I had to make some decisions. I can't continue to live like this. Angry, there's no benefit to it. you know, it doesn't fix anything. You know, anger, it just turned out I'm like, this is not profitable and this is eating me up inside and I'm making stupid decisions and this has just got to end. What what's making me like this? I need to get it out of my life. And slowly over time got a handle on stuff and uh kind of got some of my perspective back. So, imagine that you had a friend and every time that you invited this friend out for lunch, they showed up an hour late or they didn't show up at all. After a while, you stop trusting them and stop inviting them out at all. You are that friend to yourself. — Yeah. — And I think this is such an important lesson for people who want to be liked, who want struggle socially uh and want to become better. People like people that make them feel good, — right? — They don't care that much about how impressive the person is. — So, I was riding for an outfit in Alaska Giden and they brought in a mayor and uh the best I could understand, she was a retired barrel racing horse from here in Texas. And so when I signed on, they assigned her to me because nobody else, we couldn't put guest on her. None of the other wranglers wanted to ride her because her go-to was run. If something disturbed her, her head came up and it's run. Just run. That that's my answer to escape to just run. And it wasn't something that I could physically fight and stop. Um, and so that horse really made me step outside of the thought process of physically controlling something that has a mental emotional issue and getting in her head and figuring out what can I do if the problem is mentally or emotionally, what can I do to get in to her head and get into her emotions and fix that for her. And so what I did, and it's so simple it, you know, it probably wouldn't even make sense to a lot of folks, but while we were sitting there and while she was calm sitting there at the ranch waiting for others to get on their horses, I would just come in with the lightest little pressure and get her to tip her nose, not pull her nose in, just give a signal, hey, tip your nose. So she'd tip her nose. And we just do that and just do that. And then when we get out on the trail and she started getting anxious

about something and her head would come up, I would just default to that. And so she would find something that she was secure, the signal, and it would she would calm down and she would calm down. and working with that mayor for the summer. Um, I'm I made huge strides with myself in stepping outside of the norm of trying to physically control something that isn't ideal. — Yeah. I mentioned that I had uh ridden a horse for the first time in Texas and they gave me whatever the leader of the group is for the horse, whatever that's called. Um, and I was right far at the back. — Yeah. And this horse was eating. And the lady that was guiding the group said, "Just give him a little pull. He'll come along. " I gave He didn't move. I mean, it is absurd to explain how strong these things necks are. — Yeah. — And I'm like, "I don't think he doesn't want to come. " She's like, "No, no, just take a little bit more. A little bit more. " I'm like, I'm a pretty strong guy. So, I was like, "Right, okay. I'll give it a big pull. " Didn't move. I'm like And by this time, they're 100 yards away. — Yeah. I'm like still he doesn't want to doesn't seem like he want said no like a really big pull. So I went mixed grip like you do on a deadlift. — Yeah. — Set my feet into the stirrups and like one rep maxed this horse's head up and finally he got up and uh that was absolutely not the most efficient way to get him to do that thing. There would have been a much better way than me. — Right now what I teach folks is I don't want his body. Okay? I want his mind. Now, if I physically, like you just went through, if I physically get his body to do what I want, but I don't have his mind, soon as he gets a chance, he's going to go back again. But if I ignore the body and I get the mind, if I have the mind, I have the body. So, in a situation like that, what I do is I don't pull his head up, okay? I take the reins and I bounce that bit that's in its mouth. I bounce it pretty sharp. and he decides in his mind, I don't like that. I think I will pick my head up. I'm going to suggest to you that you decide it's in your best interest for you to pick your head up and we go for the mind. And h how much in life, you know, you you've got all these folks working for you here and you have to you can't physically browbeat and nag and threaten. You've tried. Does it work? — No. They're belligerent. — Yeah. I' I've already heard stories. It's just Yeah. — But you want to make things so that they decide that if this is what Chris wants done, it's in my best interest. I want to go do that. And again, it's communication, you know, and again, it's getting in the horse's mind and working with a horse in that manner. Um, I I'll give you an illustration if I can. All right. One of the cardinal sins in my book is when I go to get on a horse and the horse walks off when I'm partway up. You know, I'm stepping up, I'm swinging my leg over, and he's walking, he's leaving. Okay, that's a cardinal sin. So, we have a difference of opinion here, me and the horse. It's like, I want you to plant your feet and be still while I get on and then I'll tell you when I want you to go. He says, well, I want to go. So, I'm not going to sit there and take pull back and say whoo and do that onelegged hop along Cassidy down while I'm trying to get inside. I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to physically hold him back. I'm going to put my toe in the stirr and I'm going to go to step up and when he walks off, I'm going to step back out and I'm going to make him keep walking in a circle around me eight or 10 times. I'm like, I wanted you to stand still, but you want to walk. I tell you what, I'm a nice guy. I'm going to let you walk. do what you want in a controlled manner. You pick the tune and I'll pick the dance and I'll make him walk around. He's like, I don't want to walk anymore. Well, you said that's what you wanted, so I'm letting you do what you want. Okay, stop. Whoa. Now, won't you stand here while I get in the saddle? And he says, and it may take a couple times, better. He says, you know what? I think what I want to do is I want to stand here while he gets in the saddle, you know? So, we communicate. And when I got his mind, when I changed his want to, I didn't have to fight with his body. And so that that's just that's how you approach it. You understand and you communicate. — What have you learned about humans from working with horses? — Humans don't know how to communicate. Communication is our biggest weakness.

