Calvary Audio. Ladies and gentlemen. It is July twenty one, two thousand and twenty two. I am at Bolinsky. This is your weekly dose of sanity, the prevailing narrative, and I hope you guys were able to stay saying in the last few weeks while I was away. Yes, I was traveling a bit, so no episodes. A lot happened in my absence, a lot of stuff around the abortion issue. It's gonna be no shortage of stuff to analyze and current events and newsworthy topics to attack, but we're going to put that to next week. This week, I'm having a conversation with a fascinating individual named Kamal Rabbitt kan So this this podcast beyond a kind of fierce analysis of current events. It's meant to bring you some of the best thought leaders in most insightful minds out there, and Kamal is certainly one of them. Very successful UH founder and invest investor in Silicon Valley for many years now, but also a thought leader and a successful best selling author. His book Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It has change lives many times over and is kind of one of the really most most popular and impactful self personal development self help screeds over the past decade. And what really strikes me about Kamal, and this is also not just from his writing but also just from having met him a few times, is how open, honest, and engaging he is in raw um and a gentleman you know historical figure and author that will be discussing on the pot and chat with Kamal Um is Ernest Hemingway. And Ernest Hemingway had a famous famous quote that writing writing is very simple. You just sit down at your typewriter and bleed. And the notion being that that you have to pour your you have to overshare. You have to however much you think you are you are hesitant or scared to share about yourself, your hopes, your fears, your desires, your experiences. You have to share more. And that is it to let yourself out in the most raw, vulnerable manner possible. That that brings and that results in the best writing. And that is what that is what Kamal has brought to bear with his work as well. Um a super interesting guy um and you know, and in the hopes and the goals of bringing you guys the best thought leaders and the most help full valuable information possible. It's a fascinating discussion. Kamal is a great and fascinating guy. Um. We talked about everything from the principles and experiences that gave gave rise to his career as the best selling, best selling author, his thoughts on the business world, the startup world, in the cryptocurrency world, which is very involved in as well, and just a fascinating guy who's experiences, I mean, he's tried to live a life of excitement and challenge and you know, and and his his wisdom and his perspective definitely shows that. So the conversation with Kamal Robert Kant coming up in just a moment um. Great to be back with you, guys. I hope you enjoyed. Ladies and gentlemen. I am Matt Bilinsky. This is the prevailing narrative. The competition for most interesting man in the world is fierce, and my guest today is definitely in the conversation. He co founded numerous companies, meditated with monks in the Himalayas, gone through basic training with the U. S Army at eighteen years old, walked across the country of Spain and changed thousands of lives with this best selling book, Loved Yourself Like Your Life depends on It. Comal Robert Kant, thank you so much for joining us, Thanks for having me. That's a most interesting, random world. That's funny. You know that profile. You're definitely in the conversation, your hats in the ring. I do get that, but I find it very comical. You know, I would say, I would say, actually, the most curious man in the world safely curious, and I think that's what leads me to do all these crazy things, so right into that the being interesting is being interested. It was for tracing it back to kind of one of the early self improvement or personal development text Dale Carnegie. Do you I imagine that you find that that lesson rings true? Yeah? I mean, look, I was thinking, you know, if you want to have friends, you've got to be and you've got to be curious about people. If you have curious about people, you will never lack for friends. And then if you're curious about people and you're open about yourself, you will never lack for lack for deep friendships, no doubt. Yeah. And in terms of being terms of being open with yourself. That seems to be one of your core principles and in terms of the genesis of your career as an author and thought leader and your book, uh that you that it really is about sharing and then oversharing about your personal experiences and getting past kind of getting past that boundary of hesitation to share your innermost thoughts, fears, beliefs, um and and ideas. Is really getting past that is really what led you to to your fate. As has rolled out, destiny has rolled out over the last decade. Yeah, you know, I trained as a classical fiction writer, you know, so that was what I was gonna do. I was gonna write literary fictions. So but I would love yourself. I had never set out to write a book like that, And I wrote it because I had something to share and because now I've had the skill and the craft to be able to to share something the truth simply. I think that really helped. But what really made the book successful, I think is the fact that I truly share. Um. Look, I'm just a human being. My mind is no more of it. It's probably more of a ship show than yours. But here's how I, like, you know, basically trained it and here's how it changed my life. And here's exactly how you can do it. And I'm not a fan of people who write your journals and put them into the world. There's no it doesn't help anyone, you know. It's you've got to show there's gonna be a method to the madness. You've got to show what the lesson is and how you got there. Not just look, this is my psychy path. There you go and have a great time. No, this is what happened, this is what I did to get through it, and this is how I'm on the other side living it. So you can follow that path. And that's the best gift we can give as human beings is share our journeys and share the path so other can take them and also realize they're not alone. And a lot of people get you know, when office have been there and we're stuck in in a funk or dark place, it feels very alone. It really helps to understand that people who be considered successful or whatever out there goes to the same stuff, if not worse. The more driven you are, the more you go through that. You know, that's a lot of people forget that. It's part of so some of the very most successful people I know are had to have had to work in themselves really hard because they were shipped of their lives. Are fit shows, you know, they have to really do that. And so when you share that, people realize, oh, I'm not alone, you know, I'm just another human being than another human being. And I think that through it, this is how they did it, I can do it, and then it's worthwhile to share. And one related observation that I saw you you made is that your life went from an incredibly dark place to an incredibly bright place very quickly. And that's something if we once again, for some reason going back to kind of classical personal development text um and Think and Grow Rich, and one of their chapters is on how some of the most successful people out there, their real breakthroughs came after an immense tragedy or some of their darker periods, and that that seems to ring true. I mean, do you think that's something that's translatable that a lot of people, um, they need to see that it's possible and even uh and even oftentimes occurs that your darkest periods are followed by your by the true breakthroughs. I think that's kind of like because what dark foods break. Like normally, if life is just going as status quo, we just kind of get caught up in it. You know, We're all do that, you know, we just get lazy, fat, and lazy and just get caught up in it. Or if the things are going great, we're just busy enjoying it. But when things really bad, it's when two things one way, but you can get in there and wallow in it and just dig your well deeper. Or at the same time, you're probably you're forced to reflect and you're forced to be really honest with yourself, like in ways that you normally aren't. And when you're really honest with yourself is when you make the true changes. And unfortunately that often comes during dark periods because they forced us to look at ourselves from our um you know, like hospital bad decisions are very clear and life changing decisions. Why it is that, you know I've had those, you know, and like, let me tell you, when you're in a hospital bed, the conversations you have with yourself are there's there's a purity to it that nothing matches well, not just your focus, you're just really honest with you when they tell you you might die next week, You're like, okay, let me get you know, it's not even like, oh, let me get honest. Your thoughts got verily clear, like the gun falls away, right, And it's the same at dark periods, you just get honest with yourself or when you do, when you're honest with yourself, when you reflect, you naturally come to conclusions and you and then the next step is just living them. And those that do I don't want to transform their lives. And so, uh, the well interesting A serendipitous moment related to this conversation. I was checking out some of your materials, noticed that we have a mutual friend, Al Low what a top screenwriters in holiday. Yeah, yeah, he's great. Listen to your podcast with Alan was fantastic, loved hearing his origination story. But obviously one of the principles of that chat was the power of storytelling. So your story the what occurred to you that led you to the place that that at which you were forced to be honest with yourself. Um, it