 This is Sharp Storefront. To quote Arnold Schwarzenegger, big dreams require relentless focus, and any time we spend planning for failure sets us up for failure. Today's guest, Matt Higgins, literally wrote the book on the subject. He grew up in poverty in Queens, dropped out of high school to get his GED, and took night classes just to finish college. At that point, Matt had already beaten the odds, but he didn't stop there. Matt became the youngest press secretary to the mayor's office in New York City history, vice chairman of the Miami Dolphins, and a guest shark on Shark Tank. His path to success was hardly linear, but for Matt, it's always been about calculated risks, which is why he titled his book Burn the Boats. In today's episode, we discuss with Matt Higgins about why his first impression of Gary Vaynerchuk was that he could make a career out of stealing Gary's ideas, letting his nerves almost get the best of him during his first appearance on Shark Tank, why you should always bet on the jockey and not the horse. All right, welcome to the podcast on today's show. We have Matt Higgins, author of Burn the Boats. Thanks for joining. Thanks for having me. For those who don't know what this book is about or about you, what's the quick, the quick 10 second highlight reel about Matt Higgins? Matt Higgins of the book. Let's go Matt. Let's introduce Matt. OK, Matt, self-made, grew up in Queens, New York under hard scrabble circumstances, poverty, and I have to do this in 10 seconds because I have about six seconds left. Take your time. So I grew up in Queens and grew a product of a single mom and my earliest memories are hawking flowers on street corners and like a lot of people listening, doing whatever it takes to pay the bills, scraping gum under tables at McDonald's. True story. And I made a radical decision when I was very young, which is the genesis of this book, the genesis of my career, which is to take matters into my own hands and drop out of high school. And close your ears if kids are listening. But why is that the most important decision is that at the time you could get your GD and if you were to crush your GD, I always say those words never goes together, right? Like crushing your GD. It's usually a last resort. But if you do well enough, you can go to any college. And at the time I was taking care of my mother. We were on government assistance. She was her health was deteriorating. She was morbidly obese. And I was like, this is going to end terribly. And I was working overnight at a deli. Because none of this makes any sense, especially calculus. Like what do I need to learn that for? And the hack, don't need to offend calculus if that. I was going to say, I used to teach calculus. I love calculus. I actually don't even know what calculus is. Don't worry about it. I barely know what algebra is because high school. So the hack was if I could drop out of high school, I could get a job making $8 an hour. Literally, that was the whole revelation is that I could accelerate it. And the reason for the book, we can get into it, is once I had this excited plan of saying I'm going to drop out and I would get picked up by the truan cops and my guidance counselor would call me at all the time, everyone was trying to shame me or oppress me to conform to conventional thinking. And when I would give a glimpse into my life without knowing the full story, no one ever came in my house. I was like, look, things are bad. We have no money. And this makes more sense. And it's just like no one would receive it. And I remember as a kid thinking, no one will help and no one's going to intervene because we don't live in that kind of society. But then everyone's trying to talk you out of your instincts, which are telling you there's a better way. And so that's when I made my burn the votes move. I decided to fail every class for two years. Now, I was a kid who did pretty well in schools, a little smile, like a sweetheart kid, had a big future, all those cliches. And then I failed everything. And the reason why is so that I would become effectively a write-off and that everyone would stop trying to intervene and would eventually just push me out of the system. I'd call that calculus. Is that, yeah, I guess that is. Is that some kind of risk theory or whatever? So in that example of like you learning, I guess the burn the votes mentality, or you're such an outlier that you have no other choice, I guess, because of circumstances that some people listening have gone through, did you get addicted to that? Like, did that become something where you were like, this is it? Like, this is actually the only way to live. It is, and this is a degree of reconstruction because I didn't have that much foresight. Some parts are true and some parts are packaged, right? You get little crumbs. Yeah, you start like reconstructing, like what was I doing? But the part that did become addictive was, one, this idea like, wait, this was sitting on the table for everyone else to do, but everybody else wrote it off. And now all you kids are gonna sit through an extra couple of years of high school and I just dropped out. And the part that was also addictive is here's officialdom, people who are paid to perpetuate the status quo, the teachers, the guidance counselors, all telling you with such conviction. Solve for the bottom. You're gonna be a loser, like with various ways of putting it. And yet, and with one chess move, I went from a high school dropout to coming to my prom at finishing my first year of college as president of the debate team. You know what I mean? So the part that became addictive was like, I'm gonna consult me first before I consult you. I'm going to remain a little bit oppositional and a little defiant, not arbitrary, but I'm always going to check in with me first. That part did become addictive because that's why I say it's the most important decision I ever made. Once you get that ratification at a really early age that you make an unconventional decision, that changes the entire course of your life. And we can get into this. But remember, I go from a high school dropout, sitting on the steps of, I was a high school smoking butts, taking care of my mom, living in dirt, to press secretary to the mayor of New York at 26, making a $100,000 a year. That's a lot of cager. You know what, a relatively short period of time. So it did become addictive. Yeah, what I think about, so the reason this book obviously me wanting to reach out to you was this book came to me at a time where I had to raise something like two, a little over $2 million in like 10 days. And it was not an ideal time. And I had, and everyone in this room knows this, but I had like basically stopped reading books because at some point I had read 200, I was doing like 50 a year, whether it's Audible or reading the hardcover. And I just kept hearing the same thing. And nothing was motivating me anymore. I was like, everyone's told me their version of the thing that they figured out and now I'm over it. Like it's just, it's not hitting home. I'm done with it. And I picked up your book. I don't even know how I was introduced to it. Maybe a YouTube video that you did maybe with Gary or something, I'm not sure. When I watched the video, I bought the book immediately and I finished it like probably next day. I mean, it was crazy as soon as it arrived. And that, it gave me the juice to finish like the raise, the capital raise. And it made me. Give me goosebumps, by the way. No, I'm serious. You're actually almost gonna make me emotional. No, but it's what's amazing to me. I mean, it was emotional at some point because I think with the entrepreneur and the person listening and really with the point in this podcast is the entrepreneur goes to bed at night and has to, they have to live with themselves and they have to deal with the story of if I fail tomorrow, this is a huge catastrophe for me. And if I win tomorrow, it's a huge win. But sleeping with that pressure is something complete. It's impossible for me. So we're all my, all my doubt as an entrepreneur in general comes at night. I don't know why. Me too, by the way. Nights are hard. Nights are hard. I keep glimpsing through the bathroom window and say, please let the sun come up. It's so funny. You feel the way we might be maladjusted, to be honest. Probably. But I would keep going. I'm enthralled. Yeah, I know. And then the book in some way was the thing that would let me sleep at night easier. I was like, no, fuck it. Like we have to burn the boat. This is it. This is it. We're gonna do this. It's gonna change everyone's life. And then I just started thinking upside. And then I'd wake up in the morning and cold plunge and then, cause that's the torture I put myself through and then right into work, right into action, action, action. And it was a sense of, and I think