$50M Poker Pro Shares His Best Advice For Founders

Transcript from https://podmenti.com/t/1b30c178786f5075

You know I went broke many, many times, but the downswings are probably the most important
part and typically with like a breakdown, things are going badly.
That's an opportunity for a breakthrough.
I feel like I can rule the world, I know I could be what I want to
I'm putting my doll in it like a day song on the road, let's travel there. Today we got Daniel Negranu. He is here. I've been watching this guy on TV.
Feels like half my life.
He is a poker player who I think you've had over fifty.
in tournament caches, so turn tournament winnings.
You're known for your ability to read people, for your uh longevity in the game, for your personality and how you built the brand around the game of poker.
Think you've won. Something like
Is it five, six world series poker bracelets?
Well, we're at seven, but it should be a lot more, if I'm being honest. Listen, people are gonna be like why are you guys having a poker player?
business podcast and the reason is a I'm selfish I played poker my whole life and I wanted to talk to this guy and that's what the podcast is
But B
There are so many parallels between poker and business. Uh whether it's
Yeah, thinking about it in terms of investing, around bankroll management, around pot odds and things like this, all these frameworks that I've used for poker in business.
But also
The s the people side. The human side. The reading people side. And you were one of the best at that.
So uh thanks for coming on, dude.
Absolutely. You're absolutely right with your description too, because there's just so many things about poker. Poker, you know, you have to register as a small business anyway, right? You're just self employed.
And you know, y you know, getting out of bed to go and work is up to you, but uh you still have to
You know?
Make smart decisions, invest, and look for plus E V situations.
So
Sam, I don't know if you uh if you follow poker like
Back in the day, the the sort of the famous players. Yeah, and I watched it on TV with Phil Ivey and Daniel. I've seen Daniel so many times. And they look like uh a lot of his like Doyle Brunson, they look like cowboys, right? And they had these per big personalities.
And it was like superheroes who would come to a table and one guy was just like the stone cold, you can't read him. Another guy was the talker. Another guy he just was, you know, had no fear gene in his body. He could just risk it all.
And that that was the sort of persona of like these charismatic like personality perk per players.
And then if you fast forward now it's like
Hoodie on.
Sunglasses on, scrawny kid who's doing math and basically like
Is is is uh i in many ways like it's a it's a numbers game and versus like the way that poker f used to have this sort of gunslinger mentality. Daniel, is that accurate how I described it?
Pretty much. I mean, you know, the difference between and I think this is true with chess and other games too. The difference between like like Bobby Fisher was asked you know, he's like Well, who's the greatest chess player of all time?
Right, and he's like, it's not fair. You can't make this like the players in nineteen oh five, right? Brilliant people, they didn't have access to the tools that they have now. So with both Oh, are these kids more back in my day, people had to figure it out on their own.
Doyle Brunson, before he had computers, he would run simulations by literally getting a deck of cards, a piece of paper, and a pencil.
He would take an ace and a king against a pair of fours, run out the board and say, okay, ace king one. And he would do it like hundred thousand times, right? Now, obviously the click of a button, you know, you have this data available to you. So
It was a different type of skill set, and you're right.
Um a lot of the more modern players.
Are much more deliberate.
They take a lot more time because they're actually doing, for the most part, they're doing calculations we didn't used to do. It used to be like this. I'd look at Sam and I'm like, yeah.
Sam's full of it. He didn't have it.
I call.
Right? That's the equation.
However now people are doing what's called
This might be a little bit
above your uh audience's uh
But
Counting combinations. I'm just saying because it's very even for most poker players, they don't understand like combinatrics, okay?
So for example
You think your opponent has ace king. How many ace kings are possible?
Right. That's a difficult question for somebody who doesn't play poker, right? With his four aces.
And there's four kings, right?
So that's sixteen.
Okay.
So
what you're doing in your head or what these people are doing is they're counting
Not just Ace King is one, but sixteen.
And then using other effects to decide like
You know, the pot odds, what they have. It it like I said, it's kinda complex and I probably shouldn't go down that's
It's sort of like why like I like this idea of like Babe Ruth who shows up hung over and like a smoking a cigar right before he goes on to like hit and then now it's just like all jack dudes who just hit home runs and like how like who are technically perfect, but I'm like
I want the guy who ate steak and eggs in the morning and smokes a cig while he's like he's practicing. The more updated version of that is absolutely John Daly.
Right. Tiger Woods was asked one time, like, Why do you practice so much?
Right? Like why are you up at four A M? He's like if I was as talented as John Daly, I wouldn't have to.
'Cause like Joe you know, really,'cause Tiger Woods is getting up at five AM.
Right.
four AM to go golf and he sees John Daly at the bar.
Drinking, smoking, whatever, and they tee off it like nine.
Right. And if you know John Daly goes out there and shoots sixty three, you know. I I agree with you, Sam. It's kinda romantic.
Frankly.
Yeah. Just that old swash swash buckler who just shows up and
And can still uh you know Was was there a moment like that that hooked you? Cause you know, I I I think the first poker boom that I was a part of was the the Chris Moneymaker thing. And I remember the final table with him and
Sammy Farha and Farha's try you know, this kind of experienced player, moneymaker was this amateur
Cool.
kind of like won a won a mini tournament that got him a ticket to the thing. It was like Willy Wonka. He got a golden ticket and then he got in and got all the way there.
And I just vividly remember that was great T V. Was there a great T V moment or like a poker final table moment that
For you, you were like, This is awesome. I want to be a part of this.
Well yeah, if I'll answer your question, but first, you know, the moment you talk about that's the sort of a watershed moment in poker, right?
'Cause it was the first time where some amateur guy
named Chris Moneymaker, like you can't make this up. You know, he put forty dollars in on an online site.
Turned it into$10,000 seat, sits there, and now he's against the grizzled vet, Sammy Vet, you know, far out with the cigarette and the suit and the whole old school vibe.
you know, and he ends up winning. So that uh for me
My moment was a little further back. I don't know if you're familiar with the movie Rounders.
Yeah, of course. Love Rounders. Rounders, great movie. So obviously in that movie, Matt Damon is watching a scene between
Johnny Chan, the master, and Eric Seidel, you know? I go I used to watch those tapes as a teenager and I remember Phil Helmuz, actually, who's a buddy of mine who I like to needle.
Um
I remember watching him as a young, you know, in his twenties. You know, he he Johnny Channel won two years in a row and then he was heads up with Phil Helmet, and Phil Helmet won this young kid. So is that so was a little bit inspirational for me. I'm sixteen. I'm like, I'm gonna be the next fat, you know? Right. So that was a big moment for me.
I believe that was nineteen eighty nine. Did you by the way, Sean, let me uh let me ask a question really quick. Have you ever heard Daniel tell the story about Scottie Wynn?
That's the one I was thinking of.
Yeah, I was actually there for that. That was nineteen ninety eight.
When I'd won my first bracelet and I was just coming up on the scene, I was twenty three years old, I believe.
And you know, I was there for the final table, and Scotty Wynn was that guy. You know, he's having a micelobe. That's what he drank, he's smoking a cigarette, you know.
He's in the hand, he looks at the guy.
Beautiful mullet.
Beautiful mullet. He's got the black and white, the chains, everything.
Yeah, and then he just gives them the
You know, baby.
You call gonna be all over, baby. That's right. And then he drinks his beer.
And it was amazing psychological warfare. I can dig into what happened there.
So he's up against the guy who's not a professional, right?
Highly stressful moment.
Okay. You're playing for days, fourteen hours a day, five days in a row in a smoke filled room, right? And this guy Scotty, he's fighting you, he's a pro. And Scotty gives you the out. He says
If you puts this little idea in his head, if you call baby
It's gonna be all over. No more pain, no more suffering. You get to go.
Right. So I really believe in
Kevin McBride ended up saying the comment
What he said, we call that
you know, speech play, if you will.
Uh
That did it.
That was what got him to call and Scotty One, you know, Scotty Wynn was the world champion.
That's exactly Sean, what
Kyner McGregor did to uh Jose Aldo. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Yeah, there's a sort of mind game to this whole thing. And you're you're famous for
Reading people.
And
I'm curious, you know, there's probably some natural element to it, but it's a practice skill. You've done it a bunch.
Um
And and entrepreneurship in business, there there's a big element of reading people. You're doing a deal with somebody, you're selling.
Um, it's really important to understand what's going on in the head of the other person and understand where they're coming from. And so I'm curious, like
If you were gonna give us
Like a mini master class on reading people. What what comes to mind? What are the what are the big f big factors?
Okay, we're gonna start from when you're born and you're a little baby in your mother's arms, right?
You a little baby.
Can look at their mother and get a sense when Mama is happy.
Or sad. How do they do that?
Right. That's a natural uh human instinct and ability. And we all have that. We all born with that. What happens is as we get older, we trust it less and less.
Right. Have you ever met someone within three seconds there's something I don't like this guy.
You have no reason. There's n nothing this person did, but something, there was a clue something about it just felt off, right?
When you're a poker player and you're and you're you know trying to read people, you trust your instincts in those spots. I used to, no joke, I did this as a teenager when I started becoming professional. I would go to the mall.
Okay. I would sit on a bench.
I'd preepily I'd wear sunglasses so be
Didn't think I was a weirdo. And I'd watch people walk by.
