Top Marathoner, Ken Rideout, On Making Money, Dealing With Addiction, And Mental Toughness

back in like the late nineties trading desk was like a walk room was very like alpha driven a lot of h and shit but i mean i was at the time boxing for the new york athletic club i had played hockey i mean i was i worked in a prison for four years so these nerds were h me and one day i just cuff the guy i just slapped them across the face and almost knocked them out of his seat and needless to say they fired me but i was covering these young guys at en and they told the senior traders what had happened and one of the senior traders who happened to be from martha's vineyard outside of boston called me up said hey i got a job i didn't even know we had competitors that's how naive i was i didn't know there were other brokerage shops yeah i was there like two months and i mean i barely knew what have been in offer was were and this other competitor offered me a job starting the next monday alright we get ready into this ken thanks for coming man i do you know at all what you're getting into or no yeah yeah i heard andrew hub on the show my friend andrew good well let me i'll let you kinda do the intro but i wanna tell our audience what i know about you and why i think it's cool that we have you basically i was telling sean you're so we take pride in like finding people a little bit before they explode you're getting quite popular you in the washington journal the other day so things are happening for you but you're to me like you're like the next david go in my mind like you know you're kind of a freak athletic but you're also more so a freak mentally and you talk about a lot of like just being tough you got some crazy quotes that we'll talk about later about how you know like you like running because it's all about suffering and things like that and so you said a lot of really interesting things sean and i are also huge combat sports fan so i i listen to the pilot with teddy atlas that you're on and i know a bit about your background and so i wanted to have you on to talk about that typically we talk about business stuff lieberman was a little bit of a we had him on that was a little non business you're a little bit non business but you had like a interesting background where you worked on wall street worked on worked at en ron i think you did a bunch of interesting stuff and so that's kinda why we had you on what what how do you give your introduction what do you what do you say you do yeah well that thank you for that introduction when i hear people introduce me sometimes i almost don't feel like they're talking about me because i i i think part of what makes me unique is i at times have don't have the highest opinion of myself and always feel like i this i should be doing more but i think that the comparison to david go is somewhat accurate although dip it's it's accurate i can see why others would think that but i don't think that it's a perfect in and and i take it as a compliment no i don't think he's soft at all he i think he's probably maybe more more aggressive and alpha than i am i would say i tried to be i don't know i think that the way i come across you know when i was on rich role he described me as being his his initial impression would be prior to meeting me was that i was very aggressive and alpha and intimidating and i don't see myself that way i see why other people would see that but i think of myself is that that alpha or aggressive exterior is almost like a defense mechanism because inside i think i'm very emotional and insensitive and so much so that my way of protecting that sensitivity is to be so aggressive externally that it really takes someone unique and special to kinda see through it at least that's my take from the the the the psychotherapy i've been involved in but the reason the reason we had you i mean we typically so it's usually just sean and i or it's like we'll have like billionaires and stuff on so like these like a wonderful people but something that like i've been thinking a lot about lately and i've been talking to sean about lately it's just like tough and like how it feels like good to get out there and work hard physically or to spa do things like that because even though we're doing cool shit behind the computer it's still by behind the computer it feels good to live you say you're not an alpha but i think in the wall street journal article you said i'm the biggest male i'm the biggest alpha male on the starting line i'm ready tied thank you for pointing that out because there was context to that quote i said my my exact quote was when i'm on the out when i'm on the start line when it's time to go hundred percent i'm alpha i will step on your neck to win i wanna kill you i wanna destroy everyone but the minute that race is over i'm everyone's best friend if i see someone fall down in front of me i will stop and help them i've i've in tri up have asked people y man you are right i'll stop and help you i'm not i say step on your neck and kill you to win but not really like this is this is my mental process that i have to go through to get to the dark place that i need to get to to suffer to the extent that i need to suffer to get the most out of myself running you know i ran thirty six hours ago i ran the tokyo marathon in two twenty nine nine teen and the day before that and the day before that outside magazine wrote an article how fifty one year old ken write out run sub two thirty marathons and i saw the headline and i literally had an anxiety attack i'm like oh my god the pressure is on i mean i've run sub two thirty three or four times but it ain't easy and i know that that last five or six miles the suffering and the darkness that's coming with that i can't it's it's literally the physically the hardest things that i've ever done is like your everything in your body it'd be like if you're driving your car in every single warning dollar is going off the radiators overheating the oil low you're gonna run out of gas and you literally are i like i can stop and no one would tear or i can push myself and know that i didn't have another f and ounce to give and that's sounds cliche might sound corny but that's my process that's where i have to go to get to where i've gotten to to the point where guys like you with this awesome park i wanna talk to me like i'm i'm a regular guy i'm a dope i i don't see myself as special with the exception of being willing to die to get the most out of myself physically on these particular days or at races and you so you said you just ran you just ran the the a marathon in tokyo thirty six hours ago you're here now and i didn't know much about you before sam brought it up sam goes oh i really wanna have this guy on are you down with it i i thought i've heard that name but i don't know who is that and and i was like was that the to the atlas podcast guy oh wait what's the story and i as i started looking into it to me there was a few things that really stood out so there's the kind of the obvious headline that here's a guy who's over fifty years old and is basically flying through these marathons so running super fast speeds that i don't know the exact records or what would not but you're one of the fastest if not the fastest correct you're kind of in your brand fifty yep yeah so that's kind of remarkable and i think that's you know that's the key thing i wanna get to is like that's an extraordinary thing and that that doesn't just come out of nowhere and so you talk about being able to go to that place at the last five miles what happens pre race where do you where how do you flip that switch what is your sort of like mental state of mind or your psyche what do you do mentally to prep yourself before these races that's a great question and thank you for the opportunity to explain this because i think that it's important for people to understand when they look at this just on the surface like you just described like wow it's extraordinary and and by the way when i hear it it doesn't even seem like you're talking about me so i i i don't at times have the highest opinion of myself because of the struggles i've gone through with addiction so as i'm telling you this i'm super cautious that about coming across like a narcissist i i don't wanna come across like that i wanna be i wanna be very humble in how i describe this but i'm gonna be honest with the process prior to the race i've spent before a race and this one in particular not no different than any other i spent ten or twelve weeks like dev voting all my physical energy or or at