Ed Mylett - #MaxOut Your Life: How To Become An Elite Performer & Elevate Your Life To New Heights

Full transcript: Ed Mylett on London Real

2:28 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Ed Mylett, the American entrepreneur, business coach, author and motivational speaker. You started from nothing and today have a net worth of over 400 million dollars and named in the Forbes Top 50 Wealthiest Under 50. You host the number one business podcast, The Ed Mylett Show, where you interview peak performers like David Goggins, Dr Joe Dispenza and Jay Shetty.

3:01 Your best-selling book, Max Out, details your strategies for creating personal identity, building self-confidence and developing the will to win. As one of the top business leaders and performance experts in the world, your mission is to inspire people to obtain happiness now, no matter their situation. Ed, welcome to London Real. Brian, great to be with you, brother. You know, I’ve wanted to do this for a long time, so it’s an honor to be with you.

3:25 Look, I’m so happy to do this. There’s so much to talk about, but you know, happiness, that’s that word that I grab onto right away, and I’d love to start there because a lot of people see you, Ed, and they see a really successful guy. A guy that’s in shape, that’s kind of a master of his domain, and you know, when you say happiness, they might think, well, I’d expect Sadhguru to say that, or notice Joe Dispenza to say that, but for you, you think we can all have happiness now, and I find that really interesting.

3:54 I also find it juxtaposed with your social media following. You’re massive on social, Ed, and you’re, you know, in this space, over 2 million followers on Instagram, and that’s the place where I find most people go to get unhappy, you know, because they’re bombarded with people that are always doing something better to them. I always tell my members, my Academy, there’s always someone out there that’s better looking than you, has a better looking wife, has a bigger car, has a this and that.

4:20 And because of technology, we’re plugged into this comparison platform. How do you get those things in your head? Again, this technology is a new thing, really. And yet it seems to sometimes make us unhappier. So just curious what your read is on that.

4:34 Well, I think I talk about happiness a lot because I’ve, well, first off, it’s what everybody wants. We think we want the car, but really it’s how the car will make us feel. We think that car will make us happy. We want the jet, we want the relationship, because of what we think we want. Those emotions, and so I think I talk about it a lot, because I’ve sought it out all my life, and when I was young I really was that person that thought I called blissful dissatisfaction is the way that you should live, is, which, that you can live blissfully now and still be dissatisfied.

5:05 People conflate those things, and they think, well, if I’m unhappy, I’m also, if I allow myself to be happy, I’ll lose all my drive. You can be simultaneously dissatisfied with where you are, it’s still blissful, and I never understood that when I was young. And so I think you’re asking me how old I was before we started. One of the reasons, maybe I looked a little bit older, was the stress I put myself under as a young man, delaying bliss until a particular destination, and every time I get there I move the goal post more and more, and I was never happy, and I finally, it occurred to me.

5:36 I had a couple different incidents take place, but it just finally occurred to me that I can be happy in myself now. And really what it comes down to, it’s, it sounds corny from a big entrepreneur guy, but it’s accepting and loving yourself as you are, but not accepting and loving the destination you’re at. So I love the man I am at any place, but I’m not dissatisfied with my, I am dissatisfied with my location, even to this day. I want to improve. I want to grow.

6:01 Sometimes I think it’s a disease or an illness of mine, but I’ve learned to enjoy myself as I’m growing, as I’m improving, as I move to the next level. And social media is absolutely that place I have to guard against. Oh wow, GaryVee had 17,000 comments on that post. Minded that you know, I even, I struggle with that stuff. All comparison is a formula for misery, all comparison, and what often we do, Brian, is one of the most insidious forms of comparison, is comparison to our former self.

6:34 Well, so if we’re not in that relationship anymore that we wish we were still in, we compare, or maybe the relationship ran, we compared to the sixth week when it was blissful and we were getting to know each other. Now we’re in the sixth year, and we compared to what it was then to now, and it’s not the same, and that hurts us, or we lament a decision we’ve made. I’m really become good at not comparing me to former versions of me or to other people that I see.

7:00 That is something that has brought me great joy that I didn’t have when I was younger. I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say that comparison is the most dangerous thing. You know, there’s a lot of people say stay away from this and stay away from that, but I mean, that must take a lot of mental discipline to catch yourself when you’re comparing, because we’re probably doing it hundreds of thousands of times a day. I literally catch myself doing it and I go, scratch it.

7:23 I’m not kidding, I go, scratch it, scratch it. And I, I’m old enough that I can picture a record or a DVD player literally being scratched. I don’t want it to even be in my unconscious, my subconscious mind, where it comes back, because all misery’s a comparison, and we may not realize it. We’re not really that upset with where we are. What we are is what happens.

7:42 We compare it to where we think we should be, and that very comparison is what brings us misery. We’re happy to be breathing, we’re happy to be alive, we’re happy we woke up. It’s the immediate comparison to what could be, used to be, should be, or somebody else’s, b. Does that brings us the sadness, the angst, the anxiety, the worry, the frustration. It is always comparison, and I would, I would encourage everybody to evaluate this the next time you feel these negative emotions.

8:09 You don’t want all the ones I just listed. You’re comparing to something you don’t have, or a place you are not, or someone else’s life. Every single time. Wow, yeah, so blissfully dissatisfied. I was probably that guy.

8:25 That ever thought, you know, Ed, and I grew up before YouTube, before podcasts. You know, both of us didn’t have this massive resources of people. I always think, what would my life have been different if in my 20s or 30s I could have tapped into, you know, Joe Dispenza, we’ve had on the show, or, you know, a myriad of people. But like, I was the guy that probably would have said, if I ever celebrate, happiness, I’m not going hard enough. I’m getting lazy, you know what I mean?

8:49 Maybe, yeah, I was, you know, but that’s not necessarily true. It’s not true. In fact, we all do it. There’s two types of people. There’s people that delay their happiness to a particular destination.

9:00 Once I meet that man, once I meet that woman, once I get the promotion, once I get this house, they delay it. The other one’s the achievers. The achievers are like, wait a minute, if I enjoy this I’m gonna lose all my drive, because my formula, my recipe so far is kind of be miserable, try to avoid this misery I feel, and that causes me to acquire new levels of life. And so we think, oh my gosh, if I celebrate, if I enjoy, I’m toast. The truth is, I’ve known for years that wasn’t true, and as I’ve started to research and understand the brain, I had Dr Andrew Huberman on.

9:33 He says, actually, we’ve researched dopamine. Turns out you get far less dopamine when you achieve something than when you’re in the stress phase of pursuing it. Your brain feeds you more joy and bliss in the pursuit, literally, than when you acquire it. It’s all been studied in the brain. So this notion that we’re going to lose our driver ambition is completely false.

9:54 In fact, the more rewards we get for enjoying it, the more we want to do it again. There becomes a point. People have all heard of burnout, and what burnout is, and it’s a very real thing. What burnout is, is that somebody who’s robbed themselves of the joy, the bliss and the celebrations far too many times, they’ve achieved, and their brain has concluded there’s no dopamine in this achievement thing for me anymore, therefore I have no desire to do it again.

10:20 So you better celebrate. You better enjoy. The truth is, it’s the formula for greater achievement in the future long term. Wow. All right, so next time you feel yourself thinking, when I get this achievement I’m going to be happy, just be happy to be in the moment, doing something you love, taking some risks, stretching yourself because that’s when, that’s where the juice is.

10:41 Well, for most people. Yeah, for most people the juice is growth. Yeah, so you know, if you study anybody who’s really great, I am a Tiger Woods fan, and if you really listen to him, he’d say he’s a winner. Second place is first loser. You also listen, he says, I just want to give myself a shot on the back nine on Sunday.

11:01 I want to be in contention. What he’s saying is I want to be in the hunt. What I love is the hunt. What I love is the chase. What I love is the competition.

11:08 What I love is the pursuit. That doesn’t mean I don’t want to win. I’ve won a great deal and I’ve lost a great deal, and I’ll take winning over losing every single time, believe me. But most of the great growth in my life, where I’ve become a better man, a better businessman, a better father, better friend, better human, has been in the times when I lost, not in the times when I won. That’s just a fact.

11:30 Night, I don’t know why this hasn’t become more part of our culture, because there are people like Joe or Andrew who can prove that this stuff is true, but most of them, and I, and Joe’s one of my dearest friends, don’t come from an achievers perspective. They come from more of that let it come to you perspective, that bliss, that zen kind of perspective, and most achievers are like, yeah, that’s great, I’ll get around to this meditation, heart, all that crap once I get everything right. But I’m saying they’re right, and you can achieve more if you’ll do that now.

12:03 Yeah, that’s a super powerful point. I mean, just to think about the happiness thing, I mean, I grew up not far from you, southern California, San Diego, and for some reason when I was a kid, I think it got etched in my mind. I always called the American dream, but I thought that when I had money I would be happy. I don’t know why. I used to have dreams I was rich and wake up and realize we weren’t, but for me that was kind of etched in my mind, and you know, I went down that road for a long time, Ed, but I could never it never satisfied me, and so, you know, I went to a good school and I was working on Wall Street, and then, you know, in my 30s I think I was looking for other things to make me happy.

12:38 I got involved in alcohol and drugs, and then when I finally got to London I was still 40 years old, working in the City here, which is the Wall Street equivalent, doing really well, and I noticed one day that my bank account kept going up every quarter because they would pay us every quarter in the business I was working, and I wasn’t getting any happier. I was alone in this big house with no family, still trying to, like, drink myself to death, and I was just like, this isn’t working, and that’s why we’re talking here today, because I decided to make a change, and it was because I started being of service. I always thought those were the corny people, Ed, that were of service, you know.

13:16 The other thing you became, that all happy people have, brother, is more self-aware. I lived completely unaware of who I was unobserving of who I was for so many years, thinking I’d get around to it. The happiest people I know are very aware. They’re self-deprecating, you know. I’ve realized I’m a very average, ordinary person.

13:39 I grew up like you. I thought there wasn’t a lot of happiness around me, so it must be in those beach houses, right? It must be on those jets. And by the way, there are those things. They do make you happy.

13:51 People say, well, material things don’t make you happy. That’s just a lie. Any of you ever bought a beautiful suit like you’re wearing? Makes you happy for how long? I don’t know.

14:00 Does it fulfill us though? Which is a completely different emotion. No, service is what fulfills us. But I had a catalyst too. I was building my first big mansion, dream house, and I met my wife, as I told you, when we were five years old, so it was, it’s a family project, and we walk in one day.

14:18 I’m having a bad day, I’m mad at everybody, business isn’t going good, you know, appointments have flaked out. Walk in the house and they’re building it. I’ll never forget this. They were in the kitchen, building the kitchen, this huge great room. I walked in and I’m pissed, yelling at veins sticking out, and all the guys working in my house, were in southern California, you know this as well.

14:41 The vast majority of people that were working on my home were from Mexico, whether they were there legally or not, I don’t know, but they were working. There’s about 15 guys working at my house, all making minimum wage, all had left their families at one point, and they’re playing mariachi music, they’re laughing, they’re dancing, they’re joyous as they’re working, and I stopped myself. With my wife, it’ll make me too emotional to talk too long about it, and I looked, and I thought if life is measured on happiness, these guys are killing me.

15:12 They’re building my mansion, my veins are sticking out of my neck, I’m miserable, they’re making minimum wage, it’s 100 degrees, they’re working in my house building my kitchen, and they’re singing and dancing and loving each other and having a blast, happy to be here, and I’m miserable, and this is my damn house. What the hell is wrong with me? And that was a real turning point for me. What do they know I don’t? And what they were doing is, I was always projecting forward.

15:39 It was always the future. I never lived now. You know, I didn’t always live in the past. I’m not one of those, that kind of comparison is not my thing, but I never live now. They were living right now, because they don’t even know what their future is.

15:54 What a great gift to live right now and be grateful for that moment, that work, that song, that buddy of theirs working next to them, and I started to just slow down my appreciation for the moment, and that’s really changed my life, and I can’t tell you that I still don’t revert back, because I do, but I do it much less because I am self-aware. I catch myself when I do it now. There’s a lot of people watching us right now, are listening to us, that are shaking their head up and down, saying, I’ve had the Ed Mylett mansion moment in my own way, you know, to whatever degree, where they’ve realized why am I so upset and angry?

16:30 I’ve got so much, and here’s someone with technically less who’s happy. But a lot of people never know how to get out of that cycle, because it’s one thing to notice it, but you know, a lot of people repeat it for years. How did you break out? I know it’s still a struggle, but how did you start to get out of that and be in the now? Because it’s easy to say but it’s really hard to do, especially if you’ve built your whole life as this high performance go-getter looking to the future, what’s next, kind of guy?

16:58 Yeah, and I am a high performing, performance go-getter still, as you know, and I haven’t, I’ve been let that version of me go. Here’s the fallacy. People think I have to let go of a part of me. This is not true. I have to let go of a part of me in order for this other part to appear.