And I get a sense of who is this person. Were they picked on in high school? Are they confident? Are they, you know
They're are they you know, insecure, are they depressed, are they happy?
You know, was this guy a football player? And I'd make up these stories in my head to try to get an idea.
So when I sit at a poker table, everything you everything from what you're wearing to what you do
Where you're from.
That's sort of
Is a puzzle.
where I'm uh profiling. I'm you know essentially profiling people, which we all have the comit capacity to do.
Um, and in business, of course it's super important, right? A guy comes and tells you, Oh, you know, we had a great first quarter, it was unbelievable. Yeah, we broke records, what up.
Why are you telling me all this?
Right here, the way you are is so blustful.
Baloney.
You know what I mean?
'Cause'cause you know, you know so you have to like get a sense for
And p and often what you do with people is when they're lying.
You wanna like remember what they look like when they're lying.
And look for that pattern again.
I'll give you a simple example with poker.
It was in Europe, World Series Europe. I played with this guy on day one.
And he was chewing gum.
Okay.
Well, I was watching and there was his hand where he was chewing gum, chewing gum, and then he he bet all his money was all in.
He stopped chewing.
wasn't chewing his gum anymore, so I'm like, I really want to see this hand.
He turned it over, he was bluffing.
Okay. So I bank that in my memory.
Now on day five.
Five, four days later.
Big spot between me and him at the final table.
He bets all his chips.
Right.
He's chewing away.
I throw the hand away.
Okay.
Later, he bets all his ships.
He's not chewing anymore.
I call it
He's bluffing, you know, I'm able to to to to knock him out of the tournament. So
Absolutely the we all have that ability.
I think it's really observation.
You know, noticing
and looking for patterns'cause everyone's unique and different, but there are some true there's just some tried and true dub
You know?
Examples of like people are not looking you in the eye.
Typically like they look away or they look down to the right.
because they're uncomfortable about you looking at them'cause they're doing something that they should or they're saying something that they shouldn't be saying or they're lying to you.
Can we actually invert that? So let's just say that I I think you know, I you've been involved in uh ow and investing in a handful of companies. If I was trying to get you to invest in my company.
And I wanted to successfully lie to you.
What would the checklist be that I would follow?
I think certainty, for sure.
You know, being so but again, this is the thing. The best con artists are also the best liars, right? So they can they'll fool you, right? Like
Um, I'd say an over exuberance of confidence, though, is problematic. Like if you're just too like, Oh my God, this is the greatest thing, da da.
If you actually acknowledge
Um
Both good and bad.
Right.
You're like, listen, we're good, we're in great shape. However, you know, we got we really gotta work on this.
So sort of admitting some uh being humble almost, like that shows some honesty. Like, wow, okay, well.
This guy
Why would he tell me this bad thing?
You know?
if the other part's not true. So if you were gonna lie to me about A
Tell me the truth about B.
That's doesn't look good for you. And now A is far more believable to
So I would be I would be confident but self deprecating a bit and admitting to flaws. What else would I do?
Well there's honesty there. Um
I think you know, looking the person in the eye.
Um, you know, is a is a big one. And I think also like
Never come off as desperate.
All right, I read a ton. I would say almost a book a week. And the reason I read so much is because my philosophy towards reading is I wanna see what works for the winners that I love and what strategies they use, and then I wanna see
What mistakes w uh did they all make? What were the common flaws that they all had, and I just want to avoid that.
And so HubSpot asked me to put together a list of the books that have changed my life so far in two thousand twenty five. And I did that. And so I list it out
Seven books that made a meaningful difference in my life, and I explained
What the differences that they had on me or what
actions I took because of the book.
And then also I list it out my very particular ways of reading because I'm
pretty strategic about how I read and how I read so much and how I remember what I read and things like that. And so I put this together in a very simple guide. It's seven books that had a huge impact on my life.
And you can scan the QR code below if you want to read it. Or there's a link. You guys know what to do. There's a link in the description. Just go ahead and click it.
And you'll see the guide that I made. So it's the seven books that had a massive
change in my life this year so far.
And then also.
how I'm able to read so much. So check it out below.
What's an example of uh of not being desperate and also of being desperate?
Yeah, I'd say okay, so you know, desperate people they they frontload
the pitch too much.
And ask.
Right.
Like if you really want to pitch somebody, you want to play the long game, don't even make an ask.
You know?
Just be like, man, I'm working on this really great project. It's fantastic. Da da da da da.
Then at the end of it, don't even ask for anything.
Don't even say anything. Well ask him, hopefully.
If you've so if you've pitched it well.
Subtly, he's gonna ask you.
Yeah. Now how much better is it when he says, like, Well, so you guys taking money for investments like, Yeah, we are, but you know, we're in round one. It's not that
We're we're fine, like we got money, but like, you know.
Hey, listen, we're always open to listen to people. So now you've flipped it on them, right? Right. So instead of like you selling him, he's like, Oh man, I want in on that, right?
That's like a really solid
way to you know get people on board with your vision, I think.
You mentioned that when you were on your come up, you would you know you'd go to the mall, you sort of practice just your observational skills.
Like n like without distraction, actually just observe people, try to really like understand how you know how they move, how they think, you know, try to build up a a profile of them.
What were the other things you did?
to get good, right? Like you don't just become who you became
without doing something that was uncommon. If you just did the common set of actions, you would have had a common result. You did you must have done something uncommon to get you an uncommon result. What else did you do on your come up that that was uh very helpful for you?
Yeah, on that note of obs observational, we'll go I don't know if you guys remember a show called Heroes many years ago. There was a character called Siler, and all these people had like you know.
you know, superhero type talents, right? And he would go in there and he'd like
pull their brain out and he would now have this
you know, ability himself.
So when I started out quite young
I would play with people and I'd see these I'd start to notice the same guys are winning, right? So I'm like, Okay, this week I'm getting inside Sam's head.
I'm gonna be like I'm gonna
I'm gonna sit like him. I'm gonna put my chips like him. I'm gonna sort of try to become him for this week and understand exactly how he thinks. Okay. Now I take all the good, I leave the bad. Now I move on to Sean and I'm like, okay.
Let's be Sean for this week. Let's really soak in what makes him successful. Why is he winning, right? The idea is to create this super player where I take the best skills from all these different people.
look at what works and what doesn't, and then formulate like uh you know a game plan that way. So really for me.
Was it was learning from those that are already successful. And that's easier to do today.
than it's ever been. Like I'm gonna be streaming later today.
Playing for eight hours. You can watch me play for eight hours and see my whole cards and hear me explain my thought process. Right. So without even risking any money at the poker table like we used to have to, you could just watch and learn that way.
Then you start to think outside the box.
Just from observ observation. So I had a friend a group friend that we have ultimately did start talking poker.
But early on
It wasn't like that. Early on I was I wasn't gonna go up to him and be like, Hey, would you just tell me all your strategies? Thanks.
Cool. So I the listeners are gonna hate hearing this story again because I say it ten thousand times, but I previously owned a media is company that I sold and it and it was wonderful. And when I sold the company, I sold it via
It was during Covet. I sold it via Zoom.
And so it was a lot of phone calls and it was a lot of Zoom.
W you've talked a lot about negotiating and like uh being able to read someone, but it's very physical
Is there a way that you could teach me how to be better to to read or to understand what someone's thinking via Zoom or phone calls? Like can you hear s in someone's voice or just see them on a camera, or do you think you have to be in real life?
Yeah, well obviously you you know, you can with Zoom, but I think, frankly, let's say, for example, when it comes to business, I think
And it's this is like
This would be my go to. I think the best way
To get reads on people is when they are relaxed.
Okay. When are they relaxed? So not during a business call, not during Zoom, everyone's buttoned up, you know, and like ready to talk. How about when you guys go for dinner and drinks?
You know, just like hey, you know, we should go we should go check out this restaurant, have some drinks or whatever, and then talk about things unrelated to business. Understand who these people are, get a sense of who they are, and sort of disarm them. I do this in poker all the time.
Right?
Where
Um I'll give you an example what I do.
Often
The idea is I want the person to be relaxed and I'll get more from'em. So I'll be in a spot where my opponent, you know, they bet all their chips. So it's decision on me.
Instead of looking at them, I look at the dealer and I go, Why did I do this to myself? This is so s this is what I always do.
And then I see him over there through the corner of my eye.
I see him laughing, right? He's giggling. So that means he's you know, he thinks he has the best hand, right?
So I'm looking at the dealer and saying yeah, okay, what
You know that
What if he just has only like ace jack?
And then I look at his face and he goes, Hey
Mm shit.
That is and I can beat that. So all of a sudden the demeter, but the thing is is he's disarmed because I'm not looking at him, right? So the analogy there with business is
You're still at that dinner meeting?
At those drinks, whatever you're doing, you're s you're in reading mode then.
That is when you're gonna need the best reads on who this person is and how they think. And there'll be especially with a little bit of alcohol, they'll be probably a little looser with the lips, you know?
Um and disarmed and that makes it much easier. It's much more difficult when everyone's very, very stiff.
You know, to get authentic reads.'Cause it's practiced, right?
Like s if you're taking a pitch from somebody, they've probably done this pitch before.
So they're just sort of like going through the motions. And that's not authentic. That's not real. You need to see the real. And usually that happens.
away from those environments. Is there a certain body part? Because you're describing this example of like poker where you say, what's he got H Jack? And you said he stops smiling, but it's never that or it doesn't to someone like me who doesn't know what I'm looking for, it doesn't seem that obvious.