least ninety minutes to two and a half hours a day of preparing for this for let's say twelve weeks when i get to tokyo the week before i always go by myself my i have full young children even some of the local races they don't come to even when i think oh i'm gonna win and you can see me win a race like they've come to a few of them and it's kinda uneven unacceptable for them they come to expect me to win and i in my mind think they're gonna be so psyche when they see me win and then they're like okay doug can we get out of here now and get a doughnut so anyway long winded way to say i have a very very specific process that i have to go through in the days leading up and again i don't wanna sound like i'm like some elite professional winner but this is how this is what i do this is the process i have to get there in the case of told you without fourteen fifteen hour time change i need to get there at least seven days early to get my body and my circadian rhythm on track with what i'm about to do because again i've spent twelve weeks dev voting so much energy to this i don't wanna mess around when i get there it's very specific i don't make plans to go to dinner with people or very rarely mainly because i'm a jerk i know it i'm very selfish out to me again i'm not a pro runner but to me this is my version of the olympics and i am not there to mess around and have fun it's a like i'm i'm on a work trip so i get there and i just need to be alone by myself think about what i wanna do try to stay positive i'm a big believer in mindset and and and what you tell yourself is the truth reality doesn't matter like what other people think about you doesn't matter the only thing that matters what you think of yourself and that goes into the same the that same thought process goes into prepare for this race in my mind am a professional runner and i'm gonna win the you know olympic gold medal on sunday so i get there early i go to my process and on race day i've said this before in interview it's like i'm not i'm nothing nice on race day i don't wanna make friends i don't wanna chi chat i don't i'm a jerk i know it so i try to stay completely by myself i don't put my ship on other people but i don't want them put theirs on me either so i stay by myself the race goes off i know what's coming some people like how will the sites in tokyo what were the people like in the race i said i couldn't tell you if we ran through the f imperial palace or not all i know is the road in front of and i get into like a tunnel vision where i can't see any i mean i obviously i if i look around i could but i don't waste an ounce of energy i don't even try to look at my watch for i i don't wanna move any movement that isn't completely necessary to get from a to b as quickly as possible i'm trying to run the straight line i'm focusing if people get too close to me i like kind of give them an i'm like dude you're getting too close like i don't wanna trip someone at the start of the race in tokyo i was on right on the start line and two or three people right in front of me toppled in it was like they were caught in the white wash surfers just arms and legs fl and elbows and knees smashing on the ground as people just tram them at the front of a major marathon was crazy so i don't want them doing that so i'm like that's what i meant about being a bit alpha at the start but i don't wanna hurt anyone i don't wanna affect anyone but i don't wanna be f with either and i yeah did i see a picture of of you and jason cal over there yeah i mean jake jay kelly yeah it's my dude how do you know him kate my friend casey neistat that who is do you know his youtube yeah yeah casey so i trained casey last year for the new york marathon my friend ne shu who's the host of catfish on mtv he connected us so i trained jason and not jason casey and ne for new york city marathon and then i heard jason mentioning running a marathon on on all in and i just mentioned it in passing the casey casey connected me i saw jason was in it we would connected via text i saw jason was in tokyo i sent him a text and then we ended up going to dinner one night and then a a tokyo food tour the next day we went to like some super high end sushi place and then a bakery jay is like he's dialed he knows where he wants to go i know nothing hey i was just like just tell me where we're going and i'll be just text me the address that's what i mean about the we you're in the crowd you're you're you're hanging out with all the all the cool guys brother again when i think about my friends like andrew cooper and david sinclair and joe rogan i think i can't believe these guys are my friends i'm i i feel like the luck person in the world and i'm so humbled and honored that guys like you wanna talk to me it's just mind blowing but it comes back to this point of i don't have anything that anyone listened to this show doesn't have i promise you i'm not a good athlete i played division three sports i was just a hustle and when i found running as a way of getting over an addiction issue with op opioid opioids i just decided i was done being mediocre and we'll get into the career stuff and i'll tell you how i did apply the same practice to my career in finance but at the end of the day you know not again not the sound cliche but if you're not all in is just too many competitors out there that are gonna eat your lunch if you don't bring your a game every day but when you do dedicate your hundred percent effort to one particular goal it's very hard to beat the guy who wants to die to win and that's kind of what i applied to running and and and it's attracted these other kind of people that recognize that i am like serious about the things that i get involved in well the thing that you're interesting is the you you just have an interesting life that i read did you used to work at ed no good question i was working in finance my very first job if you want me to kinda walk through my career i don't wanna let jump around i started in i moved to new york right after i graduated college i had a pharmaceutical sales job for a few months but when i moved to neil i saw all these younger guys my age working in finance and making a ton of money and i was like i was making like thirty six thousand dollars and like like rent and student loans came to more than my take home pay i was basically like living on borrowed time in new york living in a shitty walk up and long story showed i was playing pick up ice hockey at chelsea perez and a french canadian kid all who played a minor league hockey asked me if i wanted a job as a like a trading assistant on a on an inter dealer brokerage desk broker electricity trades between the utilities and en was one of those clients and the way it worked was the junior guys at en would trade like next day power which was like the commission was like literally like five dollars but if you didn't do that as a service for these accounts they weren't gonna trade to like big ticket items with you so lone story showed i was doing that the guys on the trading desk you know back in like the late nineties trading desk was like a locker room was very like alpha driven a lot of h and shit but i mean i was at the time boxing for the new york athletic club i had played hockey i mean i was i worked in a prison for four years so these nerds were h me and one day i just cuff the guy i just slapped them across the face and almost knocked them out of his seat and needless to say they fired me but i was covering these young guys at en and they told the senior traders what had happened and one of the senior traders who happened to be from martha's vineyard outside of boston called me up said hey i got a i didn't even know we had competitors that's how naive i was i didn't know there were other brokerage shops yeah i was there like two months and i mean i barely knew what have been in offer was were and this other competitor offered me a job starting the next monday i was make a forty grand they offered me a job at eighty grand i mean to me that was more money than anyone i knew made so i was like and the other only thing is this guy guy's hated me i had a huge black guy from a fight at the new york athletic club like i was not like a punk that you could just like like i didn't strike you come across as like hey bully me i'm a big sis like i was a guy you know so when he it i was like you got the wrong guy dude and i cried them and needless to say you almost started crying because i was like when you leave this office i'm gonna beat the crap out of you and he's was like i'm not i'm not gonna leave