Um, that's not like the number, but that's something that lately this is this has been just really hammered home to me working with horses and working with humans. Um, and communication is a much more complex issue than I think many of us give it credit for. Um, so you take a horse and a human, a relationship with a horse and human. All right? For that to work, there has to be communication. Well, we have a couple of problems here. First off, the horse doesn't speak English, and we don't speak horse. All right? But as humans, we insist that the horse comes into our world, but we're too arrogant or too lazy or a combination of both to learn to speak horse. And horses language is not verbal. It's all movement. It's all body language. it's all this and so that is a problem. But another problem is us and the horse. We are um we're predator animals. All right? We are the human is we're predators. All right? We're designed to eat meat. Our eyes are side by side on the front of our face. We see one picture and we're designed to see what we want and go get it. The horse is a prey animal. They are the animal that everything that eats meat wants to eat. And so they have a complete different instinct. Their instinct is everything wants to eat meat. You know, we wake up of a morning and we say, you know, I want to be a trophy husband. You know, that's my goal. I read it. Okay. I what do I want to go get today? The horse wakes up and says, I don't want to get eaten today. Two totally different instinct. All right. So to be able to build a communication with a horse, we have to move into their world and learn to speak but learn to think how they think. Well, I mean we can say men and women are the same thing. You know that women are different from men. They have a different way of thinking. And like I said, my wife and I've been married almost 34 years. And even today there's things I say and she absolutely what she heard is not what I said and vice versa you know so communication and you cannot have 34 years of relationship with one person if there's no communication. Um I don't like the trend in this circle men's motivation circle. I don't like the hustle culture as is being brought out and taught today. I don't agree with it because I think it's out of balance. I think young men need to know that, hey, it's okay for you to sit down and to chill and to think. Cuz I guarantee if you're in the weight room um pumping out all these reps and running on the machine and then you're going into the cubicle and you're flip open a computer and you're not thinking, you're learning, you're taking in, but you're not meditating on stuff and you're not thinking. But that can be taken. and so far that young men are made to feel guilty for just sitting down and thinking and relaxing. And I understand that there was a tendency in this country. We had a lot of young men that were not raised with dads. They weren't raised to work, you know, and so that it's sitting on the couch playing the stupid Xbox, you know, not growing up learning to work. So that pendulum went too far this way. So now you've got guys who in order to counteract that. They swung the pendulum too far this way. And a balanced man needs to be somewhere in the middle. He needs to be able to work to do what needs to be done to improve himself. And he also needs to sat around by the fire in the backyard and just stay balanced. There needs to be balance. — I wrote an essay about that — this week. — Did you? Would you mind if I read it to — Absolutely not. — I think type A people have a type B problem and type B A problem. Insecure overachievers need to learn how to chill out and relax and lazy people need to learn how to work harder and be disciplined. Given that you subscribe to me, I'm going to guess you're probably type A. Some version of a walking anxiety disorder harnessed for productivity, as Andrew Wilkinson says. Here's the thing you may have already realized. Type A people with a type B problem get very little sympathy because a miserable but outwardly successful person always appears to be in a much more preferential position than the content being lazy but on the verge of being bankrupt person. The problems of opportunity will always get less sympathy than ones of scarcity. One

feels like a choice the other like a limitation. I need someone to teach me how to be disciplined and work harder feels noble and upward aiming and charitable. I need someone to teach me how to switch off and relax feels dopamineergic and addicted and transactional and opulent. Every underdog movie ever has a training montage of someone working their life out by working harder. None included a guy learning how to log out of Slack at 6 p. m. or finally enjoy a beach holiday. Type B problems are just as tough as type A ones, but they require a much less sexy solution. Peace. One that you can't achieve by just working harder. It seems like especially with confidence, right? Or self-esteem, there's a relationship between confidence and competence. — So, what you're looking to do is try and have what you believe that you can do be ahead of what you can do. Now, you're not looking for it to be delusional. You don't want it to be able to believe that you can do something like fly, right? But you need to have a relationship between the two. But what people are asking for is for their confidence to be so far ahead of their competence or without having even been competent at anything in the beginning. And that's just delusion. That's fantasy. — Right. Well, I believe that you have to build belief. Belief is like there's an after school special belief where the mom says believe in yourself and that's all great but there's also a built belief and the built belief is one like for me I came from a bad place. How I build belief is through the daunting tasks I put myself through. So