Ep 7 | Alex Banayan | The Glenn Beck Podcast
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 15 minutes
Words per Minute
162.10089
Summary
Alex Benayan was a medical student at the University of Minnesota when he decided to take a leap of faith and leave his academic career to pursue a dream of becoming a sailboat captain. He went on to become one of the most successful people in the world, interviewing people like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Lady Gaga, Maya Angelou, and more. Today, he is a best-selling author and was named one of Forbes 30 Under 30.
Transcript
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How do you make it, especially in today's world?
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Success occurs when opportunity meets preparation.
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And sometimes the opportunity reveals itself and it's intertwined with a good amount of luck.
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Today, I want to introduce you to Alex Benayan.
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But that's not the path he wanted for his life.
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The day before his freshman year exams, he decided,
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He didn't tell his parents until he actually brought the sailboat home.
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He had to sell that sailboat that he won and he used that money to set out and find out
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what makes the world's most successful people so successful.
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He interviewed people like Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Lady Gaga, Maya Angelou.
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All these people that he met helped him formulate something he calls The Third Door.
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Now, The Third Door is a national best-selling book which helped land Alex on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list.
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Alex is going to walk us through the events that set him on his path,
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the courage it took to commit to something that had so many things going against him,
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and what he learned about himself along the way,
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So, I'm trying to think about how to describe you.
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But I think there would be people in your story that might even consider
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or have considered, i.e. Bill Gates, you a stalker.
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The person who I am is because of who they are.
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And the cool thing about growing up is you start uncovering things about your family you didn't really know.
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You know, my family came from Iran as refugees 35 years ago because of the Iranian Revolution.
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We're Jewish, so if we stayed there, they would have died.
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And my whole childhood, I would see family photos where my grandpa would be missing for like two years.
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And I'd always ask, where was grandpa in those years?
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I found out when I was 20 years old that that was code word for a death camp.
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My whole life, they sort of had this fake story they would tell the kids.
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And the story of my grandpa actually says who I am.
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My grandpa was born in Iran at a time when he had a father and a mother, of course, an older brother, four sisters, and then him.
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So it was up to the older brother to provide for the family.
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And then when my grandpa was five years old, his older brother passes away.
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So now my grandpa is the only male left in his family.
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So the grandma, you know, his mother, of course, was very wise.
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You know, but there was a point where food wasn't on the table.
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So he starts going through the classifieds of the newspaper and sees the government is asking for bids for paint thinner.
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So he goes and gets an insertion order and just fills it out.
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So he grossly under bids because he doesn't know the price that you're supposed to bid.
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So he turns it in and the government gives him a bid.
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There's not a slot on the form that says, how old are you?
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My grandpa goes and finds a family friend who has paint thinner.
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He buys it from him, gives it to the government, gets profit.
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I think he's maybe in, you know, fifth grade, sixth grade.
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And they pull him out and they say, are you the one who gave us the paint thinner?
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And they said, the paint thinner you gave us is expired.
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And if you don't give us good paint thinner in a week, we're going to have a problem.
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And in Iran, by the way, Iran in like the 40s, we have a problem means.
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They didn't say, are you the kid who gave me the, gave us the paint thinner?
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So he's like, he goes back to the family friend he bought the paint thinner from.
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And this is a Jewish kid running around in the Tehran bazaar.
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And he ends up finding someone else, gets the paint thinner, gives it to the government and makes it home free.
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But that sort of sets him off being an entrepreneur.
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And by age 50, you know, he's just working and working and working.
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By age 50, he actually becomes one of the wealthier Jews in Tehran, you know, in this big high rise in the middle of the town.
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And right around then, the Islamic revolution happens.
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And one day, the Islamic guard breaks in through the glass of the ground floor, surrounds the building, goes up with guns and puts a bag over my grandpa's head and takes him to a death compound.
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My mom and her siblings and my grandmother are able to escape to America while my grandpa's in this death compound.
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And every day, he can remember hearing people's names being called over the speakerphone, hearing gunshots and them never returning back to the cell.
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So he figured out exactly what he was doing there.
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And sure enough, you know, my grandpa's very entrepreneurial.
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And then finally, his name is called onto the speakerphone.
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And, you know, they put a bag over his head and take him into the execution room.
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And the bag comes off of his head, and he's outside of the prison.
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So now my grandpa escapes to America with asylum, comes back here, but he's back to where he was when he was five years old with nothing and a full family to support.
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And that's the promise of America in many ways.
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But what's crazy is that I went and went on this whole journey, not knowing this was my grandpa's story.
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This was maybe halfway through the journey when he realized, all right, he's like, he's like, come back.
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He sort of just saw, because my grandpa's mantra to us since we were kids was, you all are going to be doctors.
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But, you know, you're a boy, you're going to be a doctor.
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And I learned the reason he would say that is because he said, you know, if something ever happens to you and you have to, you know, flee like we did, people can take your money.
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They can take what you own, but they can't take what you know.
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So my whole childhood was pre, I was like a three-year-old pre-med.
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You know, I wore scrubs to school for Halloween.
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I, you know, you think it's funny, but my mom, instead of putting my finger paintings on the refrigerator in kindergarten, would put skeleton charts.
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And it wasn't until I got to college where I was the pre-med of pre-meds that I began to question what path I was on.
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Your whole family has designed that path for you.
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What did it take to go to your family and go, um, yeah, I don't think I want to go to college.
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You know, with my family, so I, you know, I got into college and, you know, my grandpa, my grandpa literally like took me to my first day of college.
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And he's like, you know, this is the tight, tight, tight knit immigrant family.
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And I remember it was maybe just the first few weeks.
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It happened fast where I remember looking at this towering stack of biology books on my desk, feeling like they were sucking the life out of me.
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And at first I assumed, you know, I'm just being lazy, but very quickly I began to wonder, maybe I'm not on my path.
