Rachel Hollis Shares Her Secrets for Reframing The Toughest Years of Your Life

[Music] hey everybody today's episode is brought to you by our very own impact theory university enjoy the episode hey everybody welcome to another episode of conversations with tom i am here with somebody who's going to help me ring ring in the uh the new episode here on this set rachel hollis thank you so much for joining me and for helping me smash the bottle of champagne on this set oh my gosh my pleasure i'm also glad that you got the memo about wearing yellow today so we match we're ready to rock not on purpose but yeah so i i read your new book oh did you you're surprised i didn't know that you were like get it to me and i was like i'll get right on that i didn't know how'd you even get it they gave me a pdf copy oh wow oh my gosh okay this is a whole different conversation then all right well very exciting so my question is i'm going to sum it up in a way that i think you'll probably disagree with but this is what it felt like to me okay and as one of the most upbeat optimistic people i have ever come across in my life it is so fun to be around you because you're so intense in a way that i resonate with and i know we will talk about tonight um why write a book about dealing with trauma right um so i got into quarantine uh beginning or maybe second week in march we went into quarantine we shot we had the company everyone go virtual and um that first i want to say 10 days i really freaked out i think most of us were freaking out all around the world as an entrepreneur as an entrepreneur yeah so our business the largest part of our revenue comes from our live events and i had no idea when that would happen again and i have 60 employees who right it's big who you know pay bills and and the reason i freaked out when i first went into quarantine is because i knew so i've been an entrepreneur for 17 years and that means that i held a company together through wait and i it was like a visceral like i remembered it so fast and it was like okay here we go again and the first you know couple weeks i freaked out and i drank too much vodka which is an old coping mechanism of mine um and then you hit that moment where you're like okay get your [ __ ] together look there is no other way you've got to figure this out and as i was in that mode of truly like save my company save these people's jobs um i was editing the book i had already written so i wrote a book called girl what the health which was all about women and body image and the way that we had talked about right so that's what i thought that's what was going to be this book to work and i was like whoa whoa whoa how the hell did she write another book that fast right so i um i just it just felt i started editing it and i was like this is wrong and so that book is written with my typically my non-fiction books there's a lot of humor it's very irreverent i'm talking about silly things i want to make you laugh so that maybe you're better able to receive some bigger conversation and it just felt so tone deaf yeah and i was like i can't do this now the interesting thing about this time period is i've lived through a lot of really shitty things unfortunately and i was like there are some things i know about how to navigate this time i know that it's going to get better someday and i know it's going to be brutal in the meantime like just because you have hope that tomorrow will be better doesn't mean that you're not self-aware enough to understand that like every day between now and then may be awful so um i started thinking about what would i want to say if i could say anything in this time is this like march this is march yeah and there is a part of me if i'm being honest as an author i've always wanted to write a crash book do you know crash no so a crash book if you've ever seen um the best example i can think of which is sounds terrible is like you see a celebrity die and then it seems like a month later there's a book on the show and you're like how in the world did they do that it's called a crash book they wrote it really fast they rushed it through the publishing process they crashed it and i as i started to think about what i would want to write i reached out to my editor and i said i feel like i need to write something for where we are now and naively i was like i feel like i need something for her meaning my reader i need something for her to read when this is over in a couple months which is so dumb uh but everybody was thinking it was weeks though back in march right like this is going to be a couple years yeah this is like a while yeah we've got two to three weeks like and then i was like okay maybe it's gonna be a month or two like this could be crazy so that wasn't it was actually i would say unusual that you had the foresight to see that this is going to be longer than just a couple of weeks back then because that was the other thing i was like whoa to commit to a book that is so clearly of the moment when you don't know we could be out of quarantine by the time this hits and then it would almost seem like passe you know what's interesting is i didn't know when we would be out of quarantine but i'm wise enough to understand how much this will devastate our economy for years and so i actually wasn't even really writing for people i didn't it wasn't like oh i don't know when quarantine ends it was it doesn't matter as you and i sit here right now if quarantine ended like if it ended tomorrow if we had the answer tomorrow our economy is still [ __ ] for years to come because of what's happened and you and i are both really [ __ ] lucky and really [ __ ] blessed and there are a lot of people who are don't know how they're paying rent this month who lost their job who got furloughed their partner lost like i just i could see like what this was going to be and i thought is there something that i could create that would maybe be helpful and i started to write it and um it's not i mean you know if you read it it's not my normal tone um it's still it's still i try it is very clearly a rachel hollis book i hope so for sure yeah they were like could you just add like one joke in the editing process because i still wanted it to be hopeful and i still wanted to hopefully illustrate things in a way that people could hear but you're talking about crisis you know the world has gone through this massive crisis and for many people they're experiencing loss or it could be traumatic the ptsd that comes out of this for our healthcare workers like i i can't even we can't even fathom what this is going to be um and i don't say that i'm not you know me i'm not a pessimistic person but i do think that this will have far-reaching ramifications i'm like crazy optimistic almost pathologically optimistic i found one by temperament i am that way and then two it just as an entrepreneur you have to find that gear otherwise you'll never take the chances that you need to grow and so when i was the one saying to the team guys this could get really bad like and i've often said this is like the economy's essentially been shot it's a person who's been shot and they're bleeding out nobody knows how serious it is yet because you're looking at them and they seem fine or um do you know what a space case is no i can't believe this [ __ ] is real this is the craziest thing ever so there did you see the m night shyamalan movie oh god the one with mel gibson signs one of the most terrifying movies okay in my life i'm terrified of aliens we should circle back we should circle back but his wife in that that is it's based on a real thing it's called a space case so somebody that they've been pinned against something but their lower half has been severed so they they are going to die right but because the blood is basically crimped yes they can't bleed out right but the second you pull that vehicle back once it tells them phoenix to swing away correct right so it is i was in a writing class and there was a guy that wrote he was an emt and he wrote a story and it was funny because everyone's criticism was that's so fake no one would ever like you can't do that and he was like i'm a [ __ ] emt i'm telling you i actually this was he goes this was basically a documentary what i wrote he was like i did not exaggerate it was like i changed the dialogue obviously but he was like this really happens so i'm like this what we're going through right now is a space case where the economy has been hit so hard but with like the government subsidies and stuff like everything hey it seems fine but i'm like i don't know what's going to happen right when you back that vehicle up it's like uh it i'm thinking of in my hometown you know my dad owns a business in in my hometown and has managed to still barely stay alive you know had that thing where you're paying the lease for the for the business that you can't go into and i was talking to him the other day and he's so angry because that's how my dad expresses emotion so angry but what it is is sadness of these restaurants i come from a small town so these restaurants that have been in our town for 50 years like family and businesses and he's naming them and they're famous where i come from and they're gone um there's a a really famous place in austin called shady grove that had the same kind of thing had been around forever and everybody loved it it's like this beloved thing and it's gone and there i mean there's just there's a loss in in a bunch of different ways um and yeah i still think there's beauty in this time and i think that there's goodness you know me like i'm gonna look for how is this for us and all that but that's what started the process was like i just i think i want to write something that meets my reader where they're at typically i think i'm writing to try and hopefully guide you somewhere and in this instance i was like nah i'm coming to you let's let's walk through this thing together because this is it's going to be hard and you can numb out and you can you know watch tick tock or stream netflix forever but you're eventually going to come back to the reality that is and that's hard and so how do we get through it so that's where the idea came from it's interesting what's fascinating is of course the timing then of your divorce right and the bizarre sort of cynical voice that has raised its head which there's no well i guess the book hasn't come out yet yeah so there's no way that they've read it yeah so once you read it it's like it's clearly not a book about your divorce your course is mentioned because you were editing when you were going through it but um i felt like i had to like i felt like i had to mention that i had to say it yeah you know super [ __ ] right and my audience knows me and i have talked about everything it's a big part of my platform is to be honest about where i'm at and what i've gone through and i thought like this is crazy you know there's like a full-on the editor and the publisher and everyone gets on the phone like hey you have to address this and that felt like i wanted to puke like i how do you write about something that you're drowning inside of um i've never heard that phrase before right from your scars yeah and i don't know i mean i i looked it up when i was trying to reference it in the book and it's attributed to a lot of different people but the idea is that you're never supposed to teach from your open wounds you're supposed to teach from scars you're supposed to teach from places that have healed over that you've done the work on so you can say like back then this was something that i struggled with if you are teaching from an open wound like a current pain in your life number one you don't even know how you're gonna feel about that five years from now and also it's being colored by emotion and so it doesn't really feel fair to be teaching anyone anything do you feel like you taught around your divorce though in the book it didn't feel that way to me i no i and i didn't want to i only wanted to um the book starts there like this is what happened because i needed to explain that i wrote the entire book and then in the editing process i was in the midst of a breakup and so the first pass was very much what you would normally get for me like coach and teacher and whatever and then in in an edit it changed and it became more nuanced and i'm was in so much more pain trying to write this thing um and it's really weird too i'll tell you like i started doing um press last week i want to say and i had the very first call i wanna like people and i mean that's a big get and as an author like that's the kind of thing you dream of you know having people magazine care about your book and i got off that call and i was like oh my god i'm to have to have this conversation a hundred times right and that everybody starts there what's going on how are you doing how are the kids how you know and she's like oh my god this is um it's already hard enough and i'm also navigating really deeply caring about being respectful of him you know and if you if one person then is the only one who's sort of being asked these things that also doesn't feel fair and so it's just like it's a big [ __ ] like this is all i was driving over here today and i was like this is a wild time to be sitting down with tom right and i thought like i almost text you and just said like i don't even want to record a show i just like want to sit with my friends and talk about all the things no that's why we were talking before we started rolling about this this setup feels too much like we're on a set right and it the goal of this show for sure is is exactly that and i know like one getting a chance to talk to people that have a very similar life to you is there's so much joy and like oh my god only you are going to this very weird thing which is actually something i found really interesting about the book was in the way that you share in the way that you talk about everything it does feel like somebody who's not trying to preach or anything just like hey i've i will say that the book had a sense of speaking from the scar and not from the wound but it was like look i've been through this thing it's [ __ ] gnarly i've been through something like this um and just i don't know and that's your normal style is to sort of walk people through but when i think about what the promo tour for this book is going to be like the danger i think for you is the way that when people ask you the same question you get you develop a loop and for something that's so live that you're going through right now to become a loop right is [ __ ] risky when you need to process through and figure out like what the [ __ ] is actually going on absolutely and and then yeah and then things people take sort of snippets instead of the full context of what you said and it just kind of is i feel like i've hit a place in my life and career where i have learned like if i care so much about how i am received i would stop doing anything at all right like the [ __ ] though for real for real how do you deal with that [ __ ] so when you mention in the book because this is exactly what it is for me as i was getting bigger i read every [ __ ] comment it was awesome it was a love fest and i used to tell people go look at our comments youtube is known for like these crazy [ __ ] vitriolic bitter comments and our comments are loving and it's uplifting and they're connecting with each other so great and then we hit a million and [ __ ] lost their mind and it it devolved into the standard right stuff and so i was just like cool i i will put my thing out i will do my best to like bring value and then it is what it is once it hits the world but then people say [ __ ] like [ __ ] man i'm so sorry for what they're saying about you on facebook and you're like what the [ __ ] are they saying like i was fine don't send me that text i actually had to this like probably three or four months ago i sent a group text to all of my closest friends and i said i so appreciate and love you i do not consume comments on social media when people say awful things i don't know the tree is falling in the forest i am not around to hear it until you send me a text and say the thing goes worse than like oh no what they're saying about you on social is people who'll send a text and be like hey girl thinking about you and i'm like oh no now they're saying without saying right um so i really truly don't consume it i do um the absolute best thing and i hate to even say this because i'm gonna like give um attention to it but this is really funny and i will tell you that i have laughed like uproariously crying laughter so many times in the last six months at how awful life is like it's just so hard that i'm gonna i have to laugh or i'm gonna cry and i had this day it was our fir first or maybe second um divorce meeting which is number one in this world you do that on zoom oh um so we're doing something called a collaborative divorce which is the best possible thing you can do if you have kids so our attorneys work together and then we have like a mediator a financial mediator a like a therapist like it's a whole group thing right but even then those are really hard meetings and they're much better now but at the very beginning it was [ __ ] brutal like just the worst two hours ever just awful and um i get off this call and they had told me in advance they said you know make sure you block out about 90 minutes after these calls which is like good grief like do you know how much time divorce takes like two hours for the meeting plus 90 minutes because they were like you are not going to be in a place where you can go have a meeting right after this and i was like calm down we're fine like we're no they're 100 right and so i get off i get off this zoom call and i'm just like a mess a puddle a like devastated and i think i'm like i need something like i i need i need to hear a motivational speech i need something that and then i thought i wonder if anybody has ever created videos on youtube for people who are going through divorce they're awful by the way um but i thought maybe there's something on youtube i could find that would um just you know hey if you're going through divorce like it's tom bill you being like listen [ __ ] you're going to survive right that's what i mean next time i'll just call you be like tom tape this for me um but i go on youtube to look and i like can't i'm like well i'm like these are terrible terrible and then youtube suggests a video that's something like all of the reasons why rachel hollis is awful lovely and it has hundreds of thousands of views yeah and i'm like yeah it's recommended to me and i'm like oh wow and at that moment you have to laugh now i'm not i don't know what it was i'm not going to watch that i'm sure there's tons of stuff like that on the internet but in that moment i it's like you're just like i'm already on the ground like i can't take any more kicks and incidentally i um because i want to like you know me and i want to like bring this story back up because that's just the worst um i had an appointment i think later that day or maybe the next day i this is very hippie of me tom but i started seeing an energy healer oh [ __ ] oh my [ __ ] god like if you come to austin someday when the world is good again um i you have to what do they do it's like nothing i've ever experienced and everything that i'm about to say defies anything a preacher's daughter would ever have been allowed to think was okay um but she i say energy healing but she doesn't it's not like reiki she doesn't use her hands or anything like i would be like laying there on the bed or whatever and then she's sitting in a chair and you're talking through she'll be like it's a therapist no no okay it's a healer i don't so literally you're sitting there and she'll just be like what happened when you were six really i can't even do this and she's saying like i'm seeing energy coming off of her 100 she like literally she's like counting like she's one two three six what happened when you were six and i swear to you 10 i've sent so many friends employees like so many people to her none of us have the same story none of us have the same experience everybody bawls their eyeballs out do you know what cold reading is no i actually considered getting really good at this so there was a period in my life where i got really into magic and i'm not surprised as i got into magic i got really into mentalism okay and mentalism is [ __ ] extraordinary yes and there were these two mentalists that were so good one of them's his stage name anyway is banach i forget what his real name is but they went to these university professors and convinced them that they had real psychic abilities so imagine they have set up a real test to see if psychic abilities are real okay these guys are so good at mentalism that they were able which is all mad it's magic in that it's fake it's it is all just they figure [ __ ] out they know how to read people all that that's wild a mentalist before and it tripped me it's [ __ ] incredible i didn't know it was fake though i literally thought they were psychic all fake all fake all fake all fake so cold reading is the ability to if you i know you've seen ghosts because you mentioned it in the book yep so odamae yes yes yes yes doing cold reading right so she's like seeing she's like vibing out like and you pick up on things and you suggest something right it's like tell me about when you were sick no seven right you know because you didn't react to six but you do react to seven so then they're like ah okay well so what is wild is that it's like first of all i'm not even looking at her so i'm like laying on a bed i'm looking at the ceiling or whatever and she'll say like what happened at six and what's amazing is like it's therapy because whatever you're about to say is what you needed to talk about right and she doesn't then supply like oh it's this or she's not saying like oh your great-grandfather's here and he's coming back from the whatever she's like what happened at six and what i found was every age that she would talk through my first instinct would be like nothing and i think most of us some girlfriends have similar stories to me so if you have trauma in your childhood i know very specifically if i go see a psychic if i'm doing an energy healing what i assume she's going to say is what happened at 14 which is when my brother died that's not a conversation we have so it's like what happened at six and then you're like oh nothing i i mean i guess i'm going into ah yes that was um like first grade and then i'm and i start talking and i'm not i am not a motive with people i do not know like i don't i feel there's a handful of people that i feel where i would feel comfortable being emotional or breaking down crying whatever and that was the first question she asked me and i'm like well that was when um and i'm realizing oh that's when our