Making It Count and How To Do More

Simple yet profound words from this week's guest, a man in full embrace of the ethos of living an impactful, creative, authentic life in overdrive. Uncompromising. Unapologetic. Filmmaker, photographer, builder, father, humanitarian, athlete. But most of all, an artist leveraging his boundless creative energy to tell personal stories that inspire all of us to find the adventure in life. To invest in experience. To be bold. And to do more — both for yourself and for others. I first became aware of Casey around 2010 when his show “The Neistat Brothers” aired on HBO and was immediately captivated by Casey's DIY sensibility. His fearlessness. His acute ability to find the wonder in the seemingly banal. And his refusal to await permission from the gatekeepers to create. I've been a fan ever since, eagerly anticipating each new upload to his wildly popular YouTube channel – 82 movies he refuses to monetize; a network that enjoys a quarter of a million rabid subscribers; and dozens of viral sensations with 50+ million views. At this point, many of you have likely seen his remarkable “Make It Count”. If you somehow missed it, please watch it now for context before listening to the episode (I've watched it at least 20 times and never get tired of it). Hired by Nike to create an advertisement to promote the Fuel Band, Casey audaciously ignored the agreed upon commercial treatment and instead brashly spent the entire budget traveling the world, all the while documenting his incredible adventure until the money just flat ran out. 34,000 miles, three continents, 13 countries, 16 cities and 10 million views later, the rest is history. This past December, Casey raised the bar. Contacted by 20th Century Fox to create a movie to help promote “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”, Casey agreed, with one caveat: permission to donate the entire commercial budget to typhoon victims in the Philippines. Tying creative expression to service, “What Would You Do with $25,000?” became an instant viral hit, trending on Twitter to over 3 million views. Then just one day after we sat down for this conversation, Casey headed out in a blizzard to “Snowboard NYC”– a sponsor-less lark he posted within 24 hours of shooting that clocked 5 million views in it's first five days. In the words of Wired Magazine, “Casey Neistat’s bite-size Internet movies have so much viral potential they make influenza jealous.” But what is it that makes Casey and his work so irresistible? Sure, the movies are fun. Irreverant. Visually captivating with great music and personal storylines that always star Casey himself as the ever-appealing protagonist. But in my opinion, what makes Casey stand out, what gives his work permanent residence in my consciousness, is his devotion to authenticity — an axiom of conviction that infuses every single frame of every single work he produces — and the predominant over-arching theme of this podcast. Read more HERE... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

  Eating well rarely falls apart because of one big failure. It's the daily question that wears you down like, what am I actually going to make tonight? What's in the fridge? And it's exactly why we built the Plant Power Meal Planner. It's a personalized, plant-based meal planning program that matches you with recipes based on your taste, your allergies, your cooking skills, and how much time you actually have. You build through this program, a balanced nutrient-dense plan for your entire household in a few minutes. Then it generates a grocery list for you with one click that plugs right into our delivery partners. All the recipes in the program are built by dietitians with culinary training. Plus, you get your own food coach to help you problem solve along the way.

• 0:44Rich Roll?

  It's kind of an amazing thing. For listeners of the show, all you special people, we're offering an exclusive $20 off an annual subscription right now. To get it, go to meals.richroll.com, take your quick personalization quiz, and enter promo code RICHROLL20 at checkout. Welcome to episode 73 of the Rich Roll Podcast with Casey Neistat.

• 1:24Rich Roll?

  Hey, people, welcome to the show. I'm Rich Roll, your host of the Rich Roll Podcast. What do we do here each week? I bring to you the best, most inspiring, forward-thinking paradigm-busting minds in health, fitness, wellness, diet, nutrition, spirituality, entrepreneurship, artistry, yoga, meditation. We cast a broad net. Basically, my only rule for this show and for my guests is, are you living in inspiring, authentic, and extraordinary life? Are you of service to something greater than yourself? Can we, as the audience, benefit?

• 1:58Rich Roll?

  From what you, the guest, has to offer, what are you bringing to the table? And in return, you, the audience, you guys, you take the tools, the messages, the inspiration that resonates with you and implement these ideas, these concepts, these tools, or just the general inspiration from the stories that I'm sharing with you, implement them into your life. The focus is implementation. Osmosis, it's only going to get you so far. It's a two-way street. So hopefully, as a result of these chats, you become better as a result. I know I have as a result of this experience of doing the podcast. So that's my goal, pure

• 2:39Rich Roll?

  and simple. Today on the show, we are doing a little bit, something a little bit different. You know, usually my guests are very health and fitness oriented doctors. We talk about food. We talk about all that kind of stuff. And today, we're making a little bit of a detour, but I am super, super excited to bring to you today's conversation. Casey Neistat is a guy who inspires me tremendously. And, you know, I find inspiration in all different kinds of forms. It isn't just athletes, or triathletes, or ultra-athletes, or wellness

• 3:21Rich Roll?

  warriors. It's all different kinds of people. It's people that show a spark, people that really are raising the bar, pushing the boundaries of what they think they're capable of, and people that are living extraordinary lives. And Casey certainly fits that category. He's a guy who chooses himself. He's a guy who is a man of bold adventures, I guess you could say. He lives his life on his own terms. He's very uncompromising in his art. He's incredibly authentic in his creativity. And he's an example of what can happen when you devote yourself to something with everything that you have, when you work super hard,

• 4:04Rich Roll?

  believe in yourself, stick to who you are, refuse to compromise, move forward in the face of all obstacles, have faith, and most importantly, have the courage to be bold, to make a statement, and to really stand tall and say, this is who I am. So if you haven't heard of Casey, he is a filmmaker.

• 4:25Rich Roll?

  I first heard of him, I think it was about 2008, 2007. I got a phone call from a guy I went to high school with who I had not spoken to in quite some time, many, many, many years, a guy called Tom Scott. And we were catching up and he was telling me what he was up to. And he's like, "Yeah, I'm producing this show on HBO. It's called The Neistat Brothers." And I'd never heard of it. And he's like, "Yeah, check it out." Which I did. And he sent me a link to a YouTube video that Casey had made. Basically, the HBO series was about Casey and his brother Van as living as filmmakers in New York City. And it's a cool little show. It only ran for, I don't know, eight episodes or something like that.

• 5:09Rich Roll?

  But I think you can still get it on HBO.com or HBO Go. So all you guys should check that out. But anyway, Tom shared with me this YouTube video that Casey had made. And it was a video of him running through the streets of New York. And it was kind of a branded video for Nike. And this was some years ago. If you're familiar with Casey, he's made a more recent, extremely compelling viral video for Nike that I'm going to talk about in a minute. But this was years before that. And there was something really cool and captivating about this video. It was just so authentic. And it was about, you know, just sort of his passion for running and getting it done. And I started following him then. And I've watched every video that he has made ever since.

• 5:54Rich Roll?

