Confronting The $100,000,000 Man | Why He’s Giving It All Away

welcome back again to the iced coffee hour with graham jack and alex where we will talk about life liberty and the pursuit of happiness and all things awesome i love that thank you so much for making the time for us no are you bad thanks for having me back again yeah so this is unusual but we had you on what was it two weeks ago yeah two weeks ago we've never had a guest so requested before ever everyone was asking me when are you gonna get alex back on the podcast when is he coming back on to the point where you can't ignore it anymore we have to get you back on this has never happened this quickly i was wildly insecure about making the second one because i was like i will probably reel something up in some way we did set expectations high oh yeah i was like i want to reset the expeditions for everybody who's watching or who's watching you know who watched the first one is now watching the second one it's got to be worse right some words we're going to put set them all the way down at the bottom so that we just have room for a pleasant surprise there we go that's good so for the so for those who have not seen the first episode give us a bit of a backstory on who you are what you do and your 100 million dollar business so um i uh i started i was a major consultant right out of college didn't enjoy that questioned my life because i was like i don't really think this is enjoyable for me is this all there is i had my like rock top moment um and so i sold everything i had packed my car drove to california because that was the lane of opportunity as i saw it and i was like i'm gonna do fitness which was totally different than defense contracting uh for the government um talked to a bunch of people was able to find somebody who could be like a mentor for me um stayed with him for three months working every hour of the day uh to learn the business started my own gym couldn't afford two rents slept on the floor for the first nine months built that one up and then i opened up my second location 15 months in um just off the cash flow from the first one and every six months thereafter i opened a new location until i had six i sold those and started doing gym turnarounds um so we'd fly around to gyms and just like do all the stuff that i had learned at my locations and we would fill them up in 30 days and that was kind of our our big offers like i'll fill your gym in 30 days and you don't have to pay me anything which was as you can imagine pretty compelling and a lot of gyms took me up on it and i had more demand than i had ability to service it so we got up to doing eight gym turnarounds a month um but logistically it was very difficult and i had a lot of risk that i was getting exposed to for running all the cash for all of these locations and then a couple of i would say like bad eggs ended up happening which it doesn't take a lot of bad eggs to just ruin the margin in the business and so it was just very logistically difficult and so we almost got out of the gym business altogether but as a as a matter of chance i was calling the eight gyms that were supposed to launch the next month and told them that i wasn't gonna be in the business anymore and i was just selling my secrets because we were just gonna do weight loss direct to consumer and um and it was working and so they were like dude i need this like if i don't have this my gym's going to go under i just refinanced my house like this this has to this has to happen and so i said you know what i will tell you how to do everything but i'm not flying out there to save you if you can't sound they're like no that's fine and so i picked the number um they're like how much so i picked the highest number i could possibly think of at the time which was six thousand dollars um and they said sure and i just remember like looking at the phone to be like holy sh like did that just happen and um i called the next guy same conversation how much eight grand same conversation next guy how much 10 grand and i did like sixty thousand dollars in sales in one day in my mind like my entire world changed and that's when we switched from doing a done for you turn around model to a done with you licensing model and that was like it was this tiny little half step and i as a corollary for the audience i think it's kind of interesting because if you think about the actual skill set that that i had during the period of time i had the same skill set i knew how to market i knew to sell i knew how to build a team and in opportunity vehicle number one i was running and scaling gyms and that was reasonably profitable uh but it was not like i wasn't you know hood rich the the second version of that same bucket of skills became doing turnarounds for other people's gym so flying out using those skills at separate locations made more money doing that a few hundred thousand dollars a month at that point and then went from there to packaging all of those system skills processes etc for lots of gym owners so my incremental cost per unit sold was basically zero and so that and the value of the thing that i was selling was significantly higher and so i was going up in leverage on the opportunities that i was pursuing and with each of those jumps i added a zero to my monthly income and so once we got into the licensing business that's when we started taking home a million a month plus every single month uh for years and so i always just think it's interesting to look at like the same skill set by and large but just wrapped in a different opportunity vehicle yields outsized returns and that was i think part of the conversation we're at in the last call our last podcast was just how can we think of the highest leverage opportunity vehicle with the skills and the in the audience and the media that you have and so anyways did the licensing business then we started a supplement business to sell through the distribution base we ended up licensing about 4 500 facilities licensed the model and then in 2020 or 2019 we started our software company and then in 2021 we ended up selling a majority stake of the supplement company and the licensing company to apg which is private equity group out of san francisco um at 46.2 million dollar evaluation i still two-thirds and then for the software company i'm under nda for the uh for the finances around it but i can say that the trailing 12 once was 12 million for that business so that's uh that leaves us just about where we're at now which is now we run a private equity uh fund which is private equity on one side venture capital on the third circle and then start the second three circle and the third circle would be management consulting so it's kind of at the intersection of those three things and so we specialize in e-learning service licensing coaching type businesses because that's something that i'm just particularly passionate about is that i think that education is the only way that we can get out of we can move forward and so i think that the education system overall is becoming increasingly fragmented just like media has become fragmented into these these silos these verticals um and it's much less about the generalist education and much more about the niche down education and so we try i believe i want to find the best you know mechanic and how he teaches mechanics to run better shops i want to find the best salon owner so she can help salon owners run better salon clinics i want to find the best lawn care guy and how he can package and sell his ability to help other people who do lawn care because it's so much more practical if you know you're going to go to lawn care there's no college for that and there should be and so that's kind of our investment thesis for acquisition.com and that's what we do now in the portfolio does right now over 100 million a year well education starts really early yeah how would you change that right now with let's say this the current schooling system which seems to teach you kind of how to stay in line how to think like everybody else uh get your homework done on time you got to show up at it you know 8 a.m school ends at 3. do you think that's a good model i mean obviously you're dating me no but tell me your thoughts on that um i think so i've two two broad broad statements is i think the purpose of education is teach people how to think rather than how to memorize and especially now with technology that we have if if you can pass a test with having an iphone with you then in my opinion the test was poorly designed because it's not going to and then we have to rewind into like what is the purpose of education right education the education system overall is the the product of that is people who can add value to society right that's the that's the product of the education system the raw units are humans the out the output of the system is people who can add value to society okay cool so if that's the if that's the system then there's a lot of leeway there in terms of how we can get there i think the the system that we have set up does is is inherited from the factory worker you know when it was being designed versus now now i think we need a lot more problem solving skills than we did back then a lot more dynamic thinking processes um or sorry divergent thinking processes and if you're not familiar this is a fun little exercise so there's what school teaches right now is convergent thinking and so that means that there's uh multiple variables and one correct answer right and so it's like 1 plus 1 equals 2. there's only one correct answer and now they're even telling you there's only one way to find the answer and if you don't find it the way they want you to find it then it's also wrong which is ridiculous but anyways divergent thinking is when you have multiple variables but multiple correct answers which is like how many different ways can you use a brick and what's interesting about that is that you can also have multiple right answers and some answers that are more right than others which becomes very difficult to grade but also how the real world works and we're rewarded based on how right our youtube video really is right or how right our article is or how right our product is and how we can solve problems using more creative methods than trying to converge on a single answer because if it's a convergent thinking process for the most part it's already been kind of automated and everyone can do it right you get paid for what you can think of in the creative box of like what and what are other people not thinking of um and so i think that more of the education system should be around divergent thinking uh and divergent problem solving do you think that's ever gonna happen no mostly just because of the power dynamics that exist and like if you've ever saw the um the documentary waiting for superman i haven't seen it it was one of the only movies that i've cried during because it was just the education system and it was just showing how there are so many impediments to it getting fixed it's not just one party like you've got the teachers unions you've got the the funding for the schools you've got like there's all of these things that are almost all diametrically opposed to one another and then the only people really suffer the kids and then ultimately the country so anyways i do think that the the solution is i think the way that it'll have to get solved is that people there is an alternative schooling system that gets developed that because of technology naval robicon said this but technology democratizes consumption and consolidates production which means the if you're the best in the world you get to do it for everyone right which a lot of people don't like from a capitalist perspective but that's also silly because i feel like that's just pareto at work but why would you not want the best math teacher teaching everyone math like it makes sense and because there's zero cost of of duplication and now everyone's kind of understands how zoom works and how like we can continue to using life virtually like there's really no reason to have now it gets scary because teachers unions and what are all these people going to do for work and all that stuff but like the value just like the switchboards for when there used to be girls who would switch for telephones they're like what are we going to do and you know technology automates that there will be other like web 3 is just blowing up there will there be jobs as we solve new problems we'll create new ones yeah right and so to say like we have to keep something that doesn't make sense doesn't provide value to the system for the sake of it doesn't make sense to me and so i think that it would probably have to be a new architecture where the best people teach and then kids learn probably at their own pace and the the testing is would probably have to change in order for it to be more real world and if we wanted it to be real world then i think you need to match conditions which is real world you have your phone like now take the test yeah don't you think that like the the schooling system would need to be somewhat localized though like you can't have one person teaching over too big of a like a imagine one person controlling everyone's math like if you if you have one math teacher you know that's teaching everyone in in the country don't you think that there's like an advantage to having like because each little part in each country has and it doesn't have to be one person it's more like it could be one system you'd be like that's that's more semantics you know what i mean and if the best person is more localized by the way they speak or whatever then sure but i mean we're sitting next to graham who's got a massive personal finance channel and so if you're the best at personal finance then more people will go to you so like yeah that makes sense yeah it does your schooling system does remind me uh i completely forgot about jack i don't think you know about this so in kindergarten i had issues and in fact my parents explains a lot my parents pulled me out of the school because uh after after recess they wanted all the kids to line up in order on this yellow line that led up to the front door and so all the kids were supposed to line up on that line the bell was ringing we all had to walk in one by one and i didn't want to stand on that line and the teachers got really upset at me because i didn't stand on the line or why wouldn't you want to stand on it i i don't remember i think at the point i just didn't see i thought it was stupid or like i just didn't get why i needed to stand on the line i didn't like standing on the line and my parents pulled me out mid-year kindergarten to go to uh an alternative school and that's the school that didn't have any grades uh they had no assigned seating it was basically a big room and