MATT HALPERN: Extreme Discipline, Touring & Relationships, and The ‘No Excuses’ Mindset

Speaker 1 (00:00:00):

Welcome to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast. And now your host, Eyal Levi. Welcome to the URM podcast. Thank you so much for being here. It's crazy to think that we're now on our fifth year, but it's true, and it's only because of you, the listeners. And if you'd like to see us stick around for another five years, there are a few simple things that you can do that would really, really help us out, and I would be endlessly appreciative. Number one, share our episodes with your friends. If you get something out of these episodes, I'm sure they will too. So please share us with your friends. Number two, post our episodes on your Facebook and Instagram and tag me and our guests too. My Instagram is at al Levy urm audio. And let me just let you know that we love seeing ourselves tagged in these posts.

(00:00:55):

Who knows, we might even respond. And number three, leave us reviews and five stars please anywhere you can. We especially love iTunes reviews. Once again, I want to thank you all for the years and years of loyalty. I just want you to know that we will never, ever charge you for this podcast, and I will always work as hard as possible to improve the episodes in every single way possible. All I ask in return is a share post and a tag. Now, let's get on with it. Hello everybody. Welcome to the URM podcast. I have a guest today who needs no introduction. You already know who he is. He's been on multiple times. I would like to welcome my friend and a badass drummer entrepreneur, Mr. Matt Halper. Back on. Here we go, Matt Halper, and welcome back to the URM Podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:01:42):

I'm smiling. I'm very happy to be back

Speaker 1 (00:01:44):

Smiling. I'm late.

Speaker 2 (00:01:45):

Well, I understand why you're late. Actually, better than probably most people. And anybody who has a dog, I'm sure can relate to this as well because my wife and my schedule revolve around when our dogs take shits.

Speaker 1 (00:02:00):

Do your dogs get precious about it?

Speaker 2 (00:02:03):

Yeah, well, it's like they know when you want to do something. Okay. To your point, we were briefly just talking about this before we started. Whenever you have a podcast you want to do or something scheduled, that's really important. That's when the dog decides to be cheeky about taking a dump.

Speaker 1 (00:02:22):

Yeah, if you noticed, I texted you 25 minutes in advance to tell you it was, I was walking her 25 minutes before the podcast with enough time to do this. So she knew she planned this out.

Speaker 2 (00:02:36):

It's uncanny man, and it's a legit anxiety if they don't go throughout the day. It's like, okay, what did I do today? I woke up, I checked this off my list, I check this off my list, I check this off my list, all things that I can control. But one of the things that will ruin your day that is out of your control is whether or not your dog took a dump throughout the day or took enough. It's like, well, they only went in the morning, so he hasn't gone all day and at night, and I don't want to go to bed without him going. And it's like, you know what? There's certain days when I only go once, so why can't a dog only go once? Why do we stress about that so much?

Speaker 1 (00:03:14):

The way somebody put it for me? I was wondering the same sort of thing is since they can't verbalize, it's not that we do the thinking for them, but it's our responsibility to do the thinking for them. We've kind of taken that on by bringing this beast into our lives. They can't really be their own advocate, so we just have to assume that they would need to go multiple times. We can't really assume that they'd be cool about it. We might be in our own head and another human can verbalize it. No, I don't need to stop on the road trip. I'm fine the dog. You just have to think for them in a lot of ways.

Speaker 2 (00:03:56):

The part that I think gets frustrating about it for me is that, so my dogs are on a completely regimented feeding schedule every day.

Speaker 1 (00:04:05):

First, second, I thought you were about to say vegan diet.

Speaker 2 (00:04:08):

Oh, no, no, no.

Speaker 1 (00:04:09):

Glad you didn't say that. They're

Speaker 2 (00:04:10):

On a really good diet. It helps their BMS turn out nice and solid in the way they should be, which is great. But I mean, they eat the same time every day, morning and night, and they eat the same portions every day, morning and night. We don't really do treats. If we give 'em treats, it's ice. They like ice. So that's a good treat. So my point is, you would think that if a being has that same schedule every day, then their systems should work on that schedule every day. And you could predict when they go and when they don't. And it's just so strange to me that even when you keep a very regimented feeding schedule, their bodies work differently from day to day. And here's the other thing too, that, not to shift this conversation too much as riveting as it is, but the other thing that they do, which you may notice is, so I take my big dog Henry for a walk throughout our neighborhood, and we're on our walk two nights ago.

(00:05:13):

And I realize as he starts to shit right in front of someone's house, not on their grass, but outside of the sidewalk, on the little patch of grass between the street and the sidewalk, he starts to take a crap. And I look over and the windows are wide open in this house. Of course there's no blinds, and they're all sitting in the living room and he's taking a dump, and I don't have a bag. My bag dispenser is empty. So I'm like, it's one of the most embarrassing moments for a dog owner where you feel personally like you're a piece of shit, and you are a terrible person because you're unprepared and you are a litter bug and you're lazy and you don't have any regard for someone else's property. And there's really nothing you could do aside from

Speaker 1 (00:06:01):

You're the worst kind of person.

Speaker 2 (00:06:04):

So I'm looking around and I find I'm looking for a newspaper that got thrown on someone's driveway that hasn't been open. It has the plastic covering still on it that I can pull off, or I'm looking for a big enough leaf that fell off a tree. So I ended up finding this leaf that was surprisingly pretty big, and I covered it up. I covered up the crap. And then, by the way, this was the second time he did this on this walk, just so you know. So I'm kind of mixing up the story a bit in terms of timeline, but this was twice on this walk. He went, so yesterday I'm walking with my wife and we have both dogs and I refilled the bags. I didn't really say anything to her, but I just stopped at both of these places and I picked up the craps that were left there from the day before. And as I'm walking home, I mean, the comic part is that I'm literally carrying four bags of shit. And she's like, why are you doing this? And I was like, I forgot. I forgot the bags. I forgot to fill it up. But anyway, it's just so embarrassing being a dog owner sometimes. And it truly makes you feel like you are one of the worst humans in the world. If you leave the crap on the ground in front of someone's house, it's just horrible.

Speaker 1 (00:07:18):

My favorite thing is when she takes a crap in somebody's yard and they're out there and then she locks eyes with them. Do any of yours ever do the stare down?

Speaker 2 (00:07:31):

Oh yeah. They lock eyes. So Henry, the big one, will, he's a guard dog through and through. So if somebody locks eyes with him, he'll growl

Speaker 3 (00:07:42):

While shitting.

Speaker 2 (00:07:43):

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. While shitting. And he, yeah. And it's kind of like, what are you going to do? I love that. Whatcha going to do about it? It's so funny. It's all part of being a pet owner.

Speaker 1 (00:07:53):

So why are you a dog owner?

Speaker 2 (00:07:55):

I've been a dog owner my whole life. My parents had golden retrievers growing up, and then I rescued my first my dog when I was, I want to say 20, I don't know. It was like 2005 is when I rescued my first dog of my own. It changed my life for sure, because it taught me a whole different level of responsibility that I'd never had before where I'm the sole protector, sole owner of this

Speaker 3 (00:08:24):

Living

Speaker 2 (00:08:24):

Being. And I don't believe in being a passive owner. I mean, at this point, you know me well enough to know I don't do anything. So when I rescued this dog, I wanted to give him the best life possible. So I dove into training. I dove into the best possible way to socialize all of the things that you should do as a dog owner, the best food, the best health regimen, all that stuff. And it just became a part of my life to where I don't foresee ever not having a dog. They're the best friends you can have. They're so much fun. They're protectors. I don't know. They brighten up my day every day and they drive me nuts at the same time. But it's that love hate.

Speaker 1 (00:09:07):

Yes, they can be fucking annoying. Yeah,

Speaker 2 (00:09:09):

They can. I was on a call this morning and my big guard dog is laying on the floor going just whining, not even crying, just whining to get my attention. And it's like, dude, you're 150 pounds. You have a bite. PSI of a thousand, what are you doing? Come on man. Man up kind of thing. And it's like, well, he's just a baby. He's a puppy. You got to remember that.

Speaker 1 (00:09:39):

They're emotionally fragile forever. I mean, I love them for all the same reasons. And I have this weird philosophy that if I'm going to bring a living thing into my house, it's got to serve some sort of a purpose.

Speaker 3 (00:09:53):

That's

Speaker 1 (00:09:54):

Why I don't understand cats. I don't get why you would have a pet that hates you or that would claw you. I mean, I get some dogs will turn on their owners, but that's not as common as getting your face clawed by your cat. I love the idea of having, if you're going to bring an animal into your house, at least bring one that can be a productive member of the household. And dogs can be productive members of the household, at least mine is. I think it comes down to the owner and how you raise them, of course. But for me personally, I don't want to feel like I, it's weird. I want to feel thankful for having it in my house. And I want to feel like we have a good relationship where I'm not just feeding this beast for 15 years for no reason, which might sound weird, but it's a huge responsibility.

Speaker 2 (00:10:53):

It is a huge responsibility. And depending on the dog you get, they do serve different purposes.

(00:10:58):

My dog now, well dogs, they're both very different. It's awesome because one's tiny and one's huge and they're best friends and they're close in age, but one is very much a guard dog and one is just a constant amusement all day because of how funny he is and how he looks and just how lovable. And it's a really cool dynamic. But going back to your comment about cats, so prior to meeting my wife, not only was I very allergic to cats, but I just had no warmth for them because I was allergic. I never had any interest in getting to know a cat or having a cat of my own. And my previous dogs hated cats, so it was just like it wasn't in the cards. And then when I met my wife, she has two brothers, two boy cats who are beautiful cats.

Speaker 1 (00:11:48):

Wow. Your wife must be really cool.

Speaker 2 (00:11:49):

She is really, well, that was the thing. I mean,

Speaker 1 (00:11:52):

Yeah, she must be really, really cool.

Speaker 2 (00:11:54):

For the first year or so, I mean, I put myself through hell with, I had adult onset asthma because of the cats. I had bad allergies. I would have to take allergy pills every day. But honestly, dude, I built a tolerance. I'm not allergic to them anymore. And over time, I've actually grown to very much love them.

Speaker 1 (00:12:15):

You sure it's not Stockholm syndrome?

Speaker 2 (00:12:17):

Oh yeah. No, I'm sure. I mean, they're great. That's the thing. They also look, this isn't every cat. I think I'm actually really lucky to have met my wife and her two cats because they're pretty cool. They both also have different personalities. And what's been interesting is I've talked to her about this a lot. I was able to gain their trust over time one faster than the other. One of 'em is just, he's huge. He's a big fat cat who loves to eat and loves to be around people and loves to be held. He's great. He's like a dog. The other one is standoffish, and I call him the king of the house because he only comes out when he wants. He gets love when he wants every other time he keeps to himself. But it took me probably a year and a half to two years for him to warm up to me and just now four years into this, he's really taken to me to where he'll come over on the couch and he'll lay next to me and he'll look for love and affection. And it changed my perspective for sure. On

Speaker 1 (00:13:24):

Only took four years.

Speaker 2 (00:13:25):

It only took time. It did. But I don't know. It is interesting. Now, I don't know if I would love every cat, but I certainly love these personalities. These particular animals are great and I don't even look at, it's fun. Maybe you can relate to this too. Once you have a pet long enough, you don't even really think of it as a certain style. It's not a dog, it's not a cat, it's just

Speaker 1 (00:13:47):

No, it's just that person.

Speaker 2 (00:13:49):

Yeah, that person, George, my little dog is not George, the Grand Bassett Griffin ine, which is his breed, which is a mouthful for anybody. But George is not A-G-B-G-V. He's George Henry is not a ble, he is George. Same with the cats. It's Dexter and Bentley. And they are their own beings with personalities. And I think that's what I grew to love about all of them. And any animal that I've had, they do really add a lot to your life. They certainly add positivity over negativity, in my opinion.

Speaker 1 (00:14:25):

So do you think with the cats thing, it's kind of like, alright, so I don't like kids. I'm sure if I had kids, I'd love them, they were mine. But I don't love anybody else's kids. I just don't, not down. I don't like them. Just don't want be around them. But yeah, obviously if I had kids, it would be really weird if I didn't love them. Do you think that maybe it's a proximity thing, you're around these animals, you guys, you're stuck together, so may as well get along?

Speaker 2 (00:14:58):

Yeah, I think, I mean that's definitely a part of it because it's like you go into it, look, my wife had to sign up for me, a guy who in normal times is gone throughout the year and is going to miss events and miss all sorts of important life milestones. So if that means I have to accept the cats as well, and that was initially kind of what it was. It was like, alright, she's great. I want to be with her. I got to accept these things that come with it. And there's no way, I'm not the type of person ever that would draw a line in the sand and be like, it's me or the cats. I would never do that. I'd rather,

Speaker 1 (00:15:31):

Man, some people are like that, which is super fucked.

Speaker 2 (00:15:35):

I know if I were like that, I just wouldn't date somebody who had cats. And for a long time, that was my take when I was on dating apps and stuff. If I was started talking to someone, they were like, oh, I have cats. I'd just immediately be like, Nope, not doing it because I was allergic. But something changed when I met my wife and

Speaker 1 (00:15:53):

Well, the part that I think is fucked is not doing that on a dating app. It's being that way when you actually do want to be with somebody, when you actually do want to be with somebody, if you're then trying to turn them into a different person, it makes no logical sense. But if you're in the audition stage and there's things you don't like, well then it makes a lot of sense to just swipe left.

Speaker 2 (00:16:18):

Yeah, absolutely. Well, so I mean, if you met somebody who was great in every way, but they had cats or they had a kid that wasn't yours,

Speaker 1 (00:16:29):

Oh,

Speaker 2 (00:16:30):

Would that be a deal breaker early on for you? Do you think

Speaker 1 (00:16:33):

She would have to be really fucking cool?

Speaker 2 (00:16:37):

Okay. Yeah. Well, and that's how I felt too. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:16:40):

There's things I'm definitely willing to overlook if the more important things are right. But if it was just a casual thing where I could take it or leave it, I'd probably go the other way. If there was a kid involved, not if there was a cat involved. I mean whatever. I'm not allergic, I just won't come near the cat.

