Noah Kagan on How to Reduce Fear and Gain Control | Conversations with Tom

hey everybody i hope you enjoyed this episode brought to you by our sponsors at blinkist all right what's up everybody welcome to another episode of conversations with tom i'm here with somebody who i cannot tell you how much i enjoy hanging out with and that is the one the only noah kagan dude welcome to the show my friend it's good to see you again it's uh i love talking with you about the stuff dude same man i really wish that we were hanging out in person i found that doing these shows man it really makes a difference like there are weird subtle little cues that you pick up on from people when you're in the same space that just doesn't quite happen when you're on a zoom or a skype call there's just enough lag that it's different it's very good what do you notice like what have you seen in person that you kind of miss on uh the digital so i don't even know what it is i'm picking up on so i was doing um a show yesterday no it was one of my favorite episodes ever it was health theory and this guy is doing research into the brain the exact parts of the brain that i had to change or the mechanisms that i used to change that i try to explain to people but i never knew the neuroscience specifically to this and so he's able to explain like how you build desire like desire as a process like what the neurochemistry is of it how you reframe something that was traumatic the neurochemistry of that which that one i remember is and acetylcholine basically pops up whenever there's a super high or a super low and it focuses your attention um and he's just all over the mechanisms of change like how you prime yourself for brain plasticity if you're older it was just really [ __ ] hype on it but the problem was the internet was like off a little bit so he'd freeze his mouth was like a just a little bit out of sync and then most importantly like those moments where you want to ask a follow-up question you can see in somebody's body language or if they take a breath or if they twitch and you're like oh they want to ask me something so you stop so otherwise i'd have to be like oh wait but he couldn't hear because when you're talking on skype but like you don't quite [ __ ] get it uh so it was like i told him at the end of the episode his name's um andrew huberman really interesting guy stanford professor [ __ ] amazing and i was like we've got to do this again in person um and that was the first moment since this kicked off where i was angry about the fact that um we're having to isolate because as an introvert i've not been emotionally traumatized this has been [ __ ] amazing so economically obviously an atrocity and i truly don't wish this on anybody but the fact that it's happening also has an upside it's not all upside but i think it's got a lot of upside man that's definitely uh i i kind of i think i came out of my cave i've been hibernating for years and then finally uh this whole experience just like woke me up man like i was i was kind of just calling it in if that makes sense you know sitting on the sidelines kind of just being like all right we have a business and i have a podcast and we kind of have some stuff and you know i i've never felt more excited or more opportunistic and more optimistic now than ever before that's cool man i've seen the amount of content that you've been putting out it's really extraordinary all stuff that i think is hyper usable um i think it's rad why why are you so driven by that like why is this a cool moment for you so i think there's a few different pieces so it all started where the first three days i think i lost a few hundred thousand dollars in the stock market and so like every morning i'm waking up and i'm just like yo this really sucks like i'm scared and i think every single person now uh i think everyone in the world knows what it likes to knows what it's like to be an entrepreneur which is some days you're the best you're the queen of the world and other days you're like a bum uh and so that you know that's an entrepreneurial journey but coronavirus i think was i was so scared and then i started thinking like how do i fix this like how do i actually address this fear um and i think what got me excited is all right i started putting plans in place and then i started realizing like the coronavirus is so amazing because it's an equalizer coronavirus gives every single person out who's stuck at home because every single person famous poor anybody you can think of is stuck at home and it gives everyone a chance to prove themselves and this guy mitchell who i work with you know the first few days i went to him and i complained and i was like i was looking for him to do the complain party you know that party where you do it you want them to join you're like yo bro come over here and he did do it and what mitchell said to me that that changed everything was he said i don't know if it's gonna be six months or six years but this is going to end and i want to look back thinking i did everything possible to make this time better and and i think the the quota thing that kind of stuck with me is like don't let coronavirus go to waste and so for me it's just been like all right i'm not gonna let it go to waste uh and i think a lot of people who got fired awesome don't blame your boss he just gave you a hookup they just blessed you with freedom and now it's a chance that you have a time you have time to go do a lot of things and so uh there's just so many good things going on with it i know people are dying which is bad and that part i don't like but i think the money thing it's a good realization of like hey are you actually that important or not is your business that important or not and if not let's go get it fixed yeah this is um this really is the living example of you're gonna get more of what you focus on because look there is there's so there's real [ __ ] going on right now that i don't want people to because i actually hedge my bets a little bit when i talk about the optimism or i talk about him an introvert and part of this has actually been really fun for me um i do hedge it because in the background is i am also legitimately afraid my wife um i'll put her sort of loosely in the immunocompromised group i'm terrified that she will get this um i worry about something happening to her and i don't even want to say out loud obviously my fear is i think very plain i think people understand i don't even want to say it out loud because it's like if you get it you've got to fight and all that but it's like i'm so supremely confident that if i got it just my the sheer force of will that i have i would get on the other side of this um so that side is real and it bums me out and i don't like to think too much about it um but the once i set aside so that's all the hedging that i'm going to do i want people to understand i am wildly aware um fortunes will be lost i'm wildly aware that the the only thing any of us should really care about is lives are going to be lost but so now having said all that that i'm not operating in a vacuum i will say the [ __ ] heroism is intoxicating like watching people go out and serve and do just beautiful [ __ ] for humanity is amazing any time where the chess board gets turned over like if you were losing that's the greatest thing ever right because this [ __ ] is like you said it's a great equalizer mother nature does not give a [ __ ] if you're rich if you're poor nothing right but but what unfortunately does care is skill set oftentimes is determined by where you grew up that [ __ ] freaks me out now big time the opportunity to get that skill set is not determined by where you grew up but as of right now certainly in america and i would guess everywhere your zip code is the is a far more accurate predictor of your future success in your iq so it's like ah now that [ __ ] freaks me out so anyway you have a moment where the chess board's been flipped over all the pieces are [ __ ] up in the air and for anybody who's willing to identify the opportunity and then develop the skill set to go and do it that's where this gets really [ __ ] interesting but if you're throwing the pity party and you're looking at those things to the exclusion of the potential opportunities that'll be created then you will see that it will it it is so easy to find the negative in all of this to look at it to see it if you're you know you've been touched by it somebody you know where love died like wow like that that gets real easy so for people to um choose to focus on something that will like getting fired i'll cool my boss just gave me a hookup this is an opportunity right be very easy to see why you should be panicking it's going to be a lot harder to see why you should be stoked um so that is this moment right so the people that stay level-headed and know what to look for well i think there's a few things that are like i feel like the people who have more should be giving and if you don't have enough right now this is a chance to ask and if you have more like right now i feel like i'm everyone's confidence cheerleader and i have a lot right i'm not normally always confident i'm not knowing i was positive but i'm like i feel like i have a lot around you know around mostly around the business parts and i think what most people are feeling is anxiety right and people are uncertain and and it's really coming down because they don't have control like they didn't control their job they didn't control the virus and you know i think you got a sulk i just got off the a call with a guy who said he spent eight hours straight watching netflix and he doesn't have a job he just got fired and i was like dude that's awesome great like take eight hours go real deep hit the bottom of the trough and now let's come back up and so i think the things that i've been working on i think i know your audience really appreciates this and i've just been experimenting and figuring out okay how do i reduce my fear how do i reduce my anxiety how do i get more plans in place because when you put a plan in place which is what we've done in our business and i've done i'm experimenting in my personal to find what works for me i get my control back i get my life back and then it helps kind of like fluctuate or reduce the fluctuation of my mood swings so i'm not waking up i i you're not waking up what oh no i'm not waking up you know i was waking up at 7 00 a.m talking to my stepfather for two to three hours every morning saying like hey the stock market thing you know my mother's refusing to not go out she's she's complaining that the gyms are closed uh you know a lot of anxiety and so it's like all right how do i have more ways to reduce my fear and so just coming up with a lot of strategies for that dude i think that's really smart this is something i was talking to andrew huberman about was so there's this thing i forget the name of it there's initials for it but basically if you rapidly move your eyes from side to side it helps people reduce negative emotion i was like that is absolutely false um i was like that's the most absurd thing i have ever heard in my life when you take that back right now and he was like no he was like let me tell you why he said that's what your eyes are doing when you're moving forward and he said regions of the brain just have to like figure out how to orient themselves how to know what to reward and punish and he said they're regions of your brain literally that's what they do they reward you for some things and he said there are other aspects of your brain i mean we all know this there are parts of your brain that are pro-depressive they make you feel badly about doing something and he said one of the things you'll get rewarded for is forward movement because if you're on a hunt or you're pursuing resources like you know throw this way back into an evolutionary past and it was like the brain had to reward certain activities that were pro-survival and one of those was going on a hunt was moving forward to find you know the next kill and he said as you do that you're getting these things that move past you and so your eye movement is clocking these things as they move so as you move your eyes from side to side it is the equivalent of walking forward and he was like so it it has he said four now very high level papers have come out on the topic and i thought this is actually really interesting from so i've always told entrepreneurs that action cures all now that's me going um anecdotally i will just tell you all the times where i felt afraid i was [ __ ] overwhelmed like what is happening to me right now is so overwhelming i can't say i have the chills from thinking about how it feels in those moments where you're so [ __ ] overwhelmed and every single time just saying okay i'm gonna take one thing and i'm gonna just [ __ ] do it i'm gonna go after that i'm going to try to solve that one problem and the way that it shifts your brain is so [ __ ] powerful now i've always thought of it from an uh sort of 30 000 foot view of it's taking you out of you know being in the problem and it's switching you into problem solving mode and problem solving mode just feels better but hearing the brain mechanisms and the um the neurotransmitters and things that are involved in actually making that pleasurable and why it helps lift people out of that depressive state is pretty [ __ ] powerful so control like going back to what you were saying about control man that is that is a really big deal it's big it's also confidence man like if you lose your job and i always joke you didn't lose your job you know where it is you just don't have it anymore it's it's not lost uh you just have to you haven't found the right job or i always like to think of it more as a career um and so i think you're really right right with the confidence it's like you need to get that w uh and so like one of the things that i've been doing throughout the day is a thing called i've got two things that i think uh that i've been using that i've found really helpful one is a mood board and so it's it's not just anything do you want to feel or tracking the mood tracking so i do i literally just do this throughout the day i just created a note it's nothing fancy i didn't pay for any software and so i have a thing called mood in my notes and throughout the day i generally do it in the morning it's blurring it out so we can't see you have to hold it by your face hold it on campus yeah wow i love doing that no there we go for a brief second cool got it all right so what's on my mood board and i think everyone should be doing this because i don't know i'll just say it's helping me uh and i can recommend it so what i do is in the morning or whatever time of day i'm checking in how's my mood like number one like day is the worst day ever five literally like yo this is the best day ever then i write why right so today it was because i had coffee i'm gonna talk to you i made bone broth i did my hebrew i have some of my checklist stuff so i started the day right and then the most important part is the next column which is if you're not at a five what are you gonna do about it right now and so my only thing today was keep going just keep going but uh yesterday i felt like crap uh it was a three in the morning so i said stop playing chess because i was playing a lot of chess and losing uh and it made me really upset so i said go do some push-ups right now and focus on your daily checklist so the the mood board has been really powerful and then i've been doing a thing called geby which i think we talked about a long time ago yeah i don't know we did because i i don't remember what it is so this would be a good refresher but i remember you introducing me to that string of syllables which i had never heard before well so the mood board is one something it's free you could do it instantly and it really just helps you identify like what's going on and how can i improve it immediately how can i get that w the gabby and what i'm trying to accomplish is how can every morning start out great like having a conversation is gabby an acronym yeah it's gratitude exercise breakfast and you yes yeah so every every single day in the morning i'm like yo what am i grateful for and so it's generally most of the times most of my