How to find your thing

0:00 Dude, when you use the word stack. I get all fired up. Dude, why don't we just describe our podcast that way? Us founders acquired, it's the most potent stack of boosting the founders. I feel like I can rule the world and know I could be what I want to. I'll put my all in it like my day's off. On the road, let's travel to the game. Alright, so Sam, I was in Austin last week and I was at a restaurant. So we're sitting down at the table.

0:25 Guy comes up. And he's a fan of the podcast and he says hi. And he was like, Oh yeah, I love the episode Steven Sam, blah, blah, blah. And I asked him, I go What's one thing you want us to talk about? We're getting it almost a thousand episodes in.

0:38 You need a little inspiration. And so I said, What's one thing you want us to talk about? And he goes, Well I don't know what other people want, but here's what I want. He told me he's uh he's twenty four years old. He's like, I know I'm smart, I know I'm har hard working. I just don't know kind of which lane to go in. I'm ready to swim, but I don't know which lane to go in. And what he said was he's like, you know, basically the generic advice is like oh just follow your passion.

1:01 And he basically described this problem, which is like I've been in school. My teachers, my parents, like I was told what to do. You gotta take these classes, you gotta get take these tests, you gotta get these marks. And that's it's like super structured. All of a sudden Graduates.

1:14 Now he's just on his own from super structured to completely unstructured. And he's like, I know that I should be doing something. My friends are all doing this. I don't think I wanna do that. Banking, consulting type of jobs. And his question was basically They say follow your passion, but how? How do you actually do that? Like what would you guys actually do if you could go back?

1:34 So that's what I wanted to talk about. Why I think that Follow your passion is terrible advice. What you should do instead. Great. I think I I will mostly it sounds I based off your one line response right there, I might agree with you on everything. First of all, I want to hear what advice you gave him. But you told me that you wanted to s you also looked at the history of following your passion. Is that true?

1:54 Well, I I have a historical kind of reference. So I was reading this thing by Joseph Campbell. He famously came up with the hero's journey. Yeah, yeah. This circle that explains how Star Wars works and Harry Potter and all the great stories, they sort of start with the same structure. So this guy Joseph Campbell He gave a lot of interviews about um his philosophy. And he had this Better this phrase that I think is a little bit better. It sounds a little hokey, but when you explain it

2:21 I think it Clicks. And he goes, he started off by saying don't follow your passion, follow your bliss. And later he changed it to follow your blisters. So he's explaining and he explains for himself. He's like oh you know

2:33 For me. The way I arrived at this kind of hero's journey thing was because when I was a kid or you know, a teenager, I was obsessed with studying like indigenous tribes and Native American stories and myths. And I got really into all these different myths first as a consumer, then I started to wonder like how are all these myths Like why are these so why do I love these so much? What's what's the structure of these things? And that's how we kind of discovered The story

2:55 Shape. Uh that became the hero's journey. When he's talking about bliss, he basically made a couple of points. And so Let me first break down the the problem with passion and then why I think the Bliss and Blisters thing is better. So here's my case for why

3:09 Passion is maybe the wrong idea. First, raise your hand if you know what your passion is. Like most people, ninety plus percent of people do not know their passion. I um so I'm gonna cite Mark Manson a lot in this conversation because he had a podcast called Uh wha should you follow your passion or not? And I listened to it two weeks ago. I'm thirty six years old. Some people might regard me as successful. I still don't know what my passion is. And I then I think about it all the time. Yeah, I'm I'm with you. You're I'm always trying to figure it out. I'm perpetually reinventing myself and and starting from scratch and questioning what's going on and reinventing myself for better and for worse.

3:42 That's been the place of some amazing things of some amazing changes in my life, but it's also a period of great uncertainty. And Sticking around in the fog of uncertainty. Sucks. It feels shitty when you're doing it. And um, you know, sometimes I wish I was just one of these people who didn't question anything and just Sort of just

3:59 Picked a thing and just did it for fifty years. But uh it's not who I am. And so if you're somebody who's been in this fog of uncertainty This will sound familiar. So What ends up happening is you follow your familiar.

4:10 So you do what you know. You do what you've already done. You do what your parents do. You do what your friends do. I and so what a lot of us do is we mistake What w what is familiar? For what actually lights us up.

4:22 And so we even if you I had this idea of like You want to do something you don't really even know where to look and you feel like and while you are searching. It often can feel Like you're lost. And so m you even though you're supposed to be searching

4:38 You feel like you're lost during it, which feels like you're doing something wrong. And so um what do you do instead? All right, so he has this bliss and blisters concept. Basically bliss. is not meant to be just like pure Joy. It's not meant to be just like

4:51 uh euphoria. What he means by bliss is basically What are you enthusiastic about doing? So using enthusiasm as your guide. So this is his criteria. So he said naturally naturally drawn drawn to it. It's of interest. You feel alive when you're doing it. It's often irrational and you will lose track of time when you find yourself doing it.

5:09 And you'll do it in your off hours. So you'll do it even you'll do it during the hours when you're s normally seeking kind of like Uh, pleasure, relaxation, um, you know, just sort of an indulgence in yourself. The stuff you find yourself doing there that others would see as work. is an important signal. And then so he said he started talking about this, and people took it the wrong way, in his opinion. He's like I said this thing about follow your bliss. And then everybody just looked for something that just made them happy, pleasurable, all the time, instantaneously. And he goes,

5:37 Oh man, I've made a mistake. It's not that at all. He he said he kind of offhandedly. It's attributed to him that he said I wish I had said follow your blisters instead. And what he means by blisters is basically that There is going to obviously be hardship, in fact.

5:51 Like follow your bliss most of the time. leads you on a on an unfamiliar path, you're leaving a place that's safe. You're gonna face the dragons, cross the bridges, pay the tolls, pay the price, and it was worth it, deeply satisfying along the way. And blisters, this idea of blisters is like On my hand right now. I've I have these blisters because I've been training for this Murph and I've been doing pull ups all the time. So my hands on both sides have all these blisters.