Speaker 2 (00:16:58):

But

Speaker 1 (00:16:59):

Yeah, I have gone the other way when there's been a kid involved.

Speaker 2 (00:17:03):

Yeah, look, and I understand that it's not your responsibility to take that on unless to your point, the person is truly special and you really want to buy into the whole package. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:17:16):

Exactly. And you shouldn't go in pretending to be something you're not. It's a disservice also to the lady, if she's not looking for something casual, then what that means is she's looking for someone that's going to be there in the life of the kid. And if you're presenting yourself as that just to get laid or something, it's not morally right to do that. It's not morally right to lead people on, especially as we get older when you're younger, I think girls and guys both don't understand how bad it is to lead people on or play games with their heads. It's a normal thing to do when you're younger. Girls do it, guys do it, guys say all kinds of whatever they need to say just to get into girls' pants. Girls will pretend to love guys, all that stuff. Girls will be friends with guys, even though they know that the guy wants more than that. There's all kinds of weird games. But as you get older and more mature, you realize the damage you can do to other people. And if you're not a psychopath, kind of got to stop doing that shit, in my opinion.

Speaker 2 (00:18:20):

Yeah. Well, and it's funny, my behavior changed a lot as I got older. When I was younger,

Speaker 1 (00:18:26):

Same here,

Speaker 2 (00:18:27):

Long distance didn't mean anything to me. I was like, oh, it doesn't matter. She can live in a different country or she can live in this other part of the USAI don't care. We'll make it work. And it's like you do enough of those things. If it's not, lemme just say a disclaimer to this. If it's the right person, distance obviously doesn't matter. But when it's not a hundred percent there and it's more just a fun thing, then that's when distance at first is like, oh, that's no big deal when you're younger. Oh, it'll be great. I'll fly out there. They'll fly here. We'll spend chunks of time together. It'll be awesome. But the older that I've gotten, it was like, I don't want to fucking deal with any of that shit. It costs money to see the person. It's awkward chunks of time. You miss the person if you do start to really like them when you're away from them.

(00:19:17):

I travel as is a lot for my lifestyle. I don't want to be traveling when I'm home away from the person that I care about. And it's just, for me, that was one of those things that I was just like, as I got older, fuck this, this is not worth it. I'm not going to play games with people that I meet across the country. If I do meet somebody when I'm traveling and I have a fling or something, whatever that happens, and I'm sure I piss people off. I've told this to my wife before, it's like there's probably plenty of women who are mad that I didn't take it seriously as I was in those older years, but that was just because it was like I had kind of reached that point of this isn't going to be something more than just what it is. And I was always as forthcoming as I could be, or at least I thought I was. But the point that I'm making is that was one of those things that I crossed off the list of my willingness to take part in a long distance relationship if it was going to be something that I was ready to take seriously. That makes sense.

Speaker 1 (00:20:18):

Yeah, I completely understand. I've had a very similar attitude actually, and a lot of my relationships have been long distance, but I'm still cool with it. Only if, and I'll say only if I feel like it's going somewhere real. Yeah,

Speaker 3 (00:20:32):

Because

Speaker 1 (00:20:33):

Yeah, like you said, it's more expensive, it's more awkward. It's more of a fucking hassle on your life when you could just meet. If you're going to do something casual, you can just meet someone in town. How hard is that?

Speaker 2 (00:20:44):

Right? And I mean, I think you have to have those conversations not right away, but if you do meet someone long distance and you really do like each other and there is a future, you kind of have to have the conversation of at some point, this won't be long distance anymore. I think there has to be that milestone in sight to be together and actually make it work in the same place. But that can be obviously challenging and you don't want to have that conversation too soon. And you got to really gauge the temperature, take the temperature of the situation before you walk down that road. And look, I'm not saying that long distance relationships are bad. I mean, to be honest, again, doing what I do for a living in a normal period of time, you could compare my relationship to long distance in that I do travel for a month plus at a time and multiple times of the year, but when I come home, I'm home with my wife. And that part is great. There are a lot of benefits still to that kind of relationship, whether it be long distance or just being in a band and touring or traveling for work. What's nice is you do get that perspective. That's the positive of it. You get the perspective, you get time alone. You can still really work on yourself without feeling obliged to somebody else. There's a lot of good things. It's the

Speaker 1 (00:22:00):

Best of both worlds.

Speaker 2 (00:22:01):

It is. It really is. But I think for me, the best of both worlds is the fact that we do live together. Obviously we're married now, but we are in the same home base. But I get to go and do my thing, she gets to do her thing at home and then we reconnect when I'm back. And it's this really nice fresh reset to the relationship many times. So there's definitely benefits to it. It's just, again, it has to be the right person. It's one of those things that if it's not the right person, and I know that right away, I'm not going to even bother trying to go down that long distance road just because it's just not what I want. In my older age when I was younger, whatever, it's like who cares? You have fun. You learn these things, it's great.

Speaker 1 (00:22:46):

You don't know what the right person is when you're younger. Anyways,

Speaker 2 (00:22:50):

Yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:22:51):

I almost feel like that concept at a certain age, and I don't want to shit on anyone who's in their twenties and got married or anything like that. Maybe it'll work, but I feel like there's just a certain level of understanding that you're only going to get through living for a while and experiencing other people for a while and truly knowing yourself for a while that's going to give you an understanding of what's right for you and what's wrong for you. I know lots of people who thought they had that super young and by the time they turned 30, they didn't feel that way anymore because their interests as a human changed or evolved. Again, I'm not saying it can't work, but I think that it's kind of hard to commit to somebody long-term when you yourself are not set as who you are.

Speaker 2 (00:23:48):

And some of those things that would contribute to that idea of being set are things that really don't come into play until you're older. I mean, think about both of us, right? Over the past, let's say few years, we've both taken a very active role in our personal mental and physical health. So much so that it in a lot of ways consumes many parts of our daily life

Speaker 1 (00:24:15):

That is accurate.

Speaker 2 (00:24:17):

And I know this because we've spent a lot of time discussing our methods and what we do. But I've asked my wife many times because when I met her, although I was into health and fitness, I was nowhere near as dedicated as I am today. So I've said to her, Hey, when you met me, if I was as regimented as I am now, would that have changed your opinion of me or the way that you approach this relationship? And her response was something along the lines of like, well, if you pushed our dates back or we're late to things because you wanted to be in your sauna instead of honoring the time that we set to be together, then that would show me that you're kind of selfish and only care about those things, but if you were able to still do it all and work around it and still be the man that you are, then it wouldn't bother me.

(00:25:07):

And her point was like, and you obviously do that now. I go into it on a daily basis saying, Hey babe, here's my schedule. What's your schedule? What are good times for me to tackle these things today? And then I kind of go from there. So I don't ever, or at least I try not to just autonomously say, here's my schedule, you fucking work around it. It's more so what do you have? What do I have? Let's make it work. There are certain things I really need to do for myself on a daily basis and vice versa. She has those things too. But it is interesting to me how that has become so important to me almost in a, for lack of better word, dare I say, obsessive manner on a day-to-day basis because it is so important to me. I wonder how that would've changed my approach to dating 10 years ago if I was doing the same things I'm doing for myself now.

Speaker 1 (00:26:04):

Well, weren't there other things back then that took up those kinds of RPMs or brain ram like wasn't music and drumming, I'm sure you don't practice drums the way you used to 15 years ago when you were learning how to play drums. So

Speaker 3 (00:26:19):

True.

Speaker 1 (00:26:19):

I bet that there were other things in your life. Okay, so before the band had made it or anything like that, and you're building, I mean obviously you're still building, but before success stage when that's the thing you're building towards, I'm sure that that was taking up the same amount of RPMs as this personal journey is now or in a similar way

Speaker 2 (00:26:43):

At a time It was, but I also think that there was a big chunk of my life where I associated my abilities and my talents to the ability of meeting people and getting girls. It was something that I could use to show that I was different or special. And I mean, to be honest, there was, yeah, and there was a good period of time when I went to college or even after college, a big part of what I did every day was I went out with my friends, we went to bars, we met people, we met women. That was a big goal and focus of mine in those younger years. And it was a lot of fun, but it was good experience to help turn me into the person that I'm now, to make me appreciate the relationship that I have, to make me appreciate how lucky I am to be with someone as great as I'm with.

(00:27:38):

But if I hadn't have actually made the time and put the focus on that social aspect of my life, I probably wouldn't be in that mindset that I'm now. So the point that I'm getting at is I think there was a much more active focus on the social and fun aspect of my life that took up some of that energy that is now placed on the personal growth and mental and physical wellness. That was actually something in my day that I was like, alright, I'm going to carve out a good part of my afternoon to work out so that I look good to meet people and I'm going to go out tonight and I'm going to sleep so that I can be up late kind of thing. It was like, I mean,

Speaker 1 (00:28:22):

But isn't that time now that you would carve out for socializing, just dedicated to connecting with your wife and isn't part of why you work out now to be attractive for her?

Speaker 2 (00:28:35):

So funny, man, she's like, oh, you're working out. Don't get too cut. Don't get in good shape. She likes they

Speaker 1 (00:28:41):

Say that,

Speaker 2 (00:28:42):

Yeah, she likes me beefy as she calls it. But I think so. But at the same time, the social thing is over the years and I think it really started when I joined periphery and maybe after the first few years I started to just really shrink down my close knit group of friends. I started to really be careful about who I spent my time with. And I'd honestly say now that I definitely turned from an extrovert, very social, outgoing, always enjoying being around people and parties and bars and things like that to now I would definitely consider myself an introvert. And I want to clarify, dude, I never drank when I was in college, if I would go to the bar, I would literally get one drink usually like a whiskey or maybe a gin and soda or something. I'd get one drink and I would nurse it all night. I was never a drinker. I was always a designated driver. I was always in control. I never liked to feel drunk or out of my mind, but I enjoyed the social aspect of that lifestyle and meeting people and being around people and being cool and being popular and all those things,

Speaker 1 (00:30:04):

A true extrovert,

Speaker 2 (00:30:05):

It was great. But over time I just realized that shit doesn't fucking matter. And what I really value is the time that I get to be productive, the time I get to spend by myself, the time I get to achieve my own goals, the time I get to be with my dogs and my wife and my family and my best friends that actually matter. And my friend group is pretty slim now, but it's amazing how many people who I do care about and have in that circle who I probably never expected to serve different purposes. And I think that's also a point to make, which is everybody I'm friends with isn't my best friend, but a lot of my friends are friends that I can relate to on very specific topics better than other people like you and I, for example. I wouldn't say

Speaker 1 (00:30:56):

I agree

Speaker 2 (00:30:56):

We're not best friends, but when it comes to the things that we both connect on, I would say we are very close and and can really share personal deep things about those topics with each other without judgment and with a feeling of support and trust. And that's huge. That would be a characteristic of a great relationship or a great friendship. So I haven't necessarily analyzed this outside of this conversation too much, but I definitely have my best friends who are my brothers and my family, but then I have other classifications of best friends in different categories of life. And that's something that is really special too, and I really value that with those people.

Speaker 1 (00:31:42):

So two things you've brought up that are very interesting to me because I was talking to the girl, I'm seeing about these two topics last night. I was talking about what purpose do friends serve now as adults now that we're not like 22 and have these huge social circles and do all that? What purpose do friends serve? And then also about faithfulness. So I'll start with that. You seem to have my philosophy on it. I think, tell me if I'm interpreting this correctly, she doesn't believe this, but she was saying that lots of her friends think that a guy's faithfulness is only relative to the amount of opportunities that he has. And so therefore the more successful, the more he travels, the more he's going to cheat. And my opinion is it's opposite actually because a guy who's had lots of opportunities and who's lived a successful life, who's grown up now, this doesn't apply for dudes who are like 25 and under.

(00:32:41):

If you're 30, 35, 40, 45, and you have had success for a while, opportunities for a while, you've actually, you've been with women, you've had girlfriends, you've had a full life. If you meet somebody really, really cool, you're going to appreciate it that much more and not want to fuck it up because exactly what's out there. Having a one night stand doesn't mean what it used to mean when you were 22, meeting some girl on tour isn't special. It used to be when it was your first year touring, you have the experience to actually appreciate what you have. And as opposed to, in my opinion, a dude who marries a girl at 22 and it's like the first or second girl he's ever been with and 15 years go by and he's just frustrated. Maybe they're living like roommates and he goes on a business trip with a coworker and they have some drinks at the hotel bar. I think he's more likely to cheat on the girl.

Speaker 2 (00:33:43):

I would definitely tend to agree with the first aspect of what you described because it definitely, I fall into that category and I'll address the second part of your statement as well. But for me,

Speaker 1 (00:33:58):

Maybe I'm just defending guys like us.

Speaker 2 (00:34:00):

No, well, I mean I'm glad you are because I think, look, I dealt with this exact situation when I met my wife because the first thing she says to her brother is I met this great guy. I really like him. He's in a band and he just spits his food out laughing because he's like, yeah, good job. There's a faithful guy for you. Way to go, Natalie. But he didn't know me. When he met me, his opinion changed, of course. And now he's my brother and it's great and it is totally different, but I think you described me, which is I had a lot of experience. I had a lot of fun. I've traveled the world, I've met some great people. I've made dumb ass fucking mistakes. I've done all those things. And when I did meet my wife, I was able to commit and stay committed and appreciate and be grateful for the things that she brings to my life and helps me to achieve.

(00:34:56):

She enables me to be my best self, I really think. And she's willing to watch me fucking struggle and flail to find my best self. And that's somebody who is worthy of faith, I should say. And I do think that if I didn't have that experience prior, I would probably be more curious. But sometimes I wonder too, I have some friends who have never dated, they've never been with other people for whatever reason, and they meet somebody and they fall in love unconditionally and they never even think to get out of it because I think there's an appreciation there as well of like, wow, this person chose to love me and maybe I didn't think that I was deserving of that. And because of that, I want to be faithful to them. It's the ugly duckling case that I think falls into the second description that you described.

(00:35:52):

So the guy or the girl who was maybe never really popular in their teenage or early college years, but as they get into the real world, they start working, they start traveling for business, they start getting this different attention they never got before, maybe because they finally got in shape or they just finally started opening up and not being as shy or whatever things people find attractive about them, it starts being like, oh, so I am attractive and fuck, I'm in this relationship, but you know what? Fuck it. I never did this when I was younger and now I'm going to go do it. I think that is the caveat to the,

Speaker 1 (00:36:30):

But I think that's a lot of people.