Yeah. Well there's a myriad of examples. The eyes are very, very telling.
Often.
Like in poker and and otherwise. But the other one too is
And I this is why, like I said, I like to use this as a as a strategy is a smile.
If you looked at ten smiles right now and I showed you ten and five are real and five are fake.
You'd be surprised how good you are at telling.
Which ones are fake and which ones are real, right? Like a fake smile is one that's kind of like this. A real smile, you see more up stuff up here like that. So
That that's a you know chill to some but like I said, everybody's unique.
The eyes are probably the most telling body language too.
Body language is a big one.
Right.
Um
Are they s when they're talking are they stiff? Are they like this or are they laid back in their chair? They're talking because if someone's laid back in their chair, they're not really afraid of you looking at'em. They're they're they're they're comfortable.
You know, there you can sense when someone's comfortable versus not. And um
Like I said, there's no
Everyone's unique and individual, but
Body posture, eyes.
Um
You know
Smiles.
Uh a lot of guys are looking at pulse now.
That's like a new thing. So everyone's covering their necks, of course, with scarves and things like that. Sean, h have you g have you guys ever heard this story? So in nineteen ninety one
the the election between I think it was ninety two. The election in ninety two it was between uh George Bush senior
And it was uh Bill Clinton.
And Bill Clinton, um the their reputations weren't entirely known. The reputations eventually are gonna be that Bill Clinton is this charismatic young guy and who can like woo people.
Uh and then George Bush senior was known as kind of a uptight, not everyday type of guy. And there's this famous debate.
Where a lot of uh
But the a lot of like political folks say this is when George Bush Senior lost to this up and coming guy. This young lady in the crowd was asking a question about a very everyday thing, like I can't afford groceries.
And while she's asking the question
George Bush senior, y very subtly he looked at his watch like that.
Boom, it's over. And then the the analysts go, Look at now look at Bill Clinton. He grabs the mic.
He walks close to her and he goes, What did you say your name was?
Can you tell me about your background? What do you do for work?
Man, I it's so hard to hear what you're going through. I'm so sorry. And
And look, you know, a decade later, they did this test where what they did was they got rid of the audio of the video.
And they just showed you the body language of the two people.
Bush and uh Bill Clinton. And then this other test, they all you could only listen to the audio. And what they found was the people who only watched the video and didn't hear the audio could predict exactly what happened to the outcome. Whereas the people who only listened to the audio, they couldn't exactly tell what happened. Right. And so the idea being is that body language and seeing with your eyes
Communicate significantly more than just audio. And it was this amazing story where it was literally just this.
Like you just looked at his watch and like that. And that was the that was the end of the election. That's what a lot of peop have folks say. Have you guys ever heard that?
I remember that too and and it makes so much sense. It's so it's so on point, right? Because like the difference there is
You know, like you said, Bill Clinton got personal.
The body language mattered. How often are you talking to somebody like today in our age, like people have cell phones, right? But you're talking to someone and they're just going
Yeah.
Uh-huh.
Right. You do you feel like you're being listened to, really?
You know?
Like, Oh yeah, you know you feel like you're being ignored, you feel like you're being dismissed, versus somebody puts their phone down and looks and goes, Uh-huh, and they you know, they give you a head nod or whatever like that. Like
That person is someone you're more likely to want to engage with or feel respected by.
Right. So that like what the descrip the uh the example you gave is George Bush in that moment people see that as
That's disrespectful.
That's the same as looking on your phone.
What did Bill Clinton do? Oh, that was very empathetic. What do you do? Where are you from?
you know, tell me about your story. Oh wow. Well like just look at those two different people, right? Just on that alone. Like it's such a drastic difference.
Right.
When when you uh how did you get into poker? So what's the origin story for you? And um I'm curious if it just worked right away or you hit some rock bottoms early on and and it sort of shifted you?
Yeah, so I started as a teenager. I was a pool player. I was playing snooker in Canada. We play snooker.
And through that, you know, you make some friends up there and they say, We're gonna go play some poker. Okay. So I don't know what that is.
I get a six pack of beer.
with bring my ten dollars that I got.
Lose that real quick, drink my beer, and I'm watching for the most part after. And they're playing these crazy wild card games, follow the queen.
You know, all these stupid games, right?
But I'm watching and then we started to do that a little more regularly.
And I thought it was a luck, right? And then I started to well like what's going on here?
How come the same two, three guys just seem to always win?
And these guys always lose. And that's what intrigued me,'cause I've always been very competitive.
So I actually remember buying a really bad book.
Back then and I was like elementary.
And I was like, Okay, well but it helped, you know, because it was something to make me think about the game more s sophisticated way. Um
But uh it took me about a month or two until I started to
You know, figure things out.
But through that
you know, my origin story, like I was building up money, but I'm a teenager and I'm
Reckless.
So you know you're you you got money, you lose it. The good news was
I had people around me that started to see that like, okay, he's he's good at poker, he's good for it, he's an honorable guy.
So when I would go broke and lose all my money, I could borrow money.
from people whether it was five hundred dollars or a thousand back then.
Um
And that you know, I went broke many, many times, but that's part of the learning experience, I think. I think like

The relation to business is essentially this. Like
If you have like very little to lose, like you've you have a very small
company or whatever, you can take shots, right?
'Cause whatever, you know, you lose you. Now, once you become a big company, I remember I spoke at Craft Foods once. They had me on as a at a uh
corporate event. And actually one of the people asked, is like, What would you do with craft mac and cheese? It's been like our staple
And I use the poker analogy and I said, Listen
If I had a five hundred dollar bankroll
That's that's I can replicate that.
Like I can get that. But once I have two million dollars
I can't really risk the whole two million dollars to go back to five hundred because it's too much, right? So when I was broke, I would take shots like this. But once I've an established brand, if you will, once I've got the money.
I wouldn't mess with it too much. Because they wanted to change the recipe and the packaging and all that. And I said, you know, listen, what if it's working, why why why mess with it? You know, you're there's a risk there. And I would say that when you're taking risk, you take risk when you're on the low end of the totem pole.
That's exactly when you take them, especially in your twenties, you know, whatever, you take risk. But once you've established you you should be less
You should be way more risk averse.
So I play poker for a living, but when it comes to investing and all that stuff, I know nothing about it, but I'm very risk averse. I have a guy
You know, Morgan Stanley guy, municipal bonds. I don't even know what it is, right? But it's safe stuff. Like I don't I don't gamble.
Um
needlessly at this point, because I've already created the dream life that I want. So what's the point?
Right.
There was a guy, uh, I was in college and I used to t I took one class my senior year called Getting Rich.
And it was probably uh I was a pre med kid, so this was like I'd done all the hard physics, biology, whatever. This was like my blow off class.
Turned out to be the most valuable class I took my entire
College career.
They invited in um this guy from a hedge fund.
Or maybe it's a venture capital fund.
So this V C comes in and he um he's like okay, cool cool, like
Um, who here wants to start a business someday?
And so like I would say like seventy five percent of the kids raise their hand. Like, Way I like the idea. I'd like to own my own business.
And he goes, awesome.
Who here's gonna start a business th like you're you're all graduating seniors, right? So who's gonna start a business this May when you graduate?
And the seventy five percent of hands dropped and there was like two or three hands left.
And he goes.
What just happened?
He's like that is uh and so he starts started asking people, he goes, You you said you want to start a business.
What why aren't you doing it now? Like why what's coming first?
Oh, I got this great job at uh you know, McKinsey. I got this job at at a bank, Goldman Sachs, wherever I got this internship.
Uh, you know, so I'm gonna do that for a few years, get some experience, and then I'm gonna go do the business thing.
And he goes, um
He said, You guys have it backwards.
He goes when you're twenty one and twenty two years old and you can live off of a futon
And you know, you have no no mortgage, you have no kids.
And you have no expectations. He's like, This is the time to just go broke repeatedly. He goes, You should just try so many businesses.
Um during this era, don't wait till you're twenty eight to thirty two.
Because
that's when it's gonna feel a lot harder and a lot more costly to go start that business because you're gonna have a better salary, you're gonna have a job, you're gonna have a reputation, you're not gonna wanna be a beginner in your thirties. You should be a beginner in your twenties.
And literally that shifted the course of my life where I was like, Oh, he's right. I should just go
I can I can afford to go broke several times now, similar to poker. Like when you have a small bankroll
Is when you want to take the most risk.
And like you because you can recover and bounce back quickly, you don't actually have that much to lose.
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You said you started when you were in your teens and you started learning the game and you would go broke, but then you would borrow some money, get back in it.
Um what happened from there?
We're very good. People are very good at real at thinking of all the reasons why something's not gonna work.
And something's gonna fail?
So it's very easy to be like, Oh, I want to start this business, but
I don't have the money, it's not good timing and do this and it's like when I'm set and everything's good, then I'll do it.
And I remember I did a course
years ago on sort of emotional intelligence, and there's uh thing called Be Do Have.
Right.
Many people think
You need to like have everything in order to be something.
Right.
Where the truth is it's like
Be it.
Right.
You know?
Do it and you'll have it.
Like just just live like you got like go for it if a little bit more, like you said. As for me, like
to sub segue into your second question.
That's kinda what I did. I went for it. You know, I went to Vegas.