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Maybe I'm on a path somebody placed me on and I'm just rolling down, but I can't tell that to my parents.
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So they're calling me saying, how are things going?
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And, you know, I hang up and I'm having like a panic attack.
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And for anyone who's gone through the, what do I want to do with my life crisis?
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They know it's this all consuming existential question.
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And for me, it was more than just what am I going to do?
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It was really questioning my identity of who I am.
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Because my whole life, my parents and my grandparents had reinforced that this isn't just a job.
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This was, you know, their biggest dream was to come to my medical school graduation.
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You're amazing because I don't know what it is, but you're willing to ask that deep question.
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And I think it's because they're afraid there's nothing really inside.
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I know the role that's been created for me and I don't know what's in there.
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And maybe this is as good as it gets and they're afraid.
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What makes you willing at that age to go, yeah, that may not be me.
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You know, what I've learned is that, and I can only see this in hindsight, the moments that, and first of all, thank you for saying that, the moments that have changed my life the most when I ask the questions that literally changed your entire direction have been the moments that I've been in the most pain.
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And by the way, it's not like I'm asking myself these questions every year.
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I can maybe point to three or four different moments where I've asked myself a question that's changed the course of my life.
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They're just pivot points in your life and they're big.
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Because when the sun's shining, do what I'm doing, Glenn?
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It's when you're, like, on the floor crying either literally or figuratively.
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And what I've learned is that, you know, you don't, I think I've come to realize recently that even if people don't ask themselves these questions, they're still good people.
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What I've realized is that you just have a choice.
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You can either, you know, when God is inviting you with these crucible moments to make a decision, it's an invitation.
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And I just think life is a lot more interesting when you answer the invitation.
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I was afraid at 30 to answer those questions though.
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Um, so tell me, you decide, okay, this is sucking the life out of me.
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Tell me the moment you said, I can't do it to your parents.
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So what happened is I, look, I'm the scaredest kid you would ever meet.
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They hate going to theme parks with me because I'm the one who's always like dragging my feet on the way to a roller coaster.
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But what's also interesting is that while I definitely feel fear the most out of all my friends.
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I also am the one who sometimes makes the boldest decisions.
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And I've learned recently that there's a big difference between fearlessness and courage.
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Although they sound very similar, the difference is critical.
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You know, fearlessness is jumping off of the cliff and not thinking about it.
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Courage, on the other hand, is acknowledging how terrified you are, analyzing the consequences, and then deciding you care so much about it, you're still going to take one thoughtful step forward anyway.
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And while I am consumed with fear, even to this day, I still deal with fear a lot.
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I actually had a friend, actually, this happened yesterday.
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She was like, she has this big career move, and she's really scared.
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And I literally just looked at it, and I was like, don't get over it.
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My son, nine, he's afraid to do his taekwondo in front of a crowd when he's little.
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And he looked, when I was trying to find out how to tell him, he looked in my office, and I have all these heroes, and he thought he was going to get the lecture of, you know, be brave like them.
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I don't think anyone, unless you're crazy, you know, maybe Jim Bowie.
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I don't want to be friends with the fearless people.
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But the real heroes, if you read Abraham Lincoln, he was afraid.
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You know, before Martin Luther King was killed, he went and asked for a gun permit.
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What do you think that is inside that gives you that willingness to go, yeah, I'm terrified, but it's worth it.
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I think what happened to me in the beginning was that, and all this, especially when you're young and you're a teenager, it sort of happens unconsciously without thinking.
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What happened to me is that, for example, with setting off on the journey to write the book, I had my fear, which I was very aware of.
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But what was surprising to me was how much I cared about the outcome.
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You know, the mission of this book from the very beginning was that I believed if all these people came together, not for press, not to promote anything, but really just to share their best wisdom with the next generation, young people can do so much more.
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And I was going through the crisis, so I knew how much I needed it.
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My best friends were going through this crisis.
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So to me, I had my fear, but I also, for the first time in my life, wanted something so badly.
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I wanted, I'll tell you what I wanted at the time consciously.
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At the time, I thought I wanted practical advice.
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In hindsight, I can see what I really wanted was relief.
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I, I've learned that you can give someone all the best tools and knowledge in the world and their life can still feel stuck.
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But if you change what someone believes is possible, they'll never be the same.
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And what this journey gave me the past seven years was it blew, like completely demolished my idea of what I thought was possible and created a whole new world for me.
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I've met so many people that are millionaires that are broke.
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And they have everything they need to make it big, except one thing.
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And many times it's just the faith that they're enough to make it happen.
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Is, is there a, um, is there a difference in people?
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Because I also know people who, they don't want any of that.
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They just, they would, they're happy going in and just punching in and clocking out and living life, you know, the way life is happening.
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I've realized there's a difference between fulfillment and happiness.
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Those are sort of the three words that I've realized that people tend to cluster into one thing called happiness, but they're actually different.
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You're sort of just pulling the lever, you know, going to nightclubs, whatever.
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Happiness has this nice, warm feeling to it, but it also, after a while, can seem to be a bit fleeting.
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But fulfillment is that thing that when you fill up the glass, it really stays in there.
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Like, you know, things that have made you fulfill that no one else knows.
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You know, when I'm sure someone has stopped you on the street and started crying, saying that's something that you said.
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That you, and by the way, this is a stranger, that it changed their life forever.
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And what I've come to realize is that what makes me, me, is going after those moments of fulfillment.
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And those are the things that take seven years.
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And, you know, there's different people in this world, but I actually think all people want that fulfillment.
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And they just sometimes don't know that's what they want.
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Are you going to tell me what you said to your mom and dad or not?
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It's, like, so dramatic in hindsight how I did it.
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I had, you know, I had all these books on my desk because I was going through this life crisis.
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And there was a book called Success Principles by Jack Canfield, who did Chicken Soup for the Soul.
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And this is when I was still lying to my parents, saying I was going to be a pre-med, but I knew I was sort of backing away.
