if you didn't make progress in 2025, listen to the first 10 minutes

0:00 Wanna show you something that's honestly changed my life. Have I showed you this? Five year diary. No. Okay, so let me explain how this works. I'm so jealous that I did not invent this journal. So basically here's how my five year journal works. I um on every single page it says like, you know, December first, and then it has

0:23 The first year, the second year, the third year, the fourth year, the fifth year. Oh Yes. I'm interested. You took this journaling thing from like, oh great. The most boring topic ever, journaling. Two Oh wait, that's pretty cool. I kinda want one. I started doing this in November, uh, like a week the week of Thanksgiving, actually. And so you boys get into last year's entries. Like a week ago, you mean?

0:48 I started doing it. A year ago last year. Oh, last year. Okay. I've talked about this three times now. This is the third time. This is the first time it's clicking. But the reason it's been very special this week because I'm getting to my previous year's uh entries and I had purposely did not like look ahead to like see to remind myself. Right. Do you wanna know something, the biggest takeaway?

1:06 I Don't change. Like what do you mean like

1:13 Your habits or what you're doing or how you feel. I have complained about the same stuff for ten or fifteen years. And I have previous journals. Where I've I look back and I'm like

1:27 I've complained about the same things. Give give me an example. What what do you mean? So uh like is the way that I'm spending time right now, is it even worth it? Is working on this business even worth it? Do I wanna go all in on being create creating content or do I wanna go all in on being behind the scenes? Right. Where should I live? Basically I complain about the same things all the time. Why did I lose my temper today and make myself look stupid? Why didn't I pause for like ten seconds and like reflect before I like, you know, snapped at like my wife or a a kid or something. And I think I've concluded a few things. One, humans don't change. Actually changes re let me rephrase that.

2:02 I've concluded that change is unnatural. Change is not natural. Like it's it's inertia's natural. Yeah, right. Inertia's the default. And so you can change. And I actually have changed like a bit a lot of big things in my life. And I was thinking about what causes change. And I think a good representation of what causes change is in business, typically this happens at the 10 million mark. The difference between ten million and a hundred million a year business

2:27 Oftentimes is systems. So I think it typically comes down to hiring great people and creating great systems. And the reason why I love business is because it kind of teaches you a little bit about life. And what I'm learning about my own life is that the moments that I've changed most in my life is when I've had a system

2:44 And this a good system, what it does, ta it makes it more predictable by taking away how you feel at the moment. The way that you feel on any moment should have nothing to do with the actions that you take to get you to the goals that you've set. So for example, the times that I've lost the most weight and gotten the most fit. is when I had an accountability uh a nutritionist like holding me accountable or I had a trainer who I had to see. Or I was following a plan. stagnated most of my life is when I've not had a plan and I let my feelings on that day dictate what I do.

3:15 During my schedule. When I have a good company, you your salespeople have scripts that they follow. They have checklists for follow ups. They spend the early morning doing outbound.

3:26 the middle of the morning is doing follow up emails and it's like a system. And I just wanted to talk about like A, do you have this? And B, we should talk about some of the systems that we've implemented in our lives that have actually made real change. Because I think the key to living a successful life, not just money, but like success defined as getting what you want. Is creating a system. Mm-hmm.

3:48 I mean you brought up a Pretty amazing topic. I think you started with The journal, which again is just an incredible the year over year journal, which I think is incredible. It's basically a time machine. 'Cause you get to see where you were.

4:01 And so it like forces perspective. Which you wouldn't normally get. Um The vulnerability of being like, dude, I don't change. I'm the same complaining, you know, mother effer that I've been for the last, you know, ten years. I think that's really funny and honest. And then you have the systems thing. Now ja the the best quote of this, I think comes from James Clear or whoever he got it from in his book Atomic Habits.

4:24 Which is, you know, we don't rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems. You see this everywhere. Everywhere. I see it in my business. I see it when I'm coaching basketball. I see it in my fitness life. You see it everywhere, which is that you don't become what you want. You don't become your potential, that's for sure. You become what we regular you know, you become what you regularly do. The old uh I think the Aristotle quote.

4:46 You know, we are what we what we do repeatedly. And so what do you do repeatedly? You do what's what's autopilot. You do what's defaulted. You do what you have on a automated basis and not What's based on how you're feeling in the moment, which is like if it was a graph, it'd be up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down. And so I think you're I mean You're spot on that this is inside the company and outside, uh outside of any of your uh work stuff. It's two things.

5:11 Let me give an example. Here's what I wrote about on twelve five of last year. I said Yeah. I'm one text message away from going Amish. I'm so sick of digital distractions.

5:22 It's a drug. When I and then I throw it I had this other section. I'm like When I hang out with all these like successful people I have to remember my roots.

5:31 I'm just a punk rock skateboarding redneck from Missouri, and I shouldn't get caught up in this fancy stuff or wanting to achieve all this fancy stuff. That's an example. And the reason I'm bringing up the digital stuff and being distracted is I wrote about that three weeks ago in this same thing. Right. So There's one thing I think that goes underneath that comes before the system, right? Cause you're basically saying like you need a plan, you need a goal, and then you need a system that's gonna get you to the goal.

5:54 um reliably, right? A system that if you just follow that you know Sorta the m the mechanics, the physics of the system. leads you to a certain outcome. And I think that's very true. But there does seem to be like A couple things underneath that. One is

6:10 The blueprint. So figuring out what to want. 'Cause if you set up your systems towards getting some to to get a gold That wasn't the goal that actually would change the feeling that you want. Um You'll be perpetually on the hamster wheel. This happens a lot in business, right?

6:25 We get a promotion. And then you immediately are like, uh still feel kind of the same stressed, anxious, you know, version of myself. So um You know, I just need a little more and that'll be the solution. Right. So like Figure out the right thing to want.

6:39 Because then it says. Cool, let me build my systems in that direction. And I think That's a very uncomfortable place to be is figuring out what you actually want in life. Cause it sounds like it should be so simple. That's the hardest part, right? The hardest part.

6:51 You can't optimize for a goal without a goal, and we spend most of our time worrying about the optimization. Yeah, or like you know the goal like did you pick a goal that's actually gonna get you uh again, like You never want the thing. You want the feeling you think the thing is gonna get you. Right. You don't want

7:08 to have the fancy watch or the car, you don't want to have the promotion, you don't wanna have that relationship. You want the feeling you think you'll have if you were in a great relationship. You want the feeling you think you'll have if your team wins the game. You want the feeling you think you'll have If you are driving that car instead of this piece of junk, right? And so It's the feeling that you're chasing. And if you're not very good at understanding the f your own feelings and And practicing having the feelings that you want.

7:30 You're not just gonna have them when the thing happens. We do we just adapt too quickly. And your your base nature. Your emotional home is too strong. So when you say I'm compla I'm I'm complaining about the same things. I would guess.

7:43 that it's not that you're literally complaining about the same things, it's that you're having the same feelings. About some variety of problem Uh, you know, some some same genre of problem, but it's the same the feeling is almost identical. Yeah, exactly.

7:57 So what do you think you should do about that? I think a few things. I think that w the way that I'm feeling now, correct me if I'm wrong. Do you feel this exact same way? Or have you had the same issue? I've had the same issue. I don't know what you're feeling right now, but Yeah, I mean like this this this this um Uh I don't change fast enough or I'm not coaching myself fast enough and I'm not adapting. I think more often than not

8:19 The listener and you and me. We don't need to be taught new stuff. We just need to be reminded of the same thing that we already know. I think that we don't give enough credit to reminders.

8:31 So let me give you an example. I read Or when I'm not when I'm a newborn. I read a book a week probably. I read a lot. I love reading. It's great. It's so like I get so much joy out of it. Now, uh there's been so many times that I've read a book.

8:45 And it'll be on like something um a president or something. And then you ask me a year later, I really just can't remember much about that president. I can't tell you about the thing. And I think that I think that A lot of times.

8:57 We go too wide. And we consume too much stuff versus the same thing over and over and over again to master and be reminded of the same thing over and over and over again. And so like another example could be when you're training an employee on like a sales process, I think the majority of the time You have to repeat yourself like seven, eight, nine, ten times in a sales meeting. So you have to do it like if you have like a daily sales stand up, you have to have phrases that people can remember constantly because I don't think they need to be taught what to do. I just think they need to be reminded constantly.

9:29 So I think reminders are important. I also think that um A system? of of accountability. So When you hire employees for your business, or at least when I do I'm like, oh, I don't want to do that. I could just do this on my own. But I've noticed that when I hire employees from my company, I then feel like, well, now I have to keep feeding the system because now I'm held accountable and it's very painful, but I get significantly better results. And so when I back myself into a corner where I must perform and then and otherwise I'm gonna let others down, that's when I get the best results.