family lived out in the country and this sounds like so silly if you know the town i grew up in but like we moved to the big city so we moved from like out out in the country to still pretty picky but like the big city for us right and it was better schools and there was like a million reasons why my parents made the choice but she said what happened when you're six and i said oh that's when we moved and i'm tired i'm like and we moved away from grandma and grandpa and we and i'm like saying and i just start sobbing and like i it never i didn't know that that was something that i had carried as upset and of course it did because i was so close to my grandparents and all our family was there we had land and like you run and play and now i'm living in a cul-de-sac with like track houses and like all of these things that i lost and it was this incredible experience so you do this with different ages of your life but she says all right your subconscious does not know the difference between what really happened and what you imagine and so what i want you to do right now is i want you to imagine that you 37 year old rachel mother of four is with six-year-old baby rage what do you need to show her like what could you show the sexual version of you that would heal this thing that feels painful and with this process i've learned that like whatever the first thing that pops into your head it like it starts to just come from a like not conscious place and i had just moved into my new house and it was totally empty you know trying to move in covid no furniture sleeping on the floor the whole thing which had been this pretty um felt pretty traumatic which is a whole other thing to just like move out of your house and like not have anywhere for your kids to sit down and like is a whole thing um but she said what do you need to show six-year-old you and i'm like bawling and i'm like we got back to the country because i live out in texas in the country right and that i don't know any other thing to call it except an energy healing she's not sort of like touching you or whatever but it's like six months of therapy in an hour and it's beautiful because it's just stuff you want to talk about right she's not like you know being like the psychic and in code it's interesting because that that is and i'll give her all the benefit of like it is she comes from a beautiful place and i'm not impugning any negative emotions whatsoever right but that's like cold reading at its finest in terms of asking an open-ended question right and then at first you're like nothing well actually and then you find this thing too right to give meaning to which feels to me like i'm so fine with like if it really is like intuition because i also think i know i can do this with you know have done it at events and i was like don't you feel like you could you do that with people not cold reading but definitely you can sort of see like you you do an example in your book of when you said oh i wish i had said this is a couple and you go into like a ton of detail about what you were saying and i was like i know exactly what you're talking about you're picking up on cues the way they say something the way they look at each other the distance they keep all right 100 okay i would be able to read the situation yeah for sure yeah so i feel like i can do that with people and i just assume it's because i listen to my intuition and i feel like i talk to people so much i define intuition for me this is something my wife is writing a story right now called wish academy shout out to my wife and her first fiction piece yes girl and in it that they're dealing with like superpowers kind of superpowers and there was this whole argument because the girl's superpower is intuition and i said intuition's not a thing intuition is situationally dependent so you have psychic ability so check it out i will prove it to you it's what i call the basketball problem which how [ __ ] ironic since in your book for some weird ass reason you go into this whole thing about basketball even though i don't know anything about [ __ ] all about basketball but here it is uh the basketball problem which is totally randomly named is if i once played a pickup game of basketball with a former nba player okay and it was so hilarious i was laughing so hard because he'd be like you're about to go left and i couldn't stop myself he was right i was gonna go left he's like you're gonna shoot over here and he would step before i would step and he just put his hand up and i'd hit it with the ball he would call [ __ ] it was [ __ ] hilarious and at the end of the game i'm like how like were you just mind tricking me and by saying you made me do it and he's like no no all has to do with the position of your feet he said when you play as much as i have played you watch as much tape as i have watched you don't even have to like really look and chest they call it chunking grand masters in chess can look at a board and tell you where the game is at not because they're looking at individual individual pieces they can take a whole board at once they've just played so much that's intuition it's [ __ ] trained but it is really specific to a given arena you're inhumanly good with people because you've spent so much time one you probably have just a disposition for it yeah you're empathetic you're self-aware and then on top of that you [ __ ] trained the life out of it you were a party planner you did hundreds of weddings dealing with rides like the number of things that you would do to learn how to right because i don't have intuition about dogs correct and that was my thing if you take that basketball player and then put them into dolphin training right they're not gonna know what the [ __ ] is up they're gonna have zero intuition it's no less powerful but it's just when you understand you're not intuition is not some god-given thing you [ __ ] train the [ __ ] out of it so if you want to get intuition you can but you're gonna have to clock the hours in something very specific which to me is your whole message is like right hey girl you might be stuck now but you don't have to be stuck forever absolutely so i mean that's really interesting because i feel like i would describe it as you get this feeling you get this you know this that like you meet a person and everybody loves this person you're like that that per that guy's a sleazeball like i don't know what it is it comes as a feeling please tell me so the subconscious is faster and vaster as i say subconscious like your conscious mind can handle something like 17 variables right so it's like how are they holding their possible clothes are they wearing the shape of their face the style of their hair like you get a what they call a thin slice on somebody but the subconscious can process an inhuman amount of data very rapidly like what you see is actually the number of photons reflecting off of a surface in a given wavelength but you don't take it like that you just [ __ ] see stuff right you can navigate the world you don't bump into too much [ __ ] you can relate to somebody you sort of know how they're feeling all that so your subconscious mind can't talk to you in conscious language so the language of the subconscious is emotion yeah so whether you should run from the [ __ ] tiger doesn't come as like oh i should probably run i think it's about to attack me you're just like [ __ ] yeah and you bolt and so it's the only way for you to process that massive amount of information very very quickly this is wild to consider that you could have like i obviously we all know about 10 000 hours and like you could become an expert and blah blah but i've never thought that you could train to have intuition in another category 100 that is really fascinating and because there's enough of it that's sort of pre-programmed people do think like oh this person like they're intuitive there's something magical right but once you pull it out of the magical realm and maybe they really do have like for me and clearly for you verbal ability is a thing right and you had to train and i've heard you talk about how terrified you used to be and you gave a speech but you [ __ ] did it yep and i'm gonna guess if i put another person randomly selected maybe you get a 1.3 x return in your time and they get a point seven which is right they can get better i see but like you may just have a bigger like ability in that thing right so jordan versus me we could train the same number of hours with the same person and just one he's taller bigger hands like there's just certain advantages that he has do you think that every person has something you want me to be motivational right now or you want me to be real real this is conversations with tom there are some people that do not meet minimum requirements no what do you mean by minimum requirements the us army will define it as an 83 iq or higher if you have an 83 iq you can figure something out you are worth the time and the energy you'll get good at something if you're below 83 no matter how many times they teach you you actually take take up more energy than you can give so every unit of energy put into you you suck away 1.1 units of energy so it's a losing endeavor to try to work with that person wow i can't tell you how much it [ __ ] pains me which is why i almost never talk about it the fact that some people really don't meet minimum requirements anybody watching this that can navigate youtube it's like they are fine so i i don't even like to think about that so i'll say because people are the number of people watching this that think oh my god maybe i fall below minimum requirements and i promise you they do not is it's just ridiculous right so i i don't spend a lot of time there but no i don't think everybody has something but i think because we're all like in a video game since i know your kids play fortnite yes they do in fortnight you don't get to pick your stats but in some games you do and you can apply like to their intelligence or their speed mobility like whatever humans are like that we all have just a different stat sheet and so if you happen to also love something that lines up with one of your higher stats that's a good place to be and finding that like for me finding something like leadership in a company where i could leverage my ability to communicate that was very powerful and so when i clicked onto that and thought oh okay this is a a way for me to use this that's been really advantageous when i decided to step in front of a camera that was very conscious i was like i am good at anything that involves verbal ability i should give this a shot and see if i can make it work um so when you can align those things i think it's super super powerful uh i'm jumping because you mentioned uh games yes and one of the things i wanted to talk to you about is have you read irresistible no tell me more so i kept hearing rogan talk about this and it i gosh it's a so i i should have brought it because it's in the hotel room right now um it's all about technology and how technology is built to addict us oh yes um so you know have you seen the social dilemma i have not what i need to like send you here i mean okay so um i think like a few weeks ago a new documentary came out on netflix called the social dilemma about social media yep and everybody needs to watch it especially if you have kids i want to like look in the camera um because it is so [ __ ] up and about how this [ __ ] draws you in like what's so fascinating about it is that they are interviewing like employee four at facebook the guy who invented the like button the guy who invented endless scrolls so they're invent they're interviewing the inventors of social media who are now grappling with the fact that they have created frankenstein yeah and never i love documentary film it's like my favorite category i've never seen a documentary where as it was explaining it i was like oh that's literally happened to me and how fascinating it is that it's it's all controlled like i know this sounds so dumb but i never really understood that not one of us is consuming the same social media crazy and like there's this part in the documentary where they go on google google which i think of as like this you know encyclopedia that's universal it's universal you see what it is 100 so they go on to google and they type in climate change is and depending on where you live in the world it says climate change is real climate change is happening and then in a different area it's like climate change is a lie climate change is a hoax climate change is it's terrifying you really want to [ __ ] yourself up yes over time it will begin to tell you what you want to hear right that's what [ __ ] freaks me out right because i see this all the time because when i start researching somebody for an interview all of a sudden my feed is all that personal and so if you start looking at anything climate change climate and you start is climate change [ __ ] climate change is [ __ ] right and you look up an influencer who says climate change [ __ ] now all of a sudden google goes all right they just want to see stuff about how climate change is [ __ ] cool here you go and so now you get in these death spirals right of like you only hear your side right take on the others and this is why we have uh i don't know what it's like in other countries but here in the u.s it's so incredibly divisive you know there was a time i was talking to someone about this the other day like when i was a little girl i grew up in a really homogenous town everybody was republican everybody like christian white republican whatever but i say everyone and then this is gonna make that untrue but you still had the democrats over for dinner and just for clarity's sake i feel it feels very i'm the most liberal person on the planet just want to be really clear that's worth looking in the camera for um but my parents still had friends who didn't vote like them who were in different religions who and it would you you just you had it was maybe you talk about politics if you wanted like a a debate if you were into it or hey this is going to be a table where we don't talk about politics religion or money because we're going to be whatever but you always were allowed to co-exist and now we live in this world where if you don't if you're not exactly like me then i have to hate you i have to attack you and tear you down and whatever and i feel like most of us have seen this over the last couple years and we're all going what's going on and if you watch that documentary you're like oh this is what's going on because the they are showing you know me as a liberal the absolute worst of the right wing and they are showing right wing the absolute worst of the liberals so we're like oh my they're over there clubbing baby seals tom we gotta we gotta vote this out they're gonna they're gonna burn down the world when it's all it's wild so social dilemma you have to watch that one irresistible is the book which is more specifically about technology and he goes into he digs a lot into addiction what causes an addiction and the one the reason i thought of gaming is they're talking about world of warcraft which is notoriously i did not know this but is notoriously like their people are like living in rehab centers do you know this i didn't know they lived in rehab centers for that game but i knew that it sucked people's lives yeah so it's the most addictive video game in the world according to this book and it lists the reasons why so it goes through like this is what causes an addiction and this is what it is about this game that makes like the apparently the joke with parents is like this is like the heroine of video games like you never let your kids touch this game right not even once um so i thought that was super fascinating i feel like you would love that book but um oh there's a very specific part okay so this is my question for you i almost text you i was like no let's have this conversation on camera do you feel like it's possible to get addicted to something that is good for you and if so how do you hack that so in the book he describes addiction he's basically saying like there are very specific factors that contribute to addiction like true addictive behavior and there he's talking to a scientist who says i could kidnap you tom and i could tie you up and i could inject heroin into you every day for six months rather you didn't right yes but if you were to get away from that environment you aren't you absolutely you would have to detox from what just happened to you but it's not an addiction unless you start doing it to yourself so i'm i'm gonna butcher this but it's basically like it can only become an addiction if it is helping you to numb something painful right and then i was like okay well people do get addicted to good things but is there a way to decide like i'm gonna get addicted to working out running whatever do something that could be good for me though i suppose if you are truly addicted to it it the whole point of is that it's going to become bad but could you hack that have you ever thought about this like how do you hack it and you certainly can't now whether to truly answer your question we'd have to really define addiction so if you define addiction as something that you do even though it's destroying your life which is sort of the generally accepted answer then i would say you can it's um it then sort of defeats your question though right it's no longer good for you but so let me twist it then instead of saying addiction how do you make yourself crave yes yes now you're now you're playing my game over here how do you make yourself crave doing a thing you know you should be doing yes but you currently don't like doing it so i've been asked this question before and i've actually lived the answer okay so if you said hey you've got this person some part of their life is out of control and you absolutely have to get them of your own volition like they say you can lead a horse of water but you can't make them drink so you're better off just trying to make them thirsty and so the question is how do you make somebody thirsty and the way that you make somebody like really [ __ ] thirsty like if i had somebody i would take them put them on a desert island with people that are amazing at whatever their thing is that they're trying so let's say that they're obese and they really want to shake that and they want to get into amazing shape but they've struggled they've yo-yo dieted their whole life put them on an island let them have access to the worst [ __ ] food imaginable so on the desert island they've just ding dongs cakes pies candy anything they want but the only other people on that island are the hardest core [ __ ] ever and those guys all act and think alike and now as a social creature i promise you in a very short timeline that person will want the approval of that group to the point where they will immediately fall in line with what they're doing as long as what they're doing actually adds benefit so because working out eating right actually does make you feel better that [ __ ] would get in line so [ __ ] fast because we want the admiration this this is why it is as a social animal it is so [ __ ] sinister what happens with social media and the reason that i can't go [ __ ] with comments i'm not a guy who's like that i care deeply about what other people think and it's easy for me to get out of that but i'm a [ __ ] social animal and so when i see a video against me with a hundred thousand views right now you've got the mechanisms to deal with and all that but anyway we all have it we all have that hardwired programming so if we're 50 hardwired and we're 50 malleable the 50 that's [ __ ] hardwired is going to suck even though the malleable part goes and look you can't take it seriously they're all dealing with their own pain somebody that would lash out at you like that is going through something so gnarly that you should probably feel bad for them rather than be wounded by what they say right cool i know how to cope with it but it's still not fun right so as leveraging that innate driver that i know everyone has to get the admiration of the group when they have nowhere else to go of people that are dragging them down other people that have all the negative behaviors and they're celebrating them for that all that um that will work not 90 of the time not 99 of the time that will work 100 of the time and how did you live this because that's exactly what happened to me as a budding entrepreneur so you have this guy he's a filmmaker's teaching film happens to run into these two entrepreneurs uh very successful guys and i'm condensing a very long time yeah and they say you're coming to the world with your hand out if you want to control the art you have to control the resources come with us and get rich yay that sounds amazing i think it's going to take 18 months i get into that environment and they were making fun of me so one i thought they were amazing so it starts with that i i was enamored with what they'd accomplished in life they were jacked at a time when i had zero muscle mass they were rich and successful and i was just like oh my god these guys are [ __ ] and they were smart so i was like they're [ __ ] amazing so i wanted their admiration and then they would tease me how [ __ ] slow do you walk how long does it take you to get out of a car you guys are still [ __ ] people can you believe this [ __ ] guy this is crazy this is crazy wait you have to you have to tell this story it used to time oh not even time you were racing so you would you would walk into the bathroom you were unzipping as you got to the stall you're trying to relax your bladder so that you didn't pee on your jeans but there wasn't even a moment's hesitation because you don't want to waste any time because you so here's what it really came down to this is true you can tell how many successful patents are filed in a city right by the rate at which people walk 20 yards on the side okay wait say this again you've told me this the rate that people walk a 20-yard distance on the sidewalk is directly correlated to the number of successful patents filed in that same area there is something to speeding up your life and i can feel it happen like even right now i can feel i'm now thinking faster because we're really on something that we're crying right and when you live in that zone as much as you can which is why you're one of my favorite [ __ ] human beings and it's a part we we have to talk about people don't get a they don't see the side you don't big up this side of you like just the [ __ ] die hard entrepreneur that you are and when we're in a yurt right and we're [ __ ] talking crazy [ __ ] about like what we're gonna build about that it's awesome to see that side of you so there is just something to speeding up wanting more going for it and if you can love the process like to