 If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind pump, mind pump, with your hosts, Sal DeStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. We're still here at the Spartan World Championship. We haven't even left yet. 2017, we've done a bajillion. We're camping out. This one, though, one of my favorite people that we met while we were out here. It's the first time I had a chance to meet Ryan from Order of Man podcast. Really fucking like this dude. He's a cool guy. He actually came to the house that we rented. We got this incredible house, beautiful views. There was a perfect room to record. We all sat down on the couch, had a little bit to drink, and had a great podcast, a great conversation. He's a very smart guy. His podcast is very interesting. They talk about optimizing health, wellness, fitness, but also motivation and lifestyle and all that kind of stuff. It's a really interesting podcast. Again, he's a great podcast host as well. Well, we did one with him and one with us. So these are actually two episodes that are going out, right? So we've got the episode. This is the one where we interview him. Right, you guys are listening to one of the episodes. If you really enjoyed this, make sure you go check out his podcast. We did another interview, completely different. So it's like the same interview. Different conversation entirely. Yeah, we did back. This guy, we had such a great time talking with him that we ran back another podcast. So lots of good information on both of them. It's awesome. You can find out more on the Order of Man podcast at orderofman.com and you can find him on Instagram at orderofman. Also, I do wanna talk about our Maps Super Bundle. We have a lot of new listeners. We've been doing a lot of outreach and we have a lot of new people listening and I get a lot of questions, which program should I enroll in? Which Maps program is right for me? We always recommend the best method of action is to get the Super Bundle. Now it's called a Super Bundle because it includes all of our core programs and it's organized in a way to where you follow one program and then you move to the next program and then you move to the next program and so on. It's almost a year of exercise programming. In other words, every month, every week is planned out for you. So you know what your workouts are like, you know how to progress. There's different forms of adaptation you'll be addressing. Everything from maximal strength to agility to endurance, to bodybuilding style, hypertrophy. I mean, pretty much everything is in this year's worth of exercise program. This way we know you're going through all of these progressions. We know what your plan is and so that way we have it all set out ahead of time. I mean, it's step by step and we have videos in there that show you the exercises, blueprints that tell you the workouts. If you follow this from beginning to end and you're consistent, you will see significant changes in your physique, in your strength with fat loss and muscle building and connections to your muscles. New skills acquired. New skills, better recruitment patterns, correction of muscle imbalances. It's the most comprehensive bundle or fitness program. Now you shave right away instead of purchasing them all individually. That's the other thing too is we've took, take them all, combine them and then cut the price way down. So that's the Maps Super Bundle. You can find it at mindpumpmedia.com. So without any further ado, here we are interviewing Ryan, the coast of Order of Man. Ryan is taking good care of his years, all these years. I don't know man, I feel like I'm going deaf actually. Oh really? Yeah. Oh no. How old are you right now? I'm 36. Oh yeah, this is what's happening to all of us. We're all fucked. When I joined the military actually, I joined and I did a, I had to do like the audio test where they, you know, I didn't hear the sound whatever ear it's on and I was at basic training, they did this and the drill sergeant came and he got in my face. He's like, you little effort, you're lying like, cause he, I didn't pass the test initially. Oh really? So I was like, you do it again. You pass it this time. I'm like, dude, I really couldn't hear the beeps. And so I had to take it again and I passed the second time. Oh shit. And he's like, see, I knew you were lying. Cause he didn't think I wanted to be there or something. So he thought I was trying to bail out. Trying to get out of there. Like music when you're a kid or like were you in a band or anything? How do you think? No, I don't, I don't know what it is. I just don't know if it's bad ears or what. Yeah. That is kind of strange. I worry about that though. You know, jammed hard. I always like, yeah. I mean, maybe, but I don't, I don't think it was anything to do with that. I always like to ask my, my fellow podcasters, what, what got you into podcast? Like why did you even get into that medium? Like there's not a lot of us. Yeah. When, when, when did you see it? Why did you do it? What, what, what made you head that direction? So I, I was telling these guys, my background is, is financial planning. And I was looking at a new way of doing things. Cause I've seen all these guys do it one way. And frankly, I wasn't having any success with my financial planning practice. It was miserable. I just, I almost washed out. I'm like, man, I gotta do, I gotta do this a different way. And I had been listening to podcasts. And so I thought, maybe I can do that. I said, and then I thought to myself, there's nobody in the right mind who's going to listen to what I have to say through a podcast and then become a client of mine. Right. For, for whatever reason I did anyways. So I started a podcast, I called it wealth anatomy. And we focused on financial advice, financial information, financial planning for healthcare professionals. So doctors, dentists, chiropractors, veterinarians. And I remember the first guy that called me, it was a pediatric physician out of Pennsylvania, if I remember. And he brought me on as, It's a lot of peace. Yeah. Say that, say that five times fast, right? Whoa. And yeah, so I brought him on as a client. And that's when I knew I'm like, man, this is pretty cool. So I did about 20, 25 episodes there. And I realized that I love the medium of podcasting. I just didn't want to continue to have that conversation. This was at what time? Like how many years ago? This was early 2015. So I started about the same time you guys did. You started, what? January you said? January 2015? Yeah. So I probably started podcasting around the same time. And then I started the new business now that will run a now order man in March of 2015. Now when you went into it, were you thinking like you saw the direction like that podcasting was taking off? Or do you thought this is just a cool place where I could talk and... That's it. Oh wow. I had no idea. Like I didn't have any foresight that oh, this is the direction and this is the path and I'm going to make money. Even when I started this business, I just wanted to have some good conversations about masculinity and talk with some cool people. And that's what I did. And it took off quickly. And I realized pretty quickly, I'm like, oh, I stumbled onto something here. Man, frankly, that's all it was. I stumbled onto something. It'd be nice to say like I planned it all out. But I didn't. Now you say you talk a lot about things like masculinity and what it means to be a man or whatever. That seems to be kind of a hot topic these days. Yeah, for sure. Why do you think that is? Like what's your opinion on that? Because I feel like, you know, had you talked about that. Well, tell them. We did an episode early on. One of our first episodes that really took off was the decline of the modern male. Yeah, yeah. I think that's the reason. I think the timing is right. And I said stumble upon it. I mean, truly stumbled upon it. I stumbled into a topic that was relevant to me. And we can maybe talk about why it's relevant to me later or whatever. I think I entered the market at the right time. But I think there's a lot of guys who are growing up without dads. For example, I don't know if you're guys a situation, but I grew up without a permanent father figure in my life. I know there's a lot of guys dealing with that. I went through a separation near divorce. I know a ton of guys are dealing with that. I know there's a ton of confusion. You get into gender confusion and sexuality and attractiveness and all that kind of stuff. There's a lot of confusion about what it even means to be a man and masculinity. And so I just think it's a good time. People are confused. People want to maybe return some of that roots of masculinity. So let's go there. What led you there? You started to say that. Let's talk now about