gratefulnesses are really stupid um like sometimes it'll be cuddling in bed it's not like uh feeling good at home i got a treadmill desk this is yesterday's treadmill desk and the sun uh so gratitude exercise do something i've been doing this really fast before you move off yeah and i do want to hear about the push-up thing because your goal is insane but um one thing i think that's really interesting because i'm not the same so in terms of my gratitude stuff it's usually really simple [ __ ] like being grateful for success and whatever is wonderful and but you just sort of end up repeating it whereas when you get into the smaller things it's like different you realize [ __ ] like my whole life is actually a bunch of textures of like um lisa i looked over at her first thing in the morning i wasn't expecting her to be awake and she just [ __ ] beamed me with this smile right like [ __ ] like that really hit me so having things like that is is super important um one thing that i want people to really really think about and get perspective is okay through all of this and look i'm not i'm not a doomsday person at all but i think you have to run the scenarios right so we're living through something right now where the scenarios could get pretty gnarly it could end with banking collapsing it could end with people riding in the streets like it's i'll say a low probability but it's on the spectrum of of things that could happen um and so i thought okay well why doesn't that give me a tremendous spike of anxiety and there are two reasons one because i believe that if you have the right skill set you can always rebuild and i find tremendous comfort in that so going back to your confidence and control it's like because i know that i know how to learn and i can get a skill set that goes wherever i need it to go and i know that i have the discipline to follow it through i know that i have a willingness to take action so that things don't overwhelm me it's just like i've learned all these things about me through going through horrendous periods of my life and i see how i act in moments of crisis cool so i'm i'm very confident that i will handle myself well even if i have to build from scratch number two is that when i really think about the things that um that influence my internal state in a direction that i want them to be so my one to five right like what are the things that are gonna take me into a five oftentimes it's really simple [ __ ] lease is a big part of it right so being able to be around her to touch her to be supported by her those are huge but then even setting the human thing aside if i have access to books man and i'll take a ratty version that i got for a quarter at a used bookstore i'm fine but like books access to movies like if you give me books i like to read and a [ __ ] netflix account it's like at the end of the day even if i had to watch it like on a cheap phone like there there is a level of joy that those relatively simple things bring me um that's pretty extraordinary and because i have taken um very intentional sort of account of what are the things that i love doing like right there in that moment i'm totally swallowed by that thing maybe for some people it's a cup of coffee for me it is a dope like i'm really into japanese manga so reading like some sick manga or reading like a fiction book sci-fi especially or watching a movie like dude those things are so gnarly to me they take me when they're good they take me all the way to a five like the the days that i was reading the last book that just [ __ ] owned me was um ready player one and dude every day that i had that book in my hands was a five it was just so rad so when you know like oh cool the things i can default to are super cheap and you know in the case of a book like have high degrees of survivability there's something there that i find deep comfort in i think the the thing i was curious for you is like what makes a great day because i think for people out there that like have no confidence now right now like anything in the morning that's what i do gabby and some of these other things we can talk about because you need confidence you need to get some things that like make your bed where it's tiny but you're like i feel better at myself now i can go to something else but like for you now like how how what does your day look like for like that's a five because i think some people what i've tried what i've been even more intentional lately is what elements make a great day and how much am i actually putting that in my day yes that that's the right question so for me the answer is my writing days are my favorite days and i've constructed them to be almost orgy astically joyful so i am going to borrow that word please so i am psychotic with discipline discipline is one of my superpowers so i can make a random tuesday the best night ever by breaking out of my discipline right so if i said on a tuesday i'm gonna have a bowl of ice cream and there's a reason for it i could make it a celebration and put some time and attention on it and do it with my wife and like but it's just a bowl of ice cream right and so for somebody who eats a bowl of ice cream every day it wouldn't be necessarily that meaningful so for people that don't know what my normal life looks like so i basically work seven days a week i'm trying to build something that is so big it's probably absurd and it is um very obviously challenging and difficult and certainly given the circumstances i have a lot of people vying for my time so as much as i try to not be needed in the company there's just inevitably a certain number of things that i'm the right person to address when you're doing as many things as we're doing even if it's a small number even if only you know half a percent of each person's needs end up pointing back at me there's 25 people in the company so you can see how very quickly it's like i have one or two things from every person every day that needs something so wednesdays i've carved out where i say look this is my writing day don't put anything on my schedule i don't allow myself to drink much soda i just try to keep it to drinks that have been you know being consumed for thousands of years i figured the the safety there is much higher but which is that alcohol coffee no i suppose wine probably but i'm just like the monks i was thinking about something no no for me it's just coffee um so i normally just drink coffee but on a wednesday on my riding day i have this special like little almost like crushed ice and i'll have a mini diet coke that [ __ ] [ __ ] sets my day like to a great place so i work out in the morning i get to write all day creative stories and here's what's important for me the stories have to be building towards something so i'm trying to build the next disney so writing stories that help me do that have we not talked about this before not recently that's so funny this literally my whole life for the last i don't know six years has been about building disney so um writing the stories they're the stories that we want to tell to build the kind of studio that we want to build so i feel like whoa this story could really touch live so it isn't just writing which i do love in and of itself but it is something that leads to something that's a huge thing for me in terms of meaning and purpose and i like building things so writing a story that's going to go on to do something and having my little vice of a diet coke and with the like special little eye you're so naughty tom i know it's terrible right so but these are the like that's a five like even just describing it to you now it's like i'm getting excited because tomorrow's wednesday so it's like i'm so looking forward to it and i've i've really had to do very little things because know thyself right i know me i know those things that really make me feel good they get me excited i look forward to them and you know i have to be very intentional to carve that space out um so that my team knows look wednesday is the day just leave him be he's working on the creative um and so it isn't they're not a hundred percent about it but for the most part it's like that day is sort of walled off and i can have the perfect day once a week every week why don't you try to do more of that like four days a week epic and one day a week kind of because like i did a thing last week we're doing a variety show i just thought everyone stuck at home so i was like why don't i try to recruit people who are unemployed and pay them and have them come entertain people for free and i spent like two days recruiting people and then we did the show and like i couldn't no i wasn't able to get any of the guests i wanted so i ended up just playing their videos i played their youtube videos uh and i just was really disappointed in myself i didn't think i put on a great show and i was like well what's really wrong here and i was like well i know what my superpower is right like i love entertaining i love raw i love promoting but mitchell on our team is a great organizer he's a great recruiter he's kind of like your christopher and i was like mitchell you spend more time over there which you like i'm gonna spend more time in my area and so um i think with you i wonder how do you get more time three days a week doing your epicness and maybe two days a week doing the the less epic well i'll give you the answer to that so um that's not my only path to five so my weekends are usually five so that's already three days right there so the weekends i only do work that's fun um so i literally if it unless if it's like really house on fire sure but for the most part i try to save any work that i have to do on the weekends it's all the things that i enjoy the in and of itself doing um so that helps a lot and then on the weekends my priority isn't actually the business so even though i work most weekends my priority is my wife um and so oh yeah right now because we're on lockdown i get one day just with my wife and then my sister who's actually quarantined with us five out of seven days is here um on sundays so saturday is totally dedicated to my wife and then sunday is like family day where the three of us are all together uh we watch movies we play video games the three of us actually play the same video game uh it is inordinate amounts of fun so it's destiny 2. uh unfortunately even though it's a aaa title it's yeah compared to like uh the oh god fortnite and stuff it's much much much smaller but still very very are you playing any uh are you playing oculus i had an oculus um and i had done some of the really rudimentary stuff but i know that you box with oculus if i'm not mistaken dude i love the oculus block well i'll talk about the game stuff but first thing i was i'm thinking if i'm an audience member i'm like all right tom worked at this company he's made some money the guy's pretty wealthy at this point why is he having any non-fun work because i think a lot of people say they look at me and they say okay he's he's got some money they look at tom's like god that guy's got a lot of money and you kind of imagine like why isn't every day just perfect like it's interesting that you actually add that to your life because i think a lot of people assume that you get to some level and you've removed it i think if you do that you're really in trouble so this is a concept i've heard you talk about so i know that you're you're on the same board um it's really about fulfillment so i'm not chasing momentary happiness um and there is like a diet coke is momentary happiness there's zero fulfillment to that and so it does play into uh hedonistic five day but really i'm looking for a month to be fulfilling so a lot of times fulfillment is born out of suffering it's doing something [ __ ] hard i hate working out but i do it five days a week because it makes me feel strong it actually makes me strong it keeps me feeling young it gives me energy it gives me the look that i want the health benefits all that so it's something that's important to me that i do and i'm also proud of myself for doing it because it's hard because i don't want to do it but it has these you know leads towards a goal that i want so i think that as you have said very eloquently in the past people should be chasing fulfillment so fulfillment is a it's it's a way harder game to define or to get people to understand because any one day like part of what makes me proud of myself and to feel deeply fulfilled is that i don't let boredom stop me so to build what i want to build so jeff bezos summed this up perfectly he said every job every job has some amount of overhead so there's going to be some amount of doing things you don't want to do right and it just is what it is and so i routinely check my life for things that i don't like doing and i don't need to do and i try to eliminate all of those but there's a lot of stuff where i'm like yeah to get what i want in the long run to help the people i want to help to serve in the way that i want to serve i have to [ __ ] do this and so i just do it and i'm actually even though the in the moment it's not fun at a higher level it is makes me proud of myself and so that feeling is rad you know i had a so i had my assistant jamie uh go through all of your shows and find your most popular ones then figure out what are the elements and so she came back and that's kind of what we structured a lot of like the content and things i wanted to make sure i shared because i know what your audience likes to hear but uh the two things that i thought were interesting i'm curious how you address them is one your superpower is discipline i think a lot of people that maybe got lost their jobs maybe don't have a business yet maybe don't have even or a job they just like i don't think everyone needs to be an entrepreneur but what do they do if their superpower is not disciplined um you know maybe let's start with that and then i think the other thing that like i i was asking mitchell i said what do i do that you find unique and he's like you just do stuff you don't really always think about it [Laughter] and so jamie actually said she started listening to your summoner shows and she said i am gonna go take action now and so that was something that i i thought was exciting and figuring out like you know together me and you like how do we encourage more of your audience and i have an idea what we can talk about a little bit how to get them to take more action so i'm curious for your thoughts with that with like how do people who it's discipline is not their superpower and maybe we can brainstorm uh how to get these people to all right let's go take action as well to some of that discipline it's interesting i think you and i are the one to punch on this that people need so here's how i view us so the side that i attack it from is internally what's going on with you and what are you going to have to overcome what are you going to have to believe and value the neuro um chemicals that you're going to have to learn to corral and harness and point um that that's my game right um your game is you you think this is complicated but this is deadly simple and when people listen to you it's like oh my god your brilliance is in the simplicity of do this like the thing you've become famous for which is one of literally a thousand things that you could be known for because they are all as amazing as the next but the whole go get discount on your next coffee or tea right it really stuck with people and it stuck with people because it's so simple and so powerful and it shakes you out of your normal frame of well the price is there on the board and that's it and i follow that rule and don't even realize it's a rule and so you shake people out of that so um the way that i think about it to answer your very specific question because i actually think they then have to follow it with your like go do this um is you have to realize if you don't have discipline like i wasn't born with discipline i've developed discipline because i could see its utility so people look at me and if you want to know what i was born with because most people probably are born with something that's a quote-unquote gift they didn't do a lot to earn it my verbal ability i didn't do a lot to earn now i've done a lot to sharpen it and i've put easily thirty thousand