17:14 What if you just added more to you? I don’t have to let go of my intensity. This is what makes me who I am. It’s what makes some of you who you are, your competitive spirit, your focus level, your drive, your ambition. You, it’s not an either or.

17:29 You don’t have to let go of that. My first job Brian, my dad came home from an AA meeting, had just gotten sober. Everything happens for you, not to you. I had been living at home with my parents, out of college, just losing, and my dad goes, I got you a job tomorrow. It’s at McKinley Home for Boys.

17:48 I said, what? He goes, it doesn’t matter, get your ass down there tomorrow. So I get down there, it’s an orphanage, and there’s hundreds of boys there. They were all taken from their families, either parents were dead, incarcerated, or had molested them. I walk into cottage eight, my boys are all eight, nine and ten years old, these precious little boys, and I walk in.

18:05 It’s before school, it’s about seven in the morning, and the cottage stops and they all look at me with these eyes. Any kid who’s had any kind of dysfunction in their life, I have this philosophy: our eyes are a little bit different, you know. We just want to be loved, and I, my life changed temporarily, and what changed was I was this athlete before, that all of a sudden I’m this, these guys’ dad. I’d walk them to school. I’d open presents with them on Christmas Eve.

18:33 I was there when they brought the report, hardcore, from school. I put them to bed every night. We were walking to school one day, and we do it every day, and they’d have to walk in a straight line with me, and little Jose every day would skip up in front, and I’d say, Jose, get back in line, get back in line, and finally one day, we, he did it again. I said, Jose, I’m not going to tell you again, get back in line. We got to walk in a straight line.

18:57 He goes, I’m sorry, Mr. I said, why did he do this every day? He goes, Mr Ed, I’m just so happy there’s no gunshots in this neighborhood on the way to school. Nobody’s going to shoot me. He was nine years old, and I remember thinking he’s grateful to not be shocked on the way to school, and here I am walking angry with these precious boys, and every one of those boys wanted a couple things, a few things. They wanted someone to love them, believe in them, care about them, and teach them how to live better.

19:30 Love, care, right, believe, and teach them how to live better, and here’s what I have found. So to all the adults I made in my life, every human being wants to be loved, cared for, believed in, and if you could teach them how to live a little bit better, they’ll be very grateful. And so I found for me, my go zone is loving, caring, believing in people, and teach them how to live better. The fourth part only happens when I grow and improve, so if I stop growing and improving and achieving, I cheat myself out of the thing I love most, which is what you said, which is serving people.

20:03 So my growth and achievement is connected to my capacity to serve and that linkage right there, brother, is why I can live blissfully dissatisfied. I don’t give up my growth and achievement to serve. It’s directly correlated between the two things, so I must achieve, I must grow in order to be better at serving, and that’s how I’ve wired myself, right? Because if you don’t continue to grow. Let’s be honest, you can’t really serve.

20:30 You know, you could take a short break, but if you just put a pause and say, oh yeah, the stuff I was talking about back in 2020, it still applies. They don’t buy it, do they? Everybody looks at you funny, and they say, but you’re not emanating the energy of someone in growth. So guess what? I’m not gonna listen to you, or it’s just going to bounce off me.

20:50 That’s true, right? Absolutely. Congruency and authenticity equal efficiency, and so I need to be congruent and authentic, and if I’m that, I can make an impact. I can transfer energy. Everything, as you know, is your capacity to transfer that energy to somebody, and you can’t transfer to somebody that which you’re not experiencing yourself.

21:11 And so, when you’re in the throes of experiencing something, you can transfer and give that to me. When you cease to experience it, that energy doesn’t transfer anymore. And so I know for a fact I have to be doing that, and that is why I’m a relatively happy dude who’s still achieving, and I might even be achieving at a faster pace, because I’m under no illusion I need to give up my passion, my intensity, my work ethic. I still work crazy hours. To the normal human being, I just somehow enjoy them more than I used to.

21:42 Wow, well, that’s mastery if you can figure out how to do that, because you know that’s what a lot of high performance guys never can get their head around. Sinatra famously was unhappy, you know. You talked to you know Jerry Weintraub. I think he wrote in his book and was just saying, you know, what he was still always kind of grumpy and miserable because I don’t know if he ever figured out that thing you’re talking about, you know, achieving things and he took risks and we remember him for all these things, but you know, what was he able to be blissful in the moment?

22:11 I don’t know. You know, I knew Jerry pretty well and I’m not so sure Jerry figured that out to the extent that he would like to, either. Like, honestly, yeah, and that is, you know, we are who we associate with to some extent as well, and that lack of attitude and appreciated. I’m not, by the way, disparaging Jerry. I love Jerry.

22:30 He was a sweet man, a dear man, but I would have always wished for him even a little bit more bliss for the wonderful life that he had, and obviously I do know that about Sinatra. Yeah. It’s strange, because Jerry was so prolific. I mean, even in his older years he was doing so many things. It makes you always wonder, like, and I think it’s not true, can you accomplish that much, you know, without having something that thing missing where you got to do it?

22:55 But you’re saying you can it’s just being in that state of being blissfully disappointed, but it’s a fine line you got to walk, right? Yeah, you think that and I just think you think you’re going to lose your edge, and in fact you get a different edge. I love Jerry, by the way. When I first met Jerry, he’s gonna tell you this. I’ve never met anybody in my life who’s introduced themselves this way.

23:12 I did not know who he was. I knew who Jerry Weintraub was, but I didn’t know I was meeting Jerry Weintraub, and I said, “I’m Ed Mylett,” and he goes, “Hey, I’m Jerry effin Weintraub,” but he didn’t say effing. I just thought that’s a cool way to introduce yourself to somebody. Oh my god, Jesus, he sounds really intense. Yeah, he was super intense.

23:32 It’s interesting you said, like, awareness of yourself, because funny enough when I made the transition from banker to broadcaster, it was because I finally took a meditation course, and I kid you not, Ed, literally 30 days later of doing twice a day meditation, I took a transcendental meditation class here in London. I always tell the story. They charged me like a thousand pounds, something crazy, right? And people were like, why didn’t you get the you know, the Calm app or something, because it was no apps then, right?

24:01 And so, but I always say if I hadn’t paid for it, I wouldn’t have done it, because for me it was very woo-woo, you know? They were playing the old videotapes of the Indian guy that was dead, and I had to bring in a piece of fruit and a white napkin. I was like, come on, you’re giving me a secret mantra, you know? I’m like, come on. But since I paid it, it’s pay price to action.

24:19 I was like, I’m not going to quit on this, so I went the whole nine, and I actually got the practice. And 30 days later, one morning after meditation, I said, oh, Brian’s not happy, because he’s doing stupid things that don’t make him happy. It’s time to make a change. So that’s how it all happened. I’m laughing just because that’s almost exactly how I started.

24:40 Started in TM. Paid a fortune for it. Thought these people were crazy. Had my buzzword, you know, I’m like, what am I doing? And then just slowly over time and I really struggle with.

24:51 I remember talking to Tony Robbins about this, and he’s like, hey man, I struggle with this stuff too, just quieting my mind for 15 seconds, but it’s like anything. I think I would just tell everyone it’s a muscle that you develop, and now many years later, you know, walking meditations, and I don’t know what I would do without my ability to empty my mind. I can’t even imagine living that way anymore. Yeah, you make a great point for anybody listening who’s struggling with starting.

25:16 And I try to get all my students to do it. It’s such an important thing, but a lot of, I always tell people, you know, people think that meditators are like these Buddhist monks that always have these amazing meditation sessions. Even the most experienced person will have a bumpy session, where your mind’s all over the place and again, it’s a skill. When I first started, it was really hard. I had to say my mantra over and over again.

25:37 Now I can drop into it, you know, on, you know, anytime, but that’s only come with years of practice, so and there’s never a bad session. If you do the session, it’s a good session. I always tell people, I so agree with you and I tell people that all the time. So many friends of mine quit 30 45 days in because they’ve not yet, you know, been able to empty their mind, even for a little short window of time. I just encourage everybody continue to do it.

26:03 There’ll be a, there’s a morning, there’s a breakthrough, we’ve all had them, or we’re like, wow, that was it right there, and then you’ll miss it. You’ll miss it, but you’ll come back to it, and the more and more you do it, you’ll get in that space. So I absolutely agree with you. Yeah, and things are happening to your subconscious the whole time, that it lags. It’s that second order effect, and so that’s why I’m diligent man.

26:22 Every morning I do it, even, it’s Saturday, and I hear my boys making noise in the background, and I want to go see him. I still do my 20 to 30 minutes, because I know if I don’t do my meditation, the Brian I don’t like is gonna come out potentially, you know, and I don’t like that guy, and I don’t want to see him around. I haven’t seen him in a long time, and we’re going to keep it that way, so I pay my dues in the morning. And I want to get to morning routines later.

26:44 You mentioned your childhood, Ed. I think what’s really interesting for people to learn about you is your contrast, you know? I think this is some something that Tom Bilyeu does really well. I know, you know, Tom, and he said, Brian, my whole life is trying to explain to people I wasn’t born a billionaire, so they can see the shift and realize they can do it. And a lot of people see you, Ed, and they’re like, this guy easily was born with it.

27:06 He was born in good shape, good looking, great speaker, he must have born and been born in this beach house on the boat. But like, that’s not true. You used to be known as Eddie Spaghetti. Is that right? Oh, you really do your research.

27:19 Yeah, yeah, I was known as Eddie Spaghetti for sure. and who was that kid? I mean, you mentioned your father a bit, but what did that name mean, and who were you, and how did you evolve? My brother, I moved this weekend, so I was going through all these old pictures, and it was emotional for me, because I’m looking at pictures of Eddie Spaghetti when he was five and seven and nine, and man, I want to go back and hug that kid. Yeah, you know, I was man, unbelievably shy and insecure, and I’m still very introverted, very introverted.

27:55 That’s always a surprise, that’s surprising to hear I heard you say that to someone on a conversation, and I was just like, wow, I am too, and no one believes it, but that’s hard for you people here with you, because you don’t seem you are. Yeah, I don’t think you do either. What you have that most introverts have is you’re an incredible listener, and so that certainly you have some of the clues that would lead me to believe you’re introverted. Your ability for empathy, compassion and listening is real evident.

28:23 But me with the deep voice and the weird features, you know? I don’t know that I’m a sympathetic figure, but the little boy me was incredibly insecure and shy. I’m very small. I think probably one of the reasons I got into weightlifting was I was so undersized and so small, so bullied, so picked on, and then you max that up with a loving family, but I’d come home and you know, a lot of instability in my home with my dad. My dad is my best friend.

28:54 He’s been sober 30 years. He’s actually, I just got out of the hospital a couple days ago, but my dad wasn’t sober when I lived there. So that anxiety, any of you that grew up with parents that didn’t get along or a divorce or alcohol or drugs or any physical or mental or verbal abuse, just anxiety all the time, so I just grew up worrying. I wasn’t really a little boy very long, you know? I just didn’t have all that peace of mind and ease and naivete that comes with being a child.

29:22 So it wasn’t great in my house. Then I’d go to school and get picked on. I wasn’t a good athlete because I was small. I finally found baseball, which I was good at, but I think that’s why I tended to get into personal development, and personal growth is, I had to learn to do these things to become a baseline functioning human, and then I connect well and relate to people. I mean, I’m weird, brother.

29:46 I’m driving out here last night. I’m at a stoplight. People think I’ve lost my mind when I share this one with you, and just you pull stuff out of people nobody does. I’m at a stoplight here, and it’s a long life in town. I’m in La Quinta, and then there’s this woman in the car next to me, and I look, I have this habit now.

30:04 Does she know who I am, you know, ’cause I prefer to be anonymous still. She doesn’t know I am looking at her. She’s in her car. She’s a little bit overweight, and I just start thinking about her and her life now. Do you ever do that, like with a stranger?

30:20 And I start my eyes well up at this light, and I start literally crying, not sobbing, but water pouring out of my eyes. So I just had this notion she was sad and felt invisible, and maybe hasn’t had as much joy and ecstasy and love and passion and achievement in her life, and she’s a human being, and she’s just in her car, probably leaving work, probably going home. She’s just existing, and I was overcome with emotion for her, and I wanted to help her. You know, I wonder when did I go?

30:52 I can help you know. But I guess the reason I share that with you is because of the way I grew up I do have real empathy for people. I wish I saw that more in our political leaders today. Just a little empathy like, let them know you care. I love you, you belong, you’re not invisible.

31:09 I see you, and I think that’s part of my childhood certainly rearing its head as a almost 50 year old man now. I mean, do you think about, you know, like that woman that was in the car? I mean, like, what percentage of the population is in that state you know, and I guess if I go further, do you think 20 years from now that might change drastically because that could have a major impact on the whole world’s happiness, if you know people could find a way out of that shell, you know.

31:40 I’m, I think that the percentage, so I don’t know, but I think the percentage is scary high, like maybe in the 90-plus percentile. Yeah, I think you’re right. Don’t you? Yeah, I do. I do, yeah.