then and this continued by the way so this school went until eighth grade but no grades it was either you got a check a check plus or a check minus on any assignments that maybe and these assignments were kind of like bs anyway they're like you know draw something or like tell us to share something that you're excited about but i loved it and that was it's amazing but but that's what that what it really helped me because i hated like i hated homework i hated tess i didn't like any of it and i just wanted to to do my thing but even being in kindergarten yeah you were the same person as you are today yeah it's like you only do what you want to do when you want to do it and that's incredible that it's like traced all the way back yeah i would say that i was very different when i was younger because it was very much like if i wasn't on the yellow line i'd be like why weren't you on the yellow line like right right right and then that would be that that would be the end of that conversation and i would be on the other line the next morning and so i you know it's it's great parenting too that they that's true let you do your thing that is very true but yeah but i do think that really helps to have something that's that's different that's interesting to me because because you were an academic right and if you could go back in time do you think you would have spent so much time trying to do so well in school yes because i think if something's worth doing it's worth doing well um and that's more of like a personal belief was school worth doing though i think that it depends on what age because if you're learning to work hard and if you're like learning what hard work is then i think that is a valuable lesson um if we're like the actual subject matter you know more or less irrelevant i think that once people understand math and reading then that's that's pretty much what you need to go and learn the world so that's you know i if i were to like make recommendations to college students i would say be a math and english double major because that's everything you need for life much more so than the other stuff right but even with math classes shouldn't they be teaching you how to use the iphone app on like how to do math and like here's an iphone we all get iphones let's add subtract here's how you could do this use a more complicated calculator i think that there's an element to it that should be there um having a baseline of intelligence for math i think is useful i had to do so i used to be really bad at math or at least i identified with being bad at math and it was until my mid-20s where i decided i wasn't going to be bad at math anymore and so i actually stopped using a calculator which would make it seem like i'm contradicting my point and only did mental math for like a number of years and like calculated the tip you know on the bill with mental math and i would try and you know do all the marketing metrics and all the sales metrics just in my head and then i would i would still use the calculator to check myself and then you get better and better and better at it and so i think there's like there's an essence of having like a semblance of like being directionally correct so that you can make kind of large quick decisions uh but in terms of like exact calculations the calculator does make more sense also just using excel for most people's life is probably even better than learning a calculator like i bought a book in excel when i was in college and i was like why are we not learning this like every single job you need to learn how to use excel i agree it personally like there's so many uses for it and i had to learn how to do all the it was just a book of the equations like you know equals sum and i was like oh that's how you do that like i had no idea and so i think those would be the more useful things but i mean a lot of people know that there's problems with the education system but you know they say you you i i hear i forget i see i remember i do and i understand so that's confucius and so i think if there were more like if i were to create a school around a skill the school would be doing the skill so if i wanted to teach sales like they'd be selling they wouldn't be learning sales theory and so i think that there needs to be more application of the stuff to what people are going to use in the real world it's just so difficult to change curriculum so it has i think it's going to have to be an alternative path that's really flexible that continues and they can't do the same thing the old old one did which is like this is now the way things are because then it'll get outdated too so there has to be a built-in kind of innovation wheel for not just adding but also subtracting what things are no longer useful because i think that's what people have more fear of they just want to keep adding and adding adding but they don't also just like say this isn't really high utility if we could start all over again we include this course where we include this method probably not so let's just let it go yeah it's too bad that you couldn't create some sort of curriculum like that though like like a practical just a two-year thing that uh you know might be 10 grand or something like that i don't know how much you would charge for that but for two years just practical life skills selling excel i think photoshop would be yeah would be on that uh social media how to how to make a good tick tock how to keep retention you know how to send an email yeah that's that's a big one how to message people yeah it's because fundamentally this is just how to communicate how to human right right right that's what it is um and yeah and we have to learn a lot of these things on our own and there is the alternative education industry which you know your you have a course and like there's there's you could you depend on how you look at it like a franchise is an education system it's just packaged differently and so like there's lots of different ways of skinning the education game um but i think alternative is the way that is going to like is the only way that i think it will it it'll emerge how would you reach out to somebody because that's an interesting topic how do you get someone else's attention like let's say uh jeff bezos elon musk like someone who's like typically out of reach for most people how would you go about teaching somebody to to have access to that person or even just get their attention it would be hard i mean those are really extreme examples because those guys have everything you know and they probably have a lot of people reaching out to them so i think the way to get there would be to have to go through like from the heart so it's just continuing to network to to try and find out information that are that's not as public about the things that they like is anything that is publicly known that other people have already like gotten him his favorite jersey to his fa you know like those are those are the obvious ones but it's the less obvious ones and then trying to figure out a way that that would get just like you're just trying to get noticed and they're like huh and to be fair it would still be hard because i mean they are the richest men in the world like the amount of money they have is is hard to comprehend right and so like there's no there's no monetary value that can be delivered to them right and there's really no status value that can be delivered them so it's like how do i add value to someone's life and so i think that if i were this is me just thinking a lot if i try to add value or get gain access to somebody like that it would have to be from the personal side like those people have everything material they could possibly want and so it would have to be something immaterial like not in intangible that i think would would would hit the radar but first we have to thank our sponsor storyblocks jack where have you been all week i haven't seen you alex i've been editing i mean you edit too i'm sure you understand yeah jack but i use storyblocks storyblocks is a subscription service that gives you instant access to millions of high quality royalty free hd and 4k footage templates images and sound effects just like this one ever since i started using storyblocks my edits have gotten way better and it takes significantly less time to do them i've been able to reinvest the time that i've saved with storyblocks back into my creative vision so that i can create things that i'm truly proud of whether you're part of a large media company or you're just trying to jump start your next creative passion project storyblocks is the perfect solution for you with their flexible and scalable subscription plans you can start creating content with the tools you need without having to worry about a budget plus their unlimited all-access plan lets you download unlimited assets from all three of their libraries creative burnout is a thing and cutting out wasted time can help you find that inspiration again take it from us we've been subscribed to storyblocks for about a year now and we've noticed a significant difference in our work quality ever since so learn how to take your editing to the next level when you visit storyblocks.com ich that's storyblocks.com ich or click the link down below in the description thank you so much storyblocks and back to the podcast yeah with elon musk i think it's privacy this reminds me of the the twitter the twitter yeah twitter who is yeah tracking his jets got his attention got him to dm but now he's tracking the uh with the yachts yeah well i thought he was doing the the russia liking that yeah yeah that's yeah i have no idea okay i try not to pay attention to the news all right yeah i know this is a kid how old was he 15 16. he was like in high school yeah 16 years old and he got elon musk's attention because he was tracking his private jet yeah and he would post the coordinates on twitter be like his jet went from this location to this location and then people could speculate from there well why is he going to this part in texas a lot is there maybe something there that they're building yeah uh so then elon musk dm'd him and basically just said like hey would you mind taking us down like you know privacy is important to me yeah and then the kid said no and elon musk offered him five thousand dollars and then the kid countered back fifty thousand dollars and then elon musk said you know what uh like i'd rather you know i'd rather not pay for something like this or something like that or he just didn't respond which at that point sets up the narrative that people could just track him and he'll pay them off which i think is probably better to not engage with that it's blackmail it's a version of blackmail exactly so um but now that that same kid is tracking uh russian yachts weird yeah but he's getting a lot but he's getting a lot of attention for it well i think it's important to mention that he's not just tracking them and posting tweets i mean he's developing software to do this automatically at 16 years old so he's a bright kid yeah so he's getting a lot of attention from that i see him every few days now on the the headline of like cnbc cnn you know what's the general idea of them do people like them or they're not uh with the elon musk it was 50 50. some people were really for it and some people were really against it and they thought it was creepy and invasion of privacy but look up to tracking russian yachts it seems like everyone is on not everyone but a lot of people are on his side on that one and they think that he's doing a service yeah but huh so you mentioned like during that that you don't pay attention to news at all no why not i can't control anything so like there's no to me there's no added value like my life does not improve as a result of news at all it does get worse though and so for me like eliminating news is just eliminating a negative it's like do i want to have cortisol today sure let me check the news like you know i could go for more stress do you want some stress let's go check the news because like i think um i can't remember i heard this quote but it was uh the job of the news is to make everyone's problem your problem and so uh i have this that's on my phone but uh a journalist made this thing of like what makes something newsworthy and so it's basically ways that they try and manipulate news in order to make it more interesting so it's like how do we make something odd or unusual or bizarre how do we make something more local to people how do we make it more recent you know like recency is a component of newsworthiness and there was four other ones i can't remember but it was just like there's a formula for what creates news and i don't want to be the product for news because news is is what a lot of people don't know is like news stations are private so like they're just like hbo like think like they're just like hbo they have programming and people show up for their shows and they have commercials which is how they make money and so like their intention is to keep attention not to you know disseminate truth right that's not the goal because the thing is is like the really true stuff is not interesting and this and will fail compared to a sensationalized news like it's just dollars dollars and cents so they have to make it and that's just the nature of the business and i understand that i'm not poo pooing it but i don't necessarily need to subscribe to it you know i mean like people want to give their attention to it so then there will be somebody who will sell those eyeballs to advertisers but their intention is not to educate me their intention is to make the world's problems my problem and i have enough problems and so i don't need to add more that are irrelevant to me to my list yeah so on the scale of understanding what's going on in the world would you say you're closer to like a one out of ten like no nothing probably a two okay probably a two what would you say you are graham oh gosh probably an eight and a half to a nine wow yeah i'm probably a four you're a four yeah i'm super out of touch as well yeah really yeah see i spend all day reading the news and i see everything that well stock market or economy related news so i see everything that goes on but also worldwide events have a big impact on that so i have to understand those events to be able to um summarize that information if i need to so yeah so news is something for for years now i've i've read everything i'd like to be able to to read that so you could uh sell the eyeballs because that's exactly and i i've i'm continuing to move in this direction of like an anti-information diet um but like when i work now i realize that i can just if i just remove my phone altogether from the room um my level of focus just just goes it feels like i'm on drugs uh because and what's crazy though is that especially