6:14 And if you think about the idea of blisters, it's a It's it's a receipt. It's an evidence of a price paid. A price paid over and over and over again that you really couldn't force yourself to do just through willpower, but you had to have been actually like pulled to doing it. And so If you find evidence

6:31 Where you Suffer pain. Willingly? That's probably a very good signal. You are so drawn to doing it that you're even willing to endure the hardships that come along the way. That is ultimately what you're looking for. And so

6:43 That's the short idea. And this has been echoed, by the way, many times over. So Paul Graham wrote this long, long essay. I don't know if you've ever read it. It's called How to Do Great Work. Uh years ago. It's like a it takes you like two days to read this goddamn blog post. But it's great. And in it, he has this one phrase that I remember, which is Let enthusiasm.

7:01 Be not just the motor, but the rudder of your boat. So basically Enthusiasm is obviously gonna provide you some fuel, some like m some uh your motor. It's gonna get you to go. But let it also be the thing that guides you, like a rudder that guides your direction. His take was that it leads you to the frontier of any field. Cause the more uh like, for example, when you got really into fitness. You started maybe at fifty percentile knowledge.

7:26 on health and fitness. Is that probably correct? Yeah. And then the interest. Often irrational because dude, why do you need you're married. You're already healthy. Like why do you what do you what do you why do you want these abs so damn bad, right?

7:39 But something drove you. Correct? Yeah, and I and frankly I don't even know what it was. You didn't question it. You don't have to know what it is, you just have to not doubt it.

7:49 Is the kind of trick. And then how far did it take you? You're injecting stuff in your butt, you're doing the NFL combine as a civilian. You were like getting to you know, measuring every calorie and body fat. Like you you went to the frontier of how to do this thing, like best pr known best practices plus some experimental shit. Am I right? Yeah And so what he talks about is like Paul Graham basically says let the let the enthusiasm be the engine and the rudder. It'll guide you where you need to go. It'll take you to the frontier. And at the frontier, you will notice some gaps. So when you were at the frontier, Sam, did you not notice A gap.

8:21 And the gap that you told me about has turned into one of our most profitable investments. There's this like male epidemic of low testosterone. People are gonna wanna take Exogenous testosterone. And it's extremely you know, it changes the way you feel. It's extremely sticky when you do it.

8:36 I don't know if I wanna build that business, but man, I know that would be a gangbuster's business and we both invest in hone health, which is now, you know over nine figures run rate it's doing great. It's a it's a wonderful business. And so it's only when you're at the frontier do you notice gaps? in hmm, there's not really a trusted brand for doing this. Right, or

8:54 Uh we don't really know how to do this, but if somebody ever figured it out, that would be really valuable. You told me about Ozempic back before Osempic was even called Ozempic. You were like I'm taking semi glutide. And um you know, we didn't act on that insight, but it took you when you go to the frontier, you notice the gaps and the gaps are where all the sort of the opportunities are for for any uh person who wants to do great work. First of all, great spiel. You got me fired up there. Second of all, it sucks that me taking drugs. Uh I I'm kinda paying the price of uh your point making here. Or you could be friends with someone who's gonna do all that shit. All right, so this episode is all about excellence.

9:33 A while back, I shared my personal framework for building excellence in my own life. And the team at HubSpot turned it into a thirty day operating system that you can check out right now. It breaks down the systems that took me ten years to figure out and shows how exactly I use them day to day. These are systems that genuinely changed my life. So if you want to build a good life Scan the QR code or click the link in the description.

9:57 Now let's get back to the show. I'm gonna tell you something that sounds academic and woo woo, but I'm gonna make it super tactical. But the idea of blister versus bliss is actually really interesting because do you know what the etymology of the word passion is? No. So the word passion comes from the word suffering. It always seemed weird that it was the passion of the passion of the Christ is the story of Jesus being nailed to the cross, which you're like

10:20 Why? Why uh that yeah, uh it it stands for suffering. And uh so the idea of bliss versus blister is interesting because blister is a significantly better word because passion, following your passion. uh means following your your your suffering, meaning something that you love so much you're willing to suffer a whole bunch in order to put to it. You know, follow through it. You're basically called to do it. And what's interesting is that up until recently, following your passion is didn't mean what it means today. Now a lot of people think it means follow your bliss. Let's that's actually a great word to use, which is something that you're like

10:55 Enthusiasm. Do it. Do it. Yeah. Don't love your job, job you love, you know what I mean? So up until like you've heard of the Gilded Age. So in the Gilded Age, that was where this idea of leisure time first got popular in America. And it was a sign of class. meaning if you were rich, then you would spend your days in a state of leisure. A man of leisure. Have you ever heard that phrase? That was a phrase that was invented in the late eighteen hundreds in America. And this idea of like No one has leisure. That's a that's a that's this idea of passion and leisure, that is the idea that is only afforded to the rich. And up until that point, your trade or your skill set was given to you by your father or mother. It was my father was this thing, therefore I will become this thing. And do you want to know something interesting? I think people were probably happier then, but there is like a middle ground. And so up until like the nineteen thirty, there was no vacation or there was no work weeks.

11:48 Or work weekends. Did you know that? Um but when? Like the nineteen thirties. Do you know who popularized the weekend? Isn't it like Henry Ford with the factory system? Yeah. So Henry Ford was tr his company was so big at the time, they employed so many people, he was like, How do we get the most out of our workers? And he actually determined through a bunch of research on like some like scientific data. He was like, if we actually give people weekends off and we and we create a standard workday, which I actually think the standard workday for him was twelve hours.

12:16 Um not eight. But if we all and then if we institute like a minimum wage and this type of thing, we're actually gonna get more loyalty and we're gonna get more productivity, this and that. And so the idea of of work weeks and vacation and all that stuff that didn't even exist until nineteen thirty. Then the the Great Depression happened and then World War Two happened and those ideas sort of went away. We worked really hard to like make things happen. But then post World War Two, so between the uh uh the years of nineteen fifty and nineteen seven, that was peak leisure. This is when like the idea of like baseball and bicycles and vacations, that's when like this idea really took off. It's very interesting, but like they're literally that was like the golden age of of leisure because all these American soldiers came back from the war, the economy was booming and they got this thing called the GI Bill. Have you heard of the GI Bill? No.

13:03 veterans, ex soldiers when if you're still young, they would pay for your college. And so all these young guys were like, I was in Germany fighting for my life. Now I'm in college and like the economy's booming and I can get a job where I can have a house in Dayton, Ohio, where I can afford two cars and this idea of like I could have a I could buy an oven and a car and a stove and all this stuff. That that was like this golden era. And Up until recently This idea of passion wasn't really a thing, but now we actually work harder, I believe. The data will show that we actually work significantly harder today than ever before, and our leisure time and focus on leisure and focus on passion.