  His YouTube channel is quite something. He's got about a quarter of a million followers, subscribers on YouTube. Made, I don't know, 80-plus some odd videos. And every new video that he uploads raises the bar. And you can see the progression in his artistry with each new offering. And he's constantly uploading videos. And they are, they kind of span the spectrum. Some of them are very vast in their scope and some of them are very small and personal. But at the core of all of them is very... Authentic message of a guy who's exploring his life and trying to find the adventure in the big things and in the small things. And there's just something really captivating

• 6:39Rich Roll?

  about his style, his sensibility that I absolutely love. And the inspiration comes through in his refusal to compromise, to always be true to who he is in his, in his full authenticity, I suppose. And even if you haven't, if the name doesn't sound familiar, you still may be familiar with him. He, about a year ago, he made a video for Nike. Nike approached him, said, "We're interested in having you create a video for us. We're launching the Fuel Band and we're, it's under the slogan of Make It Count, like hashtag Make It Count." And he took the entire budget for this video and decided that he was going

• 7:21Rich Roll?

  to travel around the world until he ran out of money and document it. What he didn't do was tell Nike that that was what he was going to do with the money. And so he essentially just flew all the way around the globe and filmed everything that he did, all the adventures that he had. And he cut this together into an extraordinarily compelling, motivating, and inspiring video called Make It Count. And it's got like 10 million views. If you haven't seen it, go to richroll.com. I'm going to put it in the show notes. You should definitely take, you know, five minutes and watch this thing. I guarantee you it will improve your day. And more recently, you might be familiar with Casey because he made

• 8:03Rich Roll?

  a video for the promotional campaign for the movie, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. And essentially what happened was the marketing department at 20th Century Fox, the studio that made that movie, contacted Casey and said, "Listen, we're, we're getting ready to launch this movie. We have a marketing campaign under the kind of auspices of living your dreams. We're interested in whether you would like to make a video for us along this, these lines." And he basically responded and said, "Yeah, I'm interested, but what, here's my proposal. Send me the budget for the movie and I'm going to go to the Philippines and give all the money away in aid to the typhoon victims." And that's essentially what he did. He went there, he documented it, he filmed it.

• 8:48Rich Roll?

  And again, hits it out of the park with this extremely touching, poignant, and inspiring video that I think has like 3 million views at this point, and it only came out, I don't know, a couple of months ago. He makes his living doing sort of branded entertainment, but, or branded videos for companies, but his passion really is in making these YouTube videos. He doesn't monetize his videos, he just puts them up and they're just super cool. And I was going to wait a couple of weeks to put this interview up, because I had other ones sort of stacked in front of it, but I was compelled to put it up earlier because

• 9:30Rich Roll?

  the day after, I visited Casey in his amazing studio in New York City, which is sort of like this crazy loft with all this, I don't even know how to explain it. I think in the podcast interview, I call it something like a merging of Willy Wonka with some kind of Dr. Seuss sensibility. It's packed with all sorts of things. It's incredibly organized, but it's really kind of the artist layer in every sense of the word. But anyway, the day that we went in to do the podcast interview, he was extremely busy trying to complete a cut on a project that he was working on, and he didn't have very much time.

• 10:12Rich Roll?

  So this is shorter than my typical interview, but he was saying, "Oh, I hope it snows tomorrow. I've got big plans. Got big plans for the snowstorm." And sure enough, it did snow the following day. And he went out in New York City and made a video of himself snowboarding all over Manhattan. And he hooked up a water skiing tow rope behind his Jeep. And had his friend drive around New York City and tow him on this snowboard and made this video, which is really fun, super cool, and it just exploded. It went crazy viral. And in five days, it already has five million views. It was everywhere. It got picked up

• 10:53Rich Roll?

  by all the news stations and kind of published all over the internet. And so, kind of to honor, you know, this, this sort of cool moment that he's having, I thought it was a good time to put the podcast interview up. So that's what I'm doing today. Again, this is a shorter interview. He just didn't have that much time, but it was super cool to meet him, being a big fan of his. And his message is really inspirational to anybody out there who is struggling, who feels stuck, who feels like they're not tapped into who they really are. Because this guy's an example of truly living his life authentically in every single moment. And again, that's what inspires me. And I think that's a message that resonates with all of us. There's a lot to be learned by somebody who is refusing

• 11:38Rich Roll?

  to compromise and who is living bold. And that is certainly the essence of who Casey Neistat is. And I'm really proud and excited to share this interview with you guys today. So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, enjoy this interview. Casey Neistat.

• 12:01Rich Roll?

  It's, uh, it's super cool to be in your awesome studio. It's this wild, I mean, everybody can see it on the internet. And I've saw, I've seen all the videos and stuff like that. But even seeing those doesn't do it justice to being in here. It's this crazy Willy Wonka meets, uh, it reminds me of like Dick Van Dyke and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, you know, it's like this mad scientist.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  The, um, child catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is the source of many nightmares for me.

• 12:26Rich Roll?

  Oh, yeah.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  Remember that guy, like the long skinny nose?

• 12:28Rich Roll?

  Oh, yeah, I know, right?

• 12:29Speaker 01

  That tricked children with candy and then kidnapped them?

• 12:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 12:32Speaker 01

  What a terrible movie for kids.

• 12:34Rich Roll?

  Mathis loves it. Our 10-year-old watches it again and again, but the sheer amount of shit in here is extraordinary.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  Thanks. Yeah, and it's a little messy right now, just because we're in the middle of three different productions, but I assure you, it's normally much more organized.

• 12:47Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. Cool. So I was thinking about you taking the cab ride down here and I was remembering this interview with the Coen Brothers, in which the interviewer was asking them, you know, "How is it that you've avoided selling out to Hollywood?" And I can't remember which one of them responded, but one of them said, "Actually, we sort of feel like Hollywood's sold out to us. You know, they get to do what they want to do, and Hollywood has bent to their aesthetic in certain respects." And I think that that is analogous to your situation, at least vis-à-vis Madison Avenue. In other words, like, the projects that you do, you

• 13:29Rich Roll?

  don't bend to the system. The system bends to you, to your whims. They come to you because they want that piece of you that seems to really capture, you know, the fascination of the public. Like, you tap into this emotional nerve.

• 13:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I... Thank you. That's very flattering. But I think it's... I think that I am just... I happen to be in the right place in the right time. That's not to say I haven't done a lot of work to sort of achieve what you just described, but I think that... I mean, if I had to give the most abbreviated version of how I'm able to do what I do and make a living at it, it's simply that via my YouTube channel, you know, I've got whatever 80 movies up there, 77 of them are just personal projects that I have to do for fun. But via those personal projects, you know, I've reached an audience that's, you know,

• 14:25Speaker 01

  50 million-plus views and, you know, huge subscribership that hits that market that's like 13 to 34-year-olds, 60% male, 40% female. And that's something that a lot of the clients, a lot of the companies that I work with, they want to be able to speak to that audience. Um, so that's nothing new. That's existed for a while. They're designed to speak with that audience. But what is new is is that I've been able to, because of the internet, because of YouTube, I've been able to prove my access, prove my reach, and prove my ability to communicate with that audience organically. I did it via my personal work, and I did that without much intention. I just posted it online and it found this audience. So when you have a company, when you have a Nike,

• 15:10Speaker 01

  when you have a Mercedes Benz that comes to me, um, they don't come to me the way they would come to a typical ad agency or something like that. They come to me and they say, hey, we want to reach the people that you're already reaching.

