How to Totally Reinvent Yourself | Tucker Max on Impact Theory

The truth is that you are going to suffer. But the way to deal with suffering is accepting that suffering and then letting it sort of have it's say and then moving on from that. Everybody, welcome to Impact Theory. You're here my friends because you believe that human potential is nearly limitless, but you know that having potential is not the same as actually doing something with it. So, our goal with this show and company is to introduce you to the people and ideas that will help you actually execute on your dreams. Okay, today's guest has sold over 3 million copies of his books and is one of only three authors ever to have three books simultaneously on the New York Times non-fiction bestseller list. He's also the first author to take a book from blog to bestseller and his website was generating millions of views long before that was a thing. He was nominated to Time magazine's 100 most influential list in 2009, unsurprisingly, as he appeared on the New York Times bestseller list for an astonishing six consecutive years. But with titles like I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell and [ __ ] Finish First, his astonishing success baffled many, but not future New York Times bestselling author Ryan Holiday. Working side by side with him, Holiday quickly realized that today's guest was a brash and brilliant marketer as well as a raw and authentic author. Holiday would later detail many of the techniques that today's guest pioneered in his book Trust Me, I'm Lying. While he'll tell you that he's just a normal guy who's lucked into much of his success, his resume tells a slightly different story. He graduated college in just 3 years with the highest possible honors, went to Duke Law School on an academic scholarship, and has even had a movie made about his life. In 2012, however, he announced that he was going to be retiring from the genre of non-fiction he'd helped pioneer called Fratire. He'd evolved as a person and wanted to begin a new journey. That journey saw him embark on psychotherapy and evolve into a devoted family man and dyed-in-the-wool entrepreneur dedicated to using commerce to help other people solve their problems. From that, his wildly successful company Book in a Box was born, which even in its relative infancy has already done eight figures in revenue. So, please help me in welcoming the man who turned his drunken exploits into a publishing empire that has now helped hundreds of people become published authors and share their wisdom. The former [ __ ] who's still finishing first, Tucker Max. Thank you, brother. Pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on the show. Dude, my life sounds pretty cool when you put it that way. Your life is cool. over there being like, that's some I've done some baller stuff. That's pretty cool. Yeah. I You never think about it on a day-to-day basis. I suppose, yeah, you don't. When you're interviewing somebody though, you're When I'm researching them anyway, their whole life collapses down to like this basically 12-hour timeline for me, where I get to go on the full journey of seeing you cuz I mean, luckily all this stuff got captured on film. So, you see you as a 20-something being interviewed by the news and people being somewhat antagonistic and um you being, you know, quite flippant and very much the the man of your books and then watching you go through the evolution. It was really really fascinating. I haven't even done that, dude. You should do it. It It's It's pretty cool. gone back and looked at any of the media, especially like early on. I think probably because uh the few times I've done that, I'm so mortifyingly embarrassed. And I'm like, uh what are you thinking? Not even like with the attitude. It's like, if you're going to have that attitude, at least do it right. As someone on the outside, I'm really glad that your 20s were captured so vividly, but I'm really grateful that mine weren't. So, like it yeah, it would be pretty tough to look back on that stuff. One of the things I wanted to talk to you about is reinvention. Like you you have in full public view, which I think most people get trapped by and they're never able to get out. And I remember the first time I met you, which I think the first time we shared the same physical space was at Hustle Con. And I had no idea like what to expect. Right. So, it was really cuz I had read I hope they serve beer in hell. Mhm. And so, that that's sort of my snapshot. And then fast forward, you know, however many years later, almost a decade later, and we meet. And so, it's really really interesting that you were so successful at getting out of that persona and establishing yourself anew. Yeah. What was that process like? So, well, the first thing was um everyone I understand why everyone thinks this and they say it. They they ask me, "Well, um it's funny you use the word persona. Most people use the word brand. And uh what they mean is how did you change from this persona or brand to this one? Meaning like how did you change the perception of you, right? And I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, but when most people ask this question, that's what they mean. That's exactly what I mean. Right. So, my answer is always the same uh is that it's not you can't think of it like perception, right? I never I never thought to myself, "Okay, I'm projecting this. Now I want to project something else, but there's this uh hidden self that's different." Um one of the reasons I think I was so successful, almost in spite of myself early on, is because I didn't create a like a projected front. The guy that I wrote about, the guy that um uh that showed up on those in those interviews, that was flippant and all that, that was really pretty much exactly who I was. Most people most people in the public eye, you know this now. You've been in the public eye for long enough. You've met enough famous people where like you you're on stage with them or you meet them in media, and then you get in the green room and they're like something, you know, different, right? Like I we know a lot of the same people. And and a lot of those people, for better or worse, are different in private than they are in public. It was just never the case for me. So, for me, the change was not about how do I change my persona. It was how do I change myself, which is just a totally different thing. Right. And as I grew and changed and developed as a man and matured, it was like I left my my quote brand behind, but it wasn't leaving a brand behind. It was like I don't want to drink and and hook up and act stupid and party anymore. Like that was cool in my 20s and early 30s, and I'm done with it, and I want to change, and it was like I almost couldn't, right? So, I had to That's why I had to like publicly retire from writing