9:58 If you want to hit your goals, you need a system. And so I worked with HubSpot to put together a step by step process showing you How I use chat GPT as a life coach. So I uploaded my personal finances, my net worth, my goals. And the output is that I have this GPT that I can ask questions that I'm having Issues with in my life. Like how should I respond to this email? What's the right decision? Things like that. And it's literally changed my life. And so if you want that, it's free. We will send you everything you need to know to set this up in just about twenty minutes. And I'll show you how I use it. So check it out. The link is below in the description.

10:33 Back to the episode. Have I told you what I've been doing lately? I texted you something this morning. Uh so it's twelve fifteen. At eleven fifty five when I log in, I got this text from Sean. And it was this really good, like Instagram real, but it wasn't on Instagram. And it was Sean telling the story about how he has quit being a business person and is now fully focused on coaching a basketball team. Is that right? So here's the story of how I

11:01 Step down as CEO in my companies and I'm now a unpaid high school assistant basketball coach. This is a this is a decision I've made. They were high school kids. These guys look like they had beards. They're high school kids. So I love basketball, as you know. Uh one thing you probably don't know is that growing up I didn't watch cartoons. So you know how you're like you'll mention like Dolly Parton and I couldn't tell you who she is, or you'll be like, Yeah, you know that Elvis song? And I'm like, No, I don't really know. Well, that's also true if you ask me about Sesame Street.

11:27 Or rug rats. As a kid I never watched cartoons. What did you watch? World series of hookers. Home alone. Great movie. And I watch Mighty Ducks. Two, specifically. D two.

11:40 And um You know, these things you do as a kid, they sort of imprint on you, right? And so this idea of in the movie Mighty Ducks, Gordon Bombay. He's this hot shot lawyer who actually gets in like a D U I but gets assigned this like community service thing where he ends up coaching this hockey team. Uh in New York City or sub city and he's coaching You know, like the street kids that somehow also play hockey. Exactly. The business guy who grew up playing hockey but has given it up.

12:10 now has to go back into the world of of sport and he ends up being the coach to this shitty Uh ragtag group of kids, these underdogs. And Then they you know, they go on a run and they sort of make it to the top and he f you know, finds, you know, his love, his passion, he realizes like, Oh my god, like you know, this fills his cup. So I watched that movie a lot of times.

12:29 And I had always said, I don't know if I'd ever told you this, but I had said like you know, like Bucket list item. My retirement plan was to go coach. high school basketball team, at least for a year. And I tried convincing my brother in law, I was like, hey, what if we got like an AAU team? Can we do that? And I've been kind of like poking around, like, is there a way to do this? I think it would be really good for the soul. And um

12:49 The opportunity presented itself. About a month ago. where um the I hired a coach, a big on coaches, I hired a coach to train me in basketball just as like a workout. And so this guy used to train NBA players before the draft, things like that. And so I worked with him for like, you know, over the summer.

13:05 Did you get better? Yeah. I mean, of course you're better. You practice, you get better, right? Systems. So like I showed up three to two, three times a week. We practice the same things every time, the fundamentals, and guess what? Like you get better. Was it good exercise or did it hurt you? Oh dude, it's great exercise. It was um like you know, dr you're drenched with sweat, like which I would never get in the weight room type of thing. Same. I am and it's like you know it's like your full body, right?'Cause you can't make them like a move without like rotation. And you're doing like lateral movements and stuff like that. Things you want to do with in a stationary machine or or barbell.

13:34 So He tells me, he's like hey, um I don't think I'm able to coach you anymore. Uh I got this job. I'm now the like School starts in a week. I'm the head basketball coach. At this high school.

13:46 It's like small division five high school. I I didn't know the the divisions go to five, right? D one, D two, D three. All the way D five. So five is small. Five is very small. And so I was like, Okay And I was like So you need an assistant? I just said it jokingly and he's like Yeah actually like I don't have any like the

14:04 There's no staff. So yeah, I'm a first time coach. I would love That's just So I told him I was like, dude, I'll I'll I'd love to show up maybe once a week. And I just thought this would be Something I would do just the way I do everything.

14:16 Half ass, baby. I thought that I would make a make a f a fun commitment in the moment and then sort of back away over time. Things that I've done many times with many cool ideas in my life. But this year I'm trying to be a different guy. Right. I said I'm gonna play the piano, and guess what? I sit there and I practice scales and I play the piano four times a week and I'm getting good at it and I'm doing the boring things and I'm sticking with it. I'm not giving up. And so I did the same thing with this. I was like, I'm gonna show up. And dude, when I tell you that this is the most fun thing I've ever done in my life.

14:45 I am not lying. This is incredible. So now I'm going I'm spending like Fifteen hours a week doing this. I'm I'm basically going to practice four days a week. I commute, which I wouldn't you know me, I would never commute. It's like a I don't even know you had a driver's license. It's a thirty, forty minute drive. I am basically coaching these kids from Yeah, the beginning of the season tryouts.

15:07 We just had our first game last night. Uh first like official game. And um I the video I showed you was our first preseason game. We got smashed by thirty. And then

15:17 Yeah, four days later we had our first real game and we actually just won. We won by thirty last night and we like did a Gatorade dump on the coach'cause it was his first win. And here I am, this assistant. Basketball coach. In you know, in the office when Dwight's like I'm assistant regional manager. They're like, No, no, you're assistant to the regional manager. That's what I'm I'm assistant to the head coach is really the more more accurate way of saying this. And I'm so emotionally invested in the entire process. You would not believe like me, I'm so invested in these kids. I'm so invested in.

15:46 getting them better day by day, system by system, habit by habit. I'm breaking down game film. Of like, you know. Other high school teams that we're gonna play. I'm sending clips. I'm we have a kid who who was struggling in school and got kicked off the team and I'm helping him with this math homework trying to get him back on the team. Like I am so in it's it's not even funny. So are you I I don't know much about sports, um or at least basketball. I don't know much about basketball.

16:12 Can you tell a player to make minor changes and it actually impacts the game? Or is it just like if you're seven foot tall, you're gonna win? Well th this is why I brought this up. So you were talking about repetition reminders. Habit systems. Well

16:27 Sport are of course the great teacher of life. It's this little petri dish. It's like a simulation of life, right? You you as an individual, you working with a team, you going up against competition, you facing defeat regularly. And you getting to go to practice and then seeing if that translates into the real world, right? And There have been so many things where we would tell the kid something and then the first scrimmage would happen and we would just get our butt kicked.

16:49 And it's like we told them this. We that's the exact thing we've been telling them. And then we had to be take a step back as coaches and be like Oh, that's because the job is to drill this fifty times. Yeah. We did one of fifty. And our perspective was wrong, which is that oh, I'll tell them once and then they'll get it and then they'll just do it live in action when the moment happens. Like No, you won't. You will default. Inertia, baby, you will default to the thing

17:12 That you already do, the old you. And so I so now we t we took you know, as coaches we're basically giving this mindset of like All right, we're gonna if this matters. You can only tell them two or three things that matter. You can't give them fifteen things to change at once.

17:25 So like pick one to three things. And then let's be honest, we're gonna need to say this fifty times with the same level of enthusiasm. And we're not gonna get discouraged if it doesn't happen at number, you know, forty two,'cause it takes fifty. And that's like the mindset as a coach, but it's the same thing in your own life, which is like You seek progress, not perfection.

17:45 And reminders matter a hell of a lot more than some new strategy, some new play, some new thing that nobody's ever done before. You want that. You want some new answer. 'Cause you're like, maybe I was just missing the thing. And actually no, it's because I didn't internalize the thing the answer that was already on my plate. Right. And that reminders, like you said, are extremely undervalued to the point where Not only are reminders undervalued, they're sort of discriminated against.

18:09 Reminders are like, you know, the minority class of of of self help, right? Because When you tell somebody something that they already know, what's their reaction? It's not like Oh that's helpful. I know. I know that.

18:22 Right. It's defensive. Mm-hmm It's like that's that clearly can't be important because I already know it. And it's like no, it's coming back up again because it's that important. Dude, this is is A, this is hilarious. This has happened, uh I don't know if the listener can tell this. This has happened so many times where you and I come with the same exact thing, not even realizing it. If if you're an entrepreneur listening to this, you are gonna be nodding your head. But how many times have you

18:44 said to come up with a a brilliant idea and gone to your company and in all hands that says, This is what we are doing now and it is new and it is different. So many times, right? Yeah. And I've come to the conclusion that A company can basically only do one New project.