31:52 So I, that worries me. Just we’re a culture of unhappy beings for the most part at the greatest time ever to be alive, even including COVID. Am I optimistic that can change? I am, I am, because of what you said. There’s more and more access to people like myself.

32:11 You’ve named other people on the show that are here to serve and here to help. I think we need to find ways where this information, and as I said earlier, the energy is transferred. There’s a little bit through our shows that are awesome. Social media is awesome, but to really make change, people need to be plugged into environments, as you know. Enviro, you know, the mental side of life is very important, but the environmental is maybe even more important.

32:39 What’s the environment you’re in, whom you’re around? I mean, and not this, who are the five people you associate with thing we’ve all heard a million times, but truly, what’s the environment you live in? All of this social unrest, I don’t know that it’s articulated as well as it could be, but what people are really saying is, hey, I’m growing up in a disadvantaged environment, if you would just give me a fair environment, I’m mentally capable of doing this, I just need an environmental change, whether that’s socially or culturally or the neighborhood itself, the school itself for the child, and so the only way that changes if the environment change, and I don’t know whether that will happen or not, but I’m, that’s what I, it’s why I’m on your show.

33:22 It’s why, it’s why I’m existing at this stage of my life. I know it’s why you serve, and so I’m a big believer in humans, and I think the greater good will prevail eventually. Yeah, and I’m definitely optimistic. I mean, again, like I thought about this, like, today or yesterday. If you know, if the Brian who was 28 years old in New York City or 29 years old who had just had his first heroin overdose, but the rest of the world still thought he was, you know, this high performance guy, and his life was a mess, and he couldn’t figure out a way around this.

33:53 If I could have plugged into everything on YouTube right now and been around people and gotten that mentorship. Man, I really think I would have been able to make more changes, but I didn’t know how to get any of that. It’s like, read a book or get a Tony Robbins tape or go to it got there wasn’t many options, right? That was it. It was read a book or get a Tony Robbins tape.

34:14 That’s why the world’s so great. You know, my family obviously, for you too, you know? It’s odd for them now. The last five years when we go out, that people recognize you and are appreciative of your work. I always tell my kids, do you realize how many people don’t recognize daddy?

34:30 Like, the majority, people don’t recognize that, right? And so that means the majority of people don’t know about this stuff, aren’t learning these tools, and so it’s still, I think it’s 90 plus. Do you think that’s a, you think I’m too high on that? Yes, I think you’re right. I think you’re right.

34:46 I think it’s hard for us to judge, because we’re in a world where people talk about these ideas, right? But from the guests to the people that stop you on the street, but I think if you’re being objective, I do think you’re right. And the problem is, is this, if you look at mainstream media and MTV and the way most of social media is, it unenforces a lot of what we do. So I think yeah, I think that’s probably right, and now it could, yeah the big thing, Brian, I think people don’t give themselves credit for.

35:13 I just want to say, I want to make sure I said this on your show, because people ask me where does the self-confidence transformation come from and it’s all kinds of things that I list in my content that we can talk about, but here’s just something very simple. I had a great blessing in my life when I was like 30 years old. I’m running on the beach in Maui. I won an incentive trip for my company. It’s my first time ever in Hawaii, running on the beach, like 5 a.m.

35:37 This is why good things come to those who work out. There’s this guy running the other way on the beach, the other direction, so we’re going to pass each other. I see him coming, he sees me. It’s Wayne Dyer, and if those of your guests don’t know who Wayne Dyer is, they should find out. But so we passed each other, and I stopped.

35:52 I said, Mr. Dyer. He was like, he’s like, Wayne Dyer, Tony Robbins back then, right? Right. And I said Mr. Dyer, I said, you’ve changed my life, and he said he has a Walkman, a Sony walk. He stops.

36:04 He says, I did. How did I do that? Because I think you changed your life and it, that leads to us sitting on the beach for about 45 minutes talking. Here I am, a 30 year old guy, it’s Wayne Dyer, and he was writing a book around that time called The Power of Intention. And we ended up, he said to me, looks at me, because again I’m just achieving that talk about life changing.

36:30 By the way, this can happen on social media every single day, but those days, to your point I had to run on a beach in Maui to run into Wayne Dyer. Now you can get 45 minutes with me today, or 45 minutes with you, every hour, right? Every week. So he says, me, says, Eddie, you’re a good man, looks right at me. We’ve only known each other 45 minutes.

36:49 He goes, you’re a good man, and I said, thank you, Wayne, and he said, I mean it. He goes, you know why you really intend to do well? You intend to do good, you remember that. Give yourself some credit every time you get down. Your intentions are good, Eddie, and I gotta tell you, I’m 50 years old.

37:08 I probably told myself eight, nine thousand different times, hey, you’re a good man, you intend to do well. My self-confidence stems from one place. I’m a good man. I’m not a perfect man. I sin like crazy, right?

37:22 Like we’re all sinners, right? But I’m a good man. I intend to do well. I intend to make a difference, and long term, there is a power to our intentions. Eventually, if you put those intentions into the universe, something positive comes back to you eventually, and so my entire premise for my self-confidence comes from, I intend to do well.

37:43 I don’t always do well I make mistakes, but my intentions are really good. Too many of us aren’t giving ourselves credit for our good intentions, and I want to say this to everybody listening or watching this. Give yourself a little bit more credit for how good you are. I mean, not good in your ability or good at how special, that’s a long leap to think we’re special but are you a good person? Do you intend to do good?

38:05 Do you have a kindness in your heart? Do you want to serve other people? Because if you do, you want to feel really damn good about yourself. That’s where confidence comes from. That’s powerful.

38:14 And again, I really haven’t, I haven’t heard that articulated before, so that’s a strong point, and it is important to remind ourselves, because it’s easy to get down and hard on yourself. And so, you know, just to get back to childhood. So, you know, Eddie Spaghetti, you’re starting to get a little bit of confidence, you know, serving at the boys home helped, but like, what were some of the other major moments that kind of got you on at least a trajectory of success?

38:41 Yeah. Mentors. So I got good at baseball as a young man, and that’s where I could get people that would acknowledge me. So I started linking, oh, if I hit this thing really far, they like me more. So I got good at baseball, and I learned my little formula.

38:56 Oh, these guys leave batting practice like five minutes after it’s over. I’ll stay the extra hour. I don’t even know where that came from. Or, you know, when we went to the gym to lift weights, they do the weightlifting program and leave, and I’m like, you know, okay, guys, I’ll catch up with you. And my son just went away to college, and I’ve said this to him a hundred times.

39:13 So, Max, I get off on doing things other people aren’t willing to do, and so I started to figure this out. Oh, wait a minute, I just told my son this two days ago. Is it two days ago? Last night I said, Max, winning is not that hard. He’s away at school that I said, you see how these guys behave?

39:28 You see how they party, see how they take time off? You see how they’re not focused? I go, Max, winning’s not that hard. You’re gonna figure this out, man. Most people don’t do any of this stuff.

39:38 I teach, and so actually show up earlier, actually do the extra reps. I started doing this thing called one more, where no matter what I was doing, if I, if the set was 10 sets on a bench press, I did 10 and one more. If that day I said, I’m going to make 10 contacts, I did ten and one more. I started building this thing called one more, right? If I was gonna tell my daughter I love her today, I did that, and then one more.

40:04 And so I became this one more addict. 30 minutes on the treadmill? Nope, 31 minutes, right? An hour, an hour and one minute, and this one more thing, and when I do it, I don’t just do it, I do with intention, I do it, and I say, you’re doing something no one’s willing to do. You’re gonna get what no one’s willing to get, and I started changing me through my behaviors, and I think that significance happened in the gym and happened in baseball, and then I found out when I went into business oh, when the sales leader says, hey, make 20 calls a day, no one does this crap.

40:41 I make 21 a day and I actually do the things they tell me to do. This isn’t that complicated, and I, you start to shrink the world down to who your actual competition is. It’s not that many people if you’re a hard worker, and I know that sounds simple, but most people flat out can’t sustain hard work long term. The game is not that hard. It’s not, and it’s true in everything.

41:07 I got into social media three or four years ago. I just produce content every day. I’m not talking about old stories all the time. I’m proving I’m doing things currently. I work hard at it.

41:18 So do you, why are you so popular? One, you’re great at what you do, but you’re relentless in doing it, and you’ve gotten better. I go. I watch some of your early interviews too. Now you’re just a thousand times better, so you’re growing, you’re working hard, you’re consistent, you surrounded yourself with a great team.

41:36 It’s not that hard to be dominant in the space, like you are, it’s not. Would you agree it’s not that hard? Yeah, it’s not that hard, but I guess this is my next question is, how come most people fail at it? Is it because they don’t have the identity, or they haven’t equated the mission to the goals, because you talk about this too. Oh boy, that’s so good.

41:55 I think major part of life is identical so, as you know, that I talk about this so often, but you’re going to be consistent with your identity. Period. End of story. Now there’s a thermometer, which takes a temperature. That’s how most people are in their life.

42:09 They take the temperature. How do other people feel about me? They take the temperature. Okay, I’m 75 degrees, or I’m 90 degrees. The winners have a thermostat.

42:18 We all have a thermostat, which is different, at least in our country, a thermostat sitting right there on the wall sets the temperature of the room. Right now it’s probably 75 in here. What does not matter is the external conditions. Most people are thermometers. They take the external condition.

42:36 That’s what I get. Winners are thermostat setters and are conscious of changing the temperature setting. So we all have this identity, our identities, the thoughts, beliefs and concepts that we hold to be most true, are worth about ourselves. No matter what you do, you’re going to get your thermostat set up. So what happens for most people is they think they’re a 75 degree, or let’s just say of happiness or money, they start becoming happier.

43:01 80, 90, 95 degrees of money or happiness, somehow it seems coincidental they turn the air conditioner on of their life, and they get it right back down to their identity setting of 75 degrees every single time. If it’s money, like, well, my car broke down. No, it’s this. No, you’re a 75 degree, or who was getting 90 degrees of money? You found a way to cool your life back down to the thermostat setting.

43:24 The reverse is also true. You’re starving, you’re unemployed, you think you’re never going to eat again. You eat again. You heat it up to 75 degrees. The key of your life is your ability to change that thermostat setting from 75 to 90 to 100 to 200 to 300 over your lifetime, and you will get it.

43:44 You are a higher thermostat setting now than when you started this program. You’re way higher than you were when you’re having that heroin overdose at 28 years old, right? It’s comp. That’s what’s changed you. So it’s not the external condition.

43:57 So for me, everything I do is dedicated to changing that thermostat setting, and you have multiple ones. You have a faith, you have a happiness, you have a relationship, one, a money one. And so I changed that. That’s how I’ve changed my life. Is changing my thermostat setting every time.

44:13 So powerful, and again, I get this, gets lost, I think, in this day and age, where people will teach you that goal setting thing or the morning routine thing, which is important, but without the identity, those are just going to be tactics, right? It’s going to come and go. Look at it like, if your wellness is important to you as a being that morning routines, which I teach in my book, and goal setting, and those things are like symptomatic things you can do the root cure is your identity.

44:43 The root cure is your identity. You can, and I’ve watched it. So of you people come to seminars, or eventually, like, well, I do the morning routine. I take a cold shower, I meditate, I write my goals down. I do a gratitude list, and I’m still not winning.

44:56 It’s your identity, right? It’s your identity, and for those of you that are wondering, wait, I’m doing the things most people teach on here, and I’m still not producing the happiness of the results. Go to your identity setting, if you’re being really honest, and what do you think you’re really worth, and if we could change that, you could even mess up some of the other things. Here’s the truth. You and I know a lot of people who have won who don’t set any goals we do.

45:19 I have plenty of very wealthy friends. Like, I don’t do incantation, I don’t, I don’t do that, so I know people who have won who don’t do those things, but I don’t know anybody who’s won long term without the identity settings, right? And that’s why we see the self-sabotage behavior, because the identity is not there, so you get the good fortune, you win the lottery, you get the pop song, but your identity is not congruent with that, so it finds some way to screw it up.

45:45 Period. Yeah, yeah, and we see a lot of that, and in places like Hollywood, where some people get quick success. Sometimes it’s not always directly correlated with their identity, and then they have this thing to deal with some figure it out by building up the identity and doing the self-esteem, and then some get, like you said, the thermostat comes down. Well, people ask me often, because I’ve worked with, you know, I’ve been blessed that I get asked to work with people that are high profile people.

46:12 And what do you work with them on when they come to see you? I work on their identity. That’s what I work on with them. The main thing is I do the tools and resources to change their true identity setting. These mega talented, incredibly gifted people have very low identities oftentimes, and it shows up in small business owners.

46:30 It shows up in politicians. It’s in, it’s in every aspect of our lives. There’s a guy right now I’m watching him as we’re talking. He’s, we’re zoomed because of COVID. He’s an entrepreneur that’s putting in the lights in a pool that I have here.