if you have so now i just take my phone when i leave but like when i'm at home it's not with me because anything that's work related i have slack and anything and unfortunately i feel like the vast majority of like the text messages that i get um are usually requests there are things that people want from me want me to meet want me to talk want me to whatever and so it ends i end up just getting stressed from seeing all the messages um and so i may end up just changing my number again but like which i do every so often but but just putting it away when i go to sit down on my computer i still feel like that ghost itch of like i want to reach for my phone i like there was a oh there's a pause point here for like a split second let me grab my phone just for that dopamine and so like i try to not do that and media sources you know social media and news in general i don't consume any formal news the only news i get is as i'm posting stuff on social media so that i can get it out but i'm currently trying to figure out a like a desktop version of that so i can just plan it so i don't have to consume it's just really hard you know what i mean yeah at least for me and like i notice if i start my day consuming some social media like my i'm just not as sharp you know what i mean i feel like i'm a little bit foggier and i think it's just like i'm like it's like you get overstimulated and then everything else seems less interesting um by comparing you know by contrast so just eliminating it overall uh has been very very helpful when you start doing that um when my new executive assistant came in that i was talking about last night yeah so this is crazy jack okay so uh alex is telling me if you want to coordinate to go to dinner you just text this number and i'm like all right so i text the number and she's like this time this date does that work with you it's like yeah that works and she's like all right you're gonna go to this place at this time i was like uh okay and i asked alex i said hey do you do you know where you're going he's like no she just tells me where to show up it's great i'm like how did you pick this place she knows my preferences yeah yes that's right so he doesn't know where he's showing up but do you know who you're who you're meeting most of the time yeah she'll give you she'll like so so do you want to go to dinner with graham and you're like no or yeah um and then she's like i'll pick out a time schedule how crazy is that that's he doesn't even know where he's going like i would want to know like this place or this place or whatever what are the preferences no it's just those are all these micro decisions that you have to make that are like big picture or relevant you know what i mean like what restaurant we're going to go to well what time are you like she knows that on weeknights i want to be done by axe type so that i can get the sleep that i want and so she just planned because like if you think about all the micro decisions you have and you think about them ahead of time you already have a decision-making process you just haven't like spoken it out loud like for layla and if we're going on commercial flights here's a hack um if you go two aisle seats that are on either side you both get aisle seats you get to be next to each other but you rather than having that one person who gets the middle seat that has to like trade off two aisle seats works great right and so she knows that that's our preference and so she will always go and try and find two aisle seats that are close to each other and if those aren't available what's the backup what's the decision-making process so it's like you outline all of those things but you do it for everything so it's like if we're at an event what type of you know food are you gonna request i'm always gonna probably add the chicken dish i want them to double the chicken and i'd probably want some extra carbs on the side cool so she knows that so when i go to events there's like here's your lunch i'm like great i don't have to ask for it she already knows the preferences are and so the idea um and it took me a really long time to understand this because i have i have gone through it's actually something that i was like really insecure about um i've gone through eight executive assistants wow yeah um why uh i mean there's two to tango right partially me partially them just being real um but i think that a lot of i mean fundamentally it's my fault because i didn't know what i was looking for right and so if you don't know what you're looking for it's very hard to find it and so that's why this time it's been so great for me because she came in and she was a you know 20-year veteran executive assistant she's like this is how this is going to go i was like yes this is what i like i knew within a day i was like this is going to work and every other one was like maybe it'll get better you know like maybe they'll come around like i was like rooting for them but like it wasn't you know great but this one day one i knew and so the difference is a true executive assistant is almost like a time coach it's almost like a partner with you where you're both working to optimize you right so it's not like a administrative assistant which is different which is just like i will i will handle your scheduling and you know answer the phone and respond to emails and things like that but like a true executive assistant is somebody who's almost like a partner at the executive level who understands business at a very high level um can make business decisions on your behalf knows your like personal preferences things like that but for me it's very much like a time coach so when i wake up every minute of my day is planned and if i let's say i finish a task that's supposed to take me you know 40 minutes and it takes me 22 i'd be like money i've got 18 minutes what do i do and she's like oh i'll pull this from tomorrow and i'll slide this in and i'll see if i can move this to that and so that and like i had a handful of preferences i was like no white space so for me all my calendar i just want any white space because i just wanted like from the time i start the time i end i just want it to be going and so by doing it that way though it's just like i am just working on whatever's in front of me and she slides things in and i just and i'm just in communication with her of like and hey this person wants to do something i just send it to her and then she goes and talks and says okay dude you know and i get a lot of podcast requests and things like that and so you know rather than me having the awkward like hey like i get 10 of these a day like can you just give us some stats and what's your audience and things like that it's like that entire process she can just handle and i don't have to go like look at their profile see what like she she knows what my decision-making criteria is for all of those things and what's a yes and wants to know and so it just allows me to outsource more and more and more of the decisions that are lower value-add to portfolio company growth so that i can just purely focus on the things that have the highest leverage has she ever scheduled something that you've disagreed with like let's say let's say this podcast is an example uh where she would schedule you on something like that you're like you know i don't want to do that though um she probably will she hasn't yet but i mean if she did i would say like here like we have to update some decision criteria like in this instance this is why i wouldn't and then i mean i wouldn't be upset because if it i would only be not upset but i would only be maybe disappointed or whatever or frustrated or annoyed if the decision criteria that we had laid out was somehow not followed but if someone if if i hadn't i have to if i have to add to it then that's just like an opportunity to make the thing better so like that's i wouldn't be upset about something like got it how did you find her um is there an agency we'd actually known each other for a long time right um yeah we'd known each other for a long time she was an executive assistant of a really good friend of mine for eight years um and then as their company grew and like you know organization shifted around um it made more sense for her to pursue a different opportunity and whatnot and so um we'd known each other already and so like i was always like i need i need the her for me um and and then it just so happened it ended up being her i'm curious if you could say about how much yeah you're gonna ask to me that's what i was thinking yeah yeah that's what we're all thinking there's no way it's less than i'm we should take a guess i'm gonna say probably a hundred and you don't have to say exactly but yeah i'll say 70. no i'm 95. say 120. yeah you need to pay someone well yeah like if you want somebody who has business acumen right and who can true like if i can say hey i want you to you know i wanna i wanna make some t-shirts for us and like can you make some backpacks and by the way can you figure out why the book is not on amazon prime like why is it not why don't i have the little prime thing can you just figure that out you want somebody who can like go and just take that directive and just solve it like sometimes that's harder to find and for me i also want to pay for experience so even if there was two people that were who might have equal ability i will usually pay more for the experience because i don't want to have to have this person who's less experienced learn those lessons on my clock i'd rather come with the solutions pre-loaded so that's why i'm willing to pay more do you fly business or do you fly a couple we fly private mostly just being real economy do you do the uber black or uber like the fancy ones uber uber oh you mean like yeah [Music] yeah wow i have two people wait outside my house they carry me everywhere um yeah it's it's one of those like i it's almost i'm embarrassed to say but it's like it's there's a handful of things that are really expensive and i feel like they are worth it and i try and spend the money that we have because it's the only way that money has utility for me rather than just making more money which then like for what point so if i have the opportunity to consume benefit for money i try and use it and so the speed and convenience that i get from private versus commercial is pretty significant and like short flights are like five grand so it's not like you know what i mean if you're going with somebody else it's not a huge deal you know the longer flights if you're going cross-country it's like a 50 000 flight but you know it just depends on on what you're what you're looking for so i would say shorter flights um we tend to fly private um longer flights i'm also like more weary of small planes so i also i will just you know fly first class on on the commercial let's talk a little bit more about time management because it seems like you can get a lot of stuff done in a very small frame of time so like let's let's walk us through your day you you mentioned on the last podcast you wake up extremely early yeah and just and just for the audience like it's not because i have like some like superhuman discipline i just think i think i just fall i get tired early so like if you fall asleep at nine or ten like you wake up at four or five like it's not it's not like a superhero thing you know it's been seven hours like i can wake up now um so i don't so i'll tell you a couple things so number one is i don't have a wake-up alarm i have a go to bed alarm which is like hey you should be winding down by now i don't even really need to do it anymore because i've just been doing it for such a long time but when i started it i wanted to set myself a go to bed alarm so again about around the same time i usually know what i'm going to do the next day before i go to bed that's kind of how i clear my mental plate and i do think and i know this sounds kind of weird in woo-woo but like i think that overnight my subconscious works on some of the problems because i feel like i always wake up with like really interesting solutions in the morning to some of the problems i went to bed with and so it just gives me like great momentum to start my day um but when we when we wake up my wife and i wake up about the same time we usually have coffee in the morning together that's kind of like our 30 minutes to just like hang out chill watch the sun rise it's usually between four and five wow um so we hang out then watch the sun uh if the if in that time right you know time price and the sun is coming up if it's not then we don't watch it but if we can we do um and then uh and then from there uh i go to my office and i start working and uh she does her own thing and then we meet again for lunch and uh then i go back to work and then that's my day and then you cut it off at a at a specific hour like four-ish four it's not a specific hour it's like you know if i've got if i've got a call uh you know usually my calls end around four-ish do you work really hard at four to basically switch off like from work mode into like personal mode where it's just like a light switch or still open like if something comes up with work wise you're gonna handle it yeah i don't have like i so it's i'm just trying to say this the right way i don't get the same level of stress that i used to from work and i feel like i've i've worked i've worked a lot on that side of like not being stressed by work and i think a big part of that was realizing like last year that i don't have to work like at all at all and so kind of confronting that and then realizing that i'm choosing to do this kind of relieved me of the the stress that was surrounding and i'm like if you don't like this like basically like stop complaining to yourself like you're choosing to do this and you have no reason like there's no point in you doing this and so not having the stress around it has decreased um like a lot any kind of negative stuff associated with it and so you know i'll stop taking calls at four but if someone slacks me i was like but i usually i don't i would say i delineate that from like i'm not gonna sit down at the computer um but i don't have like hard and fast rules if there's something that i want to do i'll do it yeah but how do you mentally switch off from work mode at that hour because for me i find it very difficult if i'm focusing i ca i can't take a lunch let's just say i even when i wake up i can't do just like a 30 minutes just kind of do nothing i have to immediately start once i start i continue that all day if i have a break it throws me off but even when i stop sometimes i can't that switch is still on so i'm always in my head just like thinking you're like eating and you're like don't talk to me too much i really want to keep yeah and and sometimes it's like you know it's i won't even have my