this stuff. And I had to cut all of that off and move on because to to answer your question, it wasn't like how do I change perception? How do I change brand? It was how do I change my honest authentic self, and then go in a fundamentally different direction. Um that was hard, dude. That that's the process I really want people to man, that was like So, the first thing I had to do was I had to accept that this was something I wanted, right? Cuz Look, it's not obvious that I ever had to change. Like I was doing pretty well. I was selling a lot of books. I was making money. I was famous enough. Like I had plenty of girls. Like I had everything that At 19, if you had told me like I was going to have half of what I had, I would have [ __ ] my pants in excitement. I'd be like, "Are you kidding? This is coming for me. This is amazing." And then I got it, and it was like it's not that it was bad because it wasn't. It was fun, and there was a lot of good stuff. Here's the thing. People who go, and I say this being as a person who did it. Uh someone who goes intentionally looking for fame, which I did. Um they're always part of the reason they're doing it is to fill a hole in their soul, some sort of hole, right? And and I I mean I was definitely um that's true of me. And then once you get that fame, you realize as awesome as it may be, it doesn't fill the hole, right? And so then and everyone famous uh in any way, shape, or form that intentionally went to go get fame, right? Not someone who like is doing the work on their own and all of a sudden that you know like the world sees them. I'm talking about people who go you go to Hollywood, you go to New York, I'm going to be famous. Then you if what if you achieve it, then you have that uh you you have that moment of truth where you realize I got everything I wanted or more and I'm still lonely and unhappy or whatever it is you're trying to compensate for. And you got to have that moment of truth and ask yourself, okay, what do I do now? You know? Like do I lie to myself and tell me that this fantasy that I created in my head is everything I wanted when it's not, or do I start looking for the truth? And so in my case, I lied to myself for a long time, right? And it's easy to. Man, when you're selling books and and people want to interview you and girls come like want to hook up with you and they don't even know you. It's like, what is this magical world of celebrity? This is incredible, right? And it's not like I was that famous, but I was like famous enough where where I understood what it was like. And um but then it's like you go through it enough and you realize like, oh wow, this is hollow and empty and it doesn't really mean anything. It's just it's like the trappings of success. And so it took me about three, four, five years to come to terms with that. That like the thing that I thought would make my life perfect didn't. And then it culminated with movie that was made about my first book. Um and like seeing that kind of like not do well. Um which is so dude, think about how crazy this is. This is the most first world rich white person problem. There was a movie made about my life that didn't do 50 or 100 million dollars at the box office and it was a crushing blow to me, right? Like that Like which at the time was truly crushing, but if you think about that in the span of human history and human suffering is like what the [ __ ] is wrong with you, dude? Like that's what crushed you, but it did. Um cuz that's just the way our brains work. And so it kind of culminated with that. And so then I had to like really becomes like a turning point for you? Yeah, it really was. In fact, I'll I'll dive in. I'll really tell you. Like there was an actually a very specific moment. Um I was in a hotel room and um it was the the the the day before the movie was launching or the day it launched and we got like the numbers back. And you you know, you know immediately, right? Like and we knew that like you know, it's going to do fine. I think it did like a million, two million, three million at the box office, whatever. And it did really well on DVD. But like I was expecting this to be like the next you know, Wedding Crashers or anything something like that. And so um I was in my hotel room and dude it was I I wept uh like I cried and like by myself, like didn't want anyone around, no girls, nothing. And I wept and I cried and it was like it was it was an ego cracking, soul crushing moment for me. Um as ridiculous as it sounds, it was. And then from there I had to accept, okay. I I I got all this fame and all this stuff I thought I wanted and it didn't make me happy. It didn't fill the hole in my soul. And um And if I really want to get to the the sort of the the peak of the mountain, I've got to realize I'm on the wrong mountain. Like I'm on the peak of this mountain, I'm trying to get the peak of this mountain, but they're different mountains. And so I had to go down and up. And so then that From there, basically I realized the first thing was I had to look honestly at myself, right? And like why did the movie fail? Because I had an amazing book. We had an amazing script. This should have worked. And um of course I started doing what does what does everyone do, right? When something fails, you blame everybody else, at least I did. Uh I blamed the director, I blamed the producers, I blamed And listen, they were they made mistakes, but then at the end of the day, I picked the director, I picked the producers, and I created a lot of issues. And all the material was there for it to do well, and it didn't. And it was my fault. And that was a Man, that was a hard turd to swallow, dude. It was bad. Because like um it it it's the hardest thing ever is to realize when you don't succeed, it's because of your own It's not even like I made a I gambled on something and I lost. This should have worked. It should have. There's no reason it shouldn't have. And and I just it was my own fault. And so then I had to really start down that path of recognizing all the the truths in my life that I was ignoring and I was avoiding. And they were painful and awful. And I got pretty far along that path by myself, but then I kind of reached a sort of an impasse. And so then I realized I needed someone to help me. And um There's a lot of ways to get help. I picked um uh like therapy, talk therapy. And there's a lot of different types of talk therapy. I ended up uh going with psychoanalysis, which is just a very specific type of it. And I spent 4 years in analysis going 4 days a week. What was motivating that? Was it a positive feeling of I have the sense that I can get better or was it like this hurts so much I just need something? It It was It was That's a great question. It was it It was not self-improvement in the sense of like, you know, like um I'm going to go like lift and work