13:37 It's sort of been like this weird dichotomy where we work really, really hard all the time and we somehow think that following your passion is what you have to do. And following your passion is what you have to do for work. And because of that, and because the economy is booming, There's this idea that if you think about your happiness and your purpose on earth, it actually makes you more unhappy. There's this amazing book called Bad Therapy. And it's and this author used this idea that the people who think why and ask themselves all the time, why am I not happy? Why am I not following my life's work? Wow, why am I not following my passion? This should feel better. This doesn't feel better. Those people are actually oftentimes significantly more discontent with their life.

14:18 There was a Cal Cal Newport who wrote Deep Work, he had this Thing where he said pass uh passion is a byproduct of mastery. And if you extend that, well then where does mastery come from? I would say mastery comes from an enduring enthusiasm.

14:32 You know, yesterday I I had a piano lesson in the morning and then in the evening before bed, I'm tired. I'm walking to bed and I Past the room that has the piano, I'm like, ah, let me get in here and play the sea shanty like I'm a pirate on the pirates like on a boat or something like that. And I'm playing this song and I'm I'm I'm basically half half eyes open. But it's But I got a little bit better, right? I've got one step closer to mastery. And the only re the only way you can get yourself to do enough

14:56 Load the ten thousand hours type of idea. to achieve mastery is through enduring enthusiasm. And so if you if you think that maybe that's the chain is enduring enthusiasm enthusiasm So enduring enthusiasm, which leads to mastery. And mastery is a deeply satisfying thing.

15:12 That leads to uh You know, uh passion and and this idea of blisters where it's like Look for the evidence. Of suffering. Because you're still you you enjoy what you're getting out of it.

15:22 Now can I give you my Riff on this. Because I was like, Okay. I like the idea. But how do I actually do this? How do I use this? So

15:29 I had this observation that like I used to pick Projects based on industry. Oh I'm gonna do health care because I'm more passionate about health care. Or I'm gonna do um Yeah, I started this clothing clothing business. Cause oh, that sounds fun. Let's do fashion, let's do apparel. That's cool. That sounds more fun than that. You're a big clothing guy, huh?

15:50 I picked things that I thought sounded fun. I picked industries or products that I thought were fun. And what I learned along the way was that The time you spend on a On the actual product or industry. The industry almost like fades to an oblivion. The time you spend on a product is very minimal.

16:09 Like how much time would you say in whether it's Hampton or the hustle, how much time Per day. Would you say you spent on actually working on the product. Well none and because all the time is spent on people stuff.

16:21 Right. Like you you start a company th because you love to tinker. And then after six or twelve months, if you're really successful, the majority of time is spent on managing or leading or organizing people. And even when you're organizing them, you might be leading them or managing them or organizing them. Partly around product, but a huge amount of it. Is around growth.

16:41 You spend most of your time selling the thing. Not Making and marveling about how How great the thing is. And so uh what I realized was like dude

16:52 You spend all your like when you've when you decide to start a company You're gonna try to like inherently you're saying I'm gonna make this thing successful. To make it successful, it's gotta grow. And to make it grow, you're gonna spend most of your time on that really hard problem of making it grow. Part of making it grow is the product. But that's only a small part. Minority percentage, not more than fifty percent. I would say more closer to fifteen percent than fifty.

17:13 Most of your time is gonna be spent on Building the team. Managing the team. And working on core growth and sales.

17:20 And so I I simplified it and I was like, Oh, I don't need to pick a industry I love or a product I love. I need to pick a sales motion that I love. Because guess what? Like If you have a product Doesn't matter what the niche is. If it's grown via enterprise sales, most of your time is gonna be spent doing enterprise sales.

17:37 Hiring enterprise sales and managing an enterprise sales team. If it's built on Facebook ads, if you if it's ecom. I have an econ brand. Most of the time is spent on Running ads.

17:47 To landing pages and sending emails. Because if I want the thing to grow, that's the thing I gotta get better at. Yeah, it's like do you wanna work with uh spreadsheets or do you wanna work in like with guys that wear bright brown shoes and sports jacket and call themselves like the regional VP of uh the South East region? Exactly. Do you wanna take people to dinner and then promise to circle back or do you wanna sit behind your laptop Uh, you know, orchestrating, or do you want and there's so there's a few of these, right? Like if you're an SEO game, then you're gonna play the SEO game. That's what you're gonna spend most of your time doing. Is improving your SEO. That's the main growth channel. So I realized

18:20 Oh I should actually just figure out what type of gr what type of sales or growth mechanism I like. And that's the constraint. What do you like, by the way? So for me it's content. I was like, I like making content. And so I should pick things, I should pick games that

18:35 Content is the main way to make it grow. My second favorite is ads. I like ads, which is also content, but it's like the more pay to play scalable version of content. The thing I like the least is

18:47 Um viral growth. Uh and sales. Those are my le two least favorite. Dude, I distinctly remember a time. So the hustle was a media company. So we had um a couple seven figure deals, a bunch of six figure deals, and that required a little bit of winding and dining. There was one distinct day that I had to go to New York City and I wore these stupid bright brown shoes, which is like a joke that like all the salespeople would wear for some reason. The outfit was like Blue jeans with a sports jacket and these ugly brown shoes. I distinctly remember a trip

19:17 Where I took the shoes off. I threw him in the trash can and I got at the cab without shoes on and I said, I'm never doing that again. These shoes are done. The dude version of taking off your bra after a long day. Dude, because I was just like sucking so much D in this meeting. I'm like I'm like this the truth doesn't matter when you talk to these people. It's okay to lie. My least favorite is the wooing of influencers. We did a streaming uh the the company we sold to Twitch It was a streaming app.

19:47 And uh so it was made for people who live stream on YouTube and Twitch. And the number of Absolute shitty meetings where I'm I'm metaphorically on my knees. With this uh, you know, some nineteen year old streamer who's

20:01 N not looking up from his phone. And his manager, who is, you know, his girlfriend is sitting next to me. They don't ask a single question They're making more money than they know what to do with, making mil millions and millions of dollars sitting in Toledo in their bedroom. And you're trying to pitch them on like, you know. Your product. And I just remember thinking like

20:20 I actually met with one of my biggest competitors that night for dinner and we were both just commiserating on like He w he just literally told me he was like, I'm so tired of sucking He's like, I'm just not gonna suck anymore. And I just my first meeting with this guy. It's like two it's like two UFC fighters when they get done fighting in their backstage and they're like We both lost. Exactly. That's how it felt. And uh so that's my least favorite is the wooing of Divas, where you need these influencers to back you to for your product to succeed. That's the absolute worst. You know that feeling when strategy is done, the brief is written, and everyone is aligned. And you realize someone still has to sit down and actually create the content.