not feel the tyranny of having to pee fast which is what people hear when i tell the story but instead it's like this a brotherhood like i had never experienced something exciting so fun and just our our playing football in the front yard was things like how fast can you walk how quickly can you get out of the car can you pee faster than the other guy how quickly can you eat your meal and get back to work it was fun and we were having such a good time but we were also building businesses and it just so happened that you were able to leverage that intensity that joy for life but that intensity getting better at something always pushing yourself like every morning i just started this recently but every morning now i do breath work and i'm trying to extend the length of time that i can go on only five breaths that is so fun it's only fun though because i get it like go longer right and longer and like push it and i track my times and i see how it's like you know going and i'm getting better at something but because skills stack when you get better at something and then you get better at something else and you get better at something else and better at something else all of a sudden you look over your shoulder and it's like where the [ __ ] did everybody go right because they didn't get excited about walking faster getting out of the car faster peeing faster and so they never like made these demands in themselves right so when you get in that group of people you admire and you want to impress and they're doing things that are actually beneficial to you and that was the other thing they worked out they ate right so i started going to the gym hardcore i started eating right and it just completely changed my life and it was amazing and that's why at impact theory i'm so diehard about the culture and we have a cultured document that you have to acknowledge when you sign your thing to be a part of the company and it's basically like we only want the hardest core [ __ ] ever and if that's not you fair enough but this is not the company for you right do you lose people in the process because of that which is good which is because you're like beyond yes you're good you opt yourself out of this that's so good i was wondering too as you were saying that i was also thinking like this idea of you put yourself into community or if you put yourself into community with people that you admire and you will make that switch and as you're talking i'm like i can see how i've done that in my life but i was also thinking what you had to were you had rules so they were like stupid rules you all made up how fast can you whip it out so you can pee right but you had rules yep and you had competition yeah so have you ever broken it down to see if there was more than just the community of course this was the book that i was writing and have since abandoned why all ye give up hope or whatever the phrase is yes um i i will not regret on my deathbed not writing a book on my deathbed i will regret not writing a film yes that is real i know that about you which is yet another thing that i find fascinating about you is that you also started in fiction which is where i started and when i say other than time with my wife which trumps everything which is why it's so easy to make her my number one priority beyond that there is no joy that i get quite like creating a character in a world from nothing and then having somebody go yo that character really [ __ ] impacted me yeah that i don't know why that means more to me than the non-fiction words that i say but it does and the process is way more enjoyable because the non-fiction stuff i was like i've already said this in videos like a bazillion times right so now you're just making me write it in the [ __ ] book right let's go watch the video and it became very real because i turned down a seven-figure book deal and all i had to do was translate things i have already said onto the [ __ ] page and i was like every minute that i spend on this i'm not writing a screenplay or a comic book and i just i will regret i wondered too as you were just saying that that it feels like the difference between um sort of the non-fiction space and the things like what you know in terms of personal development or how to think or mindset is architecture like you built that you took materials that existed and you built something but writing a script is painting it's creating something from absolutely nothing and you get to live in it right which is do your care are your characters alive in your head yes characters you've never written down yeah me too and my dad is a writer as well and he would always say that his worst fear was that he would die and characters would die with him that he didn't like write them down fast enough right um and i think that i have books that i've been writing in my head for a decade and i'm like we're not ready yet but i'll you know i'll be waiting in line at the grocery store and i'm like and then what if she oh you've told me one of these stories by the way some freaking day man makes no sense but it makes sense to me so going back to your question um the book that i was going to write is what are those things that construct a person right so if you're 50 just hardwired it just is what it is nothing you're going to be able to do to change it what what are the elements that make up the 50 that's malleable and in a rough nutshell it's values beliefs rules habits identity those are the big ones and then there's a couple of little offshoots but those are the the big ones what's the difference between values and beliefs so a belief is something that i think i should do so um i should or even better than i should statement it would be something like human potential is nearly limitless or that the human animal is the ultimate adaptation machine you choose to believe it and i think you choose to believe it because it's true there's only one belief that is just patently false and that's you can do anything you set your mind to without limitation and so that i think is like number five and then the number six is number five is a lie but it's an empowering lie and we do and believe that which moves us towards our goals so people are so much more likely to believe something negative that i'm always just trying to like nudge them look yes there you have limitations without question nobody ever got all the way to the edge of their potential and then was like oh there really is nothing more so like don't worry about that don't worry about the upper limit which is what people jump to i could never do that [ __ ] you don't even know right you go try right and then trust me you'll be getting better and better day after day and you will die long before you max out you ever heard that arnold schwarzenegger quote no where people would always say like oh i don't want to work out cause like i don't i don't want to look like you and he was like don't worry you won't that is one of the greatest quotes right right sorry that what you're saying reminded me of that that yeah that quote is powerful do you know that i'm blacklisted by arnold schwarzenegger why true true words so i had a guy who i knew through comic books and he was and i was like man i really want to get schwarzenegger on the show one day he's like i know him and i was like oh my god yeah that's amazing he's like oh dude no problem i will i'll put in a word and see if he'll come on the show and so we sent him an email and he got a response back saying we anybody that uses his email to solicit something we blacklist and so do not contact us again so i was like oh [ __ ] oh no i didn't even know he was gonna do it but so i'll last but it was so sweet of him to reach out like right i'm not gonna be like dude i can't believe you did this right so i still am grateful to him for reaching out but i have been blacklist that is really funny but it feels like there's a way don't worry this is your limiting belief no no i will have schwarzenegger on the show i have already got you know oh my gosh other potential ways but i am so wait belief you said and then what's value so value would be you choose to think something is good so for instance take competition you mentioned it now everybody hates you because you shouldn't be competitive except against yourself which you go to great lengths to say absolutely i disagree with i think you should compete with other people as well and i think if you're afraid of competition it's because what you have chosen to value in yourself is being better than somebody else whereas i don't i don't value myself for being better than somebody else but i know it's effective to try to beat them because i'm playing the entrepreneurship game right so it's like i'm trying to win i'm trying to build the next disney right it's like there's only so many dollars funding so many projects right i have to [ __ ] win yes so but i'm not afraid of that if i don't win it doesn't mean i'm a bad person or i'm less valuable so i'm very careful about what i tie my identity up my self-esteem my value as a human being so be very careful where you line those things up but understand what actually works and that's that's my whole thing so you talk about oh we're the main swirl this divisive and all that and i'm like for just once can we all just go what what's our actual goal and then what is going to move us towards our goal so my obsession in life is to get people on that bandwagon and i'm just saying when you have a goal and you value your willingness to compete not your ability to win every time because you won't but you're you value you've chosen to value your willingness to compete and go all out like that to me actually moves you forward in life because you just become so relentless and you keep trying and experimenting and you find the thing that works and you're so focused on actually achieving something so anyway it it's just effective but that was something i chose to value i didn't have to right most of my life i i derided competition because i was terrified i couldn't win so i was just like oh that's [ __ ] like you know it's such a like a toxic masculine trait and now i'm like it's not it's super [ __ ] effective it can become toxic as anything can hit a point tell me like what that looks like though in your life like you see someone yeah like no [ __ ] like you see someone you're like i want that number of instagram followers or i want that deal or i want like what does it really look like that's that's tangible it depends on what it is so in comic books it's i want more subscribers because we're on webtoon so i want more subscribers um i want more likes i want more episodes so i want this to keep going for longer i want to have more projects i want to generate more revenue if i do a kickstarter i want my kickstarter to get more backers and more money and none of it do i value myself for actually achieving i value myself for the sincere pursuit so my thing is i'm trying to be the next disney it's so big am i ever gonna make it they have a 90-year head start they're gonna keep fighting you know what i mean but you're gonna live forever so it feels like it's fine this year has been the year where i accept my death wait what what what what what are you talking about yeah i i don't know what happened i love you but it stopped being useful for me to think i was going to live forever and it started being more useful to excite understand that you're going to die yeah i constantly would check back and forth between the two which one was more powerful yeah and it had always been more powerful to think that i could live forever because it made me do long-range planning oh okay cause i was gonna say why and i'm not entirely sure it's like this is something that i will probably talk incessantly about over the next year because i'm trying to figure out why it suddenly became self-evident that i need to focus on that i will die i don't yet know why well i mean we're living in this crazy like there's no world well no there were like 10 guys who saw this coming but like most people did not anticipate that we could ever be in the situation that we're in right now and so that has to make you think that has to shake the like that's where it came from but why is death as because you talk about it in the book why is that useful i mean i've experienced a lot of death in my life have you experienced a lot of death like you have i thought i had and then when you were like four funerals is not a lot i was like what do you mean not a lot i've been to so many funerals um which by the way when you say that i think how many people did she know that [ __ ] died and then you explained that yeah my dad was a pastor my granddad was a pastor in southern cultures you go to the funeral so it's just very normal it was death has always been a part of my life um which doesn't mean that it it comes without pain but it still is just always it just is it's like life is not fair and we're all gonna we only get out of here one way um so i think that asking yourself that question of like what if i only had a week what if this is my last day i actually asked myself that that's probably the most common thing that i would ask myself instead of going like did i do everything that i could do did i like that i say if i died today am i proud of of who i am of the woman that i am and absolutely but i'm proud of the woman i am and it has nothing to do with the business i've built or the fame you value yourself for i'm a really good friend i have wonderful kids no i don't know you know they still got a lot of time to grow so who knows but i'm really proud of getting to be i don't want to say like i'm really proud like because i don't want to say like i don't want to take credit for they're their own little people sure um i guess even more than like who they are i'm really proud of how close we are um i think a lot of times we are i think many people are either running from or trying to recreate maybe the childhood or their family of origin um and for me i'm proud of creating something that's different i think one of the most powerful things in my life is that i had the anti-hero in more than one person uh and i gotta ask who both my parents um i love them and i really truly believe they did the best they could with what they had and that still was pretty crap um and it's like a it's kind of it's a it's a hard thing to talk about because i also i tried really hard in the book and um to not tell their part of the story um but just to tell my experience of that time but specifically in the book you were talking about your brothers yeah [ __ ] gnarly right um and my mom's gonna read that when the book comes out and pretty worried about that moment really so that's it's not like you've had that conversation already no we don't have that kind of we don't have that kind of relationship um but i also it's true and it was one of those things i don't want to write about stuff just gratuitously or sort of for entertainment value but that chapter specifically is i am challenging people who have or maybe more specifically parents who are [ __ ] failing their children and i'm saying that like i i will you didn't pull a [ __ ] no um that you are so you are drowning inside of your own pain or your own loss you know you're drowning because of the divorce you're drowning because you lost your job you're not for whatever reason and your kids are drowning with you and most children myself included will try and save their parents or you know we learn to perform we learn to be achievers we do you know what we can to try and like gain love or attention or whatever but what i say in the book i tell the story my older brother committed suicide when i was 14. and i found him and i say in the book i've had i have never had a conversation with my parents about what i saw how it felt was i scared did i need anything um that seems crazy it's crazy like i have the amount of conversations i've had with my sons about fortnite 1 000 and i have not talked to my parents about because they were so and i say this to them but like i can't even imagine what it would feel like to have your 17 year old son take his life i cannot imagine that but i know for a fact i there is not a question in my mind that i would not find a way even if it was [ __ ] even if it was fake to keep showing up for my kids like i can't i can't i can't imagine it and actually in doing this work with the cold reader energy healer it made me think a lot about my childhood and i went back and i um actually this weekend i was re i found like my my journals and my diaries from when i was a little girl and because i was like i'm curious like i wanted to see her when did she get that this was not okay and from a really early age like where you can't even spell i'm writing about you know them screaming and like like from as a very little like it's awful like this little tiny little girl diary was like where you would have like a lock and key and i don't even know how old i was and i'm like writing like i'm scared like they're screaming and i'm reading this and i'm like if i found something like this that my child had created i can't even imagine and so when i ask myself this question of you know if today was the last day are you proud yeah because not because of any of this sort of worldly stuff but my kids know they are loved my kids know they are safe and i'm living it out right now like i'm going through a divorce that as much as we are so this whole thing is about making sure the kids are as okay as they possibly can be and man there are days where you just put a smile on your face and you act like yeah family dinner sounds like a great idea right now like we're not angry at all let's have meatloaf this is great um yeah so that's that's a question i asked myself if today was your last day are you proud me aggressively and so i oh the thing that i value myself is sincere pursuit i found out very early that money couldn't touch how i felt about myself so i gave up that pursuit um early which i'm very grateful for so now that i have worldly success it was like cool i already understood what that wouldn't be i couldn't have 100 predicted what it would be but i knew what it wouldn't be and i knew it wouldn't be me suddenly feeling like oh my god i matter now right and that the willingness to go after big dreams the willingness to stare nakedly at my inadequacies and like always try to improve like i'm super proud of that and i'm super proud of pushing myself to be better like those are things that matter to me um and then like this is a weird one little moment among many moments that i would sort of pull on my deathbed and be like wow i'm really proud of the way that i handled that um i'm proud that on the day that i became wealthy like legitimately my bank account changed lisa said what do you want to do today and i was like what do you mean i'm going to work and i went to work like normal and and that was that and nobody in the company would ever have been able to tell you what what the day was that you know the money hit because it wasn't about that right and so that like those little things where you're true to like the values that you hold and nothing sways you like those are always the cool moments but can i tell you what i am proud of about you or think you should value in yourself okay in the chapter where you're talking about um parents like i'm writing this so if you're drowning right now that you'll wake up that's going to alienate some people yeah when you told me that you were writing what the health i was like oh so you want to like piss off half your audience right um you always say what you think will add value to somebody and not what is necessarily just going to add value to you financially right which like i think about that a lot in terms of there there are short-term things that you could do oh my god well you know what's so funny uh or fascinating to me is that there was a group of people who were so angry that we're getting divorced and the rallying cry was that i was fake that i was a liar and i was like this is the most authentic thing i've ever done [Music] i am making a choice that will anger an audience upset our families break my children's hearts break my best friend's heart like i am making a choice that will affect my business that affects the brand like all of those things but i have spent my entire career speaking truth of like you need to live who you are you need to take ownership of your life you need to be true to yourself you need to do you should be more like i would be a fake if i kept living in a relationship that worked really well in these four categories but was deeply unhealthy over here just to make everybody happy or just to make more money like i all a publisher wants after a book like girl wash your face is girl wash your face two right and girl wash your face three like that's all that i could have made so much money and i wouldn't and god what a way what a way to live i can't even why do you like why does that matter to you to like to put it all at risk what what you've created is really lightning in a bottle like it is rare that i like sort of stutter to say that oh i could have that kind of success like when i thought i was going to publish my book whoo homie i didn't dare to dream that it would have like the kind of explosive success that you've had are you afraid of golden handcuffs is it the notion of what you think about yourself when you're by yourself like what is it that like why like health right you know you're gonna piss people off like why why go down i've done a lot of therapy so i can tell you what i know is that um my family life was you know written about at a time it was very hard the most awful parts about it i will never write down and from the outside it was perfect you know preacher's family everyone looked real cute on sunday mom made sure everyone's hair was braided right and it was behind the scenes it was awful and i'll be damned if i pretend to be something i'm not on the enneagram which you know i love do you know your enneagram number no i was like enneagram i don't even know i've never heard those syllables together tom i don't even know where you what are you talking about like intj no no enneagram has been around since ancient greece it is personal oh my god how we've been friends this long i feel like i tell people on the street people target i'm like do you know your enneagram number it's a series of numbers it's personality types um one through nine okay that i have heard you talking about yes it's just like oh my gosh i need to know what you are now um so there's a way to find out yeah i mean like right now or do i have to go you'd have to take a test i have my theory about what you are but you're not ever supposed to diagnose someone so i won't um but i am a three which is an achiever mm-hmm we might be this is gonna say but i'm an achiever and then everyone has a wing so it's