out and get in shape. Like I love doing that, but that provides a pretty immediate reward and it's pretty straightforward. This was much more about um unpacking painful trauma. It's not like I was just in misery every day cuz I wasn't, man. Like I had money. It's not like the movie failed and like I was destitute, right? Like I had money. I like I still had uh friends. I was in shape. I was still young. Like I I'm still young. Like I Like everything was great objectively in my life. Like there was The Like I said, it was a total rich white person problems. Like I had There was nothing to be sad about. Um so really what it was for me was understanding that like I had to go back to Why was I looking for fame? Right? Like why Why was I trying to fill this hole? What made this hole? Right? And um it goes back to me for a lot of I had parents who just weren't very good at being parents. Like they were perfectly nice people. Like it's not No one beat me as a kid. No one hit me or anything terrible like that, right? Like Like thank God. But I just had parents who were like I archetypal iconic baby boomers. They just didn't care about anyone but themselves. Their whole life was about like them. And they had a kid which is fine if you don't have a kid, right? But they had a kid. And so I grew up uh sort of lonely and ignored but in like the most western sort of rich uh middle-class way. You know, like I was never hungry. I had nice stuff. I went to good schools. It was just like I just they just weren't good at being parents. They were perfectly fine caretakers and humans. And so I just missed a lot emotionally. And so, you know, I mean, one way to deal with trauma is um promiscuity. And and I don't just mean sexual, anything. You do anything to an extreme, whether it's gambling, sex, working out, achievement. Like a lot of the entrepreneurs I know and probably you do, too. I'm convinced the reason that they are so successful is cuz they are It's not just they want to succeed. They are just driven beyond belief and it's because that's their way of of sort of filling their hole the hole in their soul, which is at least as productive. Like that's great. And I picked a path that, you know, a lot of people pick. I drank, hooked up. Um I didn't really even go that far. I just wrote about it. The only reason people know me about this is just cuz I wrote about it in a funny way. Um and then I kind of it kind of took off and it led me to success. And then I kind of went a little excess, but if you asked me at 26, I'm like, "No, no, no, no. My parents, you know, they were fine. Everything's great. I'm perfectly happy. Are you kidding? Everything's wonderful." It's not true. It's wasn't true. And I just never thought about my emotions. I had never really connected with them. I had never really I just had never really had those conversations with myself um or with anybody else, really. And so part of therapy was understanding first recognizing the pain was there. Then it was accepting that it actually existed, right? Um which is hard. Like you think, "Well, if you recognize it, you accept it." But no, no, no, no. Like I was in denial for a long Oh, well, I'm not You know, the all the stories like uh you tell yourself, "Oh, well, but other people have it worse." They do, doesn't mean like that my stuff doesn't deeply impact me. Or, you know, it wasn't that bad. It may not have been. It doesn't mean that it's not having an impact. I mean, all the sort of that sort of stuff. So I then I had to accept all this. Then I had to give myself space to really investigate like, okay. Like, what am I feeling? Like, so really kind of connecting my thoughts to my emotions. Um, which sounds like really basic and I I don't know. I I I I just wasn't there. I think most people aren't. And what did that process look like? This is so useful. Right. And I don't know if you have a sense that that this is so unique to you it'd never be beneficial, but like I get this question over and over and over. Like, people happy to talk about how to become aware of what they're going through. I'll talk about it. If if you want If you're If you're listening, I'll talk about it. Um, all right. So, uh I mean, all I can do is tell you what I did, right? Like, I'm not going to sit up here and go, "Well, here's the eight ways to do it." And I don't know. I I can only know my path. So, for me, like that's why I picked psychoanalysis cuz it's it's intense. You were going 4 days a week for an hour a day, right? So, for 4 years I did this. And what you're doing when you go is it's not like it's not a good analyst, and I had a pretty good analyst, is very um it's kind of like the classic, you know, um image of like, you know, laying on the sofa and the analyst is kind of behind you. It's like that. It's mainly you're talking and then about what you're thinking, what you're feeling. And then they essentially do their best to present basically a mirror to you, right? So, they ask questions or they point things out. Um, uh they never like say, "Oh, well, you're doing this wrong." Almost never give advice. They never um tell you what's right or wrong. They're definitely not judgmental. Uh it's very accepting. It's very like they care. It's very caring, but it's also like very reflective, right? Like, it's very much like um kind of like the, you know, like in Return of Empire Strikes Back where like Luke goes to see Yoda and then he's like, you know, he has to go in that cave where it's like he's like, "What's in there?" He's like, "Whatever you bring in there is what's in there, right?" And he sees Darth Vader and he's like all freaked out and it's like that's what analysis is. It's whatever you bring in. I love that scene in Star Wars cuz when he cuts Vader's mask off, it reveals himself, yeah. It is. It's a cool moment. So, um so for me, what my my my analysis was very much about I mean like I I was just in denial for a long time about like um it's not that I denied that my parents were like I intellectually understood I I I saw them clearly for who they were. I didn't connect to the emotion of it, right? Like I refused to accept that I was scared or lonely or sad. Um I mean I even intellectually I would, but emotionally I wouldn't connect with that, right? The difference between me now and me, let's say, 10 years ago in this realm is that now the emotions don't go away, right? So, anyone who tells you that they have a way for you to control your emotions or get rid of your emotions is either lying to themselves or lying to you and trying to sell you something. So, it's not that any of this [ __ ] goes away. It's that now I recognize it. Like like I recognize the feeling, I accept that it's there, and I can like not let it overwhelm me or let it control me without understanding. For most people, the only way you can get past this stuff is to bring