19:03 Maybe per quarter, but definitely but it could be every six months. And when I say project, I mean something relatively small, like for us. We had never advertised before. Now we're starting to advertise. It's like just do meta. Just do meta and get really good at that. And you think Well, we should advertise on meta on LinkedIn. We should advertise, we should buy podcast ads, we should do this, we should do that. It's like no no no, just that one thing and let's really master it and it's gonna take six months.

19:28 And so It's kinda funny that you're you're hearing that like I don't know About basketball, but what what are you telling them to do? Just that one thing, or those you said three things. What are those three things? Okay, these are a little bit nerdy basketball things, but here here here's one. Something called playing off two feet.

19:46 So The way that uh how do I explain this? If it's not like Okay. And nor when you play basketball normally and you go but just playing by yourself, there's no defense. You're like, Oh, I'll go do a lip. So you run in.

19:56 And you jump usually off one foot and you go shoot a layup. And that's great when there's nobody there. When there's defense. Um that's a lot harder to do because not only are there people in the way, but When you jump off one when you just run and jump off one foot, you commit to like that path being the only thing you can go do. And so what we have is a lot of undersized guys, right? Like our point guard is like I don't know, five seven or something like that, right? We don't have like

20:20 six, four athletes that are just gonna be dunking and finishing at the rim across the board on our team. We have like I think one guy who can dunk pretty much. And so We um Uh We had to teach them that there's this other way of playing.

20:33 Looks a little less sexy. Um, but is really effective, which is when you get into the paint and you're amongst the giants and the crowd. You come to what's called a jump stop. So you just land on both feet and now you have options. You can pass, you can pivot, you could shoot, you can step through, you can do you can do a bunch of things, but you're more under control. It's almost like a slower way to play. And it's not what you practice when it's not what you do. When there's no defense there. When there's no defense there, you just kind of naturally will go do this. But guess what? In the real game, there's always defense there.

21:01 So we're gonna do things. We're gonna practice like what happens in the game. And we're gonna do things that match our athleticism. And this is a habit that you guys don't have. And so we're going to like drill this not once, not twice, but every single day. You're gonna get reps at doing this and you are gonna hear us say the same phrase. Play off two, play off two, play off two. You're gonna hear that till you hear it in your dreams. Right. So that'll be like one of the like core principles that it's like

21:26 That's a change we need to make, right?'Cause Change requires that level of like repetition. to do a new b new behavior. You're gonna say it until someone hears it in their dreams. That's what we have to that's exactly what I'm meaning about reminders. You have to It's like c that's so funny. Number two is what? And and by the way, the the actual test is you say it till you hear them saying it to each other.

21:47 Once you once they're saying it to each other, your job as the coach has like, you know, you have successfully incepted the idea into them. This happens also as a CEO, right? Like Whether it's habits and how we do meetings or whatever, or it's like What matters, what are the priorities. You know you've done it well when they're saying it to each other. Okay, I used to do this test with companies like if I would invest in them or if they were running into trouble.

22:09 And they'd be like, Yeah, we're you know, we're trying to do X. And almost always in there, the little magic trick you can always pull. Is you take you know, let's say They have a uh It doesn't matter how many people. It could be like just their top five executives, or it could be, you know, fifteen people at their company. You say, Hey everybody, I would like you to write down

22:26 The top three priorities of the company. What actually matters right now. And then you look at the CEO and you see the CO start to realize like, Oh shit. We are not on the same page. Like I have not done a good job. They don't even forget doing it. They don't even know what we're supposed to be doing.

22:42 I have not even c uh successfully communicated the priorities. 'Cause everybody what what they'll do is basically They will focus on their problems. My little problems in my part of the world. Or recency.

22:55 What's the most recent fire that somebody put on in uh on my plate? And like that's just the thing I'm thinking about. I kind of forgot about all the other shit we talked about at that. at that all hands or at that meeting or at that off site or whatever the thing was where we made our plans. And so This is the same thing and whether it's a team or whether it's a sports team or it's a it's a company. Today's episode is brought to you by HubSpot. Did you know that most businesses only use 20% of their data? That's like reading a book, but then tearing out four fifths of the pages.

23:21 Point is you miss a lot. And unless you're using HubSpot, the customer platform that gives you access to the data you need to grow your business, the insights that are trapped in emails, call logs, transcripts, all that unstructured data makes all the difference because when you know more, you grow more. And so if you want to read the whole book instead of just reading part of it, visit hubspot.com. I heard this story about um NASA in the nineteen sixties before we went to the moon. They had this amazing leader and they're telling the story about how they knew he was amazing. And this one reporter sees a janitor. uh mopping the floor at the NASA center. And he goes, Sir, what are you doing here? And he goes, I'm helping us get to the moon. And

23:58 That was like the best story ever because like they all knew the mission. Like we all are playing a part in getting us to the moon. Right. By the way, there's like such funny things that happen. Like uh one kid like came to practice like ten minutes late and we're like, dude, she can't be late. And he was like um

24:14 He's like, sorry, I was at work and then we look at his hands, hands are covered in grease. Like he's a mechanic, I guess. He's like our point guard's like a mechanic. Then he comes to practice. And like this other guy, you know. Dude, wait, in high school, he's a is he's they have like jobs, you know. Does he like it? Dude, our best player's name Vinny, yes. Fucking A, man. Vinny's amazing. Um like vin Vinnie Yeah, so so anyways, um There's all these little things where you're like, Oh You forgot what it's like to be, first of all, like a teenager. Se yeah, f but secondly, you forgot like how much of the basic habits have to be installed in somebody that will serve them not just here, but also like whatever they do. Right. Cause most of our guys are not going to be in the NBA, right? None of them.

24:55 So It's how do I teach you something that's useful today for you? On this team, so we win and have fun. But that's like a master skill that's gonna serve you in the future. Right? Like I'm not I'm not doing my Gordon Bombay if I don't actually do both for them. Do you think how much percentage of a difference? Will um

25:13 So let's just say your hypothetically let's say your team is a five out of ten, just average. Yeah. Good coaching, what do you think that would change? I think it I think good coaching can take a five out of ten team to an eight.

25:27 Which is great. Which is dramatic. Yeah. I think um in my leadership position in my career. I think I've only been average.

25:37 And I've seen great And I've particularly love reading military books, like about Navy SEALs and stuff like that. And I think I get good examples of what a good leader looks like. And I think the the the difference with Uh all else being equal. Like I've read um

25:51 Like I think Jako has this story about um He's got this book, I forget what it's called, something leadership. And he talks about the story about how they would during buds or like, you know, the week where you become a seal. They have uh like six different groups of like eight guys carrying the rafts on their back and they have to erase.

26:08 And they assign leaders. And all they do is they change the leaders after each race. And what they notice is that the leader is determined Determines whether it's a The boat wins or not. Not the other

26:20 Seven guys lifting the boat. Right. And when I heard that example, I was like, I'm not that leader at this moment, and I have to become one. Because I think the difference is not f I think it's more than From a five to an eight.

26:34 Like Almost a ten. Because I I just I just I just think that leadership is so important and it's just so challenging because it's one of these things where If you're like you and I, you think, Oh, I'm charismatic, I'm probably already good. I don't need to I don't need to learn.

26:48 Like I can convince people to do stuff. Or I'm an idea guy. My ideas are good. That's just not the case. Just like basketball, it's a skill. Learning how to get teams to operate effectively, it's a skill. And I'm learning all of this like in real time, and it's been very challenging. I'll give you an example. That

27:03 We I took from the pod. So I think you were on here and you were talking about company values. You're like, Oh, and Hampton we're trying to And you were saying like Here's what I think they're gonna be. And then I was kinda pushing back, like, Yeah, I kind of expected it to be like this. And you were like, Yes, okay, let me and you were you were working through it. So Right after I got off the pod.

27:21 I Drive over to I grab my whistle. And we clip board over to basketball practice. And when we get there, I was like, Hey, it's the start of our season So I'm telling Danny our coach, I was like, Hey

27:32 I think we should install like the kind of Two or three things that we hang our hat on. What are we what are we all about? And then in but in sport they call this like your your team's identity. Right. So there was like all these famous teams that had a real identity. So it'd be like The bad boy pistons. It was in the name. You already knew they were tough.

27:49 They were mean, they had a nasty streak. And you could not push them around. Right. They would push you around. They were the bad boy pistons. Uh in the modern day there's like um Heat culture is a big one. So the Miami Heat are known to be this team

28:02 Where they do they they they hold a standard almost like military. So for example, they're the only I think they're the only NBA team that that does this where You get tested on weight. And body fat. Every single week. And you're either find or you don't get to play.