that. What sent you that direction and why you? Yeah, so I mean, we could rewind till the time I was three. My dad was out of the picture. I had two step dads coming to my life. Both of them were, I'll just say, less than stellar examples of what it meant to be a man. One was an alcoholic who's never abusive, but just not present. I remember doing some stuff. We did like a Pinewood Derby cars together. In fact, I still have those Pinewood Derby cars. He would take us to Sprint car races. And so there was moments where I'm like, oh, this is cool. This is what it's supposed to be. But that didn't work out. And I had another stepfather coming to my life and he was charismatic and successful as a business owner, but he used his talents and his skills and abilities to push people down rather than lift people up. And so he was verbally and emotionally abusive. So I never really had a great role model. I mean, I learned a lot through, we talked a little bit about football and sports. I wrestled, I played baseball, I played football. So fortunately, I had some really good coaches, coaches that I stay in contact with almost 20 years later. Oh, wow. Yeah, so that's kind of cool. Now, did you, so you have a similar childhood upbringing. Did that force you to kind of rise above and become a man early on and young? Or did you think that suppressed it and then later on you kind of did? I think it was more of that because the biggest thing a lot of people ask me, like just in this journey, even over the past two and a half years, what's changed for me? And it's this level of confidence. And I never had that confidence growing up. And I always ask, you know, if I would have had a permanent father figure, somebody in my life who could teach me what it actually means to be a man, I wonder what that would do to my level of confidence. And so that was what I really struggled with. As a kid, I struggled with confidence. I was awkward, I was uncomfortable, I was really introverted. I didn't want to put myself out there or take any risks. And so yeah, I did suppress that quite a bit. And it's only in the last maybe handful of years, five, six years where I feel like, I feel like, I don't know, it's kind of cheesy, but like, I'm figuring out who I am, if you will. You feel like yourself. Yeah, I mean. It's an interesting time too, when we talk about what it means to be a man because relatively recently, it's almost been demonized. Anything that has to do with being a man or male or masculine has been demonized to the point where there's a lot of question. What does it mean? I mean, people now are talking about how being chivalrous, excuse me, is a form of sexism. Opening someone's door or helping someone lift something or whatever is sexist or any sign of male, just maleness is bad. And then on top of that, you have interesting statistics showing testosterone levels declining. This has now been happening for the last, I don't know, four or five decades. And like you said, this explosion of children being raised without fathers. And if you look at all cultures, all especially ancient cultures, there's been this rite of passage that men or boys have gone through to become men and they've been kind of eliminated out of society where we kind of remain adolescents for such a long time. For sure. So it's very interesting. What does that mean then? What does it mean to be a man today? It's almost like you can't say it without offending anybody. I know, people get upset. And that's actually a question. I asked that question out of every single one of my guests and everybody has a different answer. But what I found is that through that question, it usually translates into one of three areas. And in my mind, a man is a protector, he's a provider and he's a presider. So he protects himself. He protects his loved ones, those who cannot protect themselves. That's his responsibility. He provides, not just financially. I know the dynamics for family have changed, right? A lot of guys are staying at home. Women are entering the workforce. So it's not just financial provision, but it's mental and emotional and spiritual provision as well. And then preside leadership. I mean, look around from businesses to national politics, the lack of male leadership, noble leadership is significantly declining in my mind and from my perspective. And so that's what it means to be a man. The other part of this is a man is also accountable and responsible for himself and those he has an obligation for. You know, I look at my boys, I've got three boys and a little girl and my boys are boys. And part of the reason they're boys is because they don't have any accountability really, right? They don't have any responsibility. They got to clean up after the dog or do the dishes or whatever it is we have them do around the house. If they get into trouble at school, ultimately falls upon me and my wife. So they don't have any responsibility or accountability. And at that point where they start to become accountable or responsible for themselves is where that transition of masculinity, manliness. What are those conversations look like? What do those look like when you're, I mean, are you having those now with your boys already? Absolutely, absolutely. You talked about rite of passage, for example. So my oldest son, he's nine years old. When he turned eight, we actually went on a little mini rite of passage. So what we did is we went on a camp out and he planned the entire camp out from the packing list to what we were gonna do to where we were gonna go, to what we needed, to the food, everything. He planned it all out. And what I did is I gave him a knife, a little multi-tool knife. And I said, this is for you. This is a gift for you. This is your birthday gift but you're gonna use this on our camp out. And so we did different tasks. We had to set up a fire and we did some firearm safety and we did some different things. Together, we did some geocaching. I don't know if you guys have ever done that. That's kind of cool. We did some hiking. What is that? Geocaching is basically you have grids or coordinates that you'll plug into your phone and so you'll go from place to place. You go find them on the site. You find them. Yeah, it's like a scavenger. Yeah, a lot like that, except for like the real version of it. And they'll make it really hard. Like certain obstacles you have to get through and get to the top. It's pretty cool. And then what you do is when you find it, you'll usually take something out of there, leave a note that you were there and then put something in the box. Is that an app or something? Yeah, I mean, there's all kinds of different programs and apps that are available based on where you are. So we did some of that. And then so he went through this series and what I did is I talked to him about what I just told you guys, protect, provide, preside. And what I did is I actually bought some lion figurines. So I bought a little lion cub and then a male lion. And I pulled out the lion cub and I said, this is you right now. And so I showed him and I said, this is where you are in life. This is what you're doing. And this is what you're striving to become. And I showed him the lion. And I said, in order for you, the cub to be here, you need to understand, protect, provide, preside. So we went through this whole thing at the fire, did a fireside with him. And then at the end, since he did all of that, he earned his first 22 rifle. So I got him a little 22 rifle that he shot and he loves and the best part about it for me was a couple of days later, he came up to me and he said, dad, can I take these figurines to school? I'm like, yeah, you want to do show and tell them? He's like, yeah, I want to talk to him about the three P's of masculinity. And I'm like, yeah, man, that's sunk in. So this isn't a one time thing for us though. I've got him planned every two years. We're just going to start doing these things. So my next son, he's six years old in two years. We'll do something very similar. And so every two years we'll continue to do this. And yeah, I just think it's great that you're doing that. Cause it is very interesting considering the traditional roles that men have played in society. And some people argue the reason why we evolved men in the first place, those reasons don't necessarily exist anymore, like life is pretty safe. You don't need a guy to protect you from people killing you or stealing from you. Wars are, they're waged now with much more technology. So that's a little different, but that's still male dominated. Earning potential and stuff like that, women get jobs. So it's almost like men feel kind of lost. Like, what do I do? You know, who am I, what does it mean? And I think, you know, those roles, you're right. I think those looked like they have gone