either the number four before you or the number after you and i'm a three a four is an individualist a four cares more about being themselves than being accepted for being them like they are who they are they're the artists they're the people who have pink hair when that's like it matters deeply that you are allowed to be who you are individualists don't really feel like they're understood like nobody truly gets them whatever so i'm a three-four and i feel my four very strong i feel like you've got you're either a three four i'm not supposed to tell you what's a two three two is a helper other one yeah you're not you help people but i don't see you as a helper i don't i i'd have to look so one a big driver in my life is um it's true i don't immediately identify myself as a helper when i think though what some of my driving motivations are it's definitely to help other people but at the same time i am very happy for people to never know it was me right so i need to feel like i matter i need to feel like i have purpose i need to feel like i'm helping other people um but i don't need it to be up close i'm not a person who would say well as long as i help one person i can be there in their life and and see that right right and twos need it matters to them that you acknowledge that they helped you that does not matter right and so a question that is a good one for this is what do you think about when you think about things like what's the most common theme i don't even know what that means so meaning i'm an achiever so what i'm thinking about is the list of all the things that i need how am i gonna do that and what's that and you know i feel like you're either a three or there's a very strong chance that you're an eight which is the challenger ooh that's interesting that i would challenge authority kind of thing anything that's interesting so now i really want to take this thing right so i will i have always had a problem with authority i don't i mean maybe to some extent like they're i could see a world in which that makes sense for me i will tell you a quick story from my childhood yes please so i was on the freshman basketball team i was the worst player on the team everybody had an outfit that matched except me and i had the outfit from like the previous era before they changed oh man so uh that gives you an idea of how good i was and we were on the bus and the freshman team has a different coach even in the jv even in the varsity the varsity coach came on the freshman bus and was like every one of you guys has something to work on and i said even the coaches and of course i got in trouble and what an [ __ ] like if i could go back in time be like hey dumbass you really are the worst person right be quiet you focus getting better and worried about yourself but that was definitely a huge part of my youth a big part of why i wanted to get rich was i didn't like that i couldn't have the things that i wanted as a kid so there is a certain amount of rebellion but when i think about things i don't think of it from that's not entirely true earlier when you said um oh god what were you saying like this is the heroine i think i was going to say i want to go get addicted to world of warcraft just to show that i can stop and i used to joke with people that i'm going to get addicted to heroin just to show people that i can stop oh my god i was like i always told people i'm obviously i'm not going to yes but there is like that element in my purse you want to prove it i won't deny that but when i think about things i think about puzzles and this puzzle is solvable and because i believe it's solvable that's how i approach business i've heard you say that about one of the things you love about entrepreneurship is solving the puzzle yep absolutely that's a big thing for me this year has felt like the puzzle it's one of those puzzles that's five thousand pieces and it's all black like there's no you know that's those puzzles that are all one color that's what this year feels like it feels like we pivot and we pivot again and we like i am there has been so much stress this year that for the first time ever i'm like i'm just like watching it go by like i'm separated from it's not to say that i don't um experience it but there's have you ever been in seasons where there's just so much stress that you're like i literally can't carry one more thing no i i have but i wouldn't describe it the way you're describing it so i have used adaptogens that is a hilarious question i don't i've heard of adaptogens but i don't actually know what they are um so it's my favorite i like basically keep an extra bottle of them in my house so a nutritionist described adaptogens to me a couple of years ago as like the waves don't go you don't go quite as high or quite as low um and it's like the stress is still there or the anxiety might still pop up but you're not in it you're you're watching it from a distance i don't know how meditative right um so i tried a few different ones and you can get them at a grocery store like over the counter there's supplements like anything else um my favorite one is called holy basil leaf i take a holy basil leaf pill every night of my life and i swear by it and in the really hard seasons i'll have one in the morning too i'm very very sensitive to anything so for me to say that this doesn't affect me at all and make me tired is a big deal um but i the reason i swear by it so much is that one time i ran out [Laughter] and you're like beanie scratching right yeah i was wild and i just swear by it so i do think this that has been a big part of this year and i meditate no but i really know that i need to homie you need to this is like okay so everybody has a person in their life that they love and they can't help yeah it just like [ __ ] breaks their heart and they probably help a lot of other people right just because they're so upset they can't help that one person yes my wife in meditation my wife refuses to [ __ ] meditate she's tried it and so she did actually recently say that i could sit with her and and meditate with her and i think you would guide her through yeah okay and now look there's almost nothing that i will say is for everyone meditation is biological it is you your body has physiological hooks that move you about from parasympathetic to sympathetic to back and so like when i do breath work you there you won't not get tingly lips and all that stuff if you're breathing in a certain way you will be able to extend how long you can hold your breath if you like practice getting the co2 out of your body and meditation is the same thing once you learn how to diaphragm breathe and then you do it over a long enough period of time and you just keep gently bringing yourself back to the breath like for everyone it will bring background radiation to zero now the more spiritual elements of meditation i won't speak to so maybe somebody's overhyped it and so you sat down to try it and you're like i'm not seeing the face of god what the [ __ ] is this i just more have a hard time focusing oh my god you do meditate i remember thinking while i was reading your book you pray like a [ __ ] thing i do they literally track the breathing of people in prayer and it matches accidentally i mean just biologically because the body slips into this breathing which is five breaths per minute people who meditate or say the lord's prayer or whatever it is they tend to slide into five breaths per minute the people that are meditating fall into the same breath pattern so prayer is basically prayer is probably closer to what i call thinkitation okay where you're you have thoughts you're you're not trying to empty your mind but you're in this really thoughtful contemplative space you're not trying to go anywhere else i see you're trying to connect with something i see so my gut instinct is that which is why you do it in times of stress yeah that you tend to pray at night so when you're meditating you're just you're in that breath you're just focusing on the breath your mind is clear my mind wanders constantly and you gently bring it back to the breath without judgment right so i have been in legal battles where hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake and that's about as terrifying as a non-life-threatening thing is going to get like just the consequences are so high and so matter and in those times i could it was i found that i was never more than 45 minutes away from total equanimity where 45 minutes before that i was like yo i cannot carry one more thing like this [ __ ] crazy i can feel so i have a rule in my life going back to rules beliefs values yeah all that stuff i have a rule in my life that i don't tolerate overwhelm now ironically by telling yourself that you don't tolerate it you actually pattern interrupt and that sense of like escalation immediately stops right and then i'll meditate and that keeps me in a physiologically calm place but it is it's truly a biological experience so when i find myself ratcheting up and the stress just [ __ ] crazy i meditate and and you if you're consistent you can't help but become calm because the um the parasympathetic and the sympathetic nervous system are a seesaw you can't be both elevated and calm at the same time right so as you do things physiologically that calm you that slow your heart rate that slow your breathing that slow your mind you can't help but you literally can't help but become calm um i made a decision a few weeks ago you were talking about rules and i made a rule i just like one day i was like i refuse to hold anxiety for someone else ever again so i realize like i've worked so hard on anxiety in myself but i realized that i am still like if someone at work or you know something's happening whatever and they're like rachel this is and i'm like okay oh my gosh okay great let's fix it and i had this happen recently it's and probably because this year has felt like that has happened a hundred times that i someone will sort of bring me up to this heightened crazy state and then i have to solve the problem and then talk myself back down instead of just solving the problem from down here and i had this interaction recently where i got off the phone with someone on my team and i was like i just absorbed all she just like gave it all to me and i almost feel like she literally like handed me the package so that then not consciously but so that then she now it's like okay hot potato now you hold this anxiety and the other day i thought this is a choice like i and i'm not saying that i could snap my fingers and it's that fast but just making the conscious decision of exactly what you just said make it a rule and in in the like in the week since i made this choice i've had and i'm start to get and i'm like nope we don't do this anymore we we won't hold anxiety for them we have enough things in your life that might give you anxiety you're not going to hold this space for this person yeah i think people under utilize rules that's one of those like people ask me a lot of times you know how do i do this thing how do i stick with it or whatever and it's like well at some point it really does come down to you either do it or you don't right and at some point you have to have made a line in the sand and you either cross it or you don't and i'm all for people building up to that like one of the most important rules of my life and i can tell when i say this to people that it's not an issue for them so they don't recognize like i'm i'm telling you like one of my deepest darkest shameful things which is i have a rule that i get out of bed in 10 minutes or less because there was a period of my life where i would lay in bed for four and five hours at a time wow there was a time in my life where i was on unemployment and i played video games in bed for 10 hours a day right i mean it was crazy right and because it's like time i will never get back and now that efficiency has become so important to me that i really do mourn the loss of that time and it's really embarrassing to think back to you know how long i would sit and lay in bed so i had to just put a rule in my life you get out of bed in 10 minutes or less that's it like no if ends or buts there's no way around it and it got to the point where i would be so hardcore that if my feet touched the ground and it clicked over to the 11th minute before i stood up i would confess it to lisa and be like i didn't get out of bed in less than 10 minutes today wow that was really important to me yeah and i feel like there's a lot of this stuff is blocking and tackling like it's pretty basic [ __ ] it's saying i'm not going to hold somebody but do you feel like you had to have the emotional leverage of shame for that to god now you really get into the [ __ ] crazy stuff like and this is yes like people are afraid to use the dark side and that's like so now i want to get into you as an entrepreneur right you've written about it you've talked about it yeah do people really understand how hardcore you are no do you want them to understand how hardcore you are you know what's interesting about 18 months ago maybe a year ago i was like why don't female entrepreneurs who have achieved incredible success talk about it why did you know it was you know this is a conversation we need to have too is like the sexiest thing in the whole world in 2019 was to be an entrepreneur and like be on the private jet and like have the cool car and you know do the thing like we we know all the people who do this thing and it was really cool especially if you had a following of like 19 year old dudes who who love that and want to see that and i love like i love garyvee love it show me all the things travel around the world be in meetings all day i love i'm here for it but i thought this is crazy why doesn't anyone show women um and why don't i'm like why doesn't oprah talk about the fact that she's worth two billion dollars um or you know sarah blakely who i adore in her master class is so good it's my favorite master class but she's pretty demure about the fact that she invented something and built a billion dollar company and warren buffett is her mentor and like incredible like where's the like where's the film crew following her around and showing women like me what that looks like when you have four kids because she does so i just kept wondering and then i thought nobody's hot nobody's doing this i'll do it i'll say that i've made millions i'll say that i have this company i'll say that i've done these things and i'll say how many books i've sold don't say this stuff and man you could flip a switch to the videos like all of the things that are wrong with rachel hollis because it's okay when guys do it but i don't think that culturally something happens when a woman claims success and i don't know if it's all success or just success in the business arena because it's not typically a place that maybe you see women having massive success but within six months i was like oh this is why this is why they don't talk about it here's so i actually understand i'm not vouching for it i understand why guys aren't necessarily going to be turned on by it so i lived my wife going from a housewife and cook my meals and set up my clothes and be sexy for your husband and all of that to becoming a savage entrepreneur right and being the hardest core [ __ ] she is like upsetting me as the boss is like one thing don't [ __ ] piss off lisa she she will hold your ass accountable in a way you did not know you could be held accountable right she makes me uncomfortable sometimes i'm like god damn like she she is 100 a savage so i get why some guys be like whoa like that that's some interesting [ __ ] i want to go club yeah i wasn't the guy who had a problem right but women go [ __ ] hard what the [ __ ] i actually i want to know like what's what's that triggering i i think from the time we're little we're taught to compete with other women and we're taught to i mean talk about rules we're taught that these are like our our family of origin or our religion or the place that we grew up in the world says these are the guardrails you're allowed to be inside of and god forbid another girl steps outside of those guard rails number one we're taught to tease her we're taught to ostracize her we're taught to do things to let her know that she stepped outside the norm but the only thing worse than that girl stepping outside the norm is her stepping outside the norm and having success at it it's like i imagine being back in middle school where there was like these were the popular girls they were cheerleaders they were blonde they were whatever and then it became cool to be goth and then like i remember there was a there was a cheerleader in my middle school blonde whatever who just like who knows what was going on at home like shaved her head pixie cut black hair coal eye like full goth right and everyone talks [ __ ] and it was like oh like whatever she got me whatever but you know who thought that was hot the guys so even worse than her stepping outside of what was allowed well she had success at it so now not only are we going to talk [ __ ] but now she's a target now we actually need to see what we could do to break her down completely and i think that that's what happens it's it's like just there's room enough for all of us to just be who we are but there's something about someone that you identified with in some way either because you're a mom too or because you are a woman of faith too or because you followed me when i was a food blogger whatever right you identified with me in some way and now i've done something that has stepped outside of what you consider normal and i've had success at it and that truthfully challenges where you are well now you're doing even farther so because when when you blow up a girl wash your face and it was like i peed my pants and was this like you really showing the vulnerability sure people were team rachel it's only when you start talking about being a savage and making all this money and then then all day then it's like what's weird to me is that they don't realize that both sides of that coin are true same person right and and we every we're both right that's rad to me like being a hardcore [ __ ] and every now and then i think what is the book that like feels so important to me that i would put it up there with writing fiction and every now and then i i sort of circle around this idea of being a hardcore [ __ ] and to my potential position as a number eight challenger right uh when people react negatively to me talking about being hardcore go hardcore right get after it get better every [ __ ] day not just about you against you you against the [ __ ] world like take it over and the more people tell me to calm down like the more i want to go and get high and i'm like it [ __ ] works right people build [ __ ] because they're hardcore they overcome obstacles they keep going and pushing and it's what's the oh god there's a quote i forget who it's by but it goes something like this progress the uh the reasonable man bends to the will of the world the unreasonable man bends the world to his will therefore all progress um will come only to the unreasonable man the actual quote is [ __ ] more slick than that but oh my god like i can feel myself want to just be unreasonable because it's like yes i want to bend the world to my will i don't understand why people don't get intoxicated by that idea like i do i mean i love being around you because i love when you start this because i'm like yes yeah go um and it it it's super important and it fires me up because it's not something that i get to interact with all the time that's why i literally um i'm going on youtube like i'm gonna go watch i will walk like you are my friend i could call you be like tom based on me and like tell me to be strong or whatever but i will go watch keynotes or i'll go listen because it i it's like you need that state creating moment of like being reminded like you might be a freak but there's other freaks like you right because i do feel like i don't feel like i'm normal and it is very hard to find for sure not other women who are like me or think like me and not i'm not saying like oh i'm like i'm thinking i'm more that i i have not yet met another female entrepreneur who's also trying to be a great mom like how do you do both and [ __ ] kill this but also kill this and i believe that it's possible but in the same way that you're like coming at yourself and like i'm gonna go build disney whatever i'm gonna do both of those really well and the world constantly tries to tell me that that's impossible like they tell me constantly that doing one of those things sacrifices the other and i just don't believe it's true the fun of rachel hollis to me is that you keep going and even i i look sometimes and i think there's some hate in you for sure like i know some of your secret dreams that you haven't talked about they're [ __ ] awesome right and that that i know i can count on you to not stop to just keep going you may or may not accomplish it right they're they're [ __ ] big they're crazy they're amazing um i never value somebody for whether they actually achieve it i i value them for like are you really going for it or you just is this rhetoric right or is this something you really show up every day and [ __ ] play to win right and i i think it's rad so normal having lived through lisa's transformation and seeing how awesome it is now to have a wife who is truly my peer as an entrepreneur and how [ __ ] rad that is and now i like as hardcore as i go she's going hardcore and not in a toxic way like she's very good about like hey you know like i need to back off right now or whatever and she's very good about that because she's had struggles with her health and stuff um but that's [ __ ] fun and i just want to see other people be celebrated for like the way that they can bend the world to their will and the things that they can create it's so inspiring like even if all your like go-getting inspires somebody to do is be like the greatest ping-pong player of all time or the greatest mom of all time absolutely like what i'm [ __ ] i don't care what the goal is i mean you said this earlier and this is my belief too i don't care what the goal is but you got to have a goal i don't care if the goal is you want to make the bed the best jalapeno cheddar cornbread on the planet truly the the magic happens in the pursuit you become who you're meant to be in the pursuit of something so many people are stuck so many people are like don't know how to it's like do something do anything aim at anything right now because at least that will give you some direction to head in i do have a theory though you want to hear my theory of course so i'm going to do this backwards so i built a company right i built this company that has been very successful and even in 2020 and even in what that means with the economy