was, as you described, a very low point. You made these breakthroughs and you know, while you've been a successful founder, executive investor, that your true craft and what you're true passionate about his being an author, and what led you to that point? What would love to hear the origination story there? Well, the original story. You know, it's funny. I've been asking so many times. I've said it so many times, and I wonder, you know, in the end, rather than going with the details of because it's in the book, in the end, what it was what you have a human being given man who's very tight, hegoes very tired into what he does, and the whole thing blows up. It could be anything in life where something we're tired to blows up. You know, you've been athlete, do your career and whatever. My whole thing blew up, and so did my sense of self along with it. And I fell into a dark hole. And it was a dark hole that I considered just ending things. And it was you know, and I and but what I decided was it was in that time and the monet of software reflection, I realized, you know what, I don't want to live like this anymore. I'm sick of being in my own head. I was literally sick of my own thoughts. And you can't escape your head. I mean, you could do drugs and stuff. But that's momentary and that just leads to a shitty you know, she inspired, right, it doesn't get that's not the solution. In fact, that creates more problems. So our alcohol for that matter, right, you can number it, but you know then you just like playing whackable and you're you're destroying yourself in the process. So I just like, I'm sick of these thoughts and I'm gonna I'm gonna change my insight or die trying. I can't live like this anymore. And in that process I came up with you know, I made a voute of myself, and I'm a big believer. And if you make a vow, you gotta keep it. You know, I'm a big believer. One of the things that private yourself and as a man is like if I give my word, I keep it. It's just like I think as a human being, forget as a man. You know, we should have certain principles that we live by the make us who we are, that make us probe, you know that. But then whenever sees it, you know, we living, you know, like our values, and that's one of mine. And and I made this out of myself and it was. It was came out and actually nowhere I was gonna be like, I'm gonna be my best self. But when I came out of my love myself and it came out in the moment, and I thought, and I wrote this down, I thought, how the hell do I do that? And and so I I think that was written a book on it. I didn't go around looking for books on it, because honestly, like a lot of self help, I found is as perfunctory. It will tell you, it will make you feel good in the moment, but I won't give you the hard solution. It's like telling someone you know how great is to be fit, but not giving them a core diet of fitness plan that they can implement. So I, coming from the life I've had, I am I believe in action. So I just sort of trying things. But now this wasn't external because I was in a pretty bad sit at the time. It was all internal work. And I noticed, you know that what started to work start to shift things inside, and so I went deeper and did those more and more, until eventually I came up with a very simple practice and that I was just simple, that was just doing daily and it was an internal practice and my my shitty thoughts went away. It was a replaced by like really like beautiful. I was enjoying my own of my own head and and actually then translated into a beautiful life. And the army is um. You know, I came up and I'm the one who gets lazy and forget it, which is one of the reasons why I have a whole section and and love yourself like you life depends on it on just really hammering, don't coast, don't close. It's like if you get to work, get really fit, and then you sit there you bond bombs for a year, what do you think is gonna happen? Right? The mind actually is even faster because near plasticity. Just like take it's always growing, it's always taking things in and your old groups are still there and they will kick in if you just get lazy and fat and lazy um And I use the word fat lazia metaphorically and mental. So so that's what I set out to write to actually share. And you know what what was amazing was this was one man story some like I have a PhD in ner science or whatever, I'm actually better off than I don't. I just did my own thing right, and and you know, there's a there's a there's a Roman power the thousands of years ago said I'm a human being different, nothing human is foreign to me. And I never forgot that because I heard my Angele saying and her talk, I heard her kid years ago and I thought, you know, that kind of like inspired me because if I'm a human being and nothing human is foreign to me, So if one human being can changes inside by doing work on the inside, soaking another, here's the path, Here's where I was, here's the path I took, and here's the step best that journey you can replicate. And it turns out of it works for a ton of people, people all around the world. You know this book is doing very well. Um, you know, just reach out to me every day from all the stef It's publishing like eighteen languages by now, right, I know I'm getting You have to use my Google Translate every day like when I check my email, and although the world that it works with them, you know, I am a human being there for nothing human is foreign to me, and so well, i'd never share one man's human journey, an internal journey and his solution that we found that worked for him. And yeah, and I wrote it down fantastic and it really has. It does seem to be resonating with people on such a primitive and cellular level. And it's also interesting that it's a very simple book. It's relatively short, it's very it's relatively simple. And you've you know, you've extolled the virtues of brevity UM and the quote you know, I would write you a shorter letter, but I didn't have enough time. And I'm at you know, you seem you know, in the way that you've described the craft of writing, UM, is real value in every word and uh and you know, essentially chiseling things down to to the utmost necessity. UM. And you know, how do you see that as a value of writing in general, and particularly as as applied towards any type of personal development screeds or something where you're revealing something about yourself um and hopes to bond with others. Yes, it's actually funny. Though I wrote a note to myself. I was in the gym before I came here, and I was thinking, I was thinking about something I heard. Um. I think it was YouTube. This fitness guy Kape rogues really great calicetics teacher, and he says, you know, chase form, not chase. Don't chase reps. Get can saying, don't chase reps. And I was writing. I wrote to myself, yeah, don't. And I was doing full ups. I was doing perfect form, and I was like, you know, I felt very it was a lot less pull us I can normally do right, but the work, the workload was much better, much greater on my body. And you know, I wrote to myself, chase, uh, don't chase reps. Chase perfection of form, which, in other words, you know, quality of a quantity, and that applies to everything, including the written word. Quality over quantity. Every word has to serve a purpose. Every chapter has to serve a story, Every paragraph has to serve the chapter. It's you know, it's it's a true craft. Most a lot of work. But when you do it it, you know you get through. You will write something that that will stand the test of time. You will write stuff that people I have kids who read my book read my books, and I have you know, people in the eighties will read my books and all transformed by why because of right? So simply in a Hemingway. I studied obsessively and it was like, never use a big word, but you can use a small word. It was absolutely right, because using big words to actually hide, to basically hide the concept, it's much hard to actually explain a concept. It's using smaller words and just using one black ape and word. But that's how people will understand what you're really trying to say, because one big word that mean a lot of different things to someone. But when you really tammer and chisel down what you're trying to say with small words, the same thing you will get through exactly what you want people to understand. So that will you know perfection, perfection versus uh, chasing, reps last everything in terms of a simple word. That really is the focus of your book and your personal credo is love UM. And then people here that you know, the notion of loving loving oneself sounds great, right as you've harped on um. The practical application it is there. There is a process to loving yourself um. And you share some of this in the book. But what does loving oneself mean mean to you? Um? Kind of you know, both philosophically but also functionally. Um. Look, I was never the guy who said out to be the lovely self guy. Trust me, I was driving to the kicking and screaming. I was never wanted to be that count, but somehow it become that guy. But I'm still kicking screaming about it. Um, you know, because for me, it's an internal thing. You know, it's not shouting out to the world of what I it's it's about in our work and how I feel about myself inside. And that's a lot of times most of us it is the human condition feel pretty shitty about themselves inside. You know. The classic thing, would you let a friend talk to you the way you talk to yourself? You know, Well, it requires work to change that, and that's what our practicing. But it was very very simple. It wasn't like stand your head right there fifty times a day all that, you know, there's none of that. It's just very simple you can do anytime. It's just mental work. I mean, you do that, you're creating these new loops in your you know, in your mind