I really hope entrepreneurs understand this, but you start to really understand the power you have to create your own life. And I think when the window is nine days away or 10 days away or six days away of the rays, you're like, oh wow, like eight hours in a day is actually a pretty amazing amount of time. And every conversation matters. And if you collect those, you could change your life. And that's when I was like, all right, done. And then I did it and it all worked out and it was amazing, you know, open the champagne. And then I was like, I'm gonna go buy this book cause everyone in my life needs to really understand it. And that's when I bought the 50 books. And so if any entrepreneur listening come to the studio, you'll get a book. And we have probably like 40 left or 30 something left, but that was it. You know, as much as it sounds like a compliment to you, it's really, it's a selfish thing for me also, like to have you here. This is the thing I want people to know about. Like this is my jam. I love that. And I want to solve it for everyone. And you're doing that, which I think is just incredible. And it's hard. It's a really hard thing to do. Yeah, so much that you just said, like, I'm at the point too. Let's just be honest, right? Like we don't have the front. It's so exhausting. And I'm on such a mission. And I've never cared so much about anything that it's like I feel like I'm a day away from, you know, death. Like it's so depleting because I, like you said, it is the codes, right? And I chose to use a very bombastic title that is associated often with like bro culture and like burn the boats with you in it and fuck every, I'm not allowed to curse. Like fuck everyone. Your story is amazing. Actually got me emotional. Like fuck everyone, right? But that's very exclusionary because the reality is so much of us have so much to offer, but we don't have the complete complement of those skills. By the way, they're not even that desirable because it means you're probably a narcissist or sociopath. There's something wrong with you. There's something wrong with you, right? The reality, I wanted to write a book. That's why I cold plunge by the way. That's why I torture myself. By the way, I do the same thing with marathons to repeat an activity that's completely unnatural. So I can torture myself. The first guy who did it died. Right, right, exactly. So I do it in very cold weather, in appropriate clothing so I can torture myself. But I wanted to write a book that's a little bit of a Trojan horse that is for us, all of us, normal people who have anxiety. And then I wanted to pull back the curtain on how I got here. And the object of the exercise is not to celebrate the ultimate destination or the results or the accoutrements of wealth or power. It's actually to say, okay, now that I have your attention and I'm credentialized because I'm on a big TV show, I teach at Harvard, I got all these logos. What's the fuck the point? The point is, let me show you the codes, right? And let me lower myself. Let me diminish myself by sharing cancer, divorce, all these other things. Poverty, shame, anxiety so that you can no longer see me as other than, right? And then you can meet me at these points of intersection so I could share with you this formula, which I think people self-select out of this idea of full commitment. That's what I, so I'm trying to pull people back. You're making it okay. I'm making it okay. I'm making it. And I'm reading, now where I might have, now we go out and get all Jedi about the book. First of all, your appreciation of it and the way you bond it with it, it sustains me. But I wonder, will it alienate too many people who believe I've self-selected out of that title and it's not for me? So I am killing myself because I have to, I chose to build a brand around this idea to appropriate it back from those people who are bombastic but the fucking work of trying to tell people this is not what you think is brutal. And I wonder sometimes, am I being too clever? Probably, yeah. What other names did you have? Did you go through like a whole version? No, I burned the boats on the name too. That was, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I kind of, I said, you know what? I just, I'm obsessed. I love that answer. Yeah. Well, I became, want to go into the history? Let's go into the history in a minute. For those who are listening out there and don't know the origin of the phrase, it's interesting, right? Number one, why I liked it is because it's understood as Cortez, right? Cortez invaded Mexico in 1519, very politically incorrect, a conquistador destroyed the Aztecs, right? So I partly chose it because that in and of itself is a misunderstanding of the origin of it, right? So when there hasn't been an academic paper on this topic, which I also find fascinating, when you look back to the origin of the burned the boats, you cannot actually find it. So if you take Cortez, you're like, where did Cortez get it? Well, actually a guy by the name of Tariq who was a slave invaded the Iberian Peninsula in 711 and conquered the Spaniards. Cortez probably learned about it in school if he went to school in 1519. Where did that come from? Oh, actually, if you go back to Alexander the Great, Caesar, you know, 207 BC in China, they even have a word for burned the boats actually in Chinese. Well, where did he get it? Where did that guy get it from? Well, Art of War, Sun Tzu was written in around 500 BC. He said, burn the boats in the cooking pots, right? The ancient Israelites talk about how when they would go to war, they would always leave one escape route for the enemy open to mess with their head because they would undermine their commitment knowing they had a backup plan. So as long as there's been human civilization. I love that. There's always been this method of human existence, which is you have to commit. Yeah, so it's the OG life hack. So then it's like, so that's cool and interesting. Yeah, it's the OG life hack. So I'm like, OK, well, maybe it doesn't apply in peacetime. And then that's where the study at a warden came, which I came across also became obsessed with, where they tried to measure what's the impact of having a fallback plan. And what they found was, basically, it does two things. One, just contemplating another way to achieve the result, not actually pursuing it, measurably diminishes the likelihood you'll achieve your true purpose, your plan. And then the second part is it'll ruin your intrinsic motivation to actually achieve it. So I sort of fascinated by it to begin with. But it's understood incorrectly. Because when people hear that, they believe the word burn the boats means doing the same thing over and over again without iteration. And that is a tactic. And I always say burn the boats is about the goals, not the tactics. Yeah, something you said earlier on, like the warden study, the thing that I think every entrepreneur deals with too, and you know this as an investor, is at some point you're pitching to an investor. And they are looking at your deck. And they're doing the failure points, right? They're doing the red team analysis. And whether they're thinking out loud or actually asking you questions, it's making you consider Plan B, C, oh, what if this fail? Oh, what if the mitigation, the risk mitigation? But they're walking you through their analysis. And so then a part of you is like, oh, maybe I didn't factor that incorrectly. You're like, ooh, am I too bullish on this? Or am I too confident? Or am I too arrogant? Right? And then you start to doubt yourself. And so I think that's the magic of entrepreneurship too. Or it's like a part of you has to just forget about that. This is this person's analysis, not mine. I believe I'm going to get this done. At the end of the day, they're kind of betting on you. And that's it. Don't take it personally, kind of a thing. And the reason why words matter, right? Lately, I've been trying to unpack this more a little bit about what are the boats that you're burning, and what's the thing you're going all in on, right? The boat is a metaphor for whatever you have to eliminate that's holding you back. It's not necessarily escape. It's retreat. And what are you going all in on? You're going in on all on the goal. So in your case, let's just break this down. You're all in on was on the goal of the raise. You had nine days to do it. And you're like, I will raise $2 million. I am not going to fail, right? You didn't say I'm all in on this tactic of I'm going to Aunt Sally. I'm going to go ahead and make sure Aunt Sally signs over her checkbook, even though she's not even have her faculties in place. She's given me that $2 million. You're all in on the goal. And that's, I think, a big mistake people make. And the reason why it's so important. When you're all in on the goal in a