Speaker 2 (00:36:32):

Oh, I agree with you a hundred percent. It is. It definitely is. All I'm saying I guess is it's not black and white because there are plenty. Yeah,

Speaker 1 (00:36:40):

No, no, no. Obviously painting with a super broad brush here and we're talking about people who are infinitely complex.

Speaker 3 (00:36:48):

So

Speaker 1 (00:36:48):

I definitely don't mean that there's just two categories of people or anything like that. And I guess I feel like I have to defend successful dudes because I've had that same situation multiple times where I get a girlfriend and her family. This happened especially in the band days, but the family already decided who I was before even meeting me, which pissed me off, obviously.

Speaker 2 (00:37:17):

But

Speaker 1 (00:37:17):

At the same time, I completely understand why

Speaker 2 (00:37:20):

You just start to laugh at at some point, and you hope that the person that you're dating is able to think for themselves enough to give you that chance to prove that you are not the stereotype.

Speaker 1 (00:37:32):

Yeah. Well, I mean I'm not worried about it now.

Speaker 2 (00:37:34):

Oh, of course not. Of course. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (00:37:35):

But it's interesting to me that her adult friends still see it that way.

Speaker 2 (00:37:41):

Oh yeah. I mean I faced it in every relationship I've ever been in. But yeah, even more so when I met my wife initially with her family. But again, it was a very quick transition of disarming those people and letting them in. I definitely had to be willing to open up faster so that they could know who I was. But I was willing to do that because of how important the relationship was to me. I wanted them to see that I'm not

Speaker 1 (00:38:11):

The savage.

Speaker 2 (00:38:13):

And at the same time, I was really honest with my wife and with her brother. We've had many conversations about our college days and our years of being total dogs. I mean, it's funny because his response to me was like, oh, he's in a band. Oh yeah, good going. But he was the president of a fraternity and he is a good looking dude, and I would argue way more of a dog than I've ever been. So it's just funny to sort of be able to now throw that stuff back in his face when it comes up that like, oh yeah, you used to think that I was going to be this total rockstar piece of shit, dude, that's going around cheating on your sister, but hey man,

Speaker 1 (00:38:57):

You've got a history too

Speaker 2 (00:38:58):

If you were president of a frat.

Speaker 1 (00:39:01):

Yeah, I think it's good to be honest about these things because you can't hide your past, in my opinion. If someone can't handle what you were doing 10 years ago,

Speaker 2 (00:39:15):

It's

Speaker 1 (00:39:16):

Not like we're talking about murder, right?

Speaker 2 (00:39:18):

Well, these days it's like you literally got to, not only are the topics like that, but you got to watch what you say too. It's like I don't want to give anybody the wrong impression when we talk about prior relationships or pissing people off. It was never anything that was illegal or what would be considered wrong or bad. It was just more like, oh, I didn't want to commit because I was a traveling musician and I wasn't, wasn't serious. So that's it anyway, just that's a nice little,

Speaker 1 (00:39:46):

You've got to get the disclaimer out of

Speaker 2 (00:39:47):

The way. A disclaimer. Yes, absolutely.

Speaker 1 (00:39:49):

Another philosophy I have, and then I'll get to the second thing I wanted to say is I don't normally think there's bad guys. I don't mean this guy or girl, I just mean I don't really subscribe to the bad guy notion for the most part, when people are talking about why something went wrong, because it's all so relative to who your friend is or what side of the fence you're on, everybody, no relationship is perfect. And if someone doesn't want to commit to you at the end of the day, they're not evil because of it.

Speaker 2 (00:40:21):

We

Speaker 1 (00:40:21):

Don't have to commit to anybody.

Speaker 2 (00:40:24):

In

Speaker 1 (00:40:24):

Fact, they're probably doing you a favor. Why would somebody want me to commit to them if I don't want to commit to them? That's just asking for trouble.

Speaker 2 (00:40:34):

Yeah, I agree with you.

Speaker 1 (00:40:35):

It's asking for a bad time.

Speaker 2 (00:40:36):

There should be no judgment in those types of things unless you're actively treating someone like shit, which does unfortunately happen. There's bad relationships, there are bad people in bad relationships. But if the intent is good and you're simply just being honest about what you are willing to do and trying to do right by that person and for yourself, then there should be no judgment. And at the end of the day, like you said, you're doing that person a favor by being honest about whether or not you can commit or not.

Speaker 1 (00:41:09):

Yeah, I think that this is actually why not all of them, definitely not all, but I'm friends with some of my exes because it ended in that way, just not working. Nobody did anything wrong. It's just not working. It's better for both of us that we're not together. It's not that we're not cool as people.

Speaker 2 (00:41:31):

You're

Speaker 1 (00:41:31):

A perfectly cool person. I think you're very intelligent and I love talking to you and all that, but it's not that thing for me, which doesn't make me or her a bad person.

Speaker 2 (00:41:44):

I've very rarely had bad fallouts in relationships because of that exact thing. It's just you be honest, and I think back on the relationships that I had prior to my marriage, and there's no resentment or animosity, there's no issues. I'm still cool with everybody. I still am waving a flag in their corner to support them. Even my ex, I'm friendly with the new boyfriend, we're cool. And that's a testament to not only the relationship I had previously and how it ended, but her perception of me is positive. My perception of her is positive and everybody can get along, and that's a very important,

Speaker 1 (00:42:25):

That's great thing.

Speaker 2 (00:42:25):

But that comes from communicating, honestly, communicating even though it is hard to talk about certain things, but that's what it comes from. It's like putting everything on the table and being willing to temporarily hurt somebody in order for them to have the best outcome possible in the end for you and them, if that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (00:42:47):

True in business and band life too.

(00:42:50):

So the other thing I was talking about was what's the purpose of friends? Because like I said, it changes and that I came to the same, well came to two conclusions. One is obviously humans are just prewired to be social for survival reasons that don't exist anymore in the modern world. But we don't rely on our tribe to save our lives. We used to, but that doesn't mean that our brain wiring change. So we have this deep seated need for these social relationships that our romantic relationship and aren't our family. We have this need for these social bonds that's just hardwired. But in addition to that, I've realized the same thing. The concept of best friends is, yeah, I've got my best friends too, but it's not the way it was when I was a kid. But yeah, my best friend characters are kind of siblings, but more so I have friends that I connect with on very specific things like you just said, who we understand each other about.

(00:43:59):

I'm sure we would understand each other about other things too, but there's this specific thing that we connect on and that's great. That's great. Don't need more than that. And I feel like the older I get, the more I appreciate that. Whereas where I was younger, I'm not sure that I totally saw that as friendship, which is interesting. But at the same time, when I was younger, some of the things that I was into, people I was around were not interested in connecting with me about, for instance, when I was all about being as good of a guitar player as I could possibly be, other guitar players around me in high school were not cool about it. They felt they were either intimidated or felt like they were in competition with me. And it's not something that I could be friends with somebody over or connect with.

(00:44:56):

Now I feel like if I was trying to be the best guitar player I could possibly be, there's a bunch of people I know that I could connect with just on that. And I think it's older and more mature, but the things I was into, I didn't really have those types of friends for when I was younger. But now I do like the fitness thing that we were talking about, entrepreneurial pursuits, that's another one that I connect with very specific people about that I wouldn't dream of talking about with other people. They're not going to get it, and that's okay. It's perfectly fine.

Speaker 2 (00:45:34):

I agree with you a hundred percent. I mean, it's crazy too who becomes more present in your life a lot more of the time sometimes. So what I mean by that is this, okay, if I were to say who my best friends are, obviously my band mates are my best friends for sure. We're brothers, we've been through everything together. We've seen each other fucking naked. We've just traveled the world and done everything we possibly can. And by the way, it's not really fun to see each other naked, but hey, it happens when you're living in close quarters.

Speaker 1 (00:46:08):

That was my next question.

Speaker 2 (00:46:10):

Yeah, yeah, we talk about that all you want. And look, I don't get to see those guys all the time. We live in different places, but we still talk every week and we're in communication a lot. And that bond is there no matter what. Then I have another best friend who, his name's Sam. He's been probably my best friend since we were fucking, I don't know, 13 or something. And to your point, it's like there are definitely things that I purposefully don't talk about with him because there's just not going to be a mutual understanding or connection, and it's just not worth it. And we don't talk every day. We don't see each other every day. But he's also my brother and we both love each other and we both fucking hate each other at the same time. And we no matter what are going to be friends, it just is.

(00:46:57):

It's like family. That's just the way it is. But then I have new friends in my life, people that have come into my life even this year who I talk to all the time now currently, and talking to them, whether it be about business or other relevant topics to what's going on in my life, I talk to them a lot and on more deeper levels than I talk to the person who I've been best friends with since I was 13 years old sometimes. But the thing that I wonder in the back of my mind with those people that I don't wonder about with my best friend is how long will these people be in my life? How long will it be relevant for us to communicate as much as we are? And I'm not drawing a line in the sand or putting any parameters or restrictions on that relationship.

(00:47:47):

I just am old enough to know how things go. It's like there's a lot of people you connect with based on your interests and what you're doing at this time in your life, and maybe it lasts for a few years and then you go a different direction and you end up meeting new people that fall into the new things you're doing and you don't talk to those other people as much. I mean, there's plenty of friends like that in my life. It's just a weird dynamic though. And I think the point that I'm getting to is as you have sort of figured out for yourself, it's like as you get older, you're able to understand these classifications better of the people in your life where they fit. And it's okay either way. If I maintain a relationship forever with someone I met this year, then that's great. That means that they are a good person and they're contributing positively to my life. And hopefully I'm doing the same for them and it's very natural. But if not, then that just means it's run. Its course. Any relationship might end.

Speaker 1 (00:48:46):

Yeah, you could still both be good people who contributed to each other's lives for that point in time. And then the relevancy faded, or your past diverged. It's no big deal.

Speaker 2 (00:48:57):

The funny slash shitty part about it is that no matter what I do, I still have this fucking other best friend who's like a toothache who never goes away. I need my tooth to chew, but it fucking hurts to chew. So it's that love hate relationship. And I should say it's not just him, it's my band mates too. I mean, the amount of things that we've gone through interpersonally individually or as a group, I think we've probably talked about this before, has not been easy. And you've talked to my other band mates too. There's so much trial and error and tribulation that occurs between all of us as band mates and friends that the only way we've made it to the point we are now is we've worked through a bunch of shit and decided that the relationship and the band and our purpose and ultimately our friendship is more important than a bunch of bullshit that we can work through if we try. And that's to me, what makes it a brother or a sister or family as opposed to just a friend who you might connect with here or there.

Speaker 1 (00:50:06):

So question though. Alright, so your friend, Sam, that you've been friends with since you were 13, you guys made friends before you started those classifications, understanding those classifications and doing what you just said now, which has made it a choice, choice to have that relationship with your band mates. So it's almost like Sam entered your life before you were actively consciously making that choice. So he is like a pro-choice friend, whereas people now are from the choice, the choice era. I'm just making this up as I go. So what I'm wondering is, is that a bad thing?

Speaker 2 (00:50:46):

No,

Speaker 1 (00:50:47):

I don't think it is. I think that it's a great thing to be able to decide this is a relationship I want in my life. This is the purpose that it serves and this is great. And I don't need it to be amorphous. I don't need it to to inhabit more than it naturally inhabits for as long as it's going to naturally inhabit. I'm making the choice to be present in it for the amount of time that it makes sense to be present.

Speaker 2 (00:51:17):

Yeah, it's absolutely great. I mean, you should be able to decide who you get fulfillment from associating with, and hopefully they can decide if they get fulfillment from associating with you too. It shouldn't be like, well, this person wants to be my friend, but nope, see you later. They're not going to be my friend. It should be mutual. And hopefully two people get to that point together and they realize,

Speaker 1 (00:51:42):

Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 2 (00:51:43):

Oftentimes it's not even spoken about, it's just like two people drift apart and that's fine.

Speaker 1 (00:51:47):

As opposed to being default. It's the exact opposite of having people in your life by default. Whereas if you're not thinking about this stuff, you might just be friends with people who are in proximity to you or be in a relationship with someone who's in proximity to you because they're in proximity and default mode, which I think is how we make friends when we're younger. The kid across the street who you play with becomes your best friend, the one kid at school or the two kids at school that you talk to the most, become your best friends. It is just kind of a default thing. The kids you went to camp with or whatever that were on your team, if you guys got split into teams, one of them is going to become your best friend when you're a kid just by proximity in default. Whereas now what we're talking about is not being friends with people by proximity or default. I mean, with your band mates, there's the proximity, but you chose and they chose you. You guys chose each other to be in that proximity and have that relationship. I think that that's, and by the way, I don't think that as a kid, it's a bad thing to be friends with people

(00:52:56):

By default or proximity. All you've got, you can't make these choices as a kid. Adults are making the choices for you. You don't have control over your social circle. But now that we do, now that we can take agency over our lives, I think this is the way to do things. Why would you want to have people in it

Speaker 2 (00:53:16):

By default? Right. I agree with you. And thinking back on it, it's like even with Sam, the way that we connected was through music as well. It wasn't by proximity. I mean, we did eventually go to the same school together, but the reason that we became friends is because he played bass and I played drums, and he was the best bass player, and I was the best drummer, and we became friends. And then from there, because of playing music together, we were in a band together. And we since have both grown up and have gone completely different directions with our lives and had completely different experiences and have developed completely differently. But that foundation that was built is so strong that it'll never go away. And it's interesting because it is sort of default based on the history, but it was also started by shared and common interests.

(00:54:05):

And now the relationship has been elevated to a point where it's just like, this is somebody who I can trust with anything. This is somebody who's my family. This is someone who calls my dad to check on him without anybody asking him to. So that's the kind of friend that to me proves the years and proves that they are a family as opposed to no offense. But I would never reach out to you and be like, Hey, Al, can you do me a favor? Call my dad and check on. Well, why? There's no history. History course. Right. There's no history there.

