5 Questions that Will Change Your Life

so i haven't seen any of these questions so it started off from a tweet where someone said like here's ten questions to get to know people is that is that right yeah listener of the pod and i think your friend blake blake burg i think is his name he had tweeted out of a thing like you know whatever there are many questions but few will change your life here's ten questions that will change your life and you know thread goes viral so by the way you know normally believe it's kind of like i no it's good there's this thing ben you'll have to look it up again no research here there's this thing i remember years ago it was called like the new york times like twenty one questions and it was like here asked these twenty one questions on your first right well on a first date i thought and it was like here's how you get intimate with people in like as a single twenty one year old i read that i was like oh like they're so i could hook up with girls and i remember those questions and they're very similar to what these these guys questions are but it was like when did your father make you cry or like like it was like pretty deep questions like that and so i'm i'm done with these questions so so i actually read these questions and i was like these are actually good questions but the way he presented it i think you know if offense is how most people do twitter it's like here's some general advice or some general questions what's interesting to me is not the like the question but it's kinda seeing somebody struggle with their their answer to that question so for example he would ask a question like and and i'll give you give you the first question which is which is gonna come out here in a second ben read read question number one i'll explain how he tweeted it and how i think we should answer instead request and what areas of my life am i settling okay so what areas is my life am i settling that's a powerful question it's a good thought provoking question now his the rest of his tweet was like you know just enough or just okay is not good enough identify the areas you life you're you're just settling so to me that's the part where it was like no no blake i wanna hear your answer like you tell me like if you're gonna put out one of these bullshit ass threads that's like you know generic generic generic thread to try to get likes i think that the next level of this like bullshit thread thing is people do get a little more vulnerable they're gonna put their actual answers in the thread rather than general advice who's invented this this theme i'm seeing so like up worthy was like here's ten things you're not gonna believe number seven this new one that i'm seeing on twitter is there's eight thousand of this thing here's the four best eight billion humans on this earth not all of them are worth following here's my eleven friends that are worth who do do who created that did one of our bodies are i or is it i have no idea who started that but that's that that is the formula well ben alright what's the first one i just tried it it's in what area of my life it's you first okay so what areas of my life am i settling and by the way this is called the boys go to therapy because we gotta open up a little bit we gotta we gotta see with it with this what the answer might be i would say two come to mind the first is fitness like i think i got kinda comfortable with my workout routine and diet and i was like oh okay like not as bad as i was i'm on my way to getting fit and i just kind of got okay with like i was kinda settling for like wow you're much better than before but i'm writing that for for like you know twelve months now and now the before is the same as the current because it's like been a while like six months of like the same and so i just realized this recently and was like why did i settle here this isn't the destination like i basically was on a road trip and i stopped at the gas destination and then unpack my bags instead of being like no no the that's this is not the destination destinations this is the the pit stop i gotta get to the hotel well why is my suitcase outfit you made a lot of progress so in a relatively short amount of time you just gotta keep going yeah so i would say i'm settling there and the other one i'm settling i think is me and my wife like we have two little kids and there's like you know this feeling of like you know what like we put a lot into work okay then you put you're putting a lot into your fitness you're putting a lot into your kids and was like whatever's is leftover at the end of the day for each other like you know we take what we can get as the scraps of like you know the energy the kind of like just the effort we put into kind your relationship as i think we've both kinda settled on that which is like it's fine they're not they're not leaving not don't going anywhere it's fine we can we can kids grow up that she gonna listen to no that's the beauty of you should never listened to this i think that that's good that you you said that maybe maybe that will make her like you more yeah especially because i didn't say that she is doing all this i said we are doing it which is you know the key alright alright what about you what areas of your life do you think you're settling my a consistent diet needs to i i think i could i like to improve that i looked at my goals over the last ten years so i created the goal tracking thing ten years ago when i was about twenty one and i hit all of them except for wanting to weigh a hundred and ninety pounds i've always struggled to lose ten pounds and i just i've always wanted to do it i've never done it and so i've i'm sucking at that the second thing career wise i've settled a bit so i'm i purposely set up a period where i was like one year the sale it plus one year i'm gonna chill i'm just gonna read i'm gonna learn and i still am not ready to like go all in on something i'm i'm not there yet and so i'm kind of being a little bit lazy and i feel a little guilt around that and then i'll do a relationship one dude i'm super dependent on sarah like if someone like wants me to come speak somewhere i'll be like eric can you just like handle this or like do you want me to go speak here like let me know like i'm only gonna and and oftentimes because i don't like to fly i'll be like by the way i'm only going if you're available like if you don't go i don't wanna go because i enjoy being around her and i think i should learn to do a few things by my myself a little bit more than i have in lately i just tend to rely on her so freaking much that i need a i need to go juice up by myself give me one that's give me one that's a settle that you i i feel like all those settles maybe that both of us said are like settles that were kinda cool with what's to settle you're not cool with the weight thing yeah i the weight thing i'm not cool with that like i get up like i'm pissed off i'm like why can't i just be consistent if i was just consistent for like five months with an an ate a certain amount of calories i'd be good i'm i i would be good i would hit it but it is so freaking tempting and i just give into that shit and that pisses me off what else i don't know what am i i do think that so tell me if this is a settling thing i create i've created a couple little small pro products in my free time and i get so excited about making like five hundred dollars one hundred dollars a thousand dollars a day i get so much joy from that and i'm like dude i could crush this if i want to i can build i can build things that are huge why am i not why don't i have the motivation to do this and so i feel like i feel soft and like i'm settling in that aspect yeah i think one one that i've seen in myself and by the way i don't think that that was i forgot out you said you said tell me what you think about like i agree with you so so i think that was good i'm thinking more and more that the the the settling thing the easiest way for me to pinpoint where i'm settling is when i see the contrast when i see somebody who's not settled in this area and i'm like oh they wow they're really pushing it beyond beyond where i am right now in this like and it doesn't mean i'm always gonna just chase and do what others do