46:46 He’s just replacing the lights in the pool that I have. The way that I found him was he finds him. He follows me on social media, and what happened was he found me when he was in rehab, and he said all the steps of my program were wonderful, but I had the identity of an alcoholic. I had the identity of somebody who believed they were worthy of letting their family down all the time, and the more and more I began to change who I believed that I was. These steps that I’m taking had 10 times the power for me.

47:12 So that’s how important I think identity is. And so I mean, without getting into another two hours, like, what do you do with these people? Because that’s complicated stuff. Changing identity, very complicated stuff. So some of it is intention-based we’ll go through what their intentions are, because when they go, oh, I am good, you’d be surprised at how many people beat themselves up.

47:32 Two, is there the power of their associations? And then here’s a big one, because we’ve all heard these things. We set up short-term games that are very short-term, like this week or this day, if you do X, and we do a linkage routine where we link a performance or an achievement or an effort to their identity, so if you’ll change things you do in very small spurts, you can change your identity little by little by little by little by little, if that’s, I’m gonna make ten contacts, I’m gonna tell, I’m gonna apologize to these five people.

48:07 You begin to change your identity through very short, sporadic behaviors. You’d be amazed. I do it with myself often, like this week I’m texting, I’m making up I didn’t do that this week, but this week I’m texting 15 friends, ask them to call me back, and all I’m doing is going to tell them I love them. Hey, man, I’ve been thinking about you. I love you.

48:27 That’s a hard word for a man to say. I love you, brother. I just wanted to check in on you. You know, these are hard times, just sort of like how we started this out before we were on, when we were talking about friends of our dads. Yeah, who would call?

48:39 I do that as a friend to my friends often, and so it’s short, sporadic steps that change identity every single time. And so it shows, Ed, that Ed is a loving guy, and since you’re backing that up with real behavior, then you can be the loving guy in all aspects of your life, with your family, even with contacts business, and everything, and it changes the game. You could be the loving guy, the disciplined guy, right? It could be I can do, I can say I’m going to do, I’m going to set up a game of discipline with myself, where I’m going to get up 15 minutes earlier tomorrow morning, and I do it, and I inventory it.

49:10 I’m going to get up that morning, and I’m going to work out by 7 a.m., and I do it, and I inventory it. Depends on the person and where they’re lacking, but if you’re listening to this and watching it, you can ask yourself where those areas are is it that you don’t believe your discipline? Is it that you don’t believe you’re worthy? Is it that you don’t believe you’re lovable or loving? What is it with you, and then work on that identity setting.

49:34 Yeah, so powerful, because you can’t trick your subconscious. That’s the thing, you know? And I’m a big fan of affirmations. I say every morning, they’ve done me a lot of good, but if you don’t back it up with the work, deep down you know it’s not true, and your subconscious is gonna ruin it for you or not show up when you need him to show up, right? I’m a huge believer in affirmations, and I’m a visual person too, so I’m a big believer in anything you do, vision based.

49:58 All these things work, but if, like you said, if you’re just, and if you’re just going, but this is bs, this is bs, this is bs, then it’s not effective. Yeah, now for sure. All right, I want to finish out with your story and then I got a bunch of things I want to ask you. But you know, you mentioned, you know, graduated from college, living at home. I know there was a point in your life with your wife where, you know, they shut off everything in your house, and the electricity, but then they shut off the water, and it was a moment, and you used this word, shame, when you said it.

50:28 Ed, and that’s such a powerful word. We know it as a negative word but it can also be this real motivating word, and I know it’s something you still remember as a story. Can you walk us through that period of your life, and now when you look back, why was that happening to Ed, and what did he learn from it? Yeah, I had actually made money, Brian, so I was a guy who had made money I owned a couple homes in my 20s and but I had that thermostat setting, man.

50:52 Of the son of an alcoholic, right? So I built these sales skills and these speaking skills, and you know, and I knew how to influence, and so I started to really make some money and save some money, but in there was a 65 degree or as a man, how I really felt about myself. So I somehow found a way, by the time we did get married. To, well, I left a company I shouldn’t have left, and made an ego based decision. My income dropped we had a house foreclosed on, another house foreclosed on.

51:24 Then one morning I remember my wife coming in. She goes, she had to get a job to support us, and she said, my god, someone stole our car. I’m like, oh my gosh, now the car’s stolen. Found out later that day, it wasn’t stolen. It was repossessed, power, then water, and you can live with everything off, brother.

51:41 You can’t live with anyone. You have to have water, and so every morning my wife and I would get up, my newlywed. We were newlyweds, my new bride. We get up at the apartment we are now living in. Remember when we were engaged?

51:52 I had two homes and nice cars and money by the time we were married, six weeks, I had no homes, one car, no electricity, and no water, and I went back to my identity. And a lot of people can relate to this in their way. No water. We would get up every morning, gather our stuff. It was cold out, and at our pool at the apartment complex, there was a shower for the pool.

52:14 No protection, no privacy. I’d hold a towel up while my wife would shower and brush her teeth outdoors, all our neighbors knew. Then we would switch, and she’d hold the towel up, and then we’d carry our stuff back up to the apartment, and it was shameful, and that is the word I was ashamed I was emasculated. I was as low as I’ve ever been in my life, even now, and I’ve talked about it on other programs. I don’t know why, particularly today, it’s hitting me.

52:43 That was a point where my life could have gone the other direction. That was a point where my life could have. I don’t know that there wasn’t some moments there where I contemplated whether having a life was good. The more I’d feel it today, I think I was really hurting as a man, really hurting as a man, and so I was deeply ashamed. Luckily, I had a loving wife who believed in me during that time and challenged me during that time, but however it was during that time that I found the business that ended up making me my first, you know, 30, 40 million dollars was when I was in that time, and fortunately for me I had enough of the tools.

53:21 Here’s what happened. I actually went, I took money on a credit card and went to a Tony Robbins seminar during that time. I went away to a seminar, and I was such an idiot. The first night of the seminar, he makes you meet all these people. I left.

53:36 So now I’m up in my hotel room. The seminar is going on. I put it on a credit card that I have no money, I have no water, and I will get your ass back down there, and I got out of my hotel room. I went back down into the seminar, and I think that was the beginning. There wasn’t a moment in that meeting, but that was the beginning of me starting to treat myself better and believing I was worthy of better, and the rest is history.

53:59 And by the way, for people that don’t know this, is an introvert thing. When the seminar is over, you want to go back to your room and be alone. Going into a strange social situation can be as painful as getting poked in the eye with a stick, right? 100 But if you’re a smart introvert, you learn to force yourself. Oh no, I’m not going to sit in my room.

54:20 I pay for this thing, get your ass down there, and at least try to talk to two people That’d be right, and it’s the biggest energy drainer. When I’m done, too, like, I think I’ve run a marathon, and I’ve had to do something social. It’s just even, that’s even to this day I have to work on that part of me. yeah, no, I find if I speak at one of our big events and I’m shaking hands with people afterwards, I like I gotta go home and I need to be alone. Even conversations here take a lot out of me too, and it’s funny how that works, but I can go lift and I feel good after that, or a train, I feel good, so it’s a strange kind of energy.

54:56 So, you know, you had that moment to go one way or the other. You know, I had a moment to go one way or the other, two, and you know, but ultimately I found the way. I mean, do you think that was always in your DNA to find a way there, or do you think it was a lot of circumstance? I think both are in everybody’s DNA. Okay, I think all of us have that in our DNA, and mine was a rocky moment, like literally out of the movie Rocky, you know, where I don’t know if you all remember how it was Rocky Three or whatever, where he’s running with Apollo Creed on the beach and me and David Goggins talked about, our, we’re both Rocky addicts.

55:30 Slides become a friend of mine, luckily, since then but he’s a neighbor of mine here, actually, where I am, and he’s running in. He basically, his wife challenges him on the beach. Talia Shire challenges Sylvester Stallone on the beach, and really what happened was my wife, who knew me since I was five years old, we literally took a walk on the beach one of those mornings, and she said, I don’t recognize you. I do not recognize you, and this is not who you are.

55:57 I’ve known you since you were a little boy. You’ve always been a fighter. You’ve always outworked everybody. I see you at home on the couch at 10 o’clock in the morning. I don’t even know who this man is, and I believe in you, and it was a rocky moment and I went, and I don’t.

56:11 It didn’t change in that moment but I changed in that moment, and about a year later I started to get back up on my feet, and then I was a monster after that once it came back, and I started learning all these tools and applying them I became a force in business, and everybody here can too. It’s great that you had that moment, but I can feel how much that would hurt you, you know, to have that woman you love call you out again. It’s the most emasculating thing possible, but again, plants that seed of pain and shame that will get you to become the beast that you need to be sometimes.

56:49 Don’t use that word. I just want to say one thing on that too. Major catalyst for me is my body not being jacked or anything like that but a major catalyst was getting fit, getting in the gym, moving my body every day, starting with my body and doing things there that I can control, because I can control getting in the gym. I can control working out. I can’t control the results of a sales call or a meeting.

57:11 I can control that. Yeah, it’s so important. I mean, when I moved to London after my dark days in New York City, arrived here in o2. I just turned 30 or 31 and I started training jiu jitsu, and I literally, that became my go-to, and I literally saw my body transform in front of my eyes, from, you know, kind of like this non-physical, you know, pleasure addict to someone that was now, you know, changing, and it was, it changed who I am, and also to have, I had a martial arts mentor, and just to know, man, I gotta show up, and that’s a big deal, and to me daily physical practice is part of my DNA, so I agree it’s a important place to start, and I’m always surprised when I hear about someone who’s successful that doesn’t have that me too in this day and age.

58:00 That shocks me when I meet a not fit successful business person. Yeah, it’s, there’s a book I read years ago called The Corporate Athlete by Gropel and that made me think, that’s an old book, by the way, but more and more athletes train like CEOs and CEOs train like athletes. It’s more and more common now. Yeah, and again more information too, so it’s something that’s doable All right, talk to me about the business. That guy hit a 30 or 40 million.

58:28 Well, a couple things, Ed. A lot of people would have stopped there. Now taking that to the 400 million, it involves a whole different kind of thinking from what I understand. It involves new concepts of leadership. I mean, it involves you really almost having that first moment where you have to be super aware of yourself, and almost transform.

58:48 Is that correct in what I’m saying, or what was that journey like for you? Yes, totally correct. I think that my, I, you, when I made my first 30 or 40 million, I thought money was scarce, and I had got a lot of it, and then when I made that money, I started being around people who had much more than me, and I realized there’s a lot of money on this spinning earth. There’s a lot of money, and there’s plenty for all of us to go get who are willing to do these things, and I think what it did is it opened a space in my mind up honestly, where the possibilities achieved that notion that you and I had of that beach house.

59:24 To me, that was just mega rich. Like, who are these people that live in these houses on the beach? Like, how do they do it? And then I realized there’s much more to it than that. It was, my, I’m gonna tell you what it was.

59:37 I got to the point where my fear of losing it went away. So as I was acquiring money the first time around, I was so afraid of losing it and going backwards, not that I’m not afraid of being broke, because I still have that little bit of fear of being broke, but I have a confidence I could get it back this time, whereas the first time I did not have that. And so also the idea of the second time of getting people around me that were smarter than me. The way I made my money the first time was mainly building a team and selling, and the second time I made money work for me, not me work for money.

1:00:13 So the first time was me earning and making money. The big leap was getting my money working for me. That is a huge difference in wealth accumulation and wealth explosion is getting your money working for you. And how do you do that? For me, it was two ways.

1:00:32 One was multi-unit investing in real estate. I’ve done pretty well in that space, as I know you’ve had other people on who have done that, and then it was investing in startup businesses that I was in control of, in the business, in other words, I found my discipline. I don’t, just by the way, I pass on lots of great ideas. I know where my dis, I want to be in the early stage. I know the amount of money I’m willing to put in, which is usually 10 million or less in my case.

1:00:59 Risk reward, and I under, and it has to be a business that I also bring ancillary value to. In other words, it’s not just the idea. It’s that I can multiply my money by either my abilities, my connections, other businesses that I have, so that I’m a multiplier on my own money in those businesses. And so both of those spaces for me have caused pretty massive, I shouldn’t say massive, significant growth of my own income, and ironically, once I no longer needed to work for income, is when my personal income started to get into the eight and high, high eight figure range as well, because now I was really doing those, the work for a passion play, because my own money was working so hard for me.

1:01:41 Wow, it’s a fascinating mind shift, and those startups you’re investing in, you’re careful not to go run them, because then it’s just you making the money. You’re smiling, it’s making, it’s me making the money, and it’s not why I do it. I do it so the money works for me. I don’t have the time and energy and resources. In other words, my portfolio now is probably only about 31 or 32 companies which is still pretty significant, but if I had to run a couple of them maybe I’d only have three or four.