away. I don't think they've gone away as much as they've changed because if you look at natural disasters or you look at active shooter type situations, the need for a protector, a man who is capable, who has situational awareness, who has the training and the skills and the tools available to be able to protect in a natural disaster or some catastrophic crime that they might experience is important. And that's why I talk about, in the other side, you talk about provision. You're right. Women are entering the workforce. So it's not just that financial provision. And this is where we start talking about more of a, I think maybe more of a deeper man, if you will. Brett McKay with Art of Manliness. So you guys familiar with his work? One of the things he talks about is he says, there's a distinction between masculinity and manliness. So masculinity are the raw virtues that we generally would think of when it comes to being a man. So aggression, dominance, competitiveness, violence, all these things. Those aren't necessarily bad, but when they go unchecked, they create problems. It's the extreme form, which by the way, the extreme form of the feminist side or women's side can also have some pretty bad effects. Absolutely. And anything, take health. I mean, something that I don't think anybody would argue is a bad thing for you, going to the gym, eating right, working out. We talk about this all the time. It can be taken overboard, right? It can be taken to the extreme. More often than not. So I shared on our show a lot, the whole process of going through competing with immense physique. You would think that, because you're looking at some of the fittest people in the world when you look at the IFBB, as far as all the professional level, bikini, body, those that. But actually when you actually really dive in, they are some of the most unhealthy people. And not just from a physical and what they're doing with their habits, their behaviors, their relationship with themselves. Like there's a lot of bad stuff going on within it and you don't realize it. So, and a lot of it's rooted through insecurities that's driven them, that's given them that much drive to compete at that level. What's interesting is that some people will say that women actually drive how many evolve in two different ways. Testosterone levels, although they can be genetic, there's definitely a genetic component. There are things that can happen that can affect your testosterone levels almost instantly, besides things that you do to your physical body. For example, if you win a game against someone, you'll see a spike in testosterone. If you're in a room with other alpha males, there's another female present, you'll see testosterone tend to spike. And they've shown in many studies that women will prefer men with more masculine features or these visible signs of testosterone around times of natural disaster or when they feel like things. And then without knowing, this are the things that they tend to desire more. Same thing with birth control. Here's an interesting one. When women are on birth control, they desire men with less signs of masculinity versus when they're off. And then, especially when they're ovulating, the more attracted to these signs of testosterone. And now if we consider birth control has been on the market for how many decades, we may be breeding out these masculine men and creating lower and lower testosterone. It may be one of the factors that's- Yeah, you bring up a really good point. I mean, think about this hurricane that they just dealt with in Houston, for example. Did you see anybody complaining about masculinity? At that point? Because there was hundreds, if not thousands of men who were going down, serving, volunteering, giving time, energy, money, resources, doing what I believe men should do. Nobody complains about it then. It's when things are going smooth that it's like, oh man, I don't know. Yeah, exactly. I had a guy who, I was at a conference. I don't remember what conference it was. And he said, man, how do I develop testosterone? I'm like, you do manly things. Like you go work out or you go shoot and you eat meat and you compete and you have sex. Like you do manly things. That's what boosts testosterone. And I think a lot of that is being stripped away from society. That's funny. It's actually very simplistic to think of it that way. But it's so true. All those things will lead to that. We talk to that indirectly on the show all the time. Yeah, it's interesting where things tend to are going. And I know we're constantly told about, we're constantly told how bad the patriarchy is and how bad men have done things. And there's definitely been some bad sides, but there's some trends now that are emerging that we're gonna see more in the coming decades that are gonna show the opposite. For example, women graduate college at much higher rates now than men do. Boys do worse in school. Schools are designed to do better for girls to do better. Absolutely. There's definitely a, and of course the individual variance is pretty big. So I wanna be clear, like you can have general masculine traits, general feminine traits, but within women and within men, there are these variances where you'll have some men that are far more feminine than some women and vice versa. But generally speaking, boys learn differently than girls do and schools have been designed around girls to the point where boys are medicated at much, much higher levels or higher rates to fit into this mold. So like ADD, ADHD, so much higher rates among boys. And it wasn't that long ago, they were just called hyperactive or rambunctious. I can't go outside and fucking throw rocks and kick cans and do shit, right? I mean, I look at my boys. I get in trouble for making a stick gun or doing something, right? I remember when I was little, I remember climbing, I couldn't have been more than seven, eight years old climbing up on my roof. And I put a napkin somehow on a GI Joe and I stood up there with my buddy and we were throwing GI Joe's with napkins off the roof. Yeah, and my mom would kick me outside and she would say, don't come in until night. And she would literally lock the door and I came in when she called me for dinner. We used to, that's what we were doing. We had a neighborhood where we lived in this big like kind of area where it was like a, all your, what do you call it, houses that are all the same, right? Yeah, like a townhouse. Townhouse, yeah, like everyone's all the same homes and there's a local park. And it was literally like a good half mile from our house, just enough to where when my dad wanted us to come back in the house, I could hear his whistle from over there. And that was the call that you had to come back. But we would literally be set, we'd set off and you say all the way until sun come down and we would all as kids push those limits, right? You know, we know we're supposed to be home before it's dark, but I can still see a little bit of light. You can hear dad whistle. I didn't hear you dad. Yeah, yeah. We still walk home from school, man. And like there was like rattlesnakes and there's all kinds of shit on the way home. Like I'm not even joking. But you know what's really interesting is I think a lot of that has been conditioned out of boys because I look at my boys and I think naturally the natural inclination is to go outside, pick up rocks, burn ants with a magnifying glass and figure stuff out, roll around in the dirt. That's what boys naturally do. But I think we conditioned them. You talk about that Dr. Leonard Sacks. Have you heard of him? He's got some great material and information on this. He's written two books, more than two, but the two that really are relevant to this discussion are Why Gender Matters and Boys Adrift. And both of them are really good books and very well researched and get into why school systems are set up this way and it's stacked against young men. And of course that's gonna create problems down the road when these young men get to 18, 19, 20 years old and now we ask them to go get a job and now we ask them to lead and now we ask them to go to battle and now we ask them to do all these things that men should be doing and yet they haven't been trained to be able to do these things. No, and you know one of the things that I can see now that's gonna be I think a detriment to, or is a detriment to everybody but in particular to boys is the accessibility of pornography. We've talked about this several times in our podcast but if you look at rates of things like erectile dysfunction and men going to the doctor to get prescriptions for those types of things, the fastest growing segment of the population that requires that or wants that is men in their 20s. It's exploding. This was non-existent not that long ago