go you're gonna have to sleep here because when you come outside you're getting a beaten and they were like okay you gotta go before we call the cops and again i had no safety that i couldn't call home and ask for money that was like i work in the prison i stepped out and brother with inmates in the prison i always was looking to help me in my finance career in new york to them i was like an anomaly you know i was already like the richest person they knew just by having a job in new york city so yeah it was nerve wracking and so that's how my career started and the guys at would just like good customers of my clients that like literally changed my life but it it worked out alright i mean i think at at the end of your career i mean you're killing it yeah so so when that happened i mean when from the minute that happened within two years i was making like i mean not again not sound like a narcissist and i don't have a lot of money i'm not a rich guy but within two years i was making like two million dollars a year doing things that to me were like i i didn't even know what we were trading i just knew people and i had relationships and they were just doing trades me i was living in london i was running i ran sales and trading commodity sales and trading at counterfeit fitzgerald out of london in hong kong and i was flying on the concorde back and forth from new york to london on a regular basis every single time the novelty like just never wore off every time it happened i was like i can't believe that this is my life much like i feel today i can't believe i've done this how are you baking that much money that's just commissions or yeah so what what goes into that how do you jump from like eighty k to two million what what what happened yeah good question so i was broker electricity trades and electricity der regulation had just taken place so you're putting together trades for like commodities trade on monthly contracts so we were doing that and when en went went bust i got basically sent from new york from at london back to new york because the business had dried up but i was like one of the biggest producers of commissions at the time again like i was so un qualified i didn't know anything about the technicalities of what we were doing i just knew how to find buyers and sellers it could have been houses it could have been baseball cards i just was had a knack for it is that like net networking is it cold calling what were you what were you doing actually be great what did it take to be great there yeah good good question i hate the word networking i feel like when you're trying to network you're already like us behind the curve like if you're trying to make friends people ask me frequently now like how are you friends with rich roll and and andrew newman i'm like i don't know i just i must have something that they like and they have something i like we just find each other but i certainly didn't make a conscious effort ever to be friends with anyone it's just a natural process so to answer your question i just had i just had an ability to connect with people and i tried to have live a life of honesty and integrity and if i say i'm gonna do something i'll do it and i like to tell the people that i'm close with or when i have a close friend someone like oh are you friends with that guy i'm like oh i'd help that guy bury a dead body i like them i'm so much like that's my guy you know and i think that people know people that on my friends know that that's the truth if you need me someone's come to low over to your house they wanna fight with you i'll come and help you like and i think like i said i think that people who are tight with me they know that that's a character trait that i have and i think it's what's helped me build the rapport with the people that i've built rapport with but to your question so i had this ability to connect with people so when went bust they sent me back to new york and again talking about reinventing yourself everyone goes down making a ton of money and these businesses like can fitzgerald investment banks etcetera they're ruthless so the minute shit went sideways with electricity trading they were like okay well i'll send you back to new york and this was i lived in london during nine eleven and can was on the top floor of the world trade center so when we lost three thousand people they sent me back to neil said hey can you take over our credit derivatives business which happened to be the lucrative business in the in the institution at the time now if i didn't know anything about electricity you can imagine how little i knew about credit derivatives i knew less than nothing i know as much as a plumber would not most but i knew people and i knew the lingo and i just i picked up the phone and just in hindsight i don't even know i had i developed a relationship with a guy who still one of my really good friends called colin stewart who worked at morgan stanley who happened to be a huge trader of these things and then market was so new credit derivatives and we just hit it off again just became friendly we went skiing a couple times and he started to just do a ton of business with me and at the time when a product is new the commissions tend to be big until people realize how much they're paying on an annual monthly or annual basis but i can remember one time for context and again i'm only sharing these numbers because of the for context of the podcast i i don't wanna come across like hey look yeah how much money i'm making because hey our podcast is called it's called my first million right alright so i'm on a trade desk is a group of credit derivative brokers just generic credit derivatives i was trading credit derivative like correlation products like super sophisticated high end bespoke one off trades so the credit derivative desk has like twelve guys and that was like the product azure everyone wanted to be in credit derivatives it was jam and they were bit credit derivative basically think of it as an option auto a bond so these guys would jam and we had a super busy they one to everyone did and the kid who ran the the cds credit default swap desk says to me do we had a huge day we made two hundred and fifty thousand in commissions between like ten fifteen guys so i said hold let me see and i thought tally out thing think i go oh dude i i was a one man show i said i did a two hundred and sixty two thousand in total commissions and i think i was keeping like either fifty or sixty percent of that in one day basic it was insane so how did you how did you leave that why how do you let that go or you know what happened yeah take it take us you know continue the story alright so when i went to london i was in charge of like a bunch of grown men and and i was like twenty seven years old but i was very immature like when i went to college i've said in previous interviews like i i wasn't prepared for adulthood i i just i grew up around junkie and degenerate and like it it was a very hectic childhood and my brother was in and out my brother never went to school past the ninth grade he's only eleven months younger than me so it was just total chaos where i was and i just knew i had to get out of this so i applied to college like i literally went to the school i went to because on the application you could like fill in the little dots with the pencil makes the letters and it was like like path of lease resistance in terms of applications and i could work at and i had a job offer to work as a guard in the prison full in the summer and then a few days a week during the school year which i did through college i started at the prison like when i was one week out of high school so if you can imagine being in a men's maximum security prison i mean i was eighteen but i probably looked like i was fifteen but i also knew prison is very segregated right blacks and whites don't necessarily ming with each other freely it's not like it's it's it's like a different world but i knew most of the white guys because i grew up in like white irish catholic almost like not in housing projects my whole life but in that in that sphere so when i got there i knew some of those guys so i wasn't as scared as i might be if i didn't know anyone going in there i which i know it sounds crazy in hindsight now with people know like you knew people in prison i'm like the difference between guards and inmates is like the inmates have been caught the guards are just as bad it's like that was that was a big part of my motivation to get out of college like looking at what my prospects of life looked like if