phone i'll just be thinking i'll just just like that quiet space totally yeah so i split my day so i should probably give more detail so i split my day between kind of high leverage work which is like me doing stuff and then uh me communicating with companies which is usually the afternoon so until you know noon so basically you know four or five until noon is when i get all of my work done so that's when i if i want to build presentations or if i make content or if i want to write the book or you know the things that i do that are like one of the companies wants to whatever it doesn't matter i'll write down my thoughts or review stuff in the morning and then the afternoon is when i do like my communication with people because for me like i want to be for me i like some people function really well late at night i don't i'm much better like super early in the morning and that's where i get my highest leverage on my time and so in the afternoons when i don't need that creative juice i can still be super effective on meetings i just i'm not thinking like how do i say this framework differently like which is a kind of abstract concept and more difficult so i understand what you're saying but my cutoff my cutoff for like when i stop quote working is at noon it's actually when i have lunch is usually when i'm done with my my what i would consider deep work for the day and that's probably just because the difference in the nature of the work okay and then after 4 or 5 p.m once you shut everything off work-wise or try to uh like how do you spend your time do you just like relax with them so we actually do we do go out to dinner a lot a lot a lot every night actually every time yeah the guy at mastros like welcome back we see you all the time like joking around yeah wow what's your favorite what are your favorite restaurants and what's your food budget like i mean maybe you have no idea so we i mean it's it's aggressive um it's a lot what a word yeah i mean very often it's aggressive just like realistically um we probably spend between 12 and 15 000 a month on going out to eat would you say that there's like a return on that because you can relax so much that you can like cycle that back into i'm like somewhat embarrassed by this um but it's so it was i think we talked about this last time is that like again like if you could pay a dollar to go out would you go out right so yeah i would pay a dollar to go to masters every night rather than staying in um and so for us because we work all day at home like going out to get dinner is like the only real time i leave besides going to the gym and so like that's kind of why like going out to eat has serves multiple purposes not just the food it's much more so like we sit down we get to connect we you know we're served which is nice um it doesn't have to be five-star i would say like two-thirds of the time it's five-star restaurants and i think a big portion of that is because of the convenience of where i live so currently i'm running a place that's literally on the strip and so like i have 45 star restaurants like connected to the building so it's just it's like if there were chipotle downstairs i'd probably eat more chipotle but it just so happens that it's masters is the closest restaurant to me so i go there a lot so like massive difference in price but relative price not so much um and so yeah so we go out to dinner i mean pretty much since we got to vegas we've gone out to dinner not pretty much we've gone out every single night we've never cooked once um so that's so in terms of best places i think delilah is really good i think they have the best dessert uh in vegas everyone's curious uh delilah's exceptional um man so many of them are really good because they're just they're all the best places in vegas and vegas has some of the best dining in the world it's like it's just it's crazy but i will tell you this the uh the marginal utility of five-star dining decreases very quickly like at the same like you open the menu and it's the same stuff it's like you've got a carpaccio you've got a you know steak tartar you've got a tuna tartare you've got you know some shrimp cocktail of some sort there's some fancier bread selection that you can opt for for five dollars um and you've got a couple salads and then you know they've got their really expensive steaks they're medium expensive steaks and then they've got the seafood selection they've hand sea bass they're all the same but you don't look at prices at all no no i don't and you seem like you'd be a big tipper you're a big tipper yeah because it's interesting after our podcast last time unfortunately we talked about this off camera but you mentioned that you want to get rid of all of your money like when you die you're not going to pass it on to your kids or anything yeah there's a pledge or something for that well i mean there's the giving pledge but um you know we already donated earth like our states have already been set up to get be given away i haven't signed any pledges for it but yeah and it's i mean well i guess i guess we're going to get into it so so um it's just that like whenever i so i'll tell you a really interesting example that'll drive this home this is like this is recent so my uh my my great great grandfather was uh he was the he was a ruler in iran prior to uh the shah and so we were like i'm directly descendant from him now that sounds fancy it doesn't mean anything which is going to prove my point he had 400 children from those 400 children was my um was my great-grandfather he was one of 19. then there was my grandfather then there's my dad and then there's me right and so he was a ruler of a country so you talk about like wealth and status and everything right i actually can't even remember his name and so that's just five generations and so the idea that we have of like i want to like create a legacy it's like dude you're not making a legacy he was ruler of a country i can't even remember anyone related to him right and so you know if you if you do that enough times it just becomes humans right like the difference and that's and that that becomes a very like humanitarian perspective too because if you if you mix bloodlines enough times it's just people right you take your genes split them split them split them slowly you do it 10 times you know half to the 10th power is very very small number right in terms of what percentage of it is still you if you still have like pride in your biology being passed on which also gets into like having children versus not having children um because then that's a whole nother like interesting can of worms but as a result of that kind of thought process the point of leaving a legacy in like capital l legacy of like this is going to last past me doesn't really make sense because the people who i'm leaving it to will never know who i am and it will get divided so many times as well between all of those people would have to be such an insane amount of money which then would become a marginal amount of money once it's divided enough times so for both of those reasons wouldn't work but then on the on the close-knit basis of like well i want to pass it on to my direct descendants i just don't know many people who have been given lots of money who are better for it and so for that reason it doesn't really it doesn't seem very beneficial to anything to give it to anyone besides just giving it back to everybody else and it's also kind of nice because it kind of relieves you of this pressure because then it's just realizing it for what it is which is it's just a game right like what we're playing right now it's just a made up game to keep us occupied and so these are just the i mean i gave the the casino analogy at the end of the last podcast but that is how i see it it's like we're just accumulating chips they're fake and i can't take them with me so i'm just pushing them back to the middle of the table which is what they're gonna be done anyways it's just whether you say like they're only going to these players rather than all the players but like fast forward three more generations it is all the players and you don't know the people anyways yeah so like what does it really matter do you want kids you mentioned you mentioned uh you know the time commitment of a dog yeah yeah like well you know it's too much i can't imagine a a child yeah yeah i think i would probably have different feelings about a child than i would about a dog um and just so the audience can dislike me so this is my gift for everybody um we had a dog uh and um it just it just went to the bathroom like eight or ten times a day and i just it was it was too much it's like it's like it was too much source that couldn't i could have somebody did you care for the dog oh yeah i mean i actually really like animals and actually animals really like me um it's kind of weird bailey goes crazy when you get in the house but like it's it's like layla's like you have calming energy or whatever you know what i mean um i don't know but like animals do like me and i like them back like we're cool like we get we get along but um maybe it's because they know that i'm like i don't i don't need them you know like i was like we just you're not i'm an animal we're both just like doing our own thing like i don't need to take care of you you can take care of yourself i loved the cat i had we had a cat that died after two years um but cats were way easier so uh so dogs versus cats like i like the cat goldfish would work you know whatever um but anyways back to the kid thing um it's something i give a ton of i've given a ton of thought to um the pros for me of having a child are the human experience which is just like this is a part of the human experience that is unique and i think that would be interesting to go through that being said going to prison is also part of the human experience it doesn't necessarily mean that i should do it um you know i get sometimes people are like i think you and leila would make great parents and i'll say this and i say this not as a pejorative statement to parenting in general but i'm using an extreme example to illustrate a point which is like i could be and this is not disrespectful to people who may have this job man culture these days uh so if you know if i i could also probably be a really good gas station attendant right i could probably be really exceptional with that it doesn't mean that i should do it and so just because i might be an exceptional pair doesn't mean i should and i think that there's a and like in the in the cons column there's a tremendous amount of risk of risk personally that the person doesn't want to do what i want them to do right and so the fact that i still have this desire that i'm projecting on an unborn child is something that i'm not very comfortable with because like if i had one i would have a hard time saying that i want them to be their own person i'd want them to be who i want them to be and so maybe that is the learning of becoming a parent is that you unlearn the the expectations and projections that you have on the child but in terms of like my personal like fulfillment component i would rather like there's i mean i'm very obviously very torn about it um but there's so many guys that i've that that i've like mentored that have taken steps toward me like please help me with business please help me in these ways and i'm happy to and you know if i had to trade off i think we're talking about dinners last night but like the amount of time that a child takes right let's say it's i don't know four hours a day roughly but in terms like headspace and time spent with warren yeah i was actually trying to be really aggressive with four i'm being really honest i was being i was genuinely being like really aggressive with four um i would i would imagine a child would be like well i mean you're i'm gonna pay hell out that's that's like there's gonna be help fortunately yeah it's like helping the house i wouldn't mention it let's say let's say yeah okay so eight hours a day so full-time job right for the next 20 years if i had a full-time job in the next 20 years i could help a hundred thousand or a million people more than i could just two that just so happened to share my genetics that eventually would get diluted out to nothing is that how you base your decisions i mean off how many people you can get based on yeah really yeah i mean that's why like where like a lot of people want to have kids to give meaning to their lives right and as a corollary to this whenever i see a lot of people doing something i don't think oh that's a great idea i think oh that's a great path to mediocrity and again that's going to insult most people because most people do it so this again it doesn't have to just apply to children you can think about it for everything which is like if you're trying to not be in the majority because you don't want to be average then it means that you have to by definition not do what everyone else is doing and so when people are like i'm taking this action to have children i would assume that it's probably selfish because you can always count on people to be selfish it's not like humans only in this one instance are selfless right they're selfish because they want to look at it and be like it looks just like me that's why i love it you're just like me right i love you i love you right like like and i know like i'm aware of that right and so that's why i'm like i try and audit do i want to have kids just because i want to look at a version of myself you know what i mean but then i'm also going to project on this kid's life when he might want to be a ballet dancer or whatever and if there's anything wrong with being a ballet answer but if i'm going to spend eight hours it's just like i don't feel like i'm providing a lot of value you know what i mean and like in terms of but it sounds like you're thinking of it from an roi perspective gonna invest all this and i might not get a good roi compared to the guaranteed roi i could get eight hours a day over here of helping other people yeah yeah and it's really roi of like the world yeah more so than me particularly there was a brief moment where i um i like had an injury where i thought i was gonna be able to have kids um might not turn blacked and i was like oh it was fine but i was like very worried and so it was really interesting is that during that period of time before i got it looked at i just was like i'm not gonna be able to have kids like that's it right i'm i'm screwed and what was weird is that i ended up becoming almost i became so humanitarian in general like during that like it was like all of my legacy have kit like the the desire to pro-generate went from being specific to a child to general to everyone because like when you realize you can't have a child then you want to still pass it on and