and it's directly the result of this ease of accessibility to pornography which also of course changes now how men go out and court women and you know wanna do all that stuff. And how anonymous it can be too, right? Like you can hide behind your computer screen and nobody's gonna catch you and there's no accountability for it. How do you manage that as a dad right now? I always like talking to, because I always get these guys to talk about their parenting because I think it's such a fascinating time right now as a parent or challenging time I should say for a parent with all these tools of iPads and all the gaming systems and the ability to stream everything to their phone like do you set rules with your boys on how long they can be on the phone or do things like that? Like how does that work? Yeah, I mean rules are important and you have those we've got a computer but it's in the family room, you know so we've got things like that set up but the other side of it that I don't think a lot of people are talking about is like talk with your kids. Like sex isn't bad. You know boobs aren't bad. Like we're attracted to these things. Why are we attracted to these things? Because biologically that's kind of how we work. And so I have conversations with my boys maybe not as explicit as I could get with you guys but we have conversations. My oldest son, nine years old, I told you guys that we've already had kind of the birds and the bees talk, right? Part one, my six year old, my wife and I were talking and she's like, I think you need to have the conversation with Eli a little bit about the birds and bees. I'm like, oh man, and it's never fun, right? Which is why most people don't do it until it's too late and they let their boys learn from their buddies or from a magazine or whatever or a website. Which is how we all learn. Right, right. And I think you just, man, imagine if we learned in a more healthy environment. Like it's okay that you're attracted to women. It's okay that when you're around them that, you know like they smell good, they smell intoxicating or that they have a nice figure that you're attracted to. That's okay. Things are happening. You're feeling it, right? It's okay. So I think coupled with some, of course, some systems and, you know, in place at your household, I think that's fine with me. Now you have four, you have two boys, two girls. Three boys, one girl. Oh, three boys, one girl. Yeah. She's the youngest? No, she's the third. Okay. Yeah, so I've got, so she's four and then my youngest is almost two. Now are you seeing what a difference it's going to be to raise her in comparison yet or is it, she's still pretty young? Yeah, I mean, it's crazy. I mean, it's with kids, they all have their own personality and there's not a thing you can do about it. My oldest is timid and he's passive and he's really sensitive. He's in tune with other people. He knows when people are off, he loves animals and my second, what was funny? My oldest got in a fight at school or a little pushing match or something and he was kind of heartbroken. He was sitting on the steps and he's a big kid and my second son, he's six, he comes up to him. Little guy, little scrawny, kind of a runt but just a fireball of like energy. He's like, you want me to punch him in the face for you? And I'm like, man, I raise these boys the same. We do the same activities. We have the same conversations and yet every single one of my children even down to the two-year-old who can't really even say much, I know he's got a new personality, a different personality, so it's crazy. Yeah, I think the suppression of all that just leads to this hyper-masculinity, which is false, you know what I mean? The whole expression of aggression and anger and it comes out and it's because we suppress the natural things and we don't maintain the balance. So I think that's a bad thing. I just did an interview, it was yesterday, an interview with Louis Howes and he's got a new book coming out called The Mask of Masculinity. And as I read this book, it challenged me, man. It challenged me, like I caught myself saying, this isn't true, this isn't right, no, Louis doesn't know what he's talking about. I'm like, well, I'm having him on the show so I gotta continue to read the book and research. And as I read it, I'm like, man, maybe this is my own mask coming out. And so he talks about nine different masks. Yeah, I mean, he talks about these nine different masks from the material mask to the athletic mask to the sexual mask and nine different masks that we as men tend to put on to either overcompensate or hide the way that we truly feel and think about things. That makes perfect sense. Oh, for sure. Yeah, it makes perfect sense that you would do that. I think that's true for anybody, though, not just man and woman. Exactly, yeah. But I think you're gonna see more and more of that as society continues to make being a guy or being a man such a bad thing to the point where even saying the words be a man is now frowned upon. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So was this like your main, was this your motivation to really address these types of things or was it other, you know? You know, the reason I started it and it's gone down a rabbit hole and it's been a good one for sure is that I went through a separation with my wife and we got an argument one evening. I can't remember what the argument was about, but I remember saying to her, I don't even want to be married anymore. And she agreed with me and the next morning she took, she left with my six month old son. Oh, shit. Dude, it was brutal. How long, how many years ago? This was eight years ago. So yeah, because my oldest is nine now. So eight, eight and a half years ago. And darkest time in my life, man. Darkest time in my life. But I came to a realization that the marriage might be over. This was like two and a half, three months into our separation. And for the first time I recognized, you know, maybe I had more to do with this than I initially thought. You know, I'd pawn it all like, how could you do this? Why would you be in a bitch? Why would you do all this stuff? Why, how could you take my kid away from me? Those are the things I told myself. And I came to that realization that, now maybe I've got something to do with this. And I realized at that point that our marriage might be over for the first time, which I didn't want that to be the case, but it was the most liberating moment, I think potentially of my life. And the reason I say that is because for the first time in my life, because I owned it, I recognized it, I could take the power back that I had given away to her, that I had given away to society, that I had given away to the economy and all the other factors that I was blaming for my circumstances. And so at that point, I realized it and made the decision, I'm just gonna go to work on myself and let the chips fall where they may. And so I went on this journey and long story short, we ended up salvaging our marriage and you know, I can do everything that I wanna do on my own without her. She can do everything that she wants and to do in her life without me. And that fact makes us stronger together. You gotta love that. For sure. When Katrina and I have been together for six and a half years, I remember one of the first things she ever said to me is that I want you, I don't need you. Yes. And I used to love that though. I love having a woman that truly feels that way. It's an amazing feeling to feel that she doesn't rely on me or need me. Together, we are better. And without each other, we'd be fine. But together, we're that much better. And I mean, how sick, like how fast do you get sick of that? You know, that's kind of fun. You got this girl that likes you and it needs you around. It feels good for a little while and it's like, oh, this is boring. That's all ego driven. You just wanna feed that ego or those insecurities. Well, taking on that responsibility and understanding that you play a role in so much of what you experience in your life and the shit that goes wrong, it sucks because you have to accept it, which means, oh shit, I played a big role in that, but it's fucking awesome. It is. Because now you're empowered. Right. And I talk about this with clients all the time when it comes to fitness. It's like, you got here because, not because you're genetics, not because of circumstances that were out of your control. You got here because of the choices that you made, but this is a good thing because now you know that you can change this yourself, but it's so hard for people to accept responsibility because it's so easy. It feels so good in the short term to be a victim. And it really does. It really does feel good for a short period of time to be like, it's not my fault. I'm a victim