that's proof positive that I can. So it correlates and that's how this piece of [ __ ] kid I once thought I was built belief by saying hm I was in three hell weeks I went to ranger school I tried out for Delta selection — undeniable stack of proof — that is proof motherucker so whenever you think you can't confidence comes from the thing that you built you must build belief you must build confidence it can't be like hey I'm going to knock that [ __ ] out. You got to look over here and say, "I can knock that [ __ ] out. " Because a lot of people will say, "When you wake up in the morning, pound your chest, you know, and look at yourself in the mirror and do all this bullshit. " I hope it works. What works for me is that everyday resume, the things I know I've accomplished, done, real hard work, the real calluses on my mind, hands. That's it. The you don't need to pound your chest in the mirror anymore. If you have that, it's a belief and it's built on what you put in to yourself. I came from a small town in Indiana where there was a handful of black families and a lot of people in that town. When you come from a town of 8,000 people, it's like we had a local plant, Great Dane. You're like, you know what? I want to work at Great Dane and get a house next to my mom. That's what you know. So many of us come from these small places in our mind that we're not willing to think outside only what we've seen. Our mind works in such a small compartment. And one thing I was able to do was to dream. But dream outside thoseing four walls of that small town. Until you're able to really put yourself into that dream, but don't make dreams your master. That's where you truly become what you're destined to become. A lot of people sit back and they dream about being a sports figure or SEAL an astronaut and all it is a [ __ ] dream. They don't put the work behind the dream. When you become the master of your dream is when you say, "I want to go be a Navy Seal. " And you say, "Okay, I'm going to lose 106 lbs in less than three months. " The dream was the one thing I thought about and the dream was now gone. The dream goes away and the laundry list ofing details and tasks come up. That's when you become the master of your dream. Ryan Holidayiday says talking about the thing and doing the thing v for the same resources. Allocate yours appropriately. That's it. That's the way it works as well. That's the way that the brain works. You can actually get these kicks of dopamine by telling your friends about I'm going to be a Navy Seal. I'm going to start my training next week. It's going to be great. I'm going to feel like this. — Feels good. — It feels good to talk about that [ __ ] man. It actually makes you feel good. Makes you feel proud. All that [ __ ] But guess what happens? That alarm clock goes off at 4:00 a. m. to train. I don't want to be a seal today or whatever today. I'll start tomorrow. And that's the usual

pattern of people's lives. That's why I talk about clearing out the mind. Until you really want to do something, you're always g be a talker. You're always going to run your mouth. So if you wake up in the morning and you don't want to do something, you don't care enough about yourself. And that's what you need to really research is man why am I not doing this for myself? That is the number one purpose in life is to better oneself. So that's the only purpose I need. So the reason I get up every day even though there's no racers, there's no school, there's nothing in front of me is because I have pride in myself. — But where do you go to? You wake up on a morning, it's cold, it's wet, it's dark, you've got no cartilage in your knee, you've got shitty shorts, whatever it is that's the issue today. — Keep talking. You've got these problems, right? — I need you to keep talking about what you were just saying. — It's warm on the couch. Your Mrs. says, "Stay in bed. It's comfy. It's cozy. You've got work later on. You had an argument last night. You're slightly hung over. " — Cuz I know every motherucker ain't going to do what I'm going to do. This is how you level up. That's I know there's a whole bunch of people with that right there. That fires me up. That makes me happy. what you just said. That brings joy to my life right there. — Why? — Cuz I know there's so many people that have the ability and just refuse to get off that couch, refuse to study a few more hours, refuse to go deeper, to go further. And that's where I gain the advantage. It's so easy to be great nowadays, my friend, cuz most people are weak. Most people don't want to go to that extra mile. find that extra cuz it sucks. It's miserable. It's lonely. A lot of people wonder, "How did you become this? How did you become so vulnerable? How do you be how are you doing a podcast now when you were this kid? You overcame things. You fought them. And now this is what happens. This is on the other side of overcoming. You become very powerful when you overcome yourself. All those things you once counted from, you were afraid of. And you face them eye to eye every day. You now become exactly who you are. You've faced your demons. You were able to hear all your past traumas. When you go to war with yourself, you find a lot of peace because you know exactly who you are. And that is where the peace is really found for me. I'm just stubborn, man. I just never give up. There's no world where I ever would have quit. When I was 11, I just said, "I'm going to be a YouTuber. I'm going to die trying. " And I meant it. And so, people hate it, but I'm just the most competitive, stubborn person you'll ever meet. And I just never give up. I just really love solving consistent, complex, hard problems. I think that's like what gets me out of bed. And like the harder the problems, the more exciting it is. I'm like really good at just obsessing over one thing more