And I remember the first time I went to Vegas I had like three thousand dollars.
Twenty four hours later, I did not.
But I had three more days in Vegas with no money. Um learning experience.
Got kicked in the nuts, went back home to Toronto, rebuilt, kept going back. So it was a trial and error thing.
Where I went from being the big fish in a small pond in Toronto.
Two
the top pros, you know, and I remember a very
Disnec moment.
Um when that happened.
It was like four in the morning and I was playing seven handed.
Seven people at the table.
And uh I b I lost my money.
You know, and I went to the bathroom, washed my hands.
You know, came out and
They're all gone.
And I realized in that moment.
I was the sucker.
They were only playing because of me.
I was their EV. I was their expected value. And I remembered every one of their faces.
With vengeance.
Right, and I said I'm gonna get you one day. One of them was a guy named Hawaiian Bill.
You know, you'd wear those Hawaiian shirts or whatever.
And uh hated him.
You know the the table'cause he was
Take these.
playing aggressive, you know, I was like a bull. He would just he just knew how to beat me.
And then about a year or two later, he sort of became a little bit of a mentor of mine.
Yeah.
'Cause I was like, Oh, this guy knows what he's doing. He's been around the block and I'm gonna learn from him instead of, you know, being angry and uh
You know, I just eventually I had persist I had persistence.
You know, I understood that like
And I had many walks home from the casino to my
Motel.
Where I wondered like what am I doing?
You know, I'm not in school. I'm not
Going anywhere and this is it. So
Good news is I'd wake up in the morning ready to go.
I'm like all right.
Today's the day. Let's turn it around.
There's that uh one of my favorite scenes is um
F from a movie is a poker movie. I th it's with Mark Wahlberg, where he's talking to John Goodman.
And uh do you guys know what scene I'm talking about, where he's uh he basically says, like I was up two million and I lost all of my money and John Goodman's like look
Every idiot knows that when you're up two million, we all know what to do. You take one million and you buy a house, and then you buy a really crappy car and you put the rest in savings and that's your fortress of solitude. You can never mess that up. And then you go and gamble with the rest, but you never screw that one bit up.
And he like tells this amazing story.
Um, was there a point in your life or at least or rather what point in your life or what age were you were you like, okay
I have a base. I have my fortress of solitude. Things feel good.
Um how late into life were you or how early into life were you before you felt some security? Because it sounds like your line of work.
It's a lot of ups and downs. Was there ever like a okay?
I've I'm at a place of safety.
The first time it happened, I was
Very wrong.
So we'll go there and then I'll tell you about when it actually happened. Nineteen ninety nine.
Had a good year.
I uh
You know, I won the US poker championship ten of the year.
I had like, you know, four hundred, five hundred thousand. I thought, Okay, well
You know, we're set.
You know, we're we're good. We're never gonna go broke again. Then in the year two thousand, I got complacent. I was living a Vegas life, we're going to strip joints, we're going to dinners, I go play poker, gambling, you know, not taking it as serious as I should, and oh wow, by the end of the year two thousand
The money gone.
Right.
And I was like
It was a good learning series. I'm glad it happened.
'Cause I watched many of my peers.
Who went through this pattern.
Of
Building up a bank roll, blowing it all.
And then rebuilding it again. And part of that was they didn't have a foundation, like
actually a reason. They didn't have a why, right? So they wake up in the morning, they gotta what's their goal? They gotta go make money, right? Now they have money.
Okay.
Well
What's next? So subconsciously they self sabotaged.
They would self sabotage, lose all the money, so they had a purpose again.
You know, and I remember watching my peers do that, and I said to myself, I'm not gonna be that guy. So I started to take things more seriously in the early two thousands.
And probably by my late twenties.
early thirties, I'd say.
is when I finally realised that like I got it figured out.
I've got enough money.
You know, we're for sure not going broke anymore.
Um, even though we're playing higher stakes, I'm much more careful than I was. But
That was a very important year for me to fail the way that I did in the year two thousand.

Bottom out in a sense.
And then that's a decision point. Am I gonna just keep doing what they do?
And be fifty.
For sixty.
I mean I watched a guy
No joke.
He builds up.
He you know, I used to play with him in small games where you know he had a thousand or two thousand. He's playing the big game where he's got two million dollars.
Right. And then I Does that mean he he had two million saved or he was p betting that game w two million was on the line?

Total.
Like that's what he would you know, that's his that's his bankrolls, two million.
Now he's up there playing the big game.

A couple ladies with him. He's doing blow. He's
Drinking, whatever.
Three days later, this guy who had two million in front of him, he's comes up and he says, Hey man, can I get five hundred?
Uh.
'Cause he's back to
Nothing.
Right?
So he wants five hundred. I thought saw that and I was like, Wow, man.
You had two million and you blew all that? Then there's a lot of crazy stories like that.
And I knew I was never gonna be that guy.
But it was a real wake up call.
Right. Guys I looked up to
In a sense, and I'm like, What are you doing, man?
What's the biggest um descrip or what's the biggest amount that you saw someone have and it go to zero?
Well
Not I don't know the guy personally necessarily, but this famous story
was Archie uh Karis.
It was the craps player. A little bit of a cheat and all these kind of things at the Binions Horseshoe.
He went there and he was winning like a million dollars a day.
Yeah, like forty five million.
He had every five thousand dollar chip.
that Dominion's horseshoe had. He had them all in his safety deposit box. He had forty five million.
Lost it all.
And then
This for a second time.
he was able to build up a bankroll to about seventeen or eighteen million.
And lost it all.
So this is a degenerate m this is a degenerate, right? Like his whole life revolves around this. And this is where I
I don't relate to people that are billionaires in a lot of ways that still are looking to make money.
I don't get it.
Like I can't relate to it. Like you have a billion dollars. Why do you care so much about a deal that just made you twenty million that's going to do nothing to change your life? So that sort of obsession.
of a bigger yacht or matching up with my others. I have
friends that are billionaires and stuff like that.
And um
One of them actually wrote a book.
Bill Perkins, because he does.
You know, he uh he wrote a book called Die With Zero.
Right.
Which essentially he talks about how money is just a tool.
For you know
To give you opportunities to have happiness. And what is happiness? It's not a bigger yacht, it's not a watch, it's not a car, it's experiences.
Right?
So he talks about spend your spend your month. Think about that. Like if you think if you look back like
In your last ten years of your life.
You bought a watch a while ago. Did what did that give you happiness that was long lasting? What about the trip you took with your boys when you went on a golfing trip and you went to like the south of France? Like that's something that's valuable to you now. Like you still have those memories.
And um
you know, a life that's worthwhile. So material objects, material things.
I think that's where
Frankly, the opposite happens. You'll it'll
It'll do the i instead of making you happy, it'll make you
Vemently unhappy if that's
The only source of happiness that you find.
Yeah, it's it's also funny, like if you
It's almost frustrating'cause it's like I keep going to this well.
Trying to scoop up some happiness and there's just none there. Uh, right. If you if if you keep trying the same strategy and it's not working, it's actually not just
that you didn't get happiness, you actually get frustrated.
Diminishing returns, right? You're getting diminishing returns. Yeah, exactly. It's like you get that and you take but I don't do cake. I've never done cocaine. But the more you do it
You know, you have that little fleeting dopamine hit, but the more you do it, the more your body becomes customer.
doesn't even have that same effect. Same thing, I think, with material objects.
You have six cars. Okay, now oh I'm gonna buy this seventh car and this eighth car, what now?
Like w you it's it's
Becomes
Like unimportant.
So what motivates you then? Cause you're you know, you're playing a game that's literally for money. It's the chips on the table. The goal is to get the chips uh from the other guy into your little pot.
And so um
You know, why do you do? You've made plenty of money and you know, you don't have to keep playing.
So what is it for you?
Well, that's the hook, really. That's the trick. I think the most
The majority of sus or of large percentage of successful people became successful doing what they're doing because they love what they're doing.
Right.
Most if you don't love what you're doing and you don't really chances of being successful are very slim. So if you just say, I wanna be rich and famous, okay.
But do you want to do the work? Do you like what do you like to do that gets you there? And if you're doing something because you think it's going to get you money.
But
You don't enjoy it.
you you don't have that passion for it. I always did. I love com I love competing. I would love to be an athlete, but I'm like
Five nine and like a buck six. I'm just there's no I'm too tall to be a jockey and too short to be a basketball player, right? So I didn't have any talent in that regard.
But poker
was a a battle of wits, right? And I love the game.
And when I started playing it, I wasn't playing
For money.
Money was a tool. I wanted to play in bigger games. I wanted to play with the best, right?
So the only way to do that
was money.
So money wasn't the end goal.
Right.
Um ultimately
You know, what money uh provided me was and I always ask this whenever I would coach people, like what is people say, Oh well, what do you want, what's your dream? I want to make I wanna be rich. Okay, but what's for what?
To do what?
Like what what are you going to use it for? Because money itself is just a pile of
notes or a number on your screen. It doesn't do anything. What do you want it for? And for me
It was to provide myself the freedom.
To be able to do whatever I want.
you know, in my thirties, forties, and fifties, if I wanna travel, if I wanna relax, wanna stay at home, not have to go to a day job.
Um and be my own boss.
So that's what I looked at as far as money goes. Like
The truth is my bank account.
If it was ten X what it is now.