necessarily but it kinda takes me seeing that for me to be like oh word like that's this isn't this isn't the kind of the spot to just settle down and and and dig my heels in and so that's happened to me with money like for example i've seen people's lifestyle or i've seen people's just people talking about stuff it's like somebody will be like yeah we you know we picked up this project and then we you like a real estate deal we we picked up this this deal and we're gonna flip you know basically four months later and you know we should make one and a half million on that and i'm i'm just sort of like oh okay so like they're normal where they have settled for their normal is like what would have been let's say an outstanding outcome for me but like to them that's the normal course of business and then i just sort of checked myself and i say alright do i care and usually i usually i do care you usually i do care when i noticed those things because that's why they stood out to me in the first place and like sometimes they don't stand out in this way that i'm saying where i'm saying it all calmly i'm just sort of like usually it's like i'm jealous of them or i'm like i find myself trying to come up with a reason why that's not good and then i gotta a whole and i gotta pull myself back like oh or maybe instead of coming up with reasons why that's not good i should just admit that it's probably good and something that i actually want for myself and i'm just trying to kinda like mentally in my own justification tear their shit down a little bit to make myself feel okay but in reality maybe i should just say oh cool they should be something i want and maybe i've i've i've actually just kind of settled here but i could go further than i than i currently have do do you a journal do you have a history of journal or goal setting that just like writing down like thoughts or targets that you wanna achieve for different ages not ages but like do like kind of have ideas in mind but it's not it's not based on how old i am like i i i don't know i don't mean like in the future current age what what i mean is like when you're twenty one were you like alright this year i wanna accomplish this when i was twenty one i did i said okay by thirty i i used to say by thirty i wanna have a million dollars in the bank and if i had a couple of goofy ones it's like i have a million dollars in the bank i wanna have gone on survivor and i wanna like you know i had like two other like i don't remember what they were at this point and then like i i got older i was like oh well that number needs to be bigger and then the second one time isn't really a factor and like oh i don't care about forbes thirty to thirty that's actually all bullshit and i'm like you i kind of adjusted my like goals once i like wasn't twenty one anymore well i think it's good to look at those things because i i'll look at all my old journal and writings and i'm like what what energy was i putting into there what was i bummed about what was i excited about and then oftentimes i do one of two things i either tried to impress my past self or try to make my future self pumped where i'm like what what what will i be really excited that i did now in ten years so there's this thing i don't know if you're heard of it so chris saga who is you know one of the kind of best investors of all time who's one of the biggest investors in twitter and instagram and a couple other bad companies he he had this thing which was like he he read out somewhere i think was on the tim ferris podcast something he like he read out a note that he had written to himself and of note that he'd had written written to himself when he was twenty years old and and he goes i i i actually i just found it while we were talking here this is perfect i found the transcript do you know what i'm talking about do you know what about to say yeah yeah i remember it i remember it what did he say i don't remember exactly he says i remember this episode he goes he goes something about you know do you wanna be when you up goes so here i am i'm twenty years old i'm living in cork ireland and we'd start the day drinking at eleven thirty blah blah blah blah and i'd never heard of an investment banker i've never at that point i i've heard of a venture capitalist and so i just wrote in there i don't know what the job is called but i know it's gonna involve a lot of talking on the phone a lot of negotiating a lot of yelling at people high risk high reward unbelievably high stakes and i'm gonna do it part time from the mountains part time from the beach whatever it does whatever it is i'm gonna be done with it before i'm forty and then he's like you know fast forward he this is you know just i think he was forty forty one and he basically a billionaire home exactly that yeah so he's like he's now a billionaire who does exactly that makes deals he didn't know what a vc was but he became a vc which is that deal he has a house and truck and you know another one on the beach so he had the mountains in the beach thing and it was like literally it all played out and he retired from the game and he was like done with it and he moved on with his life and he started doing other things and so so i always thought that was really cool and i thought it was cool because it wasn't like these fucking lame goals it was a of his life was like it was like a painting of his life it was like a movie scene of his life and i've noticed that the people who kinda do this like they kinda called their shot and they manifest it they don't really call their shot with like some like it doesn't feel like excel it feels like imovie it's not like a bullet point analytical thing it's like a a vision for how their life is gonna be and what life is gonna feel like and they don't even know the words to describe it or the route to get there they're like but that's it that thing at the end that's how it's gonna feel that's what it's gonna look like that's what i'm gonna do i'm doing this tonight i'm doing this is good i imovie movie not excel that's a good one if you were gonna do like let's do a kind of off the cuff shitty version right again we do it for the entertainment of we do it for the people what do you think would go into that what do you what's your or what comes to mind as your version of that i like physical places as opposed to internet places so i like it would really i wanna have a i really wanna own i wanna have some type of physical land or or buildings throughout the country that i can entertain all of my friends all at one time by the way for all of propose something here yeah i propose we do a two minute thing where we just jot down on our note here what we think it is and we'll just cut that out now because i'm not prepared i'm not prepared you wait you gotta do it what's that's what saying we get we get we gotta write it down we gotta figure it out okay so i i think i'm not ready alright look at that reaction this tells you that's that's what we call resistance when the boys go to therapy that's but identify some resistance i have to figure this up this is like such a hard thing to do next question ben fuck are you guys ready for the next question love look okay let me let me give you my let me give you my scene right now okay my scene that i have in my head is you're already living living no dude my house is like this i i already know the house it's this big ass house everything's fucking white inside my i i'm at this i i have the same i have a chef like i have today but it's like on this like giant area there's people just coming in and out of my house because we're like the fucking lobby like my whole life and work is so integrated that like my trainer showing up they're having brunch with us and then the you know i'm having this meeting with this other person but they're also gonna work out with us and the whole thing is just integrated into one big ass thing my mom's over my sister's over because we all live nearby because we all made it the second thing is i take a nap midday with no guilt so zero guilt midday nap i already know that that is like that is the that implies that the rest of the shit worked itself all out and then the last piece is all i get to do is just meet interesting people and