it out, let it let it have its voice, accept it, and then, you know, like see okay I like I know I think I'm skip skipping ahead a little on your questions, but this ties directly into something in my life now that I'm a father, right? I have a 3-year-old son, Bishop. And um this happened like 4 months ago. I'll never forget it. So, something I Bishop knocked over a glass or something, whatever. He spilled something. He's three. And uh and I kind of like, you know, I was having a bad day and I was in a bad mood. I kind of sat down. I'm like, "Bishop, what do you Why did you do that? What are you doing? Be careful." Like really almost exactly like that tenor, right? And like it I didn't it didn't even occur to me that I was snapping or being mean or whatever. I was just like talking, you know, you react whatever reacting. But I looked at his face. And that kid's face, man, it looked like I had stabbed him in the chest with a knife. Like, it he was crestfallen, like broken. And I remember looking right at him and and under in a flash understanding I had done to him what my dad did to me. And at that moment I had a choice to make about the type of man and the type of father I was going to be. Like, either I could rationalize, oh, well, you know, like he deserved it or I needed he needs to toughen up or I could rationalize this or I could accept that I had hurt this kid, my son, and I had done it unintentionally, intentionally, it doesn't matter. I had done it. And that um I had to accept it and then uh deal with it, right? Deal with the fact that I had done this. And and of course, thank God I went through therapy, right? Because I was able to see it in the moment and understand in the moment what I had done and accept it and then deal with it. And dealing with it is actually pretty easy if you'll accept that, right? Uh but it was really painful. I mean, you could like it's still painful to think about the fact that I did like I did it. There's no way to undo this. But, you know, I picked him up. I said, "Oh, buddy, come here. Are you are you sad?" And he's like, "Yeah." I'm like, "Okay. Why are you sad?" And he's like, "I, you know, I don't know." He's I'm like, "Are you sad cuz daddy yelled at you?" He's like, "Yeah." I'm like, "Okay, well, you know, daddies make mistakes, too. Daddy shouldn't yell, should he?" No. "But daddy makes mistakes and what do we do when we make mistakes? We say we're sorry and we clean it up." I'm like, "Okay, well, daddy's saying sorry to you, okay? Cuz daddy shouldn't yell. Daddy made a mistake and daddy's sorry. So, let's give me a hug and now clean it up, right?" And like um I don't know. Like, that was to me like uh uh If there's a happy ending, that's a happy ending, right? That's what therapy taught me. And if you had to boil down so that particular thing to me from the outside, it sounds like ownership is is the key there. Ownership of of yourself and your emotions and your a desire to seek and to feel the painful truth, not just intellectually recognize. Truth in therapy is about connecting with the emotions you are running from and feeling them no matter how painful or awful they are because almost certainly they're awful and painful to you. Otherwise, you wouldn't run from them. Like you don't run from happiness, right? It's not like, "Oh, remember that great memory? No, no, put that away. Hide that." No, no, no, that's not the problem. It's the painful stuff. You know? Yeah, yes. I totally get that. And the fascinating thing to me is in my own life, the thing that has become the most powerful thing for me isn't isn't um maybe internalizing or connecting to my emotions. Maybe that wasn't the problem that I had and it's kind of interesting seeing you from the outside because there have been times in my life where I almost wish that I was a little less connected to my emotions. Right. I see now though that also leads to somewhere not very effective. But the thing for me that was really powerful was learning to take responsibility for everything that I did. And that that was where my entire life changed. And the most um It's intentionally provocative, but the most unintentionally controversial thing I've ever said is around the notion of taking ownership and how people really get riled up. Now, maybe I push it too far, but I used to one of the first blog articles I wrote was about I if I got hit by a drunk driver, I would blame myself. And people just went [ __ ] ballistic. Well, I can see why. With that title, I can see why. So, the the take home message is I could have made different decisions that would have had a different outcome. So, it doesn't mean that I wasn't victimized, but being a victim moving forward is a choice that that I have to make. Yeah. And once and and I wrote it, understand, I wrote it from a place of like, I'm giving you the best gift I know how to give you. In fact, one of the questions I was trying to formulate in my head is like, if you were going to take the gestalt of psychotherapy and hand it to Bishop in like one just one key thing to take away, like what would that be? Yeah. and I I do want the answer to that question. And so, writing that article is me saying, the single most important thing I've learned in my life Right. is that if you get hit by a drunk driver, as unfair as it is cosmically, as much as it isn't your fault from anyone else's perspective, the gift I'm going to give you is if you're willing to say, I could have made a different choice and gotten a different outcome, everything in your life will change. And it's very hard Cuz then you take ownership of everything that happens going forward. I get it. And I get your point. I I can see how someone misinterpret that, but you're the point is rock solid and amazing. Yes. Own everything in your life that you have control over. You don't have control over a drunk driver, but you have control over everything that happens after that. Yeah, [ __ ] yeah. Oh, hell yeah. Yeah, like for me, it was um Yeah, I like I've never had problems taking ownership over my life. I've had problems, I think, and this might be a different version of taking ownership over your life. I've had problems recognizing painful, unpleasant truths, which I think is just actually a If you think about it, it's a subset of taking ownership over your life. You know, like um the movie thing's a great example. It took me 6 months to a year to fully accept And clear as day, it was my fault. It's not like this is like some sophisticated, you know, multi-level thing where like I had to unpack this mystery. It was clear Everyone involved with the movie could be like, "Oh, dude, you totally [ __ ] this up." Like without I'm clear but it took me a year about a year to fully emotionally own that. a voice in your head that was like, "Look, [ __ ] you know this was you?" No. No, I don't think so. Because