My life wouldn't change.
Much.
at all.
Right.
You know.
maybe I'd have a plane. But funny how the line between degeneracy and loving it
Like we could be we could be describing very similar things. Like, for example, I I'm a little bit of a workaholic. I d I I love it.
But then my wife or someone else would be like, Well, well, you're just a degenerate. Like I for like you know. Yeah, like there's um
It's kind of interesting. When you describe it in the way that you describe it, I'm like
Hamling's awesome.
Then when I like think of it, I'm like, Oh uh, you know, Larry the Greek or whatever Archie the Greek, he's uh he's a degenerate. Um but couldn't he describe it as the same way? I loved it.
Yeah. You know, Dole Brunson had that famous quote once. It was on a TV show where they asked him and he said, You know
We're all really just degenerate gamblers.
We just found something we could beat.
Right. So he was a you know, a lot of the old school guys, they gamble on everything.
you know, poker players they didn't just play poker, they play, you know, golf for big money, bet on every game, bet on everything, you know.
Um some really
famous bets from back in the day.
Some really cool ones, but they're they're always looking for action or EV. And a lot of it is cause it gets their juices flowing. But I found, like I said, for me.
That's not the be all end all.
Like it doesn't do it for me.
I'm not really a thrill seeker in that way. Like people say, Oh, you know, you should bungee jump or jump out of a plane. I'm like, I have zero interest in that.
Zero.
It's just dumb for me because it doesn't do what it does for other people. Like some people go, Oh my God, it was the thrill of a lifetime, whatever. I'm like for me, I just look at it and go, Oh, you might die. So what's the point? You know, like if I believe that it would give me that thrill.
You know, I would
You know, I maybe take it on, but it's
Yeah, I don't it doesn't do it for me.
You mentioned love and the competition.
Who's the best poker player you've ever
sat down at the table with. Has there ever been anybody you sat down and you're like, wow, this guy's
This guy's better than me.
Yeah, for sure.
Several.
One of them is my good friend, who I've been friends with for thirty years, and he did what I didn't. I'll tell you we we sort of split.
In terms of like our focus.
He's the best play poker player in the world as far as I'm concerned when you count all the games, and that's Phil Ivey.
Okay.
So Phil Ivy and I
Took different paths.
There was a time where poker started to get popular on T V
You know, and there's all these opportunities and this and that. Phil didn't he was not about that. He didn't like that. He was nose to the grindstone. I'm gonna sift my leather ass.
in this chair and I'm gonna play for ten hours, I'm gonna make all the money.
And I had that when I was younger, but then I saw these other opportunities.
To be
You know, sort of a name in the game.
And potentially get some money.
thro sponsorships or different business side the business side of poker.
And I was more well suited to that.
Than he was.
Because
I enjoyed it, you know. I when I was a very young kid I wanted to be an actor.
So being on camera, speaking, these types of things, that was comfortable for me.
So I felt like I could position position myself.
to do quite well that way. And I did.
You know, and he went a different path and you know did did well.
But the difference is once I start doing that, my focus is now diverted, right?
He's focused on one thing and one thing only, just this game of poker, right? I'm playing poker, but I'm also doing this stuff too, right?
So
The intensity
With which he plays at.
I can't reach.
Right.
'Cause I've got other things going on.
You know what I mean? Which is fine. I don't regret it.
You know, looking back.
But uh
Yeah, I think that's part of why.
You know, what made him so successful? He was completely consumed.
By poker and nothing else.
So he was w he's completely intensely focused on it.
What's his kinda like superpower? So like if yours is the ability to sort of like
get inside the mind of the other person and read them and try to
Trying to be able to see through the cards.
Y what's he what's his superpower?
He was a very like he was quiet. He was a quiet assassin when he played.
But he's paying attention to everything. He sees everything, right? So he'll sit in a game
For cash and
You'll see like fifteen, twenty minutes in.
The wrong guys are winning.
Okay.
What does that mean the wrong guys are winning?
Okay, well the wrong guys are winning means they're gonna play well. Because sometimes when people are winning they play well, and when they're losing
they're gonna go off for a big number. So sometimes he'd go down there any place in fifteen, twenty minutes.
See, there's nothing here and he'd leave.
You go home.
Where other days.
He's there for four days.
Without w you know, leaving his chair because he sees
that they're vulnerable, right? Often in that environment.
It's all a bunch of sharks. So it's like all sharks, right?
So every shark is circling each other and then you see one shark is wounded.
Oh, one shark lost his tail. Ho ho ho ho ho. We're gonna rip this shark apart.
Right.
It's a dog eat dog world in that sense. And he was the king of that.
Um, and still, you know, still still has that killer sign of intensity. Yeah, I would say it's just his ability to like
Dial in.
And have like
Uber focus.
If you had to teach me, someone who frankly I've never even been to a casino really.
uh how to like keep calm under pressure in these high stakes games. Uh you and Phil, I have you as my coach. We're gonna spend like three days in a hotel before we go down, like preparing.
Um not
Not the actual like math or the cards, you know, what would you teach me? What would be my checklist on how to be calm in a stressful situation?
Yeah, well first of all
Virtually impossible.
Okay. Like in a three day spin, because here's the thing, it's an emotional thing, right?
I mean, I would you know, you could do like a meditative retreat, a yoga retreat, learn to get zen, you know, learn to get centered, all these types of things. But in three days,
entering an environment you've never really experienced before.
Dealing with that sort of stress.
That's a you thing, right?
Can like we could like set you right with you know explaining like
It's all part of the you know.
There's there's
things you could probably do, but over three days to somebody that's completely new, I would say that you wouldn't be an easy t easy person to help.
In that regard, you're just gonna have to go through it on your own. Now that's different for people that
Have played the game for years, right?
You know, I can
You know, get them to focus on
The fundamentals of what they're doing.
Right?
Are you making good decisions?
Okay, let's focus on that.
Okay, let's not become victims to the idea that like, oh man, I'm so unlucky. That that does you no good. There's no value. Being input focused, not output focus. Being yeah, focus on the journey, right? So in poker
It's it's not like other things where
If you make the right decision, you make money.
That's not how poker works. I can go all in with a pair of aces, right? And Sam could say, Oh, I have a nine and a four. I'm gonna go all in. Well, that's a good situation for me, but sometimes I'm gonna lose.
But did I make a mistake?
No.
In the long run, I'm gonna be okay.
So for you or for anybody else, I would usually probably ask like
what your exper life experience is with other things, right? Like so let's say you're somebody who plays the market.
Okay, I would maybe make an analogy, like, okay, so sometimes you make good investments and then something completely uncontrollable happens.
And you know, your investment goes to nothing.
Doesn't make your decision bad.
Right. Your decision was good.
Right. So focus on that. Instead of like woe is me, go, Okay, well
Or
Alternatively, if you lost and it was you, you made'em you didn't see something, you're like ah, I missed this.
You know, that was important. Okay. So use that
You know, you you use that mistake or that breakdown, if you will, to uh plug a hole.
You know, and be better prepared the next time you see it. Poker's like essentially like a big puzzle.
Right?
We start out
And you just make all these mistakes. And now you start to like
Okay, I've got this one figured out. And you continually
plug leaks or you've seen them these situations so many times and you go aha
I made this mistake before, but I'm in the same situation now, or a very similar one. This time I'm I'm gonna do the right thing.
What are the most common leaks?'Cause you've coached
People and people ask you for advice for years.
One of the most common leaks that like a smart, competent player still has that kill them. That's really hurting their their gains. So like, you know, they're they're not at the beginner level, but they're sort of like, you know, intermediate and they are a smart person. They have enough talent.
What leaks did they have?
I'd say a pretty common leak for ninety
Nine percent of poker players are gamblers in general.
Is
Uh when they're winning.
You know, everything's great, or whatever.
Um
They don't play as long.
Okay. They'll be like, all right, I'm gonna take my winnings, I'm gonna leave.
Whereas when they're losing
You know.
They're there for for days. I'll give you a perfect example.
uh my friend Evelyn who used to or my ex girlfriend.
We go.
And she'd win like every day almost.
You know? It's like how'd you do?
Well, I want a hundred, I want two hundred, I want three hundred, da da. Then I look at like day nine.
And it says I lost thirty seven hundred.
Okay. So you won nine out of ten days, right? But what's the difference? You won a hundred, two hundred, three hundred. So over those ten days, because of your mental state, when you were winning, the situation was good and you should be pressing and pushing.
Right.
That's when you like you know, a lot of people just be like I'm gonna I'm gonna just
Take my winnings. That's the opposite of what a Phil Ivy would do, as I was sort of described. And but when she was losing
She wasn't there for w I'cause I looked at the length of play. The first six days, one hour, two hour, three hour
Nothing more than a four hour session. That one she lost thirty five hundred.
She was there for thirty one hours.
Right.
So the biggest leak people make is they chase losses in the short run.
Right. So
Like I have to get even today. It's not to this game isn't today. This game doesn't end today. This game is all year. All m you know, all all month, all year. You have to be able to
Say okay, well, you know.
'Cause the thing is is when you're losing, your mental state is going to be affected.
Yeah.
There's very few robotic minds that can play poker without having that affect them to some degree.
So you're better off playing in situations when your mental state is good, you're winning.
Versus when you're bad.
Have you ever read The Inner Game of Tennis, Daniel?
No.