be super curious about them and then i just either i don't know record or type or something like kinda like what we're doing right now i just take the interesting bits i put it out there and it's in million it's in in in a million people's ears or eyes you know the next day because they are following it they love the content the like they love the content package that i put out and i never meet those people i don't have to talk to them i'm not their consultant i'm not their motivational speaker i just kind of i'm taking little bits of what i'm curious about and i'm putting it into a million people's ears every morning i think top almost i think you're practically there i don't know you gotta to get the house and the fancier chef dude you could take a nap now i'm sure dude the midday nap right now with kids that's indulge if you take more two years that's like that's like giving the middle finger to your spouse i'm go take a nap right now what what's the next question by the way the that million people's ear things that was old i had said that before we started this podcast i had told sue he was like what do want you do next when i was selling the company and we were on like a fucking ten mile walk we just kept walking in the middle of the night and who was like tell me more what are what are you thinking i said dude i think what i wanna do is i just wanna have some way that i could just get my thoughts out there and it gets in a million people i remember calling at ear balls i said it's did a million people's ear balls in the morning i said i just think that that would be so cool if i could just be on people's ears while they're on their commute to work or whatever else and that was before the podcast now the podcast is getting close to that yeah you have that alright question to and but you can go out of order ben pick the questions that are interesting to you let's go with question ten you should choose your battles wisely what battles do i choose dude i choose so many petty battles like if i what i'm driving and i see someone behind me and they're driving like an asshole and cutting other people off i like go out of my way to slow down and purposely like block it so i'm going just as fast as the fast light so they can't get by me i also i i replied you're like i go to their destination yeah do not to wear really bad i'm just it pisses me off at someone's rude i also replied to the just so many comments that i shouldn't reply to where i think someone has says something and it's just kind of ridiculous and i reply to it and there's no reason why i should be doing that so i pick a lot of really really really dumb battles your hoa battle that you had i would die on that one that would that would that the this would not stand that's what i would say i mean i i would go hard on that one what was the question though what what battles do you pick that you shouldn't it's basically it says choose battles wisely what battle do i chew so which it really what is saying what battle do you want to be choosing another way of looking at is what you said which is what are the shitty what battles am i stupidly choosing right now that i need to knock choosing dude i choose so much small stuff like i just for some reason i see stay like hardcore in the dirt like for example i'm out at my ranch and i've got people here like setting up my airbnb and stuff and like people are like doing the stuff but like i just have to be here and i'm like putting shit together or like fuck i guess i'm gonna go rent a car and go to costco it's like no we're already doing that i choose the smallest stuff as opposed to leveraging my my skill set and so that is an un unrealized battle that i should not be picking instead i need to be thinking about much bigger things and i just i simply don't i think having kids might change that i think there's a world where that we're i'm praying that having a child is gonna like somehow like show me the way you guys could tell me if i'm wrong but dude i picked the smallest much i felt like tiny tiny tiny issues that's like i have a friend who the like the there are a couple they're like kinda going through problems right now as a as a relationship and then she said something she was like i just feel like i to have a kid and then that's gonna like help us and i was like well my god no that is not the answer like i understand why you do but that will make it this relationship better but it is going to do the exact opposite i think it could be the answer to be honest like having a dog is like two percent of having a child not in the sense if i'm taking care of but it's like i've got something that i need to protect and take care of and it makes me a little bit happier i imagine properly having a human being where you're like oh i have to dedicate my my life to this person it's beyond me at this point i have a feeling that is that can be very inspiring and that's why i think a lot of like thirty five and forty year olds who are childless and are like getting messed up on psychedelics all the time and feel depressed i'm like dude just fucking pop out some babies i bet like you won't be asking yourself how do i find myself you're gonna say how do i just like make this kid happy and like when you dedicate yourself to others i think you're happier can i read you something cool by the way but i just you disagree with that no i think you're right in that in two ways so i think you're right that habit a kit definitely takes to focus off yourself so that that eliminates like a huge number of worries that you have but it replaces that with new worries if your habit is to worry just what whatever situation i put you in you're gonna find something to worry about it's just better to worry about other people though it's it's more reward is improvement it is an improvement the other thing is that yeah some bullshit just can thrown out the window because you don't have that bandwidth you don't have that extra time to think about stuff and do and make that trip to costco because it's just off the table you don't have the time and so so that's one thing but it it doesn't fundamentally change the nature of the the root cause of the problem which would be you like a focus on minor things because guess what then you're gonna start to focus on you know why your kids you know pinky toe is a little bit crooked and why they have this little rash on their knee and like why they're not eat why didn't it eat all you know a balanced lunch and like there's a million there's a zillion things you could worry about with a kid and you could even justify them further because it you're i'm a marty i'm a great parent for doing so so you gotta be careful with that i don't think it goes away but i do think it like changes the problem a little bit so what's yours okay i'll answer the question i'm gonna read you this thing so the battles the battles i should pick i should pick the battles i wanna choose are health so being in the best health that i can be and having a a healthy lifestyle for me and the people around me is your way healthy because does she eat healthy yeah she she she's in and out she she you can be when she's on it she's super clean so she doesn't have the problem i have of discipline like once she flips the switch she'll just never for bad again until she flips to switch off and then she'll eat oreos all day and so it's like you know one or the other and so but and same thing was working out she's like hardcore intense about that and hardcore intense about her diet and like she doesn't wave her at all so but it's just a matter of what what mood she's in like and the mood is like a year long mood not like a daily daily fluctuation so i think health is the first one because i've seen that once your health goes a little sideways nothing else actually matt none of the other battles have like any relevance anymore i think the second one is like probably the probably the second battle to choose is like i don't know probably something around parenting but i even know how to phrase it like i don't know being like not constantly trying to like rush through parenting parenting and like getting the job done that's probably the second one is like the battle of enjoying being patient with my kids and then the