counterintuitive way, you are willing to compromise on tactics very easily because tactics aren't tantamount to the goal. People hold on to tactics, and they do the same thing over and over again because if they release it, then they're out. But when you're all in on the goal and raise $2 million, I'm sure when you're like, that didn't work, that didn't work. But the goal, the thing you were all in on was the money. And that's what I say. When people are like, wait, but you were all in on your TV show and the TV show got failed. And I was like, no, I wasn't all in on that. I wasn't all in that TV show. I'm all in like, I am going to have my own version of Shark Tank. And when that tactic didn't work, I went ahead and created a production studio. But I am still all in. And that's a nuanced point. But it's not just semantics. It has to be broad enough so that you can live within it and you can iterate within it. Yeah, I think you have to be all in on your ability or just the belief, right? The belief that you're going to create the thing and how you do that can take 14 different variations or 14 years or 30 years. And the reason why we can break down, why is the universe structured this way? And I think it's because most of the things that go wrong in life are self-inflicted. We have more agency than we ever give ourselves to. So if we have committed to the act of getting it done, we usually have the ability within us to manifest it. And we're sort of born to think so many things are out of control. I think most things are actually in control. Because when I audit shit that's gone wrong in my life, I can usually identify the role I played. And the moment the universe gave me an opportunity to course correct and pivot and when I didn't take it. I don't know how many mistakes you've made in your life or things that have gone wrong where you forget about tragedies where you're like, oh yeah, I kind of knew. Yeah, that's usually the case. I think people generally know. When it comes to Shark Tank, so we've got a lot of people that have been on Shark Tank on the show. We've never had a shark. And so what? First of many. Yeah, the first of many. When it comes to being on Shark Tank from a shark's perspective, statistically, all the sharks will slash their valuations in half. That is like tried and true. Did you know any of that going in? Is it something you guys? Oh, you mean? Is it a strategy that all sharks kind of talk about or at least discuss ahead of time? I come in, I go, hey, I got the better for you pillow. I've made $200,000 last month, and my valuation's $10 million. And then Mark will go, great, I'll give you a 10% for at a $5 million valuation for X amount of dollars. And you're like, OK, it's like every time. Every time it's a slash. Yeah, it is funny. There's no communication or commiseration whatsoever about the deal structure, to be honest. It's like all acting intuitively. What I sort of found funny watching the show, which you guys can relate because you invest too, right? CPGs have their multiples out in the world, right? For those listening to consumer product goods, they were five to seven. Now they're zero to negative because we're in a shit show. Save me. Save the valuation. Whatever it takes, just pay the mortgage, please. But anyway, back in normal times. And yet you go on the show, and none of that logic applies. It used to drive me nuts. I'd be looking at Kevin O'Leary applying math that doesn't quite exist. But it also is kind of common sense, too, in a weird way. So I think it's a reality is, I think it's a function of these are not investors using other people's money who are getting paid based on carry. If you look at all the funds, they're just getting money based on how much money they're putting out to work. And the returns are important, but it's not your own money. And when you're investing your own money, it's like a return to reason. Like, no, wait a second. I don't care about multiples. I'm not looking to flip this. What can I generate? I think that's what drives the, which is kind of interesting. It's a bunch of people using their own checkbook, like trying to ensure that they get a return. And there's a value that they can, yeah. They're trying to buy value and create value. So there's something people are like, Shark Tank is not realistic. I was like, is it not realistic or is the world not realistic? And this is primitive behavior when somebody's money's on the line. That's what I find fascinating. When you get on that set. Oh, that's such an interesting take. Yeah, right, because I was contemptuous of it until it was my money. But then I realized, but my behavior was distorted because I was looking at this more as, you know, this is cool. It's also a branding play. I'm not gonna be permanent. Also, I felt bad for everybody. Like, it's just like, I just feel so. You know what I mean? And be Kevin. Yeah, I can't be, but this is their money that they're doing all the time. And like, everyone is very sympathetic to the entrepreneurs. But what you don't see often is the parts that were not totally accurate in what was presented on the set. You know what I mean? Like, it's a two-way street. Like, you know, if you found your way onto that set, you got a lot of grit, a lot going for you. You're hustling, you know, so. Will you talk about the equity play in the book how it's always up for grabs in terms of, it doesn't, like, if the shark is gonna invest their money, it's also their time. And so they want to make their time worthwhile. Like, if they only get 2% of the company, that's not worth it for them, no matter how much the company valuation is. So I feel like that kind of affects the slashing of, in half of these prices and these valuations. It does, right. I'm glad you brought that up. This is an important part of the book, just trying to educate everybody, saying it's not just money, it's time. And we've all learned this the hard way, right? You get so excited and enamored by something and, you know, you think it's gonna be a score. And then you realize, like, that took forever and I only own 3% of it. So I think the shark's intuitively under there solving for a percentage ownership stake and that's what's driving it, right? I'm only gonna put 300 grand to work and that's gonna have to equal 20%. That's the part that's unrealistic about the show that doesn't quite work in VC land because that would mean your first valuation, you gave away 30% of the company, right? Like, that's the inherent tension. The fun part, though, is that these are not VC type businesses. They are real businesses that are meant to eventually cash flow, that make you money, that pay you rather and not necessarily to flip. So, but back to the show. The show itself is so similar to what you see on TV. The only I'd say, not even distortions, is that a pitch could take 40 minutes and the end version that you see is seven and a half. When I have been on it and I watched the version on the TV, I can't remember what was edited out. That's how accurate. There's some amplification of conflict, like one time, Mark Cuban, we were competing for a deal. This is great. He was belittling me to the investor. This actually happens. And he was like, he goes, yeah, Matt, because I was saying, well, I have this big soccer business. I could help you. And I have a big platform. He's like, yeah, Matt, you and your 15,000 Instagram followers. I was like, and I go, Mark Cuban, like a billionaire, acting like a teenage kid, like kind of flexing about your number of followers. They didn't show my retort. I was like, what did you show the answer? What did you say? I said, oh, look at Mark Cuban acting like a little teenager flexing his number of followers. But they didn't show that part. So there's a degree of decorum that has kept out of the. And I'm sure you're friendly. Oh, for good. Maybe on some boards together. They were all great. I mean, I've been very open about being anxious coming on the show. Yeah. It's in the book, which is great. It's weird. It's great. To be, now we're being Cuban are really real. I don't know why more people have been guessed, haven't talked publicly about what I'm talking about. Could I be the only one that had imposter syndrome going on that show? It's not possible. So then I'm like, it's an opportunity to make a gift of yourself by sharing that publicly. And what made me actually begin talking about it? I had a conversation with my wife about it. Because if you look at me on TV on that first episode, objectively, one could argue you're a natural at it or you're good at it or it seemed effortless. I'm pretty good at making things that are gut wrenching seem effortless. So that's one view of it. Or I could say what was really going through my head. And now use that as a teaching moment. And I actually think not communicating how I was really feeling