We talked about it on here and what you're describing exact is exactly that. So it's this amazing book. I I don't play tennis, but it's about how to play tennis, but it's one of these books where it teaches you about life. And the concept of the book is basically that you have two self. Self one is like the conscious critical mind where you like judge yourself like oh that was a bad hit. That was a bad hand. Self two is like
Uh you don't think, you feel your body.
And that when you like listen to your body and you don't judge yourself, that's oftentimes when hot streaks happen. So
Um, I think in b I don't know, Sean, I forget the phrase, but they caught in basketball where you're like on a street.
Yeah, yeah, you like you can't miss. And people always say, Well, don't pull them out, like let them just go. And that's that moment where you're listening to self too, and you're just feeling it.
And what you described is exactly that.
Golf too. Like I don't know if you guys golf, but like when you golf
Most people when they go off, they have a swing thought, something they're working on, you know, like I'll get the like it's always a swing thought. But I remember the one time one of my swing thought was this.
My swing thought was nothing from nothing is nothing, which means nothing. Swing. I would literally s go over the ball and in my head I'd sing the song, nothing from nothing is nothing.
You know?
Just let the body do it.'Cause when you're over
technical overanalyzing and all that kind of stuff, it can actually be a detriment. And that's funny. You're describing this the uh you and this author are saying the exact same thing. That's so fascinating to me. Yes.
And it's true in poker too. Like you're like you see a move and you're like, Oh, I don't know, but I do I need to take this risk. I mean
I don't know, it seems kinda crazy, it might work, what might not. Instead of just being like and frankly, and this is
A secret weapon that I don't use too often, but it really helps.
is alcohol.
Okay. I'm not I'm not pr I'm not saying you should drink and play, but there was a guy named Bill Smith many years ago.
They said when he was sober.
He was the easiest, weakest player
In the game.
When he was drunk.
He was just a sloppy mess. He couldn't win. But when he was just a little buzzed, just a little drunk, they said he was the best player in the world, right? Why would that be?
'Cause with poker.
Alcohol can lower your inhibition a little bit.
So you're just both trust transic. And when I you know, whenever I've done that, I feel like it's almost like a superpower.
Because
It allows you to sort of get past the
The fear and the rationalization for why you shouldn't take this risk.
And that's all going against what your instincts are saying is gonna work.
Right.
So having that little bit of uh but enable learning to to create that and trust that without alcohol is the ideal goal. And uh that's what we all strive for.
Uh and I've been I've actually gotten a lot better at that just naturally, just by just saying, Okay, listen, if you think this is probably right
You know, forget about all these other reasons that it's not. Just do it, man.
Just do it.
I'm writing this uh book right now on on
creativity and getting into creative flow. And uh in the research I'm looking at uh I mean in writers and authors.
It's amazing. These guys are drunks. These guys are all drunks. And they would wake up and they had this discipline part, which is wake up.
And immediately start writing.
But they're like, Yeah, our best work was also when we added this other habit where we wake up and right before we start writing, we do the whiskey part, or you know, we we start drinking.
And um
And there's another analogy to this, which is actually kind of an interesting thing about um
Mapping.
And so there's this there's this famous study that was called the Paris Sleep Study.
And it's similar, like you get in a state of mind where your inhibition is lower.
Um, and you're basically you don't self-censor. So we all have this sort of editor in our head, like in a game of tennis, like the guy, the ump sitting on the the tower. Um, we all have that sort of ump who's calling balls in and out. And when you say something, you censor if you're if you're doing a golf swing, you start to think, you start to censor what you're what you're doing.
And if you can get that center to shut up and trust yourself, you actually do a lot better.
And so they did this thing in the Paris Sleep Study. They gave people a very complicated um pattern, like a math pattern, like a number pattern.
And you know, let's say 10% of people solved it right away. Great, you guys are done. Congratulations. Here's some chocolate. You guys are out.
Um
The rest of the people, they basically let them work at it for something like an hour.
And they were all like stuck. They're like I can't see this pattern. I don't know what the hell it is.
So they split the group into two rooms. They're like, Hey, we're gonna take a quick break, you know, uh a sort of twenty, thirty minute break.
You guys go over here and hang out in the waiting room, do whatever you want.
And um they took the other group, the other half, and they put them in a in a they said, Hey, we'd like you to uh go ahead and take a nap. So you're gonna lay down.
In a calm environment, you're gonna take a nap. They took a nap for about twenty five, twenty six minutes.
And then when they woke up, they all went back in the room.
And the group that had mapped
basically had the th uh a three times higher rate of just solving the problem right when they got it.
And the there's a state that and there's all these great and you know, um
Edison used to nap and Einstein used to nap and all these guys used to nap. And they would they would famously nap with like a spoon in their hand because they didn't want to sleep for a long time. They wanted to get into that state where you just start to fall asleep and then when you fall asleep, you drop the spoon, it would clang.
And then you'd wake up.
And they would use that state, which is called a hypagogic state.
where you actually are way more creative and you're you're in a uh you can get into a flow much more easily than if you were
Just in your normal pattern. That's super fascinating.
Yeah, that's wow. I mean I I'm I was my first thought was that just like obviously sleep in general
for poker is the most important thing. It's like it's the t it's like if our mind is a computer, it's the time where it shuts down and it reboots and you know, you downloads all the information so that you're ready to do it the next day.
I remember hearing that with some uh
They did similar things where they like did some tests with people where
They had them, you know, do this test.
Um morning, night, and then
Sleep and then next morning.
And you know next and the the the the results the next morning.
We're always better.
Then
you know, the previous night or whatever. So I don't I mean, I didn't know that napping could do that or this flow state or the state idea, but that sounds cool'cause I like uh
I'm a big fan of naps. You know, used to go to Europe and play, you know, the jet lag thing. Sometimes I'd be at the table with my like a head down and I keep a hand out.
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You you mentioned at the beginning you said I went to a
course or a seminar about emotional intelligence.
And um that's not what I expected you to say. That sounds like you know, I don't know. I thought you would talk about poker and math and stats and all that stuff. That's pretty fascinating. Why did you go and what did you get out of that?
Yeah, it was in Vegas. I did it in two thousand thirteen. Um, my manager, Brian
Who's a like
Just a
Yeah.
Super healthy, perfect wife, three great kids, like lawyer guy, you know, all buttoned up.
He did it, right?
And we were playing golf and he said, You know, you should try this thing and I thought to myself, Okay, well, I trust him.
Right.
So he thinks it might have some value, I'll say, Oh, I'll go. You know, what's the word? I'm always looking to learn and do different things. It was nothing like I expected it to be.
This was no business seminar, if you will. This was a deep dive.
Into what makes you tick.
Where you decided certain things about yourself.
Um
You know, what works about you, what doesn't work about you.
And it was a life changing experience in a lot of ways for me, right?
Um, I hated it in the first couple of days, but because I had faith in Brian, I'm like, All right, I'm gonna stick with it. It was it's transformational in so many ways. And
Um really like, you know, some of the key
tenants of what I learned there was just the difference between being a victim
to circumstance and responsible completely for everything and everything you've ever for where you are and all the decisions you make.
Right, you're not responsible for the weather.
You're not responsible for a car crash, you know that then but you're responsible for your response to it.
Right. The word responsible when you break it down is essentially response able.
So the difference between those that succeed and those that fail often
Or how they respond to things. And there's one story I remember that they told and it's true actually.
There were two mothers.
that had the same thing happen to them. They had their
Child killed in a car accident.
horrifying experience, right?
The first mother
Was grieving, obviously, she knows.
expected. She you know, she drank
She had an other children, she had a husband and you know, she stayed in that depression six months, a year later and
lost her family, right? Which is sad.
And you can you can look at that and you can empathize, well, yeah, of course, right?
The other mother had the exact same thing happen to her.
She grieved.
Took her time.
And then she started an organization called Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
So she said, Okay, I'm gonna you know what, I'm gonna take this. I'm gonna respond to this in a way where I'm gonna help other people.
Right. So the event was the same, right? It was a neutral event. The event was
You know.
happened to both people.
But the response to the event.
led these lives in a very different trajectory.
because of how they were responding to it. So learning that with poker.
Is incredibly important.
Right.
You're gonna have bad luck sometimes. Good luck. How you respond to it.
is gonna be the difference between you being successful
And you being a failure.
One of my biggest things that I've learned from Sean is uh
I I for years I thought
Well I'm very
good at that. I know that I am responsible for my own outcomes. I I believe that fully.
And one day I think I was in a bad mood and he was like, Well, why are you in the bad mood? And I said, This person did this and it pissed me off. He's like, Well, so you're
You're not responsible for your mood. What's going on? Like this person just the and and I and it
That's when it like clicked and it and frankly it's still really hard. But it it was like the this being
having that internal locus of control isn't just for like making money or starting a business. It's also for how do I feel on the inside. And that was the biggest thing. Sean, what do you say like you have some like
different version of someone living rent free in your brain. Like I you have all these like phrases where it's like the w the the one that stuck with me, I went to so I went to a Tony Robbins thing. It's very similar, like
I I kind of intuitively knew, hey, like I'm a learner. I'm I'm a curious guy. I why I always want to improve. Why would I not invest in this? Then I get there.
And he's like, All right, everybody stand up. I wanna hear and I'm like, Oh God, I I'm here just for the learning part. I don't need to dance, right?