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And the dedication said of this book, it said, to all the brave men and women who decide to break out of expectation and pursue the life they were meant to live.
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When you're 18 years old and you read that, I'm like, I thought there was, like, this secret society of successful people that meet, like, once a year in Superman's ice cave.
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You know, it's, what are we going to tell those suckers this year?
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Let's tell them, you know, Oprah's like, follow your dreams.
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And, like, Michael Jordan's like, yeah, tell them hard work helps.
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Like, you know, there's this, like, Illuminati.
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And I literally, when I was 18, I thought, like, that's sort of the thing you tell people.
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But another part of me was like, what if that's actually the truth?
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And it was literally five minutes later that I was like, wow, this is, I've never told anyone this.
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And I told myself, the only way I'll know is if I try for myself.
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And I opened up my computer and I wrote a letter to my parents and I started the letter with that quote from the book.
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And I said, I'm doing an experiment to see if this is true.
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And I went and told them, and I remember crying as I'm writing it.
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And I sent it, expecting, like, my phone to blow up with my mom's calls and texts.
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With a Jewish mother, you made her angry when she calls you back yelling.
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But you made her, you know, apoplectic when she won't talk.
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And I remember going back home because I was going to college about an hour away from home.
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I, as a dad, if my son wrote that to me, that would be the greatest thing.
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But if I have your family and your family history, oh, my gosh, you're betraying generations and you are setting yourself up to be, you know, in trouble.
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And my mom, I didn't know at the time, I was like, why is she acting this way?
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I didn't understand how much she had sacrificed for me to be in college at this point.
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But I had no idea that she had taken a second mortgage on the house to help pay for my college.
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I had no idea that, you know, there would be notices on our front door from the gas company saying, you know, it's been your sixth notice.
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But my mom, like a lot of families in America, lived above our means and wouldn't tell the kids.
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So there was two, there was two financial lives.
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Me and my sisters thought, you know, we're pretty, pretty good, pretty good and normal.
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My mom and dad are just swimming in credit card debt.
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And by the way, God bless them because it's given me the opportunities that I have today.
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My mom had a simple premise, which is if she sacrifices everything to give me an education, I won't have to suffer the way she suffered.
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And in that moment, I was pretty much turning my back on everything she had sacrificed.
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I want to come back to your mom after we go through your journey.
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So how long between World War III and The Price is Right, how long between that time?
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Ooh, it was very, this is all happening like very close to each other, which when you're living it, every day feels like forever.
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But in hindsight, this was all happening within months.
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So tell me what got you to The Price is Right and why?
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So when I had pretty much decided, you know, that I wanted to go on this journey, I, the only reason I did it is because I assumed there had to be a book with the answers.
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I remember going into the library, you know, ripping through business books and biographies.
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And I even remember which books I was going through, you know, Outliers and The 4-Hour Workweek and all these biographies.
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There wasn't a single book that gave me exactly what I needed, which was I didn't know what I wanted to with my life.
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And I was this nobody kid, so I wanted to know not how Bill Gates leads Microsoft.
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I wanted to know when he's 19 years old, how is he selling software out of his dorm room?
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When Steven Spielberg is an unknown movie director, how does he get his first contract?
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These are the things they don't teach you in school.
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So me being this naive kid, I thought, well, if no one's written the book I'm dreaming of reading, why not write it myself?
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You know, I thought the easy part would be calling Bill Gates and getting the answers.
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You know, he's helping kids all over the world.
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The hard part, I figured, was getting the money to fund the journey.
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So there had to be a way to make some quick money.
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So two nights before final exams, I'm in the library doing what everyone's doing in the library right before finals.
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And I see someone offering, you know, free tickets to The Price is Right.
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And my first thought was, what if I go on the show and win some money?
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Everybody thinks that, but nobody thinks that and does that.
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So tomorrow I'll go to The Price is Right and win the showcase.
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I'd never seen a full episode of the show before.
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I'd never seen a full episode of the people who go to that and watch the show.
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So I tell myself it's a dumb idea and to not think about it, but I don't know if you've
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ever had one of these moments where an idea just keeps clawing itself back into your mind.
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So to prove to myself it was a bad idea, I remember being in the corner of the library.
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I actually had a table very similar to this, a round wooden table.
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And I opened up my spiral notebook and wrote best and worst case scenarios to prove to
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You know, worst case scenarios, fail finals, get kicked out of pre-med, lose financial aid,
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The only pro was maybe, maybe get enough money to fund this dream.
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And it felt, I can remember very vividly, it felt as if somebody had tied a rope around
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So that night I decided to do the logical thing and pull an all-nighter to study.
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And I went on the show the next day and did this ridiculous strategy and ended up winning
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the whole showcase showdown, winning a sailboat, selling the sailboat.
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Um, because you have these ideas and you don't, you don't dismiss the crazy and it's the crazy
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You know what I've learned through all the interviews and through the prices right story
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in particular, the moments that change people's life the most, and you and I actually talked
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The moments that change people's life the most is when there's 20 good reasons not to do
00:28:00.860
You know, there's logical reasons, financial reasons, all your friends and family are saying
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And when you're staring at that pro and cons list and there's 20 reasons not to do it,
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yet something within you still is just whispering and it's the faintest of whispers telling you
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It's when you listen to that whisper that your life changes forever.
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So when you, have you had that happen and, and it just was a massive failure?
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I thought it was one of those moments, but it wasn't.
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I was, I was acting out of fear or acting out of desperation.
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I, my whole life is a series of dumb things that don't work out.
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It's the times when I actually do something out of, you know, belief and faith and possibility
00:29:05.180
Um, because I have spent the last 20 years of my life doing that.
00:29:12.720
I, I read something years ago in the nineties called The Celestine Prophecy.
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And it had, it's just this cheesy, you know, um, new age kind of book.
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And it just had one line in it that was, don't dismiss coincidence.