• 15:21Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 15:22Speaker 01

  So that's the point right there. That's the precipice. That's the line right there that is me being a product of being at the right place at the right time. Because when they want to reach my audience my way, you know, there's no, they would never suggest do do it exactly this way, this way, or this way. Like, if they knew how to tap into this audience, um, if they had to communicate with these, this, this, an audience like this, they'd just do it. Like, what do they need me for?

• 15:49Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 15:49Speaker 01

  So if they're coming to me for the audience that I'm already communicating with so effectively, um, why would they ever suggest that they know maybe how to do it better than I do?

• 15:58Rich Roll?

  But at the same time, you see that all the time where, for example, Hollywood will look at a director or writer and say, we love this person's work. Now come and make this movie. Oh, you know, we like what you did, but now we want you to do it this way. You know what I mean? And the system kind of wears people out and bends them to their own will.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, well, I think that it's probably headed in that direction, but because this is such a new model, I think that I'm able to sort of, uh, have a level of creative latitude that, um, hasn't really existed in certainly in advertising, um, that I'm more than happy to take full advantage of.

• 16:35Rich Roll?

  Right. Well, I think that, that, uh, you know, my own personal opinion about.

• 16:42Rich Roll?

  Why you're able to kind of tap that nerve is that there is an undeniable authenticity and level of honesty in your work. Like you're just sort of, I mean, on a surface level, you're just this guy, you're gonna go out and you're gonna tell this story, whether it's this sort of sweeping narrative with Nike traveling the world, or, you know, your issue with the microphone on your, on your favorite camera. It doesn't matter how pedestrian it is, or how large it is. There's this emotional vein because you're, you're being honest and authentic to who you are, and I think people recognize that. And that is like, that's what, that's what resonates, at least for me. I mean, I mean, is that fair to say?

• 17:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, I, I talk about this idea of the bullshit detector. And it's something I, I talk about a lot. What I think the bullshit detector is, and your son probably understands this, or maybe don't, maybe you don't understand it, but I think you're more conscious of the bullshit detector than we are. My fifteen-year-old son is definitely more, has a much more in tune, sort of acute bullshit detector than I do. And what the bullshit detector is, is that, you know, when you and I grew up, Rich, like we, we watched TV after school, or whatever it might be, and we were forced to watch these thirty-second commercials, and then get back to like, you can't do that on television, or Saved by the Bell, or whatever you watch. We were forced to watch those thirty-second spots, and we just dealt with it.

• 18:06Speaker 01

  But now you look at my fifteen-year-old, or you look at, you know, me to a lesser extent, and it's like, everywhere, we are just inundated with media. It's not these thirty-second clips that are in between, you know, five minutes of Saved by the Bell, it's, it's a constant, constant, overwhelming inundation. It's Facebook, it's on our phones, everywhere we go on the internet, it's relentless. And what that sort of relentless media marketing, nonstop in your face has done... Is it's it's made your your ability to figure out what's truthful and honest and what's bullshit much more quickly and much more effectively. So you dismiss ninety nine percent of what you see. You just see, you dismiss it.

• 18:47Speaker 01

  You you were on Facebook this morning, tell me one banner ad you saw running across the side of your Facebook profile.

• 18:52Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I can't I can't remember seeing one.

• 18:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, name one commercial that played in front of your last YouTube video like you can't. There's it's invisible. And that's because your bullshit detector just dismisses it. So how do you penetrate that? How do you get through that sort of level of bullshit? And that's by being authentic. And I think for me, authenticity is just inherent to what I do. I think that if Nike had come to me and they said, hey, we need to sell this exact product and want you to discuss the attributes of it. And we want you to sell it and explain how it works and all that like I wouldn't know what to do with that. I'd have no idea. But I can definitely represent the big idea behind that because that big idea is truthful to me. It's this idea of like, you know, making it count, getting out there and mixing it up like, yeah, I can talk to that ad nauseam.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  So, yeah, so that's the bullshit detector. And I think that the bullshit detector and people's understanding of it again, just sort of enables me to do what I do. Because if you've got, you know, somebody coming to me and they want me to do exactly what's on this piece of paper. They want to follow this script to a T. You know, that's going to set off my kid's bullshit detector.

• 19:57Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  And then he's not going to know that he saw it. You know, when I ask him, name three commercials, he'll have no idea that he saw it.

• 20:04Rich Roll?

  Right. Do you go home and quiz him about that kind of stuff?

• 20:07Speaker 01

  No, I mean, it's, you know, and your your parent, you know, like you pick up on these things. You notice these things and you see his behavior. And I remember when he was old enough to sort of figure out the remote control was when I first realized that he won't tolerate TV commercials. We had cable then and the second a commercial would come on, it would change. The second, you know, Netflix on Netflix now, but the Netflix on demand came out, whatever, six, seven years ago. Then he stopped watching TV altogether and then Hulu Plus, he's got this. And when he's watching TV on the Internet, he's got three tabs open. The second it forces you to watch a commercial, one tab gets closed, the other tab gets opened until the commercial is over. Then he swings back to it. And it's like, how do you as a marketer possibly penetrate that? How do you get through that?

• 20:48Rich Roll?

  I was watching your newest little opus this morning about the Jeep getting stuck in the pond.

• 20:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:55Rich Roll?

  And it's funny because it's on some level, it's a silly little movie. You're like, hey, I wanted to drive my Jeep across the pond. This is what happened. It's like stuck in the ice and all that kind of stuff. And you're trying to back out of it. But you have this cool little kind of graphic, you know, voiceover that goes across it. And you say, um, you know, when I was a kid, I made a lot of really bad decisions. I guess I just forgot. I just, I guess I just thought I would grow out of that. And then you say, not considering the consequences of your actions is something kids do. And I'm okay with that. And I think that that's kind of a profound statement. That really kind of encapsulates a big part of your ethos as a filmmaker, like sort of retaining that

• 21:37Rich Roll?

  childlike, you know, kid mentality, you know, whether it's the aesthetic of your, your studio here, or even the, the small little movies that you make that are very personal.

• 21:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it's kind of become a mantra of mine. But if I had like a mission statement in life, it would be to realize all the promises I made to myself as a kid. Because when you're a kid, or at least when I was a kid, I was really frustrated all the time, sort of always getting like, you know, held back by adults and not being allowed to do this, not being allowed to do that, and just always being in trouble. And it was like, well, when I grow up, that inner dialogue was always when I grew up, when I grew up. I remember in fifth grade, I was either suspended, might have been thrown out of school for skateboarding in the hallways. And the vice principal, as he's screaming at me, was like, you think when you grow up, you're gonna have an office that you can build a skateboard in? And I had a half pipe in my office here for two and a half years.

• 22:33Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. Did you ever take a picture and send it to him?