that stuff. So for me, it's an inner state. It's a way of being were you're walking around and your natural thoughts, your chatter, and your head generally is right when it's focusing on salary positive. It's seeing the best about yourself and wanting the best for yourself and looking for the best of yourself and watching out for the best for yourself because that's what you would do if you Yeah, yeah, really so. And it's a state of being and one practical it's the answer asking something oneself a question and answering on a daily basis that I thought was interesting, if I truly loved myself, what would I do? And that is a kind of guiding light for for all actions and decisions. Yeah, it was a question I came up with and myself when I first came into practice was interact with people. I still found myself like getting pulled into their dramas or like getting put in and pull into a lot of stuff. You know, you we all live in the world, and and I found myself I was like, how do I, like, um, pull myself back from it? So I came in with this question. And the most important part of the question is actually the if. Because if you said, you know, because I love myself or what I do, your mind will said, well, dumbass, you don't love yourself. You know, like you know, you're not good enough whatever rights to be a radical question. If I love myself, you're in any situation. If I love myself, what would I do? So anyone can you can answer? The mind will not fight the you know, radical cuestion will give you the answer. Now you know the answer, and now you have Now it's up to you to live it. And you may actually ask this scusion a hundred times and not live with a hundred time, tired of knowing the answer, not living in and you will start living the answer. And that's where transformation will happen. It's very simple, you know, um, this was part of it. This is actually the ladder end where you know, so where I started just giving myself these things and when I was in the world and I have space with choices and you're not naturally fall into uh, you know, just old patterns of behaviors. It's like in that moment, ask yourself, and you know, sometimes I consciously chose the opposite, but I was being honest with myself, you know, I think, and you know what the best way to live with yourself is be honest with yourself in your mind. No one's eaven strongs for dropping the n s A hasn't figured out how to listen to the inside of your head. Okay, like you know, the IFIL can't get in there, if you can be honest with yourself inside your head, there's a true freedom in that. And so I was being honest with myself when I oncen't and eventually it was like, Okay, I'm tired of like because I was not doing what what what he knows is to be trust to just start doing it, but really requires being honest with yourself. How do you catch yourself? How do you keep yourself honest when you catch when you catch yourself when you might be telling yourself, you know, some some FIBs, some white lies, or just kind of approaching the truth but taking a detour right as you're you're about to about to find it. Because I feel like that's something that's practice. All these things are practice. It's like the mental work, you know. It's it's like you don't go and take a meditation course and then you don't for the rest of your life. You know, I've noticed amongst you know, like they meditate every day, hours a day. You think they would have gotten at a seven point right, right, So, like anything that's in our work is a practice, and that's when we forget, you know, like like I went to the gym today, I might have like make myself a nice smoothie, you know, like the protein and greens and all this. We do all this stuff to take care of our outer side. We don't think twice about it. You tell your friends you're working out, they'll all be like good for you, you know, like, but how much of her time do we spend working on our inner self? And that's what runs the entire show. It runs the entire show. You're work on your inner self, your outer self naturally gets better. You stop being more honest with yourself and so but they love yourself practice for me, I realized later on was literally a trojan force to make myself better on the inside. And that's actually become like my my journey deeper and deeper, like to just be better on the inside because it I mean, look, we're until the dying moment. That's who you've got is you. You always with yourself. But you can make that better. I'll promise you your external will get better because your actions won't get better. But there's also something I've learned at this we can get into it like it gets a little bogle. But I've really noticed that any time I really um and again a lot of people tell me the same thing. I noticed that I'm really being internally um like the word positive, really being good inside um my external sus to reflect it without me having to do anything. So I don't know. I mean, one can can go to dread, you know, the conversation of Nature Reality. But all I can tell you is I've wrote this to be true. You're outside inside, your outside reflecting inside. It's it's not like constantaneous, like you say, if you think something and something happens. But you've noticed, after a while, reality just starts to shift and become very more pleasant for you and a lot of people. There seems to be a broader consciousness around uh internal work. It's why a lot more people have turned to meditation over the course of the last decade UM, and they're trying to find more outlets for for you know, at least the notion of internal improvement UM. Yet simultaneous, it's not working for everybody, and that that raises some interesting questions. And it was a tweet that you know that I really wanted to discuss with you. Someone in Molly Milk I believe, and her tweet was, I increasingly think there's intense cruelty to shilling self care is the solution for people who are clearly craving purpose. And I think that was an interesting concern about where people UM may be taking a less practical approach towards internal work, towards self love UM and where where they're they're finding it to be hollow when you know, when they do true, the way for them to feel happier, more engaged and break some of those mental loops is having purpose and things that they can apply themselves to. UM. I don't know. I just think there's a lot. There's a lot to unwrap in in that tweet and the balance and uh if there is tension or any hostility between the notion of self care as a crutch UM, as as an avoidance UM or maybe a distraction from purpose, and we'll have more of the prevailing narrative after the break. I think that's a nice tweet, but I think that there's a lot of b s in it. UM. Purpose First of all, lit's defined purpose. You know, in our Western civilization we think of purpose is my job career in the world, you're in the third wor you're in a shiitty situation. You know, a single mom raising five kids. What's your purpose your kids? You beas putting working, putting food on the table. A lot of people have purpose. They don't disid around defining and they haven't. They're not living in mask laws top of the pyramid. Okay, it's a nice tweet, but it's it doesn't reflect humanity. Yeah, we all better when we when we have purpose. But I'll tell you I've been on purpose at times. I know a lot of people on purpose, but their minds are should showing their miserable you know. So I don't talk about self care. I'm not. I'm not even much of a believer in self care. What I'm believer in what shifts my inside, what makes my inside better, That will help anything, whether you're doing purpose or not purpose or whatever. Um, you know, it's it's really love. It is the fundamental, it's the God particle. It is a fundamental thing that we all understand that we all know how to feel. We can all even trick ourselves in the feeling. That's what. It's a special that's what. It's not self care. It is not positivity. I never talked about positivity. It's not about uh, you know, beating negative thoughts are all of that. I just go to the core, which is what saved me and which is what I realized. You go to the core as a writer, you go to the core of the truth. Same thing here. I think a lot of self care gets cost gets caught up in a long, long to my lively circle jerk, you know, just people doing fifty different things, feeling but not making any progress. Maybe and making a little progress forever. No. No, If you're going to do something, it's got to transform your life. If it doesn't transform your life, you're you're doing the wrong thing. That's simple. If you're a workout program that doesn't get you insanely fit, drop it, find a better one. If you're a diet that doesn't get you insanely internally, drop into another one. If you're an internal program it doesn't get you internally awesome inside, drop into another one. Go for the core. I think a lot of self care there's too many programs, are too many goods, and too many YouTube coaches and two people selling everything. Everybody's selling everything something to everyone, right, Love is something we don't need to be sold. We don't need to be taught. You know, I figured out myself, I'm sure, and I've looked a lot of people are figuring this out. I just dive it with my own, separate, my simple practice. Because of the life I've lived, I have a certain you know, maybe a broader approach to myself and and and and also what I've learned, what I've seen in my life. But um, and I think that's one of the reason it works. But you know, it's a good tweet, that's a probably twitter. You read something, right, It's like, oh that's good, and you like, and you move on. Didn't change your life, didn't change your life, did you? Are you a week later? Is your life better for it? If not, stop it, let it go. In fact, I find you know, I took nine months up