i think that's just like a human desire right of benefiting the tribe whatever but like you still had this desire and rather than being able to get my fulfillment out of out of one child doing that for me it's like i was forced to just be like well i have to just give to everybody and so i think that was that was actually a really transformative experience for me um and i think it's part of what has shaped a lot of like the thoughts around giving today in general i'm i'm a little confused and curious not saying this is wrong or anything and in fact i admire this but why is the like the thing that you hold to the most weight when you're making decisions how many people you can help that could be selfish in and of itself probably wow do you think being selfish is bad i i like to believe that most people generally want things that are good for everyone so if they pander to what they want themselves they're generally helping other people i'd agree with that but do you think being selfish is bad sometimes i think i think if it hurts somebody else then yes i i think if if if being selfish is at the detriment of of somebody else or if the net is bad for more people if it hurts more people than it serves you you also have to define but you know yeah i know right and you can't you can't objectively come back it becomes a circular argument of it's not about being selfish it's just hurting people is bad yes which is the thing which is irrelevant from the selfless action right right so then sure i think everyone you know many people would and that's bad in the little b sense rather than the big b sense if like the universe so anyways um but all that to say um i think people act in their own self-interest and that is and comma that's fine and we can expect them to do that and i act in my own self-interest as well and you're just naturally interested in helping people um i think i get some level of like fulfillment from it i do i mean that's why i like the books 99 cents the courses are free like you know and i plan on writing a bunch more books um i think i mean self it's selfish like i think i i think i feel good when i do it and so i do more of it i have an interesting question for you um so in the last podcast you mentioned that at one point in your life you were religious so what made you make that switch in your head from like going from religion because i think you said you were on like a one of those trips i i'm sorry i forget what they're called um what made you switch that in your head to go from you know this very very spiritual belief to like almost the complete opposite of like life is life we die we die you know a fact is fact nihilism as a whole what made that switch in your head or was it like a long process i mean it was a very long process it was five years um it was very very hard for me um and i think i yeah i will say this the amount of messages i got from people who are christian and muslim and other you know faith thinking that i attacked them on the last podcast like i don't know how i can make the you got messages yeah i mean yeah yeah just like yeah and i will say this again my statements are not an attack on your religion they are simply an expression of what conclusions i have come to and i'll say right now i'm wrong i'm wrong you're right everyone listening to you what you believe you're right that being said um for me i i was even going to at the time a christian therapist because i was like i wanted somebody who understood therapy but also like understood uh you know christianity so they could kind of like work with me on these things and after like a handful of sessions she just looked at me and she was like alex i think you just need to make a decision she's like you just she's like you've gathered all the data you've gone you've gone to the courses you did you did a college course on on the the formation of the canon which is like how the bible was actually put together why things were put in why things were not put in you know like you've investigated all this stuff and you're and i was obsessing about it because i just like because i think for me until i understood like why i was here like nothing else mattered to me so it's like and and some people they can just like walk through life without really thinking about it in some ways i'm jealous you know they can just they can just do that i i couldn't like i was like why why am i working why why do i care about money what's the point of all this like that was always my my first and most important thought is like once we answer that box then everything else kind of falls underneath of it and so um i think it's safe to say that there are very exceptional people who can make arguments on both sides in terms of like there's nothing it doesn't matter and then there's really amazing um apologists like ravi zacharias who's an amazing apologist uh who's a christian there's just there's just a ton of guys right and they're brilliant people and you can listen to both sides of the arguments but i think what ends up happening is that on some level you have a belief and i'll rename that as an assumption because all beliefs are assumptions but everyone has these assumptions and at some point you just have to say like okay there's stuff on both sides the jury has to pass a verdict right and to say that like we have cracked it or like alex has cracked it or like to try like the deeper you go in these arguments the more there are just other arguments that just continue to get pulled and that's why i just fell into this rabbit hole where i was like i need to start becoming a productive member of society because like this is just going on forever and that's when she was just like i think you just need to decide and for me the thing that felt more true to what what i actually believed was that i didn't think any of it was real um and i think it was because that initially saddened me and i didn't want that to be that's why i put spent so much time trying to like logic my way in to believing because i do think it's a better life perspective to believe that there's capital m meaning that there's somebody behind the scenes who's directing our lives so we can accomplish some greater goal right beyond ourselves i just don't believe that i wish i did i spent five years trying to i just don't believe it and for everybody who messaged me and said i really just need to talk to you for five minutes please don't i'm good i'm very content with my belief um and so for me now i had to learn how to live with that belief um and then kind of go from there which is like i don't believe that anything happens after we die and my evidence for that is that i have been dead because i have not been alive and i know what it was like before i was live which was there was nothing and i think that that's exactly what it'll be when i am not alive again so to me i'm okay with it and that's fine um dogs keep taping breaths [Music] but that's that's like and i know it's i'm not right you know what i mean it doesn't like that's just my two cents alex's two cents on the world and i think that people just need to figure out a belief like whenever someone states a belief and they're like well i don't think that i'm like cool like awesome as long as like your beliefs serve you great like i'm i'm pro-you it's interesting once you uh i guess got rid of the idea or you didn't get rid of the idea of religion but you just deemed it wasn't true for you you described in the last episode that we did with you that you became nihilist uh could you define nihilism for those watching and also once you did become a nihilist how did that change your life did it change anything on the day to day or did it just like basically reaffirm kind of what you already believe deep down i think it it formal it crystallized thoughts that i already had so it's like you know how you have these thoughts that are ill-defined or more amorphous and like once you put words to them you're like that's what i believe right and so i think that once i understood like i didn't even know nihilism was this thing when someone was like oh you sound like you believe in those like oh but again that's just a label so like people want to lock labels on things because it's easier for us to organize in our minds but like i just inherently believe that there is no capital m meaning that's it that's all i believe it's just that there's no capital m meaning to what we're doing there's little m meaning as in like i find this meaningful i find this stimulating i do things that i enjoy like those are things that i find meaningful little lab but is me doing this podcast big m universe meaningful no i don't think so some people disagree with me that's okay i just that's just my perspective and so um in terms of how it shifted my life it actually in a lot of ways dramatically improved my life what was the worst thing for me was the indecision that five years was really hard for me because i just i felt like i couldn't make progress either way like i feel like i needed to either say like i'm all in i'm going you know all down the religious path that's my that's the game or i um i actually don't believe this and people could make the argument well there's probably a million shades in between sure but for me there wasn't this is this is where i it was either this or this for me and so um believing that there was no inherent meaning freed me from a lot of stuff so this belief that i had to do what my parents said or or you know listen to the opinions of others or and like be weighed down by judgments that i perceived to be there which arguably probably weren't right um those were the things that that i had that it gave me relief from and then the day-to-day anxieties of like running a business and like this person stole clients from you and i'm like let me die it won't matter it's okay like we'll move on like it's just not gonna matter and and you know and for some people and and that's why i share it because there are probably other people who were in the same boat as me and so like i'm just sharing it for those people and if you're not one of those people i i love you and that's awesome like i'm so stoked for you that you believe what you believe um but if you're not one of those people i do think that um giving yourself the freedom to have whatever little m meaning you want out of the activities that you do is incredibly freeing because you you get to you get to do what you define as as meaningful which is great i like that who do you look up to warren buffett and charlie munger are probably my two like heroes why um they've lived a life that i admire in a lot of ways i think that like and like my my life goal was to be like king solomon just a wise man and i feel like they are like modern day you know king solomon king solomon's in that they are wise they accumulated a lot of wealth and they did it living what i would consider you know aristotle's like good life uh they you know they they they did they did life their way and i just have a tremendous amount of respect for that and i have a lot of respect for uh elon you know it's i think it's more like the people that i look up to are people who are just authentically them and just do things their way and so that is what i try to do and i think nihilism actually helped me do that a lot because i wasn't trying to get fit and fit into a cookie cutter of like you have to do these things this way just much more like i'm gonna do this my way you know and that comma and that's okay period and that was very freeing for me and so i think those guys embody a lot of those traits a really interesting thing that i um that i read was a lot of us make heroes out of our own deficiencies and so like the people that we look up to are the people that embody things that we wish we had and so it's like be careful like being mindful of who you look up to is a great exercise in self-reflection it's like why do i look up to these people and it's probably because on some level like i feel the most pressure of not being me right and so like the pressure's around like i mean i almost was in a hardcore religious person like i am very you know honestly susceptible like i am swayed by those things and so making the decision to choose not to do that despite basically walking away from a community and all that stuff was very hard um but it felt right and so to me and so i feel confident in the decision who do you look up to jack yeah you graham i i would say probably mainly just my parents big idols of mine uh interesting is it yeah i mean i think that's interesting i think a lot of people don't look at their parents because i think they live a perfect life wow uh you know i don't know i just i really really admire them they're great people i i love their philosophies and i think they're super nice they're charitable they're respectful good people that's great yeah they got a nice house too oh that's what it really was yeah oh yeah overlooks the beach jack's trying to get on the wheel right now i love you mom and dad you guys are the best seriously just make sure to put me on title though i love you way more than my brother yeah so was the view uh if we're gonna talk i guess like a great driveway nice good job yeah if we're talking like big figures break bones yeah the house the house is good i would say i i guess like i really look i like elon musk i don't want to be one of those people that's just like the classic person that just like uh idolizes elon musk but he's he's pretty awesome it's like saying you know like something that's awesome is like i don't want to say it's awesome it's like saying lebron's not a good basketball player because everyone says lebron's about like it doesn't like that more people admit it has nothing to do with his excellence yeah right it's hard for me to to look up to people that i don't know super well fair i suppose like it's easier if i know someone through and through like anytime i picture people i admire it's mostly the first things that come to mind are people that i'm familiar with [Music] you know um that's really interesting because i think as like for me like the entrepreneurial career path that i went on it went from having mentors to heroes and so mentors are people who like at least decide to find that you have close proximity to kind of speaking to your life and i think as you continue to like i say level up and i say that loosely just on the within the material success world that's all i'm saying um there were there were fewer fewer people in my close proximity that i was like i look up to you because i feel like i've already kind of hit some of the these check marks and so i think that you end up moving up to like finding your heroes and then that's like charlie munger talks about this where he has all these p all his best friends are dead because it's like benjamin franklin and the