and like until we can get back to a place we can do events all those things i'm going to continue to run a company that's successful but i keep thinking about the rock or oprah or reese witherspoon or name the celebrity who has built companies but it felt allowed for them to have a company because they had celebrity so they almost like earned your attention in a way that was accepted and then they sold you stuff right like oh i love him i you know he's like my favorite human all the rock does right now sell you tequila that's all he does delicious tequila by the way i don't know if you drink too that's actually really good he sent me some i don't know if you heard but it's fine it's fine um it's we're basically best friends it's fine no we're not he doesn't know who i am um it's like this is my theory is that i'm gonna do it backwards now it's like i built the company and the infrastructure is obviously there and then i'm gonna go do some things that feel like more traditional entertainment so it feels like oh that's why and then like five years from now people are gonna be like oh my gosh rachel hall started a company that's interesting as a blueprint for in in the digital age where we have youtube and people can get good at something behind the scenes build something and then leverage that in front of the camera which to me is far more interesting than doing it the other way right now reese or you know seven bucks or the seven bucks production company is the name the rock that makes sense you come up as an actor or whatever and then you start making the stuff yourselves but to be a influencer but not have built something like the only reason i ever let myself step in front of a camera was i had spent by the time i sat in front of a camera i'd been an entrepreneur for 15 years i'd had my ups and downs um you know was really finally understanding how to do this stuff and all the changes that i'd had to make to myself and so felt like i could go and offer value but the only reason that i continue to do it now is because i'm building a separate company so i can sell people a business class right because i'm i'm my business isn't the business class right my business is actually over here right i know this is a financial opportunity and so i do it but all the [ __ ] that i'm doing all day and learning and growing this thing over here i'm just teaching what i'm doing yep so that makes a lot of sense yeah so backwards maybe from the way that it's done traditionally but right far more interesting right and just like this is something that feels a little bit more accepted and i think you know i told you 18 months ago that i was like oh i'm going to be the one who who sort of carries this torch forward and then i ran into that like started talking about numbers and start because i'm really proud of a high school diploma like i'm really proud of what i built um and then i was like whoa calm down slow your roll like there needs to be more strategy behind this if oprah the queen of all like hasn't done this hasn't talked about this if all of these really smart very successful women aren't leading out in this way there's a reason so what's the reason so how it's like i wanted to set an example but not at the detriment of the brand of the business i think about that a lot in terms of what would i need to do to grow faster so when i look at you know there's a lot of young upstarts that appeal to the 19 year old guys you were talking about and flash the wealth and the cars and all that stuff and the team will be like you know if we did a video right and we have the drone shot of your house you know all of that um we could sell a lot more business courses or the number of [ __ ] times a pr team has asked me like you know to tell tell the story about you know how you build the the billion dollar company and you know just just make sure you work in that stuff right and it would be better for business but the thing that is i actually i'm i'm making a bet that and i want this to be true because it wouldn't be better for how i feel about myself when i'm by myself i don't do it and now because i'm not willing to do it anyway i want to believe that on a long enough timeline people see me [Music] in the muck in the dirt the parts where i'm trying to figure it out and i'm just trying to help people really gain the skills that they need to have to go on and do something extraordinary my hope is that like people see like he doesn't posture he's not faking it he's not selling a dream right like it's just look the [ __ ] is [ __ ] hard right it's super [ __ ] tactical learn these things do this you can have success no one can guarantee that the most successful people i know this is just real the most successful people i know the wealthiest people i know are not the people who would ever make a video with the drone shop they would never show off the private jet because they don't need to but you know what i mean like the wealthiest most successful people i know like if someone's doing that you need to ask yourself why my thing is the only reason that i don't do it is because the money won't change how you feel about yourself so if i get you enticed by the money and you pursue money it's a losing proposition it's like i have to find a way to get you to pursue improving yourself getting control of your emotional life well also because you're not a douchebag like that come on it's the it's the dude but if it were real it wouldn't be douchey i don't think like if it were real that in pursuing money you will make the changes that you want to make then great no problem it's just that it is i'm talking about the very specific like wearing you know designer whatever on the private jet showing that like over the top showing that which we know people who do though i do think we're in a time period that's going to get [ __ ] on so hard this is like the french revolution like you cannot if people are still doing that you're dead you are dead even i i followed this really closely when we went into quarantine because i was just like okay all of these celebrities have the highest level publicist in the world i want to not listen to what people say i want to watch what people do and if you notice and i still think they're in this place like go through go scroll through social like biggest celebrities shots are really tight you know it's like you're not showing the whole living room anymore you're just showing like this one moment there's nothing fancy there's we're in jeans and t-shirts we're no makeup because the last thing that you should be doing right now is showing that off or shoving that down people's throats like it's so the idea of tone deaf or so disrespectful i haven't checked but i'm sure some of the usual suspects are still showing their you know fancy belt buckle yeah private jet that they totally rented and pretend is theirs that yeah that's funny the thing that there's a flip side to that coin which is ambition is now getting [ __ ] on and that makes me really [ __ ] sad for other people cause it's like look i'm going to win like if you guys want to stop playing fine right that's not interesting to me right like i'm not interested in talking people out of competing so that i can win but it's like do you think that's something that's happened inside of like coved and this world what whatever this change is that's been going on for a while and i don't just think it's coveted i think covet accelerated it but there is like the fact that people will pull down an american flag the fact that people will um you know laugh if you say man it's the american dream like come on we can do this um the fact that it's those are people who don't who've never clearly been to another country a and more distressing to me is because i think of america as an idea far more than i think of it as a place like my wife is what i call a foreign-born american she was just always american she was just always optimistic she always had big dreams she always felt like you know put me in coach like let me do this i can do it and so from the time she was a little kid she's always said i'm going to live in america one day and like that enthusiasm for oh i can change my life is to me like that's the juice like the the very thing that i want to give people is the belief that they can improve their life and because i founded quest in the middle of the great recession it's like i know how you can control your destiny you can build something even when the deck really is stacked against you right you're one i never thought about this you're one of those people like how many millionaires billionaires big businesses are born in recession you're one of those people it's a moment of disruption and what happens is people get emotionally and mentally defeated and so there's just less people playing the game that's part of it and so it's the people that can we just sit in that for a minute there's just less people playing the game yeah i i was uh i was at a meeting yesterday with someone and i was trying to like pep him up with this of like do you know how many people are dropping out of the race like honest to god half the battle right now is can you just stay standing you fall down and can you stand back up and can you keep going because that really is it like i i really do you're talking about like entrepreneur and like being so hardcore i really i'm gonna come out the other side of this year like i'm already like [ __ ] i am strong as [ __ ] like i knew i was strong but i did not the mental stamina to survive like personal life absolutely that personal life is over here but everything that has happened in the business this year i can't even believe it is like sucker punch one after another and like you're like okay we figured it out like we dodged that bullet and they're like oh no you got shot in the other arm you didn't know that one's bleeding enough too business it's business that that is like and it's like you okay wait i want to ask this real were there times in building quests after you had made money where you're like [ __ ] what the [ __ ] am i doing not even once that's your brain is wired that way here here is the because i had my crisis early meaning so the company before quest was a company called awareness technologies so i leave teaching filmmaking to go work at this company as a copywriter and they gave me this great speech which i will forever be in their debt for which was don't think of yourself as an employee think of yourself as a partner if you add so much value that we would rather make you a partner than lose you then you can become a partner right and i did and true to their word they made me a partner and i was worth about two million dollars on paper and people need to understand the difference between paper money right and cash money which most people don't right so they think you know these billionaires that right over covet yeah they've just become richer it's like that money's not in their [ __ ] banks right it's like a baseball card going up in value you still have to sell the [ __ ] baseball right anyway we started on that yeah but um i was technically wealthy and felt emotionally bankrupt and i was like oh my god i feel [ __ ] dead and i was like this sucks driving into work there's like this [ __ ] dark cloud my wife finally pulled me aside and said look this is now damaging the marriage you were so unhappy and you're working so much what the [ __ ] are you doing and i was like you're right i need to do something that makes me feel alive and that became my mantra i go in and quit it's a moment of deep shame and so yes it ends up being the most important thing and it gives birth to quest and blah blah but at the time you don't [ __ ] know where it's going right it just seems like you're you've broken and you can't go on anymore and so i was like this sucks i've got to go do something that makes me feel alive so in that moment i realized oh this is about how i feel when i'm by myself this isn't about money or what other people how do you feel about yourself when you're by yourself 100 how you feel about yourself is all that matters like that's it neurochemistry is the game like how many billionaires have to commit suicide before people realize it doesn't it's not about the effect how you feel about yourself and so one of the things i'm super grateful for is the way that i got wealthy was by creating equity so equity in a company the company becomes valued more and then ultimately you sell it but while you're building that value on paper i was worth hundreds of millions of dollars but i didn't have anything other than my normal salary right to show for it right so it was one day to the next oh okay cool now i've got wealth and oh my god i don't feel any different all of the insecurities that i had coming into this stuff i still have right so you talk about when people have a goal that is just geography but who you are is going to follow you right to that new geography who you are is going to follow you to being wealthy who you are is going to follow you to being broke by the way right so if you're stable and you know who you are and you feel good about yourself and then you go broke you're still stable you still know who you are unless you were foolish enough to value yourself for money so that i buy into tremendously so i had that crisis very early i knew that it was about how i felt about myself so i just started focusing on what are the things i need to do to feel good about myself i come to this whole there's a book i think it's called drive maybe by stephen pinker but i can't remember go home into that and he talks about the five things that actually motivate people which are money okay autonomy yep meaning purpose which one am i forgetting meaning and purpose of the two that ultimately really matter i can't believe that i don't remember the fifth one if i sat with it long enough i would definitely but um oh i think progress okay getting better mastery that's how he words it mastery so we all want to get better at something absolutely um meaning and purpose meaning and purpose if you don't have meaning and purpose so i was like cool that's the [ __ ] glowing orb i will set at the center of my heart and soul my daily life is all going to be about meaning and purpose so once the company was no longer about wealth creation it was about meaning and purpose i knew even if i sell the company so to give you an idea i exited quest on a monday on tuesday tuesday we started impact theory i didn't take a single [ __ ] day off so because i knew that it's about meaning and purpose and showing up and doing hard things and pushing and being a hardcore [ __ ] right not to be a broke record but it's like these are the things that i value in my life so you know you take that again that tapestry of beliefs rules values identity you bundle it up and it's like there there was it's not even like i considered taking a day off it's like of course i'm gonna stop doing one thing on monday and start doing the next thing on a tuesday right that's just what makes sense to me i don't feel like like i've been in i sound so silly like i've been in a game so long but i've been in it so long but there are days where it's just like what the hell what the actual hell so what are the bumpers in the alley that stop you from giving up because i've fought too god damn long to be here what would you package that as identity probably like this is who i am i'm the person who gets back up i'm tenacious i go again no matter what i go again and i think if if you were going to give up you should have given up in 08 you should have given up like i you know i literally in the last nine months like i've thought through like oh remember when this happened and remember when this happened i remember and you just you know got on with customer service and answered you know 5 000 emails and like called people and did like if you were gonna why'd you go through all of this if you were gonna give up why didn't you give up back then like this is not yeah i guess it is identity that's not who i am you talk about it in the book and it was a really powerful section i think it was actually a different section but marrying where you were talking about identity with when you were talking about the navy seals yeah and you were like one of the things that really resonated with you was that they say every time we fall back every time we fall down we're going to get back up yep yeah um it just i i'm surprised at myself like i and i'm not saying that as i like uh oh i'm so fancy but i think of this year maybe this is has been like this for a lot of entrepreneurs or business owners or just humans it reminds me of running my first marathon my only marathon i remind you of running a marathon and i signed up never you know the whole thing like never thought i was a runner decided to run whatever sign up for the la marathon the day of my marathon this freak occurrence in los angeles it was 92 degrees in february oh right don't know why so when you train for right it's awful when you train for a marathon i don't know if you know that you don't run your full distance so you train to like 18 or 20 miles when a full marathon is 26.2 and they tell you your adrenaline will carry you the rest of the way but it means that you show up on race morning not really knowing if you've got it right and i was so [ __ ] scared and so scared mostly i don't care what anyone else thinks but i did not want to fail myself and for me and i know that people will hear this however they want to hear this for me it would have been a failure to walk i had trained for months i had trained to run a marathon and man if you walk 26 good for you like that's amazing but for me i knew that it would i would feel like i had i had given up on my goal which was to run 26.2 miles so i felt like everything was stacked against me that day i was on my period tom like i was like i'm one of those people in a magazine who's like bleeding out on mile 18 but i'm gonna keep going like i it's 92 degrees and you're literally literally people are passing out as we're running this race like it was crazy and i get to mile 18 and it's so wild because i was thinking about this the other day and then i was driving up mile 18. so in la the la marathon you run from dodger stadium to santa monica pier whoa right that's crazy it's crazy it's a really cool race because you're just running distance as opposed to a circle but mile 18 was wilshere and it was like i don't even know what time of day like high noon or something is so hot and it's all asphalt and it was ju i just felt like i was going to die and it took everything in my power to get through mile 18 and i was thinking i'm not how am i gonna get to 26 there's no way and i was just like i mean the cussing that i did in my own head and i was running slower than anyone can walk everyone can walk faster than i was running but it was like a mental thing i maybe as long as i felt like i was still keeping my commitment to myself i'm just like barely you know so slow like a turtle running this marathon and i got to mile 25 and that's where you're like coming in to santa monica and you're like running along the ocean and you see the ferris wheel and um one of the most profound experiences of my whole life mile 25 into the end of this race and it is it is ingrained in my nervous system i can see that day i can smell the ocean i can i was playing miley cyrus the climb on repeat which is so lame but it was like i was so delirious i was just 26 miles no no no just that last bit just that last bit i just like over and over and over and i'm just like you're gonna do it like you get them you for for for 25 miles i've been like i'm not gonna do it i can't do it and then i'm like oh my god we're gonna do this and the only thing that i can equate it to is um giving birth because that is an equally impossible physical feat like i have no idea how my body did that um but the amount of time like i always tell the story to people who are like i don't know should i send him for a 5k or you know what should i it doesn't matter what it is but i think that as human beings we need things in our lives that we look back on and we're like i survived mile 25 i survived mile 18. and for a lot of people 2020 is going to be their mile 25 right that's interesting and that only happens if you keep going like in 2020 even i who am resilient as [ __ ] am like this year's getting us so if we can if we can survive this if we can thrive if we can if we can be the people who are still in the race if we can be whatever that looks like like if we can still be in this you get to 21 or 20 like you're untouchable what's gonna get you like i'm still standing right now as an entrepreneur in 2020 owning a live events business because i lived through i owned a high-end event planning company in 2008 like just nobody wants that in 2008. i don't know i'm shocked at like we're all just here and we're all still standing up it's interesting because i see you i think very differently than you see you which is one of the fascinating so if somebody said all right you you've got a couple chips you can put on people that you just know 100 no matter what is thrown at this person like they will be standing on the other side yeah definitely easy chip on you right like just no question 100 but not easily that's what i love this is that's the magic of like the rachel hollis human who is the brand is this [ __ ] is hard it drives me crazy when people look at me and think well sure easy enough for you i'm like [ __ ] there was a point in my life where i couldn't tell a story to my own family right because i was debilitated by anxiety right and had to claw on my way back from that there was a point in my life where i was lying on my unfurnished apartment because i couldn't afford furnishings uh feeling the synthetic carpet smashing into my face and thinking how the [ __ ] am i ever going to do anything with my life i'm too stupid to have the kind of storied existence that i want right i have no idea how to make my dreams come true and it's clawing your way from stuff like that that i want to be inspiring to people and this is why it with empathy i'm when i see people tearing other people down i'm just like what are you doing like is is there anything else you could take away from this is there a lesson is there inspiration is there like something because the hard moment is going to come for you right if you've got a value system that's like crabs in a bucket nobody stick their head up too high nobody go too hard nobody dreamed too big it's like you've just capped your own potential i think that there's also just a wild misconception about that once you're successful or once you accumulate wealth that then it's easy keeping wealth is a lot harder than earning i i was listening i want to say kevin hart was on a um i think it was his last interview with rogan which was so good if you haven't