i didn't go to college and working at that prison i was like i'd rather be dead it was the worst worst to this day it's the worst experience in my life just in the thought of i've having to do that every day for twenty years so i'm i'm working the at pains with college i'm i i go to london i'm now in charge of basically in in on a brokerage desk whoever makes most commissions they're the manager regardless of having management skills so i guess the what i was saying in a a long winded way of saying like i had no experience or no i didn't have the maturity to be a manager so i really didn't know what i was doing but i know i was good at bro trades and i was suffering massively like from an a fraud complex and impostor syndrome and i had a minor sergio on my ankle i was introduced to per set in the minute i took those per sets and the opioids i was like oh i have all the confidence in the world no one can stop me and thus began like a ten year odyssey of being high twenty four seven save for like a week or two here a month here and there like i'd get sober on my own just white knuckle it like go through the physical withdrawals of you know basically ob opioids like heroin i was i was a mess like in hindsight i i tell people now when i speak to like junkie at like n meetings or aa meetings so i speak at ad prisons i say like just i was a good drug addict i could get away with it i had resources i was resourceful like i could find drugs anywhere i could get people to give me prescriptions all over the country i just i'm embarrassed to say i was really good at it and i was a functioning addict for a good ten years and i'm sure people that worked with me during those during that period just think i was fucking crazy not necessarily whacked on drugs but it is what it is it's it's embarrassing like i'm i i could i get choked up thinking about it because for yeah i just can't believe i behaved like such a loser and but i did it and and once i finally got sober when we start when i i started having children with my wife i haven't an adopted daughter who's twelve years old from we adopted her from ethiopia as a newborn and right before we adopted her i just went through like an outpatient detox got clean and have been sober since i mean i haven't been without slip ups over the last several years like i might you know slip up here and there but i mean for the most part i've been so longer than i've ever been in my life and it's you know it's like of all the things i've ever done it's the one of the things that i'm most proud of the fact that i was able to kind of i don't say get over because it's a constant struggle to stay sober when you've been addicted to those kind of drugs they're so physically and and and mentally addictive but nevertheless it it that that's kind of my journey but where the transition go from just being a normal guy to this kind of i don't know personality or whatever you wanna call what you are now yep that's what i was gonna get to so in two thousand and ten when i got sober i started doing triathlon i did the iron ironman in hawaii three times and which is first time or what was what what time did you finish in your first triathlon probably eleven hours and then my broke twelve hours or first time yeah yeah yeah but that's like that's again that goes back to mentality like oh my god twelve by the sean that's like pretty good i mean twelve hours sounds like very long time i somebody never no brett breaking twelve hours for your first time that's like that's a that's a great accomplishment right pretty good in like three years i got down to a nine thirty six basically without even knowing how to swim and i went to hawaii three times but again part of that journey was like learning about myself and figuring out how to suffer in learning that quitting is much harder than suffering because the first time i went to hawaii to me it was like i had made it to the olympics and i was so happy just to be there that when that when i got off the bike you know it's two and a half mile swim in the ocean hundred and twelve mile bike ride in the hawaii sun in the heat and you start a marathon around one o'clock in the afternoon which would be crazy even even to do as a training run and the run got hard and i just quit i just thought i was like i'm dying and this isn't my day of like i i just told myself every story that i needed to tell myself to justify quitting it's been a long year of training you made it here that's the big thing and as i walk back to transition literally like crying to myself like crying like real tears like it just so shameful because i know i didn't have to quit i had a lot more to get even if i walked and i went back the next year and finishing like nine hours and thirty nine minutes which was you know i don't know where i finished overall but that that was i was very satisfied with that in that process of so so so i used the endurance sports to deal with my addiction and then through endurance sports i discovered my an ability to suffer through adversity and i also learned the pain of quitting and the emptiness that i felt when i didn't give a hundred percent to something that i had committed to and and that really began the journey so that was like in two thousand and twelve or thirteen when i was like you know what i'm done being mediocre at anything in life i'm whatever i do i'm gonna do with a hundred percent conviction including work and if like i am happy to come back to like my career and how it transitioned into what it was into what it is because this is all part of the same story well let's stay with the with the mind shift sure i wanna talk about two of them so you had said kind of like we adopted my daughter and i decided to get sober and you know made a decision but what what was the thought because you know after ten years of addiction can't imagine that that was just worst addiction yeah opioid i mean they they're the worst and so i can't imagine that that was just so as simple as saying okay okay well now i'm this time i'm gonna do it so what what was the thought and do you can you take us back to yep that moment where you kind of realized okay i'm gonna do this or was it many false starts before it finally happened how did it happen yeah no that's an excellent point there were many false starts no one who's suffering with addiction wants to continue to wall and that because they call those medication perk at like pain killers but they're really joy killers so it what happens is you initially take them you feel great and you can maybe do that for like a week and every single time you take a a dose you get a a eu euphoria feeling maybe the first time for an hour or two by the end of the first week it might be a half an hour by the time you're in the rose of addiction you're only taking them so you're not sick and i mean anyone who knows anything about with charles from opioids and like i'm talking imagine having the worst flu of your life of seven freaking days and it can stop whenever you're ready to start taking them again or are you strong enough to get through this week to ten days so then again just like quitting at anything you're sick oh something came up any justification where like i can't afford to show up here in like the throws of withdrawals i've like can't go two feet from the toilet because i might have to use the bathroom i'm sweating then i'm freezing cold everything hurts i'm an emotional mess i could cry at like a drop of a dime and so there had been many i had gone sober for weeks and months at a time and then you know found excuses to go back to using but when we were adopting in my children i was like i cannot live like this with children i have to be in my right mind i i and yeah it wasn't is so to your point it's not just like i just switched the a sw flipped the switch but i will say in terms of being hard finding someone that's been able to get sober from opioids is like finding someone like with a story like from the biggest loser where you see someone who weighs like three fifty four hundred pounds then the next time you see them they're ripped to shreds and they live in like an athletic lifestyle that's i think how rare it is to find someone who was heavily addicted to opioids and is now living in a clean and prosperous emotionally prosperous life that's how i feel it's it's it's so hard and only other junkie who've been through this can recognize the struggle that went into it and the strength that it took to get out of it like i said i've not always been perfect but i'm so grateful and thankful to be where i am versus is where