hours worth of effort into my ability to articulate ideas to be captivating um you know to to do this which of course i didn't know anything about social media or that it would ever exist but because it was so good in so many other areas i just really poured myself into it so i'm a kid that found speech and debate when i was in the seventh grade and so i started going hard at that point um i began to realize that writing is very much like being able to think and speak so those two things came together so i put a lot of time and energy into that as well i wanted to be a stand-up comic so i've spent an unimaginable amount of time in front of a mirror with a hairbrush um performing routines so i've put a lot of time so anything where you're like well sure it's easy for you because it's verbal cool i'm loving that now on the on everything else that people look at and say well uh it's easy for you to be an entrepreneur because you know you were probably born with that literally zero i had zero entrepreneurial instincts or abilities um i didn't have discipline in fact discipline was the one thing i really lacked i had big dreams i've always been a big dreamer but i didn't have the drive to see things through so i had to learn that which was not easy because i wanted to i mean my my mom quietly assumed i was going to fail when i left for college because she was like you're so lazy and i was and that wasn't like her being mean or misidentifying me i really was lazy i really am lazy to be like be excellent at something tom right and so what i found to um to finally answer the question you actually asked is i realized okay discipline is useful it's a skill i need and by that point i had realized everything is a process desire is a process love is a process and so i just had to walk the the process of building desire because having the desire for something will make the discipline really easy so building up desire i found was the key so going through the process of building desire and then rewarding myself like crazy for being disciplined and then discipline became this sort of thing that every time i was disciplined i felt so good about myself and because of that i had this thing that i really wanted and i got to reward myself emotionally every time i stayed focused didn't go party i just did that thing i got to tell myself the story about who i was that felt good and you put those two things together and now all of a sudden i'm disciplined i i'm curious to follow up to this which is one of the things i've always believed is it's really easy to get what you want when you know what you want yes but knowing what you want and you label the desire which i even think it sounds so sexy um but i think the hard part is how the hell do you figure out what you want yeah right because to get it i think once you know your destination you're like oh i just drive this way and so like one one thing i did this year and then i'm curious how you did i did a fantasy so like uh i just fantasy year would look like yeah i just wrote up i was like you know noah i wasn't feeling good and you know some other personal things and so i was like what is the craziest year that i could possibly have and i just started writing my fantasy and it was like some of the things are like go to oktoberfest wear all the outfits and have a crazy thing um our business is this one thing that i couldn't even believe our business is this um i get a new bike that i love i mean some of it's small some of it is like okay dork reaches 10 times the audience and then i think from running at the fantasy i started really thinking okay well what did this really matters and then it was easy to be like all right maybe that kind of helped me understand where my desires were going so i don't know i guess how would you encourage or how have you explored where like the studio is that just a childhood thing or that recently and like other things that you've you're desired well now you're getting you're getting into probably the most profound example of how i built desire in a way that even caught me off guard um so all right so i believe everything is a process right if you want to fall in love well you better go on a date you better find somebody that you're attracted to i don't believe in love at first sight so even if you're deeply compelled there's something about that person pheromones their look their laugh whatever find yourself incredibly drawn to them that isn't love so love to me needs to be reciprocated it can be certainly infatuation if it's a one-way street so all right you go in these dates you find somebody that you're attracted to you begin to build trust you build a real relationship that's back and forth there's intimacy there's all these things you have to be doing things all along the way communicating proximity getting near each other um you know doing all the things that you need to do to build a bond okay i say all of that just to demystify love for a second so people can see that even as a process so now with quest i my first like real passion was filmmaking then my second passion was getting rich and i spent a long time trying to get rich and i'll give everybody the punchline you will live the cliche of money can't buy happiness i wish it weren't so but it is so so the pursuit of money without the pursuit of meaning will leave you emotionally bankrupt so don't bother um let me have learned that lesson for you so then i go okay well then what is going to be my connection point to my next business you know passion what's going to be the passion what am i going to because passion is a process so how do i take something put it at the center of my soul and make it real that quest it was i wanted to save my mom and my sister they were morbidly obese i wanted to basically make food that they could choose based on taste and it happened to be good for them and so translated into a business statement we wanted to end metabolic disease okay cool so through my mom and my sister i really made that meaningful and important to me now flash forward i spent so much time and energy it was almost a decade at quest um spent so much time and energy on that like the only glowing ember at the center of my soul was ending metabolic disease so now what i'm going to pivot i'm going to do something else okay well it's going to be storytelling for reasons i won't bother you with right now and going back to my first love which is filmmaking but filmmaking in and of itself is a thing you do it's not meaning so what's going to be the meaning that i assigned to because i already know has to be meaningful so i was like all right here's something i've been thinking about for a while a big brother for this kid rashaan a big brother for eight and a half years and i failed to save him from his zip code so um his life was turning out exactly the way one would expect from growing up where he grew up and that made me very sad but i was young and stupid when i knew him and could do nothing other than show him somebody loved and cared for him but that really bothered me and now at quest i had 3 000 employees about a thousand of them grew up hard like rashaan had so i was like [ __ ] man i don't want to let the same thing happen to these people they're in my life there's got to be a way for me to impact them and so this whole notion of like how am i going to impact them what am i going to do so i begin to conceptualize building a media company because if you want to impact people at scale it's got to be at an emotional level you're never going to hit them at a logical level so um neuroscientists will tell you the way that humans assimilate truly disruptive information is through storytelling we need something to hit us at a limbic level right it's why the art form storytelling there is not a single culture that doesn't happen so we tell stories to open people's minds to get them to take in lessons and things that will end up serving you and so i was like cool that's what i'm gonna do now how do i marry uh just insane amount of intention and meaning to this and i said this is my chance to basically impact people in the way that i was unable to impact rashaan so there's this whole thing called the age of imprinting it's 11 to 15 which is exactly when i knew rashaan i met him when he was eight years old so i met him in this window where i could have changed the course of his life and didn't but step number one was admitting that i had failed rashaan even now dude it makes me emotional to talk about that because i spent a lot of time saying hey yes you showed him that somebody loved him and that's [ __ ] awesome and you should be very proud of that but you did fail to take help him take his life in an area that would have worked out better for him and so owning that i had failed him and that i didn't want to fail more people and that i didn't want anybody to get to the age of 15 without encountering the growth mindset now i'm saying all this not diminishing my sense of self i'm not you know feeling badly about who i am i'm so proud that i tried and that with the what i knew at that time i did what i could um but i'm not hiding from the fact that i did not get the outcome that i desired so in talking about that and telling other people hey i failed this kid i failed this kid and i don't want to fail more people hey i'm building the studio let me tell you why i'm building the studio because i really believe that we can embed some really amazing ideas and just entertaining [ __ ] and i said imagine if one studio had made star wars the matrix karate kid rocky iv rocky one like all these [ __ ] just rad you can do it [ __ ] you just have to believe like come on and because yoda changed my life yoda led me to taoism and taoism literally laid the foundation for me from like 14 to 25. it was i mean when people ask what's the gift that you or the book you've gifted the most in your life for sure for me it was the sheen i [ __ ] used to give that thing out like candy so like that was just it it really laid this foundation for the way that i think which led me to a growth mindset which then changes my entire life so it's like i really believe in the power of storytelling to incept people and i had to start telling myself a story about what rashaan now meant and what that failure was and my opportunity to help people if you watch a video just you search my name plus master plan you'll get a youtube video that comes up and you will see the result because 10 years ago if you'd asked me about rashaan i would talk just like i'm talking now there was a sense of like oh man i'm really bummed out but like it was a beautiful thing for him it was you know wonderful for me to to truly give to somebody he there was nothing he could have given me in return other than love right it was just me trying to look after a kid that was in a really shitty situation and so anyway it becomes beautiful and is one of the reasons that i truly understand what it means to have children long way of saying watch that video you'll see how an avalanche a tidal wave of emotion hit me which i wasn't expecting i could have predicted it but i just wasn't expecting it because that was the end process of me telling people hey i failed this kid this is what this all means to me knowing this is the process this is the process of making it mean something is saying it to myself articulating it to other people doing what i'm doing now which is embodying it right elevating my emotions feeling it like really letting myself feel it and you do that over and over and over and it becomes real right in the beginning it was a little bit of bs it was like i am going to knowingly take this thing from my past and reshape it so that it becomes very meaningful and current in my life now today and in doing that it now i have rewired my brain to think about all of that with these heightened emotions well i think number one you tried with well i i yoda i know personally sometimes i don't like the word try um i'm curious with you the the two things i would i'm observing uh that you said one it took you 10 years to get rich and longer than that i think some people are starting businesses or watch you because they want inspiration and they're like i instantly want to be wealthy or have a side hustle and i'm like i don't know if you guys heard it took over 10 years so if you're really commit 10 years uh second thing you said you have just gigantic visions i'm like you know i'm going to try to sell 10 bananas you know tom's like i'm going to try to fix uh this diet in the whole world and so i think that is something that to people need aspire for three another thing you said you made me you maybe reflect on i was doing something i was trying to recruit these variety people a few weeks before and i failed at it right like people were saying yes to me and i i was disappointed in myself and then like about an hour later i was like oh this is just a test to see if i really want it this is just a test right and so i think we have these tests do you really care to help do this the studio do you really care to help fix the diet and then it's just a reflection for you to say yes i do or no i really didn't i didn't have the conviction for it um i am curious if you could go back to rashaan like is there anything you could have done differently yes unfortunately if i knew what i knew now uh yes so the the very sad news so i was very young when this happened this is me trying to feel less badly about it um i was 18 when i met him unfortunately he was being abused and i didn't know and he just kept begging me to live with me let me live with you let me live with you dude i'm broke at this point and i'm just like man i can't dude like i'm [ __ ] broke i'm in college like uh you know what i mean so the way that my relationship with him went he was supposed to be an eight week extra credit assignment where i go in and tutor him at his school and he was a problem child and at week six you're supposed to tell him hey i'm only coming for two more weeks i told him he went absolutely insane i'd literally never seen a human act that unhinged before and finally i calm him down i'm like is this because i said i was only coming for two more weeks and he was like yes and i said all right look man i'll make you a promise because he was really hard to deal with when i was there he was like [ __ ] all over the place and wouldn't do his homework it was a nightmare and he would end up keeping me i was supposed to be there for an hour a day and keep me for two because when i said i have to leave he would beg me to stay and then he would actually do his homework so i said all right look i'll make you a deal as long as i live in los angeles i will help you with your homework as long as you do it as soon as i get here is it a deal he said yes and that became an eight and a half year relationship now in that eight and a half years he was begging me to live with me i couldn't understand why and he couldn't articulate why he was eight so it's like i didn't put it together and he finally got taken out of his home because he was being beaten and he made me the guardian of the court to help him into foster care so i get a call one day like this is rashaan's attorney um he has requested that you be his guardian and i was like holy [ __ ] so then i helped him into foster care all this if i had um just just being honest like if i had taken him into my home at that point or earlier he would have been a thousand times better off if for no other reason then i was [ __ ] trying to figure it out so i would have been like yo i don't have all the answers i'm trying to [ __ ] figure it out and so i ultimately do end up figuring it out getting my life together and going on and having success and by the time he and i reconnected it was it just he was already in a bad place so um that i have decided to allow that to haunt me in fact i've decided to force that to haunt me um because it's very powerful um i hope one day i can be useful to him as well i've tried to get in contact um we'll see but it's uh yes i would be lying if i said there was nothing that i could have done so stuff yeah life is like that so um dude one thing that i think is really extraordinary about your style is you are so tactical and you're so able to mitigate um that gap between wasting your