28:18 If you are not keeping your like doesn't matter who you are. If you're the star player, like you can't cut you know, can't just coast by on your talent. And so they demand and they they demand it from day one. So it's like by the time you show up to training camp, you need to already be in shape. You don't come to training camp to get in shape. And that's just a known thing that that's their standard. And so it doesn't matter w what what it was like where you played before, when you go there You already know what they're all about. You've heard the stories.

28:43 And so you gotta buy in or you're gonna be out. It's one way or the other. And so we so we so we go there and our first day we do it all wrong. We're like okay, what do we You know, it's all about playing hard. So uh effort. Effort is gonna be one of our things.

28:58 So we tell them that at the beginning. We tell them three values. Effort's the first one, then we had two others. All right. Right. So you get to the you get to the end of practice. Coach had to leave like the athletic director wanted to talk to him. So he's like

29:09 Coach Sean will uh Uh we'll we'll we'll we'll finish up the practice. Like me, that's me. Wait, I'm I'm coaching. I don't know I don't know what to do here. Uh okay, let me let me go ahead and help these guys out. So As we're finishing up. Um I just huddle them up and I'm like

29:23 All right, how did we do today on those we started the practice saying we're gonna be this is our I team identity, these three words. And I was like, Who can give them to me? Couldn't they couldn't even remember, right? They got one of the three. So they got effort as the only one of the three that they remembered. And they were like They wanted to remember, they just couldn't remember. So this is it's like to your to your thing about repetition and reminder, right? Like it's super important.

29:45 I was like, so how do we do on effort? And they were like Yeah, some guy was like You know, kinda like a nod with a shrug, like a pretty good Another guy just shook his head no.

29:55 With no explanation. Um you know, another guy was like, Yeah, it was good effort. And then I was like, Oh Remember what I was telling Sam, which is like Facebook's value was move fast and break things. It wasn't just like Um

30:08 It wasn't just like Speed. Which everybody could be like, Yeah, we're moving fast. It's like no no no are you moving fast and like are you moving so fast you're breaking things? 'Cause if you're not, then you're not even playing at our speed. So what's yours?

30:22 Oh, if we just said the word is effort. Then like Some effort's fine, I guess. K pretty good efforts fine. Like wait, guys, what is it? Is it pretty good effort, whatever? And there's one kid on the team who always beats everybody in the sprints. He's not the most talented kid.

30:35 But he's he plays the hardest and in when we make them run He always finishes first. His name's Max. And I was like, Oh, perfect. I go. All right, we have a new standard. called max effort.

30:46 And I was like, If you're not playing as hard but like it's like a pun, right? But I was like, If you're not playing as hard as Max It's not effort. That's not a that's not what we do. We play with max effort. And so that's the only one of the three that's stuck. Because it was like a campaign slogan and it like worked. You know, it's like it is actually like a bar you could pass fail.

31:03 Whereas most of the other values were like, Yeah, like We wanna be really competitive. It's like all right, we were kind of. There's no pass fail. You can't test it. Versus everybody knows did I actually go at max effort today or not? It's like a very simple pass bell. And so taking these things from one, you know, from business and trying to apply it here has been very, very interesting.

31:22 Yeah, I think that we have we I think that we Think about marketing to customers when we should be marketing to ourselves and our teams and our families. So

31:33 Like You know, this sounds I roly, but my wife and I are like Should we have values for our family? Like what what should we Because we're we're at the age now where our children are just now old enough where we're able to Form tradition. Yeah.

31:47 And we're like, what traditions should we have? You know, what do we like want to teach them? And so I joke with my daughter w where we do daily affirmations. I say, um Repeat after me. I'm bold, I'm tough, and I won't conform to anyone. That's like that's like her daily affirmations because clearly I care about like, you know, that type of stuff.

32:05 But we had to sit down and we're like all right, well what collectively should we care about so we can teach our kids and also like what traditions can we have? And I was thinking, I was like, Well, I have these things. I have what I call my four F's, family, fitness, finance, fun. And that's like the categories that I value or I weigh myself on. I need to have that for my family and I need to have that for other parts of myself. So if I'm being a weak leader, I need to come up with a cool phrase that I can remind myself

32:32 In times of like I wanna revert back to you know, old me in order to create change. This whole episode is about change. Uh and I think that something these cute phrases I'm telling you, I just dismissed them by calling them cute phrases. I'm trying to make myself feel better here, but they they work. They work they work so much.

32:50 Um at Hampton we have this thing called the three Cs commitment, candor and confidentiality. And that and so we have to repeat it. We have found roughly six times to our customer for them to understand and rem remember the three Cs. And so It all has to be in a memorable format.

33:07 So I was um kinda studying this last night. So I was like, How do you actually do it? Because you said that, right? They need to be memorable. All right, Sam, tell me how you make'em memorable, right? So it's like uh you cotta like

33:20 Well there's a couple frameworks. But like I'm not an expert on that. I don't think you're an expert on that. And we actually care about this and we should be good at this. We're like Actually pretty good at writing and pretty good at talking. It's kind of a what we do for a living. And even we aren't like

33:34 That far ahead. Okay. So who is great at this? Who's who's in what group of people is amazing at this? I don't know. Marketers? Marketers. So the people who come up with specifically slogans. Yeah.

33:48 Um w another one that's like where where is it life or death? Where do you have to be great? Military or police. Military and politics. You gotta get elected. Right. And so make America great again. Right. Okay. Okay. That's a that's a that's a thing that if he repeated it a thousand times, but it was enough to s to stick. It was polarizing, it was interesting, it was repeatable, it was like something you could get behind.

34:09 So I was studying this last night and there's this um Phrase called it I don't even know how you s pronounce this. Chiaasmus. C H I

34:19 A M. US. Alright, so here's an example of one. Sam, if I said the f the following phrase, if I said Um Ask not

34:28 What your country can do for you. What would you say next? That's what you could do for your country. Exactly. And that's a chiasmus. It's basically a sentence structure. That is

34:39 In earworm. I I don't even know when the when was that said. When was that phrase said? It was said like, you know, fifty years ago or something like that. J F K said it in like nineteen sixty three, I think. Yeah, exactly. So v this is, you know, more than fifty years ago, and yet off the tip of our tongue me and you can can say this phrase that was said

34:58 before like twenty years before we were alive. That's how powerful that phrase is. Okay. And so what is that structure? And it's basically this like if you break down the sentence

35:08 It's the th they say this A B B A structure. So the first part is About asking, right? So Ask not what Your and then it's your country can do for you. That's the B.

35:20 Then the B uh you know, then then you switch the order and basically Ask what you can do for your country, right? So you're gonna switch the center structure and there there's these two like Overall structure just like a Um you know. Uh A B B A and then there's like a

35:34 Uh uh A uh sorry, there's an A B B A and then there's like an A B A B, right? Or A B B A. And so it's like there's two structures that you could use. And so what you start to do is you start to find Two phrases. That

35:46 Individually. are valid. Okay. So for example. I don't know if you've seen that um podcast clip that goes viral where people d where it's just people are like, Oh my God. Pod I hate podcasts. Where there's that girl trying to be motivational and she says

36:01 Don't she's like. Don't love your job. Job your love. Oh yeah, the uh blonde hair lady. Yeah. And everyone's just like uh it's like the ultimate ground. And the reason why that cause doesn't work

36:14 Is because job your love doesn't make any sense. Right. Um And so you have to find two s two individual statements that make sense, like Asking what your country can do for you and what you could do for your country. Both are individually valid. Then you structure it this way and it becomes incredibly memorable. And if you go look at that JFK speech, There's like Three of them that he does have that same structure in the in that one speech if you go break that speech down. Yeah, here's another one. Let us never negotiate out of fear.

36:40 But let us never fear to negotiate. Exactly. And these sound beautiful, they're very satisfying to the mind. And when you understand how the mind works

36:49 You you see that the mind loves order. It love structure. If you look at how a be why is a face a beautiful face. Symmetry. Right. The more perfect the symmetry of the face, the more more beautiful the face to people.

37:01 Uh another example of this, the game Tetris. Why is the game Tetris so Addictive. Um why are games like Candy Crush and Tetris so addictive? Because they actually uh Like tap into this part of your brain. That's almost this uh cleaning instinct.