And then like five minutes in, I had a choice, a fork on the road. It's like you're either gonna play full full out here, you're gonna like do the experience, or you're gonna have to do the experience and get half the results. I was like, Whatever, let me do this. Nobody here knows me, I can just wear it. Let me dance.
And then of course, you know, 45 minutes in, I'm dancing. I'm like, this is amazing. This is so good. And he says this thing in his talk. He's like, um, and he's like, I'm fucking Tony Robbins. And he's like, he tells the story of when he was on his trip.
With his like
Platinum.
You've you bought all the upsells. You're at the like you're paying him a quarter million dollars a year to go on vacation with him.
And he was with them in India and he meets this guy in a mountain, some guru guy or whatever.
And the guy said, um
Like you know, Tony says like how much are you suffering nowadays? He's like
I sorry, I don't know if you know me. I'm Tony Robbins. You know, suffering isn't exactly how people describe me typically, right?
Um, and the guy was like, Well I can see like you you know, you
Got upset because the the guy didn't know the schedule and then that, and then you got upset about this. Like these were small things. He's like, Well, no, I wasn't upset. I just
He starts to be defensive. And then he calms down. He's like
He's like, what are you like what's the what's the observation you have here? He goes
Basically he's like, How cheap is your happiness?
Because all it took was this guy forgetting one thing on the schedule and you lost it. That was so cheap.
He it he it took him nothing.
to take your happiness away. And so this idea of like
Your mood is essentially you want the Louis Vuitton of moods. You want it to be so premium.
Like for somebody to affect your mood to take your mood.
Away from you.
Um it should
come with a very, very high price. And so I started to reframe like when something would happen. I'm like, that's too cheap. I don't
I'm not gonna take that deal.
Uh why would I ever why would I ever trade my good mood for that small that that small thing?
No, I actually love that. That's really good because I think we
We all strive to be like
you know, be above that, but we're human, right? Like I get annoyed by the dumbest things. I'm gonna use that today because I s like I said, I do streams where sometimes and you get comments. I get thousands of comments like while I'm streaming. And you know the brain I've already
Th known this. But like
we naturally gonna gravitate toward the negative comment.
The one who calls me a bald idiot or whatever.
So
I mean I so instead of like I've learned this a long time ago, but like allowing that to affect you.

you know, divert the stream. It's like kinda like what they're wanting to do.
But I've learned to just like sort of
Respond to positive reinforcement.
And good stuff.
When let's say, for example, I play a hand and I lose.
And I'm already frustrated by the fact that I lost the hand, but I'm comfortable with how I played it. And then you read a bunch of armchair quarterback saying, Oh, what an idiot.
Just gave all his money away. That was terrible. You're you're the worst. And I see that and I want to go, Oh, really?
Sam six five nine three four come here and say that to my face. How about that? I would bust you, I'd take all your money, do that. And I sometimes do that, but it's silly, like you said, because why am I allowing this
Well sometimes it feels good. Like I trick myself into thinking it feels good. And and the reality is it doesn't feel good because I've like check I'm refreshing the page. I'm like, let me see the reply. Let me see No, I can't go out to dinner yet. This guy on Facebook says something, I gotta wait for his reply. I will say this though, I am a big fan of venting.
Like in the sense that
Like rather than hold stuff in
You know, and let it bubble and let it fester. I laugh at myself sometimes when I act like an idiot. I'm like I get mad about something dumb and I'm like, Okay, that was okay.
And then I could like very sh sh quickly after I can go, Okay, that was stupid. But I got it off my chest.
You know what I mean?
Like I see the River Card comment, I lose, I'm like, What the hell is going on here? How did I lose this? Whatever. And I can laugh at how
Unhinged I was behaving.
It's but it's not gonna be you know, it's not so but it's now not something that I'm just going, Okay, everything's fine, sure. Right. I think there's some value in sometimes just letting it out like Sean, you you had that thing in in the in the five tweet Tuesday the other day where it was um
What was the name of it? Start with a K. Something theory, which states that like if you write something down, if you if you have a problem and you just think the Kinlin's Law was basically like
Um
Like a problem well defined, like if you write down a problem, you've already half solved it.
Like if you actually can write it down inaccurate accurately, what is the problem?
You're already halfway to a solution at that point. Uh Daniel I wanna ask you about this.
One thing from that seminar,'cause when I was thinking about the Tony Robbins experience
They'll tell you something, but it's usually like an exercise you do.
There's some like thing you do that you wouldn't have wanted to do, but now you're sitting in the room and you signed up to be there and you paid the money and now you're here. So you go ahead and you do it.
And you kinda have this like
Moment of enlightenment that really only happened because you were actually immersed in it. You actually did a thing versus just listening to like an idea and you know it intellectually, but you didn't get to actually feel it.
Did they do anything? Was there an exercise that stood out to you?
There's tons. So
Yeah, the one that I did is called Choice Center, and there are plenty of people. There's a lot of crossover between Anthony Robbins himself and people that have done both, and they're you know, there's a lot of similarities, it sounds like in what you know, what you were doing. But as far as uh
You know, one specific one I think
Uh sort of
The root of that whole victim responsible idea.
the concept is that I remember, you know, there was a girl
Well, we she was young and she was partying whatever and we
you know, we were together, I was I loved her, whatever, but like
We broke up, okay.
And I had a story about how I was the victim.
you know, about how she did this, she did this, she was bad and all these types of things. So one of the exercises we did was we tell the story.
As a victim.
Okay, now you must retell the exact same story.
Or you're one hundred percent responsible for everything that happened.
Whoa, right? So now I have to retell it.
And all of a sudden, well, she did tell me this.
She didn't say this.
And all of a sudden you're I'm freed.
I'm freed of this victim story that's been a label to me as like woe is me, poor me. I'm like no.
I there the signs were there, the choices were not, you know the choices were there, and I'll say this.
after I did this course in two thousand thirteen, this woman who I was in love with in two thousand ten, eleven, okay
She came back to Las Vegas in two thousand. I even bought her a ring back then, I never gave her.
In two thousand ten, eleven. And I have I kept it in my safe for some reason. She came back to Vegas in two thousand nineteen.
And we're married now six years.
Yeah. We're married. She's uh yeah.
So
But a lot of that came from me sort of reevaluating.
The story that I had told myself, right? So
You know, that was probably one of the more impactful ones. And it it's like it's a long pro it's like a hundred day process, this course.
Mm. You know, you go to one weekend and you know, it's pretty intense another weekend and and you know, throughout the that's pretty impressive.
Yeah, you're doing coaching calls, you're doing all you actually learn how to coach other people. And you know, you sort of was speaking to this about
um writing down stuff because that's part of it, you know, the idea behind journaling as well. But one of the things you you know, on that note, like sometimes when I would coach other people,
You find that like
One of the questions you ask is like say you came to me for co for coaching.
And I said well
How would you coach yourself on this?
Mm-hmm. Right.
So then as you do that and you're like, Well, I would probably tell myself
This this this this and this and then you I just look at you go
There you go. You already know the answer, right?
You know, it's just like, but a good coach, what they do is they help ask good questions that sort of help, you know, get you to a place where you may I don't think a good coach is one that tells you what to do.
A good coach is to
set you up where you see, you tell me, you know, I'm I'm I'm helping you see what's possible so that you get there.
I like that a lot.
W when you um one of the things about poker is handling down swings. And I think that's not just a thing about poker, that's a thing about life. Now in poker, it's just very immediate and it's very
uh quantified. I lost this much money just now. Um my buddy uh back in college when I used to gamble
Uh a lot. My
Uh me and my buddy Dan, we would go to Vegas and we would go lose a bunch of money.
And we, you know, every once in a while would make enough money to keep us coming back to Vegas, but most of the time I would say we we didn't do well.
And I just remember him uh
The psychology
Of losing money is so
It gets you to act so strange. So one thing you were talking about was like you chase the loss, you know. I remember going back up to the room, he's going to the ATM machine. It's like bro, don't do it.
Uh, but he wants to do it. And then then he would lose money and then he would try to get the pit boss
to like comp em a breakfast or the room.
to like just salvage some dignity out of it. Or he would come back to the room and he would use all the toiletries and wear the robe as if he was getting the value back out of what he just lost. And he would look in the mirror in the hotel and remember he thought we were asleep.
He just goes.
Five iPhones. You lost five iPhones. He's hating himself in the mirror.
And I just remember thinking like man
We focus so much time, me and him, we used to focus so much time on the strategy of how to win.
And what actually we needed to be spending time on is the psychology of how to lose because there were always going to be downswings, and we handled them so poorly.
that our strategies went out the window.
And so I'm curious, Daniel, like what is the strategy of handling adversity or these downswings? What do you tell yourself and w what do you think is uh applicable to to people outside of the world of of poker? The downswings are probably the most important

Like how you deal with them is the most important part of becoming a professional poker player. And for me, I learned over the years we call them a breakdown, right? And typically with like a breakdown, things are going badly.
Mm.
That's an opportunity for a breakthrough.
When things are going fine, right, you're probably not really deal delving that much into your strategy. You're like, Okay, things are good, you know? But when things are going badly,
And things are going wrong.
It requires you to be more introspective. You have to go, Okay, what is really happening here? Let me dive deep.
Is there
Is what I'm doing working?
You know, is my ar is there anything I can do better?