people that he consumed all their stuff because he they became his mentors right it's like and so i think that that at least for me was a shift that i feel like has continued to reinforce itself over time is like the people i look up to are not in my life at all but i still consume like like i've been tremendously impacted by warren and charlie even though i don't know them but you're saying like once you checked those boxes of the reasons why you looked up to these people then you could no longer look up to them not look up to them but like trying to be mindful about how i say this but like i'll give a very quantitative example um if i if i'm looking up to somebody for you know their physique or something right and then i achieve the physique that i want then it's not that i don't look up to them but like i don't i don't need more like i have i have understood the lessons i don't need more lessons on this path like i get it but what if it's not something like uh like it's more like of a mental thing like you look up to them for their life philosophies or just their overall he understands the philosophies you can yeah he's just checked that off and really yeah well so there's like that i mean richard feynman talks about this where the point is not to memorize the point is to understand it's like once you understand something it becomes a part of you and you take it with you and you can apply it in a number of scenarios and so if someone has something or a perspective that you don't have the goal should just be to understand it so that you can take it with you i actually really like that answer because i can relate a lot to that because when i look at people like when i watched people for example on youtube when i was learning let's say photography i didn't want to keep them as my mentor forever because then if i look up to somebody and i don't learn and i don't understand myself then there will always be a deficit between my knowledge and their knowledge if that makes sense so i think it's always good to to kind of want to understand things fully for yourself for you know and i think there's also a sequence to knowledge so this is this is actually kind of interesting so if you think about when you learned math because it's a simple example right like first you learned like simple addition and then you learned multiplication and then when you went from your addition teacher your arithmetic teacher to your multiplication teacher you weren't like screw my arithmetic teacher there was so much better stuff out there like they were teaching me basics it's like well you had to learn that to learn the next thing right so it's not like i poo poo them it's just that like i no longer need that i need some i need the next building block and so i think that if you look at your life and those components of like maybe health and wealth and relationships and maybe spirituality etc like you can look up to people who have an understanding of the topic that is more in depth in your current understanding or has an understanding that you prefer to your understanding and then learn of them in that and if someone just continues to have a more and more in-depth understanding of it which is why i think like the higher up you go in terms of like the people that you're looking at the more the deeper their knowledge is on the subject which gives you a longer period of time to continue to look up them right and so um which is why it's natural that a lot of many people share the big public heroes because those big public heroes have such a depth of knowledge compared to everyone else that they can stay public heroes because a lot of people never never surpass them or never fully understand what those people understand but like if you're close proximity you assimilate the lessons and knowledges and knowledge and perspective from them then like you expand your circle it seems from the the outside that you've already kind of like optimized everything you've you've i don't want to say you're set in your ways but you you're you're you're confident in what you believe and what's optimal at this point and what can you work on and what's your biggest insecurity it's a good one certainly not your hairline [Laughter] lifting up your brim i see that man oh man my biggest insecurity um it's probably um the dual sided coin of ego and validation from others um i still am sensitive to the fact that like i know that it still drives me and i don't like that it does and so it's just like you know just consistently trying to just peel back the amount that it influences my decision making processes you know like the simple example is the content example it's like you make a video you think it's awesome people think it sucks and there's like two sides to that one is like you want to serve a marketplace so you have to understand that part of it but the other part of it is like do i now suck right which is like am i taking the performance of the thing and then you know projecting it on myself and i think that i still have a tendency to do that more than i would that i'd be happy you know about like i would prefer to not do that i prefer to take the feedback objectively as it is and have zero percent reflect back on me but i don't i'm not at zero percent and so i think that's probably my my biggest insecurity is is the the validation from mother's piece i think i think i'm significantly better at it than i was but i think it's still something that i want to work on who do you seek validation from oh it's just like the unwashed you know just the masses overall yeah and as a quick rewind on the point that you were making earlier like i think i've inherited a lot of the character traits not inherited but like actively tried to ascribe to a lot of the character traits of like charlie munger and and warren buffett and i think a lot of that is because like when i look at old people they have really good perspectives on things and most of them don't care about most things because they realize that life is short and so i'm trying to live my life as an old man for a longer period of time rather than waiting until i'm 70 to realize that it doesn't matter and i'm going to die um it's just that i think once people get older and their death is looming that they like their priorities become much clearer and the the i think indiana is the right word and entities of life become irrelevant right it's just like who cares like that doesn't matter i like because life is literally too short for them like they literally don't have time for that and so trying to kind of project that into the present and trying to use an old man's wisdom in a young man's life is kind of my my goal but then what about a skill or something that you want to work on that you don't yet have i feel like so i talk about this on my channel a lot but there's there's there's three things that limit limit an entrepreneur right there's skills there's character traits and there's beliefs and so the beliefs are some of the hardest ones uh because you're not aware of them because you believe them right we question all of our beliefs except for those that we truly believe and those are never think to question right and so those are the three things in terms of improvement so it's not necessarily just skills it's also like traits and beliefs i think that from a skill perspective um when i look at like leverage of vehicle i don't i don't do i don't feel comfortable raising funds from other people but i think that would be that would probably be the next natural pa the next natural piece to my business career would be having some sort of fun structure for like the investments that we're doing because we're obviously getting very good returns on them um i just there's part of me that i can see the value in the fund structure and having you know helping other people um participate in us you know allowing us to do more deals bigger deals etc but there is a certain amount of autonomy that i that i enjoy having not reporting to anyone yeah and so i i wouldn't want the investors to become a new boss because that i know i would not like uh and so i'd have to structure the right but anyways i think that is that is probably a skill deficiency that i currently have at least a in-depth understanding of capital markets from like the fundraising side um that's that's probably the skill that i i need to work on the most in the probably three to five year horizon got it alex you should ask some questions yeah tell me what you disagree with about what i said alex yeah you want me to disagree with more of your points oh my god yeah sure i i don't know because i don't think about this give us give us some some either issues problems or things in your life alex that you want to work on or that you want to improve my whole life we didn't drop fitness stuff we didn't do any of that oh let's talk about that you know what graham that is a problem in my life let's talk about that so as you guys can tell by looking at me you know i'm not the uh the peak of uh physical fitness okay um but that is definitely a problem in my life that i think that i've neglected um and i think that i could definitely use like a lot of work on um and and there's a lot of aspects to it but alex how do you do it you know to to just conquer because i mean look at you man it's true i noticed to say that jack wong is like is that a tighter shirt no i just worked out this morning and i'm thinking the same thing it's incredible thanks man i appreciate it yeah that's what i do it for for that validation it would rip it yeah it's stretchy that's the key right that's the key um so this is this is a good question because i mean i did this i dedicated the first half of my professional career to this and i would say that the nice thing is that the fitness weight loss thing is a is a question that that has a lot of roots that that can apply to other things it can apply to personal finance it can apply to fitness and apply to marriage like the the concepts of how you fix it are the same and so i would say i would ask you a question back which is alex what do you think you should do if you wanted to be it better than you are right now what would you do with regards to fitness sure um i already know what to do i guess right yeah and so so the real question is now what do i need to do because you already know what to do the question is why aren't you doing it yeah so how do i answer that question because like i mean like i i was talking to graham about this the other day and i'm going to get a really personal here guys you know i told graham that at the weight that i'm at and luckily i'm comfortable to talk about this so please don't hold back um i feel like and i might be putting myself in a box here and i hate to do this but i'm speaking openly i feel like at my weight you don't get to my weight by having like a small problem right i think there's some sort of like um emotional problem whether it's like like something like a either another addiction to food or like some sort of like how much how much how much do you weigh right now if you're comfortable saying it um i can tell you guys but i don't if it's okay we can remove it from that i'll ask you a better question okay why aren't you 200 pounds heavier uh probably because i can't eat that much so you do know how to stop yes i believe right so here's what's interesting you do know how to stop it's just that you're stopping you don't have an issue you just stop at the wrong point so it's not like i can't stop it you can stop because otherwise you'd be 200 pounds heavier can you explain that a little more so a lot of people were like i have an issue you know binge eating i can't stop eating once i start etc it's like okay well then why aren't you twice as big well i can't i can't eat that much cool okay so you do know how to stop we just need to shift when you stop right but that's like again that's only to break that belief the real real is is is becoming rather than thinking about the doing right so you've probably heard the bee do have right like you have to be a certain type like habits and how we create our identities are are self-reinforcing right we do certain things and because we do those things we believe certain things about ourselves right and because we believe certain things about ourselves we do certain things right and so it's a it's a constant reinforcement loop and so like one of the telltale signs of somebody who's not going to be successful is like oh i'm trying to lose weight it's like no that's not because like they've already identified themselves as somebody who's not going to lose weight and so they're we just need to wait for them to fail right because they're already they already are saying this is outside of myself i have to push myself to get there rather than thinking like i'm i want to become a healthy person and so when you are confronting the many hundreds of decisions that you have every day rather than trying to zone in on the super tactical of like i have to weigh this and i have to count this and whatever it's just simply like what would a healthy person do in the scenario like at every point just like what would a healthy person do it's like they would do this like okay and the thing is it's like you're not trying to be necessarily right you just want to be less wrong than you are right now yeah that makes sense i think maybe that's where i kind of had a a downfall because um there was a point where i i did commit to to weight loss and i made i i in my head i guess i wasn't right but in my head i committed that you know this is a lifestyle change right it's with me for the whole life and i lost um 45 pounds which you know for me that was a lot but for some reason and it was all that was in my head like every day when i would wake up you know i would be it would be like a conscious like choice of like what i was eating blah blah blah you know and but but the thing is it became so i don't want to say i don't know if it was toxic but it became so i'm going to use the word toxic that like that's all i thought about in my head and i don't know how to go back there without doing that again because it was so that part was so detrimental to my health but obviously so is eating so yeah they're both bad but the thing is is like i think you can take us a season and not project it for ever right so it's just for now you will have this kind of obsession around eating food and that's okay because you're making a behavior change right like it's good that it's at the front of your mind like that is what is creating the change after you do that for a year or two years or three years it will stop being as important because you'll do it without thinking about it and then it's not going to be a thing but most people who have like really exceptional physiques were obsessed with it for a period of time most