is a form of not violence, but a form of regression. Because now I'm pushing this forward into the world. Look how good I was on TV. I'm making great Instagram posts where I'm telling you about I went from government cheese to now I'm redeemed. And by the way, why haven't you figured your shit out? Because if you came from crap too, you should have it figured out. That is like, it's so subtle. It's a form of abuse. It's a form of abuse to the people who need the most for you to tell the actual truth. Because if you leave it there, this is what I hate about Instagram and self-styled gurus these days. They have this narrative, this arc of redemption where they sometimes probably amplify or manufacturing, stumble or crisis. I was vulnerable. My ego got the best of me. I blew all my money on Lamborghinis. But now I'm good. And now you- I hate when that happens. Yeah, me too. We can all relate. So fucked up, right? But then now you volunteer at a monastery, blah, blah, blah. But I think the tough part is when you present or purport to have the answers to the test, but you don't asterisk it or disclaim how you still struggle implementing it, you actually are amplifying a wound. Because the typical person, even when they occasionally stumble upon the answers to the test, they forget them. That's the human experience. So the book, I know this is maybe too Jedi, but the book is in my attempt to be like, I have the book and I wrote the book, but I wrote the book so I'd read the book alongside you. Not because I no longer need to read the book. It's like your own little reminder. Yeah, because that's why the stuff is so circular in the book. It's like, yeah, you got your TV show. You're press secretary of the mayor of New York. Mom dies that day. That day is a metaphor for the human experience. That's the true story, right? Some of the last things my mother ever said to me is that no one will care when I'm dead. My life will not matter. And it is true, no one cared. She had a couple of friends who did, but she disappeared from this face of the earth and she was never redeemed, right? And I have never fully healed from that either because we all don't fully heal from this stuff, right? And so like, I do, maybe this is my, when I see these self-styled gurus and they're purporting to have it all figured out, I'm like, are you hurting people right now? Actually, you're not helping them because you're not telling them the truth that you don't have shit figured out. That's a good point. I kind of love that. Or maybe I'm just well maladjusted and you are too clearly because you're torturing yourself. A part of me is like, this is what the podcast is about. It's about to give people like the realities of it, right? But just like, how do I, having imposter syndrome, that's a real thing, right? Your company goes public, let's say. Great day on the surface, but you know your stock's gonna fall in a couple of days, likely, right? Five days, maybe a week, you enter a recession, you've lost half of your net worth, maybe more, right? And these are the things that- These are the things, well let me- No one tells you the story. So I've had to now talk about burn the boats and what does it mean and what context, but I raised a SPAC, right? A $200 million SPAC and I've killed myself, it's in the book, to bring this company public. I love this company and I was probably a little too precious of thinking like, I'm gonna do this differently. I know that there's all these characters chasing us, it got so frothy, but I'm gonna do it differently. I'm gonna put together a team of consumer Avengers. I know how to identify a killer company. I'm gonna find that, I'm gonna work the hell out of it and it's gonna be like, I took it home to mom and dad for the first time, like meet my new company and it's gonna live with me for the rest of my life. I did all that and then companies call Ken and then I had to cancel the deal, right? So now I'm faced with scrambling, okay, I still have $206 million and I still have five months left. There's all this pressure to do a deal, but like my intuition is telling me like, things I'm being presented with are just not gonna work out for shareholders and like I cannot compromise even though I'm facing losing millions of my own money and reputation. I was like, I can't stray from the initial goal because I was all in on it, right? And it'll lead to bad things. But here's the interesting, a couple of the companies that I passed on ended up going public and one in particular did well out the gate and I was like, I don't understand, like all my instincts told me that this company in the end was not sustainable and these other companies, so two weeks ago they both went bankrupt. Oh wow. The two companies that I had targeted and looked at and had to walk away from and had people questioning, why'd you not do it? They went under, like publicly traded now bankrupt. You think it's a self-awareness thing? I think it's a combination of pattern recognition, again, not to overestimate our intuition. I think there are things that block our intuition, hence burning boats, the things that get in the way. But I do think we are primitive creatures and because of where we, especially if you have been through trauma or you have a degree of anxiety, you spend a lot of time hyper aroused, your amygdala is flashing, like red a lot, the consolation prize of trauma and anxiety is refined pattern recognition skills. So I think those who are a little more angst-ridden, they watch all the time, right? We're scanning, you know? And so when I was out there looking, the signals become kind of obvious. What gets in the way of the signals is other people substituting your intuition with their supposed knowledge. Yeah, I think whenever I meet people in general, I think the thing I always, the way I think about things is their graph always shows an upward trend toward success. You know, say it one more time, tell me how I understand that. Like it's like you meet someone new, let's say an entrepreneur, I do meet a new entrepreneur and I'll say, hey Matt, you know, your graph in life shows an upward trend and it points to success. Now you might not believe that today, but that's what I see for your future. So then it's a function of, all right, cool. If we both believe that, what do we need to do? What things do we need to eliminate actually in order for you to get there? And it's always the self-talk. It's like the thing between your ears. That voice is the thing. I love when I meet, it's funny. Isn't that great? You know, I love it. What I love about the book resonating with you is my attempt to scale that, what you just said so perfectly is what I'm trying to do with the book is to scale those interventions. I'll meet somebody and I'm like, huh, my intuition is telling me your destiny is greater than where you are right now. And weird that I haven't even heard of you or what is it holding you back? And I see a little pain in your face it flashed a second ago when I used those words, right? Like I was doing an Instagram live with somebody. I just randomly was going live with Gary and Gary had to go and I was like, and Gary was like, I know you Matt, you'll just stay with these people all day. So let's just do it. And some young guy comes on to ask some questions about his business. He's from Wales, right? So now we're across the ocean, right? Don't know anything about him. And he starts to describe me. So I'll tell me whatever. He's like, well, I have a business an apparel business. So my mom died when I was 17 and then he continues talking for another three minutes. So can I ask you a question? Why was your saying my mom died when you were 17 within the first 30 seconds of your story? I said, does that have something to do with you being unable to realize full potential of your business? And he goes, I just want to know if she's proud of me. I can't figure out how to find out if she's proud of me. Literally within the first, and I could feel it. And I was like, so, and so we did 20 minutes of saying, okay, you don't have children to you. He's like, no, I can't have children. I'm not, I'm not well adjusted enough to have children just 33 years old. And I said, let me speak on behalf of the future version of yourself. When you finally have children in your life, you'll realize that all your mother ever wanted to know was that you were self-possessed, that you had achieved whatever it is you cared about. That's all she cares about right now. Like, and when you have children, you'll understand, because all you will care about ahead of everything else is whether or not they love themselves. And so do you love yourself? And this is the comment. In front of like a thousand people, like. You really broke them down, Matt. Geez. You know, but Instagram live, that's powerful. No, no, it's great. Well, it's fun