What strategies can I adjust? What strategies can I change. And those usually come from breakdowns, whether it's in
Poker banned downstreams or life.
Right.
Like when you're in a downswing in in your life with whatever else, that's an opportunity for a breakthrough. You either say, Okay, this is the point where I'm at.
Am I gonna accept where I'm at?
You know, and just woe is me.
Or
Is now the time.
to reinvent myself, to try a new you know, a new angle or or or try to do things differently to get myself to a better place. And often, you know, people call it rock bottom, right? So if you're a
you know, an addict or something, you know, that's
Getting by
People look at that and say, Well, this person's not gonna be helped until they hit rock bottom. Cause what's rock bottom? Rock bottom is the decision point. This is it, right?
I'm either gonna die here like this.
Or
You know.
Some change has to happen.
There's a a quote from JK Rowling about this. I don't have you guys ever heard the her talk about rock bottom?
No, just D K Rowling who wrote Harry Potter and you know, billionaire author, right?
Uh, so she said this thing about when she was I think she had been um
And so she said,
I was set free because my greatest fear had already been realized.
I was still alive.
I still had a daughter I adored and I had an old typewriter and a big idea.
And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
That's beautiful. That's so well said. Yeah.
essentially concapulates what we're sort of talking about. Where
I think like
The most impactful
stages of your life. And like for me too, even with the
Like going to that course, right?
It required me to be in a place where I had that
Lost love.
That breakup, that painful experience.
Of you know, losing someone that I loved.
And I was at a at a low point. So I went out and I said, Okay, well, let's do something. Then boom.
completely shifted my relationship with that event.
And then eventually
Became the man.
That could look past
you know, our differences back then and realize like I'm responsible for this relationship working and now we're happily married. You know, and I and I constantly think of those things. Like
It was one of those courses. I don't know if it's similar for you with the Tony Robbins thing, but
Um
I still use in practice a lot of the things that I learned there on a daily basis.
Like I'm not
perfect by any stretch. I still have my bad times, but I f I recognize them more quickly.
But I'm being
an idiot or jerk or arrogant or whatever, I notice it faster.
You know, and I'm able to shift out of it. It's like uh I remember thinking afterwards, I was like, dude, I feel like Neo in the Matrix, but I but th I thought that was like, you know, new matrix, he's seeing everybody else. But it's actually just seeing yourself. It's like you see, oh
I'm just acting this way because of this thing. Oh, I'm saying these words.
Instead of saying I have to go do this, I get to go do this, right? Little shifts.
Right. Two word shift, right? Like I I gotta go I have to go pick up my kids. No, I get to go pick up my kids from school right now on this bike and we're gonna spend time to like this is amazing.
Um you know, me five years ago what killed for this. And now it's a now it's a have to. I what what's going on here?
And so you get curious about those things.
Um
So I totally I I totally agree with that. And you know
I think we came onto this podcast thinking like, hey, there's gonna be
Some
poker lessons, you know, as in like, oh we can learn about, you know, poker and the the art of bluffing and reading and all that. But
It you know, this turned into a a um a a podcast about the mine, right?
Right.
Can I ask you about your content diet? What do you read and listen to on a on a daily or weekly basis? Because I f I find your attitude
Uh
Interesting. And I wanna like
I wanna be inspired by the same things that inspire you.
Well, I'll tell you, I mean, nothing recently, but one of the books that I loved. It was such a simple book.
It's by Don Miguel Ruiz. It's four it's called the Four Agreements.
Yeah, I've heard a lot of people talk about it. It's such an easy read. You'll read it in five seconds. It's four basic principles. Number one, be impeccable with your word to yourself and others.
Number two.
You know, don't take anything personal. Number three, don't make assumptions. And number four, do your best. Do your best is the most important one.
'Cause the idea behind it is those three things you're gonna fail at.
Sometimes, right?
But as long as you're doing your best, you're in a good place. And the one being impeccable with your word.
That I take so seriously.
Not just for others and for myself, to the point where
If I said to you guys I'm gonna be here at nine AM
If I was here at nine oh four, I'd feel like it's a broken agreement.
That I did not keep my word, right? Many people go through life and like they just show up at nine oh four and it's like, hey, what's up, guys.
Don't acknowledge the fact
That
We had an agreement.
You failed on this agreement and you didn't even say anything. Listen, sometimes it's gonna happen. You're gonna be five minutes late, right? What does a response person do? Listen.
I acknowledge I'm late. Very sorry about that. No excuses. Don't tell me about your kid and the hair dryer.
I'll I'll I'm committed to in the future making sure that I'm on time.
You know?
That you can respect, right? But somebody who's just always fifteen, twenty minutes late.
And think it's no big deal.
They're disrespecting your time.
And I don't trust their word when they say to me
I'll be there at nine.
I'm terrible at that. Not just the timing thing, but the
Keeping your word to yourself.
I'm pretty good actually about keeping my word to other people, but keep my word to myself is like
Well, I'm I'm the judge, the jury, and the executioner. So I you know, I can always let myself off the hook.
Like I I have a I have a food coach, so I'm trying to get in great shape and it, you know, obviously I had a personal trainer, but most of getting in great shape is controlling, you know, what you eat. And so
She calls me every day at uh 1045 and she says, like, hey, like, how did yesterday go? We'd have to talk through it's food therapy, basically, for 10 minutes a day.
Every morning.
And
In that there's all there's all these little things where it's like
I tell her, hey, I'm gonna do this. I'm deciding I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna have this at this time. And then tonight I'm not gonna late night snack or anything. I'm gonna get to bed on time.
Next day.
Uh you know, I did um
W see the thing b there was all these like crackers out and like I didn't even actually think about it, but like I was actually kinda hungry and is all these compromises and she was just like
The amount of energy
You space she like let me kind of realize like man
It's not about the
Crackers are the chips that you're having. Sure, that's that's not gonna kill you.
This chip's not gonna kill you.
But being the guy who breaks his word to himself all the time
Like that actually will kill you.
You will let yourself down and not even trust yourself.
'Cause you don't believe what you say.
And that has been like uh like ironically like one of the things that I've struggled the most at and like
I'm trying to overcome this year. And if I do that, it's like wow, then
I do learn to play the piano better and I do l do better with my companies. I do do better with this because I become a type of person who
I trust myself that if I say something
That's what it's gonna be.
And that I won't renegotiate and relitigate these things myself. And the problem is I'm a very persuasive person, so I can persuade myself back into anything.
But I don't wanna use that, you know, use that s that skill against myself.
We have um a bunch of guests on the pod, like
W Sean and I aren't particularly like

Big investors or anything, but we love having investors on like um
You know, the mo we haven't had'em on, but the most famous example of this is Warren Buffett and how
He really can teach you about life.
uh via investing.
And it's very evident that you are in that same category where it's not necessarily the poker thing that is the interesting part about you. Poker is just your vehicle for showing that you have mastery over your own emotions and your own uh um and you you're you're a master in emotional intelligence. And so it's really cool to hear your perspective on these things because
I'm not gonna play poker.
But you've said of many, many things that will change my life just in a non poker field.
Well, I appreciate you saying that. And like I said, I I'm a big believer in sort of what you're saying is like looking at successful people, listening to how they got there. There's value in there. This isn't me telling you this is what you need to do with your life. I'm sharing what's worked for me.
Right. And if you hear some of those things and you think, Oh, you know what? That would be something that we've, you know, something beneficial for my life. That's kinda how I look at other successful people too. But we we didn't get to talk about this, but I I do want in the research this came up and I was like, that was really cool of him. So it's a compliment to you, which is
Um you were talking about the young players.
And you're like, I never wanted to be that guy who was the old head criticizing the way all the young players are playing now and how the how it's ruined the game and blah blah blah.
And you you've talked about I you said something like
You know, I get really curious. I want to learn from them. I want them to coach me as much as I'm coaching them. And I thought, Man, that's a great attitude. I I see that in so many
In basketball that happens, it's sort of always criticizing the younger generation.
And just saying like they you know, they don't get it, they've ruined the game, that it's all change, it's not the same anymore.
And I thought that was a pretty cool attitude you had, and I wanted to give you a compliment on that. I remember where it really happened when I was like twenty two, twenty three, and I was really grinding and I'm working hard and I'm playing with some big names, you know, like
Established guys.
And I could see they were scoffing at some of the stuff I was doing. And in my under my breath, I'm like, buddy
I'm already better than you.
By a lot. You know, you got that cocky young energy. And I reminded myself in that moment, never be the guy.
Who's you know the older guy who looks at the young and the different things they're doing and scoff and go, Ha, look at these dummies. So
every three to four years, I'll update my own software, my mental software, by learning the things that they're learning. Now I combine that with the wisdom that I have of thirty years.
And I become really powerful as a player, but the it requires humility.
'Cause let's say you were in the top in two thousand four and you think you still are today?
Just because?
Rest on your lords. No the day you stop.
Learning.
Is the day everyone else starts to surpass you because they're gonna continue to learn and you're stuck here. New new ideas, new solvers, new approaches, they're always gonna advance. And if you don't advance with them, you get worse by
By definition.
Because everyone else is getting better.
That's awesome. Daniel, thanks for coming on, man. Really appreciate it.
You got it, guys. It was fun.
All right, we appreciate you. Um That's it. That's the pod.
I feel like I can rule the world, I know I can be what I want to
I put my all in it like my day song On a road less travel never looking back