last one is probably like i do too many projects i have so many fucking projects at once and they're all good projects but they're probably collectively together a bad number of projects do that's probably the most one i know i always say it but how many people criticize you about that i don't know if my friends and people who actually care about me like i don't know the people who know me and care of they do they do and the people they don't are like oh that's cool you do so many things and my friends are like that's not cool all these things could be cool but you gotta do them you gotta do them right and if you're not gonna do them you gotta figure out how like hire somebody who's gonna do that thing for you dude i would if i was you i would only do three things i would do the podcast because i thought that hard and it kinda drives the other thing i would do milk road and i would do investing yeah the problem is i'm too deep in on e commerce and so i gotta like either hire my way out or sell this thing or i don't know what i don't know what the other option you gotta sell it i think you sell it or something i think that what everyone talks about hiring someone to run shit they're still like involved somehow like you're not active i i think that that's actually really hard to i don't know when when you did it for the hustle you were pretty good about it right yeah but i thought about it all i mean i still felt like i was working there but yeah i i didn't do other projects though i wanna read something to you real quick there's a thing from devil that's i don't know you said something that that reminded me of this it's little i have a slack channel called wisdom and this is in there so he goes he says the only true test of intelligence is if you get what you want out of life it's the only true test of intelligence is if you're getting what you want out of life it goes there's two parts of this one is are you able to hack reality to get what you want and the more important one was were you smart enough to figure out what you should want in the first place and that's the part part that's the hard part exactly and like you read this nod and then it's like have i been smart enough to figure this out in the first one what do i even want and then do i do i like both you and we have developed the skills of hacking reality but we get a little easy yeah remembering what what we actually want and what doesn't matter what we don't care about and like remembering which game actually play yeah ben bending reality is in my opinion the easy part what knowing what you want is the way way harder i don't know but let's one other part one other part that really liked he goes you live in a society which has a bunch of people in it so that will train you to play the the bunch of people game the multiplayer game but only an only as an individual you get to stumble on the hidden game the single player game and that is the real game and he goes he says a couple things he goes he goes if you had no adversity it would be a very boring game so remember you gotta play the game it's your game you get to design the board design the challenge you get to design the victory condition and that is the creativity that is like you know sort of you get to decide the purpose of your own life in in the same way you get to design what game you're gonna play what the rules are and what the victory condition is and if you have you write this intentionally done that you're you know you're not you're not playing it you know you you haven't actually started playing that game consciously yet where do you write that i know he he said this on like a twitter spaces or something like that this guy's zach zach po gru tweeted it out i liked it that's good ben what's question what's another one alright i think this is an interesting one what are you letting in so in other words like he says turn off the news don't read the comments quinn interacting with negativity you think of his mental fitness like what what things are you letting in what noise you're letting in that you shouldn't let in oh that you should i have a yeah what what are you letting through the through the window or the door that actually is you know you shouldn't be should be getting through the what are yours well i had you had written something on the dock that i think is interesting it was about feedback so let's just zoom it into feedback what was your question around feedback so i have a few ways that i go about doing this but you could do this when building a product or when just asking people about your personality which i think you should do like what do what do i suck where do i rock and what you'll notice and it's very clear i tweeted out what do you like about the podcast what do want more what do want less of and for every person who says they want a longer podcast there's an equal amount of people who say they want a shorter one there are some people who say more guests there are some people who say no guest and that makes things really hard you to to to figure out feedback and so i was gonna ask you how do you decide which feedback to listen to and which to ignore so i started off like i used to the way i used to think about this was do feedback is the key you need a feedback loop you need to talk to your customers you need to know your audience and there was all these like you know books written about how important that stuff is and so i became fucking mister feedback i would you know if i had a project idea i'm taking the designs out to a mall and i'm stopping people say hey give me feedback on this idea and you know every coworker i was like hey would love some feedback what do you like about me what do you hit me hey what's good about me to work with etcetera i was fucking missed feedback and then i started to get what you what you just described which is information whiplash which is it's like information overload but it's not just an overload it's the information yeah and so then i'm like gosh shit what to do so i got paralyzed so then i went to steve jobs mode fuck feedback people don't know what they want why would i ask them what they want they don't they don't even know what they want for breakfast how could they tell me what they want out of this out of this app they've never heard of how could they tell me how to be a better boss blah blah blah people don't know what they want and i became mister steve jobs in the turtleneck then i sort of realize that's not good either right because now i've isolated myself from actually getting feedback so i i have no signal to go off of and so now i've come up with a better balance i think between the two which is i seek out feedback from people who i think are are gonna give me relevant feedback so i don't just ask everybody and then the last piece is the feedback is not the answer it's the question so when i hear feedback i'm not looking for the answer to what we should do more of what we should do less of how i can be better how i can be worse i'm just looking for the feedback to just surface a couple of questions so for example if they if the feedback said you know longer podcast somebody people will say i want longer podcast some people said i want shorter podcast it's just a question that comes up which is what do i think is the right length of the podcast what podcast podcasts are great when they're long what podcast podcasts are great when they're short it what would be the verb what would be a great short version of our podcast so i use the feedback to ask myself a better question and then it's my job to come to the answer it's their job to just give me their opinion which which gives me a question that that can ask and so same thing when what goes with products which is when i for feedback we both like this book called the mom test and the the central principle is i only get to ask them about their problems they i don't get to ask them what solution they want and so similarly when i go ask for feedback now i'm just looking for them to say things that's gonna get me to ask a better question that will get me to to come up and then it's my job to come up with the answer to that that's that's the main principle when when in doubt there's one final thing which is at the end of the day