when the cameras fade away. Even like we're doing right now. We're like fade away, what I love what you said is your graph is pointing up, right? Like, but what is it the thing that blocks? That's the point. That's the book. Now, what's fun, you are, I always say, I want to find out the results of the referendum. Do more people see the world this way? Or is it confirmation bias that I see the world this way? Do more people have metaphorical boats to burn or is it just that I have boats to burn, you know? And like my instincts say that's not possible, you know, because it's a shared experience. But that guy and those few, what you just said, I identified it like, huh, what's stuck? And it's usually something psychological. Always the case, yeah. How's the book doing? It's been about a month, a month and change. Yeah, the book, I mean, I'm never happy. Yeah, but it's doing great. I don't know. I can't, I'm lying to you if I say it's doing great. I could say it's doing great because it seems like the answer I'm supposed to give. I don't feel like it's doing great. Okay, why not? Based on what, what feels missing? Like it's missing. It feels like I'm muscling it too much. By you being out there in the media. Yeah, it's very unnatural for me to promote anything. I've never had a product to sell before. Even though just because I have the capacity to do it and I might have the tools to do it doesn't mean it's natural to do it or it feels like it's the best use of me. So I've had to communicate about it so much. And I do think there was a more obvious title, like, you know, unlock yourself, stop being mad or something or, you know, whatever the obvious title is. And I didn't go that way. And so I'm wondering if the amount I have to do to communicate with the book is really about is a form of self-sabotage. So that's a long way of saying, really? Like, do I have to? Right, like what's the metric for the success? That's the thing. That's interesting. Yeah, like it's- And it's not on paper. No, now. It's not a vanity metric. Now to be true to the purpose. So I think it's because I'm tired. If I was less fatigued, I would be measuring it by the messages I'm getting from every demographic. And this is no bullshit, right? This isn't like patting myself on the back. For a person in my position to have supposed wealth and success to not then become alienated or others alienate themselves from you saying, I have nothing to take from you and we don't have anything in common. To me to bridge that divide by offering up my life and my lessons to connect with a 19-year-old who said he was struggling with acne and depression and the book made him, he needed to burn up a hotel as parents of truth and went and got therapy. A woman emailed me, she was probably in her fifties, had to get a form of spinal surgery and she was afraid to do it, but she read the book and realized she needed to burn that boat. The fact that people have appropriated the metaphor for themselves in the right way that I invented feels breathtaking. So from that measure, if I'm being honest. It feels your tank. It feels like, well, I did it. Like I was trying to, I didn't write a book, I was trying to engineer an outcome, which was like, let me do it. Now I feel an obligation to sustain the momentum. You know when you are inspired, you watch a great movie and you're like, oh my God, I'm ready. And then it leaves you and you're sort of sad that it's over. I feel the obligation to create a community around the idea and to maintain the momentum. How do you do that? What's next? I mean, well, I am doing it through amplifying that my intentions are pure. So for example, somebody, this isn't like a brag. I'm giving my psychology, right? A woman, single mom, she bought a package of the books, like 50 books and we did a call and she just was like, this book moved me so much. Like it's changed, I'm at the point of my life. I needed to, you know, to break through. And at the end of the conversation, she says, you know, I cared so much about this that I went into my 401k to go ahead and buy this package. And she had told me earlier in the thing how she burned the boats to make sure she could get the tuition for her daughter. Like, and she did it and she was able to generate. So I slip in, what's your daughter's name, whatever it was, so I sent her back the book with the check in it for the books. So I've been doing like, how do I maintain the momentum? Live the book. Live the truth of the book. I've been doing podcasts too where I say at the end, if you don't have the money for the book, you still have the book, so DM me your address and I'll send you the book. I'll just come here and I'll give it to you. Yeah, you're right, where you already have 15. So that's a convoluted way of answering it. And the other is the newsletter, use the power of my writing, use that gift to write in the same style as the book and people will feel that and then they'll be, and then form intimate relationships with people. If there's something I could give that helps them cross within the framework of my own time, right? I always say, I don't wanna go on a rescue mission because then it's too much pain. It's on a rehab project. Right, right, exactly. But if there's something that I can do, there's a woman from South America who has a soccer business and she's an artist and she said the book gave her the confidence to finally move to the United States for the World Cup and bring her art here. So I was like, well, my CEO knows everyone's soccer. Let me bridge you. That's something I could do pretty easily. So it's maybe if I could supply a little bit of momentum that I'm trying to do it. You were on, I believe CNN and you were talking about the coming months we're gonna have like a recession and in the book you talked about how founders use like the pandemic or any kind of tragedy to take a look at what they've done and if they had to start over, how would they do it all differently? And what would they keep? What would they toss out? And I'm curious for people like myself who are starting companies with, you know, this looming consumer recession coming up without the hindsight because we don't have that baked in because we're just starting now without that kind of hindsight to know like, okay, this is what we would do differently. What kind of advice would you have for someone who is staring down the barrel of a recession and just trying to get something off the ground at the same time? Good question, see? Yeah, that's a good question. That's a hard one. I mean, I'm more optimistic about what you do now that I would have been a year ago because you were doomed a year ago. Like now you're not- That's a good way to look at it. Right, like you were doomed. Now you're into- You couldn't see the barrel before. Right, now you have- Now it's staring at you. Perfect information. Like I just launched a company, it's in stealth mode. It's a secure blockchain native company, right? Like if we had raised a year ago in the frothy period, we would have been stuck with a stupid valuation that we couldn't live into. We would have blown half the cash on marketing and parties or something, right? Like dumb behavior on the assumption that we're gonna be valued at growth and we would be doomed. So you're not doomed now, Hope Springs Eternal. And like you get a chance to start in the way things always return, which is a business that can actually acquire customers at a reasonable price with margins that are sustainable, hopefully north of 50% in your case with clothing, right? And here's the other positive part. This is happening below the surface right now, but it's 100% happening. During recessions, who gets put in charge? CFOs, they fire the CEO in the visionary. They're like, that guy ruined the business. We need somebody who has no vision, could just execute and fire everybody, right? So that CFO gets no offense to CFOs. I value you, but not when you're in charge. So they fire everybody, they fire everybody. And then as a result, marketing spend dries up. So what's happening right now is cost of acquisition, however you wanna define it, is dropping dramatically. So DTC businesses, four months ago I was on the thing saying they're all doomed and they're all going bankrupt. Now I'm saying the exact opposite, which is ironically, you have the feel to yourself and this arb now on customer acquisition. So my only point is, one word, you're never truly doomed, but you're definitely doomed before you're doomed. And once you're doomed, everything is at your disposal. That's so funny. And that's the situation we find ourselves in right now. When I think about reals like development, it's always like right now, it's obviously a trying time on paper or whatever, but I love it, because I'm like, this is it. No, it's great, it makes it so simple. Well, it's funny, so funny