Speaker 1 (00:54:39):

It would be kind of weird,

Speaker 2 (00:54:40):

Right? Totally. So yeah, you never know.

Speaker 1 (00:54:43):

Maybe in 10 years or something, but that would be kind of weird right now.

Speaker 2 (00:54:46):

I mean, he would talk your ear off and he wouldn't care who it is. He just loves to chat and with interesting people. But that aside, you know what I mean? It, it's just to summarize some of this stuff, it's like it's nice to be at a point now where I know the amount of time that I have in my day that I can allocate to being social with people outside of my immediate important zone and outside of the things that are important for me to spend my time on. And that amount of time is pretty finite. And I don't want to associate with people that don't provide enrichment for me, or that I can't provide enrichment to them in a way that is appreciated. I'm not going to try to help somebody if there is no appreciation of that help. I don't ask for a, I don't have a lot of expectations aside from somebody actually just appreciating the time that I'm willing to share with them because my time is precious, for lack of better word, because I only have so much to give to other people. And if I do give to other people, I want it to mean something. So I think that's how I've sort of looked at my group of friends and group of people that I interact with on a daily basis or weekly basis. I don't want that to come off self-serving in a way, but I try to think of it as mutually beneficial.

Speaker 1 (00:56:18):

Absolutely. You've got a lot of people demanding your time all the time. You got a lot going on. You have to make these decisions.

Speaker 2 (00:56:25):

And I'm lucky because you know what? The majority of people in my life are awesome. They're great people. They have that same mentality as me, is that they're willing to give, give and I'm willing to give, give and return. And I was thinking to myself the other day, how lucky I am to have so many close friends. I have so many close friends that I can't count them on two hands, and that's a really lucky fucking thing.

Speaker 1 (00:56:50):

Fuck yeah, it is.

Speaker 2 (00:56:52):

I'm grateful for it. And people that haven't stayed on those two hands, again, it's not that I'm sure there have been falling out, there have been things that have reasons why I don't want to be friends with somebody. But for a lot of it, it's just like life changes and our focus changes and we spend our time doing other things and we're just not as relevant or important in the moments. But that doesn't mean you love the person any less. It's funny, me and Wes Huck used to be super fucking close. We'd talk all the time, and I love Wes to death now, just we don't talk as much. I don't see him anywhere near as much. I don't communicate with him anywhere near as much, and I don't think there's any reason why not. There's no active thing that happened that caused the relationship to deteriorate.

(00:57:38):

It's just like we just don't communicate it as much. But I still love him and would be there for him in a second, and I think he would do the same for me. So I'm just giving you an example of somebody that people might know as well as I listen to this, it's like there's those people everywhere, me and Tosin from Animals as Leaders, or like me and Javier from Animals as Leaders, or me and Matt from Animals as Leaders. It's like we were all very, very close at one point, but we don't talk every day now. But there's still that love and respect for each other. And if they needed me or if I needed them instantly would be there. So I consider those people my very close friends too. It's not the people you talk to every day, it's the people that when push comes to shove, you would be there for them and they would be there for you.

Speaker 1 (00:58:26):

Absolutely. I actually feel like that's a great measure of a friendship is how much time can go by and those feelings of loyalty and wanting to help them and love still stays strong. There's certain people who I can go a year or more without talking to, and then if they hit me up and needed something, I'd drop everything and I know that they would do the same thing. So this brings up two things I want to talk about. I want to definitely talk about some of the physical stuff we've both been doing because I know you've been doing a lot of crazy shit since last time. But there's one more thing you touched on earlier that I'd like to talk about first, which is carving time for people. So you said that you had asked your wife if you were this dedicated to fitness or any of that whole thing being as nuts as you are about it when you met, if she'd still be into you.

(00:59:25):

And her answer, which I think was a great answer was, if you weren't blowing me off, who cares? Right. Okay. So the reason I want to talk about that is because I think that a lot of people who are trying to be better, whether it's trying to be better at guitar, they're trying to build a business, they're trying to go after fitness, something that requires you to be kind of obsessive will do it at the expense of their relationships. And I've always thought that you should be able to be available to the person you're seeing as well as present in all of your obsessions. You should be able to do both. It's harder when you're younger, I think, and it's harder when you haven't proven yourself yet. And it's also maybe harder when you don't actually take the relationship as seriously. But I really do think that if you care, I guess that being the big, if you actually care about the relationship, you'll find a way to do both. It shouldn't be one or the other. And so that's why I think she gave you a really, really good answer. Just being obsessed about something and wanting it really, really badly should not make you unavailable to that part of your life, in my opinion.

Speaker 2 (01:00:40):

Yeah. Well, because at the end of the day, eventually you will achieve that goal and then you're standing there and you want to share the success with somebody. And if you step on all of the people that you would share it with to achieve that goal, they're not going to be there anymore. And you're going to be done with this mission, or at least reach a point with it where you can kind of put it on cruise control and you're not going to have anybody around you to celebrate with or I don't know, to vent to on a hard day. There's plenty of times where I was doing a lot more breath work than I'm doing now. I've sort of become more efficient with what I do. But there's times when I would be doing breath work and I'd come upstairs from the basement of where I was, my wife be like, how'd that go?

(01:01:29):

And I'd be so frustrated and I would be able to vent to her about this journey and how I didn't achieve what I wanted to achieve and it fucking sucked. And instead of her being like, yeah, you're a fucking loser, it was like, alright, well think about what impacted you today. Think about what you can do differently. Is there a reason why that happened? Is there something you can do for yourself right now that will make you feel better and able to take it on tomorrow? So if I were selfish about all those things and didn't share it or try to make time, she wouldn't be interested or willing to support me through it. She'd be like, yeah, this is what you get. You have a shitty experience because you're treating me shitty and you're not making time for me, and why would I support this?

(01:02:24):

Fuck you. But I think the support in the endeavor came from the fact that she knew I needed to go down this road and she knew that I would be willing to find the balance with it, which to be completely fair and honest, when I first started getting into all these different methodologies of self-improvement, it took some time to not only figure out which ones work. I was doing too many at first, and I had to figure out how to narrow it down and as I said, become more efficient with it so that I could find the balance of everything I need to do in a day. And what falls into that category are relationships, not just business, not just eating and basic needs, but it's like there are other relationships that are important too. There are other conversations, other experiences that need time. So it's like you got to manage it, got

Speaker 1 (01:03:28):

To water the plant.

Speaker 2 (01:03:29):

And

Speaker 1 (01:03:30):

I have been guilty in the past of being unavailable

Speaker 2 (01:03:34):

Me too

Speaker 1 (01:03:35):

In relationships because I've been obsessed about what I was doing. And now I know in retrospect I didn't care that much about that relationship. And I also kind of got what I deserved. I got a bad relationship because I wasn't very present. But at the end of the day, it wasn't a good match anyways. So why would I have cared? But it still taught me that if that's the outcome I want with a person, then that's how I should act. If I want a better outcome, then I need to figure out a way to do both things. And there's plenty of people who have figured out how to be both successful and be present for their relationship. So I don't think when I was younger, I thought it was a good excuse. I don't think it's a good excuse anymore. You should know how to do both, and you should strive to be as efficient as possible so that you can be present in all important aspects of your life.

Speaker 2 (01:04:29):

Yeah, I agree. And that's the aspect that I've been honing in on, I would say for the past few months, is like, okay, how do I develop that efficiency? But what's funny, I mean, I'm sure there are people that would fall into this category too, and I can't think off the top of my head who it would be, but people that I don't have a desire to be around per se or experiences that I don't want to do because they'll take away from the things that are more important to me. So as an example, I months ago scheduled something that I was going to do that would take me out of my personal game here for four or five days. And just yesterday I canceled that thing because in my mind, one, it's not important or necessary, and two, it will take me away from things that I now deem to be necessary in a span of five days.

(01:05:36):

So I would rather not go do this thing than be able to have five days of the self-improvement fitness, whatever it is that I'm doing. That's more important to me. And it's funny because now when I think about things that take me away from this, it's in every aspect of my life I've figured out how to adapt. So for example, we always go down to, my wife's family has a beach house in Ocean City. We've gone there as of late, and I've figured out, okay, well what am I going to do so that I'm not away from the shit that I like to do on a daily basis for five or six or seven days. So ice baths being one of those things. I bought a huge trough and I store it at the beach house now, and I go and get ice at a certain supermarket that has the cheapest ice, and now I have an ice rig at the beach house.

(01:06:33):

I think about what am I going to do when I go on tour? Well, I already can tell you I'm going to bring a trough and store it in the bay and the bus, and I'm also going to bring a portable sauna and I'm going to figure out time every single day on tour to do my sauna stuff and to do my ice bath, and I can make it fit into an hour's worth of time. And if I think about my day on tour, there's always an hour extra that I can spare. Of course. I guess the point to this is it's like it's become such an important aspect of my daily life and what makes me feel optimized. I find myself weighing decisions that I make based on whether or not I can achieve those personal goals every day. And if I can't on paper at first, I think about how can I add them into that situation? So it's like touring, it's not a problem because I'll figure out how to add it in. Going to the beach house is not a problem. I'll figure out how to add it in. But there's certain things that if they aren't necessary and I can't still then achieve my personal goals, they get nixed because they're not as important as the things that I could do on a daily basis for myself. I think that is a level of selfishness, but that's okay because it's not,

Speaker 1 (01:07:55):

I know what your priorities are,

Speaker 2 (01:07:56):

I know my priorities and it's not at the detriment to anyone else.

Speaker 1 (01:08:00):

Okay. So I don't think that's selfish. I think if you don't know what your priorities are and then treat them like priorities, you're not going to get the outcomes you want in life. One of the things that I've also learned the most in the past few months was, it's interesting when we first talked, well, it wasn't the first time we talked, but when we first talked about this topic back in what, February, March,

Speaker 2 (01:08:24):

I think? Yeah, it was at the beginning. Yeah. February or

Speaker 1 (01:08:27):

March of Corona.

Speaker 2 (01:08:28):

Yeah, March. Because we were quarantined at that point. So it March or April. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:08:33):

Yeah. I was also doing a bunch of different things and I've narrowed it down considerably because I started to think about, all right, well, I do want to do all these things I'm trying at some point, but what's the number one thing or the two top things I'm trying to do physically right now? And it was under the umbrella of fixing my health. It was drop weight and replace it with muscle. That was more important to me than anything else because if there was one thing that was going to kill me faster than anything else, it would've been weight. So that was over the cold stuff, over anything else that became the priority. And so anything that was going to lean me in that direction, I decided to prioritize. And everything else I decided to minimize. So I decided to take the time that I was spending on a bunch of the meditation and a bunch of that stuff and put it into cardio.

(01:09:38):

And now I'm 20 pounds off of the goal. And so now that maybe I'm a few months away from being able to put this on cruise control, like you said, to where I'll drop down to a maintenance amount of cardio, so maybe 45 minutes a day or something like a normal human being, then I can start adding these other things in and start exploring that. But it became too much stuff to do between trying to do cold work, breath work, sauna work, cardio weights, flexibility stuff, and then also trying to maintain a 700 calorie diet and then also trying to build a relationship with a woman. And then also the businesses like Uhuh, it's

Speaker 2 (01:10:22):

Too much. Yeah, no, it's too much. Too much. Yeah. Well, and I'm in your same boat in that sense. I had to prioritize, alright, what's the main focus and then how can I achieve and combine those things to make it into an optimized program? One of the things recently that, I mean I briefly talked to you about this, but actually has been, I'm finding now to be very helpful, is the use of a training app, so to speak. So I started using Whoop, which tracks your vitals and specifically is focused on the amount of, they call it strain or activity you should be doing in a day to then balance your recovery, your sleep, and then your ability to perform at whichever level you deem to be the optimal level.

Speaker 1 (01:11:14):

By the way, I think Woof is great. Let me tell you something I thought about Woof. I told you that I stopped using it and only used the Apple stuff. I think if I was you, I would be using Whoopf and I think I will start using it again once I stop being crazy. But the thing that I'm doing right now is so far beyond what Whoop recommends,

Speaker 2 (01:11:35):

Right? Right.

Speaker 1 (01:11:36):

I'm doing stuff that's completely unreasonable that nobody should do, but I feel like once I switch over to where I am doing it more like a normal obsessed human who just wants to get into really good shape, then whoop will be perfect for optimizing everything. But right now, everything I'm doing puts me into the strain over this, over that, and it's like I can't be thinking about that. All I need to be thinking about is hitting those 2,500 calories burned through exercise a day, which is insane. And so the Apple stuff that I'm doing just allows me to track it all and it doesn't tell me I'm fucking up. And so it's easier to keep my head in the game. I figured out that's why I stopped using Woof.

Speaker 2 (01:12:21):

That makes total sense. It's the exact reason why I like Whoop because for example, yesterday there's been a bunch of random things over the past few days that have led to a couple rough nights of sleep and just not at my peak. So yesterday I woke up and I was at like 25% recovery in the red, and the recommendation was achieve under it, I think it was 13 amount of strain. So under the number 13. So don't work out, don't push yourself today because you need to recover. Your heart needs to recover, your body needs to recover, your mind needs to recover. What's interesting is that I wouldn't have known that information from a vital standpoint. I would've just felt if I weren't using Whoop, I would've just felt kind of tired, but I probably would've still pushed myself.

Speaker 1 (01:13:16):

You stop being a pussy, fucking go do it. Right?

Speaker 2 (01:13:18):

Exactly. But now when I see this and I see what it means in terms of data, I'm like, alright, I can afford to go easy today. And it's funny because going easy today still meant that I literally got to exactly 13 on the strain level,

Speaker 1 (01:13:41):

Which is still a lot for most people.