than anyone else on the planet. If I were to say what's my superpower, it's that I can just obsess endlessly about something and it's just like kind of who I am. — When you think back over the last 10 years of your life and the success you've had solving some of these hard problems, if you were to like break it down into some core components that you've learned, one of them is obsession that you've said. — Yeah. — What are the others? like you are obviously who you surround yourself with and um luckily I just got around the right people. I feed off the energy of the people around me. The core crux of it is like extreme ownership and don't make excuses and take extreme ownership. Take accountability like sure I guess it was out of your control but it could have been in your control if you just thought through it more if you just really cared. And that's what I was just trying to convey in it. And the other thing that comes through in this, but also all of your work is just this idea that nothing is impossible. — I don't know why, but when people tell me I can't do something, I and I don't know where this came from. It makes me just want to do it more to be honest. If you tell me I shouldn't do something, that's fine. But if you tell me I can't, then I just if everything in my body just wants to go you, I obviously can. I mean, does physics allow it? Then yes, it's possible. Just do we want to put the time in? I mean, it's I feel like people over complicate a lot of things. It's not that you can't do it. You just don't want to. You just got to really love what you do. I mean, and push through it. Something I always tell myself is how you feel right now is why no one else does what you do. And if you push through this, that's just more of a reason why no one will ever be who you are. And so, it's like I think being able to push through unhappiness and do

things you don't want to do consistently year after year over the course of a decade is like the ultimate advantage. being consistently uncomfortable and like cons being able to consistently suffer over long periods is like arguably one of the deepest modes. Like there's a reason no one makes videos like me. Like not even close because no one wants to live the life I live. — What five characteristics would I need to demonstrate to be successful? — You got to be very coachable because whatever I teach you today is going to change, you know, a year or two from now. Always learning, always improving. A big thing for me is you got to see the value in working here. This isn't like a job. This is a career. Like if you don't realistically see a world where you're working for me in 10 years, then it's pretty hard for me to invest into you at the level I want. Like I'm not I don't like training someone for 6 months, they work here for a year, and then I lose them. What I like is I train someone for a year and then I get nine years of dividends on the back end where they crush at their job and I'm constantly paying them more because they're becoming more valuable with time. like that is like the eighth wonder of the world is investing heavily in an employee and then they stick around for a decade. So, uh, Coachable, uh, sees the value. Um, obviously obsessed. I don't I just don't like working with mediocre people. I mean, I really just can't stand it. It's the fastest way to make me depressed. Um, is if I have to work with someone who's just not allin and just loves what they do. Like I said, I think one of my greatest superpowers is my obsession. And I think some people would view that as a weakness. But I just like if you just think about solving problems three times more than everyone else, like you're bound to come up with different solutions. There's just a lot of, you know, stuff like that I'm sure if you listen to like a Steve Jobs interview or something that he talks about, it's just the typical traits. Obsessed, coachable, allin, sees the value. — And what is the single worst trait? — Mediocrity. I mean, it's just like cuz they're not bad enough where you fire them, but not good. The problem is like I mean and you see it in full effect. Great people just love working with great people. They do. And there's something about being around great people that pulls some kind of animal out of you that just makes you want to do more and push more and believe things aren't possible. And I don't know, when you put me around a bunch of other successful entrepreneurs, I just turn into a different human than if you put me around, I don't know, a bunch of people who are just running small businesses and don't really care and don't really have much ambition. I'm like two completely different humans. And you see that same thing in full effect. You put a bunch of A players around more A players, they just build off of each other. But you like put two or three C players amongst a bunch of great people and they'll start pulling them down. They'll start making them not want to work as much, make work not as fun. And so everyone knows get rid of the C players, right? Obviously get rid of people who aren't all in blah blah. It's the ones that are like they're not an A player, but they're not a C player. So it's kind of hard because you still feed off the energy and if you get enough of them, it just drags the overall culture down. So those are like the worst. But, you know, when it comes to like the mission critical things like making videos and things like that, that's one of your number one jobs as leaders is just to make sure your great people are working with other great people cuz that's like the number one reason why people leave jobs isn't money. You know what I mean? It's that's like number four on the list. Don't ask me to list them all. I don't remember. I just know the number one thing is do they enjoy who they're working with? And people will leave