i was with regards to the addiction but yeah it was not it it it i know i'm different i know when it comes to mindset i know that i have some mental strength that other people don't have i say that with humility but it's the truth i i i just decided i'd rather die than live like this and i don't wanna die i can find this client in pull have you heard of hubspot hubspot is a crm platform so it shares its data across every application every team can stay aligned no out of sync spreadsheets or dueling databases hubspot grow better you have an interesting perspective because you grew up with a bunch of people that are now in prison and you worked in a prison then you worked in in new york on wall street but now you know a lot of these like you know these celebrity fitness folks so you have like a you know a bunch of interesting people and you also work with teddy atlas which i imagine through that you've been able to meet tyson and it looks like you have dustin po on the on on your behind your shoulder on a picture of him so you've met a lot of like traditionally tough people or at least people who from an outsider perspective from my perspective are like these tough guys who are some of the toughest people that you've met and you admire when you think about how would this person behave in the situation when i'm struggling physically or mentally i would think one of the toughest people i know i don't wanna get emotional one of the toughest people i know is my wife the fact that she was able to like stick with me through all this bullshit for the for the sake of my children has been incredible it's easy to be physically tough because like i said i mean he catching a beat and his like okay i go beat up like okay not the end of the world we've all been in falling down by crash car accident and whatever like physical pain is just moment emotional pain lasts forever someone that's able to withstand emotional pain and showed tough and perseverance through emotional pain is a special person because like i said with like using addiction as an example there's a lot of ways to escape emotional pain drugs alcohol ultimately they all shortcuts cuts and you know like a finger in the d of the problem like the only way through it the only way to deal with adversity is to go through it and go through the fire you know like the expression when you're going through hell keep going or you're in a hole stop digging so to that extent in terms of emotional tough my wife showed incredible conviction and perseverance to stick with me when i was just of a mediocre or finance clown addicted to drugs behaving like an asshole worrying about materialistic possession and worrying will keeping up with the jones versus worrying about just living for myself and trying to be the best person that i could be which in my heart is like who i really am and so to that extent my wife is tough but you know in terms of traditional tough i'd say any of the fighters we've had on the podcast that's dustin over one shoulder and regis over this regis pro gray who's hundred and forty pound world champ those are two incredibly tough guys but anyone who has the courage to get into the ring or the octagon and have a fist fight for money in front of other people i can you imagine anything physically tougher than that i just i have such ad those guys how do those guys to drive that i mean like this weekend i don't know how many people bought the john jones fight but i imagine he had millions of eyeballs on them he's like well i'm gonna get in my underwear i'm gonna basically i'm basically naked and i'm like gonna fight to the death in front of all these people that's right i and like i read some like chill sun in and cowboy they're like backstage they you they're these tough guys and they like they'll at the way ends they're puff in their chest and their flexing in their muscles and they're like i'm gonna effing and kill you yada yada but then they'll tell stories once they're retire they're like i had a throw up in the backstage ahead of that fight because i was so afraid and at the beginning of every fight it's just like a race do you have these feelings of like what am i doing i don't wanna do this why do i keep doing this what am i like this is the worst feeling and so they're kind of human but what do you think or what if some of those people said right before they're about to get in the the arena and just fight to the death what what's that what do they go through you just hit the nail on the head i've had some fights myself boxing and matches and it's whether you're in the u or fighting in a a v or con of convention hall every single person that i've ever met and spoken to and i've been in the locker room of fighters before fights of many world champions u usc boxer teddy and i trained the light heavyweight champion of the world i was basically teddy assistant teddy train him but we were in the locker room for a pay per view main event flight and i can tell you every single person feels the same things that you and i would feel or that average person would feel they're not different than not special they're not unique the coward in the hero as teddy alice would say they feel the same exact thing the only thing that they do differently is how they behave some people let that fear overwhelm them and they cow and the like i i i i i compare it to like surfing the waves are crashing down and there's that like break zone where you either have to get out of the water or get through the break and the coward either gets washed out the sea or goes back to the shore and the hero goes through the break and knows that on the other side is calm waters and is the place where you wanna be with other heroes so i think to answer your question is they don't feel any different everyone feels the same thing they're not immune to the fact that there's millions of people watching no one is it's just exactly as you would imagine the only difference is how they behave and you just forget that the what that's reason they train you train as hard as you do what they do is because at the end of the day you've gotta block out all the bullshit because all that fear that we we've just described is all noise and the the the amount of things and again this is all knowledge i i've glean from working with teddy ellis all of the scenarios and potential nightmares that could happen teddy calls them like the ninja of your mind the ninja dot coming over the wall as you're getting ready to go into the ring of the octagon and all of the possible scenarios endless scenarios of things that could go horribly wrong you could die you could get knocked out you could get your own broken but at the end of the day what are the odds of any of those things happening because you know you trained like a dog you've been in fires with these kind of spa sessions you you've done the running you've done the training and at the end of the day you have to block out the fact that everyone's watching this is now simply a more aggressive spa session and you just gotta focus on the task at hand and once at least in my own experience whether it's a fight or a race once the gun goes off of the bell rings and you start jab or running you have to get your mind into that place of like hey i've been here before i know what's coming i know what to do even if it's not going right i know how i'm supposed to behave and teddy would say you know the difference what makes a fighter a fighter or what makes a fight a fight is when there's something to overcome you're not really a fighter if you just in there beat in the brakes out of shit competition you become a fighter when there's something to overcome when you dealt some cards that you weren't expecting when you get punched in the most in a shot that you didn't see coming and now you tested that's when you see who's really a fighter who can come back who can get off the canvas we measure a man much more by how they get off the canvas versus how many times they knock someone else to the canvas so when you have losses and setbacks and you've experienced that feeling of having quit or not given a hundred percent that's when you find out who you really are and that's at least that's what's works for me and again a lot of reality the the reality of situation isn't nearly as important as the narrative that you have in your head because the narrative in your head is gonna control how you behave and control your mindset and that's something that's well within your control and you can learn how to harness that ability over time and through practice and that's why we train the