20:59 That someone is you and it's due tomorrow. Breeze assistant can help. It works right inside of HubSpot. drafting, campaign copy, blog posts, emails, all in your brand voice. all grounded in your actual customer data.

21:13 So you don't just create content, you create content that converts. Check out hubspot.com, the agentic customer platform for growing businesses. Alright, so My my phrase for this. is you want to find a loop that you love. All right, what's a loop?

21:28 So the loop is basically like I can kinda break down any job. Into a pretty repeatable loop. So I'll give you an example. The healer loop. This is a doctor or therapist.

21:39 It's someone comes to you in pain. You diagnose the root issue of the pain. You prescribe some solution. And you hopefully send them back out with less pain. That's your loop.

21:49 If you're a doctor or a therapist, you're going to do that tens of thousands of times. And so I remember when I was in college, I took the MCAT. I thought I was gonna go be a doctor. Specifically, I knew what I wanted, I knew my passion. was to be in sports medicine. To be an orthopedic surgeon. And I went and I actually before I went to med school I spent two weeks shadowing

22:08 A guy who did the exact dream job I wanted. He was an orthopedic surgeon. For an NFL team plus, you know, had his own practice. Wow, it doesn't get any better than this. And I go in and I realize the loop that he was doing. Which was basically somebody comes to you in chronic pain.

22:24 You say some version of like well That's just it is what it is. You don't have any cartilage left in that shoulder or that knee. Or yeah, it's damaged or it's ruptured, and we're gonna try our best to do surgery or to give you an injection, a steroid. But like It's never gonna be the same as it was. And you'll never change your behavior the I'll do pain management for you or I'll do performance management for you and like I'll send you back on your way.

22:49 Better than you were when you came in here, but much worse than you want to be. And that was what he did every single day. And he'd been doing that for forty years. And I realized that is not a loop I love. It is extremely low creativity. You see people suffering all day and more power to him, he loved doing it. I didn't l I felt tired at the end of every day of like Oh my God, just emotionally tired of

23:08 Dealing with suffering all day. And I was like, Do I have to do this just'cause I've been saying this since I was fourteen?'Cause I don't know, it sounded good to my parents or something. I I'm not sure where even where this came from. But like this idea of a loop, I think is really important. So for for example, the founder loop is You see the world as it is, some status quo of a of a of an industry, of a of a situation.

23:27 You imagine it better. Why what if we did this instead? You build a product, you sell the product, and then you build the team that will build the product and sell the product. That's the loop you're gonna do as a founder. Every a as a founder on the whole and on the on the daily basis it's gonna be mostly Initially it's a building loop, then it's a selling loop, and then it's a building the team loop. That's what you're gonna do for the rest of time.

23:47 So like do you like that? So there's some there's many of these. A farmer has a loop. Right. It goes with the seasons. You you know, you you plant the seeds, you water them. Then you know, then it grows and then you reap what you sowed. Right. And like that's the loop you're gonna do, and you're gonna do that every year for twenty five years. So I think the the key to life

24:04 I was telling that that kid who walked up to us. At the restaurant is Assume right now you don't know what it is. But know what you're looking for. You're looking for the blisters that you enjoy.

24:14 And that will come from doing this loop. thousands of times. And you don't have to know up front you would like to do it thousands of times, just to see are you interested in doing it once. twice. Do you have an enthusiasm towards doing this? And then as you do it. You have to ask yourself like is this something I

24:27 I feel myself doing like you know, like More and more and more. I would I wouldn't I don't feel tired doing this. I feel some I get energy doing this. Yeah, there's there's some pain, there's some suffering, there's some difficulty. I'm not saying it's without that, but find the loop that you love. And so for me, you know, I stumbled into it when I was Basically thirty years old, which was this podcast. It's like oh the th I'm not the founder loop is okay.

24:48 But the one I really love Is I'm doing life and I get to be curious about something. Then I go dig in. Then I take the top one percent of what I found and I enthusiastically share it with like minded people.

24:59 And I like that they like it. And then I go and do it again the next day. And whether I'm writing books or I'm doing the podcast or it's my YouTube channel, it doesn't matter where which way I do it, that's the that's the loop I love. And I've been now been doing this podcast, what, six years? Something like that. And um I'm fresh, fresh as a daisy, you know, and I could keep going.

25:17 And not everybody other people could do this exact same loop and they would be totally burnt out and they would hate it. Let's get really practical on advice for that guy. But let me ask you something first. Have you read this book? I read this a um I think five years ago. I told you about it when I read it. It's called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying.

25:35 I didn't know this is a book. I've heard the story. Some researcher went and talked to h people in hospice, right? Is that the story? I think I think it's worth the read, but it's one of these books that if I I'm gonna I can tell you the five points and that's definitely a lot of it. It's worth the read. But basically I forget how many people she worked with, but it was a woman who worked in a hospice for And I think it was Potentially ten thousand people, but for sure thousands of people who she Oh, so she's not a researcher. She actually just worked there. She was a nurse. Yeah. So she was a yeah, she was a nurse. Uh I think she she was a nurse. This was her occupation. And she saw thousands of people die and she wrote this book called The Top Five Regrets for Dying of the Dying, where she put together a list of the five things that were most common amongst the people she worked with. And I don't believe this book is scientific. It's purely observational.

26:24 But her number I'll t I can tell you all five of them. But the number one regret by a huge margin was I wish I had the courage to live a life true to myself. Not the life others expected of me. That was the number one regret by a huge margin when she like tallied this this up. And then basically this idea is that they like would spend

26:43 too long and they didn't realize until the end of their life that they were living a life that other people that they thought other people would should want them to live, not versus what they really wanted to live. Now listen to the rest, because the third one is actually related to the first one. The second one was I wish I hadn't worked so hard. Now this was the majority men. who said, um, I missed this game, I wasn't around for X, Y, and Z and they had massive regret around that. The third thing was I wish I had the courage to express my feelings. So it was people who suppress themselves. And they wish that they had the courage to say X, Y, and Z to someone they loved or a friend.