i gotta like trust myself and i gotta know that ultimately if i just do the thing i think is right over and over and over again i will happen i might some people might not like it but i will ultimately attract the people who love what i do so that comes back to that that saying my my trainer gave me which is who are my customers the people that love what i do and it became that simple for me so that that's what i that's what i fall back to so it's like if it was like if else statement it's like if if their feedback gives me a clear question and an answer that i know what to do with great i'll make an adjustment but if not then i'm just gonna do what i do and i know that that will attract the diapers person and who loves what i do i think that i i think you can i always call it like excel sheet your way to creating a big business so i think that like you could just say like where's the opportunity based off of like traffic demand and i just hired these people and you can create wealth that way i so i and i and i don't like when people say you have to be passionate you don't really have to you can just excel your way to this but what i've learned throughout the years is like it's a lot more fun just to do things that you think is are cool and typically i can that's more of the feedback that i'll listen to is just like do i think this is cool and the second thing when i get feedback is i don't actually care like you said what they're saying i i care more about why they're saying it and so for example when people say make the podcast shorter they're not saying make it shorter they're saying it's not always that interesting right exactly and and so the quote because if something's you know really long it doesn't matter as long as it's badass ass or if i did a made a three hour movie about sean your sean gonna watch it and so it's really not about listening to the actual feedback but why do i think they're saying it so that's what i listen to alright this one you guys get talk about some other people this one is am i surrounding myself with the right people who are the five i want to spend time with powerful question that is a powerful question so let's just we'll make it but i think it's a heavy question so let's make it light so tell me right now who are the five if you just said i spend my time the most with these five people who are the five people you currently just spend the most time with wife sarah problem yeah neville my best friend and and lives next next door to me ramon who you be allowed people to know ramon va mirror and then jack smith that's four you got one more i wouldn't put anyone else in those categories no that's it your dog well you i i like you guys kinda like i that's pretty in endeavor but i would say that that's the out in it there and alright so then let's let's let's just add one more who somebody you wish was in that five that is that you're not spending as much time as as you like in an ideal world you would be steph smith i would add steph smith oh yeah nice i think smith is is amazing just like what i was like just like our podcast listeners they also want so every time i talked to her i like damn she's brilliant she's a very special person so maybe her anyone else like i sometimes i do wish i like i had like some baller ball baller friends a lot of my friends are like pretty great but like fucking hanging out with like a russian a arc just to see how like some of these crazy people think who are like extreme i would like i like extreme people so even though i may think they're a bad person i would like to hang out with some of these extreme people who are just on extreme ends of success or it could even be an athlete like what's it like to hang out with like the person who holds the world record in the marathon so it would be nice to to be around more extreme people that's in that's a really good actually twist to this which is i think a lot of people have heard this idea of you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with and that's true but there's two other groups of people that i think really matter one is like the equivalent of a vendor it's like you don't wanna go in a bender every day or every weekend but like twice a year a bender is a lot of fun and if you don't do a vendor twice a year if you're not really having one amazing party or you know just an all night or some kind of experience that's like a little out there you kind of leaving a little bit of life on the table and and so there's some people that are amazing in that capacity that you just you would never want in your you're every everyday but they're amazing twice a year twice a year hangs with and and i think there's some people that are like that the other one is who have you just not even encountered yet like who is just outside of your bubble that it's like you don't even know what you don't know yet because you just don't hang out with anybody like that and so you you have zero exposure and therefore you know it's just like it's not part of your worldview view it's not part of your mental model yet so i think that's a two categories who or the those those two your category do the five and then the other alright so my five would be sonya and my wife and my my kids i'll just put it put it all together my mom is the next one so i spend my mom comes over one week out of every month he stays with us ben who's kind of like my my right hand man my my business partner across no road across in the fund he helps with the podcast he does a bunch of things so i talked to ben hours a day andre who i don't think you've met andre right no no andre is like kinda like the new ben he's like the next ben so he's a he's a new guy in the fold on on that level and andre has kind of amazing because andre has got this story that he had some illness that he had something he caught some bug he got some infection that like he gave him like kinda like chronic fatigue syndrome or something like that like he basically like couldn't get out of bed for like i don't like two years or something like that like he guy was in a wheelchair one the and nobody nobody knew what it was and it was just like and then he kinda like recover him it but it was like this multi year thing and so this motherfucker is the most like grateful person you'll ever meet because he's like dude i walked today and i'm like you know like it doesn't take much for andre to be like high on life and because andre around me all the time i'm i get that secondary high right you know they contact high right off of andre and like you know because he he kind of like was just battling and got out of it and so now he's like every day he like you could tell he's just savor every day like as if you you haven't eaten in like two weeks and you're having your first meal that's how andre is like and so i love andre who and who are the other two the other one is su who's our mutual buddy and i don't hang out with him that much because he moved but he's a partner in one of my businesses and so i talked to him you know because that but the one downside is now that he's like an official business partner we don't really just like talk to shoot the shit anymore it's like we kind of anytime i'm talking to him i'm sort of talking to him always as he's as if he's my investor or business partner instead of just catching it up you know so i guess that's probably the downside and then so those are the those are the five that i'm currently hanging out with the most i would put you next as we hang out you know two three hours a week doing this so that's more than most people and then the one i wish i hung out with more was ramon because ramon is like the best human on earth so you know the more ramon in my life the better human i would be just you know by default i completely agree when he teaches me a lot he he's a very thoughtful person i learned a lot from him and then the the the category that was saying that people i'd have no exposure to is like i basically have no exposure anymore to people that are in high school in college which like actually pretty important as an investor and like you know person of the world to know like what that's like oh i forgot i used to think about these stupid things and they were the most important things in my