from Twitter. Finally came back on kicking and screaming because a lot of my readers want me back on, And I'm like, I really have a hundred tweets I could do. I did, but I really struggle because I'm like most of this, yeah, the sound going, I'm not gonna get a lot of lot of retweets and a lot of life. But it's really like, what is something core that if someone really listened to it and applauded it, that life would change. You know. So, I'm sure the woman who wrote the tweet is a wonderful person and meant well, but tweet, I mean, Twitter is full of that. But i mean, if if Twitter is full of that, and then we want to Twitter right now should be enlightened if that was the case, if these things really were sure, Yeah, I mean there's enough of those, right there is a lot of faint, faint wisdom and faint praise. What was the last time on Instagram? Transform your life? You know, transform your life? Yeah? If it didn't, it doesn't matter. Which would you say that like may even be the enemy of love. I don't even know what that means. Uh that, as you said before, if this workout program, if you're if you are, If something it is not the most animated, it does not animates you the best workout program you've ever been on. Right, If there's something animated, I'm talking about results. I'm talking about results. Is it giving you the best results? If it's not, drop again another one, this time give you the best results? Drop another one? Internal program, dropping in another one in self care. If if, if it makes you slightly better, not good enough, go for something else. But life is finite. Man, you're talking to a guy who who died in the hospital was brought back life, and you don't know when you're gonna go. Okay, we all think we have time, and I thought I had time and when I was going and I was like, I had to come to terms with it within milliseconds. And it was horrible. It was absolutely, absolutely horrible. It was severe trauma. It was absolutely horrible. Let me tell you, life is finite. Don't waste your time and trying to find it right program, be very very it's your life, it's your mind. It's nothing more important because who you become and who you are is how you affect the world. You make everyone around you better. So when it comes to self improvement, be merciless and go for only things that transformed you. And you know, yeah, I guess maybe it's it's taking an extra beat of consciousness to think about whether or not something that you might like do you act really love it? Is there an even deeper appreciation and deeper feeling that you know it might be It might be so long since you've been in romantic love, um and since you mentioned that the in describing the feeling of love in your book, that the feeling that you see with the child because the child knows that it is loved by its by its parents, um. And that people may have been and maybe so long since somebody's felt loved that things that they think they love, it's really just kind of a passing amusement or something that they have a mild uh, you know, a mild connection to and to really be conscious of what you do truly love and gives you that that deeper joy. Yeah. You know, a romantic love is tough experienced and so much A romantic love is actually not love. It's more like craving. You know, you must love me this way so I can feel you must love me this was so I can feel that way about myself external right, right versus I mean, if you really love yourself and you don't need someone to validate you watch them throw themselves a yeah. Yeah. That once again the emergent qualities and things that that kind of you know when we talk about the law of attraction and just kind of that mystical quality of once you've got the inner game right, and the external results seem to follow um and then the flip side. And you have some very interesting thoughts on what is very much the flip side to love, which is fear, and the way that you you know, kind of uh, your view towards processing fear in that you you describe fear as the proper signal and that fear really you should be guiding yourself towards the things that you fear is probably a proper signal for the direction you should be going. Maybe you could tell us a little bit about, you know, how you see that emotion process, because because I think too much in our because the modern society they live it, you know, we fear is so we use fear is something to run away from. Were often fear beyond fears were the greatest magic lives, you know. So I try to learn, like if I'm like fear, like fear of Like let's take something like public speaking. You know, when I started doing public with I was freaking terrified. I was terrified. I remember the first talk I gave. I went to the bathroom and shared myself like five minutes, like what the hell are you doing? And they went on stage and I started talking about hey, by the way, just be honest the first time talking on stage, and I'm terrified, and let's just have this journey, let's see what happens. And it being like a really really well it's a talk that's very very well known on YouTube. Now you know what it's like. But I went past that fear, and that's where I found the magic was being was going past it. You know, that's an example and anything um if they let fear stop us, Like I don't know any successful entrepreneurably successful. I don't know any. I think I've read somewhere like Bruce Springsteen or which a very successful musician that we always say, oh my god, that guy's like a musical legend. I think throws up every time before he goes on stage. Right, I think it's Saim or someone I was, someone really well known. It's like, so the fear, you gotta go beyond it because that's where the magic is. Right. The same thing and loving yourself like maybe you know, like getting us from people like all these fears are coming up like good that shows you on the path. It's your old self fighting in. Do you think the old self is just gonna let itself, you know, let you just layer these new patterns and it's gonna say who do you think you are? And all that that's normal, go beyond it. Keep going, keep going. That's the only thing. Keep going. Yeah, No, it's fascinating and creating those those new neural pathways and also emotional pathways because you haven't had to experience, you know, that type of emotional discomfort while while encountering the possibility of a new reality. Yeah. And then in Buddhism, like I've studied with the bond with the mystics of Tibetan Buddhism, and you know, like I was one of the very few Westerners who got to train with them. And then talking about how um, when you get to some place in certain places in your mind, because they're they're practical at all about life, and when you get to this point, that point that's just the mind, keep going, keep going. You get here, you think, oh my god, this is awesome, Keep going, keep going. I think it's the same with fear, like obviously, like you're parked with the to the cliff, and your fear saying don't press on the gas, don't press on the gas. But I think and what I found is overall, it's it's been. It's been a very good like maxim to live by. If it scares me, this magic on the other side, really considerate. Yeah. Another principle in which you had kind of a counterintuitive view was the notion of self belief. And you said, self belief is actually not that important because hey, if you have to wait around till you believe you can do something, you might be waiting forever. You might have to start before you have that self belief. I've seen that every great entrepreneur look like from Selkon Valley. I wanna VENTU come from trust me. I know some very very successful people everyone knows, everyone's heard of. I know them very well, and I know well, you know, be sure in the most thoughts and feelings, and there they were just as scared of them. In fact, they're probably more scared, right, And they didn't have the belief. But by doing it, you don't get belief. I sitting there and trying to get self belief, you get belief by having done something. That's how you get self belie You know, it comes to the to the path of action, because there's no in terms of embodying something and changing your state. And and actually you know that the process that the functional way of improvement, you know, your your inner uh, your interwiring. I mean, there's just no replacement for the feeling of encountering that challenge and in times you know, succeeding or at least in a more more healthy way. You know, process and your failure and haven't done it. Yeah, yeah, I mean I don't see the points and trying to. It's like you can spend the entire life trying to psyche yourself, but trying to figure out all the reasons why you are in a certain way or whatever. You can just deal and get better for the process. I'm a fan of do it and the process of doing it will make you better. There's there is no substitute for action. And then another point that you've hammered on in terms of functionally how you work and work most efficiently. It was interesting, Um, you know your process of writing and working through it's called the Pomaduro method, where you know, you batch work together, you you organize in twenty five minute kind of sprints. And i'd love to, you know, hear a little bit more about your kind of functional approach to work. Oh yeah, that's my favorite productivity method because it's so simple. And the guy came up with you called the promontor method because you need a kitchen timer and that looked like a tomato and he was Italians, called the Poma method and he just said it for twenty five minutes or twenty minutes stuff again, but I usually do twenty five minute birds. And you start for twenty five minutes and you pick a task and you only focus on that task. It could be email, it could be work, writing, research, but you only do that and nothing else. Nothing