• 22:36Speaker 01

  I mean, I'm not one for vendettas.

• 22:40Rich Roll?

  But in a fun kind of way, not in a mean way.

• 22:42Speaker 01

  I mean, I will tell you that the high school that I dropped out of, or was kicked out of sophomore year, has invited me to come speak to the entire, you know, body. So all the administrators, the teachers and students in April. So.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  It's a little bit of validation.

• 22:59Rich Roll?

  It's important to understand, I want to talk about this, like you look around the studio and it's so, you probably have people that want to come in here and do tours all the time. I see the sign that, you know, please no solicitors or no, no drop-ins or whatever. But you were not to the manner born, you know, this is, this is a hard fought, you know, long road that got you to this place and a lot of work and, and not knowing where it was gonna head. I mean, when you were fifteen, you dropped out of high school. At seventeen, you had a kid, you were living in a trailer, washing dishes and, you know, trying to raise a child and on welfare. Right? I mean.

• 23:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, that's totally right.

• 23:34Rich Roll?

  And, and to get from that place to, you know, dinner with the president and making commercials for Nike and, and, you know, being in demand to the extent that you are is, is quite an extraordinary journey.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, definitely. And it's, in retrospect, I don't know that it makes any sense. And it's like one thing you realize when you get older is that it's like, it's, it's a whole bunch of tiny decisions that, you know, that lead you to where you are. And two things that I always say is like, whenever anybody asks me advice via email, which is great, so I can always dismiss it with like four words, which I always do, but I mean these four words. It's like, work hard and be brave. And I literally think if you sort of distill life or any career path down to that,

• 24:22Speaker 01

  you'll find success. And it's gonna be scary and who knows what my, the outcome might be, but working hard is something that most people are scared to do. They think they're, it's their right or they're entitled to have a job that gives them free time and things like that. And yeah, you're probably right, but, you know, don't complain and don't make an issue of it when you haven't achieved all of your dreams or set, do everything, accomplish everything you set out to do. You know, if you want to be home at six o'clock every night. And then being brave is just about taking chances, like taking huge chances. You know, there's, there's only two decisions in my entire life that I look back on and just have no idea what I was thinking when I made those decisions. And one was moving to New York City.

• 25:05Speaker 01

  I had my only experience in life was working in a restaurant in a kitchen.

• 25:10Speaker 01

  No education, no resume and no career experience, no work experience, no friends. I knew one person in the city, it was my older brother. And I had no money. I had eight hundred bucks and a three-month sublet. And a two-year-old.

• 25:27Speaker 01

  And like what I was

• 25:28Rich Roll?

  Terrifying.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  What I was thinking that I I just I can't figure it out. I can't. I remember so vividly on a cigarette break with one of the cooks at the restaurant that I was working in standing out back and he's like, well, you know, the good thing about this place is that you can you always have a job here when you come back.

• 25:42Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 25:43Speaker 01

  And I was just so insulted and I turned to him.

• 25:45Rich Roll?

  When you come back.

• 25:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was like eighteen years old. I turned to him and I was like, I'm never coming back.

• 25:49Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 25:50Speaker 01

  And I think it was that kind of conviction that, you know, that made me stick it out. And the second decision was like quitting my, three years after moving to New York, I had like a really great job. I was managing an artist's studio and I don't know what, how much money I was making, but it was like sixty grand a year. It was like a good job. Um, I had a lot of responsibilities as a boss, had a lot of like people working under me and it was exciting. Um, and I got the opportunity to like direct some really shitty TV commercial, um, with a tiny budget of like ten grand.

• 26:20Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  But in order to do it, I would have had to quit my job and without any hesitation or, you know, batting an eye, I immediately quit my job.

• 26:27Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 26:28Speaker 01

  Um, that's the the second decision. I have no idea what I was thinking.

• 26:32Rich Roll?

  See, when I look at that, though, I see this, um, I see somebody who who was able to identify something that they were passionate about filmmaking and whether it, whether it made sense or not, whether it was based in logic, you knew that this was something you wanted to pursue and you were willing to, you know, blindly step into the void and see what was gonna happen. And I think when, when you do have that kind of passion and conviction and you're willing to put in the work and even if it doesn't make sense and you don't, don't know where it's gonna lead you, that, you know, the universe really does step in to can, you know, conspire to support that in certain respects. I mean, looking back, it looks like a clean line, but I'm sure at the time it was pretty frightening.

• 27:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I remember when I first moved to New York City and I met for the first time in my life, rich kids, um, kids with like trust funds, like the Hilton sisters when they were twenty, like meeting these guys and just like, it was sort of infathomable to me, this idea of, of, you know, them having everything in the world, um, monetarily anyways. And I remember sort of like, you know, there was a level of jealousy about that. I was, I wished that I was able to live a, a life like they did when I was in my early twenties. And, um, You know, now, I definitely like, am so happy and so lucky to have been on welfare. I'm so fortunate to have lived in a trailer park.

• 27:55Speaker 01

  I feel so bad for these rich kids that they'll never get to experience that. Because the truth is, like, why would I quit my job when I moved to New York? I mean, I still make sweeping, terrible decisions that just have no foresight whatsoever.

• 28:12Speaker 01

  But the truth is, like, when it comes to your career, if I were to lose everything, I mean, everything. If everything were to fail, if it were to go as tits up as it could possibly go. Like, what's the worst that could possibly happen? Like, I'd probably be back in that trailer park, maybe even on welfare. But like, I had TV then, I had Playstation One, like, it wasn't that bad. It wasn't, like, you know, I was in Uganda earlier this year, delivering morphine to late-term AIDS patients. That's bad. You know, I was in Afghanistan and, you know, saw some gnarly shit, like, that's bad.

• 28:49Speaker 01

  You know, in Takla Ban, those people, they literally lost everything and they're sleeping in, you know, they're sleeping in the dirt. That's bad. This, like, really polished, American version of what the, you know, what the sort of end of the line is, or what rock bottom is, is, you know, luxurious compared to 99% of the population of this planet. So when you put it into that context, it's like, is it that big of a deal?

• 29:12Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 29:12Speaker 01

  Who gives a shit?

• 29:13Rich Roll?

  Well, I mean, this, there's this weird, like, sort of pseudo-dissonance in what you do. Because on the one hand, like, being in sort of marketing and advertising, it's part of your job to kind of sell a product, or a lifestyle, or a lifestyle aspiration. But your message, your inherent message in everything that you do is really invest in experiences. Like, don't, you know, it's not about the stuff. It's about, you know, how, these bold choices that you make, stepping out and testing yourself, and, you know, doing the, doing, making the brave choice.

• 29:45Rich Roll?

  But it's weird, like, sometimes those are, those can be, I mean, sort of inherently, those two things are at odds with each other, right? When it comes to like Madison Avenue, but you're able to find a way to get your idea across without falling prey to that trap, I guess.

• 30:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, uh, just to speak to experience.

• 30:06Rich Roll?

  Is that accurate? I don't mean to, I don't want to misspeak.