that that's one of the downsides of being And like this is going to sound like a ridiculous humble brag, it kind of is. But one of the downsides of being smart is that it's really easy to rationalize, you know? And I'm really good at rationalizing. So I'm really good at creating narratives that that really are true in a way, but they hide an underlying truth. My analyst would always say, um I I would be, you know, 20 minutes down the path of this amazing story that was essentially rationalizing or justifying something. And she would look at me and she would say, "The best defenses are true." Ah, can cuz cuz I like what I would be saying, like I could tell you a story right now that is factually correct about the movie that would place all the blame off of me, but the underlying truth is that it's my fault, right? Um so yeah, I think they're different ways of saying the same thing. I I would totally 100% agree. It it um That was the last I'd always done a good job owning my life in terms of taking action. I think I'd done a very poor job owning responsibility, uh emotional responsibility, especially for the way I made other people feel a lot of times. I didn't I did a terrible job at that. And I don't think it was that I didn't care, it was that I was so disconnected from my own emotions, it was like, "How the hell am I going to feel hers or his or yours?" Like it doesn't even occur to you that that's a thing. Like why would they yelling bother you? It doesn't bother me. It's like, "Well, dude, not everyone's like you." Like it took it took me a long time to really internalize that on an emotional level. Um Yeah. God, I hope people see this interview in the context of how um brash and successful, by the way, you were early in your career and how different you feel now. Like the interviews that you did or the books that you wrote, which were all non-fiction, by the way. Oh yeah, of course. So it it is really, really fascinating. And especially for me because this is over such a collapsed time period, it's like I I really got to go on that massive swing in this really finite period of time. It's been really really interesting. All right, I do want to get the answer to the question. If you had to wrap up your like big takeaway from psychotherapy for Bishop, what's that breakthrough you hope he never needs psychotherapy for? Yeah, so right. If he needs if he needs psychotherapy, then I failed as a dad, right? I mean, he'll he's going to experience traumas in his life, but I'm just hoping they're not in the core family. The takeaway of psychotherapy is the exact same takeaway of Buddhism. They just are 180° diametrically opposed ways to get at the same truth. And the truth is um the truth is that you are going to suffer. But the way to deal with suffering is accepting that suffering and then recognizing that it is suffering, accepting it, and then letting it sort of have its say, and then moving on from that, right? So so to really condense that, I would say um the the what I would tell him this is what I try to do with him and and and my daughter Vaughn is we help them connect what they're thinking to how they're feeling. Right? Because I think so many people disconnect those things. And and that's that's why like I use the example I gave you with Bishop. Like, you know, three year three years old, they feel, but they don't know how to articulate their feelings. So I I spend a lot of time with him helping him understand what he feels, you know, not telling him what he feels. Like I'll give you a great example. Every kid falls down, they hurt themselves, right? And I learned this in sort of indirectly in analysis. Early on, my wife would be like, "Oh, you're okay. You're okay." Cuz her instinct is like, you know, motherly, wants the pain to go away. I said, "No, no, no, stop doing that. Don't do that." Cuz what you're doing is you're actually confusing him. You're negating his feelings. Cuz he fell down, he skinned his knee, he hurts. And you saying, "You're okay" is a very confusing thing cuz it's like I'm saying to my wife, you're the center of his universe or his mom. So the better thing to say is hey, how are you okay? And then let him tell you, no I'm not okay or yes I am okay, right? That's a great example of something I learned in analysis is just understanding what am I feeling? And then connecting it to what am I what I'm thinking. I almost think of it like two different parts of my brain. The feeling part and the thinking part cuz actually literally they are there's you have three different parts, right? But you really literally do have like two different parts of your brain and it's it's not quite biologically neurologically accurate to say thinking is only in one part and feeling is only in another, but if you but roughly you're you're you're close enough. Dude, I'll give you a good example. Coming in here, I was actually a little bit nervous for this interview. The weird thing is is like cuz I've seen a bunch of your your episodes and you get great stuff out of people like Simon's Simon's Simon Sinek's a good friend of mine. And he like his like has been viewed like a couple hundred million times, right? Right, exactly. So I'm showing up like man, I can't I can't screw the pooch on this. Like I got to really show up and do a good job. But it didn't freak me out because like I reckon standing right there 20 minutes ago, I recognized okay, like I got chills. It's not cold in here. I'm a little bit nervous. No big deal. I've done this before. I can talk about this stuff. I just I recognized the anxiety. I accepted it. And then actually I another technique I use a reframe it is like okay, I'm going to reframe it as excitement and energy and I'm going to use it to really dig deep and do like a great interview. Um But like yeah, like that's that's what I would tell him to take away. And that's what I try to teach him is thinking is awesome, but emotions are kind of what drive you and you've got to connect those to really kind of have a happy successful um life. I love that. That's a pretty damn good takeaway. I want to go back to something you said. You said, "I'm on this mountain. I'm at the peak of this mountain and I had to really realize that I'm actually on the peak of the wrong mountain and so I had to go down before I could go back up." Yeah. What What was that process like and then how did you recognize that you wanted something new and what were you telling yourself as you knew I'm going to have to go down first? Yeah, it sucked. It was It sucked cuz you work so hard and you think this is the mountain you're trying to climb and you climb it, man. Like I climbed the mountain, right? Like I I I was there and then I kind of looked around and I realized I I wasn't happy. I didn't really have what I wanted. I had what I thought I wanted to be happy, right? I had Like I I I'd