life we're like oh wow you know we didn't have phones so we couldn't do these things you know that they're doing now in high school or college i like zero exposure to that you know like people in third world countries like you know when i went down to mexico i was like oh wow like i kinda of forgot like just how simple and like different life is for most people on earth and like you know i used to live in indonesian in china and stuff like that so like definitely was in it every day but now you know i'm sitting in the be in california so it's easy to forget that so i i think i have a lot like my bubble is pretty tight right now i think i should pop that intentionally once a while do you wanna do one more question ben yeah we're doing five questions five questions because i can nice round number and you bet you can remix it because some of these are sort of the same so you could just ask a different question you're a good question ask her in general so can ask a i've been thinking about one of these so let's go with this one in what ways am i in my own way ugh i can say that one easy i lose my temper and follow my i get very emotional where i'm like no fuck this is wrong we have to do it this way and i have lost a lot of money for doing that for like let's just say like it's an employee who i think like has maybe under performed even though they talk like they're hot shit i would just fire them as opposed to like well we could definitely salvage this like there's lots of ways to salvage things and make things better so it's a a net positive but more often than not be like well no i just i'm out i don't wanna deal with the headache i'm over it or and that is a very emotional decision i make so many emotional decisions oftentimes it's sometimes it's ego oftentimes is temper loa but mostly if it's like oh i think this person is trying to get one over them on me if i fuck them i wanna crush them no i'm not doing you know what i mean i make a ton yes i make a ton of emotional decisions as opposed to practical decisions that's just thing alright i got two i have one that's real but but is that true have you have you seen that with be easy yeah for sure you've been mad at me sometimes and i'm like because you think i would trying to like get one over on you and i'm like dude have i'm really not and then once you realized i'm not like your whole perspective changed right away and i was like oh that's what you thought like oh i had no idea because i wouldn't like it's so different than the way i so i i didn't i just never i i couldn't understand it basically it was not like oh i we can give a real example i got mad at you for being late and i'm like in my head i'm like here care he didn't care about this he thinks he's better and it would reality was like no dude my baby was sick or like you know i like that she was in the bath and it took forever to get her out and not like legitimately good like even a bad excuse which was just like dude i just i literally like i was sitting here i just lost track of time i'm not doing anything i'm not more important i'm not like diva i'm not trying to do that like i feel horrible every time i like i sometimes i literally don't even have a good excuse but but even that was fine with you it was just like and as long as you know to know i was sort of like actively doing it it didn't bother you you know what i mean to know i be or another thing that i do all the time and i think everyone should learn from me and i'm working hard at it and i made this mistake is replying really quickly to text based messages so whether that's an email anything where it's like dude it it's okay if you sit on this for an hour or even a day or even five days sometimes i'll get shit like a text or an email and i'm like oh no f that and i quickly reply and i'm like oh i should've just sat on that for like three hours what was like thinking yeah i'm that's actually a great one that's a great answer for me to i'm massively disorganized which affects everything so it's like replying like there are so many emails and text messages that like people are either like offering me something they're trying to help me and i'm just not replying and people take it very personally as you know maybe i would do if i felt i was blown off by this person or i'll just miss a deal that like it's just like a clear win for me because i just don't reply yeah forget reply i don't see it i would say fuck you know i actually don't think you should i i've been struggling with that too i had and lately i'm just like i'm just not gonna feel bad about find of these people like and it this is the most of it but listen here's the most du thing i could say but just subtract this by like a lot and that's the reality imagine you're justin timber and people like are always presenting you with stuff you're just like dude i don't care i'm gonna do what i wanna do of course we are not that big a deal but like a much much smaller version where there's like lots of opportunities and i'm just like i'm just gonna get door them i don't expect jt to reply to a dm do i yeah that's true but i'm talking about like people who i'm doing business with her by they're my friends or something like that like those are people i do intend to be replying to or i've asked them for something that they give it to me and i forget to do something with it but does just joke craziness there like imagine joe check how much is that i i don't wanna share the check on on screen but this is a thirteen thousand dollar check that's just been sitting here for like six months and then it expired and so now i just have to go like get a new check and then i got this is the new check after the other one expired and i still haven't deposited this one another month has gone by like that's how shitty i am and it's just sitting here because i'm just warriors for no reason or same thing with like my company's books so here's the bad way it plays out which is i don't like i've never hired a bookkeeper and so i'm like oh yeah like i don't know like aren't the transactions just like on the credit card no they've been basically end of the year i'll just i'll just cram for my taxes final and just figure this out and so now i'm like learning oh how do people do this oh they hire bookkeeper and then they like okay gotcha so like there was just things that are just messy in my world that's me getting in my own way you know it cost me a lot of money to to have messy books or not reply to certain certain emails so i think that's me getting in my own way the other one was just staying up late which is again this is so boring cliche almost embarrassed to even say it on the podcast because how late you stay the what it gives a fuck like on average i was staying up till two or three in the morning and then i'd wake up at nine and i just started like the last week i was just like fuck i was to sleep early and it solved like five of my biggest problems it's like my diet cleaned up because i i'd no longer late night snack or eat like junk which is all i would do right if i have dinner at seven and now it's one am and i'm hungry like guess what i'm not even midnight at that time nothing good happens including it could be fighting or it could be fighting yeah exactly it's like my sleep was shitty my work was shit i was editing the milk road at night now i just i sleep at like ten thirty or eleven i wake up at six zero or seven in the morning i write the real road and it's alright headed the milk road and it's done but and like by the time the kids wake up like i've already like finished my workday almost and so i just cleaned that up and it cleaned up like five other things but again so fucking cliche to say sleeping early that i bleep this whole thing out make it mysterious instead to remember how regiment rob j was about tracking his time and like waking up at six am or five am or whatever you did i actually like like i i if that's what makes him happy do it and i also respect how crazy about that i think i like extreme people part of me was like oh but that's like you don't need to do that but then the other part is like that would be kinda cool to do for like two or three weeks just to see what would happen just what would happen if you do get up at six am and