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And, uh, and so I thought, all right, you know what?
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I'm going to take every coincidence and I'm going to run with it.
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Um, if it, if I'm thinking about something and I meet somebody, I'm going to run with
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And people think this is really bizarre and it will, it's weird because sometimes people
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will come into your life and they're supposed to be with you for a long time.
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They're supposed to be with you for three days.
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They're supposed to be with you for 10 minutes.
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But it's like, I don't know why we met, but we should explore and learn as much as we
00:30:06.200
Um, but then when you, when you have an idea, for instance, Hey, let's start a network.
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Uh, and you, I mean, I'll be real frank with you.
00:30:20.420
You spend your entire life almost to zero and you are standing there going, wait, I know,
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I know, I think there are two points in people's lives where they quit too early or too late.
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Something happens and they're like, you know what?
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Or you refuse to see, no, there was a jumping off path right here.
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How do you know the difference between one of those feelings and, and one of those feelings
00:31:28.220
I mean, cause I got to, I got to almost zero and I was like, oh my God, I'll tell you about
00:31:41.320
I didn't even know there was a such thing as a million dollar control room.
00:31:54.480
And I remember I turned the lights off in that room and I said, well, and I closed the
00:32:00.120
And I thought, cause we're going to just do, you know, podcast and things like that.
00:32:09.460
Cause it was needed at the beginning of the journey.
00:32:14.660
Now, if I would have gotten, if I would have given up and been angry and spiteful, I wouldn't
00:32:20.840
have taken a phone call that said, you're the only one that you have a linear control
00:32:33.740
And I went, yeah, you're the only one that has it in this particular yada, yada, yada.
00:32:40.760
It's going to be something that we launch in 2019.
00:32:50.520
There's a great line I heard that said, coincidence is God's way of winking at you.
00:32:57.500
And that was almost like, right when you were turning off that light, you got that phone
00:33:01.500
And I think, I just like, because I think people, they do something and then they panic and they
00:33:11.420
don't give it enough time or they don't look for the other thing.
00:33:15.700
That's not what I bought that control room for.
00:33:19.200
But I get that call and I immediately looked at my wife and I said, you're not going to
00:33:28.620
I'm convinced that's why they bought that control room.
00:33:34.280
So, so speak to somebody who has followed their, their gut and it hasn't worked out.
00:33:44.560
What I've learned is that, you know, the biggest mistakes I've made on this journey, like for
00:33:50.200
example, I spent eight months hounding Warren Buffett.
00:33:54.820
I was like, look, if there's anyone who's going to do an interview with me, it has to be
00:33:59.240
By the way, I believe this may lead into the, why I called him a stalker moment.
00:34:09.000
You know, with Warren Buffett, I thought, you know, if anyone would do an interview, it
00:34:14.620
He always talks about how much he loves college students and how much he loves helping young
00:34:18.700
So I was like, look, Bill Gates might be a hard interview to get, but Buffett, that has to
00:34:28.360
I'm like, you know, Warren Buffett and I end up, this is after I've left college.
00:34:41.880
I'm going through all of his biographies, these big 800 page biographies.
00:34:45.960
And after two months, I finally feel like I know, you know, I have a good grip on it.
00:34:51.500
And I write a two page letter by hand, like pouring my heart out, asking for this interview.
00:34:57.780
And he actually writes, handwrites a response back.
00:35:02.480
And I'm like, oh my God, this is crazy, you know?
00:35:09.640
He sent two sentences back, but he essentially wrote, thank you, but no thank you.
00:35:13.900
But I'm thinking, look, if he's handwriting a response back to me, I'm at like the 99 yard
00:35:22.720
Every business book says persistence is the key to success.
00:35:25.480
So I thought, if that's the key, I'm just going to keep turning the key until it opens
00:35:29.180
So I post, you know, persistence quotes all around my office and I'm waking up literally
00:35:36.780
I would put, you know, eye of the tiger in my earbuds and I would be sprinting.
00:35:44.700
Like I'm just all Buffett and, you know, month two, month three, month four.
00:35:48.740
And it feels like every rejection, you know, Paula Coelho, the author of Alchemist has a
00:35:54.080
He says, when you get an F in school, it hurts.
00:35:57.620
When you get rejected with your life's calling, it's debilitating.
00:36:02.120
And I'm just getting no after no, after no, after no.
00:36:06.920
By month four, month five, month six, it feels like I'm going to cough up blood.
00:36:13.240
And I had never been more desperate in my life.
00:36:17.620
I had left school and told my family to trust me.
00:36:20.440
And now I'm pretty much spending my entire time, 24 hours a day, writing letters to a
00:36:25.300
And my family is like, you left being a doctor for this.
00:36:30.700
And I actually made one of the biggest mistakes in my life.
00:36:35.180
I met a guy who told me to send Buffett a shoe with a note saying, I'm just trying to get
00:36:40.160
And the guy's like, look, I worked for Warren Buffett.
00:36:44.720
And it wasn't until much later when I finally got the interview with Bill Gates, that Gates's
00:36:55.400
Um, do you think you can introduce me to Warren Buffett?
00:37:00.400
Gates's office calls Buffett's office to set up the interview.
00:37:03.640
And I'll never know exactly what happened, but essentially Buffett's office was like,
00:37:12.480
And I got an email back from Gates's chief of staff saying, no more contact to Warren's
00:37:20.380
And I realized not only is the answer, no, I had gotten myself blacklisted and every
00:37:27.500
business book talks about persistence, but none talk about the dangers of over persistence
00:37:31.340
where you're, you know, you're not just banging on the door a few times.
00:37:36.960
You're banging on it so many times they're calling the police on you.
00:37:39.720
And what I've learned is that my problem was that desperation clogs intuition.
00:37:50.700
And that really goes back to your core question of when people are pursuing their life calling
00:37:54.960
and it's not working out, you know, how do they make that call?