1:02:10 And the other thing is, during COVID I’ve also really discovered, like, I had to come back and kind of get more involved in a couple of them during this difficult time, but by and large it has to be something I can multiply for me. Mainly, it’s usually 10 million and less, and I got to be early if I’m not early, I’m not. It doesn’t mean that there aren’t great investments out there that I could be involved in late. It’s just that’s not my play, and I try to stay in my play when I’ve invested in things I don’t understand that are late stage or that I can’t bring value to.

1:02:40 I’ve not done well on those, and I’ve had losses and so I’ve just learned I got to bring value. It’s got to be early stage, and it’s up to about 10 million typically for me. Okay. And early stage means you’re buying a big chunk of the equity, or it’s only been around for six months, or it’s less than 10 employees. What do you mean by that?

1:02:57 I’m being, I’m getting a big check of the year. Okay, gotcha. Okay, that’s very interesting. Back to that previous point where you lost the scarcity. I think this is really important for people to think about, and they say that poker players, when they’re playing scared money, they can smell it across the table.

1:03:14 I don’t actually play that much poker, but I can see the analogy, and everybody knows you’re playing with scared money, and scared money doesn’t grow. Is this a similar analogy when you’re in scarcity? What a great analogy, brother. I’m stealing that from you. Okay, that’s exactly what it is.

1:03:29 I held on to my money so much as I was making it, afraid to risk multiplying it. And by the way, I think there is a place to use the poker analogy where you take a particular amount of chips and you say, I’m not playing with these anymore, and I know that’s contradictory to what a couple guys on your show have said, but I just believe that because I don’t think there’s anything wrong with saying, if I’ve got, you know, 10 chips, I’m taking these two and these are the house, is not getting these right now. These eight, let’s play but play all out, and so once I started doing that, man, it’s a perfect analogy that you’ve given, and then just also learning my comfort level of how much I want to be involved.

1:04:12 I’m a control freak. Yeah, and so, and then the ability to evaluate something over time. I’ve gotten better and better at learning to evaluate what I think something’s worth when I pay for it, whereas before I bought on ideas, or I bought a lot on ideas or personalities. Now I buy on the value. I’m buying, I’m investing.

1:04:33 It finally occurred to me, I’m investing. I may love this entrepreneur. I may love this idea, but there’s a value proposition here as well. And for those of you that are pitching businesses, you want someone like me who will think about it. If you’re going to sell equity, wouldn’t you like someone who understands their discipline who’s going to bring more than their money to the table, and he’s gonna tell you what it’s really worth.

1:04:54 That’s what I do when I invest, right? It’s interesting. And do you think that your money needs to be flowing, like you need to have the money out there doing things? Okay, fine. You hold a percentage back in case, but do you think in general you need that money out there working, doing something, not sitting in a bank or sitting in an asset that’s not going to do you something.

1:05:15 100, and it took me a long time to do that. My money flows now. I’m a cash flow guy. I want that money circulating. I want it expanding.

1:05:23 It’s like it doesn’t just sit. You’re either growing or dying energy. Either expands or contracts, right? So if that money is sitting, it’s contracting almost every single time. That doesn’t mean that I’m stupidly investing money.

1:05:36 I’m not in the United States right now. I’m not buying residential real estate necessarily, right? Like I’m not so sure that’s on sale right now at this time that we’re doing this interview, so I’m not, you know, just spending it to spend it, but I want it growing. I want it multiplying for me. I think that anybody you know has got a net worth of above 100 million dollars would almost agree 100 with what I’m telling you, and the people that are below 100 million that can’t quite figure out how to go from 8 million or 9 million to 50 million, they think the reverse, and that’s why they have what they have.

1:06:07 Yeah, I think you’re right. I’ve spoken to enough people about this, but again it sometimes creates some, you need real identity change to get there, and there’s a lot of baggage from that scarcity mentality goes back to childhood. It could be generational, you know, right? It could be, it can be identity and confidence too, brother, that you don’t believe you can get it back like I believe I could get it back I firmly believe that I have the tools and resources and the skill sets, the experience, to get it back if I happen to lose it.

1:06:39 Yeah, I, funny enough, I had a conversation a couple years ago now with a buddy of mine at dinner, and I said, I said, I realize, I said, both you and me, I said, we’re never going to have to worry about money, ever. That’s what I said, and I normally don’t think that. I used to save all my money and work the rainy day and all that, and he said, well, he’s a really accomplished, like, software guy, and he said, I don’t know, what if this happens? What if this happens?

1:07:03 I’m like, I’m now convinced that I will find something. I know people. I can do something, whatever. So, you know, what I, I just gonna, that’s gonna be like one of my affirmations now all the time. That’s not the way I think anymore.

1:07:16 And so I’ve just had that shift, maybe hanging out with people like you and talking with people like that on the show. I just realized that was something that was probably somewhere in the back of my mind, and I’m sure it was affecting decisions. And so I would agree with you, that does make the difference between that. Yeah, and the other thing, the other thing I would say, and this is the uncomfortable thing to say, is I’ll meet. There’s a lot of people that consume your stuff that are startup, right, right, but also there’s some that are doing pretty well, and what they think is, they think they’re doing really well, and you know those guys, and like, I might, I would just say to you, even though comparison is a thief.

1:07:49 Compared to what? Like, you’re really doing well compared to what you know, you’re making you know more than you’ve ever made in your life, and because you don’t have a high enough identity, you think that’s a lot. You think you’re really playing at a high level, and there’s many levels past there for you, so begin to think through that. Like, there’s a lot of you that I meet people all the time is like, well, you know, I do really well, and I’m like, well, what do you make?

1:08:13 Well, X, Y, and Z. I go, well, you know, I don’t mean to be rude, but you wouldn’t pay my jet fuel a year, right? So compared to what? I don’t mean that in a condescending way. I mean that to wake you up, like, and if that’s all you want, wonderful, do what makes you happy, right?

1:08:28 Do what makes you happy, but don’t tell me you want to be mega wealthy and have tons of influence and lots of impact in the world on your peasly little couple million dollars you’ve got, right? Like, you’re not gonna do that. What you’re gonna do is you’re gonna sustain a decent existence. That’s okay, there’s nothing wrong with that, but that’s what it is. Don’t tell me your mega is successful when there’s trillions of dollars circulating in an economy, and you’ve got your hands on a couple million of it.

1:08:52 Yeah, that’s a really powerful lesson, and I’m glad you made it without pulling Eddie Punch’s head. There’s a great line in the movie Wall Street. I always love it. Bud Fox says, I never knew how poor I was until I started making a little bit of money. It’s so true, you know.

1:09:09 And I remember even when Conor McGregor made a big paycheck, he went to Ibiza I think after one of his big fights, and he saw some of the yachts around there, and he was like, oh okay, I thought I was, well, you know, because he had gone from unemployment to making maybe 50 million, and he’s like, oh. And that’s what’s good about peer groups, right? Because absolutely. So where I live here, I’m looking at his house. I won’t, not this, isn’t a name dropper thing, but just so you know, I feel this way too.

1:09:32 Where I live here there’s a lot of very wealthy people, but Phil Knight lives, you know, not too far from me here. I can see the actually the chimney on his house, you know. I don’t know what Phil’s worth. 30 billion dollars, so like this conversation I’m having here, Phil makes me feel like, right? So it’s all compared to what?

1:09:50 And that’s a healthy, I think, to me, that’s a fun comparison, right? Like, that’s an association issue. And so, yeah, I mean, Phil couldn’t stomach living like I live probably. So it’s all relative. No, I think it’s good to be around that.

1:10:04 I really do, and again it depends on how you react to it. Some people will get angry and react, but that just shows, yeah, me too. It shows you something about your identity and your personality you can learn from. You know, I’ve got a high performance mentor, Dan Peña. A lot of people know him.

1:10:17 He’s got the castle in Scotland, and I was up there in January for his hardcore seminar, which by the way was probably one of the funnest weeks of my life. I just, I have a lot of fun being around him. He says the most audacious things, the most politically incorrect things, but I think it was the final dinner. We were all hanging out in his, you know, library afterwards, and, you know, he just makes comments like, yeah, he’s like, yeah, you know, some of you, some of you shits think you’re worth something 30 or 40 million.

1:10:41 He’s like, I wouldn’t get out of bed in the morning to take a s*** for that kind of money, and like, you just gotta be there just to hear it. It just resonates in my mind, and he’s just like, he’s just never impressed. He’s had mentees that have gone on to create, you know, Columbia Healthcare and the billionaires and stuff, and so it’s just nice that the old man every now and then checks you and say, you think you’re doing good, you could be doing literally thousands times better, and then he goes on to say, I see it in you.

1:11:12 You are this close away, and you know, the longer I’ve been around and I’ve had some of my own students, I realize it’s true. It’s, you’re literally a few thought processes away from breaking through. Should have someone like that in their life that they’re, I’ll call it vulnerable with, but whatever that, you let challenge you. I’m really leery of people who don’t like being challenged, because part of being a great leader is you challenge people. I love being challenged.

1:11:44 I love being course corrected. I love being told how I could improve. I love people pointing out where I need to get better. And I really am skeptical and don’t like hanging around people who don’t like that, and I’m really leery. Like, why don’t you want to be challenged, right?

1:12:01 Like, you’re to me, that means you’re not for real. You’re fugaci. If you say, I want to be great, I want to be incredible, but I love these guys too. Well, I’ll take the coaching, but you need to say it in a way that I like it. No, I don’t.

1:12:16 I need to say it in a way that gets you to change. In fact, to the extent that you don’t like it, it will compel you to not want to be like this anymore, and so we don’t get to choose how we’re spoken to by our mentors. That’s not the way it works. The way it works is we need to be in love with the information they’re giving us, not the delivery. I know you feel this way too, so often, people are put off by direct challenging and coaching, yet say they want this next level more than they want oxygen.

1:12:44 Yeah, but we have to say it nice. What, that makes no sense whatsoever. So I’m always a little bit skeptical of those guys. You can say it to me however you want if it gets me to move. Let’s do it.

1:12:54 Yeah, I’m sure I get some similar things sometimes. People, you know, I want you to mention me, Brian, but why are you always banging on about this, and why don’t you ask me about this and not this? And I’m just like, this isn’t the essence of it. I mean, look, I’ve had a long story relationship with Dan, and I say I love him and hate him at the same time, and that’s the way a good mentor should make you feel. You know, I go back and forth, and honestly, like, if you ever saw, like, when I meet Dan after I haven’t seen him for six months, it’s usually one of the worst nights of my life.

1:13:21 Like, he’s got a way. I don’t know if it’s part act or part whatever, but he’s just got a way of just saying, what the hell have you been doing with your life, Brian? You know, all these people are saying, look how big you are. It’s like, this is a joke, what you’re doing, and it’s just like, it’s like, man, but it always gets me to reflect. It gets me to think about it and, look, maybe he’s doing that for my benefit, or maybe he feels that way.

1:13:43 Either way, it’s effective. So what happens is we have this desire. I had this with Tony Robbins. We have this desire to want to get the approval of our mentors because we admire them so much, but the fact of the matter is, and we want to be their best friend too. Yeah, we want to be our mentor’s best friend.

1:14:00 Okay, everyone needs to hear this. Okay, I don’t know if that’s necessarily a good thing, because I think that your mentor needs to make you, as you just described, a little bit uncomfortable, and I think that lack of proximity. There’s a ratio in there where your proximity should increase, so you’re closer to them, but not so close that they lose their influence over you. And I don’t mean that as leadership. I mean as a leader.

1:14:24 I think you can get as close to the people around you and love them as you possibly want. I’m not talking about that in the business setting. I’m talking about that in the mentor setting. I want my mentors, my dad’s a mentor to me, and the honest to god truth is my dad’s got cancer right now. He’s barely able to walk, and you know what, I fear my dad just a little, like, right now.

1:14:44 You said this is nuts. You can find Mike Tyson or your old man. I’d have to think about that. My dad scares me a little bit, and he, and it’s the person on earth who loves me and believes in me the most is my dad, but I like that. I’m just a little uncomfortable around my dad, and anytime I achieve something, the first person I want to tell is my dad, right?

1:15:04 So I think there’s that unhealthy discomfort that you have with the mentor that you shouldn’t want to go away. Yeah, I think you’re right. As soon as you become friends with your mentor, they become ineffective, for sure. Yeah, for sure, and I’m just like reliving it. You know, Dan famously says, I don’t want my kids to love me.

1:15:22 He says, 20 years after I’m dead, I want them to respect me. That’s what he says, and I think he meant his kids and his students. Now, look, that’s the extreme version, but he lives his life that way to a certain extent, and it’s a strong powerful statement, and I always say, Dan, that’s the essence of being service and giving back to your fellow man, and he he’s like, nah, stop saying that. I’m not Mother Teresa. I’m just here to be the trillion dollar man, but the truth is, that’s the, that is the essence of service, where you don’t want to be loved, which is the human emotion we all want.