else, phone rings, you don't pick it up. You're just on that. You don't you don't say, oh maybe I need to check this in leater. No, like I mean, separate task. And you're done. You take a five minute break that you do another and I call them basically sprints. You do another sprint, and I think this thing is after three you take like a half hour break. So what I found for myself is, um, I'll do like maybe five minutes sprints, and sometimes you're so much in the group, I'll just skip the break and start the next friend and the next bring. You're just using my iPhone timer, and you've got so much done when you just like focus. One thing we all have lost in the modern day is focus. Of what this brings you back is to focus to the task ahead. And it's amazing how much you can get done if you just focus on the task ahead. Yeah. I use it for our emails. I'll batch I hate you know, like I get so many, you know, so I'll just like twenty minutes. I'm like, okay, this prey much is gonna suck gum, and it's just like right and just what it's done. It's out the way. So it's a great way to do this stuff. Yeah, you can wait, wade through that morass for twenty five minutes and get it. Get off the books real quick, um, And turning to your your you know, uh professional life, if if you will, in your involvement in silicon value in the startup world, interesting period right now, you know, as you've commented on as well, you know a lot of people who began or entered the startup world during this last cycle, which seems to have ended over the last six months now through three downturns right at the turn of the millennium. UM two thousand and two thousand nine, and now this one um. You know what, how what's your outlooking for? How this downturn um coming after a period of extensive low interest rates in some pretty uh some pretty frothy times in the startup world, in the digital world. You know how? What are you seeing that that is has continuity? Is similar to the downturns you've experienced before, and where this might you know, might deviate might be different. Are you talking about crypt are you talking about tech startups? I would say more tech startups specifically here. Then there there's no effect. They're doing great. In fact, I am no lack for deal for ideals, I'm looking right, that's look, the best entrepreneurs are busy working. They don't look at market conditions. I mean, like at the like the best A lot of the best stuff is built in recessions. Yeah, if you look at some of the greatest companies that were built intact the world starting recessions, right, it doesn't matter because in fact, as Ann mester, it's even better because a lot of the people who are like what I call fair weather entrepreneurs when it's a hot market and think, oh, you know, uber is hot, so I'll start Uber for dishwashing. I'll start over there. You'd be a based the stuff I've seen from people, right and versus you know, people just care about something and want to solve that problem. They'll do whatever, and they'll all of this new money from those people. Okay. And also the bed has an invest so now I have like a little bit less crap to to wait through to find the great deals one and to the prices are a little bit more reasonable, they're still not. Yeah, so as a investor is great. In fact, I'm like, I like it, and honestly, I think entrepreneurs should too, because they have less competition for fair weather entrepreneurs. Now it's like the Okay, it's the real, it's the real teams and a lot a lot less pressure to do, you know, take distorted paths and chase growth at all costs and really, you know, instead refocusing nailed down on building a profitable business. You know, at the right depends on the product. Certain products are never meant to be profitable, you know, like the most interesting You think none of the social platforms are necessarily intended for profitability. No, they're not. They're not. They're meant to usually be swallowed by a bigger company that can then apply to their user base, and you know, like, um, that's the most social apps. That's the route they take. Instagram, right, it was, it was swought up by Facebook, which then inhaled it and spat out all these users of Instagram was a true threat to Facebook. Facebook. But it would have been a real It would have taken a lot of market ship on Facebook. And I'm sure they would have done money, but not Facebook level money like as far as income does, right, And so they've been able to focus on us experience more so than then monetizeing because there's a bazilian as they can monetize, but when you're part of a bigger company like that, you monetize, but not like every which way or whatsoever. Yeah, most social products are mental, honestly, find of I don't look at I'm not looking at the results on a social platform. If I I'm doing I'm in the wrong business. I'm looking for like a thousand extra turn. And you only get that if the I p O or they get sold to a big company that can then take that product and they have a billion users that they can just plow in and bake into their own. But social it's such a small part of tech. Sort, it's such a to a small part. It just occupies a lot more mind share because it's media friendly and its stuff that more people use. Yeah, but it's such a most social and most social stuff, I would say more than anything in tech fail because it's all based on you know, users and retention and you know and users creating your content and so forth. Of socialist Actually, what the hardest thing to pull up is if you do a sas business. You know, that's that's simple sale. You turn a product of a sales popeline, you get business guys, you go out, you sell lab and res repeat, right, Or you like do marketing and online marketing spend a dollar to make a dollar tail leather is repeat. Those are way easier than that doing social where but that's a head driven business. If you don't have a head, it's a zero. Yeah you got you gotta find some of that magic somehow in social What sectors are interesting you right now? Well, I'm almost fast interesting. Cryptoca Crypto is the evolution attack um And that's the way I look at it. I don't look at it like most a lot of people do. I don't look at as the savior of mankind or anything like that. It's the evolution of attack in this part of it. They're going to be great for humanity. Parts of it that are just outright scams. You know. I stay from the outright scams and I go for I invest in projects earlier, platforms, earlier that I think are actually some cretatic something valuable. Um, there's a lot happening right now, but the mark of the appetite is very low. Like you know, I just invest in like a stable corn project, which is like the last thing you want to invest in, the last thing, which is why less than because the founders is so sharp. I'm like, look, the um, there's still a need for a stable coin across the world that's not a pegged to fiat currency, that's not one on one how to reserve to feed currency. Well, then what makes it stable algorithmically and like all the levers and pulleys that they do, you know, And and there's still gonna be it's still going to be a need for that now right now, the demand for a zero, but eventually it's going to come back up, and whoever pulls it off, it's going to be very, very rich. So I'm looking at that basis and I'm thinking, Okay, who are the best teams and basically expected to lose my money and pretty much all of them. But if I hit that one, I'm doing just fun and that's the venture game. Are you seeing a lot of similarities from what's going on right now with crypto to the dot com and eCOM boom bust around the turn of the millennium and something being overhyped in the short term being properly hyped in the long term, and then in response to that bust. To some it's you know, the bursting of a short term bubble. A lot of people overlearning the lessons. They overlearned the lessons of some of these failures, like the lunar failure around stable coins um or other other aspects of the crypto world that might have been a little too heavily reliant on financial speculation as opposed to functionality. It seems like everyone exaggerated exuberance on the on the upside and exaggerated pessimism on the downside. Yeah, that's the smartest in general. Yeah, I mean, is it? Is it equivalent dot com bo Originally, like maybe early on I would have said yes, But now, I mean it's crypto is so global like anyone any ten year old with a laptop and beyond, they're investing in cryptical projects. You learn have them. And then Dot com Boom you still have to go through a broker and all that. It was a different audience, it was a different um. It's it's completely different because the world is connected in a way that we weren't in the first Dot com boom. So what what's available, what's possible? Not crypto is they kind of dreamt about combo So I think it's much bigger in scale as far as the ups and downs. But as you said, over time, you know, you have things that are built at the standard tests of time and become corectly valuable. What they are remains to be seen. I mean we all know, okay, big poins of bill standard. You know, no one's doubting that, and then the rest, you know, people say, eat, okay, outside of that, it's all a fair game and it will be fair game for a long time. How does one become a shrewd observer of of the prod you know, app relevant projects in the crypto world about who's building what and you know, try to if you are someone who is interested in this world, it's not necessarily building themselves but wants to, but believes it is. Uh. It is the next phase of digitized society. Um, what do you know? What do you what's your guidance and recommendations on how to be you know, be more educated and than a shrewd observer of these things. Uh. There's a lot of stuff, you know, YouTube and podcasts available that