00:37:58.940
You sort of have to step back, which I wasn't at the time asking yourself, is my desperation,
00:38:04.880
my fear of failure, does it have its hands around my neck?
00:38:10.340
One of the benefits you have in the story you shared, in my opinion, is that while you
00:38:15.760
were down to the wire, you're at a stage in your life where you believe in yourself so
00:38:22.280
much that while you were getting to drastic times, you were never desperate.
00:38:28.860
You knew you had enough faith in yourself, enough faith in God, enough faith in the people
00:38:39.300
I will tell you that I, um, I have been rich and I have been poor.
00:38:53.160
I can be poor and I know I will be happy and whole.
00:38:57.440
Only thing that changes private air travel, that changes your life.
00:39:02.320
Other than that, rich and poor doesn't make a difference.
00:39:07.340
And, and I also know because I have been rich and then poor and then rich and then poor,
00:39:17.180
It's, it's, it's a, it's, it's a mindset, you know?
00:39:24.920
What do you say to, um, people your age that are being taught that you can't make it, you
00:39:36.060
can't do it, you're not capable, people are standing in your way.
00:39:42.220
Well, first of all, make a list of the people saying that and write the do not talk to these
00:39:46.980
Cause what I'll tell you, it sounds like I'm joking, but what I'll tell you is that
00:39:50.100
one of the biggest things that you can do to hurt a child, to hurt a teenager who's just
00:40:01.240
Now, now any parents listening to this will be like, look, but you have to be realistic
00:40:06.720
You can't tell them they're going to be an astronaut.
00:40:10.620
I'll, I'll, I'll tell you an anecdote that I heard recently.
00:40:12.720
Anyway, I was, I didn't even remember where I read this, but it was a teacher who's teaching
00:40:20.800
And she was assigned to a school in Baltimore, you know, really rough part of town, a really
00:40:26.800
And I think she's teaching maybe third or fourth grade.
00:40:29.860
And she's like, look, these kids need some inspiration.
00:40:31.940
So she's like, guys today, instead of our math lesson, I'm going to pass out sheets of
00:40:36.080
And we're all going to draw pictures of our biggest dreams in life.
00:40:41.000
And, you know, she's like, dream whatever you want to dream.
00:40:43.980
And all the kids are coloring, except this one boy sitting in the back of the class won't
00:40:55.200
And after about 20 minutes, his eyes light up and he starts coloring.
00:40:58.380
And, you know, the kids turn in the papers and they go home and the teacher's reviewing
00:41:02.800
And she sees that that young boy drew a picture of a pizza delivery man.
00:41:11.460
So she called the mother that night of the boy and the mother wasn't surprised.
00:41:17.140
She said that the only male figure in his life who's not in jail or on drugs is his uncle
00:41:25.220
And what I took from that story is that young people will always reach for the highest branch
00:41:35.400
They'll always reach for the highest branch they think is possible.
00:41:38.500
So it's our job, whether it's families or schools or the media at large, to illuminate more branches.
00:41:46.800
They will always reach for the highest branch they think is possible.
00:42:11.860
But Bill Gates is in many ways responsible for Common Core and the sorting that he, and
00:42:24.180
look, if you have this point of view that I want to grade your aptitude early on to see
00:42:31.000
what you're good at, we'll fast track you into there.
00:42:34.440
But I do believe that there, I don't know what I would have been fast-tracked into.
00:42:43.720
Do they have empathy tests and communication tests?
00:42:55.100
These schools and the way we're measuring everything, it is putting a heavy box around people.
00:43:05.400
And I talk to parents all the time that say, I don't know what to do.
00:43:16.360
Some, you want to be a doctor, you've got to go to college.
00:43:19.540
You know, you want to be a comedian, go get a great creative writer, you know, and take
00:43:30.300
There are things that you need, but you don't need the four years of college.
00:43:37.320
First, I think this is the theme of our whole conversation, which is stop and actually ask
00:43:46.320
I think whether you're the 18 year old deciding if you're going to go to college or if you're
00:43:50.720
the parent deciding what you're going to tell your child, life is, it just feels easier
00:43:56.660
when you follow, you know, the check the boxes routine, which is, you know, go to high school,
00:44:04.160
You just said, you know, if you're being a comedian, that's a big waste of $250,000.
00:44:10.600
You're not going to be able to survive as a comedian because you have to pay student debts
00:44:13.500
and you just literally killed your career without even starting.
00:44:16.520
However, my son wants to be a comedian and he was learning about diagramming sentences
00:44:28.940
I took him backstage to meet Jim Gaffigan and Gaffigan said, no, no, no, no, you need
00:44:36.780
I said, hey, as a comedian, would you ever use diagramming sentence?
00:44:40.900
Maybe it's because he's got so many kids, but he immediately went, oh, yes, absolutely.
00:44:46.900
There are things that you do need for each skill, but you don't necessarily, you can get
00:44:53.880
it at the Barnes and Noble or Amazon or YouTube.
00:44:59.120
What's shifting in our society right now is that you have all these course lectures on
00:45:04.080
YouTube, you know, Harvard and Yale and Stanford are putting their best professors out for
00:45:16.580
How many people just, I'm curious, do you know, have watched any of those lectures?
00:45:32.400
So what it tells me though, is I don't think it will be zero forever.
00:45:37.580
I think it's going to shift over the next 10 years.
00:45:39.780
But I think right now we're still stuck in a, you know, I need the diploma to prove that
00:45:45.860
It's not, you know, the value of college is on the wrong syllable.
00:45:49.800
Instead of it being on what I learned, it's here's proof that I learned.
00:45:55.760
But I don't think you, I think you learn in college what to think, not how to think.
00:46:25.120
And nobody wants, that is, I mean, with the future of AI and the future of just unemployment
00:46:31.700
by 2030, it is going to be all about the uniqueness of you.