Speaker 2 (01:13:44):

Sure. And obviously it's all relative, but it just means that I'm not going to overexert. But yesterday I still took an hour long walk with my dog at a fast pace. I still went in the ice barrel, I still went in the sauna. The only thing I didn't do was a very rigorous workout, but

(01:14:02):

Today my recovery is a little bit better and I'm going to fucking crush a workout. But what's interesting is I don't feel like I missed a day where I used to feel like if I didn't work out the day before, I'm giving myself a hard time because I probably could have pushed myself and I should have pushed myself and I'm a pussy for not doing it. Instead, it's like it's obvious to me based on this data that I needed to give myself a day of rest and that is what I should have been doing and I feel good about it and today I'm back to the grind and I'm going to hit it hard. So that's been part of the efficiency aspect of it. It's like having this data allows me to then decide what can be cut out and what can't be. But what's interesting is I've decided that the thing that can be cut out on a day-to-day basis is the actual exercise. Like doing a CrossFit workout or doing cardio or lifting weights. That is the thing that gets cut out because

(01:15:10):

The ice bath and the sauna and the breathwork that I do in concert with those practices fall into the reason why I'm doing all this shit anyway. And for me, it wasn't necessarily to hit a goal. Weight wasn't necessarily to, it's definitely not to get ripped or to be a bodybuilder. My focus, my goal is longevity, is maintaining good health is being in good shape. It's not getting sick. It's being able to perform at a high level. And not only do I find it based on just my own experience, how I feel after doing it, but there's a lot of information and data that shows that these practices help to improve your human optimization.

Speaker 1 (01:15:57):

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:15:58):

And that's why they're non-negotiables for me.

Speaker 1 (01:16:00):

That makes perfect sense. That's actually, like I said, that's how I look at it too. To me, it's like a list of what's probably going to kill me first or what's going to shorten my life the most. And weight was just glaring me in the face as the number one thing. And then also with losing weight, if you don't build muscle, you're going to look like a deflated potato, which I'm not okay with.

(01:16:30):

So that became my priority. But it seems like it's the same kind of priority. What's going to give you the best longevity and quality of life. That's why I'm actually looking forward to hitting the goal is so that I can, rather than eliminating something that's considered a morbidity than actually working to optimize things is very, very exciting. Let me just tell you that for people listening, woof is really, really great. It's basically this armband, you pay for a subscription, I think it's $30 a month and it tracks your shit. The only thing it doesn't track are things like steps. So if you want to track your steps and

Speaker 2 (01:17:10):

It doesn't track your caloric intake or anything like that either.

Speaker 1 (01:17:14):

Yeah, that kind of stuff. If you're into tracking calories and all that kind of stuff, it's not going to do that. But if you're looking to measure your sleep, measure how your heart's working, apparently your recovery, which is all very important stuff. So it's kind of like a deeper level of tracking. If all you want to do is track steps and calories, then you're fine with the Apple Watch, which is why I'm doing that because the WF doesn't have a GPS on it. So in this little device, I have the GPS, it can track every single one of my workouts, all of my calories. It still gives me my heart rate, it still tells me my sleep info. It's not as deep as whoop. But because all of those things that I'm actually trying to get are in one system, in one ecosystem, it just makes perfect sense. But for optimization, I don't think the Apple Watch is enough.

Speaker 2 (01:18:11):

Sure. I had a call recently with somebody who worked at Whoop just to learn more about it, to learn more about what they're doing. Part of the affiliate program that I'm a part of with them for me is to learn as much as I can about it before I start sharing it with people, which is why I still haven't really made too many posts trying to bring more people onto it yet, or talking about it more publicly than just sharing some data here and there. But I will be. But another thing that was really interesting was that the woman that I talked to, she pointed out that she uses it every day when she wakes up to look at her respiratory rate because,

(01:18:51):

So it measures your breathing overnight, it measures your breathing throughout the day, and they're able to actually identify cases of C with the measurements of the respiratory rate. So every day when she wakes up, she looks and sees if her respiratory rate is in the average or if it's accelerated, which could indicate that she might have COVID. Right. And I'm not saying that this is something that's going to last forever, obviously, but in times like this, these right now where you have a respiratory disease, having a respiratory tracker on you 24 hours a day isn't the worst idea if you're looking to make sure that you're on top of your health and staying safe and protected from that disease. But I just thought that was interesting because it was a whole nother data point that I wasn't really paying attention to. And what's so cool is there are so many different data points within this app that are beneficial to all sorts of different parts of your life. And I think that is what I like about it.

Speaker 1 (01:19:48):

It's a real life optimization tool.

Speaker 2 (01:19:50):

Exactly. And again, I don't know, I would probably, I don't know if I would use this if I were really trying to achieve a more extreme goal, like dropping a hundred plus pounds or something like that because

Speaker 1 (01:20:05):

200 baby,

Speaker 2 (01:20:06):

There you go. So if I were dropping 200 pounds, I probably would not use whoop, because you don't necessarily set the goal of losing 200 pounds. It more so just tells you, Hey,

Speaker 1 (01:20:18):

How you're doing?

Speaker 2 (01:20:19):

Yeah, this is your body. This is your health right now on a day-to-day basis, here's what you should and should not do if you want to feel good and actually maintain, again, that word optimization. So that's what I like about it.

Speaker 1 (01:20:33):

Yeah, it's fantastic for that. With an extreme goal, this kind of weight loss, you're not going to feel good

Speaker 3 (01:20:40):

No

Speaker 1 (01:20:40):

Matter what you do. And anyone who tells you you can feel good while doing it is full of shit. So you're not going to be optimized. I feel like weight loss is unhealthy, not feel like I know it is. How do I know it is? If you kept doing it, you would die. So if you were to keep on losing weight, even if it's at its slow rate, the slow quote, healthy way, you'd still die eventually

Speaker 2 (01:21:05):

From

Speaker 1 (01:21:05):

Malnutrition. So by definition is not healthy. And I think that I've never experienced a way of doing it where you actually feel good or optimized or full energy. Its you have to want it so fucking bad that you're willing to be in constant misery and feeling shaky and just weak and

Speaker 2 (01:21:28):

Operating at a deficit,

Speaker 1 (01:21:30):

Operating at a goddamn deficit for months or years. But if what you want is to actually feel good and optimized in your life, then a tool like that is phenomenal.

Speaker 3 (01:21:42):

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:21:42):

It's just about what you want. And so yeah, so earlier in the year I was trying to do everything, and this is something that I see musicians and producers do too. I see entrepreneurs do it. So I don't think it's specific to just those of us trying to improve our health. I think this is, I call it the entrepreneur's curse, but I think it's pretty common with people who get obsessed with achieving something. And it's because they can do so many things As an entrepreneur. I bet there's a hundred other businesses you could start. Maybe you don't have the time to start a hundred other businesses, but if you were to, I bet if we sat down for a weekend, we could come up with 10 different businesses. We could start together where at least two of them would do well. And I'm sure you could do that with Finn. You could do that with a bunch of other people. You could do that on your own. I bet you there's a hundred different businesses you could start if you wanted to. But as well as that would be stupid to even entertain, right?

(01:22:43):

You have to pick a few and go with those and give them the chance to grow. Same with musicianship. You're learning an instrument, yet you could learn a little bit of every single genre and technique under the sun, or you could go for the thing that you're going to be really, really good at. That's going to make all the difference in the world for your life. And I think that with these fitness goals, it's the same thing. Yeah, I want to be awesome at swimming and running and CrossFit sounds cool, but I want to be a bodybuilder. Oh God, I got to be fucking flexible. So yoga too, and man, it would be awesome to finish P 90 X again, but insanity. I got to finish insanity too. It just goes on and on and on and on reality, I just got to think about, I just need to do a lot of cardio. Lose weight, lift weights, build muscle, the end.

Speaker 2 (01:23:36):

Yeah. Well, again, it all depends on your availability and your time and your goals, right? We've talked about this. I have a buddy named Eric who he's been very successful as an entrepreneur. Guy's a savage. He's a savage. He's been very successful as an entrepreneur, which now allows him to literally train to train for Iron Man to Decathlons every day of his life. And that's what he does. And he does all those things you're talking about. He does yoga, he does breath work, he does sauna work, he does ice work, he's doing CrossFit, he's doing, I mean, the workouts the motherfucker does on a daily basis blows my mind. I don't understand. But the dude, he's capable and able and crushes it and is in amazing health and has done four Ironman races at this point and has another one coming up, or at least I know is going to be continuing to do 'em.

(01:24:31):

But that's his goal, and he's built his life around that. And there's a lot of people that we know who that's what they spend their time doing. And I got news for you. I love my job. I love being an entrepreneur. But at some point, if we did get the businesses to a point where I didn't need to be there every day and they would just run completely by themselves, I probably would end up going down that road. I probably would say, well, in a day now, I'll probably spend somewhere in the range of two to three hours on health and fitness. I would say that's a fair amount of time. But if I had more time to do it, I probably spend five to six hours on fitness on a daily basis.

Speaker 1 (01:25:18):

Same here,

Speaker 2 (01:25:19):

And would absolutely use every minute of that. But again, it just depends on what you want to do and where your life is and what you can fit in. But I think at the end of the day, if there is a message in this, it's like even if you only have 30 minutes to do it, fucking take advantage of that 30 minutes to optimize yourself as a human and figure out what thing it's going to be. Because it's different for everybody. Some people might choose to spend that 30 minutes doing yoga. Like you said, some might choose to do breath work, some might choose to meditate, some might choose to go on a run, lift weights, ride a bike, get in a sauna, whatever it is, it's so important. If you care about yourself and your life and others, then you should be thinking about it from the standpoint of I need to be my best healthiest self so that I can be my best advocate and friend and husband and brother to everybody else in my life for a long time.

(01:26:20):

And that drives me. That's why I obsess over this because, okay, not to deviate really quick, but there's somebody in my life who right now is going through a rough patch. They've gained some weight, they feel unmotivated. And I'm not saying this in a way to demean them in any way. I just am at a point in my life where I literally can't fucking relate to that because it's so obvious to me for myself, why even when I don't want to, I'm going to push myself to go get in that fucking ice barrel or go lift weights or ride a bike because I want to live. I want to live healthy, I want to live long, and I want to be there for people. And that's what drives me. And it's just so obvious. Sometimes people need to find that reason. They need to find that why. And it's not always as obvious, but I think the thing you have to do is just start trying things. I think we talked about this last time. Just try something.

Speaker 3 (01:27:18):

I agree.

Speaker 2 (01:27:19):

Try one of these things and see if it makes you feel better. And then if it makes you feel better, look into why it makes you feel better and then keep doing it and then try something else and see how that makes you feel and learn about that. And it's like, I would say people ask me all the time, where should I go to research this stuff? It's like, well, the first thing you should do is just try it. Maybe do a little bit of research, but then go try it before you research it.

Speaker 1 (01:27:43):

10% research or 90% action.

Speaker 2 (01:27:45):

Exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:27:46):

Yeah. Two things. One, if you only have the 30 minutes, do anything. Whether you want to get better at an instrument too, you only have 30 minutes. The worst thing you can do with those 30 minutes is look at the million things you could do and get discouraged and do nothing. So the best thing you can do is pick something and go,

Speaker 2 (01:28:10):

This

Speaker 1 (01:28:10):

Happened to me yesterday. I actually ended up working out five hours yesterday, but I thought I was only a good 30 minutes. I overslept. I had a podcast starting in an hour and I had a bunch of shit for the rest of the day. And it was like, this is the only time I have to work out. And I started to get negative about it. I was like, fuck it. Just going to do 30 minutes on the elliptical. That way I know I'm not going to be late and I'll deal with the rest of the day. Something ended up falling through later and I just worked out for a few hours and it was great. But while I was on the elliptical for those 30 minutes, I was like, yeah, this is good. This is really, really good. The way that I'm going to continue being successful is by doing what I can when I can no matter what and what you just said about people finding their reason why.

(01:28:59):

So I get a lot of people hitting me up. I was kind of hesitant about posting some of the physical transformation photos, but I feel like I sent one of them to you. I sent one to Finn, I sent one to a girl I was seeing and everyone's reaction was crazy. And then Finn started telling me, you need to post this. And my brother was like, you need to post this. And I realized that when I posted one of those where I was flexing, I wrote that I wasn't going to post it. And some people might've thought that that was a humble brag sort of thing, but I really was not going to post it.

Speaker 3 (01:29:35):

I

Speaker 1 (01:29:36):

Felt super uncomfortable, but then I did. And the reaction that came in was insane. The amount of dms I started getting about that stuff was like maybe more than any I've gotten for anything else I've done, which it's not surprising, but it's also kind of surprising. And where I'm going with this is a lot of people have hit me up asking how to do it because they've gained a lot of weight. And the thing that strikes me is I know they already know how I get that this is inspiring, but at the same time, it's like exactly how to lose weight. What's missing isn't knowing how to lose weight is you're missing a good reason why, obviously because the thing that changed for me was having a reason, figuring out a reason why, and the reason why being stronger than the pain of going through it,

(01:30:30):

If the pain of going through it is stronger than your reason why you're not going to do anything. And that's not true for just weight loss. It's true for literally anything you want to do that requires some sacrifice. I feel like if you don't know how to proceed, if you're wondering how to get started on this kind of journey, the first thing you need to do is figure out why. You just said you want to live and you want to be there for all the important things in your life. But to someone else, say your friend who sounds like he's going through a depression patch, that might not be a strong enough. Why? Because when you're depressed, you don't see things that way. So maybe there's something else that could seem superficial, so don't want to admit it. Maybe there's a girl he wants to impress, whatever the reason why is people need to find it and it's a completely personal thing, and they need to be honest with what their reason is. I know that some entrepreneurs have a hard time admitting that they want the Ferrari or something like that because you're not supposed to be in it for the money or whatever. But then other entrepreneurs will be like, no, I want the fucking Ferrari, and that motivates me and I'm not going to apologize for it.

(01:31:43):

Nor should they. My point being, whatever your why is, that's a hundred percent personal and you should find what it is. And when you do find what it is, even if it's embarrassing or seems shallow, you don't need to tell anybody, but you need to be aware of it because if you're not aware of it, you're going to have a real hard time moving forward. You don't need to hit up someone that lost weight and ask them what they did. You know what they did?

Speaker 2 (01:32:08):

They

Speaker 1 (01:32:09):

Stopped eating as much and they moved more. That's it.

Speaker 2 (01:32:12):

And it is important to find the why. I mean, it's paramount to this, but again, to what you're saying, I mean it can be any small thing. It doesn't need to be this big grand gesture of, for me, it's wanting to live as long as I can, as healthy as I can. I mean, for me, that's the best reason. But it's not going to be every piece that's you. That's me. And we may have addressed this before too, but now that I'm so much further along in this process, there's still one thing on a daily basis that continues to push me to do these things. And that is the feeling of accomplishment after I've achieved the daily goals.