set the X on the map and I got there and I actually did better than I thought I needed to be to have everything, right? Everything I wanted. I did even better. Like I would have been happy, you know, selling half a million books, right? And being having one year on the bestseller list and I went way past that. Um and so like uh it was it it ties into to what you mentioned earlier. The one thing that I I think I do better than most people, if I had to attribute my success to one thing other than hard work, which is you can't succeed without hard work. That's just table stakes. But one thing I think I do better than most people, even successful people, is I'm always willing to face uh the truth once I know it. Like I'll fight it for a long time, right? I'm really good at rationalizing it. But once the truth is like like that's why the movie failing was such a turning point in my life cuz you can't argue that away, right? And so like um uh that was the thing. That was the thing that made me realize I'm at the top of this mountain and it sucks, right? Cuz it it if it if it didn't suck, if I was at the the of a mountain I wanted to be at the top of, then the movie failing would suck, but it wouldn't crush me. It wouldn't break me. Like that really That cracked my grandiosity in a real way, dude. Like I really I felt like I was going to die. I mean, which It seems ridiculous, but anyone who's really ever gone through a serious like emotional uh like painful thing, you know what I'm talking about. And I really totally subjectively, emotionally felt like I was going to die. And that was the thing that woke me up. I was like, "Okay." Like I like at least that started the path to understanding I'm on the wrong mountain. All right. So, then how did I go down? So, that's when um I I finished my my other books and I retired at the end of the uh the the last book, right? And that was a very intentional thing. Like that was a kind of a symbolic I'm a big fan of ritual and and like I used to think weddings and all those things were so stupid, and then I got older and I'm like, "Okay, maybe the way we do weddings is stupid, but I get why you have rituals and why you do public things and what like there they they they're very impactful, right? Why? That's I believe that more than you know, but I want to know why you say that. Because uh rituals done right, I think integrate thinking, feeling, and accountability in a public way, and they commit you to something that that uh that you want, right? You stand up in front of everyone and say, "This is what I want or who I am or what I'm committing to." Then it integrates all parts of yourself and li- and your community and lines you up in in in a direction. And that happened for me. Like that's why I retired from from Fratire. Because part of it was cuz I just I'd outgrown it, man. Like I just didn't you know, I was 35, 36 when I did that and it's like I didn't, you know, I hardly drank anymore. Like I didn't go out and you like going to a bar at 35 is like, "Ugh, kill me." Right? 25 was the greatest thing ever. 35 like it was the worst. And so so retiring was like a way for me to to step off the stage and to to find something else. So, that was I had that was a a ceremony that was very important for me. Really fast, before we move off that, was part of the reason that you wanted to do that because the way you built your persona, everything that you wrote, you your book was literally titled [ __ ] Finish First. Right. Self-identified [ __ ] around the movie there were people you incited a riot on yourself. Yes. So, there were plenty of people that wanted to see you burn at the stake. That had to cross your mind as you're like, "I'm going to retire and I open this vacuum for people to like pounce on me and say, 'Fucking finally, it's about time this guy shut up.'" Like that kind of thing. Did you worry about that? Mhm, not I don't I don't Not consciously. Maybe unconsciously, dude. I don't know. I grew up very independent, right? Like they they unintentionally taught me at a young age how to be self-reliant. Like I was cooking my own meals at 10. I mean, like I've never worried about losing everything or whatever. I know I can start again. I know I can handle myself. And also, I've just never worried that much what other people think, you know? Like I didn't have a tight circle of people who loved me and cared about me and nurtured me, who also taught me to be very um uh very conscious of their opinions, right? I grew up like kind of on my own. Uh and so, like it never occurred to me to worry about what these people think, who aren't in my life and don't impact my life. I mean, if they like me, okay, that's cool. Like I like that. If they don't like me, man, well, [ __ ] them. Like it doesn't doesn't impact me, you know? And so, that was really one of the reasons why I was able to write what I wrote. God knows I was not the first person to get drunk and throw up on myself and fall down, right? I was the first dude to write about it in an honest way under my own name. And I think the reason why is because I didn't care about embarrassing anyone cuz I had no one to embarrass, right? It It didn't bother me what people thought. And there was no one around me that like I was going to shame by doing that. And is that part of what then made the gave you the ability to go down without too much overwhelming pressure? Yeah, it it was like Well, let's be honest, money helps. Like I'd sold a lot of books and it was like, okay, I have a chunk of money like you know, I'm maybe I'm not I don't know I don't have your house yet, you know, but like I don't have a jet yet, but like I don't have to work anymore. So I don't have to answer to anybody. And even if I did, I could always There's a lot of ways to make money. I could make more money. So it was like, well, why do I care? Like it doesn't matter to me. Like I I've done what I had to do. I've said what I had to say about Fyre in that point in my life and I climbed that mountain and I thought that was the peak. And then I got to the There's There's a great Buddhist saying, when you reach the top of the mountain, you'll there will be another mountain, right? And I was like I I didn't think that and then I did it and I realized, okay, great. And so it was like, all right, and then I retired. Coming down the mountain was not hard, right? It It's really easy to lose momentum. Like it's really easy to kind of step off the stage cuz there's always 100 people waiting to replace you. So that was not hard at all. Going down was easy. Climbing the next mountain was really hard because that required therapy. That required me to really be honest with myself about myself to discover hard things, find hard truths to to and it required me to shed a lot of the things that had made me successful on the last mountain, right? Like um being