00:46:41.800
And what's going to happen is that the people who have the mindset of, I'll figure it out
00:46:50.560
You know, a great way to think about it, you know, and like you said, in 2030, that might
00:46:57.280
A great little micro case study is the music industry.
00:47:02.460
You know, Napster came in and literally, there's not many industries that can talk about over
00:47:09.560
Napster came in and just with overnight changed the entire music industry.
00:47:13.600
And what happened was people could start getting the essential product, the song for free.
00:47:19.360
And those, you know, the musicians who thrived during that time were the ones with that entrepreneurial
00:47:26.220
You know, one of the interviews I did in the book was with Pitbull and he said, growing
00:47:30.700
up a drug dealer was the greatest education you could have gotten for what Napster would
00:47:39.280
Cause before the interview, you know, the PR person was like, Pitbull's PR was like, don't
00:47:47.000
But, but I asked about what he needed to learn and he's like, oh, you want to know what I
00:47:52.440
And then he just started laying it all out for me.
00:47:55.200
And it's going to be true for 2030 for the whole population.
00:47:59.760
If you have a job right now where you're literally pulling a lever, moving a steering wheel, something
00:48:09.200
I hate saying this cause I feel like I'm the messenger of bad news, but you're in this position
00:48:13.160
every day telling people, warning people, sounding the alarm.
00:48:27.000
And radio and television people say it'll go on forever.
00:48:31.180
I've, uh, eight, uh, seven or eight years ago said, I think it has 10 to 15 years.
00:48:38.740
I think it's got about another five left in it before it dramatically is impact.
00:48:44.640
Where are all the new talent coming five years ago?
00:48:53.520
And the biggest lesson that you have to learn and people, my age, people, especially people
00:49:01.320
yours by 2030, we will have 20 years of technological change every day.
00:49:11.780
So you cannot, you have to be a Jack of all trades.
00:49:15.580
You have to be somebody who is adaptable that can change.
00:49:18.920
That's why institutional cookie cutters are so dangerous because you'll, you're not prepared
00:49:29.640
And I think one of the problems people have that I used to have is that you see this coming
00:49:39.340
You say, well, that's not how it's going to be.
00:49:44.320
What you're saying is, look, I'm not saying if it's good or bad, I'm saying it's happening.
00:49:49.760
You don't have to, what do you want to do about it?
00:49:51.360
What are you, what are you going to do about it?
00:49:56.660
And the whole point of the third door mindset is that I believe that, you know, the analogy
00:50:06.680
There's three ways in there's the first door, the main entrance where the line curves around
00:50:11.400
the block where 99% of people wait around hoping to get in.
00:50:15.380
And you know, that line's only going to get longer.
00:50:17.860
There's the second door, the VIP entrance where the billionaires and celebrities go through.
00:50:22.400
But when no one talks about and what school doesn't teach you is that there's always,
00:50:28.700
And it's the entrance where you jump out of line, run down the alley, bang on the door
00:50:31.800
a hundred times, crack open the window, go through the kitchen.
00:50:35.480
And it doesn't matter if that's how Gates sold his first piece of software or how Lady God
00:50:42.260
So that's not only, you know, the title of the book and the message, that's really the
00:50:46.140
energy I'm trying to inject into the next generation.
00:50:48.920
Because when you're talking about 2030, I'm like, if they can just understand the concept
00:50:54.760
that you can take control of your life, but you have to stop waiting in line.
00:51:00.040
The world, for the first time in centuries, is being completely redesigned.
00:51:12.420
You are either going to stand and watch and then work on somebody else's design, or you're
00:51:21.480
I mean, the possibilities are endless, endless.
00:51:31.340
She, what most people don't know about her is when she was starting out, she wasn't a
00:51:42.380
So she would, you know, call up, you know, local nightclubs in the Lower East Side of
00:51:48.520
Like, hello, this is, uh, this is Joan, Lady Gaga's manager.
00:51:52.940
And, uh, Lady Gaga only does Friday at 10 PM, you know, and she would do her own negotiations
00:51:59.460
And then after that, she would go work as a waitress, you know, making money to make ends
00:52:04.160
And she would take the money she would make as a waitress, go to the local print shop,
00:52:09.800
make these big posters of herself and put them up right in front of the nightclub she
00:52:15.760
So when the nightclub managers would have to walk to work every day, they would just pass
00:52:19.180
by these posters and be like, who the hell is this Lady Gaga and why is she so famous?
00:52:24.240
You know, she is, this is David Bowie and Ziggy Stardust.
00:52:32.640
The only thing that's changed is that for the past 20 and 30 years, society has been
00:52:36.760
telling us, wait in line, wait your turn, wait in line, wait your turn.
00:52:40.560
And I sort of went and did these interviews and realized that's a recipe for disaster.
00:52:59.620
Look, there's nothing I like to talk about more than my mom.
00:53:06.680
When, if, when and if, did your mom say, wow, good choice.
00:53:16.760
It's hard to say and put into words how much I love my mom.
00:53:30.360
And the hardest part of this journey by far, there's not even a close second was having
00:53:36.820
nothing to choose between pursuing my dream and my mom being in tears.
00:53:45.460
There's not even, you know, as hard as the Buffett stuff was, as hard as the gate, nothing
00:53:50.240
even comes close to the emotional pain of, because at the time I didn't know that my mom would
00:53:56.680
come around, it wasn't, you know, oh man, it was such a good feeling.
00:54:06.580
On the day the book came out, my mom flew to New York with me for the book launch day.
00:54:13.780
And through a friend we got, you know, the NASDAQ tower in Times Square, they turned the
00:54:26.020
And my, I remember standing in Times Square, this is the morning of the book launch and
00:54:31.400
my mom's on the other side of the street and we're going to go meet.
00:54:34.840
And I didn't know they had just turned on the billboard in Times Square and I see my mom
00:54:40.440
and I see her face because my back is to the tower.