way we do so i wanted to ask you about that exact thing because you know not you you run and you run these crazy marathons and these crazy times i think basically just been getting faster and faster every you know every year since you were thirty five years old which is kind of amazing i'm not gonna run i'm not a runner it's not something that's of interest to me but everybody hits adversity and so i think this is probably the most important thing that i wanna learn from you which is when you whether you're in a fight or you're in a race an adversity strikes what is the self talk that you have developed that gets you through that because you said the difference between like a coward and the hero is the behavior but i think the behavior i would guess comes from a conversation and that happens in your head deciding which way are we gonna go gonna walk off the field or are we gonna continue on right and so what is that self talk and how do you train that yeah that's a great point and i think that at the end of the day we all know what the answer is like try to use a a professional analogy like a business analogy if you're a research analyst right and you're covering a particular stock and you know that there's like let's say realistically fifteen other guys covering that stock is like who's gonna go the extra mile to get it done right we all just like at the start of race everyone shows up everyone there is good everyone there is fit who's the healthiest that's a big difference who's done all the little so if you're doing research have you uncovered every every stone have you turned over every stone like warren buffett talks about that he would pour through company reports i don't even think he uses a computer he's just old school he's just reading reading company reports reading balance sheets and i think that we all know whether it whatever our professions we all know what we could do better and i think when you sit with yourself and you ask yourself have i done everything think about how much free to how much time we waste in the day and and if you need an example every single time you open your phone and look at it for anything instagram twitter i do it myself it pisses me off because it's such a waste of time i i've like contemplated getting rid of social media every day for like the last two years but it's it it it i would be lying if i didn't say it's been helpful me to me in terms of getting my message out there and kinda sharing some of the knowledge i have in terms of what i've been able to do with running but i i would say that to simplify is like we all know what needs to be done you just have to do the little extra things that you know that other people aren't is someone else leaving early to go have drinks with their friend the people who are great that's their priority and again back to the concept of all in if you're all in on one thing and you decide this one thing that no one's gonna beat me at no one has to tell you what you need to do you know everyone you know spend more time doing the thing that you love doing if you do something more than anyone else i'm pretty sure you'll become the best in the world that if you wanna be the best piano player there's gonna be people that are just so let's take out the outliers but if you wanna be a a piano player and in in this twenty other people in your class i promise you that if you train more than them and practice one in them you'll be the best and i unfortunately the only example i have bet for me is running i've just run more than other people and i've been able to stay healthy which is you know i maybe part of it is luck i just have the physiology that absorbs the miles but i do a lot of other things to maintain my overall health in addition to ronnie you you keep saying that you're like this you're like i'm a humble guy you know and it feels crazy well you don't say i'm humble i think you said i don't wanna be a narcissist and talk about this and that but you're you kind of are like this alpha cocky guy in a good way that's a compliment because i read the story and you you you just you're you're a funny guy you're like you're like the care you're like the real life version of mark of of a mark w character in a movie because you say these these these funny wisecrack cracks because i read the story that's like ten years old apparently lance i'm armstrong was hosting like a man camp for some type of like you know like tough guy camp and i think the story is is that like you were kind of chirping out of you're like i came this you told the the the reporter i came this close to beating lance arm from in the first race i attacked him like a rabbit dog i had a gap on them and then on the ride apparently a rock hit lance or something from when someone's tires and you said i hurt lance armstrong i broke them i made them bleed and then you actually you got close to beating them or you maybe even he did beat them him and he said i'm the winner of man camp lance i need you to clean my bike and hose it off for me yes yeah initial quotes are slightly on context because it sounds a bit like a door like i would never like i came just close to beat him i just would never talk like that there was more to the quote or i was and i did beat him in a couple of those clients but he probably hadn't ridden a bike in like six months before we did this together so like a lot of context that's missing in there but lance is a good friend of mine a rock did bounce up and hit his finger and i said yep i made your bleed now clean all the bikes we kick your ass and and then i probably said to him make sure that no one gets a blood sample that make sure no one gets a drop of that blood and runs sample on it i don't wanna find out that you're still doing any kind of performance enhance answers but it was obviously set in ingest but but you're you're chirping adam in a fun way but even like even that you had the confidence to chirping at them a little bit i think it's hilarious than awesome well why wouldn't i use a bike rider have you ever met a bike writer that was gonna physically like do anything to anyone i was like i i think at some point i said to him i'm like you used to deal with like hundred and fifteen pound european cyclists now you're dealing with real men like this is where peers this no like you know what i mean sounds imagine a less intimidating group of guys than professional cyclists sounds like you better took lance to bam cap actually instead of never yeah you're that yeah glasses and inside and that the the thing is if someone heard all the conversations out of context number one they wouldn't be fit to be published they were like very much like a locker room but lance is my buddy and and and all of that set stuff was just said and just and teasing each other that probably wouldn't all be for public consumption but you know i anytime you see quotes where it's like that like i came this close to lent it makes me sound like a do and like i i wouldn't talk like that i would've said i'm gonna kick your ass and when we get out there tomorrow i'm gonna do this and i'm gonna do that but again i would say that too i'd tell dust pour the same thing if we were gonna have a spa session i just that's but that's all and i don't i don't wanna sound i i don't at all i don't feel cocky arrogant whatsoever i know that there's some things i'm good and i know that there's a lot more things that i'm bad at so if i've come across those cocky i apologize it's certainly not the message i wanna send i i think i tried to be as humble as i can and know that there's a lot of things that i'm not good at but suffering is one thing that i know how to do are you making most of your income right now from your main i think you have like a like a small advisory right are you making most of your income now from that or are are you and are are you gonna try and go full transition to become like this i don't know what the right word is what we call his go but whatever that is a personality that sounds like lame than it actually is but you know what i mean yeah i know that's a great question so i've made that most of my income through finance and what i've done so so in two thousand and fifteen i left new york and went to california with a fintech startup called electron we were broker trades between institutions for corporate bonds so right now when you trade a corporate bond you have to call like goldman morgan stanley and you have to find they they you tell them i wanna sell these bonds they find a buyer sometimes they'll they'll buy them from you which was the old traditional