you said this. I always say, my wife is like, you have that smile on your face, we just lost them. I'm like, no, because everything I was worried about and think about has now happened. And now I have so much more data and I also know how most humans react to these situations. They respond to the last crisis, not to the next one. So now everyone's gonna be running away from early stage investing and running away from, right? Like safety and security. And I've already been living in a paranoid universe of my own making, sitting on cash, now I can be opportunistic, right? So anyway, that would be the advice back to, in terms of also for somebody who has a job. And so somebody out there who finds himself in a layoff and has to deal with that. Number one, I keep saying make provisions, right? Plan for that at the end of the day. So that's like the practical advice, but I do believe a lot of what holds us back are the things we possess, the things we're afraid to lose, it's just true. As I become more successful or more accolades or credentials, I've started realizing, wait, these are becoming a prison unto themselves because I don't wanna lose them now. So it's preventing me from wanting to take risks because I don't wanna lose reputation, prestige, everything's amplified. So I work hard on constantly thinking about how do I define my needs as narrowly as humanly possible so that I can take bigger and bigger risks because I was finding myself becoming more risk adverse. So when you find yourself unfortunately decimated and you've lost a lot of things you care about, at the same time, you can make much riskier decisions because you have much less to lose because you've lost a very big part of your life. Now, easy to say when you gotta feed yourself. So I know there's a practical reality to that, but for those who are looking to start a business, it's never better to start a business than in a downturn. So while it'll be harder to get the capital, it'll be the kind of capital you want, premised for the right reasons. And the idea will hit. You'll get product market fit because it'll actually work because people actually need it because what happens in these markets, people only buy what they need. Exactly, it's a simpler time. It's a simpler time. So now if you're only somebody you can perform, this is why I like writing early stage checks now. If you're only somebody that can perform when you're in a frothy market based on bullshit metrics, well then you'll fail. But that guy's a hustler and I'll figure something else out. Yeah, one of the companies I invested in was an almond milk company, oddly enough. They were like nationwide with Blue Bottle. And then they decided to make a powder format and I was like, why would they like a year ago? I was like, I don't understand why they do this. The reason they wanted to do this was Nestle acquired Blue Bottle. Yeah, it's for $600 million. So Nestle's big on trying to- That's when they had 48 units, I think. I don't know, I know. They're trying to basically powderize everything so whether it's coffee, like kind of not so instant but they want to keep some form of it because it's easier to ship, it's easier to move around. It's less space if you're a coffee shop. And so there's all these fine tuning, a CFO level analysis on why it makes sense. And so she doubled down on it and it worked. And now she's got like two massive contracts. But it was during the, this was in December. So right when things were starting to get ugly, but she figured it out. Right, well, I had a meeting recently. I'm having this meeting actually all the time. So that's what I'm trying to figure out which meeting I'm about to talk about. Like the emergency board meeting. Yeah, exactly, the emergency board meeting. It's amazing. All I do all day long is an emergency board meeting. And when I'm together, my wife made that comment. She's like, you seem so happy. And it's like because- It's simple. And we're making the decisions we needed to make anyway without the emergency. Only now we must make them or we die. And that's back to burn the boat. So like, that's what I'm trying to sort of tap into. It's like master of the obvious. I'm not saying anything that controversial. I'm saying that to do truly hard things, you need clarity of purpose and you can't have energy leakage. So when you have optionality because you're not in a desperate crisis, you have energy leakage, right? So all these decisions I'm making, I'm seeing these meetings. I'm like, this was like obvious four months ago, but because everyone else was not working off the same crisis script, we're not able to do it. So part of the premise of the book is, how do you manufacture the clarity of crisis decision-making in peacetime? And the way you do that is- That's fascinating, actually. And you just have to accept the premise. And the premise, this is what I'm gonna spend, now you asked me what goes forward after this. Once I figure out the effort to create the first catalyst, right? I look at this promotional effort as, I'm catalyst in chief. I need to disseminate it. But then what I really wanna do is work harder on to substantiate it. I have this great platform at Harvard. I can basically work to create any kind of study. So I have all these studies and I wanna go ahead- Like a think tank you mean? Yeah, no, I mean, actually just, I wanna prove out the premise in different ways through studies to demonstrate. I wanna figure out, can I measure the amount of energy leakage of a backup plan? And if I can show some type of ratio to how much that will diminish the likelihood of success. Kinda like what the Wharton study did, but go a lot further. I wanna find a way to substantiate it. And I wanna find a way to substantiate how outcomes improve when a person who has anxiety or angst can actually accept the premise. I wanna substantiate, I have a four step process for how to handle risk at the beginning and why that's so important. To catastrophize at the beginning of going all in on plan A. There's a lot that I wanna build upon that I didn't do it in the book because I wanted the book to be readable and mostly to leave you with a feeling of infinite possibility, right? Like to me that was more important. But now I care about the science and the psychology. That's actually so fascinating. In sports they do this thing called domain general. Where you wanna induce stress. And so the idea being, let's say you're giving a big speech in front of somebody you love, you adore. So if he walked in, this person here, she walks in the room and you would make you nervous and not cool, you would just probably start sweating. Who knows, all the feelings. And so the idea is that, let's say you're afraid of heights. You just put on a VR thing and you just do a tightrope across above New York City. But it's all VR. But you would still induce the stress. And so the idea is that you can actually get the feeling of stress on purpose, like a cold plunge, like all these weird things that we do a marathon. Marathons and a cold, yeah. And the idea is that it starts to actually strengthen a part of your system that deals with stress, right? And then it's like, it's like, it's called domain general, they call it. And the idea there being is maybe if that gets really strong, like a muscle, then entrepreneurship and these risks feel less than the thing, like the muscle you've just built up. It's interesting. I love that. I mean, that's totally true. That's why in times of real stress, when I did all these marathons, I was going through a lot of personal turmoil. I was like, okay, well, what would be more torture? Like I trained for my first marathon, now this is kind of sounding too crazy, but you can relate to this because you're doing cold, plunging torture. So I trained for my first marathon in the dark basement on a treadmill with them staring at a red light. I was 40 pounds overweight and I needed a catalyst and I wanted to subject myself to an even stronger level of deprivation than when I was experienced emotionally. I wanted something that would eclipse the thing that was in front of me that was actually very painful with something even more torturous. Like, and it's similar to what you're saying. At the end of the day, it's controlled. I'm in a basement, I'm on a treadmill, I'm staring at a light in the dark. But that's how I trained for my first marathon on a treadmill in a basement. How long did you do that for, that training? Four months. And I dropped, it's a whole article in the Times that talks about it. I dropped probably 40, 50 pounds, I think, during that period. Have you ever tried to replicate that training for any reason? No, because that's insane. Okay. No, no, no, I did. I trained for Antarctica in the cold. I would go out in New York and I would go in the cold and wear a lot of that kind of stuff. I'm