right now. Shit sucks because of somebody else. You know, it's so much easier. But when you say to yourself, okay, I just got divorced about, God's been about two years now, maybe a year and a half. And, you know, same thing going, coming down, I was married for 15 years. And a lot of, I thought most of it was her, you know? Definitely most of it was her, but I was forced to look at myself and realize the roles that I played in it. And you're right. It's, at first it sucks, but then it's amazing. Right. Because now I can see, okay, what can I change and how can it become a better human being? If you want to grow, you have to take responsibility. I tell people it's always you, you know? It's always you. It's never the other. Even when it's the other person, I still allowed myself to get into that circumstance, right? I allowed myself to get in that situation. So what is it that I did to allow that to happen to myself? No matter how bad it seems like it's got to be the other person, I think when you learn to take that kind of ownership, then true growth happens every time. Other words, otherwise you're always blaming others or thinking, oh yeah, it won't happen that way or I won't put myself in that situation. No, what did I do in this situation that made, that get this outcome, you know? Right. I just did a podcast with a pursuit podcast in an interview and he was out, he was a big fan of the show. He listens a lot and he says, you know, you talk a lot about that, you know, did you have, do you have like some tips or tools to give to people to get there? He says, because I think very, I think everybody wants to be at that level but don't know how to do that. And I said, well, I remember starting off like this and I remember at the end of the day, I would look back at like everything that happened in that day and the things that got me excited, the things that got me frustrated, all the emotional changes, like all of us right now in this room, we have kind of like an even kill personnel. It's whatever our personnel, whether you're a high energy person or even kill, whatever, that's like, that's your homeostasis, right? Your baseline. Your baseline, right? And then things happen to us throughout the day, good and bad that caused this change. And when I learned how to, at the end of the day to go back and reflect on all those things and then know that any time that I was upset, angry, frustrated to dive deeper into that and unpack it. And then it always led to an insecurity of my own. If I truly could have good perspective, pull myself out of it and go, okay, that made me angry. Well, why did it make me angry or it got me frustrated? Why did it make me frustrated? And then when I started looking deep, well, not because that person said that or did that, it's because I get offended by that. Why do I get frustrated? I get a nerve on that. Why does that even bother me? And when you learn to look at every situation like that and I think I started by doing it as a thing before I went to bed and then over years, I've trained myself to do that real time while you're talking and catching yourself in those moments of like, ooh, that. What is that? What is that feeling? Yeah, what is that? I think there's, so there's two things. The one that I've used that's been helpful for me is margin. Like if you look at most people in their life, they wake up with just enough time to maybe grab a quick bite, get a shower, head straight into the office. They have an hour, maybe even two hour commute, right? They're wasting time listening to music on the commute. They get into work. They've got a stack of paperwork up to their eyeballs. They get through that. They can't take a break because they gotta get through that. They punch out the clock, they get home. They say hi, they kiss the wife. They've got some chores or whatever they do. They go to bed and they do the same thing over and over again. It's like, yeah, I mean, you can't get to that level if you don't create any space and margin in your life. So find some time, find a couple minutes to reflect so that you can think to yourself, man, I'm frustrated right now. Like you said, why am I frustrated? But that requires margin. No, it's true. And then the second side of that is an after-action review, which you alluded to as well. This is like a military term. A lot of first responders understand this, but this is something that I've learned to do after every day, every engagement, after every encounter, conversation, project. It's five simple questions that I've asked myself. So number one, what did I accomplish? What did I get done today that I set out to do? Number two, what did I not get done? Number three, what did I do really well? Like where did I thrive? What characteristics and skills and abilities and things that I do that went really well? Number four, where did I fall behind? Like where did I struggle? What things that I did not get accomplished in the way I would have liked to have gotten and then accomplished? And then step number five, what will I do better tomorrow? Like imagine if you just asked yourself those five questions after this podcast even. Right. What did I get done? What didn't I get done? Next podcast I do, what I'm gonna do better. Like that's the way that you improve. I think the important part of that too is to not identify with what you didn't do and what you did do. And what I mean by that is if you do that at the end of the day and you judge it and you say, oh, shit, I didn't do that. I'm a loser or- Yeah, great point. Oh, I did that. I'm a champion. I'm the best. When you start to do that, then you start to create bad behaviors. No, you treat it like- And you identify with these things. Once you identify with things, that's where the ego steps in and that can become a problem. It's no different than when I'm coaching someone through nutrition and I'm telling them the track and I'm working them towards intuitive eating and I tell them, listen, don't judge some of the decisions you made. You can be objective about them and look at them, but when you start to judge yourself, you create a layer on top of what you've done. So you've eaten something bad. That wasn't good for you, it didn't make you feel good. But now you feel guilty on top of it. Now you're angry that you're guilty and you're creating all these different layers. So it's important at the end of the day to make those, to understand those things, but also don't identify with them. Those aren't the things, that's not who you are. You're not your thoughts, you're not the things that you do. You're the thing that is seeing this all, the observer. And when you can do that, then you can move forward with any problem. I learned, this was a big learning lesson for me, just learning how to not be angry at people. When someone did something wrong to me, I had this problem where I would just hold on to it. I never forgot, like I never forgot what you would do to me and you're never gonna do that again or whatever. And I realized that forgiving someone wasn't about forgiving them, it was about me not feeling it anymore. Like why am I, why am I owning this? You're giving your power away. Yeah, but why am I, obviously it's because my ego likes this, it likes to feel angry and shitty. It's as hard as that is to believe it's true, otherwise we wouldn't do it. So just let it go and all of a sudden you're free. And living your life this way is incredible, man, the power that it gives you, it's not a feeling of power as much as it's a feeling of peace. Yeah, for sure. I remember, there's one exercise that somebody told me and they said, I can't remember who it was, but they said, be careful of the I ams, the co-I am. Like if you do something, I am dumb, right? Now you're not dumb, you may have done something dumb, but that doesn't mean you're dumb. Now you correct the behavior and I love the word that you use, objective. It's just an objective look at what's going on so that you can make the best decision moving forward. Well, I am as you identifying with it, right? You say I am, now you identify with it. You own it, yeah. Yeah, you don't want to say that shit. Well, in our field of fitness, people really say all the time, I am fat. Yep. You are not your fat, your body has fat. Has fat, yes. You are something else completely, you are not your fat. And when you can separate the two, then you can move forward and solve some of these problems that plague us. Cause if you really think about it, if you really break it down to the issues that we tend to suffer throughout life and even if you go big and we get all esoteric and we look at humanity as a whole, a lot of our problems are really simple. They're not, I'm not saying they're easy, but they're kind of simple, right? You talk about, you know, the issue of, you