1:15:54 You’re willing to postpone that until after your death to create someone that will respect you, which means you created someone who can respect themselves. I know it’s deep, but he hates it when I bring that up, which is also probably the mentor relationship as well. You mentioned leadership. I mean, look, it’s a massive topic, but like, some of the big lessons you’ve learned even in the last 10 years about leadership. You know, what do people not understand about it, and what do you think it is?

1:16:23 It is for you. Well, I think the thing they don’t understand, and I didn’t understand, has always led people like me, so you know, there’s six human needs. You know, Tony teaches that, I teach it, many people teach. There’s the need for certainty, there’s the need for uncertainty, love and connection, significance, recognition, growth and contribution, right? And I think that for years and years only led people that have the same need as me, which is significance and recognition.

1:16:51 I pushed to that button with people and I couldn’t understand why the lovey-dovey types and the growth, you know, they didn’t want to be around me, and I’d get reinforced by people like me that I was a great leader. Be intense, be ballsy, be nuts. Yeah, right? Except there was to the exclusion of 85 percent of the rest of the world who wasn’t wired that way. So it’s your ability to get all those needs fulfilled for people that make you a great leader.

1:17:16 And I don’t think that you can lead somebody until they really believe that you care about them. Like, do you care about me? That’s something that I was not good at early on. I was like, it should just be assumed. Let’s go and now I make sure that people understand that I care about them, but here’s the biggie.

1:17:30 It’s the one that drives me the nuts. It sounds like this, why you respect Dan so much? Most leadership skills that I embody come this way. They are caught, not taught. They’re caught, not taught.

1:17:44 All of the lessons I can teach where I talk are one thing. Most people catch things by being around me, and that means I have to be it. I have to be it. I have to be authentic. I have to be congruent.

1:17:56 You know, in 10 years I may not be on social media. I don’t know. There may not even be social media, but I’ll stop when I stop growing, as I told you earlier, when I’m stop, when I’m no longer an example that you could catch by watching me. If you spent the day with me, I’m no longer valuable as a leader. And we’ve all been in organizations where that leader, you just know they’re not doing the things they’re asking you to do.

1:18:17 They’re no longer engaged. They lose their effectiveness altogether, and then for me, the last thing is candor which we’ve just addressed. Jack Welch has a great, he just passed away, but Jack Welch had a great, did he pass away? Maybe I’m misquoting that. I think Jack just passed.

1:18:31 I think he did. Yeah, they did. Yeah, this great chapter in his book on candor. And so for me, I tell people the truth, and I do that one-on-one. So I praise publicly and I give candor and criticism privately.

1:18:43 Prior to that, I was a loose cannon, where I would land based people publicly and I have found very little effectiveness in doing that in a public forum of people. So I’ve changed that about myself where my criticisms and course corrections, as much as possible, are in private, and I recognize in public those are the things I do as a leader really well. All right, that’s really fascinating. That’s super helpful. You mentioned COVID.

1:19:07 What has been your read on the last six months of the world, and where do you think the next 18 months leads us? Wow. I’ve not known exactly what to read, because I have friends pretty high up in the current White House, and I had friends pretty high up in the prior one, in our country. Well, what I’ll say is that I think we’re never going to be the same, and I mean that maybe in a good way, probably even for you and I. It’s opened our minds as to why wasn’t I doing some of the things this way prior.

1:19:40 So there’s entire new industries, entire new practices, entire new pivots that are going to be the blessing of this time. We’re rethinking as a consciousness what really matters. Our health matters, our family matters, our relationships matter. Once we will be able to go back together. I think we’ll be even more grateful for those associations.

1:19:59 So my read is that ironically, it’s gonna sound nuts. I think the world needed a bit of a consciousness reset, and I’m not suggesting I wanted COVID to happen, but I think we are going down one crazy consumer-driven achievement-driven almost nutty driven culture that this has given us time to pause and reset and recalibrate. That’s the upside, not to mention all the pivoting and all of the innovation. If I was to predict what I think is going to happen, I believe the vast majority of the social distancing and whatnot will be gone by the end of the year.

1:20:34 I think there’s a, I think there’s probably going to be a a vaccine, if people are willing to take it, if not, some sort of remedy of some type that’ll make us go back, at least for a while, to living until there’s the next plant pandemic. But I don’t think we’re ever going to go back to many of the businesses that existed prior. I think that there’s going to be new industries created from this, and the big ones, I think, are work from home. I think that more people are going to find different ways to grow businesses out of their homes and less connected in office buildings.

1:21:03 Entire new industries will be born. My prediction, though, is that once this reset happens, that we will have one of the greatest global booms of all time in the economy. We’re now a much more connected economy, believe it or not, globally, because of this, because of Zoom, because of technology, and I believe that we’re going to go into, and sound, we may have a dip for a while depending on what happens in a couple of the election cycles, but I think the next five years will be the most robust growth time in the history of our planet economically because of all the innovation, all the new industries, about every 20 years, man, new a complete new revolution, and industries have been strong.

1:21:42 Our real last one was the internet. There hasn’t been one since then, and I believe COVID is that reset that resets an entire new way of the economy functioning, of entrepreneurship, of consumerism happening, and I believe it’ll be another massive boom, and those that can get their minds and their businesses in front of that curve are going to make what the Jobs and the Gates and those guys did look like nothing. This next five to ten year run. That’s my belief.

1:22:10 Are you looking for those companies to invest in now? You bet. Yeah, and I haven’t, a couple. I can’t tell you who, but I do. I do, I do believe that I was going to tell you other smart people that I know do as well.

1:22:23 I believe this is the next revolution, and we’re in the really uncomfortable stage of it right now, because it may not be our last pandemic. It may be not our last crisis, and so I think this is the greatest reset since the advent of the internet. Yeah, it’s in a weird way, it’s forced people kind of ten years forward. You know, you would argue that, look, retail was gonna, you know, go to the web, and all these things were gonna go on the wine, but it was, had it was like in the death throes, right?

1:22:51 And there was still a lot of old school people that were in these behaviors, but now it’s almost like it’s been accelerated forward to this new future, and now you need those businesses to jump in there and take advantage of something that might not happen until 2030, 2040. And then there’s a bunch, there’s something about the convergence of all of that, and then we’re also at this time where you’re going to have autonomous vehicles. You’re going to have the ability to commute it’s going to be entirely different.

1:23:15 I mean, and that’s real. Like, that’s basically here now, right? And so you begin to think about what does a world look like that is not. We’re going to look back and go, did you know that we used to all work within like 30 miles of where we lived. We would hire from a pool of people that were only 30 miles from where we live.

1:23:33 We would all go to this one building and sit there next to each other and do all of our work. We would commu, the way we commute, the way we get to market, the way we inter consume and spend our money is going to be completely different, and it’s almost like if we look back pre-internet, we can’t even imagine the world back then. I actually think the pre-COVID way of doing business was about ten percent of the innovation that technology and the internet could have delivered to us all along, but we couldn’t get our minds around doing it.

1:24:06 Now all of our businesses are going to be global businesses, for sure, international first. Excuse me, for sure, national business. They’re going to be in cities and states anymore, like in the United States. So yeah, I am investing, and I am excited about it. I just don’t like the discomfort this is causing us now, the angst that’s causing us now.

1:24:25 But, and it’s not that I’m just an optimist. The writing’s on the wall. The world just changed. Yeah, the world changed, and I think you’re right. It fast forwarded us a decade Does it also mean that from now on people need to look themselves in the mirror and say, I can no longer you know, cook or plaster or drive?

1:24:42 I’m gonna have to think, what can I uniquely bring to the world that adds value, or adds to the equation? That’s my, I just wrote about this. So that’s my biggest concern, brother, is that human beings, you are a product. Now you are the product, and so your ability to bring a unique skill set, a unique perspective, a unique talent, is going to be more and more incumbent upon you to be valuable and to be relevant in the economy, because there’s a whole bunch of businesses that are never coming back again, and we haven’t even faced that.

1:25:17 Of course, retail, some of the obvious ones, but there’s a bunch more. The way we even do medicine, the way we evaluate health is going to be completely different. We’re just, get your head around this, the idea that we still go physically see a doctor to spend 10 minutes with them, so they stick a thermometer in us that we could just as easily stick it ourselves, and then have an evaluation. I mean, the whole way medicine’s delivered, the whole way almost most products are going to be delivered.

1:25:44 You better be getting your minor, and you should be excited about that if you’re a younger person. My gosh, the future is so incredible. The wealth accumulation, the innovation, the startups, it’s going to be remarkable, but you better bring to the table a set of skills that are valuable or you’re going to be sitting at home watching it. Yeah, know for sure on that. Do you think that people can work remotely as effective as they can in a, in close proximity to each other, like in an office?

1:26:13 Not yet But yes. So, even at the beginning of COVID compared to now, companies are finding their efficiency levels are, you know, three and four hundred percent higher just eight months into this. So no, not yet. I think most people still need that human interaction, and I mean, like, in person human interaction, but we’re becoming more and more accustomed to what you and I are doing right now, and I think it could get up to probably a 90 or 95 efficiency, and just think about education for a second here in Southern California, the average school day right now is about two hours compared to 10 hours, because they figured out all the bs time they were giving these kids.

1:26:48 Now, are those kids better off with socialization? Are they better off connecting with each other and building those relationships? 100 for sure. Yes, but even the way they consume education is going to change. Maybe it’ll be a hybrid of home and school, and so do I think there is effective no, but I think it’s becoming more and more effective, and I think in four or five years we’ll look back and find that we are more effective this way than we were dilly dallying around and all the distractions at the water cooler and the coffee machine and long lunches than we potentially could be in this new world.

1:27:22 Yeah, I think that could be true, but I still think that great innovation happens when people are in proximity, like the powerful big bang moments, the I see the whites of your eyes, I feel your energy. I don’t know, man. Something, maybe I’m wrong, but that does not mean that those won’t exist. It just means we won’t be reliant on them a hundred percent of the time Like, for example, my sales company, I’m bringing them all here to my house in about five weeks.

1:27:47 We’re gonna social distance but I know the power of just being with each other, and there’s an energy transfer that’s far greater in person than there is through Zoom or through any form of technology. There’s no question about that. But not exclusively. And so I think everything becomes a hybrid. It’s not like we don’t ever shop anymore, right?

1:28:06 But we do a lot of our shopping online. So I think there’ll be a combination, just like there is in that room. Yeah, and I totally agree. I think we were looking at, I mean, really to hear you describe it, most of these businesses were these anachronisms. I mean, they were based in the past, based on hundreds of years ago.

1:28:23 We’ve been doing the same thing, like you said, go to a doctor, you stick a thermometer, you go to a classroom, you sit around, you learn from one person on a textbook, whereas we know you can learn from the greatest mentors in the world on YouTube and you look at a bunch of these practices, and they all seem really antiquated, but without someone taking them behind the woodshed and sticking a bullet in their head, we would have never had the room to innovate as quickly as we can now. I would be really worried if I was in the college university space long term, that whole model, the revenue from it making the kids stay on campus. I don’t know, you know, where that’s all going to go?

1:29:01 Medicine, are we never going to see a doctor? Of course not. There’s all kinds of medicine that needs to be practiced in person, but think about the efficiencies, the cost reductions of not having crowded emergency rooms, of all the different ways that the stuff that we really need can be delivered to us. We were all going to someone for the most part for every single ailment their inability to write a prescription. If they didn’t see it, all of that stuff’s going to change, and so it’s all progress.

1:29:26 It just doesn’t feel like it when you’re going through it. Right, right. We’re going through progress right now, right, and it’s going to be a little bumpy and rocky along the way. Tell me about, you know, the situation, because you talked about, you know, what’s the feeling like, you know, with the people in America and that people are feeling their environment, and they’re feeling, you know, the energy of the people around them and okay, we’re having protests, obviously.

1:29:53 There’s an election this year. It’s supercharged, and I’ll get into politics after this, but what is your feeling on, say, the vibe of the people, and let’s just say in America because you’re there feeling it, what is happening here, you know, maybe from an energy perspective or from a 30 000 foot perspective, you know, based on all the wisdom you have, what do you really see is actually going on? I think there’s, I’ve said this last night to somebody too.

1:30:18 I think people are down, from being candid, I’m not, I would consider this to be a depressed, down culture right now overall, and the combinations are they, we have been locked in our homes for the most part. We haven’t had that human interaction that is light in our lives. My dad’s been, my dad just spent eight days in the hospital. I couldn’t go inside to see him when he was in there, and he’s in there struggling, right? So there’s thousands, millions of situations like that.

1:30:47 Then there’s the social unrest in our country, where, you know, a group of people are telling us, hey, we’re hurting, please hear us and then there’s another group of people saying, I hear you, but I don’t agree with you, and that there’s then there’s the contention of the election. There’s the economic frustration that’s happening in the country, and then, you, I know we’re gonna get into politics in a second. Like, politics has become so central in our lives now, and now the athletes are involved in politics, so you can’t escape.