• 30:08Speaker 01

  I think so, um, although I don't know. But just to speak to experience, it's like, uh, you know, I always try to spoil my kid with two things, and that's like love and experience. I don't really buy him presents, I don't think I got him anything for Christmas this year.

• 30:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but you took, you take him to Africa, you do these crazy things.

• 30:27Speaker 01

  Exactly, so like, I think experience is everything. Um, you know, I think that, I don't know that I would be as brave as I am had I not been to Uganda. I don't think that I would be, take the chances that I take had I not lived in a trailer park. I don't think that I would live the lifestyle I live, or do the things that I do, or been able to accomplish, or have been able to accomplish, if I was that rich kid, that, you know, they don't get experiences, they don't get those real life experiences. But, to your point about Madison Avenue, or, which is such a weird, old timey way to refer to the advertising industry.

• 31:03Rich Roll?

  Was there a better way to describe it?

• 31:04Speaker 01

  I mean, I think it's probably accurate, I just, um, I don't know, I mean, are there even agencies on Madison Avenue still?

• 31:11Rich Roll?

  I don't know, you know more than I do.

• 31:13Speaker 01

  I have no idea.

• 31:14Rich Roll?

  This is definitely not Madison Avenue right here.

• 31:17Speaker 01

  I typically don't work with.

• 31:18Rich Roll?

  If Don Draper walked into here, he would have a heart attack.

• 31:21Speaker 01

  And the good news is, I don't work with Don Draper, I've been fortunate enough, like, I don't, I rarely, rarely, rarely work with agencies. Because the trouble with that is, um, that's where the sort of the creative lays, it lies with ad agencies, they're the creatives. So for them to bring somebody like me in there, I don't know, it seems like there'd be a conflict.

• 31:43Rich Roll?

  Right, you could just gum up the works.

• 31:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know how to do that stuff, but when it comes to dealing with a client, then I sort of act as the agency, and that's why it works out so well, because, you know, then I'm able to present my creative, and it's not within the context of someone else's creative, it's just mine, and I'm able to kind of own it.

• 32:12Speaker 01

  What did you ask me?

• 32:13Rich Roll?

  I don't remember. Well, I mean, it all starts with this idea of investing in investing in experience as kind of being your primary driver.

• 32:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, that's just because it's something I'm really passionate about. And, you know, when it comes to melding that with the work that I do for money, it's always like, you know, I think I literally said to Mercedes Benz, I have no idea how to sell a car. And I've said to Nike, I have no idea how to sell a bracelet that tracks your energy expenditure. And, you know, I'm working with J. Crew right now. I have no idea how to sell clothing. But what I do know how to sell is ideas. And when I believe in those ideas, and those ideas are my own, I'm really good at sharing that. And that's why marriage is like with Mercedes Benz, which was very little about a car and much more about sort of, you know, getting out there and living and, you know, youthfulness

• 33:02Speaker 01

  and excitement and, and just this idea of like delving into the unknown, given that's an abstract idea. But I know how to, you know, I know how to, I know how to talk about that. I know how to present that. And I think for consumers, people like you and me, I look at somebody like my kid, and my kid only wears Nikes. And I think Nike makes a great shoe. But I also think Brooks makes a great shoe, and I think Adidas makes a great shoe. I think there's a great, there's a handful of companies out there that make really great athletic products. But why will he only buy Nike? And the reason is because he believes in the idea behind that company, as do I. I mean, like Just Do It like shaped my childhood. Like Just Do It is such an incredible thing.

• 33:46Speaker 01

  And the amount of marketing they do, that's not about products, but it's just about big ideas. Like, that's something I believe in. Apple, same kind of thing. Like, all those Steve Jobs isms are things I like, think different.

• 33:59Rich Roll?

  I feel like Apple is like, you know, this, this wife of yours that you're arguing with all the time. You know, you have this love hate thing with them now because they're, they're different now than they were. I mean, in many ways, like, Apple ignited this flame that allowed you to sort of pursue these things that you're doing now. It was that first computer that you got, that first camera, you know, the first editing software. And now they're in a different place than they were in your heart, maybe 10 years ago.

• 34:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I don't.

• 34:25Rich Roll?

  What's going on?

• 34:26Speaker 01

  I still, you know, I think Apple's still maybe one of the greatest companies out there. And I so believe in so much of what they do and all of that.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  And I don't, I don't know. I, I pick on them the most probably because I have the most intimate relationship with them.

• 34:40Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 34:40Speaker 01

  Like, you know, why don't I pick on?

• 34:42Rich Roll?

  Have they ever approached you to do anything for them?

• 34:46Speaker 01

  Trying to think. What that non-disclosure agreement that I signed said.

• 34:53Speaker 01

  Uh, I mean, not, they've never approached me to make a video for Apple.

• 34:56Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 34:57Speaker 01

  Um, there was, I was, there was a really fun opportunity to do something fun with Apple, um, last summer, but I elected to proceed with my trip to Zimbabwe with my kid instead of putting that on hold to do this project.

• 35:12Rich Roll?

  Um.

• 35:13Speaker 01

  But no, I, I like Apple. I totally believe in Apple. I still think they're making the best products out there. I just like, you know, like I want more, newer, better, all the time. I don't get that. I get mad. I want my cellphone screen bigger. Like, give that to me, Apple.

• 35:29Rich Roll?

  Uh-huh.

• 35:29Speaker 01

  Um, but no, I, I definitely believe in them, um, and, and their message and the things that they do.

• 35:35Rich Roll?

  Right. And even, I mean, your first true viral video really was the iPod battery video, right?

• 35:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, like 2003, like three years before YouTube.

• 35:46Rich Roll?

  So how did that all, I mean, that was really, you, you know, when you look at it like in a Malcolm Gladwell 10,000 hours that you put in, I mean, that was many, many, many movies ago. And it's funny because when you go back and look at those earlier films of yours, um, you can see the progression in your skill level. Like, they just get better and better and better and better, but they retain that same sensibility. Like, you can all, like, when you see a Wes Anderson movie, you know immediately it's a Wes Anderson movie. When I see, you know, a Casey Neistat film, in the first three seconds, whether, you know, I, I know how I got to it or not, like, I can tell that it's your film. That sensibility stays true from beginning to end.

• 36:27Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, I mean, you know, it's when people ask me like sort of how how did I develop my style or how did I develop my aesthetic as if it's like some prescribed thing that I masterminded.

• 36:39Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 36:40Speaker 01

  I always explain like I was never taught the right way to do it. I was never taught how you're supposed to make movies. Um, so I was forced to figure it out. And when you have to figure it out, like that's when you find really interesting things. Um, any beef that I have with art schools or film schools, it's just because of that. It's like to know a lot about art is very important. To know a lot about films is very important. But the idea that you can teach someone sort of the nuances of what it means to tell a story or to make a film that you can prescribe that, I think is misguided.

• 37:09Rich Roll?

  Then, I mean, not having had that experience and then having to kind of overcome those own rules to find your own aesthetic. I mean, who are the people that you look to for inspiration or who have been mentors to you?