heard it do you listen to joe rogan i do i love joe rogan it's a an interesting choice for me i understand but oh man i think he's hilarious i think he's one of the best interviewers here here is the heartbreaking news what he is the best interviewer right but he's my competition i must defeat joe rogan but he is better than me oh my god i love you right but i think he's really good he is and he makes it look easy so easy and people don't give him credit for how intelligent he is how well read he is he is the king i grew up in theater did you do theater i did a little um so do you know yes and yes in improv right i do so he is if you watch him do an interview that's all he's doing oh yes and nuclear physics also like he's so good at just going um but he did an interview with kevin hart and kevin hart said what people don't realize is that it's way easier to become successful than it is to stay successful and i was like that is the realist of the real and when you achieve success you also i hate to say this because it sounds pessimistic but it's real you have a bigger target on your back now people want to tear you apart because and and not just like this isn't we're not saying like oh people want to tear you apart because like on social no i'm talking about like people want to sue you right like that sued me when i was poor yeah right yeah it's a whole different thing where you're like what is happening that it is so much harder to be at this level than it was to be like oh could i get to 5 000 followers on facebook which in saying that i also feel like it's important for people who are in that season of their growth of their entrepreneurial journey or you know they want to be a speaker or author or whatever like enjoy those moments number one you're learning you're growing whatever but i i know if i i feel like if i heard someone say this when i was younger i'd be like shut up but you'll miss that level of responsibility because it is phases nothing to this i'm always telling people enjoy every phase right every phase has something that is amazing and you will look back and be like oh man i i didn't think i would ever look back fondly on this time but i actually do know because of you know xyz 100 but yeah got to enjoy the phases it's i think that that is that you said earlier like do people know how hardcore you are or whatever i think the biggest thing that people don't understand is that i'm on the stage and i'm also running it behind the scenes and that's not i don't want that for me i wish i wish that i could just be the one creating but i haven't figured out a solution for it yet i'll let you know when i do please but i don't think that people understand that i'm like marketing the thing selling the thing and then i am the thing which is wild what i what i really hope people take away from your entire personality is it's really inspiring to see somebody build something from scratch to fight for it to keep dreaming bigger to um have children to have a business and just to be enthusiastic and to be so optimistic it's like it's so intoxicating but you have to i mean i guess you have to share the values part of why i find it so intoxicating is because i share so many of your values and so i see you making something out of nothing out of thin air pivoting learning growing pushing yourself like seeming to thrive in the uncertainty like you'll attack it with a smile like we i wasn't being figurative when i said we were in a yurt like when that group of us got together all because of you um and we come together and we're dreaming and pushing each other and talking about like how the [ __ ] do you really pull this off and that to me like is so cool and when you you know going back to that desert island idea when you get a bunch of people that are thinking like that and you can insert yourself which you've created for people between the books and the events and the podcasts it's like people can really be a part of your world and make you one of the five if we're the average of the five people we spend the most time with it's like they can make you one of the five and the fact that and look this is definitely because my wife and you are so similar in like just the savage nature of like i'm gonna be who the [ __ ] i want to be and like people can try to tear me down all day if they want but like i just believe in it and it makes me come alive and so i'm gonna do it i feel like this generation is a vanguard of women who are opening that door to people and i just want to see more people like really hype on that i hope so i can't tell if this was an outro no or okay i was like am i allowed to keep i was like is this was this a wrap up no i god i hope so i really um i hope that when my daughter my daughter's three i hope that when she is a grown-up that these narratives don't even exist that it's just you could be whoever you are and my sons too like what does it mean to be a man what does it mean to be a boy what is it like just that we get to define that for ourselves i sincerely hope i just god the world is so big and there's room enough for all of us and i think i think it's so interesting that people tear down other people not not even me i'm fine my my skin is very thick like i'm not worried about it but there are a lot of people who will quit what was a billion dollar idea who won't ever make the podcast that would have been better than rogan right they will stop doing the thing that actually was genius because someone was mean to them on social how do they solve for that um the easiest fastest way is you don't consume social i don't what happens when a friend texts them you send a group message and you say i love you don't tell me this and when youtube suggests it to you when you're looking for divorce advice i i i laughed and then i sat there and i was like okay this is two-pointed what am i meant to learn in this moment like this feels too much like the universe i really do live my life in such a way that i'm like you believe i'm meant to be no but i do believe the universe is talking to us i believe god the universe whatever you want to call that is trying to be like hello and not even necessarily to say like oh your destiny is over here in the door on the left but more to say like you're missing this i really like 2020 is is wild it is a wild burning down of a lot of things that needed to be burned of we talked about this earlier of houses built on sand of things that are falling apart and it's awful and painful to watch things fall but that is how you have a rebirth that is how something new comes out of it and so you know in the slowing down of this year i've had a lot of conversations with my girlfriends about like what have we what has all of have all of these things been distracting us from that we were supposed to be paying attention to that we were supposed to be listening to that like in that moment like the youtube thing i was like okay what am i meant to learn in this am i meant to learn um one of the a really powerful thing was i unpacked why does seeing that thing give you anxiety because that's why i don't consume social because it will make me anxious and so for the first time rather than fighting against it and going like don't be anxious like that's so stupid like this is a picture like some person like who knows like i i go through the checklist of very rational thought this was the first time that i ever said why does it give you anxiety can you understand why and then i had a conversation with myself okay it gives me anxiety because i'm a people pleaser what does it mean for you to be a people pleaser i don't want people to be mad at me okay so you seeing that someone made a youtube video about you and just so we're really clear that video is not about me you know me you're my friend that video is about rachel hollis that video is about a persona or a brand that that person has made up in their mind of who i am that's not me that's not my kid's mom that's not my you know friends with sammy and beans look that's not that doesn't touch me because that's not real and so it's like okay well why why why is that triggering for you okay i don't want people to be um mad at me okay well what does it mean for you if someone's mad so i like literally therapy session myself sitting here looking at this i did not watch youtube video swear cause i was like i don't hate myself that much but i'm just like looking at the cover art which was like a hideous photo of me of course um and then i unpack oh why would it be triggering for you if someone is mad well daddy was always mad and as a little girl you lived in fear that he was gonna get mad well what happens if daddy's mad you're not safe you don't know what to anticipate my dad was just you know would go into violent rages and um never laid hands on us but like you're punching holes in the wall or whatever like and you're a little girl like that's terrifying and so his anger meant that i was unsafe and it is the exact same way that it feels for me when i see something like that i feel unsafe why because that thing is attacking my brand and my brand affects my business and my business is the family i have created to make up for the family that i didn't have right so all these people that work with me that i love dearly that thing affects this thing which means i'm unsafe which means the family's unsafe and me just being able to identify that was like a light switch that i've not had in my entire adult life and i was like oh this feeling this anxiety is not 37 year old rachel because 37 year old me is badass she knows that that person has their own problems this feeling comes from me as a little kid and literally all it took in that moment i know that i'm gonna sound like a hippie right now but i just imagined a conversation with 37 year old me like a mom talking to six-year-old me and saying i got us nobody is ever gonna make us unsafe again never like we're we're safe we're fine even if someone's mad it won't affect us and what we're doing like that so that's why i think i saw that that day i really do think that you can look at that opportunity and you can crumble or you can ask what is this meant to teach me so it is so interesting to me the way that we can imbue something with meaning so i don't think the universe is talking to us which like you it's like i'm very open to people's interpretation like whatever gets you there and it obviously took you somewhere very powerful so i'm i'm not in any way shape or form i'm discounting that or anything um so we don't actually have to agree and we can still be friends it's wild i know the internet should take a lesson right um what i find interesting is like as you were talking i was like ah there's something in that like the image of you protecting a child but that child also secretly being you like that is what makes movies so [ __ ] powerful like those conceptual images are brought to reality and i've said this i'm actually embarrassed by this and i'm i even surprised myself with how often i bring it up because i'm a little ashamed of it uh if i'm alone in the house i can get scared if lisa is here i'm never scared because i have i'm prepared to die for her right so that's like an easy conversation that i've had and never come to that and trust me for anybody wondering i'm also prepared to kill for her right so um you know but it's very clear right yeah uh because the imagery is so strong in terms of how i've crafted my identity not just with rules and values and beliefs but just also like snippets of images and you know me protecting her and standing up for her it it creates something really powerful so anyway this is a long way of getting to self-awareness like the people that put the time in to ask those recursive questions there are breakthroughs to be had for sure to understand what's motivating you it's pushing you i think it's worth doing the work i had um have you ever heard of lori gottlieb yeah why she's a therapist she's an author and a therapist yes she wrote a book called maybe you should talk to somebody right yes amazing book okay and in it there she deals with like those recursive questions and as i was reading the book i was really freaked out by and this is something that's long freaked me out but just how much one's childhood plays into your adulthood and quite frankly her book touches a lot on trauma okay which i felt like was the the core of your book of you know how you rise up past that how you use your identity to get beyond that like how you survive in your words this season like if you're in a difficult season like this what you have to do and the self-awareness that's required to like parse the words that laurie used were integrate you have to integrate this into your life you have to integrate why that thing creates that reaction how you begin to understand it and how you make it part of the tapestry like this is a hard thing but it isn't the sum total of who i am um my marriage is falling apart but it's not the sum total of who i am and so finding a way to have a holistic narrative that recognizes the things that didn't go well but also recognizes and celebrates the things that do go well yeah and creating that whole human that to me is like the juice right but the amount of work that you have to do to ask those questions to sit in that space to not numb out the difficulties like and that's one of the reasons that i talk so much about staring nakedly at my inadequacies because from that i can actually figure out what's going on right but if i don't stop to say oh like that actually did not feel good like why the [ __ ] is this bothering me so much and actually forcing yourself to come to an understanding and if you can do it by yourself amazing otherwise get a therapist right an energy healer get somebody something somewhere well and i i will say to be truthful i haven't done all of this therapy all of this work energy healing if you were like i got a you know shaman in the back room you can talk you'll be like yes i'm here for anything it isn't because i don't want to lie and say like oh it's because i want to be like the most healthy whole person that i can be i'm going to say this to you because i know you're going to get it these feelings are a distraction i hate being slowed down i hate like there is pain in my life that i will sit with and i will feel my marriage is ending my children are sad i am sad dave's sad like i'm gonna feel that it is unhealthy for me not to feel that accept it work through it process that anxiety over someone making a youtube video is a [ __ ] waste of my time and i always get over it always but i hate that it takes even half an hour i hate that i have even half an hour or 10 minutes or three minutes of anxiety about a stranger who does not know me who made something quite frankly i am going to give this human the benefit of the doubt and say that they never in a million years thought that i would see it they wanted youtube clicks they wanted to get attention they wanted significance they made a thing right they don't think that that's ever going to come to me in one of the lowest moments of my life because if they did then they're a monster and that can excuse that too right so um i i i'm willing to do the work i'm willing to dig in let's talk to the therapist let's figure out this thing because i have a life to live i have a mission i have work to do i hate the distraction like damn it like i'm in flow i'm doing the thing and then this over here like uh what a stupid waste of my time you also said something that made me had an epiphany so i read a study recently that said that women come nowhere near men when it comes to negotiation like men are wildly like the bunch of studies men are wildly better at women for negotiating for themselves okay if a woman has to negotiate her own salary man has to negotiate he's going to be wildly better except if she is negotiating on behalf of someone else not only is she at his level but she surpasses him yeah by a thousand percent not really that percentage but i thought that was so fascinating that we are so bad at fighting for ourselves but so incredible at fighting for other people like you were talking about lisa which is what made me think of this but i even am looking at my own experience this work that i've done with my inner child and my younger self and her telling me to imagine that i'm doing it for younger me i'm fighting for a child literally what i was thinking when you're right and i just like have this epiphany i'm like oh that's why this is clicking for me for the first time is i'm truly trying to heal a child that i know very well because it was me and all of those things that like i didn't have i didn't like this is whatever we're just going to keep going down this inner child thing i started doing this work with her when i moved into the house i was going through stuff when i was little and i found a like a not oil painting but oil like chalk from like third grade or something i'd taken an art class and i remember mrs roll's art class and um we had to paint uh like a she showed us a painting we all sort of did our replica of it and it's not gonna win an award but it was pretty good for like a third grader and this sounds so sad to even say like out loud but like my parents don't have mementos from my childhood but even as a child i kept my own like my art projects my reports my like i have a box in my house that i started collecting as a little girl wow because nobody else would which is even never thought to do that right like it's interesting wow you were journaling that young as well yeah [ __ ] fascinating i i thought that too the other day when i was reading i was like oh okay there's something here always like i found lists like i would write lists like this is what i'm grateful for or like as a little kid or here are my goals my goals were like that i wanted so and so i was a boyfriend i literally i i should have taken a picture it was like i will own a house in beverly hills i will like it was precious but the point is i found this picture that i had made as third grader and i had it professionally framed and i hung it on the wall in my house because i do a lot of the i have artwork that i collect and then i have framed interestingly enough little kids in like preschool will create things with finger paints that look like the greatest impressionists are like the most amazing stuff and if you have it professionally framed people like oh my god who is this artist her name's noah but i had it framed and i put it on the wall and i swear god i walk out every day and i'm like wow someone framed my art and it's ridiculous because i framed it sure but there's something so powerful about like if you didn't have that and you spend so much real life an achiever a three on the enneagram which is what i am is created a very specific way the way that you got attention as a child was to achieve and so it taught you that that's how you should behave in life and there was something like so beautiful for me of like i see you and like i'm gonna acknowledge this thing you did even if nobody else did you're touching on something which i find very interesting i'm way out of my depth i do not know about this but i have strong intuitions which i will share and let the internet wait you have you have intuition uh and here it is so i i am i have a deep conviction that men and women the 50 that's hardwired is different now look we're both human and so the things we have in common are far more than the things that we don't so let me just be very clear about that but to me once you begin to understand what the mechanisms are about the way that a woman approaches the world you can leverage them to your advantage once you understand the way that the male brain approaches the world you can leverage them to your advantage to do things that create a better world a more beautiful world that your own life is more beautiful whatever but the way that you're talking about your art and somebody framed my art it's possible that there are guys that feel exactly that way but i will say probably like when you look at the overlap as you get to the tails it just probably isn't the way that a guy would respond i would not expect to hear that story from a guy but coming from a woman it feels completely normal to me and i am well aware of how much of society influences us and all that but still one of the most extraordinary examples of how women can leverage something in them that that willingness to fight for those that we care about how women then can leverage that in her own life whether it's like you reflecting back on your own self as a child and beginning to marry those two and fight for that little girl and to show that little girl how far you've come and maybe it's a gimmick but my gut is it would work so the example is there's this book called the gouleg archipelago it's written by alexander solzhenitsyn and he was a russian guy thrown in the gulag tortured and he was talking about how and millions of people were killed in the gulag [ __ ] bananas and in the book he talks about men and women being different in torture and he was like if you heard that someone was tortured to death he said odds are it was a woman because a guy would stop like eventually he's just like [ __ ] it like you're not gonna stop so eventually they would just make [ __ ] up [ __ ] like let me out of this and he said but women were so [ __ ] stubborn and they just wouldn't quit and i don't remember it well enough to know if he specifically said because women would [ __ ] protect somebody to the ends but it's like when you think of that that was my impression got it and thinking about my own wife legitimately even though like i'm probably faster to be aggressive once she's triggered good luck like but for real i remember once there she she so wouldn't back down on something that i was like you're starting to freak me out like how can you endure this much pain on this subject stop it doesn't [ __ ] make sense anymore just let it go it seems so irrational but then i'll see that same thing in another context where it's beneficial and i'm like yo [ __ ] you be the one because i know you will [ __ ] go to a point that is so long past like how much i care about it i will have stopped long before my wife would stop and when i hear stories like that and it's like look guys have their strengths and there are things you can [ __ ] rely on them for and i love that and i step into that space and it feels good to me to be relied on like when the alarm goes off in the middle of the night i'm the [ __ ] one that rushes into danger right i love that i take pride in that i would turn to other men and expect them to do the same say what you will but that feels right to me there should be in my mind we all want to belong to some sort of group and to have there be standards and this used to be a thing where you would take boys away from their mothers at a