37:15 There's a mess. And then you put one block in the right place and it evaporates the mess. It creates order out of disorder. And the brain loves that. It's just wants to do it again and again and again. And this is the basis of the game design of Candy Crush and Tetris. And so you you know, the the brain likes what it likes. And so if you want to use you, you know, ch deciding to change your brain. Which is this like, you know, multi thousand years of evolution is very hard.

37:41 But just changing the structure of how you speak so that you tap into what the brain likes and give it what it wants so that it does become memorable, it does become sticky, and it has an effect. Is obviously the much better way to go. This is This is pretty profound. This is um

37:56 This is very fascinating. What did you read to learn this? When you said last night. You said last night, you said you're curious about this. Well, I started asking different questions. So I started asking the you know, I think I even said it earlier, which was like whose life depends on this? So anytime I want to get good at something, I try to figure out Who

38:14 For who uh this is a nice to have for me. Who is it a must have for? So let's say you want to lose weight. You would go look at the bodybuilders training for a bodybuilding competition. If you want to know the logical extremes of how you get the maximum muscle and the lowest body fat, go watch what they do. Yeah. Exactly. So for example, right now I'm writing the book.

38:35 And I told uh Diego yesterday, who's helping me, I go, you know I We're doing this process where I write in the morning and then I do a bit of a show and tell with them and I kinda show them what I'm doing and then I get feedback, but I'm like The problem with our feedback is I want you to like it.

38:49 So I want to show it to you. And then but I also want your honest feedback'cause I want to make this better. You're trying to be polite and not my feelings'cause you see that I tried very hard this morning. But you're also trying to help me make it better. And those two things are at odds with each other. And I was like, so I was like we don't even know how to give feedback in this way. That's like

39:08 Look, I need to be able to share So that I can get this better. But I don't need my emotions to swing based on, yay, they liked it, I did a good job. Oh, they didn't like it, I did a bad job. It's like That's so lame and a waste of energy. And on your end, you don't I don't need you having one part of your head saying

39:26 How do I say this? the right way. Cause I want to be nice and supportive versus like Hey, how can I tell you what I'm feeling? Or you know, you know, for giving feedback. So I was like this art of giving feedback on art, on something that's subjective. I was like, I don't know how to do this. And you don't know how to do this.

39:43 Who who definitely has already solved this problem because it's a must have for them. So I was like, Oh, let's text like a couple of people who are comedians because like I was like, I think comedians have to figure out like oh, is this funny or not? And once I've heard the joke once I've written the joke and looked at it twenty times, it's not funny to be anymore. I can't even tell. I'm too lost in the sauce. And so I was like, How do they do it? How do musicians do this? How do they play a song and I was like, Is this a good song?

40:05 I can't tell I kinda liked it, but now I've heard it ten times and I I can't tell anymore if this is any good. How do they get feedback? And so now we're gonna go find the peop Well, this is the new thing. I gotta go find the people to like Go learn. From the people for whom this is a must have. That's actually um

40:20 First of all there's the I keep talking to the listener today, but the there's of two or three takeaways. question of whose life depends on this. That's a great question. Uh And I'm v very curious, actually. I wanna know the answer. Because I uh I I create a little bit for a living. I wanna know how you know

40:37 If something's hitting. If I had a guess for A comedian? They would probably just say I perform it in small audiences and I suffer the pain of bombing. Right. Yeah, then that might be it for them and it's like, Oh, cool, so what's my version of open mic?

40:51 With twenty people and testing if it bombs. Can I do that in my world? Is there a way I could set that up? Okay, maybe if it's not that how do musicians do this? And you sort of start to figure out how well how do they do that? How do they get feedback? What's the language there? Pixar, I think, wrote this book, Creativity Inc, which is very Like they talk about the brain trust that they have of how they show Raw. kinda like not even the movie, but like a single scene.

41:12 And how they created a dynamic of trust. There's actually a great story of uh When Disney bougar. Pixar had been making hit after hit after hit, and Disney animation. had been just bombing for years.

41:26 And so they put the Pixar guys and charge that they were like, Great, like we'll merge these two companies and then we'll just start making hits like Pixar. Didn't they just like want to fire all the Disney people though? No, no, no. I think what he did at the beginning of the the the main guy, Ed Catmole, they were like, Oh, what a perfect A B test. What a perfect like you know randomized control test here.

41:44 So what they did was they didn't blend the teams together. They didn't move them together. So what they did was they kept the team separate. And then what he did was he basically took the Pixar method And he went and he taught it to the Disney folks. And he's basically like if we just took our process but not our people Could we make those same people

42:01 Who have been failing succeed. kinda to your question earlier of like how big of a lever is leadership is coaching. Like can it take a five and turn it into a ten? And they actually started creating hits. Once he taught them the process of ha of doing this. And for them, I think trust was like the underlying thing, which is like Um

42:18 If you don't have trust. You're not gonna share your work at the right times. You're not gonna be f g give real candid feedback. You're not gonna receive candid feedback in the right way because you distrust. What's going on? You think your project's gonna get killed. If it's bad. Or you think this guy's gonna come steal your thunder. If uh you know, if you let him and g collaborate on it, right? You have all these fears that are basically a lack of trust. And they once they installed their sort of like trust process, Disney animations started making hits too.

42:44 Well, and I think one of the um the other points from that book was he was like we have Hitmakers. It was like we got like these two or three people who are just typically more They're more right. Uh more often than other people. We listen to them. He did like a pretty fun funny thing about that. We should um

43:04 Okay, so for M FM we've done like a handful of challenges, like the M FM uh fitness thing. We should do like a give back thing because Tell me about I haven't like really given my time to give uh to others, which I don't know if you consider coaching.

43:19 Is it like uh you you rescued a dog, but you say the dog rescued you. Uh is it that type of thing. You thought that you were gonna go and you know, do it for these kids. My choice was selfish. I wanted to do it, I thought it would be fun, and it is very fun, and I do want to do it. So it's not like this like burden. I'm t I'm caring. At the same time. I had recently like in the last two years I'd given some money to charity. And

43:47 Felt nothing. Like So maybe I did some good in the world. Hard to know. You know, you give the money and it just goes in a black box mostly and then you know

43:55 Hopefully something good hopefully someone's life got changed from that in some positive direction. But I don't know and I didn't feel anything. So And didn't want to like triple down on that. And my trainer has this great thing he says, basically he always talks about he's like, Oh man He's like

44:10 Our economy. Our economy. And I was like, Why do you Talk so much about the economy, like Jim Cramer. Like what you what are you talking about over here with Okay You know Powell. You know, what are you talking about? The interest rates in the economy? What what are you what are you talking about? He's like no he's like

44:25 Us, he's like me and you and my other clients and with the because he trains my mom and then my mom. Then they refer to another person. He's like it's all like a web, right? And so he was like, I'm just talking about like our local economy. Like He's like, I want that little economy to thrive. local not like I don't care what's going on in the macro I want the local to thrive that's what I can affect And if that's thriving, like that actually like improves the lives of these people that I can see, feel, touch. And if everybody was just doing that in their local little bubble.

44:52 Then though then the big picture would take care of itself, right? I was like, Okay, fair enough. And he even like went farther, like again, like the sort of cute thing, like he was like I was like so if the normal economy measures GDP, gross domestic gross domestic product. I was like, what's the how do you know if your economy is doing well? He's like, it's basically he's like, maybe smiles per hour, baby smiles per hour. He's like he's like, I just want everybody to be smiling. He's like, If I made you laugh and then you carry that vibe into the house with your wife next and with your kids, and then they carry that into school. He's like, That's how it works. Like if you're making people smile.

45:22 Bye. Whether it's your mood, it's doing something for them, it's thinking of them, it's having an experience together. that has this this carry on effect. They take that smile into the next interaction. That's how it spreads. So I started actually like buying into this. I was like it is about your local economy. It is about miles per hour.

45:39 And so I was like, what do I do? That is a kind of give back. But not the way I did it last year, where I put money in some black box into some multinational nonprofit and then it just disappeared and I I don't know what happened. I didn't feel anything. They didn't I don't know what happened. And so the idea of like going to a local high school

45:58 Taking an unpaid job and just go contributing my time, my talent, my effort. And affecting like a group of twelve guys. Like That sounds small. But it feels very big.

46:09 The other thing solving world hunger felt sounded very big, but felt very small. Like there's no feeling. And so I don't know. I don't know if this is the right direction or wrong, but that's the one I've gone. I don't I'm not charitable. Uh, I want to be. But I'm like A little bit. I'm like I don't know how to be. I don't

46:25 Wanna just write a check to someone and not feel anything. I wanna be selfish. I wanna get a value out of this, just like a feeling. And so I talked to do you know who Mike Beckham is? He started uh Simple Modern. Yeah. The Uh

46:39 water bottle company. So he told me all the numbers and he told me I could share it. So he's worth two hundred million dollars. Because the company does something like two hundred million a year in revenue.