1:31:16 I have more and more friends tell me, I just don’t want to even watch television. I’m listening to more podcasts. I’m trying to find something on Netflix that’s positive. So, in an honest answer, I would say the temperature I would take right now is scary low. People are very frustrated, very down.

1:31:32 That’s not everyone, but I would say that’s a large majority of people. Even the people I know doing well financially, they feel sort of like they’re the enemy in our country now, to some extent, through some of the political rhetoric that’s out there, so they feel pursued and beat up a little bit too. So I’d, I mean, if I’m being honest, I don’t like that it’s this way, but if I answered it any other way, I wouldn’t be on being transparent with you. I sense a real frustrated, down culture like I’ve never seen before.

1:32:02 Yeah, I mean, you said politics is everywhere. It’s almost become the new entertainment, you know, I mean, we go back to when we were kids. You know, there was a debate, some articles even five, six years ago it was definitely part of the news. Now it is the only news that, and the core that, and the correlations from it, and the reactions from it. It’s almost like that dominates the news, brother.

1:32:25 You’re so right. It’s entertainment, religion, and almost a sport all combined into one, and it’s, it’s the central part of our lives for most people, and I don’t think that’s necessarily a good thing. I understand being socially aware, wanting to create changes that you feel that need to be made, but the other thing it does is, it’s a great diversion from us. In other words, if I can worry about Trump or Biden or this or that, I’m not really focusing on me and my life and my ownership of where I am, and that’s a real sad part of this, is everyone being lost.

1:32:59 Everyone’s picking a team and a tribe and a visit of that, and this mask versus no masks. It’s red versus blue. It’s Dems versus Republicans it’s Black versus white, gay versus straight, and these politicians from both parties, it seems to me, specialize in creating victim cultures of some type. If you’re a successful white entrepreneur, your enemy is brown illegal immigrants. If you’re a Christian, your enemy is a Muslim.

1:33:29 If you’re a Democrat, your enemy is these rich white guys, and it’s just this vicious cycle of and the truth is we don’t really live that way. Most of us live together pretty harmoniously. We want, when we see something wrong with one of our brothers or sisters, for there to be retribution, and for it to be fixed, and for there to be justice. But they’re telling us, and people are believing, that we are separated from one another. Next week I have Donald Trump Jr. on my show, and the week after that, I have a prominent liberal person coming on for the progressive side, and I already know I’m going to lose followers over that, because I’m normalizing Trump, and then the Trumpies will be mad at me for having the liberal on.

1:34:07 I’m just doing it to serve and get information, but I, it’s so polarized that it’s almost like I’m putting a gun to my own head and pulling the trigger. I know it’ll only breed negativity for me, yet I’m a glutton for punishment, so I’m doing it. So I’m really, I’m hopeful that somehow this culture begins to change, because it’s a, you know, I have people very worried, Ed, about the election when the results happen, that there could be dramatic civil unrest, a dramatic, and there’s some people that think it could be bloody and I’m hoping that’s not the case.

1:34:39 I pray that that’s not the case, right? With people contesting the vote and then, on that, dud civil unrest, and then it be, it spills out. Yeah, and that’s happening. Civil unrest, we’re already having. There’s peaceful protests in our country, but then there’s real riots happening that’s under reported by the media, property destruction, people dying.

1:34:58 I mean, it’s actually happening in the United States right now, and I know it’s happening around the world too. And then there’s the peaceful protest. I feel the peaceful protest. Their message is being lost by these rioters and these poor entrepreneurs that have spent years and years building businesses to have them burned to the ground, is it’s just horrible. It’s horrible.

1:35:17 Yeah, it’s hard to watch, and it’s weird for me to watch, because I’m over here, but I’m from there, but in some ways I can’t recognize it. I’m from California, but I probably wouldn’t move back to California now, so it’s just this weird thing I feel. I’m glad you’re having both sides on, that’s what we do, right? I think that’s really strong of you, and you got to take the hit, you know, and so I’m glad you’re doing that, and then part of me also wonders, like, it’s easy to hate someone and cancel someone when they’re a Twitter account, when they’re a digital image, you know?

1:35:49 Lock these people in an elevator that breaks for an hour and get them to actually talk to each other. I think it would be a different story, Ed, to your point, that is the negative of the digital culture. It’s almost like when you’re driving in a car and someone cuts you off, you effing, you would never say that if they walked by you and cut you off, but you almost think they’re not human or not there if they’re separated from you. So what we have is millions and millions of people that are driving in the car of their life, canceling one of their, screaming at one another, not listening to one another and that’s why, by the way, I’m hopeful, because I do believe more and more people are going to move away from wanting to, I call it consuming content, because everything’s content, but messages, and more like what you and I have been talking about today, more like our realm where they grow and improve and see connectivity and have a common understanding and enough to agree with everything that I say or that you say.

1:36:47 But you know, you can agree with my intentions, as I said earlier. If we all sort of gave everybody a pass to some extent on their intentions, the world would be very different. But we automatically think if they’re different than us, their intentions are bad, and once you believe that, there’s no hope for you to change, for you to connect with someone when you believe their intentions are bad. So I don’t, I do not like saying what I’m saying right now, but it’s an absolute fact that it’s very bad over here I would say right now.

1:37:17 Yeah, I mean, the only positive is people seem to be consuming long-form content like this, and once you do. I mean, this is the best thing we’ve got to hanging out with each other, or hanging out with spending time with Ed, but if you really walk in, you know, a day in a man’s shoes or two hours in a man’s shoes, you can start to understand, at least, their intentions are there, and you can say, okay, now I see why they’re saying that, and they actually seem like a nice person, and they love their kids like I do, and they believe in their God like I believe in mine. And you know what?

1:37:44 They’re not what I thought they were when I just saw that Twitter message or that click bait or that 30 second video. So that’s makes me feel a little optimistic that people are doing. I did a program last week. I did sometimes on my show. I don’t do interviews.

1:37:58 I just talked. I did one on diversity, and I just talked about diversity being a pathway to a richer life both in business and in the joy that you get out of life. So, like, my social media teams run by all women. CEO of my company happens to be a Black woman, who’s one of my dearest friends too, but I was talking about it also out of a life perspective. What you just described, those are the people that become some of our richest relationships, where it’s someone you thought you couldn’t connect with.

1:38:22 Like, for me, if I walk into some muscle head at the gym, I already know we’re getting along. You know what I’m saying? It’s when you meet that Uber driver or something where you’re like, wes guys, I had a guy the other day picked me up from Lebanon. We drove for an hour, and I’m an interviewer, like you are, so he’s telling me all about living in Lebanon, and I’m learning all these things that I didn’t know. He was, gosh, you’re on my street.

1:38:44 We had Christians, Muslims, Jews, agnostics on my street we’d have block parties. I lived in a gated neighborhood. I gotta be honest with you, that was not my picture of Lebanon, right? He’s like, you’d be surprised. Not everywhere’s like that, but where I lived was, and it was just this beautiful connection between two people from different parts of the world, and to your point, he loves his children, has a daughter at Yale.

1:39:04 He’s driving Uber to put part of the tuition through. Like, I just loved this man, and we couldn’t have been from more different places in the world. What a great experience. And I think he is pretty liberal, and I’m not that liberal. You know, I’m, I have no political party in our country because I’m very socially liberal progressive and I’m fiscally very conservative person.

1:39:24 So there’s nobody that represents me. I’m for small taxes and live the way you want to live, and there’s no party for that right now in our country. So, and so, that’s my next question. What does the future of politics look like for you, Ed, or when you’re running for president? Yeah, I’m probably not.

1:39:41 I’ve been getting asked that. There’s a great poll, and I was a story in Idaho many about a year ago that I was running for the Senate, which I’m not even a resident of Idaho. I do have a house server. I’m not even a resident, and I was leading in the poll, which is really exciting to hear, and I have no intention of running, but I don’t think that political office is probably the place for me, just because of all the fundraising that’s required. I would serve people.

1:40:04 Say, oh, you take a pay cut. I’d be willing to take the pay cut. It’s all of the running around with your hand out, raising money. All of that stuff is probably not for me. What I hope, though, the future of politics in our country is that there’ll be a tipping point where we just don’t want to do this anymore.

1:40:20 I’m not so sure the two-party systems going to be forever here, you know, in our country there’s really two parties, the Democrats and the Republicans, and I think there’s a lot of people like me who are like, I’m kind of like the Democrats socially. Like, you know, people should be able to live their lives and I love all people, and I want social justice, same time. I don’t want socialism in a welfare state. I want it to be capitalist and free enterprise and to have achievement, and I think that there will probably be a third-party candidate eventually that breaks through.

1:40:50 I really do believe that’ll be coming, and that would be the greatest thing for our country is that these tribes and camps, their influence begins to be minimized by just good people with good ideas running for office. The reason it doesn’t happen is money. Yeah, because they can’t raise enough money on their own. There’s a very reason why I wouldn’t run, and so there has to be a change in our country in the way that we fund politics and the minute you take the funding away, advantage to these two groups of people, you’ll see people from every walk of life, much more qualified people to lead countries, by the way, would be able to run that aren’t affiliated with one of the two parties.

1:41:28 So my hope, the saving grace, is that, and again, I just lost a bunch of people who are staunch Democrats or Republicans in our country, but it’s when more independent thinking people can run for office in my opinion. And so you don’t want to raise the money, and you also don’t want the strings that are attached with the money. That whole thing is something you don’t want to be involved with, which would keep you out of poverty. That’s one of the things I thought I was going to like about Trump a great deal was that he didn’t need that and he funded it.

1:41:53 And yeah, there’s all people don’t give you money with no expectation, and you need a lot of money to run for political office in the United States. Although Trump won the Republican nomination by spending almost nothing compared to you know what Hillary had raised, but he was a public figure already and had his own TV show, you know, potentially someone like me could do that, who’s got notoriety that doesn’t need to raise money to do it, but I’m optimistic that the two-party system could be broken, and I think that’s the key to making politics healthy in my country Okay, I feel like that’s a long way off, but it sounds like a great step, and maybe the next step, but man, those systems are locked in, and without having, like, the covet of politics to break them up, I don’t know.

1:42:40 They’re going to not want to die, are they? It may, and by the way, it may be 10 years, and then we’re in for another 10 years of this crap, which we probably are. Yeah, you’re probably right. May just want to finish on parenthood. I know you’re close with your kids.

1:42:55 I see you golfing with your son, and it’s great to have that relationship. I know it must be hard seeing him go out to college but you know, I have two young boys, three and four years old, and I just love him dearly. And I’ve got a stepdaughter who’s 16, who really changed my life just having to take care of her since she was four or five, so it’s been a big thing. It’s kind of the ultimate service, isn’t it, being a parent as well? What are your thoughts on parenthood?

1:43:20 What have you learned, and how have you learned to be a better parent, and how can you keep having a good relationship with your son? You know, you had that conversation, you know, how do you get it to where he still listens to you as well? Great question. By the way, Brian, I love you man. I’m so glad we did this today.

1:43:37 I’ve watched the show forever, but you’re a wonderful man, so gifted, so thank you sincerely for having me. Thanks, man. I don’t know if anyone’s watching. I don’t care. I’m just glad talking to you right now.

1:43:50 I hope they are. Parenting is the one area where I constantly knock myself. I’ve never been secure as a parent. I always feel like I’m not doing it right. What I have done with my kids to answer your question, the reason I’m close to my children is I’ve afforded time with them.

1:44:09 I don’t, I think they want time with you, and they want to feel like they’re important, and I violated that a lot when they were really young. My wife’s constantly, do you remember when Bella first walked? No, do you remember Matt? No, I was just not even when I was there. I wasn’t there, and I changed that when they were pretty young, like five, six years old.

1:44:26 I think that what we have in our family that’s pretty special is an amazing mom who cares for all their needs. We’re a pretty good team. My wife wanted to be a mom. Like, she really did. That was one of her dreams as we, when we were little kids, you know.

1:44:44 We met when we were real small, so that’s worked but what I have with my kids is, my kids are very different. My son is much more like his mom. He’s very easy going. He’s just a good boy, a good man I should say now, but what I have with them is I’ve done what I said earlier as a leader. Like, they’ve seen my example.

1:45:01 My son was the editor on all my first podcasts when they were all just audio, so we had to consume all that content, but I walk the walk, like what I’m talking about. I actually do most of the time, and they remind me when I don’t and so I think they’ve seen examples of these things that I teach. I’m really honest with my kids, and what I just wanted my kids to leave Brian, my house, with a few things. One was their faith like just a foundational faith in their life, self-confidence, okay, work ethic, and the ability to communicate.

1:45:36 If they could leave those things, I think the ability to do what we’re doing right now, you can always be successful in life if you can communicate your thoughts and your ideas, right? And then an unbelievable work ethic, confidence in their faith, and I feel like those are the things I was constantly trying to reinforce, their faith, their self-confidence. So I’m a big believer in praising them and I’m over the top with it every night when Max go to bed, to who’s 18.