time because you think your idea is rad and really being able to assess like just through systems and simple questions whether something is going to work or not but rather than go down that because you and maybe you give that as the example but i want to know more how you think like how did you end up here you have you are um if you're wasting time thinking you're average let me just stop you right there you've developed this extraordinary mindset that even i find myself going okay i'm thinking about something new i really need to bathe in noah's content for a minute to make sure i'm thinking you have like a first principles approach so how is it that you think like that is it mom just told you this is the way to think is it you mushroom trips what is it there are some mushroom trips that have happened well i'll say there's different ways to access parts i mean i think a lot of us are you're influenced by a lot of different things the first thing that comes to mind my parents um what did they get you specifically like what were they teaching you yeah i'll tell you the first thing my dad taught me is to ask and so the coffee challenge is asking for a discount 10 off anywhere on any purchase really and then realizing after you ask you're still alive and so in all things in our life it's good to ask i remember my dad we would go man there's been so many crazy stories we go we're at a garage sale there's a guy about to buy this rug and my father he's from israel oh yeah i want the rug the guy's like one i'm buying it he's like how much you're buying it for uh whatever fifty dollars more than him and i'm a little kid i think i'm eight years old and i was just i don't know shared this right i was like i was so embarrassed and the guy the guy who's buying he's like dude i'm buying he's like 50 more and then the guy leaves right and my dad goes 25 and so that's just one example right like that was a lot of my life but i think what it taught me he came to america didn't speak english like learned all this stuff and he made a lot of his own mistakes which i think haunted me in a good way um and so that i really think asking is just like almost everything in life and i think the thing for my mom that's made me somewhat unique in my own way is it just perseverance this lady just does not stop and it's it's on one hand you're like it's annoying as hell but the the you know perseverance is one of the you know one of my favorite quotes that she says is the squeaky wheel gets the grease and so she is so damn persistent like uh she a buddy of mine says persistence beats resistance and i don't think i think i'm above average intelligence i wouldn't say i'm like top ten i've always thought of myself as a b-plus kind of guy and but i think what differentiates me is that i think i just do it and so that that is what i i try to encourage other people is that hey if you didn't like your job great let's do something about it um i'm not perfect in all things i have a lot of my own mistakes um i think that makes me unique i think another thing that that happened recently that that's helped me in terms of me can be muted because i think i'm pretty good at saying okay well what was wrong and how do i fix it so the iterations get better uh and so i asked mitchell he we did a q1 review on our team for all our podcasts and youtube and he said he's like can you give me feedback and so i gave him feedback and um a day later or later in that day i texted him i was like yo man can i get some feedback because i was like who am i to think i'm a better that i've i'm i'm done right like i i figured it all out and he started giving me some of this feedback like he and and at first i was like [ __ ] you man like you know like i'm the boss like you know but then like a second later i was like dude this is a gift like how awesome is this like he is helping me improve and live a better life and so i think that you know those are some of the things um i think ultimately like if so it's those pieces feedback asking persistence and i think from a professional's perspective um i think i just do a really good job like following my curiosity can you guys example like how you chase it down because that's one of those people say that a lot and i yeah i know what you mean and it is super powerful um but yeah give me an example yeah so we can do like business and non-business so in non-business i like exercising i want to feel healthy but i just got bored of going to the gym like yes i always felt like i'm in prison like i'm all with all these sweaty guys that were stuck in this metal box lifting things and putting it down and so i was like i want to be healthy but like what other things can i do to get the to get the outcome like the goal or the functionality i want without having to go to a gym and so i just started exploring and so one of the things i ended up on was boxing and so i tried a lot of variations of boxing um and i eventually found like a trainer that lives locally in austin and i do training with him and now we're not doing it so i'm doing virtual training on my oculus there's an app called box vr and so i think that was it's a journey though i don't know if that ever ends in terms of the curiosity and the curiosity evolves like but i think one of the things that helps with curiosity is also having like a reason for it like i wanted to be healthy the desire or another thing for me is that i had a desire to learn hebrew to speak to my dad's family and so i kind of explored how to best learn uh hebrew and so i've you know found my own way that that works for me i'd love to know what what way did you find not to derail us too much oh no no you could get your own we can talk curiosity in business too i have a lot of examples that's my whole career has been professionally been crossing but in hebrew i think number one you have to have a goal and so i dude i was i was i did ayahuasca and i was um i love white people love saying they did ayahuasca but uh you know i'm on the ground and i'm on the mat and i'm scared of the dark i realized and i need to work through that and i'm on the ground and i'm like sinking in the ground in the coffin and i'm looking at my dad and he's speaking hebrew to me and i was like is he actually there or no he's no he was he's passed away oh [ __ ] in the yeah but in the in the trip during the the trip i'm like seeing him and i was like oh we're speaking hebrew like this thing that i'm studying matters like it it's there's a purpose for it and i felt just connected to him in that and so my goal my desire is crazy strong and so how i learned it over the years i think what what people don't do in learning is they don't take responsibility for their learning they blame the person or they blame the book but if they have a goal that's fine but now how do you do the process of learning so i experiment with a lot of different things um over the ways i think i'll just highlight some of the things that make a difference number one i think if you don't put at least two hours a week into something you will not improve when i noticed i did an hour a week or about an hour i stayed the same so if you're not putting a minimum two hours it just didn't change i was like at the same level and then i think you have to figure out your learning style so for me what i found is i need structure and then i need like micro learning so i have structure in that twice a week i have a structured program with opan.com and there's a bunch of sites now for learning languages like italki or preplea take lessons there's a lot of these but they have like are those sites with humans that are teaching you yeah so also i actually put out a video yesterday i was saying here's 10 sites that if you want to run a side business or an online business side hustles go to these sites if you can speak english you can get customers and so i went to italki in the beginning and i tried a lot of things out i tried italki i tried a local teacher in austin i've tried different apps and things like that i've tried podcasts i've tried youtube but what works for me is twice a week for two hours with a teacher in israel and they have a structured class and then every minute every day i do five minutes on an app a vocab app and so that's kind of what i've i've found to work for me now and guess what in a year it could still probably change one people love apps so i will show the app i use not for the not for the hebrew i use drops by the way for the hebrew it's called drops it drops a word each day uh and then you can test the words but the thing that's actually more interesting is this app called strides and it's totally free this guy's awesome it's like this solo dude founder in the midwest but basically it's a checklist of all the things i want to get done every day no matter what so this is like my gabby like what i was talking about this is like a checklist of the geby stuff so hebrew i want to do the vocab stuff three times a week and so i did it this morning and i've been trying really hard and it's getting better that every morning before i enjoy my rewards i do my like core gaby stuff so i do some push-ups let me talk about my push-up challenge i do my hebrew i read my daily goals and my like mantra um drink certain amount of water so i'm trying to do as much of that before i can start enjoying like goofy like to me playing chess lately has been an obsession maybe not healthy but it's like you can't play your fun thing until you do your your hard work to you know maybe some of your suffering i love that man so um bringing it back to curiosity you said yeah some business examples well i mean i think if anyone wants to start any business if anyone wants to work at any company all you have to do is just go look at what you're already enjoying and so i that's all i've done in my career so i was an r.a in the dorm and everyone was getting on facebook and i saw the power for me about how much enjoy i got out of connecting and flirting and talking to buddies and posting stuff so while i was bored as hell at intel trying to like quit that company i just applied for the job and so it was i i thought is this a big enough problem yes connecting the entire world do i personally want to work on it yes and so the money part was secondary and every time i've kind of put money first and try to just make money personally it hasn't worked for me and i flame out really easily um and then my whole career like mint.com which is the second company i really went to i love personal finance i love it it's like dude and the fact that we could build a product that would change the world's personal finance i i like i enforced my way into that company he actually rejected me from getting that job but i basically said hey this is a cool story i came to him and i said i know you don't want to hire me he said no so i put together a 90-day actionable plan and i said i'm going to do every single thing on this plan and you could pay me the salary or this hourly and after 90 days if you actually really like it you can offer me a full-time job and so he accepted i killed it in the 90 days i don't like the word killed it i did very well and then after 90 days he offered me a full-time job that's incredible yeah so do you think about people who aren't willing to do things for free i don't know i just see where it gets you i think you have to try it out for yourself like lately i've been thinking about that i've had two people um i've had two people who work for me who are now very good salaries and i think they have great lives and they both started for free one of them i was at the arnold bodybuilding classic and he's like hey you're noah i think i've seen your stuff blah blah he's like hey if you ever want me to take photos of you i could do headshots of you in the entire office and the rest of your company this is a guy named brandon wells and i was like oh yeah sure so he comes over takes head shots they look awesome and he sends it out for free and i was like that's cool he's like hey you're doing youtube i think this is a few years ago he's like you're doing youtube i'm like yeah he's like i'm a filmmaker i could just do a free youtube for you and so one brandon sucks at business that's a whole nother episode we could do but two i was like sure so we did the youtube video and then i was like well hey can i pay you a few thousand bucks a month to just keep doing this with me he's like yeah that's fine and so that is transition now he's the full-time youtube uh video appsumo maker so for appsumo he does all video and then mitchell just as well mitchell's the guy who's now like running an executive producer of okdork.com he basically hit me up an email and he said hey i know you're doing a charity bike ride we do this charity bike ride to give laptops to kids and he's like hey i'll just volunteer at one of the rest stops i was like and he's like do you need any other help i'm like yeah can you pick up tacos because obviously we have we have tacos and margaritas on our ride it's more of a party with a ride and so he went and did that and then i was doing the next ride i said hey do you want to help organize he's like yeah i can organize a lot and then he from that he's now full-time executive producing youtube podcast blog like helping out entire business the guy's like a total stud and so i don't think you have to work for free i think what you should do is if you're not working if you're not employed if you're not having anything what i've always personally found valuable is go work for free until you get too busy and then start asking for money and it's also a great way a lot of people are saying no i always feel they're scared of rejection that's why the coffee challenge is great because they don't want to get rejected and so work for free because then you can't get rejected and then from there once you've worked for free and you're so busy then you could say hey i'm too busy to do this for free i need you to actually pay me for it yeah i think i think in in what's about to come with the economy people that are unwilling to um do something for free are going to find themselves held back and i always feel bad as an employer it's like yes that benefits me to have people that are willing to come in and prove themselves before i have to pull the trigger on hiring a full-time employee but i'm just telling you right now if i were to give myself advice back when i was 25 right the classic question what advice would you give your 20 year old self i would tell that [ __ ] go find the person who's living your ideal life offer to work for them for free in exchange for knowledge and connections and you can put a timeline on it but it's like when i was that age i was trying to optimize for the dollar i wanted to make the most money i could and what i didn't understand was that money only spends once but knowledge and connections monetize forever so literally oh it's like look everything ended up working out okay no complaints but oh my god my journey could have been a lot shorter yeah if i had gone direct to the person who's doing the kind of thing that i wanted to do so um that does make me very sad and such simple advice so when i hear people and look i think things are probably about to shift but there was like a real sense of like [ __ ] you i'm going to get paid what i'm worth oh god i'm like bro if you're optimizing for the dollars your whole life i promise you you're not going to end up being very happy at the end of this well the two things that that i've noticed from it is i'll give a script so i've there's two things i've observed so if you're trying to work for free don't email tom don't tweet it tom don't leave tom a comment don't email noah and say hey what do you need help with yes oh god that john you crazy that's all they do right and they're like hey uh it's like asking someone what do you want for dinner tell them hey here's what i'm gonna make you i'm making you sushi it's so much easier to say yes i want sushi no i don't want sushi then figuring out a whole dinner thing it's a lot less mental energy so when you're emailing anyone i'll give just a quick script but basically it's like hey i hope you're doing awesome here's how you changed my life because of course everyone likes to hear that i know this is wild but uh i know it's a wild