that you can follow. I would say, okay, if you can only listen to people who are not selling you anything, yeah, that's it. If you're trying to figure out who do I pay attention on crypto, If they're trying to sell you something, if they're like I want to chunk of that project, don't don't listen. They make money if you buy right and they're dumb on you. I mean, um, so like podcasts. Anytime I see you find someone smart and crypto, first thing I do is I just do a Google stearch up with name and podcast and see if the bar podcast episode those I get to basically take I meet someone smart, and then if I find the podcast, I basically get to listen to the animals thoughts on the subject that I want to learn about it. I mean, this is better than any NBA, any education. You can never get that simple. Take their name someone you find smart, whatever, so you know what, put their name in podcasts of they've been a podcast, They're there't share, they didn't answer questions. Go learn from that. And it was interesting at your thoughts on the on podcasting as a medium because I was looking at you know, your news letter around when you decided to reboot your podcast, that you have some hesitation about the podcast space and that it was because it's so saturated. Seems like alpha is harder to find. But then you know, in getting past you do get access to so many amazing minds just like you, you know, provided access to the great conversations you had with people like Alan. What we're trying to do here today? What do you What are your thoughts on you know, you obviously just gave them, but you know, and looking back on some of your hesitation about doing your own podcast, Um, what are your thoughts on podcasting as a medium. I mean, I saw hesitations on and I haven't done it in a year. I just got I was like, after a while, I was like all right, Like, I mean, what am I doing that so special and so different? Right? I kind of got I was like I stopped until like I figured that I want to want to do it, um, But I think it really is to be the best thing we can do is we could be strategic in our growth and and then then that then we have to be strategic with the ones we want to learn from for our growth. So if you find someone you think, oh, I want to learn from this person, literally just go look at what podcasts that be on and don't be wedded to any particular podcast. But every once in a while you'll find someone who's just pure magic and you want to listen to everything I've ever said, Like Andrew Huberman on health, that guy is the top guy on health period. I mean he's a north scientist out of Stanford and his his uh, some of his episode does it's just hindering an episode they have master classes, true master classes in your health, and then the guest EVM or whatever. But I don't listen to every episode gets done. I go and listen to what I'm interested in. Um. But then like that same thing, you know, like I'll just literally if I find someone interesting enough, but I want to learn from Basically, what do I want to learn from this person? Yes, with the name podcast, go find an episode to listen to him. I learned from someone, you know, leven, from someone who is way smarter than me and something that I'm interested in right like right now, if anyone wants to get new crypto, you know, there's so much information out, there's so much garbage. I would just do this. I would just start like, um, you know, picks, you know, go to Twitter, follow some of the really smart accounts, um and then see who did they follow, who do they listen to? You know, like when it comes to bitcoin. The only person I would listen to his Willy is a guy in New Zealand. He's brilliant on bitcoin. Um, you know, he's also a friend of mine. But like we actually met a few years ago, years ago, I think in Bali, and randomly we end up talking about twelve hours straight because we approached I would approach with the venture perspective you approached from as a trainer, but also someone has been quite much longer than I have, and it was yes, we're both like learning from each other. It was just like one of the best conversations that I would literally talked as twelve hours we just met for dinner, spread all night time, and like he's brilliant. So like if you find those people and then you just if I want to know what's happening in bitcoint, I don't sit there thinking, g I wonder what's gonna have a big good Tonna, I'm gonna say, you know, Willy's way smarter than I won't know what Willie thinks, and I won't to go find his latest podcast episode because I'm sure someone's asked him that. Yeah, not incredible, incredible outfit to be to be gleaned from people like that. And I think people, uh they a lot. Obviously, the the tenor around bitcoin, you know, in the general marketplace down a little negative right now, but I think people are still underestimating how many how much amazing stuff is being done, you know, utilize in the chain, and what the potential of this is. So um look forward to looking at you know, listening to some of Willie's uh materials, um one thing on crypto we just want to add, like look, fundamentally, in the end, you gotta ask yourself, do I think it's gonna be around or not. If you think it's gonna be around. This thing is the future of tech, you better get. You better learn because this is also the future of money. And it's also way to make a lot of money and also lose a lot of money. Yeah, let me just be honest, right, but it's not something you want to disregard if you think it's going to be around. It's like the Internet. If you think you know the two thousand and two, two thousand and four, we sat down time. You know what, I think this Internet thing is going to stick around. You should have gone and started learning about the Internet and companies building on there whatever, and I bet you would have gotten Yeah, you you if you overlearned too many lessons from pets dot com. You missed Amazon, right, So you start learning about you start thinking the broadert thing bill this thing you don't think, oh do comferent and failed to interest nothing? No, no, excell will the internet and be around, will be bigger and big in the future. That you better dedicated if you want to learn, if you want to make money, you want you want to start dedicating some of your time to that field. I feel that way about crypto. It's gonna be a painful, painful next decade or two for the people who dismiss it. I mean, I just I'm looking at just the pure, the the uh intellectual capital that is investing in the space trying to figure it out. I was like, man, if this is not a thing, got a lot of smart people who missed the target, and I just find it hard to believe. I think Stanley Druccon Miller, I think mentioned, um, the way that we find we we've been scouting investments for a quarter century now is looking at what all the smartest engineering students from Stanford, the IBS and cal Tech and m I T you're going into. And they're just overwhelmingly going into crypto right now. I was like, Okay, I'm sure some of this is chasing a quick buck, but a lot of it isn't. And I mean, you've got a lot of young people essentially throwing their their youth away. If if blockchain and the crypto world is just simply a myth, that was an impact of loose monetary policies during the I mean, well they were otherwise going to Wall Street made you know, hedge funds rebellions. So now they're going in and doing this, and they're creating something new. That the best way to make money and also the point also the easiest way to lose money is to get into something when it's new. That's where the highest risk but the highest of work. And I don't think if someone doesn't get into it they will lose that because look, I know people who make forges of real estate. They really should not get involved in crypto. They're going to lose their shirts. If you're good at something, you know one thing I've learned investing, figure out what your unfair advantage is. Mine is in tech. I know it inside out. I know a lot of the top people in the space. I have the deal flow. That's why I don't invest in real with there anything else or up in Wall Street, Like there's plenty of people of Wall Street who are who dedicate their lives to it, who have the unfair advantage. I don't, but intact early stage I'll win against that, right, So that's why I stayed. So figure out what if you have an unfair advantage of something else for to make a living, just get really good at it. But if you don't and you want a new thing that that you know is going to be the future crypto in my opinion, right, absolutely, well, you know, a very valid, valid opinion giving your track record and speaking of which in terms of looking at how you've you've commented on some of your investments and what which direction you decided to take your both your capital and your time, because one of your core value propositions is your network and helping these companies scale and grow the network and b d um you have continually seeing that you mentioned that you've you met a founder and you thought this person is the right person to be building. This seems to be you know a bit of a bit of a feeling and intangible quality that you know that you've um that you've absorbed from these founders. I'd love to hear you expand on that, and we'll have more of the prevailing narrative after the break. Yeah, those actually, but historically my best investments. Just like, look, I'm also a people person, so I'm not a spreadsheet person, and you know, people are surprised by I'm like, look at venture. If you're a spreadsheet early stage venture, if you specially person, you're in the wrong business. It's not the best spreadsheet. It's about people and what they're building and the possible you know, how well do you think that's going to do? You have to know Attrack. I should know people who know