in a different phase of my life, although I crave it. If I'm perfectly honest, I start with my wife, I want to resume that because there's something to be said for that. So for that controlled deprivation that is actually more intense than the things that are psychological that you're dealing with every day. And I think it's what you're saying in a different context. It is, it's totally that. And that's the problem. That's why I think we're crazy because it's like there's, there's... So you know what I'm doing next? You wanted moments, right? You would appreciate this. Again, I'm gonna say it's stated publicly, so now I have to execute. But I forget about the company that does this, but I'm associated with a company that does MRIs and brain surgery. And there was a study in psychology today, a while back that actually tried to measure the impact of meditation. And what they found that meditating it for 20 minutes a day, if they were to, you know, they were to analyze the control group that didn't meditate and the ones that did, the amygdala was significantly smaller in the group that meditated 20 minutes a day, measurably significantly smaller. So like meditating can actually rewire your brain. I've always wanted to replicate that with myself since I don't fully commit enough to meditation. Same, I can't do it. I try. But if you had tangible data. But if I present to you in a few months and I show you my MRI and show it actually shrinking, that's gonna be pretty persuasive to you, right? Absolutely. And so we don't have a, we don't have a sort of like an authoritative feedback loop with meditation just feels good for a minute. But I don't know about you, but I like to give up those 20 minutes. I'm like, I could barely shut down. I just can't do it. Yeah. I've tried so many times. Meditation to me objectively brings me joy and tremendous peace. And it's like, it feels like the greatest gift. But because of the other countervailing force of like, I don't want to give up those 20 minutes. It's crazy. When I hear people get up in the morning and they meditate right away, I'm like, who are you? Yeah, that's amazing to me. Like I look for the sun, like when is that going to come up already? I want to get after it. My meditation is making a coffee every morning. All right, well, maybe if I show you if I actually execute this, I'm not committing to it. But if I actually execute on this, I'm going to show you my brain scan. Hard to argue with the data. It's fascinating. Exactly. So give me your advice on the book. Or give me your pep talk. We actually talked about this. So remember, because on the last call, you're like, what things do you think I should be doing better, right? And I think let me preface the conversation where in the math problem that you asked you're solving for, or at least let's pretend we're solving for book success, right? Ultimately, book success equals the outcome you're trying to achieve for people to do the things. I'm achieving for the book to achieve escape velocity without my intervention. So I don't have to muscle it because it's not sustainable. And so in that, I just think there's a huge, and I don't know if Gary has told you this, but to me, there's a huge social media opportunity you're missing primarily on like these short videos on TikTok, on telling your story, right? And so the vulnerability in the book hits. But on the socials, if it's not in the long format, you don't touch on it to me enough. You get fair. Right? And I'm like, why is he not doing that? And I don't know. It's obviously hard. You're moving a million miles of a minute. There's a lot going on. But in it, I'm like, he's missing that. That's the thing he's missing. So give me an example. A concrete example you could talk about. It's just like the ones, you've shared 10 of them here. We will clip them and we will send them to you here. You've done that here today. We will do that. We'll send it to you and to the loop. Okay. And then you'll see, and then hopefully you share them all over your TikTok. And that could be a by-product of being somewhat neutered in the book, by saying, well, it's a business book. You can't get into that stuff. And my instincts told me the opposite, actually, that it's the part that people connect with. And I think we all struggle with that, too. It's like, if my purpose is X, why am I sharing Y? But they're related. And in your book, you know how it works, actually. Yeah, right, because I wrote it that way. Right, right, yeah. And so then it's like, how do you thread that into? Yeah. No, I need the bolstering, because I am constantly reappraising one, the cringiness of the entire effort, promoting anything, but then also the ratification. I need a referendum every day to know that it is worthy and it is good, and it's being received as intended and continue. You're changing the world. I just do. I could lie and say, I'm so confident about it. It's like, no, because that would be ignorant. Like, if it isn't connecting or if it isn't working, and so the act of needing to sell it contradicts that. Does that make sense? Absolutely. In its purest state, it should work. Then I shouldn't have to be communicating about it. Absolutely. But I know that's not realistic. And it's just because I don't sell things normally. Whereas Gary, Gary would be like, you've got to do 83 pieces of content. Then he'll give me a tactic. This is the other day. I did this the other day. I told you I did it live with him, right? I was bothering the shit out of him. I'm like, come on, Gary. And he's like, anyway. And then he makes that one statement. Matt, I know you love this. You'll stay on this the whole time. Talk to my, and I kept bringing people up, right? Which I also loved, because it was so fun to like, you had to navigate somebody coming and talking. And I did it for an hour and a half. But as a result, it kept amplifying to their communities. And I was like, Gary just gets it. He gets it. And I'm thinking, I'm putting all this energy. Gary spends like 10 seconds on his cover, 30 seconds on his book, and he moves on. And it also tells everyone that's the case. And here I am doing that. And in 10 seconds, he's like, you should be doing this. And I'm like, damn, I own the firm. Do you know what I mean? How did you meet Gary? And what magic did you see in him? I met him at the Jets, right, at the training facility. You're trying to sell him a suite, right? A suite at the bagel store. And that was the number one. That was the first interaction with him. But I think what I saw in him, because I do listen more than I judge, I do feel I'm pride myself on that. It doesn't take work. I'm listening for value and for enlightenment. And when I met with him, I was like, well, this is all being clouded by the cursing and the bravado. But it was 2009, he was predicting things that just seemed like things I had observed casually, but he was predicting them definitively. So in other words, he was saying to me that everyone's going to have smartphones. They'll be ubiquitous. They're obviously it's 2009, so we're a few years into that. And what's going to happen is smartphones are going to enable everybody to be both the Comcast, HBO, and Sopranos all in their hands. They're going to be the content creator, the content distributor, the monetizer of the content. This is 09. But the problem is, businesses are too lazy, slow to realize this. So me and my little brother, AJ, who's still in college, when he graduates, we're going to create a firm, and we're going to help companies who can't do it themselves. We're going to start with community management, and then we're going to go and we're going to morph into up the chain to Super Bowl commercials. That's a fascinating take. Right. So it was the first 10 minutes I was like dismissive. So I'm like, what am I selling this guy? Swee is not going to have money by Swee. He's never going to have money by Swee. Second 10 minutes, I was like, I bet you I could make a whole career stealing this guy's ideas. And I really want to get out of this job. If I'm honest, I'm really not happy. I don't want to run a I don't I have the cool everyone's dream job of my own. And he would love my job. I was like, but I bet you I could work with him to help me understand how to hack this future in a way that's not natural to me. And I'm going to get out. And so like I said, why don't why don't we do an experiment? I'll give you eight jets tickets and let's take somebody on the team who wouldn't otherwise be prominent, but let's use this, you know, social media to make them prominent. That'll be our test case. And that's what we did. And he took a couple of players and started making content and it worked. And then when I partnered up with Steven Ross few years later, and he's brilliant. So right away, I was like, you know, if we owned a piece of this firm, we