1:46:00 You’re a leader, you’re a gladiator, you’re a champion, you’re the greatest of all times. I know, Dad. Well, I’m telling you again, man. You’re a leader, you’re a gladiator, you’re a champion, you’re the greatest of all time, brother. I tell them that all the time, right?

1:46:12 My daughter, you’re a superstar, you’re beautiful, you’re so smart, your daddy’s pride and joy. I tell her this every damn day I pray with them, because we’re people of faith, so they’ve seen me exemplify my faith. We pray before meals just so they see that there and then, you know, I’m working on their communication all the time. I make them speak. I make them do book reports to me verbally.

1:46:35 Verbal communication, so those are the tools, and then, hey man, I could screw it up. One of them could turn out okay, one of them could not. You know, I don’t have any magic, you know, crystal ball or anything like that. But I do feel like they’ve seen me live a decent life. I’ve worked on those four areas with them.

1:46:51 And I also kind of, I’ve become, as they gotten older, I let them make their choices you know, instead of making them for them. I’m a big believer. They’ve got to learn to make decisions. If I keep making them for them, or giving them things, I know typically, Brian, when I meet the child of someone who’s grown up with money, I’d usually know. I can tell there’s an edge they lack.

1:47:16 There’s an edge that comes to not growing up with stuff, and I wanted both of my children, somehow, to still have that edge about them that you lose when you grow up in relative comfort, and so I was always guarding against them losing that edge, and I’m not even sure how you do that, but it’s something I was intentional and aware of, as I’m not losing that. My son yesterday called me, said hey, Dad, I just sold these. Got me a little golf club business he does on eBay, like he’s got to make his own money.

1:47:45 When he was really little, my son came home from school one day, and he said, hey, Dad, all the kids, like third grades, told me that we’re rich. Are we rich? All these third graders told him, and I said, hey, man, I said, how much money you got? He goes, I got like seven dollars. I said, well, then you’re not rich.

1:48:02 I said, I don’t know if daddy’s rich or not, but I know you’re definitely not rich with seven bucks, and he goes, kind of looks at me with those eyes, and I’ve sort of kept that line with him the whole way. And so, you know, my son’s had multiple businesses, and my daughter is now working. She’s a, my daughter is a hostess at a Mexican restaurant. She works, and I want her learning to work, right? So I, those are the things I’ve taught him, brother.

1:48:29 I hope I’ve done a good job. I’m really insecure about parenting. It’s that all parents are insecure. I hope I did right. How do you teach work ethic they observe it.

1:48:38 It’s caught, not taught. Yeah, that’s what I thought it was, caught, and also I emphasized the heck out of it. Like, back school started at eight o’clock, so I remember one day, I go, hey, my brother, it’s light at like 6 00 a.m. I said, I said, I don’t know. He was like, third on his golf team I said, do you think the other guys are hitting balls before school?

1:48:57 He goes, no. I go, what do you think? He goes, I should probably get up and hit balls before school. I said, well, I don’t know. That whole, do things other people aren’t willing to do, that’d be one of those things.

1:49:04 Don’t you think he’s like, yeah? So every day my son hits balls before school. Every day. Wow, just stuff like that. Yeah, that’s nice, man, because I’m thinking about the same thing with my boys, you know, and I’m thinking about, I mean, the money thing too.

1:49:17 I mean, Jesus, you know, their mom likes to hand the money out. I’ll be like, that’s not happening with these boys, and like I think about all those things, you know? The praise, you know, as well, and so I’m very curious to hear that from you, and that’s helpful for me. You know, tell me about your faith, man, because it’s something you don’t always talk about, but I wanted to ask you about it, because you know I want to know more about it, because it’s something that seems to give you a lot of strength.

1:49:41 Is that something you had growing up? Did you find it later, because it’s an important part in your life? I grew up around religion, but I wouldn’t say that we are a particularly faithful family that way. I’m a really weird dude, brother. I’m a believer in the quantum field and energy, because I know that exists, and I know it’s true.

1:50:01 Yet, so I guess you call me a New Ager that way, yet I’m a Christian. I believe that a greater God created that quantum field, that’s even greater, and so I’m a weird combination like that, but my faith has been a central part of my life, and I’m going to tell you why. I know how average and ordinary I am, and so for this life to have happened to this man right here means there’s been somebody greater than me guiding it and leading me along the way, and I pray every night on my knees.

1:50:30 It’s one thing I do every single night. It humbles me. It makes me feel small. It gives me comfort. I turn it over to Him, my worries and my stresses and my anxieties, and it’s a, it’s a, it’s not a small part of my life.

1:50:44 It’s a major part of my life. I’m not a big church going person. I used to be. My relationship with God is personal, but what I got to tell people, I tell people all the time, is, I always think it’s funny when someone says they have faith and they’re just so sure. Like, no, I know who God is.

1:51:01 You don’t know who God is. I know who God is. You know, that whole thing is just weird to me. For me, mine is a relationship with God. It means it ebbs and flows.

1:51:10 People say, do you have doubts? Yes, it’s a relationship, that’s why there’s faith. There are times where I’m wondering, why are you putting my dad through this chemotherapy? Why did this two-year-old just get killed, right? So do I question things?

1:51:22 Do I doubt things? I have a relationship with God, just like with my wife. There’s times when it’s good, there’s times when it’s not so good, but it’s something I want to work on, and I do work on it, and I stay connected to it, and I’ll just, I’ll just be honest with you, man. If we did an interview about my life and I did not say that I believe there’s a God in Heaven that’s guided my life, we would be not giving a full characterization of my belief system, because I do, because I’m a goofball, and this life’s turned out damn good, and I’m very grateful to God for all of the blessings in my life, and I believe that’s where they come from for me, and it gives me great comfort man.

1:51:56 I appreciate you asking me, because it makes me feel good to say it out loud. Yeah, I think it’s not talked about enough. I think some people try not to talk about it, because they think about, they’ll alienate people, and that’s why I’m, that’s why it’s always nice to hear you say it again. You say it subtly in a lot of your interviews, but I never heard you really speak about it. Want people to find their version of that.

1:52:16 Yeah, and so I believe if you’re in their face with it, they are repelled, but I’m, I love God, brother, like I thought right before the interview, two minutes before, I just said a quick prayer. Lord, just guide me, give me the words, let the Holy Spirit take over. And I’m not a holy roller, by the way. All of you that are listening to this, I just told you a minute ago. I meditate every single day.

1:52:39 I plug into the quantum field. I love the energy field. I, everything that I need exists there, and so I know Christians will be mad at me for saying that. For some reason, this is why, can I not believe that Jesus Christ or God created the quantum field as part of his divine creation, because I do believe that, and so I probably enough on it, but that’s my belief system. No, that’s good.

1:52:58 Look, Albert Einstein was religious, you know. A lot of these physicists were religious, and I’ve had some top level physicists here, and they said they’ve had discussions behind the scenes, and it seems like they both can’t exist but with a lot of these top level Nobel Prize physicists, it does. They’re like, yeah, God exists, and this is also what exists, and they come to terms with that, you know. That’s reaffirming for me. Thank you.

1:53:22 They say it’s a sign of human intelligence for how many contradictory thoughts you can hold in your brain at the same time. That’s beautiful. Yeah, these people that I am extremely intelligent because I have all kinds of contradictory thoughts. Yeah. One of my guests said that at a movie premiere, when one of the drunken people that had got a ticket asked him a question that, you know, he didn’t really necessarily want to talk about, so he threw that back at him, and then he just changed the subject.

1:53:54 I was like, that’s a nice touch, that’s a really nice touch. And look, you know, I’m always more curious about religion myself. I mean, it’s, I see it as technology that’s been here for thousands of years that humans require, they almost built it themselves to understand the world and react with each other and the world better, whether it’s rituals around death and birth and marriage and prayer and all those things, but yet we threw it, it seems like the baby out with the bathwater when we all became anti-religious 20 30 40 years ago and all of these spiritual practices that make us better humans went out with it so we don’t congregate anymore.

1:54:33 We don’t, you know, do all these practices that were really essential, and I think people are one are left wanting and looking for things to replace that. So, well, I think it also, you’re so right and I think there’s an absence of humility in culture sometimes, and so the belief in something greater than you, whatever you believe that is, causes an element of humility in your life that I’d like to think that, you know, I have some, and that, and without that the complete absence of it, I understand all of the damage organized religion has done in the world, as well, and I’m not oblivious or ignorant to those facts believe me, and that’s why I try to nuance it the way that I do. It’s my understanding, it’s my personal understanding of God that I’ve arrived at, that is evolving, that I have a relationship with and I don’t begrudge anybody theirs or their lack of it.

1:55:28 I celebrate your right to have that as well. I’m just telling you what’s worked for me in my life, because I’m the one, you know, being interviewed, or I’m the one being asked a question, but I’m certainly not forcing that upon somebody. I think you have to come to your own level of understanding of what that means to you, and what that looks like for you, and I like some of the rituals of religion. I like some of the, I pray on my knees, for example. Why do you do that?

1:55:53 Well, I grew up Catholic, so we did that a lot, probably, but the other part of it is it’s just a way of me showing gratitude, and it’s, and it’s also a trigger and an anchor. I’ve been doing it all my life since I was a little boy. It kind of takes me back to that state, so there’s nothing wrong with rituals and things like that are anchors and triggers for us as well that create particular states, and so it’s just a sign for me. Yeah, those are super important.

1:56:20 Those rituals are important, you know, and again that humility, you know, it’s so important as well, just saying, okay, guess what? I’m not the big man right now. I’m on my knees, and I’m going to just defer for a little bit. I think that’s super important. So, absolutely.

1:56:35 Look, I appreciate the time that just a couple final things. I always ask my guests, I just want to ask you, best day of your life and worst day of your life? What’s the first thing that come to mind? Best day of my life was the two days my children were born. For sure, they’re tied, so those are the two best days of my life.

1:56:57 And I would say the worst day of my life the worst day of my life was the day my grandfather died. It was very, very close to. Okay, I would say that was the worst day of my life. So one was birth and one was death. And by the way, most of us in our lives, the two great motivators in our life are our childhood and our imminent death, and those are the two things that cause us to move in our lives the most.

1:57:22 Yeah, now those are powerful moments. What scares you, Ed? What scares me is when I die not fulfilling the destiny of the man that I was born to be. I have this hallucination, as a Christian person, I want God to go, well done you know, good and faithful servant, but I also believe he introduces you to the person he made, the destiny version of you. I believe that this is the man you could have been.

1:57:46 This is where you could have gone, the people you could have helped, the moment you could have, the memories you could have had, the man he could have become, and when I die, when I meet that man, it scares me to think we would meet each other and be total strangers to me. That’s hell. Heaven is, I meet him and we’re identical twins. I became him, and so it scares me to die existence. I didn’t become the destiny version of me.

1:58:11 That scares the s*** out of me. Yeah, that’s a powerful thing to think about. I mean, just think about that moment where you meet that 80 year old guy, and you’re like I could have been that, and I, I just wasted it all because of some choices or a mindset. You know, and that’s powerful. It’s anchoring, you know.

1:58:27 It is. I am. I, it’s not one of those things I just say if you listen to stuff I’ve talked about before. It’s something I really do think about a lot. I think about it a lot.

1:58:35 Heart attack, when I was really young, I was in my early 30s, so I’ve always thought about death more than maybe even a normal person would. I think I do. So it’s something I do think about regularly. Does this choice get me closer to that man, or further away, or up? I just did something that moves me further away.

1:58:51 So I think about it a lot. Yeah, I’ve heard your stories about going to the doctor and stuff, and that could be powerful. You know, meditating on your death is a great way to cherish your life on a daily basis. For sure. Final question if you could pick up the phone and call up 20 year old Ed, give that young man some advice?

1:59:09 I guess, you know, you know you haven’t hit the rock bottom. You’re still pretty young, but based on everything you know now, what would you tell that youngster? Oh, wow. I do know. tribe now let’s continue with the show.

1:59:43 Amazing advice, we’re gonna end it on that. Ed, you’re a legend. I love you, man. It’s been great connecting. It’s even better than I thought it would be, and so, yeah, look, I really appreciate everything you do.

1:59:55 I appreciate you putting yourself out there, constantly being of service, constantly putting tons of content out there, putting so much messaging out there, but let’s be honest, you could be doing other things, and you are doing other things, but it really shows that you put yourself out there, and I, and people don’t know it comes with a lot of negative stuff too. People think when you got two million followers on Instagram, it’s all good. It’s not. There’s people you know, picking at you, but you still are going forward.

2:00:18 So I really appreciate you. Next time, let’s do this in person, either in Cali or in London. I’m looking forward to that. It was an honor. I enjoyed it so much.

2:00:26 Thank you. That was fantastic, man. So send me lots of love. Thank you so much. There he is, Ed Mylett.

2:00:31 Find him on all your socials, follow his podcast, and wishing you all the best. Thank you so much you