27:21 And um It also was when they were uh conflicted with someone and they had arguments someone and they're like, I wish I had the courage to say I don't agree with you. Can we please hash this out? But it's related to number one, which is w living the life that you want to live versus what you think you should. The fourth one was I wish I'd stayed in touch with my friends. Specifically, this is for old friends. Dive patients tried to track down in their final weeks a lot of buddies who they had, but they couldn't find them and they had huge regret. And the last one was I wish I had let myself be happier. And this idea is that happiness is a choice that people didn't realize that they could make and they stayed in comfortable patterns and they pretended to others and themselves that they were content and they feared change right up until change was forced upon them.

28:04 And so this book is really good and I highly I should actually go and reread it'cause Telling the summary it kind of excites me'cause I did feel a it felt awesome r reading this in a very uh weird way. But There's this man, I told you about this ninety six year old man in my building who I go and talk with all the time. And Gary Vanerchuk has said this all the time, that he likes to go to talk to old people. But I think reading this book is very similar to the joy I get. I'm Basically

28:27 to the listener, I'm friends with a ninety six year old in my building and he tells me all these types of stories and I leave feeling better. Uh part of the reason why you enjoy reading this is because you think You have wisdom, but also I can kind of learn from your mistakes, which is a little bit of a morbid way to look at it, but it's still a useful way to look at it. And so I think that this book is a really good book for anyone to read while when they're asking themselves if they should follow their passion.

28:51 Because the answer is almost always like yes, but I would argue That the answer is you should follow your passion, but your passion doesn't need to be your job. I have seen so many people that have made that mistake, but they thought following their passion was following that as a career. And I think that actually can be a massive, massive mistake. And so for anyone listening to this listening to this, I don't think And this includes us, this includes what you see on Instagram. I don't think you should necessarily go start a business. I don't think you should quit your job and do X, Y, and Z. If you do want to do that, I think

29:23 Try it. But you should probably save up six to twelve months of expenses, and life is a lot better. When you have financial security because there is a money may not make you happy But a lack of money certainly will make you unhappy. And I've seen so many people that have followed their passion and it was a and and because following their your passion oftentimes means creative pursuits, artists, things like that.

29:45 You don't really make a good living in any of those things. And I think there's nothing wrong with having your passion be your hobby. I disagree with one part of what you said. Which was like Uh you don't have to make Your passion, your work. I get what you mean, which is like it can be your hobby.

29:59 But I I would say Probably the default mode. Would you accept that? Most people Or not

30:06 lit up by what they do for work. Yeah, most people are not. Right. Most people don't don't get excited about Mondays. They don't wake up. Sort of tap dancing into work. According to Bill Gur Gurley's book, seventy percent of people uh do not like how they spend their days.

30:20 Right. And I think in that book he makes a point which is like um You know. Twenty four hours in a day. You sleep eight, that leaves sixteen, you work eight. So half your waking hours essentially

30:32 Half of your conscious life. You're gonna you know, once you once you Will come of working age, you're gonna sp you're gonna spend at your job. And so like doesn't it make sense to find the one that like you like to do? Uh right, like that you actually enjoy because It's half of your life experience is gonna be spent that when you're once you're of working age, once you're sort of in that twenty to sixty five range.

30:53 So way too many people accept. Uh it is what it is. Uh on something that's too to me, I'm like way too important to not accept that. Now obviously like You're right, that like not everybody sort of figures it out or makes it or whatever, but it's

31:08 I don't know, to me, it still seems like the qu you know, the quest you should go on. The you know the fight worth fighting for is like to To fight for that. To fight till you get that. What I'm saying is that entrepr it's a lot oftentimes that answer is not entrepreneurship and it is having your a a job that you love. Yeah, yeah, totally. That's what I mean. Yeah, totally. Uh I don't think it's on I don't think it's entrepreneurship at all, right? Like I would say I have even said f for me it wasn't entrepreneurship and I was

31:35 Entrepreneur. That's what I thought my job was for a long time. Uh I think it's fine in that loop that you love. If that loop is As a salesman or a marketer, or a connector, or uh you know, whatever it may be. There's there's many different loops, but But figuring out one that actually gives you a lot of energy and makes you feel alive, I think is is is worth doing. I'm gonna leave you with uh uh one quote that was said on this podcast. Isaac French came on.

31:55 And he was here to talk about it. His Airbnb Like business where he he built this like a little seven cabin Airbnb business and sold it for Seven, eight million bucks. Some some cool business like that. But he said this phrase. I don't remember much about the Airbnb thing, but he said this one phrase.

32:11 Or a quote. Which was um Light yourself on fire and people will come from many miles away to watch you burn. I just thought like There's something poetic about the way he said it.

32:21 And I I do think there's a test of like Could that be used to describe what I'm doing? Right. Like it's not a literal thing, but it's a like It's a it's almost like that's what level ten looks like. No, you might not be a ten.

32:34 But let's s let's agree that that somebody who's really lit up by the what they're doing. That's kind of how it would feel, is that they're they've just decided they've lit themselves on fire with passion and they are now people will come from many miles away to watch them burn. I would say that kind of describes uh in a visual format what what that's supposed to look like. I think that's a great quote. Isaac's the man. And I wanna preface this by or not preface this, but I wanna say that um This is really hard.

32:59 For example, you know one of the best ways to kill passion? Sometimes I like to apartment shop. I don't intend on buying an apartment anytime soon. But today I or la on Sunday I looked at an eighteen million dollar apartment because it was in my building and it was the Penthouse and it was fancy and shit. And I wanted to go look at it. And there were many other people there. And I went from

33:20 I'm happy to I need more. I'm not a night. I need more. I need more. I need to do more podcasts. You came back down the elevator to your shithole. Oh my gosh. Have you ever done that? Have you ever done real life Zillow where you just like go and ex like I always like I'll call my parents like, Oh, I'm looking at an apartment and they're like, You're looking at that apartment? I'm like The word looking I need a different word. I am uh I'm flipping through a catalogue and that's happen like that happens to be there. I'm not actually gonna buy this apartment.