time but i'm reaching out about doing specifically x and here's this is the result you're gonna get from x and i've done it before and happy to do it for you at no cost is this something you're interested in like and then ps like i said i'm a big fan so let me know would make this a no brainer for you and so i was talking with a youtuber today his name's nick nimmins he does amazing youtube about obs like how to do these live streams obs what's that oh dude this is like my new obsession i think if all the people are unemployed every day or every week they should try to learn one new thing that's been something that i've been trying to focus on more like either i'm learning chess each day like doing puzzles or i have a chess coach uh or i've been doing obs or like i i emailed him and he he's actually i'll tell you let me finish one thing and i'll come back on that but with him he said if you're emailing to do a collab on youtube the first thing you do is you email them three things you can do for them and i was like that is that is great he's like don't just email saying hey let's collab say hey here's your most popular videos why don't we do these three specific videos that we can put on my channel for you that'll help grow your channel and so you're actually making it crystal clear beneficial to them to help you the second thing he did which changed my entire week so far and i'm really excited about it is that i emailed him i said he didn't know me i just said hey i want to pay you 250 bucks to give me a consult on obs project and so obs is basically it's an open source uh project for doing video a lot of twitch guys so twitch and like all the video gamers are using it and now people that are doing youtube live and facebook live and a little bit with zoom are started to use obs because you can make these amazing amazing looking like super produced videos at home which i like because the more that i can do videos where it's just me getting on the camera doing a few slides and it's like if i can make it easy to do i'll do it it's the same reason people put their shoes by their door for the like for runs it's like well i see the shoes there might as well just step in and get the hell out um and we can talk more obs but so nick i emailed them saying hey can i just pay you 250 to meet with me for an hour and then just go over obs with me and he replied and this this has impacted my week big time he said hey right now i'm just i'm doing volunteer one hour uh one to two hours a week so i'd love to get on a call when can you meet and so because of that i thought that was really interesting wow uh i'm doing that on thursday so on thursday i blocked out an hour and a half and i'm just going to post it up to my audience and our customers and say where can i'll get on the phone and help anyone for up to two hours right now and i think the thing i would highlight is that if you're asking someone to work for free if you're asking for something else are you doing it down and i think that's an important thing i have to always remind myself like as much as like okay i want to meet jeff bezos i think that'd be [ __ ] awesome right we're both bald uh you know i like how he runs this company am i still you know you can't ask up unless you're asking you're you know helping down as well so i think him doing that inspired me uh to do that this week and it's hopefully if it's something that it's energizing um i'm gonna try to do that throughout the rest of the week throughout the rest of my life but yeah and the business stuff with the curiosity i mean that's that's all it's been like even today with appsumo.com i said i just love software deals like we got this there's an app called rocket i don't know if you do use a mac yeah i don't know yeah oh i'll send you the link afterwards but basically rocket is a really easy way to do emojis to people so i can like really quickly write you an emoji so like i just wrote happy woman to you as emoji i'll send you rocket it's on appsumo uh for free but you could send in skype that you can send emojis that was cool i sent it in your chat but so i just hit up this guy uh we hit oldman on our team hit him up and we said hey we love your product we promote it and he said yeah and so for me i just loved and i was curious about online businesses i was curious about marketing because i know i've always been interested in promoting and so 10 years ago i was like well how do we start helping promote marketing tools online software tools and that's where appsumo came and then even like our latest products we have two latest ones one is sendfox.com it's email marketing for youtubers and content creators and guess what i'm a youtuber i'm a content creator and i want to explore like making a tool that works for me and so we're doing that's you know sometimes i think it doesn't work but that's that's part of the game and then you have to kind of keep i think that what you would what i'd imagine you say which i i really believe in is that are you at least solving problems that you wanted to be solving because i think sometimes the times when i veer off like we did this thing for shopify like an email marketing tool for shopify called fam we spent maybe seven eight months on it in terms of salaries we probably spent i don't know about a million but somewhere close to that in salaries and i think we have maybe a thousand people using it we make about a thousand dollars a month oh yeah yeah that's i mean that's money that could have been in the teammates pockets in my pockets i could have you know bought more miatas whatever that is and so but here's the thing i don't use shopify i i like shopify but i don't give a [ __ ] about email marketing or shopify it's not something that matters to me and so what we did is we said well what do we really care about and we said we just like promoting dope products like i love finding cool shoes like i wear suaves that's my favorite shoe brain i wear sax underwear i use an uler i have an aura ring like those are things i love so we've got the site called hall drop h-a-u-h-a-u-l drop dot com it's basically like a reddit or product hunt for products because i love these products and i love promoting them but i don't want to be their email marketing tool i just want to promote them and so we built a site that just does that is it all affiliate links or what we don't have that we don't have that part kind of figured out yet we're going to start testing monetization literally it's just hey i know that this could be a play if i can get eyeballs here let me build it and see where it goes yes and no so if you listen to a lot of my advice i'm very big on limitation don't you need you have like generally what i recommend for anyone trying to start any business is 48 hours and you have to make a hundred dollars how do you get 100 bucks off this so this one i'll tell you i can do i'll give you two examples because i think people think well i'm not a developer so originally with this one there's a product called deep sentinel so i have it outside my door here here and what deep sentinel does is it has live security guards watch your cameras what yeah cause like ring if you think about your ring it it basically shows you someone stealing it it's like oh look it's someone stole [ __ ] that makes no sense so deep sentinel uh this guy named dave sellinger and uh it's right now you think about it like oh yeah it does they watch and i'm scared sometimes to be home alone and so they watch my door and if someone comes the door that's not that stays too long or starts fiddling around they're like sir you need to leave sir i'm going to put an alarm sir i'm calling the police so anyways i love their product i can you know it's called deep sentinel yeah it's awesome interesting dude there he's dude you should talk to this guy he helped found redfin.com this guy's i talked to him for like an hour and i was mind blown but so with him i just emailed out to my okay dork audience and i said hey i love this product they're giving us like some a promotion and then they also said they'd pay me for anyone i sold and i i actually didn't i because the economy turned like all the sales i just told them to keep the money but we ended up selling i think i was going to get 200 bucks we ended up selling like 20 of them so i was gonna make about four thousand dollars whoa so i was like oh okay there's something there if we can if we control the buyers we're more valuable than shopify right like who's more valuable facebook or shopify facebook because they control the customer so without i just i don't want to blow past it because it was so interesting um what's the fact that you didn't claim your affiliate commissions because of what's happened in the economy dude that's so rad and the number of people that are doing cool [ __ ] and trying just to like help out where they can is so [ __ ] cool talking about things where there is a bit of upside like seeing the whole world rally around one thing um and just find ways to to be rad to each other is is pretty dumb i hope it lasts man like i've said the quote and i fully believe it is that if you have more than enough now you need to give and like i have i have some i have uh some offices that i that i own that people rent out of and i ask them like hey do you need to hook up on your rent like if you want to hook up let me know like i have no problem like we can pause it we can do whatever you want one guy paused it the other two were like hey we're gonna leave it alone for now wow and so if you're not in enough right now and you're like hey i'm struggling go ask i think this is the time morning now not to say not for free because and one i don't believe in waiting for the government i don't want to wait for anyone i want to be recession-proof i'm trying to figure out how the hell like i can take my own responsibility uh but if you don't have enough like go ask to help someone else out so like here's another business i'll just give another example i started a week ago because people are always saying oh man i don't have a job i'm look i'm updating my resume and a lot of times in their life they're wanting to play work like updating your resume feels like you've done stuff applying for jobs feels like you're doing stuff but i don't want to hope that this shmo just gives me a job [ __ ] that guy like [ __ ] that girl like i want to make sure i get a job and so um i think there's different ways about if you do want to work for someone how to do it and we can talk about that but i said all right i want to start a business let me just show people how to do it and so i i had a few ideas of businesses that i want i want super instacart delivery what is that what does that mean i will pay a premium to get me the items i want i don't give a [ __ ] how you get them like if i want this if i want chicken i will pay a lot of money to just get me chicken and so there's also something beautiful about grocery stores now that people appreciate the selections we have and they now you're like oh cool what's available so i think people never appreciate that which is a whole nother story but i was willing to pay for certain stuff to be delivered so i think super instacart another idea i wanted is i wanted more gym equipment for my house and the third thing i was like oh i wonder if people want more bikes so how i went and tested that and then i the fourth idea was is there a way that i can get someone who's rich to give me money that's the thing people i'm like yo how to get money go to someone rich and ask them for it in a way that they're excited to give it to you so i'll start with that one because that was the funny that was it was it worked i basically looked up a youtuber uh i don't want to mention his name but i looked up a youtuber i created a fake gmail so he i didn't use any of my social credit or my whatever the [ __ ] people call it and i said i looked over all of his blog and his social media and his youtube and i crafted an email and the email said three things i said i love your stuff it's changed my life which i do follow this guy and i do like him and i used to fake email so he couldn't be biased then i said here's three things on your site that you should do right now and it'll increase your youtube channel and i know that's something that's important to you if you like if you're trying to do something that doesn't matter someone [ __ ] cares so i said those three things and at the end i said hey if you'd like to grow your youtube channel more if you want to pay me a hundred dollars i'll get you a collaboration with one of these types of people and there's no risk if i don't get it for you then you don't have to pay anything let and let me know and so yeah two days later and i even and so two days later he went back he's like yeah sounds good so this is someone i also i know personally but he didn't know it was me right and so my point though is that that guy has money he's making money i provided enough value that he was like yeah i'm excited to give you some money so that was just one of them and the other one was the gym equipment so basically all i did is i went on a facebook group i went on my facebook page a facebook group and my text message groups and i just posted does anyone need anything delivered right now i have bikes gym equipment or anything else you guys want and because i was just curious if anyone needs anything in my area so i posted in austin and it turns out like at the company and then a few other people that knew me and didn't know me were like yeah i really need gym equipment can you get me to me so i said well what do you need i got on the phone i think a lot of times people trust their business they're passive they're like you know let me uh you know crit buy i'll buy a domain and i've been buying a lot of domains so i can't see that i would do my domain buying is [ __ ] i'm an addict lately uh let me get a domain let me watch a video let me uh buy some ads and then let me pray and i'm like [ __ ] that let's just jump to the customers see if they actually want it give yourself a limitation and so i immediately said all right what do you guys want because i actually started thinking oh i need a website it's like no you don't so a few people were saying i want gym equipment i called them on the phone i said what gym equipment do you want i said i want 245 dumbbells i was like how much is that worth to you they're like about 100 bucks okay would you give me the money today if i have it yes all right give me two seconds so then i basically go on a 15-minute rampage now that i have my customer one of them getting your first customer is always the hardest and it's like you said it's momentum like momentum begets momentum so then i basically uh called up a lot of places i called up hotels i asked hotels if they would sell me their dumbbells and then the hotel said no so i said hey where do you buy them from so they gave me their referral which is precor it's called a pre-core they gave me their guy their guy said uh well you might buy it but no so then i tried calling local gyms because they're closed and i was trying to see if they'd rent it to me they no one answered because those gyms are closed and then eventually i found someone on facebook who's like yeah i've got i got an extra supply of gym equipment do you want to buy any and i was like well what's available and so he told me his prices i could get it for 110. i went back to the guy and i said hey it's 120. do you want these dumbbells and he said yeah he venmoed me right then this is all on air you can go on my youtube channel and see that episode it's called like make a business live he gave me 120 and i was like oh [ __ ] paid the guy the 110 and then the dumbbells arrive tomorrow morning and so i think the things that are interesting about that is not that i don't want to be a gym business business equipment i think a lot of people it's below me right i'm too good for this well then go be an employee that's fine not everyone should run a business but side hustles or online businesses are available to everyone without any money and without a lot of time the two things that are critical is one businesses evolve right but the point is just to get going and so what i'm actually more excited about i think is a huge opportunity is rental