Speaker 3 (01:32:51):

And

Speaker 2 (01:32:52):

It's frustrating because today I'm standing at the bottom of the mountain today I have not exercised or done any of the things that I know I'm going to do. And it's fucking daunting right now. It's like, God, I know I'm going to put myself through shit. I'm going to be out of breath. I'm going to be sweating. I'm going to be tired. I'm going to work hard. I'm going to get in an ice bath that I don't fucking want to get into. And it's freezing outside now. And it's like all these things, it's like a mountain of shit I don't want to do, but the reason why I'm going to do it is because of the why. But on a more micro level, or I should say on a day-to-day level, I know how good the feeling is every day when I come inside after getting out of the ice bath, after my last dip, after the sauna, and I'm done for the day, I know how fucking good it feels to be like, Hey, I set these goals for myself today and I fucking nailed it and I did it and I got through it and I feel great.

(01:33:58):

And yeah, that's the best feeling that you can have. And what a fucking cool gift that is to give to yourself every day, the gift of a challenge that enables you to overcome hardship. And you hear about this all the time, and I see people like Ben Greenfield write about this stuff, but it is funny, when I read it, I'm like, Hey, no, no, this is true. And yeah, you're claiming to be an authority, which he is on this, but it's like, wait a minute. I'm not reading this being impressed by it. I'm reading this being like, yes, you're right. And I know this better than anybody. I don't know if that makes sense what I'm trying to say, but it's like because

Speaker 1 (01:34:40):

It's your life,

Speaker 2 (01:34:41):

Right? I see people talking about how getting in an ice bath or crushing a workout or whatever it is that's hard to do on a daily basis, going through those hardships train you to face other hardships in ways that are way easier to handle. So now when I face a situation that's scary or full of anxiety or something I really don't want to do, those feelings are still there. It's like I'm anxious or I don't want to do it, or I'm scared or I'm turned off or I'm fucking annoyed.

Speaker 1 (01:35:15):

You can deal with it way better.

Speaker 2 (01:35:17):

I can deal with it way better because I just think about the conquering of the goals on a daily basis and how hard those are, and it's like, well, this is just another one of those things. And if I literally get through it every day, why wouldn't I get through this? So do it.

Speaker 1 (01:35:34):

It's important to say that this shit's hard every day. There's very few days where I start working out and I'm like, yeah, this is awesome. Or where I go and do it and don't have a voice that's like, yeah, I don't want to do this today. And I remember seeing David Goggins even saying that there's multiple days that he'll just walk by his shoes, his running shoes for two hours and just try to think of every reason not to do it, and then he does it anyways. And I think that's important to put out there just because I think I got hit up by someone who listened to our last podcast and we intimidated them, A friend of mine, and I was like, you shouldn't feel intimidated, dude. You're not us. And also, if these aren't your goals, you shouldn't feel like you need to have these goals, but if these are your goals, you shouldn't be intimidated because we hate doing this stuff as much as you think you do.

Speaker 2 (01:36:31):

Oh yeah,

Speaker 3 (01:36:32):

This

Speaker 1 (01:36:32):

Stuff is not fun at times it can be, but it sucks straight up.

Speaker 2 (01:36:37):

We're not superhuman just looking at these situations like, ha, I can accomplish this. It's like, no, dude. Okay, so yesterday I just built a skier in the basement, so I got the concept two skier machine, which is, I don't know if you're familiar with it, but

Speaker 1 (01:36:54):

I have no idea what you're talking

Speaker 2 (01:36:55):

About. I'll send you some video of it, but it's a cardio for the most part, cardiovascular machine, similar to a rower like a row machine, but it's one where you stand up and you pull the cords down, you're skiing. You've probably have seen people do that before.

Speaker 1 (01:37:10):

I think so, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:37:11):

Okay, so it was like a thousand bucks plus shipping to order this piece of workout equipment for my basement, and it comes and I'm excited to build it and set it up, and I set it up and I'm looking at it. It's like, cool. I'm looking at it, thinking to myself, this isn't something I'm going to eat. This isn't a fun thing, like a drum set that I'm going to go play. This is a fucking torture device that I just paid a thousand dollars for and I built it in my basement and now it's here looking at me in the face saying, are you going to come suffer today?

(01:37:49):

I'm spending all this time and money and effort into building this sort of utopia for myself of torture. That's what I call it. It's like my utopian torture set up, but the utopian aspect of it comes after the work is done. And that's an amazing lesson for anybody. And again, to reinforce what you said, this shit is very hard. It's always a challenge every day, and I always try to, there's a part of my mind that's like, you don't need to do this today. Just have a light day for yourself. Go easy. But I overcome that every single day because I know that I have to. I guess the point I'm getting at is if you find the why and you go back to that always, no matter how hard it is, you will figure out a way to commit yourself to it on a daily basis. However, having something like whoop that helps me track the why from a different lens has been so good at the efficiency aspect of this because it tells me when I'm, it tells me when I need to take a break, and again, I'm not taking a break because I'm being lazy. I'm taking a break because

Speaker 1 (01:39:17):

You need to recover,

Speaker 2 (01:39:18):

And it's still answering the why question. One of the things that I've tried to do to make it so it isn't as daunting as we kind of talked about is I've tried to really streamline the process on a day-to-day basis so that it's not taking up six hours of my time. It really is taking somewhere between two to three hours of my time, but it's all combined in that sense. Now, let's say it's about to be three o'clock, four, I go turn my sauna on, so it starts heating up because it's cold outside. It needs a good 45 minutes to heat up. So in that 45 minutes or hour long, I'm doing a fucking workout. I'm busting my ass, sweating my ass off, hitting the strain goals for the day, whatever I got to do. And then as soon as that's done and the sauna is still warming up, that's when I get into the ice barrel.

(01:40:12):

And when I'm in the ice barrel, I'm focusing on my breath work. So I'm combining ice, the cold thermogenesis with breath work. I get out of that, I go straight into the sauna. My sauna soak is typically 40 minutes to 60 minutes. When that's done, I do one more dip in the ice bow to cool off and I'm done for the day, and I can do all that in two hours if I have to. Probably even less if I'm really efficient and cut down the times of things. But an optimal training protocol for myself now has been optimized down to that period of time, whereas it used to be wake up, cold shower, then breath work, then maybe a workout or two, then more breath work, then another cold shower, and it was all dispersed throughout the day. Now I've figured out how to combine these things so that I can not only be optimizing myself, but I've optimized the process on a daily basis. So it's like in some ways the challenges don't get any easier, but I know what to expect and I know how much time I need to get dedicated by day to accomplish it, which does help in forcing me to go and do it, which ultimately leaves me feeling incredibly accomplished no matter what else happens in that day.

Speaker 1 (01:41:42):

Now, do you think that part of why you're able to do it so efficiently is in part because you did spend the six hours a day on it? I feel like if you've never done this stuff before, breath work or sauna work or the cold or worked out like crazy and you're like, I'm going to do it all like mat now in two hours and combine this stuff. I'm not saying that's not possible, but I think you might not do every aspect of it. I think part of it was because you spent the time doing just the breath work, you learned how to do breath work to where you're not learning how to do it anymore, you're just doing it. So now you can combine it with something else.

Speaker 2 (01:42:27):

Yeah, no, absolutely. You have to dedicate to each particular practice. And when we talk about breath work, we're talking about practicing multiple different disciplines and multiple different techniques. And even now when I'm in the ice barrel, there's a typical protocol for breathing that I go to, but depending on how I'm feeling that day and maybe even what whoop tells me, there's probably different methods of breathing that I'll focus on a day-to-day basis. Some days I'm doing really specific box breathing, for example, where I'm doing 10 count in hold for 10, 10 count out hold for 10, and that's all I'm doing. Then there's other days where I'll do the Wim Hof style of breathing, and then the one that I do most often nowadays is CO2 training. So really working on maintaining my CO2 tolerance in my body.

Speaker 1 (01:43:27):

So is that just holding your breath

Speaker 2 (01:43:28):

Essentially? It's like a stair step up of ways to breathe in hold, breathe out slowly and maintain the CO2 levels in your body with good tolerance. So the point I'm getting at is I would never know about all these methods or know how to do them proficiently if I didn't focus on breathing as much as I had. I wouldn't know how to read my body in the ice and say some nights, some days I can easily go for a long time in very cold weather, in very cold water. But then there's some days where it's like, yeah, I can read my body right now and I got to get out in seven minutes just today I don't have it in me to do 10 or I don't have it in me to do 15 or whatever it is. So the experience makes you better at optimizing to that point. So yes, you're right in that I've made it streamlined now, but I would never have been able to do it like this had I not done each thing with a lot of attention and focus.

Speaker 1 (01:44:34):

I've got a similar thing going on, even though I do massive amounts of cardio hours wise, obviously as you know, you can't just do the same thing all the time or you're going to fuck yourself up.

Speaker 3 (01:44:45):

So

Speaker 1 (01:44:45):

One of the things that I did earlier this year was do a bunch of different types of cardios doing biking, swimming, walking, walking with the vest on elliptical P 90 X style stuff,

Speaker 2 (01:44:57):

Which is amazing. It makes it more fun too.

Speaker 1 (01:45:00):

It makes it more fun. But now the way that it works great is now I know what to switch to so that I can keep going and not hurt myself. I know that I'm going to hurt myself at some point, and I have hurt myself a few times this year, but the idea is to not hurt myself so bad that I have to stop, and so I need to listen to myself. So there's only so much, for instance, that I can walk with that vest on because it starts hurting my shoulders. And so then if my shoulder and neck doesn't feel right, then what am I going to skip a shoulder workout if it has to happen that day? So now I know exactly for instance, when to do which cardio workouts and for how long so that I can keep the train going, and that's something I didn't know before. So I'm still doing a shit ton of hours, but there are some days where I know for a fact that I need to just walk,

Speaker 2 (01:45:58):

So

Speaker 1 (01:45:58):

I'll walk 10 miles or something. It's not like I'm fucking around or I don't have as much time, and all I can do is walk, but I'm not doing a shoulder workout. So that's when the vest comes on and I always figure out a way around it and my ankles start hurting bike. There's always a way, but only because I spent so much time doing all of the individual things and then getting obsessed with them and realizing what my limits are, not limits in terms of fitness that keeps changing, but limits in terms of how to know when I'm about to fuck myself up and how much recovery I need from certain types of activity.

Speaker 2 (01:46:39):

Well, that's a really important thing to share because I think that if I could guess, that's probably really the underlying part of the question. When people ask you how did you do it? Everybody knows if you want to lose weight, you have to be at a caloric deficit. Everybody knows you need to move to lose weight. But I think the things that are unknown is the how in that aspect, and that's really important for people to hear, which is neither of us necessarily knew exactly how to do the things that we were trying to do in an optimal way for ourselves to where we get results and we also can not hurt ourselves or do it in a way that actually makes it doable on a daily basis. But the whole point is we both did our research, which anybody can do. You can find the disciplines that are of interest to you out there, and you don't need to do a ton of research, as you said, 10% research, 90% actually going and doing it.

(01:47:47):

So do enough to learn and get enough to be able to practice the basics of whatever you want to do and just try that and then try something else and see how those two things work together, and if they work well together, then you learn how to use those things together and how not to use those things or to not use those things together rather. But that's the question that I think is hard for people, or I should say that's the point that's hard for people to wrap their heads around because it implies so much time and investment.

(01:48:19):

It takes a long time, it takes a lot of effort and commitment, but it doesn't feel like a long time. Again, if you are actually giving yourself the challenge every day and feeling the elation that you can feel when you accomplish the daily goal, and I just can't stress that enough, try a bunch of things and actually do them and at the end of it, see how you feel. And I don't mean physically how you feel like, oh, I just ran a mile. How do I feel? Oh, well, obviously you're tired or you're beat up or you're breathing heavy. I mean mentally from a feeling of self-worth and accomplishment, how do you feel if you do something that was hard and scary? It is without question that your answer is going to be, I feel good because I fucking did something that I thought was really hard and maybe I didn't do it perfectly, but I did it and now I've proven to myself that I can do it once.

(01:49:30):

I'm going to do it again, or I did it, I didn't like that. It's not for me, but I'm going to try something else and I'm going to do that because I was able to do this. I've proven to myself that it's possible. And I think that is the thing that occurs when you start doing this shit that helps you to then want to optimize it, that gets you addicted to it, that gets you obsessed with it, that forces you to then actually make it a non-negotiable for you. And that's where even the why comes into it. You can start without the why. As long as you know that you're going to find that and you're focused on finding that. I think it's more important to just start doing something and figure out what it means to you as you're going, than agonize over what's most important and never actually start doing something.

Speaker 1 (01:50:26):

Also, one thing that's great about accomplishing the daily goal and overcoming things is in addition to everything you're saying, it builds up your ability to push back against yourself.

Speaker 2 (01:50:39):

You

Speaker 1 (01:50:40):

Might start thinking about things like there might be a situation coming up where I know you talked about earlier, you took the trough and you put it at the beach house. So you start to realize that you have already made it work through all these different scenarios. So if you were to push out on a future scenario or something that's coming up that's on you, that's not on the scenario and you don't let yourself get away with it, and because you have this track record of not having let yourself get away with it, so you start to spot your own excuses and just not put up with them,

Speaker 2 (01:51:18):

Which

Speaker 1 (01:51:18):

Is pretty great,

Speaker 2 (01:51:19):

And that honestly can only come through the experience. Yeah, but that's the best part about it.

Speaker 1 (01:51:25):

You can't fake that.

Speaker 2 (01:51:26):

No, you can't. And what's so cool is as you're focused on that part, then you go and you look in the mirror and it's like, whoa, I look healthier. I've dropped weight or holy shit, I have more color to my face because blood flow is better and I'm healthier, my skin is better. And there's all these physical changes that occur when you put yourself through these things and I don't know, your relationships are better. The way you sleep is probably better overall. I think everything is breathing, everything is just better. So it's like, I don't know, I guess to round this out, nobody should feel intimidated by this because there's no right or wrong time to start doing this, and you literally can't compare what is right for you to what's right for somebody else. In this sense, look, I look at Eric Hinman and I'm like, guy's a fucking beast.