the rambunctious devil-may-care flippant [ __ ] works great if you're going to be that character, right? Or if you're going to live that I wasn't even a character. It was who I was, but if you're going to essentially occupy that that that niche. But when you're climbing a different mountain, then you've got to let those patterns go. And because it wasn't a brand, it wasn't a a persona, it was who I was, I had to really kind of relearn in a lot of ways how to be successful. Um and how to how to successfully deal with people. Cuz if everyone knows, oh that's that guy, that's that guy who wrote Beer and Hell, then they give you a wide berth. Like you can be an [ __ ] and people actually think it's funny. Like it's like, oh yeah, that's that's Tucker Max. He's supposed to, you know, throw up on the table or whatever, right? Um but when you're like an angel investor or an entrepreneur or at a business meeting, like that [ __ ] doesn't fly. Like professionals, you can't deal with that, right? And like a serious successful adults, like they might even people who like might have thought my books were funny and liked them a lot, there's just like a certain level of of maturity that they expect, which is totally reasonable. And most of the time I was perfectly fine. There were just a lot of things that like I had to either shed or learn going up them either about the world or about myself. It was tough, dude. It was hard. You know what the hardest part? The hardest part is I think there's this expectation that once you're successful at one thing, you just get to be automatically successful at everything else, right? And like that's just not the truth. A good friend of mine, actually my editor, told me this great saying. He said, Tucker, all success gets you is the conditional opportunity to prove yourself again. And at first when he told me that, I was like, [ __ ] you, that's [ __ ] Like I'm already successful. People should just accept my genius because I'm who I am. And of course that's nonsense, right? Um uh it took me a while to relearn that, but yeah, like then it became very clear. I've got to re-earn every day. Um especially in the new arena. I've got to re-earn success. That is something I understand completely having exited Quest and I think everybody looking at me like I was out of my mind and knowing I mean we talked as a team about this is re-earning your stripes, you know, and if you know the J.J. Watt quote, which I'm sure it's him quoting somebody else, but success isn't owned, it's leased and rent is due every day, right? And I just I love that beyond measure. Do you meet that with excitement? Do you meet that with trepidation? Like How do you think about excitement. It's not It's actually both, man. I don't think I think those those are two sides of the same coin. I'm excited so I am blessed enough I've worked hard enough and made enough money that I get to pick what I want to do, right? Um not everyone has that that ability, although I think more people have that ability than they realize, but um so I wouldn't be doing the company that I'm in the business of in if I didn't like it. If I didn't if it didn't if I didn't wake up excited to go do this, I would not do it. Um Talk to me about your willingness to fire yourself as a CEO. Yeah, uh that's 100% because of therapy, that's another one. 100% like uh in fact, one of our clients was this guy, J.T. McCormick. He was the president of a $100 million software company, just like another software company in Austin and he had like come on when they were $2 million uh as a sales guy and had become president like in 6 months and scaled the the company like turn them huge like 100 people, whatever. And this is after he'd already run he he had a long history in in sort of scaling businesses and doing all kinds of cool stuff. And I kept going to him for advice. Like, "Dude, what do I do with this?" And he's like, "Oh, man, you guys are [ __ ] up. You got to do this and this and this, right?" And he kept giving me all this amazing advice. And then so I I started like inviting him to our like executive meetings at like asked him to be an advisor and eventually he's like, "Look, man, no offense, don't think you can handle this." And I'm like, "I know I can't. That's why I keep coming to you for advice." And he's like, "Why don't you just hire me?" I'm like, "Dude, you you made last year in salary uh probably about what we made in top line revenue. Like, we can't afford you. Don't Don't be ridiculous." I'm like, "When we get to 10 million, we'll hire you." He's like, "No, no, no. You're not going to make it to 10 million uh doing what you're doing now." He's like, "You actually need me now." Wow. And and I'm like, "Yeah, but we can't afford" He's like, "Yeah, let's talk." So, um turns out his company hadn't given him any equity, and he was kind of looking for his next thing, and he loved our process. Like, I I sat down with him painting sort of our long-term picture cuz like about what we what what what our vision was, and he was totally on board. And um he's like, "I'll come on as president. You can stay CEO. Like, I'll take over ops, whatever. You can be you. You can be the face of the company," all sorts of stuff. And I was like, "No. No, no, no. That's [ __ ] Like, if you come on, you need to be the CEO. I will step aside because uh like everything you're going to be doing pretty much are CEO tasks. And so, if you are president and I'm CEO, then it's like it's [ __ ] I'm just a figurehead. I'm like, "I'm really good at certain things. Like, I'll clearly I'll stay in the company. I'll I'll go run marketing. Um I'll go, you know, run product. Um and and you run the company. You scale the company." And it was hard for me at first uh to like kind of accept that. It was But when I say hard, it was like a couple days, right? Um And what was that process? Cuz that is exactly what I want to understand. The number of people that can do that from an ego standpoint is vanishingly small. reason I could do that is cuz of therapy, man. It's cuz cuz what happened on the movie uh cuz I know the last time I tried to keep control of everything, I ruined it, and I went through therapy, and I I kind of addressed that stuff in me. You know what it came down to, Tom? It came down to did I actually care about our mission and our team? Or did I care more about myself? Because if I cared about the mission and the team, clear as day JT should be CEO. And if I cared more about myself, then I should stay CEO. And once I framed it that way, then it was it was a painful decision, but it was easy. No, I love that. All right, before I ask my last question, where can these guys find you online, learn more about Book in a Box? Yeah, so bookinabox.com, pretty simple. Um me, I have a site called tuckermacs.me. Where I actually wrote a whole article about why I stepped