people have exceptional marriages we're obsessed with the for a period of time people have really good personal finances we're obsessed with it for a period of time and then there's just so many things that like you don't even think about you're like well of course i use whatever you know apps use like of course i don't go out to i don't get appetizers when we go out of course i don't buy name brand stuff like it's just obviously but when in the beginning you have to put active attention because it's not normal what the goal is just to get the activities that you're doing to become kind of unconscious competence which is like you're doing them without thinking about them so they don't actually take willpower because this is how you've always done it but you have to get through the part where uh it's not it's not how you've always done it and so you have to allocate more attention to it i don't like judging yourself on the fact that it was quote obsessive is like so what but i think it's the toxic med it's the mentality alex right so why was that why was that toxic for you like what made that that impactful like it was literally distracting me from my work like i would sit there and i would be working and all i can think about was like okay like at 5 00 p.m i'm like i obsessed with the numbers like um i knew like and and this is good i think it's important to know this um like i knew how many meals or how much how many calories the next meal i was eating at what time like how many calories i have left for the day uh because i was so focused on trying to be in a caloric deficit which is obviously like the key to losing weight um but like i would be working and i would just think about it and then it would like pull me out of my work and you know like like alex said i mean maybe it was a good thing but um and then eventually it just you know i i i stopped following what i was doing which i i in hindsight obviously i wish i didn't but um it that's why it became uh i think a problem for me graham but yeah alex wouldn't you say it's it's better and this alex uh to find the root cause of the issue like to go deeper and say this is why i uh you know i'm eating a certain way this is what maybe caused it and solving that underlying issue would kind of help everything else rather than just focus on the surface level calories in calories out yeah i i hear i hear what you're saying with the question um i think that i think a lot of us because if we have a big problem we want to find a big root cause and sometimes it's not and i think that we have to give ourselves permission for like maybe just food tastes good and like we're evolutionarily designed to like have a super stimuli when something is salty and fatty and sweet at the same time and so we've gotten very good at pushing our own buttons and so like just saying like yeah this is not because like in some ways it becomes this like huge beast that i have to defeat when we said like this this huge emotional issue and i had my kid my parents and when i was a kid i would eat ice cream and that's how i felt good well like you tell yourself these stories but i don't know how useful it is because then it just it just exaggerates the the size of the problem um rather than just saying like i am going to be a healthy person and make decisions that are in accordance with that and a healthy person if they ate out once wouldn't be like oh i guess i'm not a healthy person anymore they would just do better you know they would just go back to normal the next day and so like you can start whenever as long as you start changing how you identify yourself um i think that's just like that's the root of the stuff is like how do you identify yourself and then you act in accordance with that identity like if you are always like i've just always struggled with my weight well that's what you identify with and so you're just going to reinforce that identity so we have to switch that um there's a great book on this james clear talk it's atomic habits really good but you're going to live in accordance with that and so you have to stop say like you have to stop identifying with the things that are not serving you i i mean i agree i just i don't know i i don't know what to say what's holding you back alex gosh we're going deep um i i really don't know to be honest with you why wouldn't you start today there's no reason so we could do that i mean there's nothing but there there was nothing holding me back yesterday or the day before just a decision yeah exactly so you can make the decision whenever you want yes but it's a i think it's a it's a hard decision i guess why wouldn't you do it today there's literally no reason well there is a reason because you're not doing it so why wouldn't you do it why are you not doing this right now wake up there's there's literally no reason well that maybe there is like you said but i there's none that i can think yeah i think the reason would be that alex feels like he could do it at any time so why start today because it's i think it's easier to start next week or the week after and i know this because i'm very much the same you know what it's like i yeah i agree with that because i feel like it's my choice but then that's so stupid because when i now sitting here i'm like well i also had the choice to start it a year ago right so isn't it doesn't it get to the point where all of a sudden the pain exceeds the the pleasure and i don't think alex has gotten to a point yet where it's it's painful it's maybe uncomfortable but i think starting now is more uncomfortable than just you might have to get bigger what yeah you might have to get bigger god to get there like because i mean at the end of the day like you just have to hit your your version of rock bottom you know i mean for me like my version of rock bottom's like 15 body fat and so like for me i'm like like what am i doing like i look at myself and i'm like oh just do piece of come on don't eat like an you know and then i got my together and so like the only difference like between how people look is just where they draw the line of where they feel like an like that's it like all you're doing is just like saying you know like i feel like an if i have above you know 10 body fat there's tons of people who live there there's some people who are like that line is 20 that line is 30 but what's crazy is that like once you find maintenance you just maintain the same weight so it's like for me i'd think like why would you not maintain it good rather than maintaining it at normal because like all you have to do is get there once and then you just maintain it so anyways that's you know alex's perspective but that's also because i came from somebody who really wanted outside validation and so the easiest and first place to start for me was my body so i started lifting when i was 13 years old so i'm like almost 20 years in this game in terms of like the lifting and and health and stuff and so for me this is not like we had we talked about at dinner last night it's like this is not in any way time consuming for me mentally because like i am a healthy person and i do these things because that is who i am and so it's not very difficult for me it's just difficult for people to make the change um and and i know the quote you were saying which is you know change occurs when the pain is staying the same um sorry the pain change pain of staying the same exceeds the pain of change correct right and so it's like if your current existence hurts more than the discomfort that you will go through then you will go through the new discomfort to get out of the current pain right you know and so for me i i would like you to be like there's a there's a million ways you can do it and that's why when you say like the root issue it's like there's lots of tiny cues in alex's environment that reinforces current behavior it's not one thing it's like what's in the pantry as soon as he walks in the door like just like all of these tiny little things so like you can change someone's environment and i'll tell you an interesting one that i actually read in james claire's book but so heroin is very hard to get off of and that's a statement of belief but i'll just just bear with me in vietnam i think it was 15 and then later they thought it was 20 of of guys who went there tried heroin insane like that's an insane statistic and what was interesting about that is that when those vietnamese now became veterans and came back 90 of them never did it again and the reverse statistic is true of like us-based addiction programs right 90 of people do heroin again after they leave the program so how can you have the most addictive substance right and you've got a 90 success rate in one incident and then you've got like a 90 failure rate in the other and this one wasn't even a program and this one was right and so what happens is people if you can if you can pull someone out of the environment entirely it's actually much easier to do because it's like you hang out with certain people right and they reinforce those behaviors you you have cues in your environment that you've associated with which reinforce the behaviors and so like if you really went all in on something like this and you could apply this to any type of behavior whether it was drugs or food or whatever it's like honestly just changing everything about your life and then starting from scratch is like i'm making these big changes i'm burning the boats i'm being this person and i will make these choices as a result of this in accordance with that is is sometimes the the best way to do it is like clean slate but that might sound like a lot of change and so you can also just not do any of that stuff um and just eat less uh but it's just tackling the big issue which is like why you don't care i'd say one of the the biggest things like you guys are saying where the what is it the discomfort of the environment is so bad that it forces change um and the discomfort of going through it is easier um i will say i mean i've i've had situations where um like i go like going on a plane for me terrible experience right yeah i mean um you know like uh you know just stuff like like my my wife probably wants to go parasailing if we go on vacation i i probably can't do that you know yeah and and it's just like i feel like there's a lot of like life that i'm missing out on and i've thought about it so deeply that i mean i've cried about it before yeah um but if apparently like it's not hard enough to change me but i don't know if i need to hit rock bottom for like me to make a change that's great that's a great statement because it is a good statement of belief to say i don't need to hit rock bottom to make a change i agree with that i think that is a belief that serves you yeah and so i just i don't know how to just click it like i i really don't well you just start that's all there's no like there's nothing complex about it you just start you go home you take away the stuff that you eat that's not good that's it at the end of the day you've got to be ready and we're not going to talk you into it right like if if if you not being able to live half of the life um is not sufficient then you got to find something that is you know um a good friend of mine ran a super marathon and it was like extremely difficult for him and um he he said i think on social media he was like i had a big bag of y's so he didn't just have one y he had to have a huge bag of just like you just pull out y after y after y after y to keep him going through this thing um and so like maybe you don't need one y maybe you need a lot of wise you know maybe you don't have enough wise do you need enough wise i mean at the end of the day like this this change is yours you know you've got to make it and it's it's when it's when the reality of the condition is is real for you like it breaks my heart it really does i mean that like in the most sincere way um my mother was super overweight my whole life and she just recently in the last two years she's now in her 60s like my whole life super overweight like morbidly obese in the last two years and for me that might be my you know an easy wife for me is like i don't want to live that easy boom i don't need like not even a thought to me right but when her physician and mind you my mother is a physician so like crazy right it was only when her physician after trying you know she tried all these diets for whatever it was when she was like you're not going to see your grandkids like zero percent chance it's not gonna happen you're not gonna see them you're gonna die before that like there's no question and it was only in that moment that she decided to really do it and she always knew what to do eat less walk more like it's not like it's not rocket science right um but for her that was enough that whenever she was confronted with decision because you have a hundred micro decisions that happen every day am i going to take the stairs am i not going to take this am i going to walk am i going to do it am i going to am i going to grab this extra bag or not right or whatever it is and so i think it's like if you have that at the root you'll be able to make the change and then that will that will get you through the the discomfort phase so that you can change your identity um and i love this again i read this in the atomic house book was really good but if you look at identity it's the root of two words you've got entity um there's the latin version of it but basically being and then you've ident it like identical right which is repeated and so like identity is literally repeated being is what we repeatedly do is who we are like when you describe somebody you're like he's that person who x y and z's right like that's their that's how we even describe identity is what people do and so the nice thing is that you don't win the vote of identity all at once it's just one vote at a time and the beautiful thing is that you can just be like 51 just like a vote like if you just do a little more you win you don't have to be perfect you just have to do more than you do bad and if you do that for a long enough period of time like it will continue to reinforce itself and so a lot of people have a binary vision of like what quote perfect health style them looks like and that's silly and it's a farce and it'd be like trying to pretend like you're going to be a perfect human it's not going to happen right but like you could also read redefine uh healthy as just somebody who like just doesn't binge you know what i mean or like just like you already know the stuff so like there's no point in getting in the tactics of this because it's just behavior change um and so i probably went too deep on that but um it breaks my heart but it has to break your heart yeah i think for me okay so i yeah some people have different reasons for why they're not