(01:52:21):

But if I let what he does every day intimidate or discourage me, I would never do anything because there's no fucking way I will ever be capable of doing what he's capable of doing. And that's because we're two completely different people with different goals, different bodies, different mindsets, different everything. We're just completely different. We're built differently in every way and that's the beauty of it. Instead of being intimidated by it, I take inspiration from that and I say, okay, how can I apply that mentality, the mindset to what is important to me? And that's what's so cool about it. That's what I get so fired up about. That's why I follow these people and befriend people like that because I want that inspiration and I want to, it's why I talk to you about it. It's like we have completely different goals, but when we share these methods, it's like, okay, cool. I'm going to fucking try this. It is working for a, this sounds fucking cool. I want to see how it applies to me and vice versa. It's inspiration, not intimidation. And that's how you really should look at it.

Speaker 1 (01:53:27):

I agree.

Speaker 2 (01:53:27):

And the more you do it, the more that'll become apparent to you. The more you actually practice or try some of these things, the more apparent it will become that it is. In fact, there's a ton of inspiration around if you want it, if you look for it that way.

Speaker 1 (01:53:41):

I will say too that if it's not in your nature to be extreme about things, you shouldn't feel bad about that either.

Speaker 2 (01:53:48):

Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (01:53:49):

There is the minimum recommended amount of exercise that people should do, which is 150 minutes a cardio a week, which is not that much. And if that's all you do, that's great. You don't have to be an obsessive maniac like us.

Speaker 2 (01:54:03):

Right. I remember reading Tim Ferris talking about the minimal viable dose of anything. That's great. Do the minimum viable dose you don't have. Yeah. You don't have to do the shit that you and I are doing or that people that are even more crazy than us are doing. Just do the minimum viable dose. Figure out what that is for you, figure out what that is for the particular exercise or practice and just do that. Even that will provide a huge improvement in your optimization.

Speaker 1 (01:54:32):

Absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:54:33):

It's tough stuff, man, because when you talk about this, I don't come off as, I don't want to come off intimidating when I think about the fitness industry as a whole, and then I think about our industry, which are musicians and people that are more creative, those things typically at least previously never really mixed. I wasn't a jock and I was intimidated by jocks when I was younger by my friends who were really good at sports. I was never really good at sports. I had my talents, but sports wasn't one of 'em. And I think nowadays a lot of fitness brands, their marketing really is geared towards people that are already into fitness because they're showing these people that are in amazing shape. They're intimidating. They're speaking to people that will get fired up about that. They're not speaking to people who will get intimidated by that. So when we talk about this stuff, I don't want it to come off that way. I want it to come off as empowering or inspiring.

Speaker 1 (01:55:42):

Well, I think it is, by the way. I don't think that overall what we're doing is intimidating from the response I'm getting. These are the episodes that people actually tend to appreciate the most out of this podcast. For instance, these get a lot more positive response than I'll have some legendary mixer on and we'll talk about that time they worked with that legendary artist. I enjoy doing these more anyways.

Speaker 3 (01:56:09):

Sure.

Speaker 1 (01:56:09):

Maybe that's part of it, but only a few people have said that it intimidates them. But I think by and large people really do appreciate us talking about it. But I do think though that since a lot of people listening aren't like our friends in real life, they don't actually know us. It's hard to imagine that people that you follow or look up to or whatever are real people. Sometimes this is something that it's normal for me and you to befriend people that we look up to. We do it all the time or people that we're inspired by, but I actually don't think that's a very normal behavior. And so I think for a lot of people, the people that they follow or listen to whatever consume content from still kind of inhabit this, I don't know what it is, this fake person spot, not a real human who suffers through the same types of hardships as they do.

(01:57:05):

They kind of more idealize people they look up to because they don't know them as real people. And so I think it's just important for people listening to realize that, yeah, we're real people too, and this stuff sucks. It'll suck for you and it sucks for us. I didn't used to want to share this kind of stuff. It wasn't until people told me I should be that I changed my mind about it. But we're sharing it because people clearly want to be inspired in this sort of way. Something out there is missing for people when it comes to their lifestyles. I think it's almost like this subconscious sickness or something that kind of affects modern society because I think modern society is a lot more sedentary than we're wired to be. And I think it's kind of this universal need to be inspired into action.

(01:58:00):

And that's why people relate to this stuff. And that's why I think it's a good thing to be talking about it. If people who have kind of figured it out or are going on the path to figuring it out should share it with other people because people need it, in my opinion. The obesity rates, for instance, and the amount of diseases out there that are lifestyle based, just look at the numbers on that. That's your proof that people do need help in this department. And so there's the help from the medical community and the help from expert experts. That's great. But I think also people need to hear it from those of us who are not actual experts in this who have just decided to fix our own lives and our own health. And to hear what that's like when you don't have a degree in this one. You're not blessed with 10 out of 10 Olympic athlete genetics or something like that.

Speaker 3 (01:58:56):

Because

Speaker 1 (01:58:56):

Some of those people you see in the fitness industry, they'll be selling a product or trying to inspire people. What they're leaving out is that they're on tons of gear and also that they have the most one in 10 million amazing genetics possible. And you'll never look like them because it's kind of like looking at Brad Pitt and it's like dude's a freak in nature. Lots of these people are freaks in nature. And that can be very intimidating to people who don't understand the amount of drugs a lot of these people take. And they also don't understand how rare they are. So it's important I think for those of us who, like you said, you were not a jock. Neither was I. We should be putting it out there that it's totally possible to at the very least, improve your life.

Speaker 2 (01:59:45):

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:59:46):

It's not just reserved for those freaks, more power to 'em, but it's not just for them.

Speaker 2 (01:59:51):

And it doesn't matter where you come from. It doesn't matter what you were classified as when you were growing up. Again, I never played sports, or if I did, I couldn't stand 'em. I was not a jock. I'm still not an athlete. Yeah. Drumming is athletic, and you could argue that drummers are athletes or musicians are athletes with the amount they exert themselves. And that's a whole nother topic. But the point is, I'm not your typical jock and like you said, neither are you. And that's,

Speaker 1 (02:00:19):

I'm not shred.

Speaker 2 (02:00:20):

Yeah. That's just the method that I want, the message that I want to get across. It's like I hope that you and I are relatable to other people in that sense because to your point, we just chose to make decisions and take steps to try to make ourselves better for whatever the reason. And I think my reasons, the more I talk about it and think about it, it's like there's a lot of reasons. It's not just longevity. It's like on a day-to-day basis, I want to feel good. I want to be happy. I want to, there's enough shit that we all go through on a day-to-day basis that the more things you can do to set yourself up for happiness, success on a day-to-day basis, the better. And the thing you got to realize is none of that is going to be easy, but it will be well worth it if you get through it. And I think that's an important thing to hopefully have people walk away with.

Speaker 1 (02:01:14):

Have you ever seen the movie Zero Dark 30?

Speaker 2 (02:01:16):

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Speaker 1 (02:01:18):

Okay. So do you remember this one scene where there's lots of scenes in offices, but there's one scene where they're in an office and the boss comes in and basically rips them a new fucking asshole and is basically like, we're making no progress. Nothing is happening. We're losing.

Speaker 2 (02:01:38):

Is that when they're on the whiteboard and they're marking off the amount of days,

Speaker 1 (02:01:44):

One of those whiteboards

Speaker 2 (02:01:45):

Scenes,

Speaker 1 (02:01:47):

And he says something that has stuck with me. He says, there is nobody else. We're it. There's no special team out there that's going to come in and save us and do the job. We're it. It's only us. And if we don't do it, it's not going to happen. And I feel that way about making your life better and any of these things. No one's going to do this stuff for you. As much as we might like to think that someone's going to come in and save us, or there's someone who's going to give us the answer or something like that. At the end of the day, none of this changed for me until I just decided I'm doing it. And in some ways, that's the hardest and the easiest thing to realize. But it sucks, but you have to do it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:02:32):

And

Speaker 1 (02:02:32):

It's only,

Speaker 2 (02:02:33):

I hope people realize that you should be looked at as an inspiration in this area because at the time that you decided to really do this, you were in a place where it was a dangerous lifestyle. And I don't mean that

Speaker 1 (02:02:47):

I could have just died.

Speaker 2 (02:02:48):

And I don't mean that in any sort of insulting way to you at all. It's just

Speaker 1 (02:02:53):

No, it's not insulting. It's the truth.

Speaker 2 (02:02:57):

Yeah. I mean, so how many people out there are where you were that were not taking the steps and just kind of giving up and saying, well, this is just what it's going to be, but it's like, no, it does not have to.

Speaker 1 (02:03:09):

Well, I had those thoughts too. I definitely had, this is what it's going to be forever. And also how the fuck did this end up this? This is not how shit was supposed to go, but I have those thoughts. But then also, yeah, it's seems like such an insurmountable thing that I'd be like, is this really my fate? It is really going to just be like this forever. And it would be very easy to just say, yes, it's going to be like this forever. And nobody can change that for you other than you.

Speaker 2 (02:03:44):

Well, that's powerful shit. But look, I mean, you made the decision to do it and you probably realized the obsession with it as you kept doing it. It wasn't like, I think a lot of people too are probably like, well, you have that obsessive personality that when you decide you're going to do something, you just go all out and you're not going to submit until you reach your goal. And it's like, well, at the outset, no, you don't feel that way. You feel discouraged, you feel daunted. You feel fucking scared and anxious and you don't want to do it. But again, you do it for enough time. You force yourself to do it for enough time that after a while, it becomes the obsession. You still have to force yourself on a daily basis, but it's a lot less force that needs to be applied in order to reach a much more powerful goal at the end of the day.

Speaker 1 (02:04:45):

One thing that people are missing when they look at stuff like this online, in my story in particular, they're not seeing how many times I fucked up along the way, and they're also not understanding how much time it took. So I can say it's taken since December of 2017, right after that URM summit you came to,

Speaker 3 (02:05:06):

It

Speaker 1 (02:05:06):

Was literally the week after that. That's when this started.

Speaker 3 (02:05:09):

Just

Speaker 1 (02:05:09):

Think back to how long ago that was, and I'm still going, and I have definitely fucked up a few times along the way, and nobody noticed the first a hundred pounds. Nobody even fucking noticed. It was hard for me to notice too. So I saw it on the scale, but I still looked like garbage and felt like garbage. And so that in and of itself was discouraging and nobody believed me that I was going to do it, and nobody noticed that I had made any changes. And so there was zero positive feedback coming in, very little feedback from myself. And that's the part that when I post a picture of how I look now, and people are like, wow, that's amazing. How did you do it so quickly? Or how did you do it? It's like, yeah, I can tell you how I did it, but you weren't paying attention a year and a half ago or two years ago when I had already lost 80 pounds,

Speaker 3 (02:06:03):

Which

Speaker 1 (02:06:03):

Is a lot for, it's a normal person. Nobody even, nobody noticed. And so it's hard to communicate exactly how much goes into this because I think people have a hard time understanding the concept of long periods of time. But I fucked up several times along the way. I've had to renew the effort every single time. However, the big, big difference now versus three years ago is now I'm getting the positive feedback from the world that I couldn't get before and the positive feedback from looking in the mirror and the positive feedback from wearing clothes I want to wear. And so I have all this evidence now from the person I'm seeing to, like I said, the clothes I'm wearing to the reaction I'm getting online to who's asking me about it, all that stuff. So that right there, I count it as evidence that I've done the right thing.

(02:07:02):

And so that huge hopeless feeling, it doesn, it doesn't have the opportunity to gain the kind of foothold it had before because before I had all the evidence in the world that it wouldn't work, and then it was hopeless. So really what I'm trying to say is it's going to suck either way, but the more you do this stuff, the more you'll actually, like you said, you'll look in the mirror and you'll be like, wow, I have more color in my face, or whatever it is you're going for. You'll start to get actual results, tangible results in the world, which will show you that you're doing a good job. And that right there will help add fuel to the Y. It's like an accelerant almost. And so that's why it's not as hard as it used to be. Finding ways to make it harder a maniac.

Speaker 2 (02:07:51):

Well, that's what you'll do. I mean, that's the thing. Everybody will do that. When you get this far down that road and you're doing it every day, you start to find ways to make it harder for yourself. It is literally why I bought a rowing machine at a ski er and building a rack in my basement and building a home gym. It's like I want to make it really hard for myself and not give myself the chance to make any excuses. It's like, oh, well, I can't go to the gym. Well wait, wait, wait, wait. You literally have every piece of gear you possibly need. Just go

Speaker 1 (02:08:21):

Downstairs

Speaker 2 (02:08:22):

In your house. What's your excuse? Now? That's the fun part about it is that's a maniacal kind of fun because you start to realize, oh, I'm a sick person in a good way. I keep making this harder for myself. But it's because you start craving the challenge. It's why when I get into 60 degree water, I'm like, I need 50 degree water, and when I get into 50 degree water, I'm like, I need 40 degree water. When I get into 40 degree water, I'm like, this needs to be in the thirties. It it's never, obviously you hit a wall with it where it becomes enough because it's just kind of insane at some point, but

Speaker 1 (02:09:00):

You hit the limits of human endurance or something.

Speaker 2 (02:09:03):

Exactly. But you start to really push yourself, and that is something that you can't quantify or put a meter on, because I just think people that go down this road that start to try improving themselves will eventually reach this point where they can just laugh about it and laugh at themselves in a way, it's like, man, look at where I was before. Look at where I am now. Look at the challenges that I'm forcing myself to face versus how hard I thought it was just to get up and walk down the street. That's the fun of this. It's

Speaker 1 (02:09:38):

Crazy.

Speaker 2 (02:09:39):

Yeah, that's the fun part where you look back and it's like, yeah, I'm a totally fucking different person when it comes to this shit now. And you can be proud of that is the point.

Speaker 1 (02:09:46):

That's actually a very real thing. There was a time period in 2017 where walking around the block was hard, and now I've mentioned the vest. The vest is 40 pounds and you can adjust them.