46:49 And does fifty million a year in profit. His net worth because he owns half of it and then with the multiple, he goes I'm probably worth this was last year I talked to him. So he said, I'm worth probably two hundred million dollars. And or he said one ninety. And he said, uh I have about uh I think he said three or four million dollars to my name.

47:06 But I pull five million dollars out of the business every year and I take one million of it and I give away four. Uh you'll if you guys Google Mike uh Mike Beckham uh Sam Parr, you'll like see a post I wrote about it. So I'm I think I there's a chance I got the number slightly wrong. But basically he said I take something like five million and I give the rest away. Uh I sp I s my family spends twenty five thousand a month, so we take enough for us to spend minus taxes. and I give you know, four million or four and a half million dollars, I I give it away.

47:34 And I was like, That's insane, man. Why do you do that? He's like, Well It's not generous to do this when I die because that's not hard for me. Like it should be like some type of like challenge. Like this should feel like I should feel a little bit of pain. But then he he said something really great. He said The more that I give

47:50 The less loud the greedy voice in my head becomes. So he's like, I feel this like greediness in my this voice in my head that says, Make more money, buy more stuff, do this. But the more that I give, that becomes a whisper because I feel what it's like to give away this money. And it feels significantly better than the acquire a bigger home or another car. He was like, I drive a thirty thousand dollar CRV because I know that if I spent bought a ninety thousand dollar car. That's sixty thousand dollars less that I can give to people and it makes me feel good to do that. And so his whole The whole point of him telling you this was he wanted to

48:23 to to get me to like give now versus when you're old and or dead. And I thought that that was very inspirational. It wasn't that inspirational, because I haven't done it yet. More admirable. Yeah. It inspired me like a You know, like the Rocky movie, like you know, I should get into boxing one day. Totally. But I did think it was uh really awesome. This is for the folks out there who have a business that does at least three million dollars a year in revenue. Because around this point, that's when you're able to look up after being heads down for years building your company.

49:02 And you realize two things. One, you've done something great. But you're still a long way from your final destination. And two, you look around and you realize I am all alone. I've outrun my peers.

49:12 Which means you're now making ten million dollar decisions alone by yourself. And that is when mediocrity can creep in. My company Hampton, we solved this problem by giving a room of vetted peers of other entrepreneurs. who are gonna hold you accountable Call you out on your nonsense and help show you the way. Because the fact is is that there's only a tiny number of people in your town who know what you're going through and who have been there.

49:36 And they're hard to find. The biggest risk is not failing. You have a company and it's working. You're gonna be fine, but the biggest risk is waking up ten years from now and saying, Shit. I barely grew in business and in life. And for people like you who are ambitious, wasted potential and regret is what we want to help you to avoid.

49:54 We have made so many of these groups and we have a thousand plus members and I know this stuff actually works. It can change your life. It changed mine and I know it will change yours. So check it out. joinhampton.com You know, I've read this a few times on Twitter. Where somebody will say, Oh, I started either micro dosing or I started taking like, you know Oh, Zabick or whatever. One of the other.

50:17 I've done all those things. You can just ask me. Okay, so m so maybe you had this too, but they talk about Food noise. Which was not a phrase I'd ever heard before. I don't know if that was is that common, but like The biggest change

50:29 Is not the weight loss. It's the I don't have food noise. Basically this like Part of my brain, this this chatter in my brain about the next meal or about should I have this or wanting this or Let me give you an example. Yeah, is this real? Yes. So Like I have a addictive personality and I had addiction stuff before. And

50:50 Tell me if you've ever experienced this. You get a piece of dessert. Like a cake or something. You eat half of it? You put the rest in the refrigerator and then you're going to be able to do

50:59 You lay in bed and you're like But it's still there. And it's uneaten. I think the fork that I use might still be the sink. I could probably just use that.

51:08 Maybe well what I'll just go up and get a little bit of bite. So you go you get it better, you eat my little bite and you put it back and then I will do this. Seven times until it's gone. And then it goes away. And I say to myself this, I say Shit. Well I already did this. I might as well eat this entire sleeve of Oreo cookies. Right. And before you notice you've done a thousand or fifteen hundred calories of like binge eating, but it's all based on one urge. That is the food voice. And when you take uh GLP ones,

51:35 Not only does that voice get dimmed. other addictions get dimmed. I noticed I bit my nails less. I noticed that I wasn't craving like it used to be where I would smell like beer. If I walked by like a brewery, I'd be like Let's let's go like it see what's up. Not anymore. What is up when you go see what's up in that situation. The secret is you should not go see what's up. But like you smell the hops and you're like, Oh, that's nice. Right. Uh but yeah, so yeah, it definitely definitely turns it down. So I wanted to ask you about this.

52:06 On the money the the the loudness of the money voice. Of the Moore voice. in your head. Because a few podcasts ago We did an episode. I think the front half of it was about something sort of silly, but the back half of it was us talking like we

52:21 Kind of mostly to today. It's just like What's hard for us in life. What is what's some of the wisdom that kinda helps. And just sort of like I don't know, trying to figure shit out. Out loud. Right. In front of a bunch of other people.

52:33 bunch of other strangers, which is a little bit uncomfortable, but you do it. Um and in that I mentioned this thing that had come up And I had a lot of friends who were basically like, they have all the success, and then they go start another company. And it's like then they

52:47 Stress out, lose some hair, gain some weight, and try to build another company. And I think it's a Well you said the best phrase ever, too. Yeah, this is the phrase that I ha a lot of people DM me afterwards which is like You you've already earned the last dollar you will ever spend. So why are you trading good hours for bad dollars now?

53:05 And That's something that I had you know, thought of for myself and when I saw others, but like, you know, that doesn't mean I'm like immune to it either, right? Like I still I'm in the same boat. I think I have it to a lesser degree in the same way that like

53:19 That food chatter you you were talking about, like I got that I that That guy's got a megaphone in my head. Whereas I think for other people it's you know, a little bit more like a whisper. And so I I wanna do two things. I wanna ask you about the voice in your head and then I wanna tell you about a uh Chad GPT co coaching conversation I had about money.

53:38 I kinda wanna just read you what it what it said to me a little bit, but Uh, but first I wanna ask you, you know, you you are also in that boat where I believe you have earned the last dollar you'll ever you'll ever spend. You're a pretty frugal guy. Um in general. Like you're not like Mike Tyson buying Tigers.

53:52 Um you had a great exit with the hustle. And You have earned the last doll you'll ever spend. But here you are. starting more companies, maybe making some investments.

54:03 And um You know, every day you wake up and you take your life energy and you go to an office With other people and you do this. And and you can always talk about how like the You like working and the mission there's the I'm not saying it's bad. I that's not what I mean. I guess what I mean is

54:17 How do you think about Money and wanting more. Are you honest with yourself that you do want more? And then how do you square that circle of like, but I don't actually need more? Because I have already earned the last doll I've spent, or do you not think that's true? So I just wanna hear how you what's

54:32 What's that chatter in your head? How loud is it and what is the what does it say? I think the okay, so nothing is all or nothing or There's a priority of lists. So the number one priority for me is like I just don't know what to do. Like I don't know how to spend time and when I spend time sitting around I feel like I'm missing out or I feel like I'm not contributing and I that

54:51 I that feels bad and yet when I spend all the time working, some days I have bad days and I'm like, What am I doing? I should be doing this other thing. So that exists. But then the The well the w the one right below that is um I'm not good enough and I have to and my my self worth is directly correlated to the success of the thing that I'm working on. My self worth is my net worth, basically.

55:13 Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You you could say that. Um And so like that That's probably if they're like years of trauma and like believing something and but it's hard to break.

55:25 Um, and then the last thing is like more money. Does feel good. Yeah. It it definitely feels good. And what I have to do I do math all the time where I'm like I don't need more. Everything that I want. I have. But I

55:38 Can break that. I guess I guess if you wanted to be like a a s a a therapist or a psychologist, you would say like the reason you don't want to change is or the reason you don't change is because you don't want to. You know, you you like how it feels. Do you like how it feels? I love when things go well at my company, I do feel on top of the world. The problem with building companies is you typically only feel like that 10% of the time.

56:01 You know, uh like things are bad most. Yeah. So I say I don't gamble, I don't do drugs and alcohol, and instead This is like um a dopamine uh slot machine. Yeah. Okay.