their job because they hate working with people way before they'll ever leave because of money. — What about your parents? Mom and dad. You talk about your mother a lot. What influence did they both have on you? — Um, well, I don't really talk about my dad much. That's, you know, a long story. Don't need to get into it. But my mom, honestly, it was it wasn't it's great now. Me and my mom have a phenomenal relationship. But on the come-up, it was pretty rough because in 2008, they were overleveraged. So, we literally went bankrupt. And so, my mom was working two jobs and, you know, barely getting by. And so we I didn't see her that much because when I was coming home from school, she was doing her second job. So it was a lot because she was a single mom raising us. She's working all the time, you know. Um I don't talk about a lot of this. You know, I have Crohn's disease, so I was very sick growing up. My brother also had issues as well. And so, you know, we're not the healthiest kids in our teenage year. She's just trying to get by and take care of us. And then, you know, she comes home and she just has this brat that's being annoying and like, I want to be a YouTuber and she's just begging me. Sometimes she would literally cry and beg me to do homework. And I mean, I was I didn't mean it in a mean way. But I mean, I even one time I literally told her, "If you want my homework done so bad, why don't you just do it? " You know, like that's what I told my mom. Like what am I doing? I don't know. Like I was just like, "I don't I don't care. " Like I just want to be successful. I want to build businesses. And bless her heart. Luckily, it worked out. So now I spoiled her. She's great. She has her second home. Anything she could ever want, she has. And so, the first uh thing I did was start paying my mom, take care of her once I started making money cuz she gave everything to like get me where I am. And I wouldn't be where I am now. But it was like me and her spoke different languages when I was younger, you know.

She didn't want me to end up like them, you know, and, you know, get screwed and not have much money. And like her brain couldn't compute the world I saw and my she saw. And it was constant friction. I mean, the thing is nothing she would say was unreasonable, right? Looking back at it, she was perfectly reasonable in what she was doing. I'm just a deranged lunatic and was way too obsessed with building the business and way too allin. But to me, I don't really feel risk. Like, if anything, it like risk excites me. — Why did you want to really be a YouTuber? cuz kids say that. — But the extent to which you said it — and the focus that you had on that particular goal of being a YouTuber cuz there's many things you could have focused on. You could have been a video game player, whatever, but YouTube is a particularly interesting thing because you're on camera, — people are seeing it. There's a metric which decides how successful you are. Was there any element of the on camera part that was helping to solve for like the feeling of isolation that you seem to have at that time? — Yeah, I think it's more to do with just I found out that when I was at a young age, probably around 11, that there were YouTubers that are making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year and I was just like, "Oh, that's it. " Like, just the money. — Yeah, of course. Because back then we didn't have money and I really wanted to take care of my mom and just my family in general. So, it was like everything. It was like this is what I love doing. I I've never had as much joy doing something as I do this. Plus, I could see a path where I could actually retire my mom, take care of her, pay her back for all the nights she worked so long so we could live comfortably and things like that. So, one thing that irks me is when people try to like put someone's motivation into like one little bucket. Like, we're very complex creatures and like, you know, you have a girlfriend. I I would never say, "Oh, you just like her because she's pretty. " — But you like her cuz she's pretty, but you probably also smart. because you know she's fun to be around. She likes similar shows. Blah blah. You could probably give me a thousand reasons why you like your girlfriend. It's like it's very annoying when people try to put why you like doing a certain job or building a certain business into one bucket. Oh, you just do it cuz of money. What if I do it because I like money and I enjoy it and it's a way to do this communicate with people and community and these other things. You know what I mean? And I think that's a common flaw we try to do. It's like — it's not that simple. I think it's a lot of people can't understand someone being so relentlessly focused on something with the level of like commitment and sustained commitment that you've shown. — I agree cuz it's very weird. I can just have the same thoughts over and over and over again. It's it was it wasn't like it was work for me grinding YouTube for those 10 years or whatever where no one was really watching it. It would have had to have been a deep obsession because you were doing it when no one was really watching or paying attention or really when the platform was. — There was literally a day when I was uh 19 or 20 where I got I woke up, joined a Skype call with my friends and where we like were reverse engineering, you know, why certain videos do well or whatever. And I remember that call being over 18 hours long. And then I hung up, went to bed, woke back up the next day, and instantly got back on the call and picked back. Like that was the level of like hours we were putting in. I mean, I didn't know anything besides just trying to make it happen. Well, this is the life I chose. This is you want success. You want to change the world. You want to do this and this. This