(02:09:58):

So when I first got it, I only put in 20 because mastering engineer Brad Blackwood, who lost 80 pounds or something and now is a Rucker, was like, just trust me. You don't want to put in a huge amount of weight. You're going to hurt yourself. So anyways, I worked up to the 40. At first, it was like, I can only do two miles in this. Now I'm doing eight miles in it, and now I'm like, man, this shit's not enough. I need to find an 80 pound bag or something. It kind of never ends once you start going down that path. It's funny too, man, the excuse that I've heard from a lot of people during COVID times is the gyms closed down. I've made a point of combating that excuse. Now, I'm not trying to say that I think everybody has the means to buy everything that we've bought.

(02:10:48):

We're in fortunate positions financially, and I appreciate that. However, that said, I have traveled a few times during COVID. There was one time where I just started getting massive horrible cabin fever, and so I just went to a hotel for a week a mile away just because I could not handle being stuck any longer. So yeah, I've been out of town a couple times and in a hotel another time, and the workouts didn't stop. I just did P 90 X with the fitness bands, and it also didn't stop me from going outside and walking or running. I wasn't going to go to the hotel gym and get COVID.

Speaker 2 (02:11:27):

That

Speaker 1 (02:11:27):

Didn't stop me. Andy, if you really, really want it, the gym's being closed down shouldn't stop you. I know, man. I know people who have, I know this one dude who's been a bodybuilder since I met him when I was like 19, so 21 years, and he was already big when I met him. Then dude is fucking jacked. But this year he kind of stopped working out. I was like, why? He's like, well, I don't have a gym. I was like, dude, why don't you just get a Beachbody program or something? I know he's not in a position to be able to buy himself a gym, which is fine. So I wasn't like, dude, just buy yourself a gym. Of course, I get it. That's not everybody. But you can afford $10 and do 90 days or 180 days of P 90 x. You can afford some fitness bands. You can do pushups. You can do pullups, right?

Speaker 2 (02:12:20):

You can run, you can do air squats, you can do pushups. I mean, there's so many things you can do.

Speaker 1 (02:12:25):

You can keep yourself in shape. If people in prison, they took dumbbells away from prisoners, they have to do everything with body weight. Now, if those motherfuckers can look the way they look, you can too. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:12:39):

I mean, look there. There's no excuse except the excuse you give yourself, right?

Speaker 1 (02:12:43):

Yeah. I guess I have an easier time accepting if someone says, I'm just depressed about this situation and I don't have the motivation to work out. I mean, that sucks, but at least there's some honesty there because then you can start to examine why am I depressed? How do I deal with that? But if it's like, well, they closed the gyms, I just can't work out anymore. It's like, dude, let's be honest. At least just if you don't want to work out, that's fine.

Speaker 2 (02:13:13):

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:13:14):

There's no law that says you have to, don't

Speaker 2 (02:13:16):

Complain about not being able to work out just because your gym's closed.

Speaker 1 (02:13:19):

Yeah. I think one of the things about this, one of the is you got to be honest with yourself. If you have 200 pounds to lose or you're just trying to optimize your health, or just one of my employees super, super skinny. He's like 20 pounds underweight, and he started lifting weights to put on muscle. He put on 15 pounds of muscle, which is awesome, and now he looks a lot more normal. Anyways, my point, just being honesty with a situation goes a really, really long way. Even if that means you have to admit you're not motivated and you're feeling depressed.

Speaker 2 (02:13:53):

Well, all of this is owning it, right? It's just owning your reality and owning who you are and deciding if it's who you want to be or not.

Speaker 1 (02:14:03):

It's interesting, just out of curiosity, I'm sure I know the answer to this, but you don't expect people around you to engage in your lifestyle.

Speaker 2 (02:14:16):

Not at all.

Speaker 1 (02:14:17):

Of course, I already knew the answer, but

Speaker 2 (02:14:20):

Expectations is a whole nother podcast topic in general. But the point is, we

Speaker 1 (02:14:24):

Can talk about that next time.

Speaker 2 (02:14:26):

I don't have expectations of anybody to do this. The stuff that I do, if I rub off on somebody, great, that's awesome, because I'd like to think the stuff I'm doing is really good for anybody, so that'd be fantastic. But I don't expect anybody in my life to adopt these methods or live my exact lifestyle. But what's cool is when it does, my wife started getting excited about the ice barrel. She was getting in it. She was getting,

Speaker 1 (02:14:55):

So you posted a picture of

Speaker 2 (02:14:56):

That? Yeah, and that's cool. She

Speaker 1 (02:14:58):

Was impressed.

Speaker 2 (02:14:59):

I wasn't pushing her in any way. It was just like, if you ever want to try it, I just be, Hey, you want to try? And she'd be like, okay, fine. I'm going to do it. And then it's amazing how much better she got from the first time to even the second time. But yeah, I don't expect anybody to do any of these things unless they want to. And if they come to me and they ask about it, that's the other thing. I will talk about this with anybody if they're serious.

Speaker 1 (02:15:26):

Same here.

Speaker 2 (02:15:27):

I've had friends reach out to me and say, I have a friend who's actually pretty morbidly obese, reach out to me, and he was like, what's his ice barrel thing? Why do you do it? And typically, this dude is kind of sarcastic all the time and kind of a prick. So I said to him, I was like, look, man, if you're actually asking me seriously asking me, I will give you a bunch of the research that I've done. I'll share a lot of these things with you. I'll tell you whatever you want to know. We can talk on the phone, whatever you want. I was straight up, I was like, but you're typically fucking a sarcastic prick and I can't tell whether you're serious right now. So his response was like, no, I'm dead serious, and here's why. He was like, I'm getting married. I want to live.

(02:16:13):

I want to get healthy for my wife, all this stuff. I was like, alright, then let's do this. Let's talk about it. I'll share whatever you want. I'll help you any way I can. But when people do it facetiously or just to kind of make conversation, it's like, man, I don't really want to talk about this right now because I'd rather just go do it. But if you really need help and you want to commit to this, then I'll fucking help you all day. But not if it's just half-assed or just to bullshit. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 (02:16:40):

Yeah. That's how I feel about it too. Reason I was asking was because to the topic of people feeling intimidated or anything like that about this, I want to put it out there that I never expect anybody in my life or judge people because they do or don't do this kind of stuff. It's a hundred percent a personal decision. And

Speaker 2 (02:17:06):

Yeah, it won't make me like you more if you decide not to do this or if you decide to do this rather.

Speaker 1 (02:17:12):

No. I mean, I'll be impressed if someone transforms themselves or it's awesome, but I am not going to sit there and think someone's a fucking loser or something because they haven't made this kind of decision. So they shouldn't be intimidated to talk to me about it. Or I guess as long as they're being serious, I just don't like wasting my time. But that's the same with music too. I can think of classic examples where, and I stopped helping these people, but where someone back in the day would hit me up and ask about what kind of rig they should get for guitar or recording, and I'd sit there and map it out with them and tell 'em, no, don't get this. This is a waste of money. Trust me. 10 people I know. Got it. They all sold it and really get down into the details and then they go and get the exact thing you tell them not to get and ignore everything you said. And I realized that there's a lot of people who really just want to talk to you and they want to validate their own ideas and aren't actually looking for help. And I try to zone those people out, but if anyone actually actually is looking for help, I'll talk to them all day about this stuff.

Speaker 2 (02:18:23):

That's the ideal student too, for teaching for me. I don't want someone to just pay me money for my time and not actually then try to learn something or work on something for real or share what they're struggling with. You want to book a cameo for me to say happy birthday, that's one thing that's pretty established is that's what that's for. And that's great. Great.

Speaker 1 (02:18:45):

I'm booking one.

Speaker 2 (02:18:46):

Yeah, I mean, totally. Yeah, there you go. That's totally fine.

Speaker 1 (02:18:50):

My birthday's in May.

Speaker 2 (02:18:51):

Alright. Yeah, book it up, bro. But you know what I mean? It's like, but don't book a lesson with me or a class with me and then spend the whole time asking me what clothes I wear. I know that sounds weird or maybe a petty thing to say, but my point is, and referencing what you're saying, it's like I want to work with students who really want to improve themselves, who have their own drive to get better, because then it's exciting to help them because you can watch them achieve their goals and work hard to achieve it. And

Speaker 1 (02:19:26):

You

Speaker 2 (02:19:26):

Don't feel like everything you're saying is for Naugh.

Speaker 1 (02:19:29):

I don't think that's petty.

Speaker 2 (02:19:30):

Well, maybe the way I worded it seemed a little funny, but the point is, if you're going to go reach out to somebody who's a professional and ask for their advice, you better be ready to actually do the work that they're going to put on your plate and realize that most people who are willing to share something with you that they've worked really hard on, have some expectation at that point of you actually doing something with it. I don't expect anybody to do anything that isn't reaching out to me. But if you reach out to me and you really ask for my insight or my knowledge and I then give it to you, then you've created an expectation.

Speaker 1 (02:20:17):

Oh yeah, absolutely. It's interesting. I don't like doing one-on-one sessions with people.

(02:20:26):

I used to at URM, it was part of the subscription, but I don't anymore. Now we have people that I trained to do those who do them really, really well, but I'll get hit up every once in a while and I jacked the price up pretty high to actually have me coach somebody. I just don't want to do it because people usually don't actually take the advice and I feel like it's not about the money. I feel really, really weird about accepting money for an hour of time for someone not to then go do something with it. I feel almost like I ripped them off or plus they wasted my time. And it is just this weird thing. I would much rather talk to a friend for free

Speaker 3 (02:21:15):

And

Speaker 1 (02:21:15):

Help them with the problem and give them all the time in the world they need if they're actually going to do something with it.

Speaker 2 (02:21:21):

Well, but that's the reason why you jack the price up is because you want to weed out people who are not going to take it seriously. That's the reason why over the years I've raised my rates for those types of sessions because I only want to work with you if you're dead serious. And a way to weed that out is to charge a premium. But if someone really cares about getting the knowledge that they're looking for from you, they value what you have to say, then they will pay that amount of money for it. As long as it's funny, it raises a point. Funny enough, I reached out to Ben Greenfield over instant over Instagram dms and I sent him a question we had previously talked before when he wasn't as big as he is now. And it's funny, his response to me was like, yeah, I actually have a great answer for that, but just go to my website and you can book a session with me. And I went there and I looked at his website and had I really been that that gung-ho and getting this answer from him alone, maybe I would've paid the astronomical ridiculous price that it would cost for a 30 minute session with him. But I said to myself, you know what? There's enough information out there that I can just spend some time researching instead of paying fucking whatever, $600 for 30 minutes,

(02:22:48):

And I want to be careful. That's not me saying he doesn't know what he's talking about. That dude fucking knows what he's talking about. It's just in that sense. It's like I don't necessarily need to pay this amount just to get this information from him. If he was going to share it with me as a friend or as a peer, then great, but I'm not that demographic. I'm not the customer.

Speaker 1 (02:23:13):

But if you did feel that you need it, you would pay it.

Speaker 2 (02:23:15):

But if I did feel that I needed it, if this was the one person who was the authority and they would give me the perfect answer, or at least put me on the perfect path for something that I needed, then I would absolutely pay it because it's worth it. It's worth the experience of learning from somebody who is better at this than anybody else. So I guess the point of saying that is I've been on both sides of this. I've been the person who is willing to pay before I've been the person who doesn't want to pay for it. And then I've also been the person that's charging the premium for weeding out the people that are not as serious. So I guess what's the lesson there? It's like if you are research all you want for free by yourself and you can learn everything you need to know, but if you are going to seek out a professional who is willing to share their time with you, you got to come correct with it and be ready to learn and willing to pay for it because chances are you'll get something valuable out of it.

(02:24:10):

But don't waste anybody's time is the thing.

Speaker 1 (02:24:13):

And I feel like money when you're in a position to where you do charge a premium like that, it's because you probably don't want to be doing those very often. And so it's almost not about the money just paying them. It's not enough in my opinion. I really do want the people that I talk to get a result out of it that it's super, super important to me, which is one of the reasons I don't want to do it very often. I know that most people won't listen.

Speaker 3 (02:24:45):

Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:24:45):

Yeah. It's a conversation for another time. I know you got to go,

Speaker 2 (02:24:49):

If I may say so. I think that's a good place to leave it. And I hope that the people that invested their time got something from it, whether they think that we're total kooks and that we're crazy, that's one thing you can get from it too. That's fine too. But I hope that if you listen this long, there's beyond just enjoying hearing two friends talk, I hope that people that are listening this long are getting something they can apply in some way to themselves.

Speaker 1 (02:25:17):

Yes. I hope so too. And I'll just put it out there. If you're in a similar position that I was or some variation thereof, and you're actually serious, feel free to hit me up anytime through DM on Instagram or whatever.

Speaker 2 (02:25:31):

Yeah, same. I'll echo that for anybody who's interested in learning about these crazy things that I do on a daily basis.

Speaker 1 (02:25:39):

Awesome, Matt. Well, thank you again for coming on. It's been a pleasure catching up.

Speaker 2 (02:25:43):

I love these talks and it's somehow, inevitably we end up going for fucking three hours every time. So

Speaker 1 (02:25:49):

Yeah, it just happens.

Speaker 2 (02:25:51):

Yeah. Time flies when you're having fun. Well, thank you. And if there's a chance to come on again, I'm sure we can find some more things to talk about that we've only glossed the surface of at this point.

Speaker 1 (02:26:03):

Anytime I say we do it, when we did the last one and kind of check in.

Speaker 2 (02:26:09):

Yeah, that sounds good. Count me in, man.

Speaker 1 (02:26:10):

By then, we will both probably be in a very different spot.

Speaker 2 (02:26:14):

Yes. I have a feeling that is the case. Awesome.

Speaker 1 (02:26:17):

Well, thank you. Okay, then another URM podcast episode in the bag. Please remember to share our episodes with your friends, as well as post them to your Facebook, Instagram, or any social media you use. Please tag me at al levy URM audio. And of course, please tag my guests as well. Till next time, happy mixing. You've been listening to the Unstoppable Recording Machine Podcast. To ask us questions, make suggestions and interact, visit URM Academy and press the podcast link today.