know, progressing society forward so we can feed people or whatever. Like if everybody just worked together, that would happen. Sounds pretty simple, right? It's not though, cause people have their agendas and their egos and whatever. And their baggage. And their baggage. You talk about doing better at work. I want to succeed at work. Well, you know the steps, you know what to do, but you make it so fucking complicated on yourself. It's actually quite simple or I want to lose weight. Here's the formula. Why can't I lose weight? Why do you think we are that way as a whole? Why do you think for the most part that, cause that's the majority? I think, so I think I have an answer to that. I think that we have been lying to ourselves for so long and coming up with the excuses that we talk about that we actually believe they're true. Like we've been conditioned since we're little, right? Like, and I'm sure I do this to my kids in some capacity. I can't think of a way I do it right off hand, but I'm sure that I've told my kids something that's just going to be programmed into their mind and now they're going to start believing that lie or that excuse and they're going to tell themselves that for 10 years, for 20 years, for 30 years and then somebody comes along and says, no, no, no, that's not right. No, what do you mean? Like it wrecks their universe or they just can't overcome it because that reality is ingrained and indoctrinated them. It is part of the blessing of language. It is part of the blessing. It's actually the curse part of being human, of being able to think in language, of being able to write and read and we end up because of that. We think we become our thoughts is what ends up happening. We're never quiet. That voice in your head is not you. That's a voice that you're observing and listening to and this is part of meditation. This is part of mindfulness. In fact, most major religions, most major spiritual practices, we'll talk about this in one way or another, but I really think it's our, I mean, even if you look into Christianity and talk about how Adam bites the apple, it's almost like the discovery of the ego. Like, oh, I know things now. Right, consciousness almost. That's exactly what it is. And now you've got the curse of that. Now you've got the curse of living in places that don't exist like the future, like the past, neither of which actually exists. There's only now. I think we're always just trying to define who we are consciously or subconsciously. And so, rather than just being. Rather than just experiencing. So this is like half of what I'm always trying to, I catch myself doing this all the time. I'm trying to define myself. Like, is this me? Is this me? I'm getting, you know, like a confirmation with that, with other people and I'm kind of bringing that in. Right. To help me sort of. The validation. Figure this out, the validation. And I'm going on in these experiences. Is this me? You know, am I tough? Am I funny? And am I cool? And you know, am I this not? It's really tough to be able to kind of associate yourself from that mentality. You're a very self-aware guy. What do you see? What insecurities do you see still surfacing from like that are rooted all the way back? Like. For me personally. Yeah, personally. Yeah, I mean, I, well, you guys can see I have this big beard, right? And so I was, I was talking to my wife about this. It's a luxurious. I appreciate that. I appreciate that. It's kind of like Aslan. Thank you. Yes, thank you. Yeah, so my wife and I were talking about this and we were talking about my childhood and, and I don't know how we got into it, but she's like, yeah, sometimes I think you overcompensate. You know what I mean? Like the masculinity stuff. Cause I didn't have that growing up. So I'm now, now I got my boots on and I got my beard and I drive my truck and I run order of man. I have tons of flannels bro. Yeah. And I've got them too, dude. I've got them packed too. And so I think there is even, even to my degree, I think, yeah, I think I do overcompensate sometimes for that. Like trying to like, what am I doing? Like making up lost time or like, what is it that I'm doing? So there's that. And then as I was reading that book, I was telling you about the mask of masculinity. I kind of feel like I've fallen to the Stoic mask. And the Stoic mask is the mask that says, you have to keep your calm. You have to keep composure. You have to keep like a, like your head about you. Even when you're feeling something or you're disappointed or you're sad or you're frustrated, I can't, I can't show people that stuff. Like I'm the man, not a man. Like I'm the man cards. Right. And so I keep that stuff close to me. Even with my wife. I mean, she'll tell you like the connections that I have with other people. I don't have a lot of deep connections with people. And I wonder if it's just because like I'm, like I gotta keep it right here. It doesn't feel, maybe it doesn't feel familiar or comfortable to you. Do you have issues hugging and kissing your sons? No, that's never been an issue. I mean, I love you giving them hugs. Last night as, as I was getting done with football practice with my son, I just wanted to know, I appreciate him playing hard. And so we were walking down the driveway and I grabbed him and I just put my arm around him. I wouldn't guess that. I wouldn't guess that from his, from him seeing it. I wouldn't, I wouldn't guess that, but it tends to be that that sometimes can happen, especially if you're raised without a father figure. Oh yeah. But I think that's what you also, that normally will make you try. You're going to be that much better. It could, yeah. It could go different ways, right? Like it could be like, hey, I'm not, I don't want anything to do with that. Or again, overcompensating it or, you know, whatever. But I feel like, I feel like we, we have an affection there that's appropriate between me and my boys and my wife and daughter. I would think, I would think he's more like you, where you're both probably really good ass dads, but you, you probably overcome it and you worry and stress about that because of that reason for you. It could be, yeah. But yours is for different because you have your, you had a, you have a different relationship with your dad growing up. Yeah, no, I had a great relationship. But you, I think you are way hard on yourself for what kind of father that you are. Absolutely. My, so I, I grew up with the insecurity of not being strong enough, big enough, you know, tough enough or whatever. I grew up in a, you know, kind of an old school, Sicilian family and the, there's, it's very masculine and very feminine at the same time. The bomb runs the household, but the dad is the, you know, he's the dude that, you know, calls the shots and, and, and there's very, you know, specific roles. And so I didn't feel, you know, I was a skinny kid and I lifted weights to get bigger and did a lot of stuff. And I really came to terms with that years ago to the point now where I'm extremely confident with those displays of masculinity. And it doesn't bother me at all anymore. Those are things I've actually, but now I'm dealing with new insecurities. And here's what's interesting about that is you're going to, if you are a person that's growth oriented and self aware and you work towards those things, what you will end up, what's going to happen is you're going to end up dealing with one and then that's going to be solved. And then another one tends to pop up. Yeah, definitely. And it's just the way life works. And more recently, just through my divorce, it was just am I being a good father? I'm guilty for with my children with this. Am I, you know, is this, how is this going to affect them, you know, growing up? And, you know, anytime something happens with my kids, if they wake up in the middle of the night now, I'm thinking, oh, it's because of the divorce, even though it may be just a bad dream. So, but I'm, you know, I'm dealing with it and I'm very conscious of it and I'm getting a lot better with it. But the, it's interesting how insidious insecurities and these things can be to the point where they become a part of who you are so deeply that you literally cannot identify them at all unless you start to maybe listen to the close, the people that are closest around you, which is very difficult. Right. It's very difficult to hear someone tell you, hey man, you're overcompensating or whatever. For sure. Like, what are you talking about? I feel great. I'm a cool guy. What are you talking about? Or, you know, even to some case, I think a lot of people can't even function. Like, I know for me, we're in Tahoe this weekend, right? And I know for me, one of the things I hate just more than about anything is flying. Like, I really do not fly, like