could create value for all of our portfolio companies. And so let's go back and buy it. And I this is a great meeting. I haven't really talked about this on record, but I was so excited by this, like we're going to partner up with Gary and this firm's going to be huge. I could just see it. And it was still nascent. And I brought him in to pitch to a whole whole room full of suits. And I'm listening to him do his thing, painting the picture of the world. And you know, when you're like a proud father, you're like, and then the meeting ends. And I'm like, you know, so who's in? One guy actually, a partner of mine, he came in. But so we went and we did the deal ourselves. It's now the number one independent agency on planet Earth, right? And have employees in too many countries to name. Isn't that amazing though? Like a room full of really smart, really wealthy people. Oh, and I don't blame them for it. Yeah, how could you? Well, because there's different kinds of people in the world, and I find myself surrounded often with people who play such a high premium on their own discovery. They have to be at the genesis of discovering identification. And I resist that all the time. If you tell me right now, like this drink, I'm like, I like this drink. I get this drink. This is Ouroboro, and like it has a little kick to it. And I hate my shitty seltzer that I've been drinking. And I said, I didn't realize right now how much I hated my seltzer until I just had a better seltzer, right? Like, I don't need to discover it. Now I'm going to hopefully you edit this part out and I'm going to say, I discovered Ouroboro. But so many people put such a high premium on their act of their own discovery for your gratification, whereas that's such a huge mistake. You know, take the idea, it's back to Gary. Like, I'm acknowledging it here that like, I don't have to pretend that I predicted, you know, social media, but I had a good sense to back the guy who did. Right. You know what I mean? And become an owner. And bet on it. Yeah, and bet on it. But I find that is a hard, anybody out there listening, this is a very nuanced point, but you're going to find yourself if you're a dreamer often surrounding yourself by people of the exact opposite who don't care about the dream, they care about whether they spotted the dream. And then they become sort of sometimes subconsciously competitive, you know, with saying they don't want yours to work because you found it and they didn't. Well, wrap on this, give me your take. I'm just curious more than anything, on like chat GPT and AI and tools if you have a take. I love it. I find it breathless. I find it ridiculous that people are afraid of it. And like the Elon Musk and all those guys putting out a letter, I think it's hilarious. It makes me think about the elevator operators and the Luddites from England in 18. I just think they're going to start one, which is why he's negative. Of course, but like he's going to go long. What's weird about it, like one day this statement will ultimately maybe be false and then that's the end of the world. But generally every innovation, we figure out how to accommodate it and we figure out how to use it to increase productivity so we can scale up. So chat GPT will become creative, bunch of people who oversee chat GPT, like it'll unlock efficiency. So the elevator operator, showed there was all fear that elevators would collapse without that person in it. Or people would do terrible things on elevators. It's such a funny example. Yeah, it's so good. Well because it's the most absurd one because you're like, well what the fuck does the elevator operate? I don't know back in the day. Everyone can press a button. Right, but maybe the elevator operator used to make you feel much more comfortable in the social situations. It's like a parking operator. You didn't have to look at each other, right? Well, you didn't probably, member back in the beginning, how uncomfortable is an elevator? I bet the elevator operator made that less uncomfortable. He's like, how you doing, Betty? How's the elevator going today? Oh Bill, we had an incident the other day that got stuck on nine. So there was, and I would love the Luddites. Do you know the story of the Luddites? The word Luddite comes from England in the 1800s where they were anti-machinery, the Industrial Revolution, so they would sabotage the machines and destroy them because the machines were gonna destroy everything. You know, like humanity, all of our jobs are alive. So the Luddites wasn't like the Freemasons or something, they were organized group of people. So like there's a word Luddite now as an adjective, right? So I was a joke. But I just don't believe it. I also think sometimes as we get older, because I feel myself feel this way, we get nervous and resentful that the world is moving faster away from us, right? And we wanna condemn it and catastrophize about the consequences of it because we feel left out and left behind. I don't think Elon Musk has that emotion because he's usually ahead of it. But I think generally we always have that fear. So remember when Twitter came out, what is this twatter, Twitter, you know, like we would, we always, we start by making fun of the word. Remember TikTok, stupid dancing, kids, whatever, even a Gary's like, no, it's gonna be ubiquitous. And I think chat, chat, chat, I think chat GBT, what's fun about it, anybody listening, rarely do you see an innovation where you could bet with high conviction. It will be ubiquitous and game-changing and make massive amounts of money where you have such an incredible advantage by being early and embracing it. Normally like clubhouse, you could put all your money into clubhouse and be like, oh shit, that didn't work out. Chat GBT is game-changing and AI is finally game-changing. I didn't believe that before. So I think let's bypass the part where we make fun of the dancing teenagers on TikTok and embrace it fast because you can make a ton. I did it something the other day. I won't get into it, but I was like, I was contemplating basically a short around a group of stocks. I was like, let me ask chat GBT. Oh, that's hilarious. And I was like, please identify the number of companies that are publicly- Silicon Valley Bank, right. I was like, what's it? I said Silicon Valley Bank. Well, no, that's what it was. It was born about it. I wanted to find a cohort of banks that with a different thesis I had. That are publicly traded from this region, whatever. And in under a second, and then I send it to JP Morgan. And I was like, this is the things I've been looking for. You guys produced a basket to me that was not nearly as interesting. I love my bank, by the way. So my point to anybody listening, trust me, embrace it quickly. Don't dismiss it. Don't go for the haters and the naysayers because it's a waste of time. By the way, if they're right, who cares? It'll be gone. But there's money to be made by embracing it early. We can use it in the meantime. My favorite thing about it is hearing examples like that expand my perception of how I can use it. Agreed, by the way. I am a neophyte when it comes to how to use it because I wasn't because I didn't believe it. I was distracted with this. I already feel anxiety that I don't know how to use it. And then I read how people are using it and I'm like, oh, that's crazy. But then I'm like, okay, it's still, there's another thing I talk about. I touch upon the book, but if it was one of my future books, it would be this. Like when you think you're late, you're early. Like if you have a predisposition to embrace things and be intellectually curious, you can always be sure. So we are like crazy early. So even though you guys, you feel the same way. It sounds like you've played with it more. I've played with it so little that it feels like I'm missing something. But trust me, my summer is gonna be the summer of chatGBT. I forget about hot girl summer. It's chatGBT summer, you know. Matt, thank you for coming on the podcast brother. Thank you for supporting the book. Thank you for the encouragement. I really appreciate it. Like it sustains me and motivates me. I wanna get the word out. So if anyone out there listening, haven't bought it yet, please do read it, but pass it on and send me your feedback. Burn the boats. Burn the boats, baby. Thanks, Matt. Thank you. If you made it this far, I bet you loved the episode. So you should join our YouTube channel membership for only $2.99 a month. This gets you access to one, the whole unabridged conversation. Two, you get the episodes on Monday, one day earlier. Three, you get two additional entries to our giveaways. Check out our Instagram to see what we've given away. And four, you get access to seasons one through three. That's over a hundred episodes of wisdom and life-changing advice. What are you waiting for? Join.