00:54:43.820
I see my mom, my mom's looking up at the NASDAQ tower in Times Square.
00:54:53.300
And looking at my mom's face in that moment was a million times more fulfilling than looking
00:55:01.080
at that tower because I knew that for my mom, it wasn't about the tower.
00:55:07.600
It was about the symbol, which is he's going to be all right.
00:55:11.900
Talk to the mom or dad and tell them it's going to be okay.
00:55:35.040
You know, any parent right now who's losing sleep over their kid's future, the first thing
00:55:46.200
I would say is, you know, thank you that you love your kid that much because what I've
00:55:52.760
seen just with different friends is you're lucky if you have a parent who cares about
00:56:02.120
Now, if you're worried about your kid, I think the thing parents forget is that they used
00:56:12.400
to be just like that too when they were, you know, 19 and 20 and 21.
00:56:16.600
I think what happens is that you get into your 40s, you get into your 50s and you see your
00:56:22.780
teenage kids without a sense of direction and you almost have amnesia about how you used
00:56:27.200
to be as a kid and you're like, how come they don't have a 401k?
00:56:33.100
You know, look, it's very natural when you have a kid, you know, I don't have one, but
00:56:37.540
just from friends who I've talked to, a part of your brain literally becomes consumed of
00:56:43.000
that kid will die and suffer and that's, it's biological.
00:56:47.980
So any parent who's nervous and worried, that's a natural biological reaction.
00:56:55.620
If you're a parent, first of all, who's smart enough to be listening to something like this,
00:56:59.720
who's smart enough to be staying up at night worrying about it, your kid's going to do
00:57:05.360
And the biggest thing that a parent can do for a kid is to stay calm and say, I trust you.
00:57:13.380
You know, the biggest, biggest detriment to me on this journey, my parents gave me everything.
00:57:21.260
The one thing I wish I could have had though, was them saying, we know you'll figure it out.
00:57:27.680
Just saying that literally it's all I had wanted.
00:57:31.560
And thankfully they're at that point now, but I went through a lot of unnecessary pain,
00:57:40.000
losing sleep, making bad decisions because I was worried I was disappointing my parents.
00:57:49.500
You're listening to this and you're, you're 18, 17, 16, 25.
00:58:12.600
I think your question was very on point because I don't believe it's an age.
00:58:19.020
You know, you just met Cal Fussman very recently.
00:58:24.740
Five years ago, had a completely different career.
00:58:28.480
Cal has done a transformation that you normally see happen when someone's 20 or 21 years old.
00:58:33.340
In case you don't know, Cal, Cal Fussman is one of the greatest interviewers of all time.
00:58:39.120
And bestselling author, writer at Esquire magazine.
00:58:46.740
And, you know, so whether it's Cal at 60 years old or it's someone who's 18, who's just trying
00:58:51.800
to make that first move, the biggest thing I would tell them is that the biggest place people fail
00:59:00.880
when it comes to making a big life transition or going after a dream.
00:59:04.600
It's not that, you know, running down the alley and banging on the door and finding the third
00:59:11.340
I think everyone thinks executing on the dream is the hard part.
00:59:14.600
What I've learned every single time without fail from studying all these different people
00:59:19.480
is that the part people mess up is that they're standing in line for the first door and they're
00:59:26.160
so consumed by fear and what ifs that they never actually leave it.
00:59:33.020
You're standing in that line for the first door.
00:59:43.880
And what happens is I've realized that people don't even know how much they're trapped by the
00:59:52.160
People are trapped by the comfort of certainty.
00:59:54.420
And no one achieves a dream in the comfort of certainty.
01:00:01.080
Can I go back to the story with you and Buffett?
01:00:07.160
Because I think this is important, at least a lesson I have learned on the other side,
01:00:12.160
being not Buffett, but being somebody that, I don't believe in coincidence.
01:00:19.720
But so many people see their third door as a person.
01:00:33.460
You were focused on, I have to have access to Warren Buffett.
01:00:46.560
And it can't rely on convincing someone else that it's the greatest.
01:00:52.980
I mean, you know, you might say, the toothbrush, it's really a great idea.
01:01:04.200
And I think, you know, talking from personal experience, the moments I've messed up the
01:01:09.440
most is when I become transfixed again on one person.
01:01:16.240
Or let, yeah, let's say you want to sell a book to a publisher.
01:01:24.240
A great thing a friend has taught me is that you can be committed to your dream and not
01:01:32.780
attached to the methods of achieving that dream.
01:01:36.100
You can be committed to the dream, but not attached to the methods.
01:01:40.620
And my problem with Buffett is I was 100% focused on the method, which is I need to get to Buffett.
01:01:47.080
And that's the thing about the change that is coming now.
01:02:06.900
When, you know, Moses says, who shall I say sent me?
01:02:15.480
And it puts a different spin on thou shalt not take the Lord that God's name in vain.
01:02:21.920
Because it, he doesn't, I can't imagine a God who is like, hey, hey, hey, a little careful with the name there.
01:02:38.280
It's because his name, you're Jewish, has power.
01:02:46.840
And if you don't fill that in, somebody in your life will fill it in.
01:02:55.360
People don't get past the childhood that somebody has filled that in.
01:03:16.440
I'll tell you the first thing that came to mind, but it surprises even me.
01:03:23.220
It's weird to be telling you this, like before I've told like my sisters, I've been on the
01:03:34.120
But I was on an airplane a few days ago and I just started sobbing, like sobbing, sobbing.
01:03:46.140
And the reason was I was reflecting back on the past two years.
01:03:57.600
My dad died a year and a half ago, just a couple months ago.
01:04:04.700
The day after the book came out, my grandpa passed away.
01:04:08.380
Two weeks after that, my grandma, his wife gets a stroke.
01:04:16.140
And our family in many ways has really come apart.
01:04:27.400
I was reflecting back on all of the miracles that happened the past two years.