is the price you have to pay. — Do you think the average person would like to be in your head? And secondly, are you happy? — No. Oh, the average person does not want to live the life I live or be in my head. They would be miserable because they're just working all the time. And they would probably just ask themselves, why am I working all the time? Why don't I do literally anything else? I mean, obviously, I'm not a robot. There are times where I'm like, I really want to play the strategy board game. I want to do this thing. And I'm I look at the schedule and I'm like, oh, maybe I could do that in 4 days. The hard thing is it's you really have to like be delicate with the framing of your mind because it's very easy in moments like that to go [ __ ] I'm like a zoo animal like I don't have free will. I'm like a little robot to my businesses and so you have to like be very careful and sometimes those emotions take over and especially cuz I'm a very defiant kind of guy and I'm like but I really want to do this thing but I can't because I got to go film this video and I got to do this speak at this conference and I got to do this networking thing and blah blah. Yeah. I think most people when that feeling comes up of like am I just a animal? Like do I have any free will? They would probably get very depressed and but I've been able to like work through those and just I always try to you know your brain you just it's you just got to control your thoughts. You should actually see this as a good thing because this is why which is why I'm very diligent about how I frame things in my mind like this is why no one else will do what you will do and this is a good thing. This is what you are feeling right now is your moat. it's you're lucky, it's hard, push through it and you'll be happy you did, you know, and so that's kind of how I try to view it. Um, but no, I don't think most people would be happy living my life. They would be like, "Oh, let's just grab a couple million dollars and be happy. "

— Are you happy? — Uh, it depends on what day you ask me. Right now, I'm having a good time. Um, other, you know, when I was had the flu in Africa sitting in a cage of lines, no. So, — what's your baseline? How would you describe your baseline? probably uh this year probably so far more unhappy than happy and it's just they're just things you got to do that just aren't fun. — Someone who um is doing so well on a platform like YouTube where the algorithm is always changing. — Mhm. — So many YouTubers I speak to say that they get burnout eventually. They get like creative burnout and they just like delete their channel. You've seen a lot of it recently over the last couple years where YouTubers hit 10 million, they just stop. — Yep. — Has that ever crossed your mind to stop? — Oh, of course. All the time. — Seriously? Yeah. — When was the closest you came to quitting? — Oh man, probably countless times. — I mean, I guess I never truly would have quit. I mean, my biggest thing would be I just would have quit for like a week and been like, "Fuck, let me sleep 9 hours a night. " And like — I feel like YouTube is like throwing coal into a train. Then you just have to keep throwing it in there once you started. You just can never stop throwing it. — Yeah. You're running on a treadmill cranked up to the max, especially if you want to be a top tier creator like me. And it's just like who can stay on the treadmill the longest cuz it never slows down. If anything, you're making it faster. Um, but no, I mean I don't think there's ever unironically a time where I actually would have quit. It just breaks probably would have been nice. — And when you think forward at that treadmill, can you see yourself doing it for the next 2 3 4 decades or — Oh, yeah. Of course. I don't have any intention of ever stopping. To go viral, you have to do something that's never been done before. I've told this story before of like, you know, if you're driving down the road and you see a cow, who cares? It's a [ __ ] cow. But if you're driving down the road and you see a purple cow, you're like, you've never seen that before and it's something you weren't expecting, you're going to go, "Holy shit. " And you're going to go tell your friends about it. You're going to remember that. You'll probably even think about it randomly once every couple years. Why the [ __ ] was there a purple cow? And it's like it's the same thing, just one was a little purple. And it like you can apply that same like uh analogy to ideas like when you're scrolling through social media to find a video to watch, there's things that you know have been done before, you've seen. It's, you know, roughly similar to stuff before. You're just going to scroll past it. You'll never think about it again. Just like a cow on the side of the road. And then there are ideas that are like the purple cow idea, which is what I try to do, which are things that make you go, what the I've never seen that like I have to click this or I'm not going to be able to sleep tonight because like why is this video? No way they did this, right? But those typically are very hard. And usually to get that perfect cow effect, they've never been done before. And if something's never been done before, there's usually a reason cuz it's verying hard. So you just kind of have to train yourself to like not resent very difficult complex hard original problems and actually run towards them because those are the ones that you know tend to have the more of the purple cow effect where people have to watch it. It's way easier to get 50 million views on one video than it is to get a million views on 50 videos, right? And because it like kind of goes exponentially and it's pretty winner take all in the top videos like you just really have to lean into that purple cow effect if that makes sense. I mean, I think we'll