• 37:21Speaker 01

  Um, I don't know. You know, I like, I'm not even a big fan of his movies, although Bad Lieutenant, New Orleans, or what it was called, is like one of my favorite movies of of ever.

• 37:35Rich Roll?

  The second Bad Lieutenant, not the Able Far?

• 37:37Speaker 01

  I mean, Able Far was great, but like, whatever. No, the the Werner Herzog one, I thought was just so horribly underrated. I love. Nick Cage is also my favorite actor. I'll see anything that he's in. So like that combination was just like the most brilliant film. But Werner Herzog, like.

• 37:52Rich Roll?

  Even like, like the Ghost Rider stuff, like you're into that?

• 37:55Speaker 01

  Anything that Nick Cage is in, I will pay $12 to go to the movies and see. He's just that great. Um, but I really like Werner Herzog, even though a lot of his movies like Fitzgerald, like, like, what am I supposed to do with Fitzgerald? But like when he says a quote, like, every man should have to force it. Every man should have to get a boat over a mountain once in his life. That's what I look to. Like, that's what I find inspiring. Like, that's what I find amazing. Like, um, The Burden of Dreams, which was a documentary about the making of Fitzgerald, which was a feature by Werner Herzog, was why I fell in love with Werner Herzog, not because of the movie itself. Movie itself, I thought, was like, kind of boring. Um, his docs, I think, are incredible. But.

• 38:38Speaker 01

  You know, like in his book Herzog and Herzog, he talks about if he were to have a film school, what would it be? And the application to get into his film school would be you'd have to walk from Berlin to Paris or Munich to Paris or something like that and keep a journal. And then just send him that journal and that would be your application.

• 38:55Rich Roll?

  Uh huh.

• 38:55Speaker 01

  And like he wouldn't teach film theory or film history, he would teach you how to box. Um, so all of those ideas are ideas that I so, so, so believe in. Um, and you know, emulate emulate to some degree. It's like I'm the last time I hired um, an assistant, I hired somebody to work in my studio with me like. The most important questions are like, how capable are you with with power tools? How good are you with a circular saw? Do you know how big a sheet of plywood is? If I tell you to get me like, you know, a three quarter inch AC FER sheet cut into half, like, do you know what that means?

• 39:30Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 39:31Speaker 01

  Um, you know, I advertise it as a mop job. This is the job where you're gonna be mopping the floor, sweeping, um, taking out the garbage, which is illegal here in my office. You have to pay to have it picked up and I don't, which means you have to walk it five blocks away and hide it in a city garbage can. Which means all the paper has to be shredded before it gets thrown away. These are the things I look for in an employee.

• 39:50Rich Roll?

  Not things they teach in school.

• 39:52Speaker 01

  Well, not things that they teach in school, but more importantly, I think it's just like a a resourcefulness and like, uh, a willingness to undertake things that you might not understand. I think is where what's required to sort of succeed in any industry where there's no um, defined path.

• 40:10Rich Roll?

  Hmm, and how does that perspective kind of spill in over into how you parent your son?

• 40:18Speaker 01

  I pretend to know a lot about parenting because I've got like this great kid who gets like, who's on the honor roll and like no trouble and runs track and cross country and indoor, I mean, he's the kid's my hero, but um, I don't, I can't really take credit for him turning out so good. I think it's just dumb luck.

• 40:36Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 40:36Speaker 01

  Um, but my feelings on parenting have always sort of been, they all fall back to one very basic principle, which is like, as a parent, it is not your job to raise a well behaved kid. It's your job to raise a a human being that will contribute to society in a positive way. And I think that's something that most parents lose sight of. I think that's why now more than ever, we're raising an entire generation of pussies, um, wimpy men raised by sort of their helicopter parents. Um, is that the right term helicopter parents?

• 41:10Rich Roll?

  Hovering.

• 41:10Speaker 01

  Hovering parents, yeah. Um, you know, Purell, it's like the downfall of manhood. Um, I just think that like it, and there's real risk in that. There's risk in, you know, I'm not to pick on anybody, but you know, I like no friends that whose kids want to go to college that are 15 minutes away from their parents' house. They can come home for a meal anytime they want. Like that's, you know, that's, I don't think that's okay. I think you need to like push your children out there, teach them to take chances. Like, how can you raise them to contribute to society in a meaningful way? Um, you know, teaching your kids to always be obedient and always to say yes and never to question authority. Like, so what? So they can get fired from their job at age 44 after 12 years at the company and like,

• 41:55Speaker 01

  get six months pension or six months severance package rather and then.

• 41:58Rich Roll?

  I mean, that doesn't even exist as a real reality anymore. So, yeah, I mean, how do you, I mean, so you have this great kid and he's, he's thriving within this system that in some ways you kind of were reared on the outside of. And you have all this sort of counterculture, question of the wordy, you know, DIY aesthetic that is very different from, you know, sort of being the good boy. Like, how does that reconcile?

• 42:23Speaker 01

  Well, I think that, you know, very quickly, very, very young, um, in his upbringing, he realized that it's like, it's up to him to sort of define boundaries. And I remember his mother and I like, we'd never let him get hurt. We'd never let him put himself in harm's way. But short of that, we'd let him do whatever he wanted to do. He wasn't allowed to be rude, wasn't allowed to be mean. But again, like whatever you want to do, um, however that might manifest. And it forced him to find his own boundaries. I remember when he was very young, um, and he said a swear word for the first time. And I think he said it on accident. Uh, you know, I explained to him, I was like, look, it's, it's not cool when kids swear. It makes them look kind of gross and not smart. Um, when you're an adult, you understand when it's appropriate and not appropriate to swear.

• 43:08Speaker 01

  But as a kid, it's, it's not a great look. And look around and watch your peers and watch when they swear when there aren't parents around. And, you know, and, and see if you think it's a cool look or if they look stupid. And he like never swore again.

• 43:20Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 43:21Speaker 01

  And but it was his, I never said, don't swear.

• 43:23Rich Roll?

  Empower him to.

• 43:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think I've always tried to do that with everything with the kid. In in every capacity, but I think a bigger thing was like, I remember no matter what I did wrong. Or what I did um as a kid, it was always me doing something wrong, I was always in trouble, it was always my fault.

• 43:40Speaker 01

  When the principal called home, it was always, what did you do? Not what happened. And with Owen, it's always, I'll always, always take his word for it. I'll I'll always want to know his perspective first because he's my kid and I trust him.

• 43:54Speaker 01

  And that's a big, big, big deal for me because I never had that as a kid. No one ever listened to me. No one ever wanted to hear my side of what happened. Maybe deservingly, I don't know. But I was stuck in what felt like a very institutionalized system that just didn't work well with me. Um, and it was my fault that I wasn't able to conform. It wasn't sort of the establishment's fault. And that's why with him, like, we send him to kind of a pretty progressive um. Primary school and now he's in in a high school that is also fairly progressive and he's. He has flexibilities and opportunities and options that I never had inside of that system. And the truth is, if he ever hit any walls, I'd just pull him out of the school, stick him in another school, try something new, send him to boarding school, you know. Whatever.