01:04:35.700
And specific, not like miracles in general, like my best friends who carried my dad's casket.
01:04:41.720
And the second cousin who's become like our lifeline in our family.
01:04:52.280
And on this airplane for the first time in my life, and I grew up, you know, with a religious
01:04:57.480
background, but this was the first time in my life I ever had the thought that God loves
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The first thing that came to mind, my mind was loved by God.
01:05:20.180
Cause this, this is the thing that you have to understand about me.
01:05:21.960
I was the kid who went to, you know, temple because that's what our parents told us to
01:05:27.660
And, and I think a lot of young people have this relationship with religion where it's
01:05:37.540
And I think one of the coolest things of the past couple of years for me has been
01:05:42.800
choosing to move toward it as opposed to it being, you know, forced down my throat.
01:05:51.960
And I think when you choose to move toward it, it takes on a whole different meaning.
01:06:04.660
We were talking about church and God and things like that.
01:06:08.500
And he said, you know, I don't like going to church and I just don't like this.
01:06:17.860
And he, I could tell he hesitated, but he trusts me enough, thank God, that he said, I don't
01:06:49.160
It's strange how we have, how we don't, we don't appreciate the fact that it's an individual
01:07:10.720
And I think, and I know you've had similar experiences, a death of a parent forces you
01:07:28.680
I think that's the most dangerous thing we can have.
01:07:38.060
I've, I've, I've never learned anything new when I was happy and whole and, and perfectly
01:07:51.140
You know, there's cognitive dissonance is that uncomfortable feeling that you believe
01:07:57.160
something, but your actions are, you know, going against that.
01:08:02.560
Cognitive ease is, is something, and, and advertising knows this.
01:08:11.280
The first time you hear something, you have cognitive dissonance.
01:08:16.860
Cognitive ease is after you've seen it over and over and over again.
01:08:20.440
And then all of a sudden you're like, oh yeah, Coke.
01:08:23.220
First time you see Coke, you know, if you're coming from someplace else, you don't know what
01:08:38.780
Either my actions are wrong or this philosophy is wrong or I misunderstand it.
01:08:52.780
I was literally going to cut you off and say, if you choose, because something, one of the
01:08:57.280
best lessons I learned from Quincy Jones in the interview was he said, you know, 90%
01:09:11.140
And if you bring it up, they'll hate you for it.
01:09:14.360
What he said is if you treat your failures, treat your mistakes as friends and you embrace
01:09:20.160
them and you cherish your mistakes, only then can you grow and only then can you succeed.
01:09:32.100
Teddy Roosevelt said, and I'm going to butcher it, but it was Teddy Roosevelt or Kipling.
01:09:37.840
I'm not, I think it was Kipling in his, in his poem, if, if you can treat those two
01:09:48.440
You know, your success and your failures, they just are, they just are.
01:09:59.080
Success and failure are the result of the same thing.
01:10:02.220
Trying, you know, they're different sides of the same coin.
01:10:05.460
And I think everybody makes this mistake and I definitely made this mistake when I was
01:10:10.300
I thought success and failure were opposites and it took me seven years to realize the opposite
01:10:30.680
Where are you, where do you see yourself at my age?
01:10:38.520
Do you know what's, there's been a lot of very cool, I call them like inadvertent lessons.
01:10:47.680
So when I was researching the book, I had to go through these massive, like, you know,
01:10:51.040
600, 800 page biographies on all these different people.
01:10:53.920
And I was looking for specific, you know, lessons, but what ended up happening, I got
01:11:00.900
Like I can pretty much, I want to do a whole like series on parenting.
01:11:05.000
Cause I learned all these parenting lessons from studying all these biographies.
01:11:07.580
A whole nother thing is I just was able to see that, you know, big career, you know,
01:11:13.160
from a 30,000 foot perspective, the career journeys of, you know, dozens and dozens and
01:11:19.760
And if there's one thing that I picked up inadvertently is that none of them knew where
01:11:25.600
they would be 20 years from now, but they knew what they liked.
01:11:30.660
They knew what kind of challenges they enjoy and they knew what kind of difference they
01:11:36.200
And they know what kind of life they want to live.
01:11:38.860
And I have decided I'm not going to put that expectation of what am I going to do 20 years
01:11:46.500
I know what I want a year from now, from five years from now, 10 years.
01:11:49.460
I definitely have a goal, but I'm not so attached to it that, you know, someone calls about my
01:12:16.080
We're living in a time where Americans who are Americans for generations, I think are so
01:12:27.040
bored with ease that we don't see how good we have it.
01:12:39.200
Do you think you would be who you are if your grandfather and your family hadn't have come
01:12:48.740
from someplace where it was life and death and then came here?
01:13:06.720
You know, we are human beings and we function off of narrative.
01:13:10.960
I grew up with the narrative of do not throw away this opportunity.
01:13:18.160
America is a place where if you study hard, if you work hard, you can make something happen.
01:13:24.700
Now, with my grandfather, there was an extra element, which was we were this close to it.
01:13:39.920
And it's given me, I think, actually a very healthy gravity in the sense that I know, you know, between my grandpa's story and between seeing my dad pass a year and a half ago.
01:14:03.140
You know, I understand for the first time, you know, when I was a kid, I didn't understand how blessed I was to be born here, to have parents that cared so much that they would sacrifice so much for me.
01:14:18.040
And one of the best things that I've learned about humility comes from Maya Angelou, where she said, you know, modesty is saying, oh, you know, little old me, like I'm not that special.
01:14:31.240
Maya Angelou says, if you meet a modest person, run the other way.
01:14:33.620
But humility is when you know deep down that everything you have in your life came from the people who came before you, who paid their way.
01:14:45.400
And I know that my dad and my mom and my grandparents, my great-grandparents paid my way.
01:14:50.600
And it's my job to pay the way for the people in my family who aren't even born yet.
01:14:54.700
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