aside. And then my email is tucker@bookinabox. Um that's probably the best place, yeah, to start, I think. Awesome. All right, what is the impact that you want to have on the world? I I got to give two answers because one is going to seem trite and probably won't be fulfilling for the audience, but it's the god's honest truth answer. And then the second one is also true, but is like the the second thing I would say, but is something I think the audience will will take more from. So, the the impact I most want to have on the world, god's honest truth is I feel like I will be a success in life if my children, I have two now, Bishop and Vaughn, and if they look back after I'm gone and they are they miss me and they love me and they are proud to be my kid um and they feel like I my wife and I gave them everything they needed uh to succeed at life or to set them up to suc- cuz they're going to have to fight their own battles, but we we set them up the best possible way. Um I feel like that's the impact that's most important to me. If I'm a hero to my kid a true honest hero to my kids, that's the impact that matters the most to me, um by far. Now, in terms of impacting the world outside of my children, um the it's the company I'm working on now. Uh I like it it from the outside it's like, "Oh, yeah, we're you know, we help people write books, right?" Okay, pretty simple. But I think it's a lot more than that. Um one of the great tragedies of human history, I feel like, is when Caesar got mad at Cleopatra and burned the Library of Alexandria, which at the time held basically all of the world's knowledge. Like the Egyptians were obsessive, they were obsessive scribes about like copying essentially what everyone else knew. And the the at the time it was said that the Library of Alexandria had at least one copy of of all like recorded knowledge. And um and it burned and and so like a huge swath of wisdom was lost. And I feel like now, even though we have so much technology and so much um sort of ability to record knowledge, I think almost everything that's recorded is essentially garbage nonsense that no one will care about in even a week, much less uh a lifetime. But I feel like there's so many smart people who know so much who don't record their knowledge. Uh they don't And not because they're bad, not because they're trying to hide it, not because anything, but uh because it's hard to really turn your knowledge into It doesn't have to just be a book, but to take your knowledge out of your head and put it into a form that you can share with others that they can utilize in their life, right? And um I just feel like I have the ability um and my and my team and my tribe at Book in a Box, we have the ability to unlock the world's wisdom, right? To get it out of people's heads and to get it into not just book Books are what we're doing now, but we plan to expand to a lot of different verticals, but essentially we want to create a community that can take people who know things that are valuable to others, like know how to do things, right? All Or how to how to anything that's valuable. Put it into recordable shareable forms, um, and share it with the world. People who aren't good like you've got the resources and the ability, you're good at media, so you can get your wisdom out of your own head, but how many people are uh know maybe not as much as you, but know like the equivalent in their niche, but either don't have the time or the money or or or the uh desire to go to all this effort, right? Why should their knowledge die with them? God knows, man, what what I wouldn't give to know at 18 what I know now or at 25 what I know now, right? What would you pay when you started Quest to have a book that that that of what you know now just about the like that business, right? It would be priceless. So, that's that's the impact that we are trying to have as a company, um, is we're trying to to unlock the world's wisdom. Yeah. All right, man. Thank you so much for coming on the show. It's absolutely incredible. Guys, this is somebody who I'm telling you is the most amazing example of the extremities of human transformation that I've ever seen in my life. Do yourself a favor, go look at where he started, read some of the early books, and then watch this interview again. It it is unimaginable the lengths to which you can reinvent yourself, change yourself, if you're willing to do the hard work, to look inside yourself, to do what he says, and really connect what you're thinking to what you're feeling, and most importantly, know what mountain you're actually trying to summit, and make sure that you have a plan to get there, and to have the internal fortitude, the sense of self, to be able to go down that hill first. And I know this is where a lot of people get lost. You get that first level of success, and you've still got the ego in the way, and you're not able to allow yourself to descend before you go back up the other side. You don't have the humility to recognize that what stands between where you are and where you want to go is a really hard to acquire set of skills that's going to require a lot of work internally and externally to get that. We didn't even get to talk about his background in MMA and I'm guessing that's where the bruises on the arms come from. And what he's learned on the mat and one thing that I came across in the research that I just thought was really incredible as he says that he feels a sense of gratitude to everyone that he grapples with because they give him a chance to show where he's really at. And I love that and I think in life, in business, in your family and everything that you do owe the people that show up to really let you show yourself where you're at and to be who you are at that moment and and then are going to be on that journey with you as you change and push and grow. I think it's absolutely incredible and honestly, honestly in all the people that I've interviewed, this guy sums that up the best and is one of the most profound transformations I've ever seen and doesn't [ __ ] "Look, I I enjoyed who I was then. So, this isn't bad. It's not me running away from something. It's me really evolving as a human being, reassessing what I want, doing the work, looking inward and becoming something new." And I think that is absolutely incredible. So, I hope you guys take as much away from this as I did. It was really incredible and if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe and until next time, my friends. Be legendary. Take care. Okay. Thank you, dude. Amazing. What's up, Impactors? If you've ever failed your New Year's resolutions, we've created a free guide just for you, the Resolution Reality Checklist. It teaches you how to write smarter resolutions that you will actually crush this year. You can download it today at info.impacttheory.com/resolutions.