56:18 So it's like do you like being addicted to gambling? You say No, but When you win it's so amazing that it makes you at least it's not heroin, is what you kinda just Yeah, and then I also justify it by saying and this is a bad justification and I'll and I'll prove it to you, but you say um I want to I'll go ahead and do the work for you. You say to yourself, you say, uh Well I w I don't want my kids to just see me sitting around and I want them to see me working really hard and I want to set a good example.

56:47 But then um They probably would rather be with you. Yeah, they wanna see me. Yeah. And uh and I don't I think I'm do good. Like I I w I go to the office from nine to four, nine to five. Um But then I also say I'm doing this for them. And it's like

57:00 What Is this. What what you know, like what is this for them? How does that make sense? Yeah, do they they they don't need anything physical, uh they don't You know I'm y they don't what do they need that I can't give them already. Right.

57:14 Yeah, is uh is fifty hour weeks. the the most effective way to just give them the general principle that you should work hard at things. Yeah, like th that might not be the most efficient route to that to that answer. Okay, so I wrote down three things. I wrote down imagination. Which I think is the first part. Uh the first one you said, which is I don't know what else. I kinda don't know what else to do. I wanna do something and like I don't want to do nothing.

57:36 Therefore I do this thing. And I think about that a lot. I think that uh Sully came on the podcast a while back. And he said something where he goes. Julie being your good buddy who is presumably worth hundreds of millions of dollars is one of the more successful entrepreneurs we know. Correct. My

57:53 S he's my great friend, but he's also the guy who I Respect and trust the most when it comes to Entrepreneurship and Like kind of Business

58:03 Like strategy. Yeah. And I've met a lot of people wealthier than him, but He consistently is the highest signal. best judgment person and like, you know, just the way he way he approaches in a tax business, he's just like like such a winner. Okay. So Uh, he came on the pod and he goes, I used to think I was limited by some lack of resource. Like I maybe I didn't have a skill I needed. I needed to learn how to code. Maybe I didn't have enough money.

58:28 Maybe I didn't have enough time. Like basically he's like, I always just thought I didn't have the network, I didn't know people. Like I just assumed I lacked some resource. And he goes Now I realize that all I ever lacked was Basically imagination. He's like I the thing I like the most was

58:44 Even figuring out what to want, what the possibilities were of what I could do. And how I might be able to go do those things. That sounds kind of like Hand wavy, I guess. But the more smart people I've meet

58:57 And it's almost like the bigger that side of your brain gets where it's like I am analytical. I I'm good at making plans and then executing them and operating and like the the better you are at that. The less I've s the the I've noticed They're disproportionately bad.

59:14 At imagination. And so for example like You know, kinda don't know what else to do with my hands, is kinda what you said. There's a lot of things. There's actually a ton of things, right? Like in uh uh the stupid example I gave earlier, and this wouldn't be the right thing for you, but it was the right thing for me, which is like Well what if you instead of Going and chasing down the next investment.

59:33 Or starting another company. And I got a bunch of deals and I got a bunch of ideas. Like the r the right thing, the thing that was fulfilling was, Hey, what if you took four months, one season, and you just coached the high school basketball team? That was actually the right answer for me, which totally out of left field. Doesn't even make sense. It wouldn't be the right answer for other people, but it's the thing that like Totally fills my cup. In a way that

59:53 Another business that was successful would never do. Yeah, but I think that you're not or maybe uh you are. You but it's way harder than you think. Or not than you think, but uh figure it of you. I think like That imagination game is quite challenging. Like for example.

1:00:09 If you said you have a billion dollars today, what do you want to do? I'm like, I don't have an answer. We might get flamed into the comments here. All we're talking about is like this uh I call it second mountain problems, but whatever. I was thinking about the I was like Why do I want all these employ like so we're moving to a new office down the street and uh we just signed this lease. It's a million dollar lease. So over three years it's could be a million dollars. And we're building out this.

1:00:32 office, whatever, and it's a lot of money. I've never done this before. And I was like, Why why am I doing this? And I was like, I just I think Maybe I'm lying to myself again, I was like, I care about capabilities. So what I hate is that

1:00:44 You have an idea. So like how often do you have an idea for like a small project and you're like uh now I gotta go get the people And then I gotta like train the people and I don't think they're gonna be any good. All the time, yeah. And I was listening to Ari Emanuel talk and he was like, We have this thing and this thing and this thing and I was like, How cool is it? That your company and you have all these capabilities. You have an idea. You say, wouldn't it be cool if this existed in the world? And it's not just a business idea. For him, I think he cares about like the show. He's like, wouldn't it feel awesome if like at the UFC we did blank or We bought all these tournaments uh tennis tournaments and we offered food at a discount. Yeah, I don't know.

1:01:22 And I love the idea of having lots and lots of capabilities and I think that's why business building is fun. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I have that right now. Actually I forgot to say this, but the one of the things I've been Talking about for a while on here, but have not

1:01:36 Executed, right? Like the walk hasn't matched the talk. Is I had this realization that that video is the language of the internet. It's like if if the internet was a country and it'd be it would be the most important country in the world, it'd be more powerful of a country than America. Um, so it's like a place where you live and you spend time. I think the internet is that. People live and spend a lot of time online.

1:01:56 And then you say, All right, well, do you speak the native tongue? Because if you don't You know, if you if you come to America but you don't speak English, you're putting yourself at a pretty massive disadvantage. And I believe that video is the language of the internet. It's how people communicate online.

1:02:10 Whether it's long form like this on YouTube. Where it's short form, which is growing, growing more and more popular. Across you know. YouTube shorts, reels, tick tocks, et cetera. It is the way people communicate information.

1:02:21 And if you don't have the capability To communicate and tell your story. Um or connect with others that way. You know, you're just not speaking the important language of the important country. In fact, like it doesn't really matter where you were born or what you were doing or how hard you worked.

1:02:39 Pretty much if you were born anywhere in the world the best decision you can make for your like life quality and upward mobility. was to move to America and learn English. Even if that meant starting at the bottom, even if that meant being uncomfortable, like In the long term, it was short term pain, but in the long term that was the best thing you could do. And it wouldn't there was no amount of hard work you could do in Somalia.

1:02:58 That was gonna make up for That one decision. A charismatic and epic way just to say you're gonna start posting on Instagram. I'm gonna start posting on Instagram. Did I not just sell your ass on the fact that I'm posting on Instagram? Dude, imagine.

1:03:20 Yeah. Imagine your wife at the dinner table. They're just like telling the story. Like listen. You're Years ago.

1:03:32 Our grandparents lived in India. The The best thing they could have done is learning English. No, here we are today. The year two thousand twenty five.

1:03:43 What? Sean, are you gonna start posting on it? Exactly. In fact, I'm gonna start specifically just post posting uh a story series about the coaching thing I'm doing. So basically like day one Yeah, basically like every week I'm just gonna post uh like a thing that I sent you. Dude, that was a good video. Do you get inspired by uh Marshall?

1:04:05 No, not Marshall. There's uh actually these young guys who are doing this, they're There's this format where Airbnb. The Airbnb guy and the bar guy. Rajan. I don't I don't know exactly what his first name is, his handle something. But they're building like a luxury Airbnb in in Virginia. There's a guy who's

1:04:22 bought an old bowling alley and he's rehabbing it. It's basically like yo, I'm doing a project. For shits and giggles, and like I want to make it happen, and I'm kind of new to this. So I I I don't have it all figured out, but I'm gonna share as I go. And I just like the format and I think it's fun. And I wanna do it specifically on something that's not business.

1:04:40 Like it's very hard for me to get motivated to be like And now I'm gonna give you business guru content. And even if I like like business, it's just very hard for me to sit in front of the camera and do talking head content about business. Or um about myself or about uh, you know. Some new SaaS company, but I was like, This one I would want to follow. So I'm gonna make this content.

1:05:01 And so I'm gonna make like a coach account. It's gonna be like coach Sean or Coach P or so. I'll put the link in the in the Instagram. But uh in the comments of this or I'll put it on the screen. Uh, but I won't be able to follow it'cause I'm gonna post videos on here and I think they'll be great. That's so funny. I've been Uh doing the Instagram thing. It's pretty fun.

1:05:18 Because you start Like trying to It's basically'cause we're the old guys now. It's sort of like when people wanted to start newsletters or something and it was like, Dude, you're writing way too like tight. You gotta be a little loosey goosey. Right. I've done the same thing on Instagram where I start talk to the camera and I like get official.