hit a billion subscribers and uh I don't think anyone will be anywhere near close because like once you make a couple million dollars, why would you live the life I live? Like, why would you not take weekends off? Why would you not, you know, prioritize your sanity and that kind of stuff? It makes no sense. But that's why no one else does it. One of my themes this year has been focusing on moments and on both the positive and the negative. And so like when we think back on if I think back on the last year, right, I don't remember probably 95% of the year. Like I, you know, I did the same things. And so it's like it just didn't get recorded. Like nothing notable happened. And so really like when we think about a year, we really just recall a handful of moments and that's it. And those moments in time are usually very short. And so I've been trying to think about the bad, you know, seasons as, well, maybe it wasn't a bad season. Maybe I had five bad days or really five bad moments that I then thought about for the entire season and turned what would have otherwise been 5 minutes time 5 into an entirely bad year. It's like okay well if we can do that in the negative can we do in the positive which is you know obviously the thing to exercise. I thought about that it's like if I were to boil everything down um of all the skills that you can learn if everything that we do eventually becomes irrelevant then the single greatest skill that you can develop is being in a great mood in the absence of things to be in a great mood about. Most people don't question someone who's in a bad mood like I'm just in a bad mood. So it's like well if you can be in a bad mood for no reason it's like you might as well be in a good mood for no reason cuz that one at least serves you. And so I've been trying to exercise like cuz there's on one degree there's like let's count things to be grateful for. On the other side it's like why do I have to have things to be grateful for in order to be in a good mood? Like why is trying to find things a requirement of being in that mood? Like can I not find things and still choose to be in a good mood? Because I've certainly not had things to be in a bad mood about and

been in a bad mood. And so I've been trying to flex that which is like sure we can find things to be grateful for and when those things pop up yes and of course it's a you know it's a practice you get better at it but like what if I can just be in a good mood and so I've just tried to try to break that relationship between the two because then it makes it contingent on something that I can find to take this to the absolute extreme. Why should I be grateful? happy? Why do I demand of my life that I must be happy during it? I think it comes down to I used the word control before. Basically, if you can predict, it means you can control. But if you can predict what's going to happen, it means that you know what the variables are and you can influence those variables which we can influence the outcome. We have a set of behaviors or skills that will increase the likelihood of goal achievement. Whatever that goal is, being spiritual, being a good husband, whatever it is, these behaviors will do that. To increase the likelihood of me doing these behaviors, then I have to have more good stuff, less bad stuff, I will die on that hill. Beyond that, what does anything that happened prior to this matter at all in so far as it only works if I can use that same variable and then use it again to change my behavior yet again to be conducive to the goal. Expectation of life is that it's going to be until I make the billion dollars, until I get married to the love of my life, until I get these things. You're just holding your happiness hostage until something great happens. What if something small could be something great? People only root for others at two times. First, when they're at the beginning of the race. Second, when they finish. Neither is when you need it. So, you have to master the middle. The boring, exhausting, soulcrushing middle. That's where the winning happens on your own. People will only cheer for you as long as you can't beat them at the game they value most. Friendly reminder that every person who doubts you is right until they aren't. It's a bug, not a feature. you know, at the very beginning people say, you know, I'm really excited for you that you're trying this thing out, right? And I noticed that everyone was very happy for me to try because I temporarily decreased my status. I actually became worse than them during that period of time. And then as soon as I achieved a level of success, which I then realized that their happiness for me was proportional to where they were on the ladder relative to me. And so as soon as I passed some people, then they stopped being happy and then they start, you know, saying bad things, right? And the people who were still always ahead were still like, "Keep it up. Keep it up. " And there's still people who have been that way my whole life. And I just wonder if and when I pass them, will they flip? I don't know. But also to the same degree, it was the it was after you start the race when you're in the thick of it because you'll quickly pass the people who've done nothing. But then you have this long period of time where you don't catch up to the people who've been doing it for a long time. And that's the part where it's very lonely because you don't have your initial posy. You have to leave them at some point. Um, but then you don't get to the new group that's, you know, way ahead and actually has some proof behind them that you can actually like sit at the table. And so like today I have, if I were to do something, I have tons of support, but I don't really need the support now. I need I needed it in the middle, right? In the many years that like no one knew who Alexi