33:51 And uh that's like the easiest way to like start like, you know, comparison's the thief of joy. That is a way to kill the passion. And so I think it's really challenging to fight Internal rewards versus external rewards. And I and what we have just said sounds really great. And what Isaac said is really great, but I also want to acknowledge it's incredibly challenging to pull off. My analogy is this. I took my kids to the airport and you know how you have to take those like airport trams like the little like Mm

34:16 The I don't know why we're at a airport, but we're taking a train inside the airport from like one part to another. And my kids have never done this before. So they get on, they're super excited. Oh, we're on like a train. And um And I'm like, hey, grab the bar.

34:29 And they're like, Why? 'Cause the train hasn't moved yet. They're like what do you mean? I'm fine. I'm like, No no, hold on to this. It's about to it's about to go. And they're like, No, no, I just want to balance. This is gonna be fun.

34:40 And I was like Alright. Train starts. Thirty pound daughter goes flying into someone's suitcase right away, gets rocked by the world. And I would say like a lot of advice

34:52 That falls into this kind of easier said than done bucket. Is really like It's the Internal soul equivalent. Of holding on to the pole.

35:01 'Cause trust me, this world's about to rock you. And if you're not holding on to this, you stand no chance. You will go flying into that man's suitcase right now. And so like The idea of like yeah, you r you do want to figure out Uh, you know, what lights you up, what makes you feel alive, not what sounds good to others. You do wanna figure out an internal reward and a scorecard so that you're not going to the eighteen million dollar penthouse and feeling like you need more when you walk out of there. And so it's like you need all this generic

35:27 Cliche goddamn advice. Because it's the equivalent of the pole to hold on to. If you don't have it, you're gonna go f you're just gonna get whiplashed by the world. You're just gonna constantly be w we whiplash. And holding it's m you know, you're still gonna feel it when the the train jerks you around, but like Now, Matt, like that's that's to me like the metaphor of of like how this sort of like grounded advice plays into the wor you know, to daily life, which is gonna whip you around.

35:51 I call it braces money. I had a friend that um had this amazing job and he was like I used to Just sale. Like I would like he was like I was like a thirty thousand dollar millionaire. I would like save about thirty grand and then go and like sale. And then he's like, I had a kid and I realized I wanted to buy them braces because that was my passion, more so than sailing. And so I got this really great job so I could have braces money because I realized I'm passionate about that as well, not just sailing. Today's podcast is brought to you by my friends at Mercury. Uh, they make the world's best banking product. I think you know this already. I use Mercury for all of my businesses. I think I have like maybe seven or eight businesses. We use Mercury as our business banking across all of them.

36:30 And now they actually just launched a personal banking account. So I have my personal account there. I moved off of Wells Fargo and Chase. I'm just all in on Mercury. Why uh I like products that are easy to use. I like products that get me and the problems that I have. So like very easy to make a joint account with my wife, very easy to spin up virtual cards. Uh one click and I get savings yield. It just has all the stuff that I need in one place.

36:51 So If you're looking for the best banking product on the market, it's definitely Mercury. I will fist bite anybody who disagrees with me on that. Go to Mercury.com/slash personal and learn more. Mercury is a FinTech, not an FDIC insured bank. Banking services are provided through Choice Financial Group and column NA, members FDIC. I wanna w leave leave one other point, which is When you if you accept

37:12 That The trick to figuring this out. Is following your enthusiasm. Especially things you're enthusiastic about that others are not. Especially things that you're willing to suffer for.

37:24 Uh the blisters. Then um there's two two kind of takeaways. The first is name the blisters. So it's really easy when you go into something. To just only focus on the outcome?

37:35 It's like oh yeah, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna start working out. Because I really want to be in shape. I really wanna be fit. I wanna be I wanna have you know a six pack. Okay, cool. I want to be jacked. Name the blisters. The blisters is I'm gonna be waking up at this time. I'm gonna be going to gym on days that I don't even feel like it. I'm gonna have to push myself when I'm there. I'm not gonna be looking at my phone.

37:54 I'm gonna be pushing myself till failure on a bunch of different sets. I'm gonna have to, you know, watch what I eat. I'm gonna have to right. So you have to like It's the blisters that decide whether you're gonna like it or not, much more so than the rewards. And so figure out uh when you're when you're looking at what loop I liked. Like Just The blisters are actually pretty obvious. You can actually know what they are and you decide if you're good with those or not. So that's the first thing.

38:17 Be upfront about those. The second is There's a great art of noticing. So you have to learn to notice in yourself where you have some weird Irrational, disproportionate enthusiasm.

38:29 Or where you're willing to go further than most people or the mastery that you're look you're enjoying picking up and what that mastery actually is,'cause it's not always doesn't always have a really clean label that other people have told you about. And also that sometimes other people will notice it for you. There's this I'll give you two examples. Uh Naval, who's somebody I think we both kind of admire. He tells a story about when he was a kid. He thought uh being a scientist was what he was gonna be.

38:52 He thought scientists were the highest calling, they were the truth seekers. They were the ones who invented things, like that's what he wanted to do. And his mom was like, Oh, I don't know. I think you're gonna be a businessman. He's like, Businessman? I never said anything about businessman. She's like, You never said it, but you're always doing it. He's what? Yeah, like everyone walk in that pizza shop, you tell me how they're doing this, this, and this wrong. Why they should be doing this instead. What this pr company should do instead. And and

39:13 She's like, I think that's just how your mind actually works. And he's like, she spotted it when I couldn't. Um, and I don't know if you saw Adam Newman from We Work went on Rick Rubin's podcast. A bunch of people are watching. Yeah, but you Austin Reef, who I think told you or you saw his thing. Yeah. Austin kept keep saying it's like one of the greatest he's like Adam gets a lot of hate, but he is really worth listening to here. Yeah, a Austin was the one who was like kept talking about it. He's like, dude, he's a master storyteller. He's like, I can't believe you're not more obsessed with him. And I was like, What kind of reverse neg? Okay, I'm interested. So I watched it.

39:44 He tells a story about we work where he's he actually was working on a kid's Clothing brand. Before we work. And it wasn't working. He was failing at it. And um his he's asking I think his girlfriend at the time

39:57 Well, what do you think I should do? And she's like, Real estate. He's like I've never done real wha where'd that come from? Random. I've never done anything in real estate. She goes.

40:07 I think you should do real estate because whenever we're walking on the street She goes, A man's eyes can go in many places walking down the street in New York. You can look at the woman who's pa who just passed you. You can look at the dogs. You can look at you can look at many things. The food. You can look at all the types of things. Your eyes Go up. You're always looking at the buildings and what's in these buildings and how they could how they work and w you know why this what this building could be for, not what it is for.