• 44:38Speaker 01

  Whatever options there were, I'd be sure to exercise. And the very, very last thing I'd ever do, if I'd ever do it, was sort of blame him. For any sort of inadequacies he's having inside of a system. And that's the antithesis of of my upbringing. It was always like, no, no, no, be more like everyone else and fit in, stop speaking up. What you're doing is wrong, do as you're told. Um, I just never did well with that.

• 45:00Rich Roll?

  Right. And the irony being that, you know, being sort of that iconoclast, now you're embraced by. The system that you were told you were, you needed to be more about when you were younger.

• 45:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think there's truths in that. That that, you know, go so, so deep. And I think there are so many people that I, you know, I looked up to that at the time of of at the time, they were they were bad guys. And then in in retrospect, people came to appreciate what they did. I don't know much about Jesus. I'm not a religious person at all, and I'm Jewish. But, you know, he was a guy like had all these big ideas and he was persecuted and then killed for it. And now look, they're like

• 45:42Rich Roll?

  The ultimate.

• 45:43Speaker 01

  Now look at him. Now look at him. Um, so I think there's a lot of truth in that. And I think that, uh, you know, it's why I take such pride in doing academic lectures. And it's something I do all the time, and I really enjoy doing. Um, just this idea that I'm sort of able to inform.

• 46:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Can you talk about what you're going to be doing? Is it this spring or?

• 46:05Speaker 01

  What, at MIT?

• 46:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 46:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. So I was invited to, uh, do a residency at MIT. Um, this spring, and it's a fellowship, uh, within their media lab.

• 46:17Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 46:18Speaker 01

  So I'll be working with all these really great brains.

• 46:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah, that's incredible program that they have there, right?

• 46:24Speaker 01

  It's unbelievable.

• 46:25Rich Roll?

  Crazy brains there.

• 46:26Speaker 01

  These guys are so smart. And it's like

• 46:29Rich Roll?

  And they're experimenting with all sorts of crazy new ideas and technology and all kinds of things, right?

• 46:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, last time I was up there last week, it was like, we started talking about popcorn or lunch or something and like conversation went straight to quantum physics and quantum mechanics. And it was, you know, it's like with me, no matter where we start the conversation, it will always end at like either talking about cell phones or girls.

• 46:50Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 46:51Speaker 01

  Like, that's the that's the

• 46:54Speaker 01

  that's like the denominator for me. And with these guys, it's quantum physics. So it's very exciting for me to be in a position to be surrounded by by people like that.

• 47:02Rich Roll?

  What does that mean residency? Are you going to teach there? Are you gonna you? You're like a student there?

• 47:08Speaker 01

  I mean, it's somewhere it's somewhere in between both. I mean, the, uh, media lab is mostly PhDs, um, or people that are there working on their PhDs. So it's it's there's a great deal of independence within the media lab where it's people focusing on individual projects to get done. And that's sort of the infrastructure that I'll I will be within is that I'll have all the resources of the school and of the lab, um, including all the great minds that are there. But I'll have like a great deal of autonomy and working on Whatever I sort of want to work on.

• 47:38Rich Roll?

  Right, are they gonna let you make all sorts of videos about what's going on there?

• 47:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're excited for me to do whatever. I mean, I have one idea that I want to do there, which is a preposterous idea, but I'll show it to you. I don't like to tell people ideas.

• 47:48Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 47:48Speaker 01

  I hate ideas.

• 47:50Rich Roll?

  You hate, you're, you're all about ideas.

• 47:52Speaker 01

  I hate ideas. Um, I always say like, when somebody has, tells me, says, I have an idea, I cut them right off. Don't want to hear it. Um, show me, don't tell me. I think ideas are cheap and they're accessible and they're easy. And it's like a penny for your thoughts because that's what they're worth, a penny. I believe in execution. Like, I love seeing things that are done. I love Elon Musk because he doesn't talk about how awesome electric cars are. He builds them. He doesn't talk about how space travel should be. He builds rocket ships. Um, I believe in execution.

• 48:27Speaker 01

  And I remember like the, when I became some, when this became something I was really conscious of was when I was talking to this dude who invented, um, he's a friend of a friend of a friend, but he invented, I think Zig Zag, I don't know what the name brand it was, but they're rolling papers with glue on them. Before him, rolling papers were just a piece of paper. And he's telling this story about when he's rolling a joint in college and it wouldn't stick. So he invented, you know, putting a little piece of gum, and that was his invention. And as he's like telling me this and telling me about his other inventions and he invented a new pen and like all this really interesting stuff. I was like, I, I have this great idea for, and he cut me right off. And he's like, before you tell me your idea, no, it's gonna take three to five years of research and development.

• 49:12Speaker 01

  It's gonna take a million dollars before you're gonna bring it to market. It's gonna take, and just was throwing this litany of realities at me. That were all part of the process of, of realizing it, that were all part of the action, not the idea. And it was right there that I realized that like, my idea isn't worth shit because it's, it's, it's so far from being done. Like, it's, it counts when you make it. Before you make it, it doesn't exist. Um, so I know I hate ideas, a very sweeping statement, and you know, I don't mean that because I'm,

• 49:41Rich Roll?

  No, I get it.

• 49:42Speaker 01

  I live off of ideas.

• 49:43Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 49:43Speaker 01

  But that sharing of ideas or that making ideas be precious or anything like that, I think is all, um, overrated and entirely misguided. I think execution's what matters. My least favorite thing in the world is when people have an idea for a movie. Like, I don't care. I don't care about your idea for a movie. And I think if you pick apart any of my movies, you'll see the ideas are not that interesting. I make it count.

• 50:06Rich Roll?

  No, it's all about, it's all about execution. And that was one of the things I was gonna say was that, you know, you could take this tiny little thing that in and of its, I mean, you know, bike lanes, or, you know, pulling your Jeep out of the ice, or whatever it is. These are very simple things. These are not epic ideas. They're tiny little things, but you make them personal, you make them honest, and then they resonate with people.

• 50:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure. If you reduce any of my movies to a single idea, that idea is not original, basic. I mean, like, make it count. Like, well, let's just run around the world. Been down a million times before. Every one of my bike lanes, it's just me complaining about NYPD harassing cyclists.

• 50:44Rich Roll?

  Texting and walking.

• 50:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, type that into Google. Like, a million people have had that idea before me. Texting and walking. Everybody's had that idea before. There's nothing inherently original about my ideas. It's the execution that matters. And the execution is the shitty part. It's the hard part. Making stuff is the hardest, hardest thing. It's like, you're a runner. I'm a runner. You're a much better runner than me.

• 51:07Rich Roll?

  Not much.

• 51:08Speaker 01

  But I always say, like, I celebrate when people show up at the starting line, not what happens at the finish line. Because to show up at the starting line of a race means you did it. It means you're there. And that's the hard part. And that's how I feel about ideas, whether it's movies, or art, or spaceships, or anything. I think it's really easy to talk about, and they're really easy to share. But to show up, to actually do it, is what separates the... I'll always watch somebody's video when they email it to me. If it's garbage, I'll watch the first five seconds. But I'll always watch it.