you are like you have a very strict schedule i i actually do think that that sounds kinda fun to try it once in a while what time do you sleep and wake up typically last night i couldn't go to bed i went to bed at one or two and i got out of bed at seven i you normally always get out of bed at seven but i like super with your schedule i'm not productive though usually i'm not productive until about nine or ten my yeah so my baby wakes up at six in the morning usually so that's when i'm up and i try and go to bed around like ten ten thirty and then once you're twice a month i'll go to bed at like three am because i need to get something done that's that's that's how you go to bed at three am i i you're not like going on doing shit but do you do you drink do you drink or do drugs no when it's usually like i god this is the lame is trio ever when i when i do how to take over the world episodes i usually do a bunch of it in one sitting that i'll do from like nine pm to like three or four am i'll do that twice a month sean so let me recap these or i drink if like the occasion calls for it but not with any regular now but you get drunk i i used to but no like last five years i have not been getting drunk and do you do any drugs no yeah that's crazy what a bunch of approvals i just drink green smoothies bro i i don't even drink coffee we are so lame alright go ahead alright i'm gonna recap the five questions so the five questions were in what areas of my life am i settling right now the next one was am my oh no is not it oh yeah choose your battles wisely what battles am i choosing right now and what what do i wanna choose so what areas is my life and my i settling choose your battles wisely what battles do you wanna choose number three what am i letting in that i need to shut out that's noise and information and opinions from the outside world and then am i surrounding myself with the right people who are the five people i wanna spend the most time with and what was the fifth one did we do five yeah question five was in what ways am i in my own way oh yeah and what ways is am in way what are the things you're doing that gets in your own way those are the five ben which one of those questions when we set them did you go off on a tangent thinking it for yourself what your answer is which one shook you one of these questions are shane i i the first question shook me in what areas of my life settling that okay so okay you guys are looking at here i i thought i thought maybe i'd get away with not actually giving you the answer because like that's like that's one that penetrate your soul but you both were just like you're gonna answer right now and like for you both of you talked about like health and fitness stuff and one area in which i settle a lot in my life is like i get super concerned about environmental poll especially like plastics and micro plastics and like stuff like that and i always feel like a psycho path when i talk about it because everyone else is like what what like plastics and i feel crazy because i'm like no actually like this is new conspiracy theory like the research is out there that like all these micro plastics are like crashing our testosterone levels and like disrupting our endo systems and stuff like i'm not crazy but the fact that everyone else is like whatever makes me feel even crazier and so a lot of so weird obsessed i just like settle i compromise and i'm like look at my baby like putting this plastic toy away in her mouth and like a part of me dies and i'm just like whatever i i settle i'm not gonna fight this fight right now but it is something that we you have plastic tu we have plastic tu wear that i wish we would just like throw away such as doing it dude that is not at all where i thought you were going with that answer when you first because you're were like so it was like weighing so have you on your heart and that's what it was matter locked to sean most fucking random answer or is is easier is rubber is like a like a what they call like a bin was the pacifier thing the pacifier what it what it is that rubber i don't even know whether that it is that plastic yeah so most of the time no they won't do plastic in pacifier so they'll either do silicone which is better or they'll do rubber yeah which is also better and rubber is better okay right silicone i like have my doubts about but it does not have like the same proven track record of disrupting your endo systems the way plastic six do do you do you read use water bottles no in fact i try not to use disposable water bottles because a lot of times they leach what do i go watch or read that's gonna scare the shit out of there is a joe rogan episode that i'll link up in the show notes where he talks with she's a the harvard researcher who does a bunch of this stuff and she's really good and it will it will scare you a lot yeah dude plastics pretty bad then like i i you don't know that sean do you you microwave plastic don't you only on this podcast yeah i i microwave everything and i everything's in plastic in my house so i'm like oh shit okay so i've heard this but i've like never i've never got shook yet where i'm like oh take action in this but that's why that's why i what do i need to go watch that's gonna like trigger me where i'm gonna need to i need to be like i i will go and you know make a like dramatic change in my i'll link it up but like the short of it is basically like our testosterone levels are decreasing at one percent per year fertility levels are just like crashing and it's not just people who want to have children less like people who are trying to have children are able to have them at much lower rates than in the past to the point where it's like and our plastic use is increasing so much that they're like in fifty years we're not sure that anyone is gonna be able to have una assisted children anymore but how do they know plastics caused that you know versus just because they do studies of with rats and they're able to them demonstrate it the the correlation good answer was a very good answer and what do you what's what's an example of something you swap out that's like a big culprit for plastic like most people are doing this but if you swap this that solves like you know the twenty percent that right well so the biggest thing that she said was never heat plastic that is like if you can do one thing it's never heat up plastic so like if you have a water bottle with water in it like yes that will leach some plastic into your system is not great but if you leave it out in the sun that heats up to a hundred degrees you're gonna get like ten times as much plastic so it's it's not eating things hot from plastic but how do you reconcile that fact with the fact that you smoke you told me that you smoke pack of cigarettes today yeah noted chain smoker ben wilson that's what people know before how do you do both well and how do you how could you have how do you have twenty four ports a today day you're tell me not a microwave way plastic you know it's just one of those mystery sam i don't know how to explain it and how do you could you test to see how much plan don't know that's a good question i would love to do it if you can i don't know that you can i got a new business that we're gonna talk about on monday that's gonna address that by the way i was all prepared for today really did just say i don't was it it's called float did you see it in the doc it's called float dot is what is it what's the url is it is it called float bend where's is my fucking rate it's called no it's called fo fat found sorry found dot bio found it's basically a five thousand dollar a month concierge service where they test your blood and tell you all about your body it's very expensive but sounds incredibly cool for five thousand dollars a month you're speck my body well we'll see maybe for five that maybe it'll make women to actually wanna touch your body maybe that's maybe people we'll do one better it's we're gonna test it over here five grand a month what five grand a month that's such an absurd number you're doing this no i'm not doing it but i think it's close to beta five grand a month when i do it i would sign up for three months for sure i think you could do it in three month in increments