investment bank model right they hey i got twenty twenty million of these bonds to go okay we'll take them there and then they try to sell them at a slight markup now they're basically just matching buyers and sellers for all intents so we created a new an electronic marketplace that could let these like fidelity and pi trade directly with each other so i went out to new i went out to la to cover the west coast knowing that there was a good chance that this startup wasn't going to work it didn't we sold it to a competitor but i my by moving to la i basically forced myself into an uncomfortable position because there aren't sales and trading jobs in la like there are in new york so i knew i'd have to figure something else out and you know that expression of like hey if you wait for everything to be perfect to make a move and ain't never gonna happen you have to make the move and make it perfect and long story your shot was riding my bike out everything that good in my life that's happened has been through endurance sports i was riding my bike with a guy in my neighborhood and we were he ran an asset management firm called the pal group and they had maybe two billion in assets under management they were running money for all big household managers like all the household names like apollo for instance and and they were had separately managed accounts so the fees weren't huge like a traditional hedge fund or asset manager and i said to him he didn't have a any business development he wasn't actively out there trying to raise more capital which is what he would need to do to really grow his business so i said let me run business development for you and and he said you know accurately you don't have any experience and where friends i don't wanna put you in a losing position and i said okay i'll work for free for three months just to see if it works and again every time i've been willing to take a bet on myself it's worked out in that in that brokerage commission rule that we discussed earlier i was paid just straight commission so when i was making all that money if i didn't do any trades i don't make any money but because i was willing to do that i got to keep more of the commissions so anytime i've been on myself its worked thankfully so he gave me an opportunity and i came in in in two years we grew that from two billion to five billion i raised two discretionary funds is basically like raising a hedge fund first time manager managing discretionary capital we couldn't even hire banks to help us raise the money they basically laughed the side of the room and i they said to me you think why do you think and i which they said why do you think you can raise this fund like it doesn't seem like you'll be able to just based on a track record experienced asset class and i said why do you think you can't like until someone beats me at the new york marathon like i'll convince myself that i can win this whole race and long story short we raised the money we raised a thirty five million dollar fund than a hundred and fifty million dollar fund and once i did that and kind of started to believe in myself that i could raise money my boss at the time who's like one of my best friends jack mcdowell who's like but like go off and go off and do this on your own he said dude you wasting your time go do your own thing and the first mandate that i worked on was with david sinclair at our life bios i helped them raise fifty million dollars at one point david and i were raising capital in new york and we had dinner with wendy murdoch and tony blair and bennett miller at wendy's like new york city tri apartment of fifth avenue it was literally like i i was watching someone's else's life on unfold i was sitting there having a conversation with tony blair over dinner and so once i had once i had raised money for a few different independent private placement mandates i just started doing that full time and have since worked on a bunch of mandates in a health and wellness space and now i'm back raising a on a consultant basis raising a third discretionary fund for the pal alto group and so that's kind of one way that i make money i also have some invest i've invested in a lot of these deals i have some advisory roles i mean i guess for a lack of better terms some influencer deals with some big brands that have been you know i just feel so incredibly lucky that brands wanna to affiliate with me it's like a dream come true and then i also have tv project i'm working on what's the next like five years is gonna be how's this transition gonna look like and what do you want it to look like well in a perfect world i just filmed the pilot with a big production company for a network that's confidential right now but if if the network likes what we recorded and i think they will it's unbelievable i think a lot of people will like it it's a a non scripted kind of show with where i'm i'm the whole main host and in a perfect world the network will like the show pick it up and i will do that and see where that takes me but i i like the idea like i always tell people like when you work for someone else when you're employed you're you're kind of a slave like they own you that you you can't just do whatever you wanna do you get to cup have a couple days off a week they provide a little bit of safety for you and in turn you give them like x amount of your time but the main thing that you miss out on by being an employee is you miss out on the opportunity to pursue interesting opportunities when they are presented like this media project i'm working on if i had a job there's no way i'd be able to do it because they were like we're gonna record for a week and you know out of town i would never have been able to do this but because i was willing to bet on myself and you know take the risk of having to get my own health insurance not being sure if like you know something happens to me and people don't wanna be affiliated with me anymore i get injured i can't run like okay now do i guess i could always fall back on a finance gig but i don't wanna do that know i wasn't happy doing that into that point i've said this before and i think it's relevant for this podcast is that i i've said to people look like money doesn't make you happy and people are always like oh bullshit you have money and i'm like no i've had money and lost money multiple times when run went bust you know when you're making a lot of money you spend a lot of money and when that ends abruptly you're very quickly out of money especially if you have a ten twelve thousand dollar mortgage and now you get paid getting paid ten grand a month which is what happens to me when went bust things can change quickly and the reason i say the example i give you is i was making a ton of money and i became a drug addict so it didn't make me happier it caused me different anxiety so money can alleviate a lot of stress but it can also add stress that you didn't know stress that you didn't even know existed and yes it's easier to have money them to not have money but if your only goal in life is to make money i would say be careful what you wish for because i was making money and i could i could have comfortably continued to do what i was doing but i'm so much happier now wearing the risk of not knowing where the next deal or paycheck is gonna come from but i've never been happier in my life and and and this didn't this transformation didn't happen until my late forties and when i finally like had the courage to bet myself like all in in my late forties it's been the greatest gift i've ever given myself is to like bet on myself and and and and and live and die with my own results so in five years i hope that this media stuff becomes more of a reality and i can continue to kinda share my experiences and you know knowledge of you know knowing how to suffer and deal with adversity and i like i like in that message i've done some speaking recently that's also contributed to my financial well being and that's something that i actually really enjoy which is crazy right because every time i do speak to people like hey is anyone here getting nervous about speaking in front of an audience in every single person raised at the hand and i go guess what i do too but i'm dealing with it and like i tell my kids it's okay to be scared like when they my youngest son's playing baseball he's like down get so nervous when i get up to body seven i said buddy everybody does but sometimes we just have to learn how to do things while we're scared once you get comfortable operating while you're scared you can't lose it's just