flying. But I flew out here and I started thinking about this a couple of years ago as I knew, as I hated flying, what do I hate so bad? Well, I hate that I could potentially die in a plane crash. That's the bottom line. So I'm like, well, why? Like, what's so bad about that? And nobody wants to die, right? But the conclusion I came to is that my kids will grow up without a dad. Yeah. That's why I'm afraid of planes. Right, that's the truth. Because I'm afraid that my kids will grow up without a dad. And so if I don't have a healthy level of understanding what that is and still being able to like function, like it'd be really easy for me to never fly anywhere, never experience life all because of an insecurity. Do you ever go through, and this was a trick that I learned, I don't know if I call it a trick, but it's a technique that I learned a long time ago where when I have fears, I will literally sit down and think about the worst case scenario, place myself in the worst case scenario that I'm so afraid of, and I get myself okay with it. Yeah, it's awesome. I get myself being okay with it, and then I no longer fear. You'll express your therapy. Yeah, so like if my, exactly so like if my biggest fear is, oh crap, I'm gonna get sick or I'm gonna become paralyzed from this accident or whatever, I put myself in that scenario, worst case scenario, now what do I do with that? I get okay with it, I accept it, and then you end up losing that fear. It's a very powerful technique. It's very difficult to do though, because you have to literally sit there and place yourself in that big time, but it's a super, super effective one to the point where the man who fears nothing is the man that is okay with anything happening. You know what I'm saying? It doesn't mean you like it necessarily, but if you're like, well, if shit goes down, what's that gonna be like, and can I be okay with it? Let me make myself okay with it, and you're no longer scared. You're not scared of natural disasters, you're not scared of anything. It's pretty awesome. That's interesting. That's what I'm at. But no, but I like that perspective, yeah, definitely. I think that's the same formula for success in business. Oh, I've done it with business so many times. I think it's the same thing with business, but I think most entrepreneurs are afraid to take that step in fear of losing or not be able to pay this or do that, and you can't have that mindset. You gotta have the mindset, so what? You know what, none of the end of the world, if this fails. I'm gonna lose X amount, yeah, I always look at that going into any of these ventures that we're doing, it's just like, well, what's the worst that can happen? Right. And then we just go through that, and how we're gonna bounce back, and so you already have that in line, so in place. After that, what's left? Well, if you treat it as no matter what, no matter what you win, if you get growth out of it, right? Oh yeah, if you learn. And let's be honest, most of the time when we lose or we hurt or we fail, the most growth happens. That's the only time growth doesn't happen when things are great. I believe it can. Because otherwise you stay this set. It doesn't happen as often. Very, very gradual pace, maybe. And we tend to not look at it the same way when we are successful, but yeah, absolutely. So if you learn to embrace that, it's, I think you have to, you start seeking that, right? You almost seek the fear, you seek the failure. Because you know it's another opportunity. Yes, either I'm either way. Right, I'm either gonna accomplish this and win, or I'm gonna come out even better than what I was when I went in, so. Well, I think the most successful people do that when they are kicking ass, is they put themselves in uncomfortable situations in order to keep themselves growing. Because otherwise you get comfortable and then nothing happens. The perspective I've always take, not always, but that I like to take is, you just gotta give yourself permission to experiment. Like if you're going at it, like I have to win, I have to make this a success, I have to, I can't fail, you're not gonna do it. Versus, hey, I need to experiment. Like that's how I define success, experimentation. So podcasting, that was an experiment, right? Participating in a Spartan event, like we're here this weekend, that's an experiment. Doing a new business venture, that's an experiment. And so you're not guaranteed success with an experiment. If you approach it like that way, I think you give yourself more opportunities. Do you, are you purpose driven? Do you feel like, because you've made some pivots, do you feel like you're just following what you're supposed to do? I do now, I do now. I think there's a lot of people that feel like they're entitled to know their purpose. Like I should just know. No, you gotta earn that, right? And so a lot of people say, how do you find your purpose? It's not like something that's like out there and you trip over it. That's what it is. It's like you just do stuff. And then you're like, oh, I like that and I don't like that. And so you move left. And I like, it's like, you remember those books when you were little, choose your own adventure? Oh, I love those books. That's what it's like. It's like you read and then you come to this fork in the road and you're like, I think I'll go this way with the information I have. And you take that course. And I think- Oh shit, wrong way, go back. Right, right. You know, and I think what people do is they get so hung up and like, oh, it's gotta be right. And I gotta find my purpose. And so they can't make a decision at all. And they sit the sidelines and then they ask guys like us, how do you find your purpose? It's like, dude, you knew, you just didn't do it. You know, I think one of the best gauges to find your purpose is really to do what fulfills you in the truest sense. The difficulty with that is I don't think people know what that feels like or what does that mean to be fulfilled? Does it mean I make a lot of money? Not necessarily. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. Does it mean, you know, I'm having a lot of fun? Not necessarily. It's, you know, feeling fulfilled when you understand what that feels like for you. Every, when you move towards that, you, in my personal belief is you do what your purpose is. And when you're doing your purpose, when you're on that path, you're your best version of yourself. And many times, many times it is something you recognize in hindsight. There's been a few times where while it's happening, like, this is my purpose. But many times it's like looking back and be like, oh shit, that was totally what I was supposed to do. You know what I mean? I mean, I feel like in the work that I do now I, quite honestly, I feel called to do this. Like I almost in a way feel like, and I've always felt this from the time I was little, I know a lot of people feel this way is that like I was, I'm destined, right? Like I'm destined for something more. And I was like this, this hamster wheel of like spinning and spinning and spinning. And I couldn't figure it out. And I just had this like plaguing thought on the back of my mind. Like I know I'm meant for something greater. I feel like I'm getting to that point now. But honestly, what that took is me starting a podcast for my financial planning practice. Like me hearing a podcast, I'm like, oh, that sounds kind of cool. I should try that. And now two and a half years later, which is not a long time, I feel like, man, this is my calling. It might change next year. Now, was that the first time you ever felt that feeling where you did something you're like, this is what I'm supposed to do or had you felt that before? I don't think I've ever felt the way I feel right now. That's awesome. Yeah, I really don't. What an exciting time. It is, man. It's exciting and I feel fired up and I get messages and people, hey, I love what you're doing and I'm inspired by what you're doing and that sense of satisfaction and fulfillment and feeling in me is like, you got a whole community and a tribe now kind of buying insurance. I was very, very, very fortunate to feel that at a very young age. I was 18 years old, the first time I ever felt like I was doing something that I was supposed to do. And I remember it. I remember my first day with my first day working in a gym as a personal trainer. Really? And I wanted to work in the gym. I love the gym. I loved working with people. I love people. But I remember my very first day doing these orientations with people and that first day I got more clients and did more in revenue that one day than the top trainer had done the previous for that whole month. And but it was almost, and I explained it to people like this. It's like it felt effortless and that it was easy. It