attech, especially crypto, because it's a lot of people selling a lot of luff. Right, So um, repeat the Kusher for me again. No worries in you. You seem to prioritize the field, the founder field that you get from this person is the right person to be building this. Yeah. Yeah, like for z cash, that was one of the earliest investing of the z cash and that was for my last fun I still in me Szuko and this was before crypto was hot, but he'd been in crypto before bitcoin, and he just lived for it and he cared so much for a privacy. I was like, and he was so like charismatic about it. But though I understand only when I attend words that came about his mouth when he was talking about you know, crypto, cryptography and he was bringing in the right people, I was like, you're the guy on a bet. I wish I had had a bigger bed. I was still kind of scared about cryping the points and a small bed. But that small bed which are really nicely for my for my last fun um and then I've just done that. Like you meet this person who really cares about a problem, and it's also can rally on the people around them and actually build there. That is the best bet you can get. Early stage. You know, the early stage is not built on if it's not built on spreadsheets. I don't look at there. I don't look at their projections because projections are made up numbers. It's host in dreams and prayers. It really is like projecting five years out on a on a on a social product, really like what you know, Like you can't it's just um. So you're betting on people you know in the ena venture at least early stage. Later stage you can do based on metrics and so forth. Early stage, you know, you know Travis and Uber. You know, Travis was the guy to build up and no one expect Pole was going to become this worldwide jaggedna It was called uber Cab, uber Taxi, but neverally. But they thought, yeah, Travis gonna pull this up San Francisco, a couple of the cities. Okay, let's buy not the amount of regulatory hurdles that he had to get past. That only it took nobody else could have only took a special person to stare at those challenges and say, you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna go ask for I'd rather ask for forgiveness than permission. I'm gonna go in there. We're gonna we're gonna access this market and we'll figure out the regulatory challenges afterwards. Took a unique Travis as a fighter. It took a fighter to go up against every taxi mafia in every city in the world. I wouldn't have done it. I could have done I've done worn out that this not worth it right, most people I know they talked about I remember this. I was at some startup event in New York City. This guy was pitching me or something. You wanted to put the uber placement. But he's like, yeah, I only need fifty million dollars and I can do it. That's all it is. I'm like, no, you can have waste at fifty million. I mean, people will understand the thing. If I just have the money, I'll do it. No, it doesn't work that way. You know, if you have the will, it's it's like it's the will, the passion ability to do it. In fact, you know, like I think first on founders over emphasize the importance of money versus the best thing. Founders are like they want to start doing it for a while, scrappy, they built it, and now they need the mind to scale. Those are people are investing that all day long. They'll be like beating people off of the stick. If you're going to be a founder, that's what you want to do. An well, all I need is the right co founder and the right and the right investor and the right this. You know, no one's going to run after that. And there's a reason for those don't work, you know, it's you know, like the best entrepreneurs are sell starters. They're passionate and care about what they do. And then I do this Capella high water. Those are the ones you want to bet on. I mean, even just as a human being, who do you want to back? Right and someone who need you are going to encounter infinite problems and it's got to be the type of person that can figure that has the willingness and the capability to figure those out and keep on going. And that's a unique person. Yeah. Yeah, So circling back to the most interesting man in the world, claim. And uh right, you know, just as I started to uh, you know, read some of your materials and and kind of research you a bit. The person who came to mind was Earnest Hamingway, who was arguably the most interesting man in the world of his era and very much. It was not surprising for me to realize that he was a a source of inspiration for you and both living a language, living a life of adventure, you know, exotic adventure. And you know his famous quote, what what is writing? It's simple. You just get open up your typewriter and the typewriter and bleed and about you know, sharing a raw, vulnerable, unfiltered version of yourself is really where the value and writing comes. Um. You know, would love to to hear you know, your thoughts on Hemingway as your inspiration and uh and you know what lessons you can clean from him. Hemingway was the first example of him across a clear true writing. I mean he transformed modern American literature. Before him, it was all flowery words and this and that, but he was just like every word matter. Remember I went to this museum in New York City once, um, and they had I think it's a Ferald to arms a copy of it, like inscribed by him, and I have to a friend and I need to wrote something like The Last Power Be. He rewrote times to get it right. That's what it takes to be a master, and that is his level when he was writing that right, he voted time, rewrote it. But I'm saying, word by word by word right to get it right. That's what it takes when you cared deeply. But anything you don't just It's like when people ask me to read their read a book that were I'm like, what draft is? They look at me like, what do you mean about draft? Is it the first draft? Second after they're like, what do you mean drafts? I'm like, when you're at the fifth draft, then maybe I'll look at you. Don't. You don't if you want to keep someone as a friend, never send him for a trap. First traf to get out of. Hemingway said, it's an excrement. You know, he was polite about it. Um. What I learned from him was this what his true commitment to his craft. You and people talk about how much you should drink or whatever, but when he was working a book, he wouldn't drink. He was so discipline. He had a process and he just would get in and do the work. It was so disciplined. I really and I learned that level of discipline, you know, and it applies to everything in life. If you truly care about something, you have to be disciplined, right because it's not gonna do it so for you. If you truly care of being great at something, and why not you have this life, be great at something. It doesn't matter what. It really doesn't matter what, you know. I recently, Um, I'll tell something funny and October, I kind of get with this idea. You know what, I want to be like. I want to be like John Wick the movie, right, I want to be like that character. I want to be as good as him. Interesting ambitions. I just came up with it. I was like, that sounds like fun right. So Collins are friends of mine and through through my network, I got connected with this former Seal Team six Opera and named Steve Sanders. Um. If you look go to six Shooters dot com. Muny can look him up. He's alleged teams okay, very highly decorated been and so many deployments been. He's killed a lot of very very bad human beings, very the top tier human beings who were done very bad things. He's been sent him to shoot them in the face, Okay, to put him mildly, Okay, put me in So I I invade. He lives in Vegas. So I re sat to him through a mutual friend, and so I was willing to talk to him, and I said, like I kind of joked, was I, Look, I want to come train with you to get a job. It's kind of like I think it would hung up on me, but it came through a vitual friends, like, Okay, show up, let's see how you can train. I showed up and I started training combat shooting with him, because John Wick is incredible the guns, right, So like, who better learned from than a Seal Team six operator who's done everything from at the first President of Afghanistan just hitting the Seal Team six against all of Caliban, you know, like right, I mean, there's as legit as it gainst. I started training with him, and I just kept on showing up every day at the beginner of mind and humble, and he's trying to just get me to get so frustrated that I would leave. He told me later He's like, yeah, I didn't think he would show up the next day. And I kept on showing up, kept on showing up, and you know what, I started training with him full time and to the point where after four or five months, I am very good at combat shooting. I mean, I said, COMBA shooter is not a rain just like running around doing drills the seam to the Seal team six drills. They're doing the Seal teams right. And in the process I kind of was doing it more as a joke I thought would be kind of fun. I fell in love with it. I fell in loved it because here's the thing I was learning from, a true master of his crush. His craft is shooting, okay, and we're lucky we have, you know, men like that and men women like that a military. That's what they chosen to do because they are you know, they're the ones who are representing us and the bad things one has to do in the military. That so the civilians, kid, don't have to do those bad things, right, And here's a true master at the craft. And and when you start learning the true master at anything, you start to you all of a sudden it's a different You just realize just what goes into it, and I fell in love with it. I never really found in love with it. And then it's like, you have a master who's taken on the time to take you on as a student. You're not gonna