certain age and you'd [ __ ] take them out into the wilderness and you'd circumcise them with a [ __ ] sharp rock and no aesthetic or you'd make them jump off a thing and like they you know it's not a bungee cord it's a [ __ ] rope and they would just you know snap tight like four inches off the ground but i think that [ __ ] is rad and i know like we're living in a world where not the rope circumcision but i don't know i now now we can really [ __ ] derail but i it doesn't have to be ropes and circumcision but it's like a rite of passage 100 yeah rite of passage there's all kinds of studies about how important this is for kids and how they don't really exist anymore got to have yeah super important but anyway that was like one of the things that hearing about women where i was like the fact that you guys give birth they're they're it seems self-evident that there would be evolutionary ramifications to that of pain tolerance of determination of um attachment to infants i mean like there's going to be like a whole lot of knock-on effects to make sure that you guys will go through that [ __ ] right and leveraging that in the way that you have by hanging up your art like to me is that's why understanding what this the biological imperatives are become so useful because now you can put it to use in your life yeah but when we're like even i i'm getting disgusted with myself that i'm couching everything i'm making all these [ __ ] caveats because i just want to know what's true i don't have a dog in the fight in terms of what is actually true i just want people to be able to talk about it explore it like hey where the [ __ ] are these delineations what makes for the most well-rounded well-adjusted human being this is a very dramatic question but do you believe there can ever be absolute truth yes there is scientific truth for sure but it can't be universal truth for every single person of course you can no are you ready yes if you let co2 build up in your system to too high of a level you will die okay universally true yes yes okay but what i you were just sort of saying like i don't i just want to know what the truth is yeah but yes okay are you talking certain sex differences no i'm saying anything in life oh yeah like there are yeah of course there's no but this has become a freaky argument to me where some people are saying that there is literally no objective truth do you hear about the whole hashtag um shutdown stem yeah [ __ ] crazy so again we're now at the edge of my understanding and so i won't speak with any specifics other than to say that the scientific method itself came under attack for being racist that's crazy that's that's actually crazy and it holds people back now why would i say it's crazy i'm using that word very specifically i will say it is crazy because in my world view and i think this is universal people should have a goal that goal should be both exciting to them and honorable meaning that it uplifts humanity okay but everything should be an echo of that [ __ ] goal and the only way to achieve your goal is with a basically a version of the scientific method you know where you want to be you know where you are you identify the impediment that stands between you and your goal you have an informed hypothesis about how to overcome that impediment you run tests to see if they actually work to get you i mean you do this in business every day it's what i call the physics of progress it is the nature of progress itself you must do it to function in life so when you start saying that that act of like trial and error and that there are empirical results that you can look at that say yes we either are moving towards our goal or we are not to ever assail that there was a whole argument about um two plus two equals five and they gave a whole argument as to why that was true and i was just like what are we doing what are we doing yeah what is like what is the point of this i i guess i meant they want to believe people are blank slates that's the point but you if if people are truly blank slates then there can be no absolutes i'm just saying there are absolutes and we are not blank slates there are absolutes i guess more than my question is the pursuit of the absolute truth feels to me less important than a curiosity about almost certainly agree but you'd have to define you think i'm pursuing absolute truth no no i just was because you said like i want to know the truth but then to me that feels dangerous and sort of dogmatic because well because the truth today there i mean if we look at our history there were things that we believe to be capital t truth that we now are like that was [ __ ] crazy and the capital t truth that you believe today could be wildly different tomorrow so isn't it more powerful to pursue curiosity to pursue knowledge to understand to like have information and come at it from different angles as opposed to say this is the ultimate answer for ever and ever i i agree with you so violently that there's gonna be bloodshed a hundred percent you're assault deserving my thing is like you're you're always trying to find that thing that moves you closer to actually understanding the way that the world works so you can leverage it to create the things you want right so the easy way to say it which you've heard before i am certainly not making this up but strong convictions loosely help i think that's true yes acting in accordance with this works right hey tom this this is actually more true well [ __ ] right thank you for this information beyond grateful for that and when you're obsessed with that like the way that i always frame it is skills have utility knowledge has utility learning something is not about checking a box it's not about oh everybody agrees like i'm sure you've seen those tests where you can put people in a group everyone's an actor except the test subject yeah and you draw a bunch of lines or whatever and clearly one of them is longer than the others and everybody goes yeah they're all the same length yeah and the person's like something like 70 of the time people be like yeah they're all the same length even though they [ __ ] know right but they're not but they don't want to look like a fool they want to conform to what everybody else is saying and i'm just saying the ability in that moment to be in the 30 is powerful beyond all recognition yeah and the person that's like to your point um oh god who was it that was like put in a tower or threatened with death or did they actually kill him for saying that the um earth rotates around the sun right and not the other way around copernicus galileo maybe sure that sounds right um but yeah that's i love that idea like the power of being in the 30 percent who has the courage to say that the line is longer than the other so desperate to be tested i want to end up on a like hidden camera show do you know how many times i play that game maybe we'll get that for you for your birthday have you ever seen the movie the game yes do you know how much i [ __ ] hate that movie what i that movie makes me angry in a way that borders on your rations why why the man jumps off a [ __ ] building the whole point other side of the building and he sees that his brother's alive i was offended to my court now you had an emotion i did and there's a rule in film school if you love something too much you should watch it again if you hate something too much you should watch it have you watched it again i have not okay i'm comforted by my hatred um this has nothing to do with basically anything but i just want to ask you this question have you read um robert greene yes most if not all of his right um so i worked i've worked my way through quite a bit of him in quarantine and i have not book clubbed this with anyone let's talk about it 48 laws of power thoughts very powerful they scare me i'm not machiavellian at all i love to connect with people i think that he is very right for a certain type of person i think everybody can learn something from a lot of the rules and you will find that a lot of the rules apply to like different people in your life the more machiavellian they are the more that more rules will apply to them um i thought it was a great book apparently drake is making it into a show on quibby did he i'm not surprised hip-hop [ __ ] took to robert greene and like entertainment industry and you know because it's a lot it's it's wild though it's not even a book that i could comfortably recommend to people because i read it i felt like i was reading it more as like an archaeologist or something of like oh okay that's because i read that i read seduction did you read seduction no that's his that one's why i think that i want to see that oh i don't know what order it came in but it's fascinating because it sort of his idea was that seduction was and certainly men can be seducers but the seduction was the weapon that was the only weapon that women had in the earliest forms of civilization so you look at someone like cleopatra who from all accounts was not beautiful was you know sort of not the oldest child was not even the second oldest i think in her family in no way should she have become queen and not only did she become queen but she was with not one but two of the most powerful men in her time period and ruled for 20 years or something like her story's crazy how how did she do that so it looks at a bunch of it looks like she do that seduction tell me more well so he divides the book into the different kinds of seducers so like the ingenue the um i'm not going to remember any of them but if you read through them it is really interesting because you're like oh i know that person i know this person this is how you do this thing it was super fascinating in the first half and then the second half was like literally called like how to take advantage of your victims and it was basically like you identify right like you identify which kind of seducer you would be and then you go like you know 3b and you go over here and you're like okay this is how you use your particular type of seduction to like gain power with other people and that's when i had to close the book so i was like this is this take a dark turn it took a dark turn and i read mastery too the 48 laws of power had a dark edge to it which is why i say is machiavellian i i don't resonate with that very much but there is powerful fascinating mastery was amazing human nature was amazing i've never read that one [ __ ] fantastic it's so uh there's a concept this is one of the books that might be important enough for me to one day sit down and write called the physics of being human okay and like so your brain uses heuristics and it's pre-programmed with [ __ ] to make sure that you can you know function and there's just basic drivers that it gives you hunger sex thirst right so there's but there's more and they get more interesting and more complicated the more that you explore it and he goes into a lot of that stuff like what are the drivers what are the things that are universal oh wait i think i did consider this on amazon and then i like didn't end up i really enjoyed it it was it was very interesting the one recommendation i'll make to anybody is go watch the book tour for any of these books you'll get a sense of the flavor it's more interested than you know they're dense though robert green is like a fountain and i love history is one of my favorite subjects so i think that's why i still ended up devouring them because i love it's not just him sort of saying these are my theories it's like using actual historical these this is the context this is where it's showing up i want to talk more about seduction right and as i wish i could remember forget the book seduction okay so i if i were a beautiful woman okay i would not remain blind to my ability to leverage the male gaze as they call it i'm not saying that i would be gross about it but that to me is that's power i don't know but i feel like yeah i mean that's what this book is all about i feel like this is um i think the example he uses of this is like marilyn rowe because in every single archetype he has of a seducer he has an actual historical figure that represents it you might like it um if it ends with go to column b4 no figure out how to take advantage of your video weird turn but um i don't know i feel like that's like something a guy would say or i guess it depends on i don't feel like it's something a guy would say that you would if you were a beautiful woman that you would be aware of like using of of your beauty with with men yeah because i think it depends it's so there's so many factors right because that's definitely not it feels very uncomfortable for me to be going into a world where i'm not married interesting like if you want a trip ah oh my god do you understand that i've only been on a date with one man and i married him whoa i'm 37. i was with dave for 18 years i didn't even think about that it feels like like i was thinking this thing you know people always talk about like what terrify like do the thing that you're afraid of and i'm like that is such a like it feels i don't even know because i don't even feel like i was ever really an adult as a single woman i met him when i was 19. like just turned 19 not like a season 19. and so it makes me uncomfortable to even like i um oh this is so dumb like we were um i've taken up golf yes okay um me and sami and beans decided we were gonna that's what because that's something you can do in quarantine where you like you go to a driving range you're not near anybody you could like have a beer and you hit balls and um we're at the driving range and this like college age kid was our server and he's a hundred percent flirting for a tip like there's no i mean he's using like lines right like there's no way that you ladies are that much older than i am right and even though i know what he's doing i'm so uncomfortable i'm like in a bag like i'm just like putting myself in a cocoon because i'm so i don't even know that makes me so so i definitely would not be the person who would try and use my beauty too interesting yeah and i don't i can't even interestingly enough um some of the gossip coming out of this experience was that i have already found a new person which can we talk about this for one second i am fascinated by the amount of people including that college age server and i was on a production call with a really big network the other day and it was zoom right and there's 10 people on this call and you do these like meet and greets what do you want to do what do you want to make blah blah blah and they have some idea of my life and what's going on and you know we're sort of talking about some talking about something like the divorce comes up whatever and this female executive of this very big company says don't worry you are going to find love again you will be married again in no time and i'm on a business call and like you're trying to like impress these people and i don't want to like whatever and i was like yeah i was like okay like i didn't the first time right and then when she said something again later in the conversation like you are you just any minute like i know it seems like you're not you're gonna fight and i was like i'm sorry i'm sorry i just have to stop why would you think why and i know why it's because that's someone else's reality right but why would you think that that is on my agenda at all that like the the second like that i have made the hardest decision of my entire life not only like that i'm in this and i'm it's pain and blah but that you think that the second that i'm ready i gotta go get married again [Music] why why would i ever do that again it it is a it is a thing i'm like i'm gonna just take note of how many people are like don't worry he's out there like as if that's that's my ultimate goal now the one thing i'll say is the words you just said or why would i ever do that again right i have to imagine there is a point at which enough time has elapsed that it at least isn't something that is an absurd idea oh i think like i i get why you wouldn't want to do it anytime soon right i cannot imagine getting married again really yeah wow and i don't know if that's like hurt talking um but why would you let's talk about it because i was very prepared to never get married okay and when i met lisa i did not intend to get married and if it's interesting if she and i broke up i don't think i'd ever get married again either right which is a weird thing to say from a position of being married but um that's because i'm entirely fine by myself right and it is only because of that particular human that i was like actually this is [ __ ] amazing right like there's this big thing going on right now i kept seeing it everywhere that charlize theron did an interview and it was like shocking because charlize said that she hadn't been on a date in five years and i saw more of her quote and what she actually said was like my life is awesome and if you are trying to take up my time or ask like you've got to bring something even more awesome to the table or why you know she's like a mom she's like career like business she's like why would i and i what i thought was so funny that what the internet latched onto was not like strong independent single mom killing it living her best life it was like charlize theron has not been on a date like she's fine she's everyone calmed down she's fine interesting it's really interesting i've never had to spend too much time thinking about it because i i only fear two things something happening to my wife and brain damage those those are the some funny i am i have a lot of fear of something happening in my brain too it's [ __ ] crazy i like the idea so i'm gonna take horseback riding lessons i know tom but i got the best helmet i got the best helmet on the market like the the maserati of horse helmets there's a thing i think it's called a gator back but you're going to want to look into it's what stunt men wear when they have to do falls onto their back okay check it out i just i mean i'm not like jumping horses i'm just like riding around in a corral but this is a little like if somebody said that i'm gonna take up cheerleading this is the number one sport that that leads to injuries that end in paralysis is cheerleading right number two i think is horseback riding like okay it is a it is a childhood dream okay and it's one of those things that i always wanted to do and never had the time and in quarantine i was like girl you have the time girl ride your horse girl ride that horse and it's one of those things where i'm like here's here's the here's the truth i'm afraid of a lot of like physical things like skiing you know this because we like stay in the hotel and drink champagne or i drink champagne you probably have green juice or something um with a group of people in a group setting that sounded weird for a minute um so like i'm afraid of things that go fast i'm afraid of things that are on like blades i'm afraid and i'm tired of being afraid of dumb stuff so i'm like take it all back right i'm like i want to ride a horse and it scares the absolute [ __ ] out of me and so i'm going to buy a really good helmet which i already did i got the special pants and i'm going to see if i can master this i actually get that but i do have a same as you i have a lot of fear of something happened in my brain because i almost said the lamest thing what's here no it feels too weird i uh what i i'm just i love being alone with my thoughts i love like i was reading something the other day where someone was saying um there's an author named colleen hoover who writes fiction she's an incredible author and she was talking about talking to her mom and her mom's really active and has been her whole life and like fit and works out whatever and colleen was saying that she always feels guilty or maybe feels shame because her mom's always so active and she is a writer just sits and like writes all day and she doesn't do any of the stuff she feels like lazy in comparison to her mom and she was telling her mom this and her mom was like oh i never stop moving because i can't be alone with my thoughts and colleen was like wow that's crazy because i love my thoughts and i thought that's me for sure is i love love love love just thinking just like losing time i love being on an airplane i love journaling i love just like i said it's like puzzles in my mind i'm trying to figure out what's gonna say between being a fiction author and enjoying the puzzle part right of being an entrepreneur right that's where the thinking because you're not you're not you're not falling into the obsessive rumination where you get like a dark thought and you're just looping yeah you're problem solving you're trying to think your way through it or you're spending time with the character or like that stuff is is really really fun i started intermittent fasting right and i finally was like oh this is i get it tom because i've never had clarity of thought the way that i have doing intermittent fasting and it was also the first time that i could see the correlation i know this is so obvious but like it just the correlation between eating and brain fog yeah and like how can it depends on what you what you're eating is what i mean is like having to pay attention to the diet and um what are you taking in and you ate that thing and how does it make you feel because when i was riding years ago it was such a stressful process for me that i would like garbage like oh i'm gonna go get a burrito for lunch because i'm trying to give myself some kind of carrot to dangle to get through this word count and then i'm gonna eat that burrito and not understand that that's why now i can't even put a sentence down my i have like crazy brain frog and i'm super tired and then i'm gonna go jack myself up on caffeine so that i can tweak back out to go back to it was like wild and amy started doing intermittent fasting and she was like i really think you'll like this you should try and i did it and i literally one of the first thoughts i had was like oh i get it tom dude intermittent fasting is so legit it's so powerful i intermittent fast five to seven days a week depending on the week um i feel like it's important to say that i i'm gonna speak for you but i feel like i can speak i feel like i can say this neither one of us are doing intermittent fasting to lose weight i def it's part of weight management for me for sure um but i do it for longevity for like the living forever thing yes which as we said this is different right i do want to stay high functioning as long as humanly possible so it is twofold for me part of it is weight maintenance if i were going to go into a hardcore weight loss phase though i would still intermittent fast well the only reason i say it is because i feel like a lot of times women hear about intermittent fasting and they get turned on by it because if you're eating in a