i for fifteen thousand dollars yeah i would try that dude i had a concierge doctor at one time broke a year when i was really sick and it was twenty five grand for a year and it was mostly amazing also i understand why rich people and how rich people can get access to so many drugs because like if i wanted to i could just like text the doctor and be like hey can you refill this the stand for me or like hey i need some more oxy like is like and you're paying them so much money that it seems like they're willing to do that it it it is kinda crazy because this took a turn hey alright can do we have we're your way over time do i have time to ask you guys one more question as long as it's five minutes okay i think give me five minutes or less i'm just curious about this i don't know why i just i thought of this as we're were asking the five questions but if you were to like simulate your life a thousand times what do you think the ceiling is and what do you think the floor is in other words like are there a few little things if they broke the wrong way like sam is working at mcdonald's in missouri right now or like a few breaks where if things had broken the wrong way you would be a like a worth a hundred billion dollars one of the richest men in the world like what do you think your floor is what do you think your ceiling is and do you think you ended up about what your average is i think in my case i could tell like i think that the ground rules the ground rules are same genetics and same like fam not like i'm born in a different country like just like a few little random variables get changed you make a few different decisions as you go through wife but same family same situation same person i think i was not far from being like homeless alcoholic drug addict like i think that was actually potentially in the cards or just like in jail because i would con people and steal wife i think a lot of people honestly could say that though like if they like if they like got it if you ever like do certain drugs like oh man like the it's actually i could see myself living on the streets the best of like the limit i think like a really attainable thing is i could have not sold my company and i think it could have been worth hundreds of millions of dollars and i could have been worth many hundreds of millions of dollars by time i was fifty i think that could've have done that i think i could have pulled that off if i was willing to put it in put the work in yep you you'll probably end up there now anyways you're thirty now that's twenty more years yeah given where you're at now pretty likely that you end up over a hundred million dollars it's very likely that i'll be worth twenty more years it's almost guaranteed i'll be worth nice i mean it's almost yeah so then fuck i don't have sense of that exactly so it's peaks you you got one of the good good roles of the dice i don't think i mean obviously there's some scenarios where yeah i end up you know in jail drug addict whatever but i i don't think that's like the realistic floor for me i think the realistic floor for me is was probably like working at twitch forever you know no not even like you know working at working as a lab assistant at fucking you know you know greenville universities like biology department or some shit like that like you know basically some some job that was like i got on some track that didn't really have merit based system and it was a time based system so like you know you basically just get rewarded for how long you've been in the game and not like how much impact you've been able to make and and the and it might have been in a very kind of like not a complete i i was very close to a complete non business field right i was like about to go to med school so you know i was very likely gonna be in a different but like even if i hadn't done the med school path you know just being a engineer somewhere or being a you know project manager somewhere was extremely likely for me had i just made one or two different decisions kind of at some point the more interesting question is like how far off the peak am i and i think a pretty far off the peak to be honest with you and and in fact you know ben you were there when we had david free on the on the podcast and i told him sam i was trying to butter them up i was like dude so you've created not one not two but pretty much three three billion dollar companies if you know he created climate which is a billion dollar company he created metro mile which is basically a billion dollar company and he created the production boards a billion dollar company and i said you've done that and you know if i went back to you at age kind of eighteen nineteen twenty or you're in college and i told you hey man this is how it all shakes out you're gonna create three billion dollar companies three separate billion dollar companies in like the in this like in a space science space what would you have said with that a been unbelievable to you would you could you believe that he honestly say i've probably have been disappointed i was like why because i think two things like one is he wasn't really like money wasn't the like the driving force and then the second piece is like i don't think he feels like he's had a big impact on the world jet like okay metro mile exists and okay climate exists but like you know what he's trying to do now with like can other stuff like this like he's i'm trying to find it like be like the the way we produce food is gonna change or like the way we produce pharmaceuticals gonna chase like that's not now the like the type of swing he goes for which is like the world used to produce things in factories and farming and blah blah and now we do it in a laboratory blah like that he's trying to fundamentally change the means of production and so i think that's what he meant but i was kinda blown away by that answer and that's the type thing when remember i said like you hanging out with that x factor person who like just sort of like stun you into a different like what i said what when do i realize i'm settling is when a guy who's created a three billion dollar company says i probably would've have been disappointed if i do this was the this was the outcome it makes me think wait what is this guy even going what is this guy's score board if he doesn't think this is a win and then what does that make me think about my score board how could i update my score board not to match it but to like let's let's definitely question it right like let's it's see a billionaire fit the same as it's been for ten years you it's he a billionaire he's personally a billionaire nose probably like hundred in that ballpark i i think he said on the podcast that he that he hasn't hit a billion so i think close by only you hit it yeah isn't not funny how you can achieve just at what most every single person on earth we consider like the top of the top of the top of the top and you're like that's funny i once i googled my my mentor and kinda of biz my my investors net worth i remember being like and then i googled a whole bunch of celebrities like so i think i think at that time like his he's kind of like my ballpark approximate like my triangulate net worth for them was like seven hundred eight hundred million and then i googled like britney spears and it was like twenty five or fifty and then i was like great britney i was like he's like more than ten times registered richard the britney spears i was like okay alex rodriguez i remember when he signed the biggest ml contract ever was a ten year two hundred twenty five million dollar contract or two fifty million dollar contract at that time and i've ever been like oh my god he's getting free he already has three times a contract and it just like i just googled every celebrity i could think of and like i worth more than all of them did you know that you're richer than ryan sc i i think i literally said that i was like you're fifteen thousand german du dude he's probably even richer than den washington this guy's a amazing that's what i'm saying oh easily watch you know den z net worth but you den z is gotta be worth like a hundred at least for a while piss poor two eighty he's a double den z you know like come on man that's awesome alright i'm out