let it down. You bring your a game, Like I'm so disappointment I'm training with them. You literally bring your a game and you're always giving your best and you're always humble because you're not gonna talk shipped back to a master. You're still a student. You'll always be a student, right And also see sixth time, you've never got to right. You just not have any instinct yourself preservation. Yeah, and you know the best masters like him, very humble, very no nonsense, doesn't tell me war stories, even he'll tell them sometimes as part of the training, Like why is he making me go around like this one girl we're doing like he teaching me how to switch and shoot from the left side of the right side, and I hated it, and like, why don't you shoot my web side, you know, with the with the with the m floor And they showed me why to see the things that did. I was like, oh, and you actually you know? And then we've done everything from like clearing rooms with live rounds with each other's sweeping rooms. Just you don't even the police started the swap doesn't get this level of training right, So I've got to train that with him. And in that process, you know, when you go into any craft and it's a craft and this is not something I want to use on people, just like funny, I want to be like John Wick And now he's like, yeah, I like I've seen the John when I'll put you in a rage and you allowed shoot up right, I was like, holy cow. The confidence you built as getting better in anything is incredible. I have a new found confidence that I know. I have a confidence guy, but I have a new found confidence I've never had. It's amazing. Like to to progress in a craft and learn from a master I did have with Hemingway. Hemingway I found was a master and you start. You learned from the dead master is by studying their work, his face, his lessons were in the book. That was the end result. How do you know? You figure out and you learn to get there, so you really there's so much growth that happens, Like I have grown so much by studying with seed Um in so many ways I never expected as a human being. I just said, have to learn a firm skill and just kind of like you know, kinda like tongue and tea. And that becomes so serious about it. Screw john Way. I'm gonna be way better just because I want to be better at this, you know, because now it's become like a craft I'm setting out to learn and one day perhaps I'll never get to his level. You know, He's been a hundreds of firefights literally, right, I don't want to be in one, you know, Like, but with my training, if I am in one, like you said, the other side is you're gonna you know, you're like he said, you only you don't pull it all out because otherwise you will you only do it if you have to kill someone, and I will never. I don't have zero desire to do that. Where As a skill, it's made me a better human being. It's made me like much more. When you apply yourself to anything, you know, something inside you gets better and better. And I keep forgetting that. I did not expect it to happen in this training. Um So I mean I would say, like in writing or anything, if you can find a master and just apply yourself to learn from it. The alchemy that happens is that you grow in ways you never could have otherwise, and you've become better ways. It's way beyond that skill. Like I am a level accomplice now that I did not have before. It's just like it's like, I don't know what it is, but I'm just like I know that if I'm walking down the street, I'm thinking I wouldn't sunk with me. You know. It's just like this compress and it's like it's like and it shows and its sounding I'm trying to prove anything, not that the emergent emergent quality of of attacking something or growing through something that's that complex that also operates at that edge of human intensity, and whether or not you've been in a firefight, you're you're learning the skills that are required. You're you're being trained to encounter a situation of that level of inten I imagine that you can't help but grow from that and be more grounded. Yeah. And also, like for example of writing, when I really sit on to learn the crafts of writing, it spot about a decade whecking my ass off on it, and I do as a person because when you grow and you get better in something that you get the sense of confidence. Okay, forget the one with shooting guns. That's a different kind of confidence, right, But you get a certain kind of confidence because you grow, you step up as a human being. When you step up as a human being and you accomplish something and you're better, nothing can take it away from me. The sense of self. It's building a sense of self, and a sense of self doesn't come sitting around waiting for it to happen and doing self care work. It comes from actually doing things that get better out of that you care about, getting better out of it. Natural impappants. It seems like a symbiotic relationship between loving yourself and inspiring yourself to take on those challenges and those challenges and growing through them, increasing you know and and cementing one's love for that self because you feel better about yourself and knowing that you know you can. It's actually like that, you know, I've talked to some people about confidence. I'm like, the best way to get confidence is actually just pick things that and apply yourself to them to get better at them, and things that are challenging but that you care about. So you'll stick with it, right, and you'll just naturally develop a sense of confidence that you can't fake, that you carry with you. You know, that's the that's the real confidence. Like people like Steve, you know, we're so accomplished, so humble, so quiet, never walking down the street. I mean, like, you see this guy, there's a I could give you a ten million dollars. You're like, now, I'm gonna thank you. You would have to know what he is. You don't have to know who You're like, I don't know because he's he's done this. He carries it with him, right, But it can be in anything. You can tell the confidence and a writer who's work to get to where they are, or a conference and a and a carpenter or anything you do. You know, it's a gift actually a life to be. We've been lucky that we can actually live in a society. We're just not literally trying to survive all the time. You know, at least most of us, right that even when I was in the position of life, I was just trying to survive. We still live in the Western world, you know, and we have so much available to us. We're not like fighting tigers off and almost not shooting, you know, like we're not like fighting off like you know, our militias out whatever. Like we have the time to do these things and it's the greatest giffic and give ourselves things that we can internally and externally where we improve ourselves. A beautiful a beautiful message that I think you know a lot of us need to be more more conscious of right now and kind of understanding but having been released from uh material deprivation, that we do have the time and the ability to go and pursue some of these uh pursue excellence and these things that might have first seemed just like uh kind of casual leisure instances, but really do present the opportunity for enormous personal growth. And UM, come on, thank you very much, and uh, I cannot thank you enough for coming on and giving us this blueprint on how to approach that expertise, how to appre coach and pursue that in you know, a deeper internal grounding and more primitive understanding of ourselves, UH encountering are facing our fears, our own truths and growing from them. UM, so appreciate your your work so much in the many lives it is transformed and the wisdom and knowledge that you've been willing to share with us today. And uh, you know, once you're you're back from Las Vegas and Mr Loebe is back from his travels. He wanted me to kind of a blood commitment to getting together and discussing this stuff in person. So thank you once again so much for joining us. And if you could let everybody know where to find finding on the Internet or your other materials. Um, honestly, I'm very lazy on social but if you just can go make Kamala robit Cohn feel fine whatever I'm doing. Literally, it took a europe from Instagram nine os so nine months off from Twitter and falling back on Twitter. I think the best way is just my books good Amazon. I promise if we don't like l W money back life like it's Harpercolinism makes money off them, you know, not me. I get a smaller world beause not trying to sell you anything, but really the work I put into love yourself but your life depends on it. Put a year in my life just every word matters and from my heart, and it really has helped so many people. That's what I'd like to see happen as more people read that and apply it. That's I've done something really good in the world with that that I the world is better because I was here. A beautiful sentiment and one that that is very much, uh that that you're seeing in the reaction to your work so far, and even just you know, having encountered it myself and having taken a break from personal development and self help work, just the some simplistic and and straightforward messaging and even within the last forty eight hours since you know, I've first encountered it has really been a big boon for me. So thank you once again, and uh look forward to continuing this in person my pleasure, I am at Bolinski once again. You can listen and subscribe to the Prevailian Narrative on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you're listening right now. Make sure to follow me on my socials at Matt Bolinsky M A T T B I L N s K Y. The Prevailing Narrative is a Cavalry Audio production and association with iHeart Radio, produced by Brandon Morrigan, Executive produced by Dana Burnetti and Kegan Rosenberger for Cavalry Audio I'm mat Bolinski,