smaller window then you're taking in less calories and it's a weight loss thing and that feels like a dangerous way to approach this this is where i have no sensitivity my wife is so good at being like you can't [ __ ] say that like so my wife struggled with um this as a kid had an eating disorder and so she's like you've got to be [ __ ] careful it is so different i'm so blind to that i have no internal um problem like so for instance when i was really dieting hardcore and i was i turned to my wife with glee and i was like i would make an amazing anorexic and she was like hit the [ __ ] pause button she was like people get into really [ __ ] dangerous places and i said okay well here's the interesting thing about this the reason i would never actually become an anorexic is i understand the mechanisms of how people go into a dark place so i said i'll tell you what you are entirely in control of how lean i get i said if i ever start looking unhealthy you say one word and i will stop on a dime because once i get focused on a goal i go [ __ ] hard so this appeared in my life where i had six-pack habs i really went hard for this [ __ ] what did we have to do to have sorry did i just startle you no no what'd you have to do to have six-pack abs um well for real what what did i do or what does one need to do because they are unfortunately very different you're so weird what answer in whatever way you would like to because the true answer of what i did i don't advise to anybody i did what what would be called rabbit starvation so 80 maybe 85 percent of my calories were from protein okay zero carbohydrates i mean i almost didn't even have vegetables essentially eating boiled chicken and a little bit of steamed broccoli only thing i would put on it is salt that was i would eat two meals that was it and it worked i got lean as [ __ ] how many calories were you taking in do you know were you eating like a lot of chicken at least no no no i was probably taking in 1500 calories a day holy crap it was miserable i was doing strength training and cardio i was doing like one to two hours of cardio you just wanted to see if you could get it i did it for two years i think a lot of us needed to hear that that's what it takes because we want no it doesn't take that that's why i said there are two ways to answer this question okay tom was a [ __ ] okay did it the dumbest possible way okay don't [ __ ] do it like this okay but i was a hardcore [ __ ] i went i stuck with it i did it i got lean as [ __ ] it was awesome right i looked so good it was so cool oh my god you would stand in the mirror in your underwear you'd like take pictures of your abs it was awesome okay not gonna lie okay and then it got to the point my wife pulled me aside and said you no longer have a personality and you need to start eating again and you're now spilling into you don't look lean you look skinny okay and so i was like cool i said you say one word and and i'll normalize out and so then that i stopped being that hardcore i still look great but filled out a bit more actually thought it looked better and then i started learning about how to do it the right way the right way to do it would be intermittent fasting you're going to be doing a high fat diet moderate protein and only the only carbohydrates you're going to take in just to wrap that like avocado perfect couldn't imagine a better fat source than avocado but you're also going to have some red meat if you're so like all these like like the rock you know i'm going to give him as my example like amazing he's eating he's not eating avocado you think that's what he's eating no but can we think he's doing steroids he is you can't get that big you can't get that big how about this he has done steroids extensively at some point in his life for sure and he's amazing come on the show i take it all back rock i'll never bring it up again but he he is incredible i'm not taking anything away taking steroids does not make you yeah it's not like someone else [ __ ] [ __ ] right and being supplemented with an exogenous form of testosterone or something along those lines allows you to get that big and is it that it gives you more energy to work out you repair the muscle faster oh interesting okay so that is and i'm sure it has a whole host of other benefits from allowing you to contract your muscles so i'm making that up but i'm sure there are things like that um they terrify me exogenous substances terrify me so i've never [ __ ] them so i've never researched much about it but there's just a certain size that once somebody's north of that size right um almost and in fairness i don't know that he takes him of course of course guessing based on just how big he is right um but when you work like michael phelps could eat whatever he could eat like a trash compactor you're out putting that much the rock obviously works out extraordinarily hard right so i had this epiphany about him the other day that was like mind blowing to me and you're going to be the seventh person i've told and nobody's impressed by it but please be do you follow him on social the rock yeah uh i almost don't ever go on social okay good it's garbage you shouldn't do you know about his cheat meals yes okay so on sundays he does these massive cheat meals whatever it's this whole thing i've seen photos right and for the longest time i have tried i'm like why sunday and if you know the answer already don't answer because you're going to be like the kid that tells you right right i'm like why not friday night why not saturday like sunday feels so not fun sunday's like my least favorite day whatever and then i had this epiphany i'm like oh my gosh the rock is a freaking genius because monday is a natural reset cue truth so if i had a treat meal on friday night there is a solid chance that on saturday i'm going to be like maybe i need some chips because it's the weekend like i signaled something to my brain but if you had that on sunday night monday morning even if you're like yeah a slob most people on monday morning try again let's see if i can convince you to do it on saturday okay tell me saturday so saturday has a natural party vibe no matter what you've just been trained so much that's why having a monday off does not feel as good as having a friday off friday feels like wow this is like an extra party day friday's already got a good vibe the whole rest of the world's in sync with that on a saturday to be like yo my saturday is my big cheat day and this is what my wife and i used to do we would starve ourselves during the week legitimately not good again i'm not encouraging people to do this it's just disclaimers we would starve ourselves during the week and then we would go so ham on a saturday it was comical one time my wife woke up and i was gone and she called me she's like where are you and i'm like i'm waiting outside the cheesecake factory for it to open so that i can get cheesecake because the second she's awake we can start eating so i wanted to make sure i was there the second they opened so i could get it and get home as quickly to when she woke up assuming oh my lord and we would just go [ __ ] crazy and because it naturally feels like a party day you're eating and then quite frankly on sunday it's like you're so full from the previous day you probably feel a little sick well my thing is i typically do my long runs on sundays okay and so i can't do a saturday night craziness because then i'm sabotaging sunday sunday right but if you run 10 miles sunday then you're like so hungry and it's the best there is something to be said for that because your muscles will be screaming for the glycogen right i just find sunday it's hard for me to stay in that party vibe like i work usually a lot on sunday do you yeah sunday's like for sure my day of rest saturday is my day of rest i still work but just not a lot so i have three hours so one i wake up very early my wife likes to draw so on a saturday let's say i wake up at 4 a.m and then my wife is going to draw until 10 or 11 a.m so during that time i do whatever the hell i want so that's when i write or you know i'm working on a comic book or something like that um so that's i'm keeping trump to you i'm sorry no no please i was just gonna say it's insane how talented she is yeah my wife is ridiculous it's like it's not like a oh it's cute like you drew a thing right because we're you know walking through the house and she has stuff and i'm just like i see it on social but i like it's insane insane like you just saying like oh she's gonna draw for five hours and then you see what she's creating you're like yeah that probably takes a while oh god it takes her a very long time she'll put 20 hours into a single drawing wow and they are incredible what does she do with them they're often gifts for people i need to ask for one my birthday's in january [Laughter] uh yeah they're often gifts for people we put them up around the house and then she didn't draw for a very long time yeah so we don't have some huge back catalog i mean she must have taken close to 15 years off wow yeah that's wild i interrupted you i'm sorry no please we were talking about on saturdays she's drawing you can do whatever you want during those hours yeah so i just i end up working um a lot during that time so that my my day of rest even though i work a little bit is saturdays when you're working break it down for me percentage-wise what is like creating is how much time during the week or during the weekend it's very different ooh tell me off so i monday through friday if i'm awake i'm either working or working out that's a rule now the technical truth is actually what yeah so it's technical i'll give you the real answer because it's so much easier to say the other way sunday night through friday night i'm either working or working out okay so around 7 or 8 p.m on friday i stopped working and now it's the weekend and so then it's basically any work that i do on the weekends unless i have a deadline or something big coming up it's i'll still work but it's only things i want to do okay so um it might be the new comic that i'm doing i'm not under any deadlines i'm in the world building phase i'll do that on the weekends if i want to watch a movie or something which for me is still like in the realm of things i need to get good at and have a core competency for our business but i call it hard work no but it's like in that vein so i might watch a movie or watch anime or something a long story about why that's meaningful but um the work during the week is 60 overhead 40 [ __ ] that i love um i would love to flip it or even go less but that's the reality on the weekends it's only stuff that i love but is it creating are you in mostly creation phases mostly okay on on the weekends no no during the week so during the kids figuring it's copywriting it's um figuring out what's broken where going through spreadsheets looking at data finances um dealing with legal [ __ ] contracts my nightmare yeah i mean it's my nightmare unfortunately i've tried desperately to make my wife the ceo and she just refuses right even after getting her to read rocket fuel which thing right yes such a good one uh and it is her personality yeah that isn't what she wants to do right so right it's always curious like how other people break it down what's your breakdown like um i am i work monday through friday and i'm pretty hardcore about that um because i have kids and and you're trying to keep the weekend free yeah um there was a time you know i talked about this in the first book there was a time where i i really was a workaholic and i wasn't present and if i had died back then i would have said that i was not proud of myself i might have been successful in terms of finances but i wasn't successful as a mom or as a human i just was like i was really unhealthy and i was chasing the wrong things what does a healthy human look like to me it looks like um i this sounds again like a hippie but it feels like i know who i am um i'm not i'm like living my life in a way that feels like this is the life that i want to live um it's because unhealthy for me is obsessing over chasing the wrong things um ignoring your kids so that you can work you know all day long on some stupid crap that doesn't actually matter um yeah i just don't think i i was doing it very well back then and the honest truth was it's really it comes naturally to me being an entrepreneur and it didn't come naturally to me being a mom and so i gravitated to the one like addiction right the whole thing with addiction is that it can numb out a pain that you feel and being an entrepreneur absolutely numbed out the fact that i didn't i felt like i was failing over here how did you write that ship i had to understand what was going on um well honestly i got sick like my body it's very i am hyper aware of this that i will not experience stress and then my body i will not experience stress and my body will just shut down so i got bell's palsy i've had it three times yeah yeah i've had bell's palsy three times gotten i lived with vertigo for a year yeah what yeah that was that year with vertigo it was like the final straw i saw every doctor had brain scans thought i had a tumor um finally went to see a what do you call like not a natural path but like a holistic holistic doctor um and i talked to him and he what it's the only way to fly right and he just sort of like tell me all the things and i saw him other things and he was like oh this is not physical at all this is all emotional stuff and i did not know i was i was before any like any personal development any growth anything overwhelmed from work or is it the stress of like i i don't feel as bonded to my kids as i feel like i should yeah all of it i love how much you've talked about that that's so [ __ ] powerful all of it of like i am i feel like i'm failing what what i say a lot now i always say this to moms because i don't think anyone says this is i did not like being a mom at all i loved my kids i didn't like being a mom and i thought i was a monster do you like being a mom now love it what'd you do how did you like overcome my kids got older that's it that's just that's a face that's why i say it is i don't love babies and i love like your babies and toddlers are great they're cute i have a toddler but it's not a phase in parenting that i like i'm not that mom i know moms who are that mom it's not me my two older boys are 13 and 12. it is the the greatest joy in my life they're so funny they're so interesting they're like little weirdos they're like coming into their own they have funny stuff like i just i'm obsessed i'm obsessed with my kids and what i didn't know was that it was an age thing so i'm a better mom for kids who are a little bit older once you turn like four which is my daughter's three yes i know send a letter um that's when it really to me starts to feel like okay that's an age that i click with um but because i never heard another mom say that i thought you're the worst you're so awful like you don't like this which means you don't like your kids and it was this whole shame spiral and really it was just i needed time that's all it was um but all the stuff that came from you know getting sick and whatever remember i told you i wouldn't have gone to therapy to be a whole healthy happy person i went to therapy because the vertigo was slowing me down and i got a right i gotta move and this is exactly why i dealt with my anxiety right this is now [ __ ] up my business right i got stuff to do i don't have time for this so took a lot of it took a lot of work but i am hyper aware that i'm i am go to such high capacity of like get it done like i was a an event planner you're and i was planning weddings that were 750 000 million weddings like los angeles yeah crazy like get some get an egyptian bride over here let's spend all the money it's a multi-day affair like wild money wild money if the cake falls over the kitchen catches on fire the bride's dress splits like that there is no option but to handle that there is no choice that was some of the hardest years of my life and such incredible grace under pressure because there isn't an alternative and i see that manifest in my life now there's plenty of alternatives in my life now but i don't see them i there's always a way we will figure this out like i've had every freaking disaster you can imagine happen on a wedding day and always had happy clients because i would always tell myself like you have until the end of this reception to make this right no matter what happen you have the end until the end of this reception to make this right you can bring this back around like figure it out find a way so what's the craziest thing you had to deal with one time um in the front of the room they start giving the toasts in the back of the room bride's grandfather falls over and within seconds like someone else at the table who was a doctor is doing heart compressions oh [ __ ] grandpa's flat lining in the back of the room now here's what's wild my job as a wedding planner is to protect the bride and groom from catastrophe it's like i have to the end of the reception to get him back to life i was like no one will know this is happening wow so in the front of the now he's in the back and everyone's turned looking at the speeches and so i had a rule in my company never let them see you run and i still believe in this so i tell everybody on our team if you are at an event and you see someone on staff running even if they're running in excitement you're going to assume something bad's happening so my rule was never let them see you run and grandpa falls over someone's doing chest compressions mouth to mouth and the only people who have noticed are the people at his table and i'm like uh keep whatever and so i tell my sister i'm like go to the front tell them to call 9-1-1 like and she takes off at a dead sprint and i'm watching she takes off and it didn't spread and then immediately i see her like she hits a force field and she starts walking and the joke was later i was like danielle if someone's having someone's dying you're allowed to arrive so um i said tell them to call 9-1-1 and ask if they'll come with their sirens off and light's off because you can do that right and they came up got him on a i s hand to the heavens got him on a girl like we got him out of the room like lift grandpa take him out got him out of the room got him on a gurney off to cedar sinai nobody knew whoa and he lived mazel tov [Laughter] there's always a way and and later you know because they had sort of like sensed i went up to the bride and after he was in the thing and she said is everything okay and i said grandpa's okay but he did um we had a we had a little moment and he would take him to the hospital and he's great and aunt helen's there with him now and it's all gonna be okay and what he wants most is for you to go do this you know let's go let's let's go the first dance let's go do it she had a great reception wow because i i never had it happen but i heard stories like there was a i hate to say this i'm like what if this person just randomly is watching but there was um i had a friend who was a wedding planner who during the first dance uh during the horror at a wedding um the groom's mother dead during the first dance oh god and you're done your anniversary is ruined the wedding's done like everything everything everything and so unless it was something like that i thought that my job was everything that was possible to to keep it to make it okay for them and i have my lord have i had some experiences but you just keep like there's a way you get them a glass of champagne you're like we're fixing this it's fine in fact if you're good at your job they never even know that the kitchen caught on fire there's always a way until the reception's over perfect place to end right rachel tom this was so fun yeah my longest interview ever though and i could have kept going oh my gosh i kept thinking of like i had a list of things i wanted to talk to you about but i'll i'll just send you guys more struggles later right no we don't have to do it on camera should not be a lot of fun i'd love to have you back from seriously rad i appreciate you having me on 100 thanks for being here guys gotta read the new book it is absolutely fantastic i didn't see that coming it is amazing you guys will love it it is another smash it is all her the personality that has made her the phenom that she is but looking at trauma and how you get past it and there's always a way till the end of the reception right if you haven't already be sure to subscribe and until next time my friends be legendary take care what's up impactivist as you guys know my mission in life is to provide the no bs instruction manual for success and to that end we've launched our platform impact theory university our goal with itu is to provide you with curriculum that will help you take your career business or personal development to the next level so regardless of your end goal itu is designed to provide you with the universal principles and tactics of success that will propel you forward so whether you want to build a fortune 500 company advance quickly up the ranks at your company become a more effective parent or partner or simply get unstuck there are core principles that apply and that's where impact theory university comes in but to be clear itu is not another podcast or conversation with an influencer you can get all of that for free right here on our youtube page instead it is structured education delivered in a compelling 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all of the discounts together the cost drops to roughly 80 cents a day i think itu truly is the best content we have ever made but if you sign up and don't agree that it's worth say 10 times what you paid just take advantage of our no questions asked 30 day money back guarantee i don't want any of us to get paid unless we're delivering disproportionate value so trust of the refund process will be absolutely hassle free and if this sounds like something that would help you move forward in your life but you can't afford it we do have a scholarship program that you can apply for that provides free access to those in need right everybody if you want to take advantage of this and make it dramatically important in your life sign up today the link is in the description or you can go directly to university.impacttheory.com i look forward to seeing you on the inside my friends and until then be legendary take care [Music] i didn't want to be in that place anymore and i think at the time i had convinced myself that if i could just get to a different city i think a lot of us do this we think if i could just move to new york or if i could just get to la or if i could if only i could lose you know 50 pounds or if only i could have this or you you think that your happiness is dependent on something outside yourself