was like, I just felt like this is what I'm supposed to do. I'm good at this. And it was just the first time I'd ever felt that feeling. And it was so addicting that I lived there and breathed it. And I didn't get that feeling again until I managed my first team. And then I felt like this is what I'm supposed to do. And then it was years. It was years where I owned my own wellness facility and I liked it. I loved it. It was a great time. But I didn't get that feeling that I had for such a long time. It's a point where I almost thought I lost my mojo or something. I believe the signs are there. I believe the signs are there for everybody. And I think people just don't know how to see them. I think that it's like finding your purpose is like finding the right woman. And I think the people that always struggle with finding a perfect relationship or a partner, they want it so bad. That's what they're focused on. When really what you should focus on is being true to who you are. And I think the same thing goes for finding your purpose. When you're true to who you are and you follow your path like that, the signs are there. But when you're looking so hard and you're trying to find it so hard, it's such a hard thing to do. Dude, I'll tell you what. When I had my, I had a wellness facility I owned for about 14 years. And I liked it and everything and it was good. But it wasn't, I didn't feel like I had that first time where I felt like I was supposed to be doing, you know, I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. And I had a client, Doug was actually my client. We're training together and we ended up creating this program together. And he tells me, we're not gonna make this a book. We're actually gonna sell it online and we're gonna do videos. So I'm gonna need you to, so what you're gonna do is you're gonna, you're gonna sell on camera and talk to people about the programs on camera. And I'm like, I've never fucking done that before. Like I've never been on camera and talked about these things. I don't know if I can do that. Like that's, that sounds kind of intimidating, but let's go ahead and give it a shot. And he turned the camera on, put it on me. I started talking and then that was the third time. It's awesome. That I felt like this is what I'm supposed to do. And it's just to turn into this podcast. It's when you're in that space where you understand the why behind what you do and your purpose, everything else tends to fall into place. And every time I veer off that track for my own individual self is when I find myself stressed or when I find things, I feel like I'm forcing things. You know, I enjoy business. I enjoy entrepreneurship, but money has never been my purpose, earning money. And I know I say that some people may roll their eyes and I think it comes, I think it comes as a side effect for me at least, but it's never really been that important to me. And every time I focus on money, I feel like I lose who I really am. When I take my eye off that and I focus on my passion, which is disseminating information, meeting people, influencing people, the money tends to come. And I got to keep reminding myself, 38 years old, I still fucking forget that lesson. And it's almost like I have to relearn it every few months where I'm like, wait a minute, that's not the shit that drives me. It's not about the numbers so much. I like looking at them. I like to see what's happening with the business, but what drives me is like, what's my passion? And when I get in that- That's your finding your wine, man. That's some Simon Sinek. Oh, I fucking explode, man. And everything else when you do that, I think too, what I've experienced is that things just tend to become insignificant. Like other stuff. I'll give you an example. I had a shirt design that I did about two months ago. And in hindsight, it looks just like those other company shirts. And I had them out. They reached out to me, they were pissed. And I'm looking at them like, yeah, I get that, right? So I pull these shirts. I'm like, I'm not gonna sell these shirts. So I pull these shirts and I'm out several grand on the design and the print and everything else. And I'm like, that sucks. But at the same time, like learning experience, that was cool. That sucked, but at the same time, learning experience insignificant, let's drive on and let's move forward because you are on your purpose, right? And I can just get back on track really quick and not get derailed by these things that I think have a tendency to completely wreck people's lives and they just really aren't that significant. They just dwell on it. I know, yeah. I had a client once who, and one of the things I loved so much about working in the fitness industry is I got mentored by so many people. Most of them didn't know that they were mentoring me. Most of them were just very successful clients or whatever. But I would ask them questions, have conversations. Luckily, people tend to like to talk about themselves and don't have a problem sharing information. And they would just become my mentors for different things. You know, I'd have this guy over here who'd mentor me on business and this person over here would mentor me on personal life or whatever. There was this gentleman that I trained, Jim, was his name. And he was a very successful self-made entrepreneur. He was 70 years old. He was worth millions of dollars. Had, I don't even think yet in high school education, to be honest with you, grew up extremely, extremely poor. And one day I'm training him and I asked him, I said, Jim, I said, I wanna ask you a question about business because I own my own business and I think you're extremely successful and I wanna learn from people like you. I said, how did you succeed? Like, what's the secret to it all? Like, if you could tell me one thing. And he goes, you're asking me the wrong question. And I said, well, what do you mean? He goes, don't ask me that. He says, ask me how many times I failed. And it was like a bomb went off when he said that. And so I asked him, I said, how many times have you failed? And he told me about the three times he went bankrupt, the three times he made millions of dollars and the three times he lost all of it. And I mean all of it. And every each time he learned something from it and grew and got better each and every time. And you see this with the most successful people, and we're speaking about business, but even in the most successful people in business, you see this over and over again, these extremely successful individuals, they've lost more money than most people will earn in 10 lifetimes. You can't, you can't throw, you can't not throw Joe DeSina's name in that since we're here representing the Spartan race this week. Oh man, we did a podcast with him and his story. He's an important example of it. I mean, I don't know if you know this or not, Ryan, but I mean, this guy was worth millions of dollars before Spartan came around. And he spent almost all his money and lost trying to make Spartan work. And it barely took off just like a couple of years ago. Yeah, and really did he just now start making his money from that, but he damn near went broke forcing this to make it happen. So it's pretty, it was a neat story to listen to him. Yeah, it's awesome. That's cool. Life is definitely, you know, it's interesting. It's like baseball, except you don't, there's no three strike rule. So you just swing the fuck out of the bat over and over again. And you're going to hit something and you're going to hit something. I'm just going to say, I like it. Well, Sal doesn't even watch sports, he's giving him a sport of knowledge. He gave him a hard time all the time as he's a player. You did good, man. Yeah. Well, listen to me. Eventually you're going to hit that ball and make a home. I was like, can you say like touchdown or something? I was like, oh my God. Go to mindpumpmedia.com. There's 30 days of coaching. It's available for free. Also go to YouTube, Mind Pump TV. There's a new video every single day. In fact, today there's a surprise video. Go check it out. Thank you for listening to Mind Pump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at mindpumpmedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps anabolic, maps performance, and maps aesthetic. Nine months of phased expert exercise programming designed by Sal Adam and Justin to systematically transform the way your body looks, feels, and performs. With detailed workout blueprints and over 200 videos, the RGB Superbundle is like having Sal Adam and Justin as your own personal trainers, but at a fraction of the price. The RGB Superbundle has a full 30 day money back guarantee. And you can get it now plus other valuable free resources at mindpumpmedia.com. 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