1:05:36 It you're gonna you're gonna have fun. It's uh it's very intimidated. Plop those two buttons down. Dude, it's so intimidating. We have if you go to my thing, I start I do all of our videos now when I'm holding a spatula as a microphone. 'Cause we had to like have fun and like listen to the view. Yeah. And it totally dollar Manhattan office.

1:05:56 Hey fellow kids. Yeah, exactly. Um your content is pretty good though. Uh the problem with it though, uh you know the problem with all social media like being like I'm gonna Try to like Plus good short form content. Is it's basically saying I'm gonna go to the bar and not get drunk.

1:06:15 It's so easy for your mind to get wrapped up in the vortex of like how many likes how many views did that get. Is that good? Is that bad? And so easy. I I don't even know physically if even knowing that, like, you know, I don't know if it's physically possible to go in and not want that. So I could easily see myself aborting that, you know, that process six months from now. Even though in this case it's like I'm doing it for just this basketball season, which is just three months, and it's only content about this random side quest that I'm on. Um, it's not like

1:06:43 you know, here's my personal IG. I'm gonna create short form content every day. But let me tell you something I've been telling myself and it's been helping so much. So a few things. One, the algorithm is so good right now on meta. That The right people see the right stuff. Like I'm pretty sure that

1:07:01 The camera knows like what I'm wearing. And what my background looks like, what I look like. Like I posted a skateboarding video. It knows that I'm like doing a skateboarding thing. It shows it to the right people somehow. I don't know how it does it. This and the second thing is that I have noticed, I've only been doing this for a handful of weeks now And I'm gonna be doing a lot more, but People text me when something hits. And I that is so much more cool than the number of likes or the comments on the things. It's just those texts.

1:07:30 And The cool thing is once you have a business, which in this case you're actually probably not going to be doing it for a business. You don't need that many people to watch it. Like I'm seeing it's ch it's changing our cup like I'm we're getting customers. I've made a lot of money off of it already in a very short amount of time with a very few views. I think my most popular thing is getting like seventy or eighty thousand views. It's not a lot for Instagram. And the right people is s are are shown the right stuff and you don't need that much to make it cool.

1:07:55 There is something weird about Like Instagram right now. And I know that like any twenty one year old listening to this is like Yeah duh. Duh. Uh but as like a if you are above thirty or whatever and you grew up with this stuff, the o I've never post it on Instagram up until recently. The algorithm is way different than what I used to think it was.

1:08:12 Mm. That's cool. Um Yeah, makes it makes a ton of sense. I th I think you're doing a good job. I think the Spatula trick is a good trick. I like that. Um Everybody's gotta have a stick.

1:08:21 That's yours, you're the spatula guy. Great. Let me write that in my diary. I mean have you ever had the thought, like what did your grandfather do? When I think about my grandfather, I think if I was him right now, I'd have like You know, eighteen confirmed kills under my belt in the world in World War Two. In an ammunition factory in India. Yeah. Okay, so that's my grandfather. His thought his idea of what work is

1:08:49 If you're talking to a microphone with a sheep on it that says sorry I'm late Yeah, my shirt literally says sorry I'm late. I was dilly dallying. Yeah. That's what I wore to work today. Dude, and your grandpa lost three fingers before the age of twenty eight. I was like Ari, is this shirt too wrinkly right before the pot? And she's like I think it fits what it says.

1:09:12 So but just this th it's a kind of mind bending thing, right? My grandpa was a sheriff, was a he was a cop. Okay, so a job that like you can buy an action figure for. Yeah. Right. Like soldiers, policemen, like you know, a factory worker, construction doing a real thing that like the world critically needs. That's hard and completely unglamorous. And then I think about okay, his son, what did his son do? My dad. And it's like he sat in a cubicle like an office.

1:09:39 Like not a factory. It's like well what does he do? It's like well he types on this computer mostly. And he like Wears a suit. Not like a construction for wears this like fancy suit for some reason. And he will sometimes fly on an airplane

1:09:53 To go meet with somebody, shake their hand, talk to them for a while, come back home and do a So he does these like business meetings, okay? That's when I grew up and that's my dad so to my grandfather, what my dad did Kinda looked and seemed like a little bit of a joke. And now my dad. Looks at me.

1:10:09 And he's like, You're wearing a shirt with a sheep on it says I'm dilly dallying. You're talking to your friend on this tiny screen, you're podcasting to who? What? What is a podcast? Do you make you can make Like I'll still go to family gatherings and they'll be like, So how do How do you earn money though? I'm like uh I don't know, I don't know how explain this ads. Um they're like, but where and how?

1:10:31 But but to them what we do, which is like, yeah, you're talking with a spatula. to a cell phone. To strangers. So that they can join so that that will so that point one percent of them

1:10:53 Well go spend ten grand joining your membership community, uh you know, like It's like what is this? And then you think about like what your kids are gonna do. It's gonna be completely unrecognizable. Work is gonna be unrecognizable from one generation to the next, is what I'm realizing. Fucking pussy doing it. As comments were coming in, she'd be like, Woohoo, Cowboy, every time Wow would have a gift. It's like that's what our kids are gonna do. Something that seems even worse, or it's gonna be like, you know, yeah, I'm a I'm a AI therapist. It's like what do you mean? It's like

1:11:28 Well I sort of um I talk to AIs to make them feel better. It's like what? What is that? That's a job? I think about your mom all the time. Well Inappropriate. Well

1:11:39 Yeah. I think about your mom coming to America all the time. Because I think about how'cause the way you told the story was really good and I like ha I saw myself in her situation of like Not having a lot, being on a plane for the first time, coming to America, we didn't speak anything, you just dropped off in Berkeley, I think it was. And like you're like, What do I do? And like I I I felt that a little not even close, but sort of like that when I moved to San Francisco, but on a much smaller scale. And I think um

1:12:04 I think about her all the time and I think about like immigrants and stuff like that who like come here with nothing and I'm like And I'm complaining About this? I'm complaining that my apartment that's already huge, is it big enough and I want more and I'm sad about it, I'm gonna pay a therapist money where they can hear me complain about this? What? The idea of a therapist.

1:12:25 It's like someone you pay money to to complain to. It's so funny. Like I I just think about that. I'm like, how ridiculous is this? Yeah. Sakawe carried her three month old kid across America for two years. For two years she carried that kid.

1:12:45 And a piece of leather. Yeah, but the car at the place only had forward facing car seats. And I need four strollers? She carried him in a leather sack without diapers. Yeah. I think about that all the time. I think about this stuff like on a regular basis. How soft are we?

1:13:04 It's so funny'cause you know what's that famous uh like Ernst Shackleford, like You know, the journey will be hard, people will die, like that job posting. What's that famous thing? Yeah. So Ernest Shackleton. Honestly the greatest book I've ever read. I I think I said his first name like he's a like Ernie from Sesame Street, and then I called him Shacklet. What's his name Shackleton is his name right? Or Shacklet. But whatever. He's just like the hardest dude of all time. The book Or uh Endurance. Probably honestly might be the top three books I've read of all time. Uh the story is basically in the early nineteen hundreds, when he was just in like a ship without

1:13:38 You know, uh power sails around to the bottom of The Arctic or Antarctica? I forget which one. The ship gets like so deep into the cold that the Lake or the water, the ocean freezes around it and he walks for three months.

1:13:54 To get to like the tip of Brazil. So here's the job ad. No one died. Men wanted. For hazardous journey, small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness. Constant danger.

1:14:09 Safe return, doubtful. Honor and recognition in event of success. Ernest Shackleton for Burlington Street. That's the job that's the job posting. Dude. Such a good book.

1:14:21 Wanted. Cardboard box cutter. Lots of Amazon packages. Getting a little bit unw wieldy. In the laundry room. Take off your shoes when you enter, please. Bring own box cutter. Don't have tools. Softer than cream cheese, man. I'm so soft. I pride myself in trying to be hard and uh it is there is no pride there. Why do I smell like chives? Oh the cream cheese, baby that's fine. We started off talking about uh dear diary The softest entrance softest exit you'll find in podcasting history. That's the episode. That's the part. I feel like I could rule the world. I know I could be what I want to.

1:15:10 I'm putting my all in it like my day's off. On the road less travel, never looking back. Alright, everyone, if you're listening to MFM, you probably want to make more money. Well, I want to tell you about a podcast you might want to check out. It's called The Sales Evangelist, and it's hosted by Donald Kelly. Each week, Donald interviews the world's best sales experts who share their strategies to succeed in sales. They share actionable insights and stories that will encourage, challenge, and motivate you to hustle your way to the top. If you're someone looking to raise your income level, check out the sales evangelist. You can find it wherever you get your podcasts.

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