40:31 She goes, I think you should be in real estate. And like Okay, this honestly the story sounds a little bit like reverse in general. I have heard no, I have heard I think her name's Rebecca, his the wife is Rebecca Newman. I have heard five to ten and the Newman's are storytellers, so that could all be fake. I have heard five stories about Rebecca being the one You know, whatever they say like behind every successful man is a is like a woman like pushing him. I have heard like five stories of her being like the Adam Whisper and like pointing him in the direction. I would we uh Adam would be great. I would like to have her on.

41:01 Yeah, everyone needs a Rebecca in their lives. That's awesome. Um, and what did you learn from the podcast? My wife has never listened to this podcast. Isn't that hilarious? You wanna talk shit? Say something bad about it right now. Yeah, talk trash about it right now. Uh what else you got? You w you want to talk about anything else? No, I do, but I don't think it I I think we're good here.

41:31 We have we have to have this one has to have a clean slate. Um this is pretty cool. What's the kid's name? Who you talk to? The the young guys who you talk to. Douglas. Douglas, this one was for you. Um Can I tell you about my trip to Austin real quick before you just we can cut this out or whatever. You know.

41:49 You guys can make fun of me for being cringe. Austin is M Fm mecha. Did you get eyeballed like a ton? Uh yeah, a little bit. A little bit, for sure. Yeah. I wasn't there for long, I was only there for like A day and a half, but So many of our

42:03 It's crazy. You know, uh like I I I feel like every Thirty something year old. Who's into some version of like startups, media or uh e commerce or whatever is there for some reason. And it's easy to get around. It's pretty cool, right?

42:19 I went to so I went and I did the I did Chris's show. Which is kinda like going to the penthouse in your building or whatever. It's like Oh yeah, this great podcast that's like Then you go.

42:31 To the eighth biggest podcast in the world. And he went on Rogan and he's like, I went on the b the the number one podcast in the world, right? So it's like envy all the way up. But does Brogan when he did he Didn't mention it. when Rogan's are you like entering in this like epic center or is it like low key, relaxed type of setup? I didn't ask him a ton about it. I I think it is kinda what you what you see, and that Rogan is kinda what you see as well. Like I think it's it's pretty aligned. Um I don't think there's like a big like

42:58 facade uh that's there, either in the set or anything else. Um But But I also visited Cody Sanchez's office. Um, and we hung out for a little bit.

43:08 And it was so interesting. I I think uh It's kind of related to what we were just talking about about like You know, you wanna um You wanna experiment for yourself, but a faster way is to just Take a quick Costco sample.

43:21 Of what other people are doing. Her office is cool, right? Well, she just moved into a brand new office. I mean, yeah, it's cool, but it was also like It was On one hand Very impressive and cool for her. You can walk in, there's an energy

43:34 There's all there's sixty five people sitting there. I'm like, W what's going on? What's happening here? And so there's you know, you walk oh we're the sales team, we're the content team. There's just Like rows of dudes with headphones on just trimming shorts of her of her videos, clips of her videos for like. It's an operation. It's an op full operation, right? She is the brand. And um

43:56 At the same time, as impressive as it was, it was also like a very clear signal to my gut, right? Like I I actually and practicing this idea of like, how do you talk to your gut and bypass the head altogether? And one way is you just go immerse yourself in an environment, your gut will tell you like, Yeah, yeah, yeah, more of this or no no no more less of this. And so this works with people when you like trust your gut with people of like, I just like this guy or like something off about this person. I don't trust him for some reason. And there's the same thing for like figuring out what you like and what you don't like, what you want more of in your life, what you want less of.

44:27 When I walked in, I was like, Wow, this is really impressive. Also Note to self. I definitely don't want a buzzing office and seventy people to deal with and seventy people's like Yeah. Uh that scale I don't want Headcount. Like headcount is something I'm actually like

44:43 Against. Um I'm looking for low aggravation. And I'm looking for like kind of high High uh flow state, low uh management state of you know, how I want to spend my days. But that's her flow state, by the way. I she loves that. I've I'm very close to Cody forever. She loves that. E everybody has a different one, right? Like you have to know what what yours is. I know. I I can only speak what I what I know. And so you go to each one and same thing like uh Yeah, at Chris's I picked up some like

45:10 Another example would be um Look for things. So what are you sampling? You're looking for things that right in your gut you say more, more or less, less less. The second one was Where is somebody who I respect doing something I've just written off in the past. I just thought for me or not good or not worth it or not whatever.

45:27 Right. Like Chris does a live tour for his podcast. We've done a couple of live shows. And I think we both or at least we're like it's like o it was like it's okay. It's okay. I don't need more of that. It felt good. It felt amazing, but it was a lot of pressure and live podcasts don't In my opinion, have not translated oftentimes where I when I see when I've done them and when I see them. Right.

45:47 But you know, here's a smart, talented guy who I respect and he's clearly doing it. So I was like, What do you know about like Why are you doing this? Well what do you know about this that I seem to not not know? What did you catch that I seem to have missed? He's also a uh a a young single guy. Who like it's like literally would be like a rock star lifestyle if he w if he chose if he choose it to do it. But I'm looking to validate it. Is that like'cause that's the reason I don't, right? Is I don't wanna like travel so much with little kids or whatever.

46:13 But I'm You know, s you do do things. I did travel to Austin, right? You do do things if there's enough motivation to do them. So I'm kinda looking for like You know that that guy the the sit down on the campus and like tell me change my mind type of thing. Like I'm actually trying to change my mind. I actually want to find find falsify some assumption that I have. Um, like I talked to this dude who was in ecom.

46:34 Uh his name's Zach. And he just actually came out. He just announced what his company is. It's like um Yeah, told me on the phone, he's like, Yeah, I've just like You know, hundred million dollar run rate supplement brand. I was like what? I never I didn't even know you were doing that. I thought you had an agency in a socks. Are you talking about is this uh Finn? No, it's uh something called like m Men Go to Mars or something like that. I don't know what it is. Something something Mars is in the name. Zach Stuck is his name. So he's like, Yeah, dude, I built this brand two in two years, we're at a hundred million in in run rate. It's a

47:02 I think it's like an alternative to testosterone. Boosting brand. So you like you take like fucking like Tangali and Ashwagandha and stuff like that. I think that's the idea. Do you see it? Yeah, Mar men go to Mars and it's a uh

47:15 The most potent and natural Testosterone stack on earth. Dude, when you use the word stack. I get all fired up. Why don't we just describe our podcast that way? Us the stack founders acquired. It's the most potent stack of Dostro Boosting for founders. It's a make your mind your body, your mind, and your wallet better with this stack. Does this work? Should I take these I mean should I put this in my body? Bro, those are gummies.