has to do with repetitions and experience how are you so i'm a former competitive runner now i'm i just i'm pretty into fitness but all types of well rounded fitness stuff and i get hurt you seem like you do not get hurt is that and part of that i think is like just biology i think some people just built where they can absorb miles like you said but what are you doing to stay healthy i try to sleep eight hours a day i eat a very healthy diet i do a lot of strength training that i think a lot of runners don't do and i do a lot of recently i hadn't done a lot of stretching and stuff in the past but lately i've been doing a lot more stretching and i feel like it's especially in the last like six to twelve months tons of preventative care electrical muscular i've got every like met device under the sun electrical muscular stimulation the gun etcetera etcetera it's been i spend a lot of time trying to keep myself healthy but it gets getting harder or over the years do you think that you know running seventy and eighty miles a week do you think that that's gonna be that's gonna make you a live a longer or healthier life or are you just happy to you just like how it makes you feel because when i you know think about like some of these i i did a half iron man nothing like you did and i didn't even do it fast but i remember doing all these miles and i'm like man i don't know if this is gonna if this gonna make me you live to be a hundred twenty it might not like or maybe just like lifting weights and going for walks might be a little bit better but how do you think about that i agree with you a hundred one hundred percent i always tell anyone who's interested i don't know that this is the answer for me but you're talking to someone who is living the life of a drug addict to me okay if it makes my life a little bit shorter but it's adding the quality of life that i'm experiencing right now that's a bet i'm willing to make yeah i don't know like i wish i had an answer for you i don't know what's gonna add to my overall longevity in terms of my mental and physical well being but i know that right now this is the best way for me to live my life look at what it's given me is been it's been immeasurable but i think that there are a lot of things that contribute to longevity i mean obviously there's the famous longevity study out of harvard that suggests that the most important element to live in a healthy fruitful life is relationships and to that extent the one thing that this lifestyle and my kind of new found station in life has provided me is the quality of relationships when i worked in finance this doesn't apply to everyone in finance but a lot of the people i worked with were real assholes and i didn't like them and it was keeping up with the jones and i if if i never had to sit on a trading desk for the rest of my life i'd be perfectly fine with that again not everyone i met some people there that i genuinely love but this some malls also some people there that if i saw them i wouldn't mind giving them a smack in the malls there's been some real idiots i've worked with and i i could go on forever but my life now when i if there's someone in my life that i don't appreciate or don't respect i can just cut them out and move on to the next thing i don't need the thing that i have that some billionaires don't have is enough i have enough i have everything i need and i'd love to have more money and i'd love to put in a pool and renovate my house and splurge on a lot of bullshit but at the end of the day i have the one thing that i need and that's enough and i have my family and so you know finding what you finding something in life that you're passionate and that you genuinely enjoy enjoy is the key and to me and people say all the time find something you love doing and you'll never work a day in your life there isn't a single week that goes by that i don't say to my wife can you believe i don't have an effing job am i the luck his person we know and she his laughs and goes you definitely luck his person i know but dude interesting that the harder i work to luck here i seem to get you're an interesting guy and we appreciate you coming on you're i've been following you now i think since two thousand twenty whenever you join teddy atlas yeah because i i i listen to that a ton and sean knows too and so we appreciate you coming on your you're different you're bill different you're different guy and we appreciate that we like those types of people well i i wanna say again thank you so much i really hope that i didn't come across as to alpha or cocky i just tried to be more than anything i tried to just be honest man is like the the the world and the internet is so big if you if you em embellished or bullshit about something there'll be someone coming out of the bushes like that didn't happen and this didn't happen because i know a lot of my stuff sounds sensational and crazy but i'm like i think if anything at times i'm downplay playing some of the stuff because i know it's how crazy it sounds but yeah anyway i i do feel that they're very humbled and honored to be here this is a place where cock is and alpha is actually appreciated so so if you that would be you know right at home here we just like when people are the way they are not trying to be at home because we by the way we don't get a lot of cock cock ness or alpha sean that's why we like it yeah enjoy it i said it's a good change but you know we're a business podcast for the most part entrepreneurship and you know we're we're a bunch people carpal tunnel syndrome know it's it's not a bunch of health males coming on the pod typically so you know i think there was some good stuff here for for mental strength tough adversity you know but basically what i think is the most important thing which is the little managing the little voice in your head and that little voice in your head you know that's who you you go through life with and i think that you're a great example of what happens when you really like you know work on that and so so thanks for coming on and i really appreciate it i would say this before i leave like that voice in your head is not little that voice in your head is all all powerful the most powerful right it's the voice in my head is the one that tells me to get high when i know i shouldn't the voice in the head the little voice tells me to go run when it's pissing rain or freezing cold and snowing so that voice in your head shouldn't be a little it should be big and it should be like screaming from a mega phone that you're the best and you can do anything you wanna do and to your point if you have a bunch of carpal tunnel guys here that it like might consider themselves nerds and like intellect good because the one thing that you can control is your physical actions anyone can do what i've done i promise you i'm not special i wish i had to intellect this some of these carpal tunnel guys because that's the one thing i don't have and that's where i'm trying to over compensate by i've being so physical that maybe my intellectual shortcomings can be overcome through physical intimidation and alpha but anyway i say that just but honestly everything that i have is available to anyone i i'm just literally the only thing i'm doing different than most people is physically is trying harder well sam i don't know about you in ten minutes i'm going to do my workout and i think it's gonna be a good one today i think i got a little extra no you not i think you know it is but you gotta follow you gotta follow on instagram there's videos of him shadow thing and right before he's about to go running or right after he got i got running into got done running yeah i always feel foolish post in that shit i really do and then i'm like no i like it i watch it because i like running a lot but i don't wanna run body and you're you're you're cool because you don't have a runner body that's my mission in life is to not look like a runner you're well rounded you're you're well rounded it didn't matter if you're fifty three or you're twenty three you look you look you look good you know i always i joke i'm like the point of working out for me is to be able to kill or out run everyone in a room you know you wanna be able to kill it eat them or out run them and well a third thing which is you also wanna look at naked it so in your and your and your in in your checklist it's check check check alright gonna for yourself think about your spouse so that's right end of my closing sal alright you're man very much appreciate it that appreciate you guys thank you for having me