was. And that's that's the hard part. And I think it's the story that Morgan Hassel tells, which is that you just don't know how it's going to finish. And that's what makes it hard is the uncertainty of like what if I give up everything that I've done in my life for nothing and then all of a sudden if I knew that then I wouldn't be willing to make this trade. But in retrospect when you do have the thing you're like of course I was like if I knew that this was going to happen I'd be I would happily make the trade. — But you don't know. And so you're just putting the money down and they're rolling it. But you get to find out if you hit black five years from now. It's why dealing with uncertainty is such a meta skill and it's one that I to be honest really suck at. I'm very not good at dealing with uncertainty. My uh required line of assurance in order for me to commit to a decision is incredibly high. Which is why I've basically never failed at anything that I've done. M all of the stuff that I've done a string of incredibly slow but very reliable successes is just because my required number of uh sort of justification points is very high. And you know in retrospect it might look like it was a risk but it's like dude I took so long to [ __ ] make this decision. On the friend point, it's a painful realization that the small number of good friends want you to win in case you take them with you. And the large number of bad friends are scared of you winning in case you leave them behind. The best way to know who a real friend is how they react when you win. And when that happens, you'll realize how few real friends you really have. — Mhm. — Many people were like, "Sure. " Like, "Good luck with that. " But I knew that they just weren't really rooting for me. They were rooting for me to fail. They're rooting for me the wrong way. One of my rules is you should only take advice from people whose dreams for your life are bigger than yours are

which is a very small number of people. Sometimes it's your parents. Sometimes your parents really do have bigger dreams for you than you do. The people who are closest to you in the beginning, if they're like true, like actual friends, then you recognize that because they actually want you to win. And that's amazing. A lot of people don't have that. And so what I have felt at least for me was that when you're a little ahead is where the friction is when you blow them out of the water and there's no question like it's beyond reproach. They will do one of two things. They will either be really happy for you or they'll change the game that they're beating you at. That's great, but I'm in better shape. That's great, but my marriage is better, right? Like or whatever, you know, whatever game that they choose to play. People who doubt you will be right most of the time. And this further increases your uncertainty about the path that you're choosing to take. But on a long enough time horizon, most people who don't bet are guaranteed to lose. And so they get to win at being right more times than you right. But what that equation doesn't take into consideration is intensity, which is can I be so right one time that it makes all of the times that I was wrong irrelevant? And in the nature of life, the answer is yes, almost a resounding yes for just about every domain. Like everyone can say that every person you've ever dated has sucked and they could predict that you're going to break up until you find the person that you're going to marry. And in that moment, whoing cares about the other 90 people that you went on dates with that everybody said was a bad idea or that you have a bad picker or you don't have a good taste. It's like, well, you're not marrying them. I date in a way that's different than you would prefer. Great. But I did end up finding this thing. I the you know, the first thing that I ever did was, you know, an online fitness thing and it kind of worked and then I did my first gym started all these other side projects. I got distracted and I didn't know. And the downside risk is significantly smaller and more frequent. It's both. You're more likely to lose and it's more likely to happen more times. It's just that upside is uncapped. And so, and I think about this one a lot. So, there's the story of the guy. Do you know the guy who uh wrote Jingle Bells? — No. So, — I didn't even know that was I thought it was like Happy Birthday. I thought he was just gifted to humanity when we started. — So, there's this guy. He's a it's he has the most tragic life you can imagine. Just like did nothing but failed was a failed everything and his entire life was nothing. He just happened to write this small thing called Jingle Bells and it has become you know the number one song at Christmas time like maybe globally and I think about that life where it's like what if I failed at everything but then I have one thing that actually makes a permanent impact. I was like, would I trade that life for Aristotle's good life where I amount to nothing but the whole time was good? And this is just one of my internal battles where I think with myself that I have no answer for to be clear. But when I'm thinking through the periods where things suck, I'm like, well, maybe I'll get a jingle bells out of this. — And maybe it'll just take 20 years longer than I thought. — So not taking the shot is like saying, "Life, I don't want to scratch off this lottery ticket, but the lottery ticket's free. Why would you not scratch it off and try it? Whatever reasons that we usually give ourselves in the beginning for why we can't achieve something, you can almost always find not only just someone, but someone who's achieved worldass levels of success with worse conditions than you currently have, which then means it's absolutely possible. And then the only thing that it takes to get there is work.