47:48 But he was telling me he's uh he's telling me like how great ecom is. I was like, Bro, I'm trying to run away from e com And I was like But what do you about e com that like what do you know that I don't? He's like, Well, I just think with AI, like having businesses that have real world products is like way more defensible. All the digital shit is just like a race to the bottom if you're digital only.

48:05 You know, that seems indefensible, but like still having like a supply chain and a physical product that's on shelves that gets into people's hands, like That's something AI's not gonna be able to just do. Plus we get the benefits of AI that we're gonna like We're gonna go from maybe fifteen percent margins to twenty five percent margins. If AI gives us this productivity boost. So I think A I I think he comes a great place to be. And I was like Mm.

48:26 I'm pretty convincing. I I I really have no counterpoints. Uh You know? I fold. I think the thing that I've been telling myself for seven years Uh might no longer be true. And I should uh I should revisit that assumption. Yeah, you're also not selling supplements. That seems like the game of uh of the game.

48:44 That seems like absolutely the game. I think you called it a long time ago. Dog supplements are really the best ones because On the back of the label. Who No It's just the middle figure that says we're not required. Studies show nothing. We couldn't tell.

49:14 What do you do To Make yourself feel like your testosterone's gone up. Forget the numbers. What do you do in life? To make yourself feel that. Just yell in traffic. Uh uh lift weights and lose fat. I mean, yeah, that's what you do and eat red meat.

49:28 Right? Like I feel like you have some niche ones too that you do. I don't know what they are, but I just My spidey sense is diggling. A lot of people think that if you eat wild animals Like uh versus fat cows that it's some powerful stuff and you get and you get all hyped up. But It's just what you think it is, is just lifting weights and losing fat. And that kinda does the still sparring, do you still fight at all?

49:51 I I I got really into boxing and I loved it. I got hit in the head a couple times that I had a headache for like seven days and I was like I think I should chill. Um but it was awesome. Sparring our sparring session? Dude, it w it it was it was that footage. Was it fun?

50:12 Oh dude, it was super fun, but the footage I'm sure will be just absolutely comical. It was fun. It's fun. And like when we sparred, it was just like You just Do you don't you weren't you didn't get hurt at all, right? It was just it just. Honestly, honestly, that was the closest Like I don't know if we've hugged. But that was the hug. It was like a man hug. Like I felt so taken care of. I was like Sam is really taking care of me right now. He's giving me just enough where I get to feel good in this and he's doing

50:41 None of the stuff that's gonna make me feel terrible by just whooping my ass here. This is really really nice. I really felt very taken care of. Thank you. It's fun to have someone like in your face and you're like, Oh, this is what it feels like to get rattled a little bit. Uh I think that definitely could help your testosterone go up. For sure. Um But no, I don't I mean I The good stuff comes in syringes, if we're being honest, but in a s a uh a

51:03 bottle that I could buy on the internet. That's called a stack. That might also be good. So we'll have to give that a go. Did I ever tell you I think after we had that spark session, I came home and I was like, I'm gonna do this and I went on Craigslist and I found a trainer. Didn't you say he showed up in Timberlands? Yeah, he showed up in Timberlands and Jeans. And uh like a huge set of keys, like a janitor ring. of keys and he was basically like a handyman.

51:27 And um But he had hands. But he trained with he trained with the Diaz brothers in Stockton. You trained at their c at their gym. And so he would do leg he would leg kick me with Fucking Timbalins on Fade. Just to show me he wasn't like hurting me. Uh, but oh my God, it was the it was the most brutal workouts.

51:46 It only lasted seven days. I'm I'm just glad I didn't quit. He disappeared. He ghosted. Uh like he just Like his phone line disconnected, he's just gone. I don't know what happened to this guy. But it was the hardest seven days of training, and I'm glad I at least experienced it so that I know what the real thing is. I'm like well, that's what it looks like when you're not in a safe environment when you're training.

52:06 It's fun to get there and then whenever you I I just box because the kicks are scary. When our friend Ramon would kick it. He would kick like I would wear all the pads and it hurt so bad still. I did not understand the kicks. The kicks are insane to me. But I think boxing is definitely good. I think it's really fun. Okay. Yeah, I think that's it.

52:24 Is that a w was so who's the guy's name? Douglas? Douglas. Shout out Douglas. Was he shirtless in Austin? Because that's like what everyone does. Did you walk around shirtless and barefoot? Everybody had the mustache. Everybody in Austin has a mustache. Hybrid athletes, maybe. That's what they do. It's it's like'cause everyone was like the buff.

52:41 Yeah, hybrid athletes. That's when you're buff and you run. That's the move in Austin. I'm trying to figure out how to brand the hybrid athlete of uh Business. Where You have the

52:53 Success. But like Grind culture suffering mindset. Right. Like the Goggins hormose, like It's just about pain. That's what it is. And you need to not see your family and not do this, not do that. It's like I don't know, man. I'm doing this I'm doing it this other way and I I it's d it's working pretty well for me. I don't know what to call this, but it's sort of like hybrid acquaintance like

53:11 You can be jacked and run. It's like oh that that makes sense to me. Yeah, everyone in Austin's that way. Um all right, that's it. That's the pod. I feel like I can rule the world and no way But I want to I put my law in it like

53:27 So on the road less travel, never looking back Hey, let's take a quick break to tell you about our sponsor. It is a podcast that we want you to check out. It's called D2C Pod. It's hosted by Ramon Berrios and Blaine Bolas. And this is a podcast about all things direct to consumer, D2C. It's e-commerce stores, it's how you optimize your brand. And they're talking with founders, marketers, and the platform creators. About all kinds of things that you need to know for D to C, you know, website conversion, paid ads, Facebook ads, consumer trends, email marketing. If you want to know the stories behind your favorite brands, this podcast is for you. So check it out. Listen to D2C Pod, wherever you get your podcast.

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