currently doing it right for me i have the knowledge right i i research into what i need to do blah blah blah um i i'm like in my head to be honest i'm ready to make the change but the one thing i think that is holding me back the more i think about it is like the the the feeling of like i don't know how to describe it other than like imposter syndrome right like what really and maybe this is just stemming from like confidence issues what really makes me think that i can do this like and i think that that that is what like is my biggest hurdle probably and i don't know how to overcome that here's something cool you don't need to be confident to do this because your calories don't care if you're confident yeah but for you no calories don't care if i'm confident or you're confident or anyone's confident calories do not care no i understand no i understand that but like i mean in my head i need to be like confident about it to follow but that's what it is that's a statement of belief so yeah why try because i'm going to fail that's that but it's one of those things where you can't let the past burn you twice right which is like if you failed in the past if you project that failure into the present then that that past failure continues to to repeat itself by you don't even trying it's like if we're looking at a kid who's who's walking right and they fall we're not like i think it's just going to be a crawler you know like we don't say that right but like right now you're applying that same like you say so much worse things to yourself when it's like if you failed so what it's like it's a it's a process you're going to learn to walk you'll learn to walk eventually as long as you don't stop that's true so basically what you're saying is if i'm not trying and fit like like if i even if i'm like trying and failing it basically it's better than just sitting here and being like well i'm not going to start because i'm going to fail and just like why don't we say this when we say yes you're going to fail expect failure it's like starting a business of course you're going to fail that is part of the game but saying that that you fall like that you that you stop doing something versus failing are very two very different things you're defining failure as you if you eat a pizza one day right but then the other rest of the week you're fine did you fail no right so it's like we just need to read like it's we just need to strip away the perfection and get to the like if i directionally move in this way over a long enough period of time i will get there as long as i don't stop that was great yeah that was not a good point yeah you're everything that you're saying is is great i mean i it's for some reason it's just stuff that like i don't it's not think about i don't i don't think about it i to be frank you'd have to pull this thread um and i don't necessarily know that we have the time to do it on this podcast but like you have to figure out why your your gut instinct was to say eating healthy was bad like that's basically like if i were to make this boil this down into simple terms you're like i started eating healthy and i decided it was bad so it's figuring out why you you made that experience bad in your head and figuring out like because there's probably other things that eating does for you it probably relieves stress right so it's like great and the nice thing is that there's lots of cues for stress in our lives so you have a number of cues that trigger the behavior so it's not just one it's like you can get stressed for a zillion things and then have a really easy because like like habits are created for like mental shortcuts so we don't have to make decisions and so it's like i feel stressed i can resolve this immediately with this thing i don't even think about it you're just starting to walk towards the fridge when you feel stressed right and so um to break this like man we're gonna get way too deep into behavior stuff so i'll just i'll cut it at this which is you gotta figure out why you're not why you didn't start yesterday and there's a reason that you have and you need to name the reason and it may be ridiculous but like some people are like it's just not convenient cool then make it convenient and then all of a sudden like it's sometimes it's the tiniest thing like i'll tell you this tiny example which is i try and put face cream on every night before i go to bed it's like one of the habits that i really was like i'm gonna try and do this right and when our the maids come sounds ridiculous when the maids come to clean our place um i have like my bedside set up and then they they take all my stuff that's like right next to me and then they like move it along the back line of the bedside table so like the cream's like over a box and like it's hard to reach and when i'm in bed i can't reach it and after that and i had to realize it because i was like i'd get on a good routine and then like two or three days in i would stop doing it and then i i realized the only reason i stopped doing it was because i didn't see the cream and if i did remember the cream it was like i would have to get out of bed to go grab it and then put it back and so i had to tell the maids leave them along the side and don't move them it's the tiny like these tiny things just like i had a visual cue and it made it more difficult so i removed the visual cue because it was further away and then it got harder rather than making it easier and making it obvious i think i have an answer for you actually okay so the only reason that i thought about food all day in my quote unquote toxic behavior is because i was hungry yeah this sounds stupid no you're not you're not you're bored if you could eat a chicken breast like if like if you're like oh man i could go for a chicken breast you're hungry if you're like oh i could like go for a snack you're bored i don't know it felt like hunger but yeah of course you don't know the difference yeah i don't know the difference i don't know the difference you learn the difference when you're really hungry you're like chicken sounds great like an apple sounds delicious you know what i mean but like when you're when you're bored you're like i could go for some chips you know i mean like if you could go for a chicken breast that's dry with no sauce that's when you're hungry i think i think you're a hundred percent you probably haven't you know what thinking about it guys i know this sounds so you're right it sounds stupid it sounds so stupid but like in my head right yeah until you said that i was convinced that i was hungry all the time but now that you said that i don't think i was hungry and i know that sounds stupid you guys are like probably you guys are probably laughing everything i swear to i swear to whatever you believe in little snack it's uh you know that dead space where you would normally reach for your phone yeah it's like well i may as well just eat a quick snack alex you haven't been hungry in years but you don't know i'm saying that you've been over feeding for a very long period of time and so yeah you're there you're you have such a surplus that and and and stores that your body can take from for a very long period of time yeah i agree with you i i think i i just had like an epiphany i think i don't know this is so crazy i think i don't know the difference between being hungry and being bored bored i know that sounds stupid no it's fine i think very few people know the difference between just even me i don't know yeah but then okay you don't know the difference and why don't you look like me graham what's up if you don't know the difference then why don't you look like me uh you're pretty physically active yeah i've been going to the gym quite a lot but i but i always caught my default is probably eating healthy but until i've started tracking calories i've realized that i've eaten more than i've expected but my default is still eat healthy eat small portions but without tracking it i eat more than i think i do i just want to thank you for your time i didn't mean to bring you on the podcast and like bombard you with my physical physique questions or anything but i'm sure there are other people who are listening who are you could replace this with alcohol you could replace this with you know whatever it's the same thing my mind is just blown right now like i feel like now i feel like i could do it and i just want to just reinforce this one point which is just because you are hungry does not mean you need to eat so you used being hungry as a justification for eating you can be hungry and not eat you can be horny and not have sex somebody's not your wife so just because you have a feeling doesn't mean you need to take action on it right so first we had to delineate between the fact that most of the time you're bored or not actually hungry but even if you are hungry that doesn't give you permission to then go eat because if you diet you will be hungry actually and a chicken breast will sound good so it doesn't necessarily mean that you have permission to eat outside of what you think you need to hit for your for your calorie intake is it just like a mental thing at that point like i you already know the calorie stuff there's no point in getting into that like you're like if you really want to do it you already know like you google it you know you need to eat less than you are right now and you would just do that just reminding yourself that like like you you know how much you're supposed to eat and just saying i have enough to live it's just my body telling me you could you could right now literally drink water and take a multivitamin for a year and be there's no way i promise you they've already done studies on this you can absolutely do it i mean i'm not going to but that's fine yeah yeah but i'm saying like you have more than enough stores to last you for a very long time so like the only thing you're doing to eat is just like you're just moving things through your system but like that's it like they've done starvation studies and like you're your your base metabolic rate goes down but not by i mean it goes down by 30 which is something but it's not massive and you're still going to have a high bismuth bulk rate overall because you have more of you to feed and maintain like fat takes calories to keep alive like you have fat on you but it still requires blood and nutrients to stay alive right to like not you know become dead tissue so like in a lot of ways it's easiest to lose weight when you are bigger so you can keep saying that as your as your refrain it's like i am bigger which means it should be easier for me to lose weight because it is yeah i don't want to lean around this too good too long because i think we've gone long enough but i i i seriously i i won't thank you today the day alex i i think so but i know he kind of yeah yes it is he kind of scared me he kind of scared me with the like you're gonna be real hungry and i'm just like oh but you know what i'm i think i've just been eating because i'm bored and i i know people are gonna think this is stupid like alex of course you're eating when you report but to me i'm telling you guys like i truly felt hungry like in my head that was hunger and i thinking back i i don't think that was yeah don't distract yourself and that was kind of stupid so yeah uh you shouldn't be bored at work that's the real issue but we'll we'll talk about that after the podcast oh no i'm kidding no we're good thank you no you bet it's a blast to have you on man i really appreciate it i was really looking forward to this yeah yeah even even going out to dinner last night uh and i like i genuinely enjoy hanging out but it's it's listening to you talk it's i learned so much and more than just like like just like a friendship but also just the fact that like i feel like i i am like the the student of so many things and like just being exposed to different thoughts and a different way of thinking and a different structure is uh very few podcasts afterwards do i just like just want to be alone and this is always one of them because i have so much to think about after we after we end this i appreciate it um and thank you guys for having me on i think i think it's um it's chunking chunking down and chunking up um in terms of like thought process which is like why are we doing this and i think that's just been the the core of it it's just like why am i bothering to do this why does this matter and so you know it does go back to my world view um because it does shape it is the it is the the seed that kind of like has brought all the fruit of the other things that i have it's just like why am i choosing to like because it is an active choice and um and so you know i'm glad that the the thoughts that i've had have been at least thought provoking because they they took me a long period of time to figure out on my own and i think they're you know they can be unique to different people but for me that this set of beliefs has served me well yeah and so i continue to believe them how about this um usually at this point i'll ask the audience hey make sure to subscribe and hit the like button but how about this instead instead of subscribing here and maybe let me speak first jack and then then you could you could ask them to subscribe you're almost at 200 000 subscribers i'll link to the channel down below in the description uh if you've enjoyed listening to two hours of alex talk your channel is in the description if we could get you past 200 000 subscribers so like if you're watching this basically and you have a spare three seconds to go in the description it'll be one of the top links and just one not the top left [Laughter] yeah it takes you a quick second just find that link hit it and subscribe to alex's channel and that's it and that would mean a lot to me as just a thank you for coming on and if you've enjoyed if you haven't enjoyed this you don't have to do that but if you've enjoyed it and it's free you mean a lot that's a great call to action that was good all right my turn so guys make sure you know if you've made it this far in the episode you guys have enjoyed it send a text to your parents or your guardian or someone you care about that you care about them oh and you love them how about this uh we set up a submission form now so we're gonna have a submission form in the description um right below where you could get a free stock all the way up to a thousand dollars but now you can submit because we never had a good submittal form yeah you could go through that form if you want to be on the iced coffee hour and you feel like you have an interesting story to tell or something unique you could bring to the table uh the link is down below in the description so thank you guys so much for watching thank you for coming on and next time appreciate it thank you guys thank you