gym equipment for homes because dumbbells are actually pretty expensive but if it's only five dollars a week that's actually not bad like five dollars a week is 250 dollars a year and those dumbbells only cost a hundred but five dollars a week i could actually justify or a bike a bike is 300 to 500 to buy but it's only five dollars a week that's 250 a year and then guess what every year you can just give a new bike and so i think there's some a big business out of rental stuff that's really easily available for people um or just stick with gym stuff but the point being is get going and you can evolve it and i think a lot of people are just like watch let's just watch more videos till it magically happens dude literally i am in awe man that that is so rad that is so you the fact that you could literally just there in an episode live get a business going um and what makes me want to punch all of humanity square in the mouth is that some people heard that story and went yeah but it's only 10 bucks it's like dude it is noah noah i have built businesses i've spent the last 20 years of my life building businesses and what you just described is so brilliant and so straightforward and so doable you want to talk about you just made real entrepreneurship accessible to everybody right there uh it makes me deeply sad how few people will do that especially i mean so basically just to be clear what to solidify for everybody identify the need get a customer and then do the work to see if you can actually your phone's blurry the way your thing blurs the background only things on on par with your face there it is it's my that's my venmo where i got the money that's so crazy man yeah yeah if you could summarize i'm curious how you summarize that so yeah to me it was you identified the need you found the customer and then you went and actually did the work to make it happen instead of building a website and like putting in you know three months of work building the foundation and writing the copy and getting the ad and you know the domain name and all that [ __ ] like you literally just all right what's the need who's the customer and then yeah boom i'll go now deal with what i have to do and the fact you didn't do anything fancy that it was literally picking up the phone and making a few phone calls brute force man i mean yeah i think people get it backwards and i think at the end of the day it's work right and so i i love people taking action like one of the things i wanted to experiment if you're down like uh this is gonna go on youtube right yeah can we i'll pay five hundred dollars i'll personally out of my own cash for a comment i wanna i'd love to put in the description like i want someone to take action today that's the thing with videos and the thing that i get i try to discourage people from it's like don't wait till tomorrow don't wait till tomorrow why not just try to see if you can do it today and so i'll pay 500 put whatever it is that you've been wanting to do just say in the comments i'm gonna do it today like jamie watched your video and was like i've been wanting to teach people how to be an assistant like she is for me and i want to have a course and i was like jamie let's do it today she's like no i got to prepare two more weeks and so i'm bringing her live on my youtube next week and we're just going to do it live on wednesday and so lately on wednesdays we're i'm kind of experimenting with like let's try like tomorrow i'm doing growing email list live with someone else so i'm taking one person who doesn't have an email list and try to see if we can get 100. but yeah i'll drop 500 bucks personal money comment right here or put in the description if you guys can do it whatever action you're going to do today and we're going to pick a person we'll check to make sure you did it and i'll give someone 500 bucks if they've done it they have to do it like it don't make you don't i think a lot of people imagine it's it's a bigger thing and a lot of it is just like get going man take that action for yourself uh build up a win so it's like hey i'm gonna do my laundry that's maybe a smaller one i don't know if we'll choose you to win but you choose something that you could take action do something now uh and then the best one or the one not even the one we enjoy well check make sure you did and we'll give you 500 bucks i will personally dude i remember you were doing um it was a live with uh tim ferriss and you were like this guy wanted to sell something like a hairbrush like a toothbrush toothbrush tell that story because that was so brilliant like he did he just he had a totally different business in mind and people like no no but i'll buy that i'll buy that i thought it was genius yeah i need to explore you know it's something watch people through that story though yeah that's to okay perfect uh so tim asked me to come on and talk about business stuff and i've never really thought i'm good or bad at this business stuff i've always just kind of done it my way um and it only works but i try like even if it doesn't work i haven't spent a lot of time and money so tim asked me to come on and then he basically showed me two different business ideas i don't remember this i remember the second one the one of them was the guy wants to build an app because a lot of people always make the excuse oh well i'm not a developer i'm like okay we'll solve that and the second one was a guy was like i have a bamboo toothbrush and that's before that was 2014 that's six years ago before now bamboo toothbrushes are common that guy was ahead of his time and so he came on the show and was like yeah i've been working on this toothbrush and i wanna like check it out and like oh i'm gonna build my website and and literally on air i was like how much is the toothbrush he's like uh he's like my houndstower 20 bucks i was like what's your paypal and he's like my paypal is this and i was like anyone here want to buy it anyone watching want to buy it and then literally sales just started [ __ ] crushing it dude the guy just started blowing up his sales and he was like what really i'm like yes yes you don't need a website like my previous business uh two business ago was payments for facebook games we were the third largest provider we did 30 million our first year in total revenue processed we did not have a full website we had our logo on a page wow and so i think what people get the misconception of and i can talk about an app or other things is that no one needs a website a website's job is to work for you like a website's job is like does this help me run my business better around the clock and i think we're i love technology don't get wrong dude i'm this is like my boner town but i think it's like how does this technology like how is this helping leverage me how is this helping replicate me not i need this to solve the problem necessarily directly because i think people do that first and i try to automate it oh i need email automation no you don't make sure the emails work like make sure people want to hear from you and i think people get that backwards way too often do there's something interesting about the way that you approach all of life with this um just like do it move um and combined with part of your personality that never really hit me until today so there's two people that i've met in my life that um they don't judge themselves and that would be you and gary vee both like if when you're having a bad day you just say i'm having a bad day like other people might try to posture or not want it to be true and so they'll sort of shuck and jive um but you don't i know you took some time off from your business for a while she's like man not really feeling this right now i think it was when you and your partner weren't agreeing on what the future was going to look like to be like [ __ ] it i'm just going to go explore and follow my curiosity and i know you've said that you actually think that might have been wasted time again not judging yourself i'm just really taking a realistic look what what's that about um and while sure some of that would be a mistake would you say on balance that's a useful way to live your life um so i was i was doing some shrooms and two weeks ago and i was scared and doing the shrooms or the trees no no while i was on the spot i was on it while i was on it and while i'm on it i realized two things my other buddy did shrooms and when he was on shrooms he just sat on his couch and he just listened to music and then i'm like talking to him i'm like dude so what else did you do did you you watched tv no so do you have your phone no i'm like so you just sat there and i think sometimes in our life like we're fighting being who we are ooh what do you mean we're fighting who we are and so because people don't want to admit it what is it is it that we don't admit it maybe sometimes we're scared of who we are in that sense so for me i would the idea of sitting on this couch right here on shrooms just sitting and just being by myself is fear like that's really oh yeah you're gonna have to i know you're trying to yeah but i have to understand that yeah we'll go back into that and i'll tell you how i'm going into that but when i'm on the shroom thing i recognized that and i said well i just need to keep being busy i need to keep i was biking and i was like just keep biking just keep running away from it and it's not that i don't it's not i'm not trying to encourage that i'm not going into things or i don't face fears or i don't face challenges sometimes i do sometimes i don't do my best but i realize that i just need to just be myself without apology and so i don't i think it's good to face the fear so what i'm doing either this weekend or in the next upcoming weeks i'm gonna take some shrooms and i'm just gonna send that [ __ ] couch and i'm just gonna be and i'm just gonna face it and i'm gonna see how that goes i don't know what that's gonna do i don't know it's gonna be but how many grams will you take i have a vial i can show it to you but it's basically a vial like this i take like a third of the vial and mix it with water any because i know that five grams is like the um dose of like yo if you think you're a baller take five grams so supposedly like you totally you have no sense of yourself or that you've even taken drugs so are we talking that kind of dosage are we [Music] i don't know how much how many grams actually it is i think it's maybe 100 gram bottle and i take a third whoa so this is where we'd have to get really real you need to um measure that look it up yeah figure out how much it is sam harrison a whole podcast about taking five grams of mushrooms and being blindfolded if i'm not mistaken oh yeah that sounds really scary he said it was [ __ ] insane um so yeah he did not make it sound fun he made it sound kind of like putting yourself through an ultra marathon where you're like all right this is really gonna suck but on the other side of this there's gonna be like some nice big breakthrough but it definitely sounded like it was gonna really suck so um i'll assume for now that we're not sort of in the sole obliterating level here right um what is it about being alone that you that initiates fear um [Music] i think just uh i don't know i think i have to explore that i mean i think part of it is just dealing with just me so ah man i'm i hope you're okay with me pushing on this yeah i don't know i want to actually want to this is actually interesting i really want to explore this so i think you you strike me as somebody who seemed who seems completely at ease with the good the bad the ugly you just don't seem that bothered by it now is that a way for you to cope with something that actually does really bother you we so we don't hang out as much and if i move to la or like one more time we will and you'll see it i go i mean i think i'm human where i go through fluctuations um i think less over the years but i definitely have moments where like was it two mondays ago i woke up and i was like everything sucks this all sucks and so i sucked all day i just talked all day and one of my friends said this and i really appreciate him said he's like sometimes it's just good just be be with the sadness and so i've really tried that now not tried i've done that when i'm sad i'm like you're just gonna be sad and guess what go to sleep take a walk or go to take a walk go to sleep wake up you're still alive you're probably gonna feel a lot better and so i try to sit more with sadness when i feel that instead of just trying to have a drink or go do something that'll kind of diminish the sadness um i think this stuff about being alone i don't know if this childhood thing i'm not sure where that comes from it's something that's been more new to me uh i know my mom as i observe her i'm like mom can you ever just stay still she's like i oh today i did the weeds for three hours she does that every day there's no weeds left at the house you know uh what's the neuro mechanism that's happening are you trying to change your neurochemistry like i would the one the one neurochemical state that i really because i'm trying to identify what is causing the quote-unquote fear which may be the wrong word for something um so the one thing that i'll say i hate the sensation so much i will do virtually anything to get out of it and that's when i've really upset my wife the way that that makes me feel is is far more unpleasant than basically it is short of the loss of a loved one it is the most unpleasant feeling i've ever had so when i'm in that state i am very active i am either trying to convince her she shouldn't be upset i'm trying to um cheer her up i'm desperate like i don't want to be separated so if if i've upset her she needs to go take time but that's the most torturous thing for me because i need resolution because sitting in that sensation is god awful so i want to keep us together and talk and talk and talk until we can resolve it because when it feels like it's still ongoing then it doesn't bother me in the way that it does where it's like i've upset her and she needs to go off and be by herself so if that that kind of thing where i'm like what i desire is to get out of this neurochemical state there is a sense of having caused pain to someone that i love that i find just insufferable it registers like physical pain and then i'm just squirming and trying to get out of it um so i'm trying to understand if it's something like that or if or is it you have a negative voice that's kicking the [ __ ] out of you and telling you that you're dumb and you're never gonna accomplish the things you want to accomplish i think with the the sitting and just the being part if you think about what i'm doing it's really just like there's no distraction and the only person i'm really looking at is me and i think there's a part of me that like likes a lot of parts and then maybe doesn't like some of the parts and it just keeps me from even having to face that and i think one of the things that i do appreciate about myself and i think it's good to sometimes recognize the things you do like about yourself is that i'm willing to go into it and so it's saying like all right we're going to go on this couch you didn't really want to do it let's at least go into it and see how that feels and see if you can understand that a little bit better and when our questions add to that experience um i think they put your mind in a different place and so you know i've if i remember before i ever took psychedelics as a form of therapy that i was always like oh you [ __ ] stoners you're just druggies you just want to have orgies like whatever it is you guys are doing on this stuff like it sounds like hogwash to me um and i think ever there's different ways of accomplishing the same desire like if you have a desire to keep improving or just learn more things about yourself or get you know enjoy more of life there's many you could probably just meditate for a day and get that i've just found through ayahuasca i've done it twice too and that was enough for me to help me understand certain things and it's exploring other avenues of this stuff and so uh the shroom stuff it i've done it twice in terms of therapy the first time dude some of the [ __ ] that comes out like was [ __ ] surprising to me um like i didn't realize how much i appreciated our office manager i didn't recognize like how much i want my mom to like i want to impress my mom with my significant other and i was like yo where did where did that come from right i didn't realize like some sadness of things i don't wanna i can't don't open it up yeah but i had some sadness about some pain that i caused others and so i haven't thought about that [ __ ] that was just me finally having to face some of that and i was fighting it or maybe i just wasn't aware of it it showed it to me or i saw it and i was like all right and so i went and i was able to address those things uh later that day and so yeah that's that's kind of where i found this i have found it as a form of medicine i think you can go to therapy i think there's a lot of different avenues for it it's not really my place to judge and i know people love doing therapy judgment or like a psychedelic therapy judgment like oh i do shrooms i'm elevated it's like no i'm just trying something else out i you know i i like what you said fulfillment i don't believe in happiness right i believe in fulfillment right i think that's where it is and so fulfillment for me is part of facing some of my fears like i am a little bit scared of darkness and being home alone i don't know where that came from never had any abandonment issues my parents were super involved like my mom's you know assess the jewish mother or something's at night i'm just scared of being home alone in the dark and so i'm gonna probably do a little bit more of that and face it and see like okay it's not so scary or what can i do to make that even feel a little better so that's why i have deep sentinel and i have a gun under my bed that's amazing tell me about the gun when'd you get it ah so i got a gun dude it's so funny in texas the story how i got is crazy but maybe about like three years ago or two years ago i felt if i'd been i've lived in austin ten years i said there's certain things in texas if you live here you have to get a gun and you have to get boots and you have to get a hat and i was like all right i got boots i have my hat right there maybe i can get that on a second and i was like i don't have a gun yet and my friend donald park and some of these other guys like tim kennedy who i didn't know really well i still don't know well but donald i know probably pretty well had guns and i texted donald i said i want to get a gun and he's like get a glock 19. it's the best all-around gun and i was like what's and so then i started getting researching and i found like the prettiest gun which you know my step did something really interesting to me he said you actually should get a gun that you could really shoot someone with because it's easy to have a gun but to actually pull that [ __ ] trigger if someone's at the door so i think he has like a revolver he's like i'll definitely shoot someone with this revolver the glock i'm not sure if i could do it why what's the difference i don't know for him he psychologically felt better i think he also has a 22 so he's got smaller bullets so he's like probably won't kill him but i'm going to slow that guy down and so i can talk a little about the gun so i got the glock 19 fde uh which is like this full desert earth like it's gorg it's pretty and then i got about uh two not before corona maybe four months ago before all this stuff happened like all the ammo sold out in texas i wanted a concealed gun and why that is because if i want something in my car or if i'm in a movie theater i just want to feel more confident if someone tries to do anything that i can be defend i can defend myself in texas you can conceal carry you can conceal carrier and i have a concealed permit but there's certain places if they have signs you're not allowed to bring it in so you're not allowed to bring it in but you could um i think what's actually the most interesting about the gun is not the guns for me it's that i took a self-defense class to learn how to use the guns and that was hard yeah so i had a gun what was hard about it uh so it was with tim kennedy it was called sheepdog response and i did it with my buddy aim and aim is a guy who runs app sumo and i was i got this i live in a small house 800 square feet and i've just been a little scared to be home alone i'm scared someone's gonna come through this door i don't know how much to steal frankly like tequila bottles and stuff like that but i just hear they're gonna come in and i have a gun but i was like can i even really use this gun if someone came through the door could i pull this gun out and shoot him fast enough to make a difference and so i was like well what would make me feel better and i to me i get i get so what was your word orgasmiosic or enthusiastic orgy i get orgiastic when i see someone solve a problem or if i solve a problem i have that just [ __ ] orgy ass makes me worried she asked me it or do you ask me to do i [ __ ] love that [ __ ] like like i have bikes in my guest room and they're always laying over so yesterday i bought a bike holder that i could just make sure the bike doesn't fall over and i'm like this is awesome i sold a problem so i took a self-defense class to say all right now how do i actually use a gun because you watch these movies dude when you're in a real thing like it's not that easy and it's intense and you have to use some muscle memory and so the sheepdog response.com awesome class highly recommend it's super intense i think they weigh under charge what you get it's full it's two 12-hour days half day is jiu-jitsu so basically i focused on home invasion so if they come into my house can i [ __ ] them up with physically and then can i draw and then they did a lot that the next six hours of every day was gun practice we went to a range and it's like how fast can you draw it how accurate are you like you you'd be shocked from five yards away how unaccurate you are on accuracy under a word but how inaccurate you are in shooting because you think i'll have a gun that comes out so just bang them it's like no and so you have to get comfortable under pressure actually using the gun and so that was a big awareness thing for me about it's one thing to have a tool it's another thing to know how to use the tool yeah yeah yeah gun guns are a trip guns are a trip right now i'm not surprised that you said that um bullets are sold out in texas i know there was a big thing here in la about the gun shop saying hey we're essential you can't close this down second amendment like but they did they they've all been shut down i've never owned a gun but i have to say like it's something that's been on my mind for quite a while that it might not be a bad idea it's like i either need to go commit to jiu jitsu or i need to have something the number of times that my alarm has gone off in the middle of the night and i have to get up and [ __ ] search the house and make sure everything is kosher it's like i always think man i wish i had either learned to fight or i had gotten that gun because yeah well like two suggestions that have helped me is number one i have a taser and i don't know if you can buy them in california on amazon it's ten dollars for a taser and it's i just have it on my bed stand and i've told my fiance i was like don't ever surprise me at home uh the second suggestion that i would recommend is a gun is pretty deadly and you have to be able to use it so and i'm you know i'm training so hopefully i can use it when that happens but you can always get an airsoft gun or bear spray so those aren't going to kill the first spray yeah there's you can go to amazon look at bear gel bare gel yeah so it's a canister it's kind of like mace but this is like intense [ __ ] so bear gel uh i can i'll look up the link for you i have a gun so i don't feel like i need it but so basically those two things what i'd recommend is if you get that so i got really obsessive with home security i like went on this like deep dive on like hey i'm scared to be at home let me fix that so i went on like this really obsessive like how i fixed up my home uh but yeah those are two things if you're not wanting to have a gunner it's not allowed or whatever your convict whatever it is uh airsoft gun or gel but the funny thing i wanted to tell you how i got my first gun in texas you go to get the gun and they make you take a quiz and by the way so it was uh we did like a it was a saturday fun day so i was blacked out at this point this is probably about four or five years ago when i got it i go to the gun store drunk like i am wasted at this point and i was like yeah man i have a gun here because i ordered it online and so when you get a gun order online they can ship it to a dealership and i was like yeah can i get my gun and i don't know why you give him someone who's drunk a gun by the way that makes no sense to me and then they're like all right fill out the quiz so i'm filling out the quiz and they're like by the way there's a trick question on there and i'm like okay fill out the quiz gave it to him he's like dude you got it wrong so he gives me another quiz and then i'm like i don't know so my buddy who's not as wasted was like hey it's that it's that one just to make a yes instead and they just give you the gun and i'm like this is [ __ ] ludicrous yeah not exactly uh stringent rules yeah they should be way more strict on that like hey you're drunk hey have you taken like i've taken a chl class after that now i've taken a to i think i think like pregnancy marriage finance guns like we should have like extra requirements on all those things you just have a background check or do you have to take a gun safety class you don't have to take anything as long as you don't i believe in texas because i just got the i so i have a glock 43 uh my it's my concealed carry it's so cute by the way it's most important thing about gun is it's cute um is that i went there they check your license i believe they check if you have no felonies but that was the extent of it and i took i took the same quiz again out the door wow that that's a whole thing man that's what's scary about being out here one of my funnier stories from moving to austin is like the second year i'm here i'm in a movie theater alamo drafthouse and i'm like holy [ __ ] a lot of people here have guns that you don't realize like i was hanging out with donald park it's a black belt what you can watch him on youtube jiu jitsu black belt that dude carries a gun i'm like yo you what are you doing he's like yeah you don't ever know but i'm in the movie theater this is my favorite stories for guns there's a guy that's talking in the beginning of the movie theater and that that's like dude i have a lot of pet peeves but that's definitely up there sucking i'm like you shut the so i look at him i'm like shut the [ __ ] up right and then he kind of looks at me mad dogs me and then i sit back in my chair and i'm like oh [ __ ] that guy could have a gun so i take i take a piece of paper and i write a note like hey man i'm really sorry i hope everything's okay i fold it and i pass it down to his friends and i'm like oh i'm really sorry if i hurt your feelings i'm like if i bothered you he looks at me and goes okay fine because my i literally was like that dude could have a gun so especially in a place like texas way more people have guns than we think yeah did you hear about the uh it was during during quarantine uh in russia and this guy shot and killed five people for talking too loudly outside his apartment i thought yeah yeah that's way sad and it's one of those like you never know who you're pissing off man that that [ __ ] escalates so quickly that is yeah very terrifying did you have the thought so i had the thought that we could go to full anarchy where my money in the bank and all this stuff actually doesn't matter correct and only thing that matters is shelter food water and ammo and so i did it crossed my mind now i feel more that that's not going to happen i'd say that's a very like one percent likelihood so i'm not really like putting a lot of energy but i definitely was like okay i'm glad i have a few of these things yeah like i said i'm not an alarmist but i will say that that is it's unlikely but it is on the menu of potential items at this point so can we buy you a gun what kind of i'll get you a pretty gun uh yeah my thing is like if when everything settles back down yeah i think it would be it would be wise it would be wise so i think the other thing is you have to have i think guns they're scary i'm still a little scared of it and i think you have to figure out what am i really trying to accomplish yeah i think it is very wise to be afraid of that gun so i've been to shooting ranges and the sense of holding danger in my hand is very real um if you've seen like oh man i've seen far too many youtube videos where you see the one where the kid one of the weddings where they fire the guns in the air and the guy is firing the gun there he sets it on table two-year-old picks it up shoots and kills him but that that was rough that was hard to watch that kid like he's gonna grow up without a dad because but he won't even remember it i mean that's just there's another one where they're out at some sort of outside gun range and they give an uzi to a seven-year-old and she's firing it and of course she's like trailing and the guy like blocks it so she can't go too far and he just stops paying attention and she does it again and shoots him in the head he's dead so it's like yeah guns guns are [ __ ] lethal man you cannot play around with that [ __ ] so if i were to get one i would train the [ __ ] out of myself that would be like one where you you don't go for basic proficiency you go for mastery like you just you can't [ __ ] around with that stuff so what i'm interested in with guns is not something i thought we're going to be talking about but neither the fact that what ungodly number of people even in war where it's like they never pull the trigger um i forget there's a name for it but um failure to fire maybe and i just feel like and dude this is the arrogance of somebody who's never come face to face with this so i say this in full disclosure i don't [ __ ] know but my gut instinct with what i know about myself i may miss but i'm pulling that [ __ ] trigger do you do you worry that you would actually hesitate yeah oh yeah undoubtedly i'd probably hesitate i would be way more worried that i shoot somebody that like lisa is checking as well which she would never she knows better she locks herself in the bedroom and i go check but um i would be far more worried about accidentally shooting somebody than not shooting somebody that [ __ ] like puts me into a rage the thought of somebody breaking into my house if i were by myself less so but if i'm with lisa i'm in full like protection mode like yeah i would not [ __ ] around with that the the two things that i would recommend um so i put put up what i did for home security and basically what they recommended sheepdog which i loved which is like think of it as like zones so what are the zones of your house and perimeter the other second thing is do you have a plan right this is the whole thing with all this stuff with the coronaviruses what's your plan what's your personal finance plan what's your company plan we have one called the 30-5 which maybe we'll talk about later or another time but with your home security what's your plan right it sounds like you kind of have it but you're waking up late at night to do some [ __ ] which sounds a little weird the alarm goes so we've had the alarm go off for various reasons super windy night and it you know rattles a window hard enough that it then triggers the alarm um so in moments like that you definitely get to find out because you don't know is it the wind or is there actually somebody in the house so yeah i've had to do that several times well there's a book so i want to recommend two things one there's a book called on killing and it's actually about what it's really like to kill in the army oh [ __ ] yeah so on killing i read about dave grossman that was a really good one and then for home security um i can send you my list but basically i went from outside in and redid my whole home security like small thing i have a cleaning lady she's awesome i love teresa but she has the combo to my door that's a vulnerability and so i bought a door lock where i could change it um i put up lights in perimeters so you cannot walk around my house without the light the uh flood light turning on right i've locked up so a lot of times i started reading dude i got really obsessed with all these serial killer books they're so good i wonder why you're afraid to be alone oh that was a really bad idea man i shouldn't have done it but it was such i mean it's so sick but it's so like it makes me feel like i can prepare a little bit better um but it made me kind of do more of this stuff like all right a lot of times back in the day they would cut your they cut your phone line now they cut your power so you have to lock up your electric box so they can't cut your power like are your gates locked you have door sensors um one of the things is like we have a window right here on the side of the door you could just like guess what i have a deadbolt you could just kick the door kick the glass and so they actually make shatterproof film so you could put a film right here we're putting it up to put film on the window so if someone tries to break the door it doesn't shatter and so then i added this well i don't say but i have a safe here i'm not gonna tell you where but it's somewhere here you know uh you know have you reinforced your door plates with like larger screws anyway so i think the point is like start at the outside of your house and then start keep working everything in um so where now i'm like all right if someone comes in they're gonna have one out and i'll be aware of them and two like i feel pretty prepared like i've trained for it and i still could do a lot more yeah speaking of that so the jiu jitsu have you trained in fighting at all i do boxing now uh generally once or twice a week and jiu jitsu i did a little bit but i i just it wasn't for me um in what way i think the whole getting on the ground and just like running rolling around with people i don't know like i a lot of it is like am i enjoying this like what's the purpose of it like you said desire there's actually this book called courage to be disliked it's a japanese book that's interesting um yeah check it out basically they say the same thing you said which is like what's the goal and everything is from the goal and for me the goal is can i defend myself and can i be fit with this because i think so many times with workouts it's not fun like if i do a workout i'm like yeah i was on a treadmill i was like why like why don't i go and try to run to a like a coffee shop which is my new thing i tried a bike to coffee shops um and so i felt that with jiu-jitsu i did boxing and boxing i was like i really feel like i'm learning a skill that's really usable because i feel like it's a little bit more likely to be used and then i felt like the workout i preferred that more so i've tried those two and i might go back to jiu jitsu i can see some benefit from it like the close game and different stuff and people seem to like it but an overall workout i remember the last time i did jiu jitsu i basically got submission by a woman who reminded me of my mother and i was like no she was literally like a 5 2 like nothing lady and she kicked my [ __ ] ass and i was like i don't know how much i enjoy this i'm sure there's some twisted stuff in that but i just didn't yeah you know with suffering you have to enjoy the reward yeah and if you don't enjoy the reward then the suffering probably won't be you're not going to want to do the suffering no question well dude every minute that i spend with you is [ __ ] cherished to the ends this this was a lot of fun i really wish that we were sharing a space i'm looking forward to that um i really hoped you were going to relocate back to la i'll be there yeah hey don't give up your fancy list two things there one where there's bro have you gone to the russian spa houses no oh game changed if people don't go to the russian spots or you've been to the korean spas no i've never been to a spot so the russian and korean spas are like the best i i normally i'm one of the things i miss like i think that's an interesting question is like what's the thing you want to do or the thing you're going to do once this is over is i want to go schwitz so i'm building a guest house so i can build a spot in my backyard wow yeah i want a spa and so i love schnitzing in la there's a russian house uh i don't know it's a russian spa and then like um there's a korean day spas and basically just go and you hang out and talk and sit in the hot tub and get in the cold tub and go in the steam room you just hang out with your boys or you just go by yourself and think and it's a way to retry i think the thing i realized last year that made me feel good is i don't i think we work really hard like we're working physically working mentally whatever it is but i don't know if we recharge enough and so that's kind of been a big thing for me where i go to the schvitz and i'm like let's like plug the phone in plug the body in and get that recharge on so what are some great ways to recharge so spa got it yeah so i've been thinking about i've been thinking about this it's like how do i called it the one one one plan it was just i like i like things that are easy to remember because then i can do them but like i don't know that works for my brain so in terms of that it's like how do i create everything create one thing a day how do i help someone today and how do i recharge because honestly if i do that every day is a pretty [ __ ] great day um and so recharging for me lately i'm recharging with chess like so i'll just do puzzles or i'll do chess games i do one minute games on chess.com um last night i actually felt recharged just doing uh studying obs project so i was just watching videos uh and then the sauna is a big one and so i can't sauna right now so i have to figure out alternatives so i have one of those like you see i remember those massage guns yeah yeah okay they're [ __ ] cheesy i don't know i'm sure some you know hipster scientist person could tell you they suck or not but last night i sat for 15 minutes i just like all over my legs and i felt pretty damn great and so i think part of that is just like giving yourself some space so in my calendar i have automatic blocks of time that are recharge time so every wednesday is my schvitz day from four to six and every friday from 10 to 11 is my massage and so it's a little bit hard because i'm stuck inside now and i can't necessarily get those but basically i've blocked at that time and then once a month i like to do sound healing basically it's kind of like a meditation where there's a lady named carol at zero gravity spa in austin i think she's doing online now too but she basically does this crazy singing like they're called sound baths or sound healing and you basically lay on them on the floor and she sings stuff that you're like i can't believe this is a human uh and it just i just feel afterwards i feel recharged and so i think everyone might have different things but it's it's recognizing that and then doing a little bit more of that each day or you know weekly yeah that's one thing i will say that i have taken the time so you said at the very beginning don't let the corona crisis go to waste um i've really tried to to change some of my long-standing almost dogmatic habits and see like is there something else that i will get more out of that's more fulfilling more productive more enjoyable whatever the case may be and so that's been nice like to to sort of just test different things um you know i had so much momentum in my old way of life getting to work the speed at which that i could do it optimizing every moment of the day and but having this lingering thought of like okay you've you've gotten you know this far acting this way but like is there more and more um you know you could define it a lot of different ways more joy more um insight more uh success whatever but is there something else to try and so that was running in the back of my mind so when this all happened it was like all right now is the time the chess board's been turned over what do we do that's new and different and it's been really fun and some things that i think that i'll keep um forever some things that probably were a bit indulgent but it's it's been really fun to experiment with a lot of different things so it's been nice what what's one thing that you've changed that you're like gonna keep so in the mornings now as a part of my morning routine i take in a piece of what you would probably call recharging content that is um so i never let myself engage with fiction content except on the weekends so it's always i'm if i'm learning something i'll do it and then it hit me a while ago like this is a little bit silly we're building the next disney and yet i don't allow myself to watch any or even read fiction so i was like all right let's start injecting as a part of the workout meditation all of that because i'm usually up so early let's inject uh you know for me it's been watching some anime so i missed anime anime like i was too young i had gi joe and transformers but then i didn't have anime which has been like the thing for almost 20 years now for kids and so i was like i'm trying to make content that they'll resonate with but i'm blind to all of this i've read a fair amount of manga but i'm totally blind to anime so let me start watching it it's some of it's really good so i've been really really impressed and that's been fun it gets me excited gets your creative juices flowing um and so to watch a piece of that every morning um is has really been fun and like you i like change change for even just the sake of change it's fun you and i both and then good yeah no no no no one thing i did realize about this i love the uncertainty for me i really i didn't even realize like this i thrive in this chaos like when when it goes back and we're all back to normal it i know maybe that's boring so i have to figure out how to structure it for me effectively dude that is very well said that's something that i think i i have liked this sudden shock to the system this is how i felt the same way about this that i felt when i left quest everybody was like oh was that hard for you questions your identity i was like absolutely not like i decided to leave that was it and literally on monday i was at quest and on tuesday i was at impact theory and so it's like that for me the the just radical transformation of your life in a very short period of time far more fun when it's attached to something positive than when it's attached to something negative but having that like jarring radical change if you know how to frame it if you know how to react to it for me is is very interesting because it it allows you to retest all your old assumptions the first time this happened to me was when i left tacoma and i came to school here up up until the day that i arrived in los angeles my goal was to become a stand-up comic and then when i got here i was like you know this is my chance to reinvent myself because you don't realize how much of being funny is people expecting you to be funny and so they're they're sort of waiting for the joke you know waiting for it and so it gets easy to deliver and you especially back then it was like you know i'm doing comedy basically for call it 20 or 30 people that i see in all different moments but they know me and they find me funny and so there's you know it's safe and so you're cracking jokes so anyway i come to l.a decide i want to take myself more seriously and that radical changes i didn't know a single human being in los angeles and so having to re-meet everybody re-establish who i am nobody's expecting me to be funny so i was like i'm going to take myself more seriously i want to be an artist and so no one thought of me as funny at all and then i remember one day i don't know how or why but call it november or december so people got to know me over four months and one night it just hit me and i started basically doing a stand-up routine at the dinner table and people are like who the [ __ ] are you like what is this that was fun the first time my wife um went back with me to tacoma and people are expecting me to be funny so i slip into funny and she was like oh my god she was like i didn't recognize you this is so crazy so that ability to like reinvent to take advantage of these moments of chaos um i find very exciting so we never there's a few things we can come back to the beginning but do you have a joke or do you have any jokes that i was never a joke teller there's always stories do you have a story you could do it's funny no not like that it's um so when i do live events now so we do impact theory has its own live events back when that was the thing and for whatever reason there was something about the setup of those i was on the stage both the events that we did were actually filmed in comedy clubs and so i would do sort of the whatever this is motivational how to think stuff but i was doing it like it was comedy um that was a lot of fun so going back and forth that would be the only it's just saying things in a funny way that was always my style um but yeah that worked really well we have those recorded so you can certainly see those and get a sense of um of what i was like as a comic but no i was never like let me tell you a joke kind of person do you wanna can i try to on you please all right um so people still buy uh tom's shoes yes that's the joke uh all right so here's another one i was um you know everyone's stuck at home right so obviously you know what's the one of the main things everyone's doing now you know watch a bunch of porn and um i think the strange thing for me was like i noticed myself and you know what i'm masturbating to has changed so dramatically and i'm masturbating to people uh shopping at a grocery store i masturbate to two people out having dinner and even last week i masturbated to two guys just working out at the gym i was like ah one day i'll do those things that is horrifying that's kind of funny that's nice do you actually do comedy i did stand up you know i think it's always good to come into one fear or think about the things that you know my buddy and i talk about it like discomfort is your compass and so it's like what's something that's like a fear thing and maybe you know some of it i don't want to do like i don't want a tattoo so like comedy i did want to do so i did a stand-up uh was my goal last year uh so i went did it and it was scary [ __ ] and i was good and i was like i i don't know i didn't have the bug to want to go do it again but i feel like i get to do comedy and youtube you know so that that that kind of i have to say that [ __ ] hilarious thanks man i mean i think if you're trying to you know you're a great teacher and i think you teach a very big vision which no one does i don't do and it's very very empowering and i think you teach a lot about mindset and taking action um and so i realized though my buddy neville and i have discussed it it's like especially with youtube is that if it's not fun like you're not gonna learn and so it's the responsibility of the teacher or the sharer to make it interesting and if you could make it fun and interesting and entertainment that info is actually going to come in a lot easier it's like when you know they they call broccoli like super power broccoli and so i think if you can do that with your teachings or your learning your whatever you're sharing people will be like enjoying it more they'll probably take it in more they'll want more yeah agreed well you definitely entertain man and you definitely give people powerful [ __ ] to think about i'm so stoked on how much content you're putting out right now it's absolutely watch thank you for being on the show my friend and uh i look forward to seeing you in person in the near future we're gonna go fit i mean you're schwitzen i like it so hopefully soon enough man all right everybody thank you so much for watching this episode of conversations with tom and noah kagan until next time my friends be legendary take care [Music] the first step is getting rid of the shame that surrounds it because the shame is what traps that insecurity and the thing about shane is that shane can only live in secrecy