• 51:41Rich Roll?

  They follow through.

• 51:42Speaker 01

  Right. But when somebody sends me their idea for me, then I just sort of delete the email, because I don't care.

• 51:47Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 51:48Speaker 01

  Because one person put the effort in, whether it's good or not, they did the work. Whether it takes them seven hours to cross the marathon finish line, or two and a half, they did the work.

• 51:58Speaker 01

  Versus just talking about it, which is, you know, it's basic.

• 52:03Rich Roll?

  I think that's a great place to end it. I know you're busy. You gotta get back to your.

• 52:06Speaker 01

  We're out of time already. I say that as if I didn't like force Rich to cut it off at thirty minutes.

• 52:11Rich Roll?

  I'll go with you all day, but I I feel guilty because I know you're busy. But before we end it, I would want to ask one final question, which is, you know, for people that are listening, they that are feeling stuck in their life or feeling like they're kind of living someone else's life or having trouble kind of moving forward on a dream that they have, you know, how can they? What are some sort of tips or maybe little nuggets of inspiration to help people, you know, make it count in their own life or or begin to make that shift to start to, you know, actualize something more personal in their own life?

• 52:48Speaker 01

  Well, I always I always say make something. I think that, I mean, it has a relationship with what I was just explaining, but I just think making something will give you a sense of accomplishment. If that means that someday you want to be a, you know, a big novelist, you want to be a big, successful writer. You could just write something on some paper, write it, but do it. You know, if you want to be a photographer, then go take pictures. Don't have a phone, like, don't have a camera, use your phone, like, just do something. I always find that that doing something is always an interesting step. My first movie I ever made was about like my baby mama's birthday party and it was terrible. It was absolutely terrible.

• 53:30Speaker 01

  But if I hadn't made that first movie, I wouldn't have made the second movie. And if I hadn't made the second, and that's just how it works. The other thing I'd say is, and I'm sorry, none of these are super awesome quotable.

• 53:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah, but it's this, uh, yeah, sometimes the the answer is not sexy. You know what I mean? It means get off your ass and start doing something, you know, write one page, write one sentence, you know, shoot one picture.

• 53:54Speaker 01

  We could spend another hour talking about just how much I believe in hard work. I think work is everything. I think this country is built on hard work and I think that you can do whatever you want with hard work. Like, there's this great quote that somebody said, but Ray Kroc gets credited for, and it's called the tenacity prayer. Ray Kroc, the founder of McDonald's. And the tenacity prayer is, I'm butchering it right now, but it's something like talents overrated, education's overrated. The only thing that matters is is tenacity. It's like persistence and tenacity alone are omnipotent. And I so believe in that. That's what Forrest Gump was about. He was a guy who had nothing but the willingness to put in the work.

• 54:35Speaker 01

  Um, but the second thing I would say is, uh, is nothing in life happens with a radical shift. You hear all these stories of of overnight successes and, you know, you you will hear about the stories of like, I don't know, Flappy Bird, the iPhone app, like out of nowhere, he's making fifty grand. Yeah, right. Sold for a billion bucks. Like all these overnight successes, um, Facebook, I mean overnight successes. But that's just like a really awesomely bankable, romantic notion of an overnight success. The truth is like, everything takes time, everything takes energy. Nothing in life will happen via a radical shift.

• 55:16Speaker 01

  Um, it's all about, you know, slow incremental progress and that's all anyone, um, that's all people are willing to accept when they're receiving it and that's that's all you're able to do when putting it out there. So again, when I, you know, flashback to living in a trailer park, um, in, you know, in in working a restaurant and now, you know, I I have a radically different life. To compare the two is a huge stark contrast, but there's like thirteen years in between there. You know, like before I lived in the sweet apartment. Yeah, before I lived in the sweet apartment I had now, there were like eight other apartments that were tiny, tiny incrementally better before, you know, before I had a house in Connecticut where my kid and I live, um,

• 56:00Speaker 01

  you know, I lived in the attic of my dad's business and after I lived in the attic, I like moved in with my ninety year old grandmother. And then after that, I like rented a one bedroom studio where my kid and I lived on bunk beds. And after that, I like rented this other apartment, then I rented this house that, you know, there's it's all about incremental progress and there's nothing romantic or sexy about incremental progress. But that's, you know, that goes back to the work thing.

• 56:24Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 56:25Speaker 01

  Um, oh yeah, I thought of a good quote that is romantic and sexy. Um, okay, I'm trying to reduce it down to like something that you could like write in a tweet. But it's it's it's this idea that. This recipe for success that I've formulated and it's guaranteed to work. There will only ever be one of two outcomes. And that is if there's something you want to do, you want to be a movie star, you want to be a rock star. You want to build a spaceship. All you have to do is commit your life, commit everything you are to realizing that. And one of two things will happen.

• 57:04Speaker 01

  You will either succeed or you will have, you will have died trying, which is in its own right, a level of success. Um, and when you reduce it to that, it's kind of okay. Have you seen the movie Anvil?

• 57:17Rich Roll?

  Of course, my friend Sasha, who made that movie is one of my best friends.

• 57:20Speaker 01

  Okay, that movie Anvil is about that.

• 57:22Rich Roll?

  That's exactly what that movie is about.

• 57:23Speaker 01

  He never, he's delivering boxed lunches to schools in Canada. He never, ever, ever, ever gave up and the idea that his career as a rock star would, would, would finally be realized because somebody has the foresight to make a documentary about how shitty his life is. There's no way you can predict that. There's no science, there's no precedent, but there's nothing. But he never, they never, ever gave up, ever. And he was gonna die without giving up. And then like you stumble upon success. That was so not tweetable, but I think some of that might have been.

• 57:57Rich Roll?

  That's pretty awesome though. You gotta, I think that might be a book. He might have a book in you.

• 58:02Speaker 01

  I know, I just don't know how to spell real good, so I can't write, so I make movies.

• 58:06Rich Roll?

  There's ways, there's ways around that.

• 58:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, spell it out.

• 58:08Rich Roll?

  All right. Well, that was awesome. I think that's a great place to stop. So, thanks, man.

• 58:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, thanks for coming by.

• 58:14Rich Roll?

  Appreciate it. Uh, all right, everybody. So if people want to, um, learn more about Casey, the best place to do that is to go to your YouTube channel. That's first. Second is Instagram. Casey Neistat on Instagram.

• 58:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's pretty good.

• 58:29Rich Roll?

  Sometimes Twitter.

• 58:29Speaker 01

  Sometimes, I'm really bad. I wish I was better at Twitter.

• 58:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, you're pretty good.

• 58:33Speaker 01

  Nobody cares about websites anymore.

• 58:35Rich Roll?

  You're a master of Instagram though. If you guys aren't following Casey on Instagram, that's, stop what you're doing right now.

• 58:40Speaker 01

  It's my favorite of the social, social networks.

• 58:42Rich Roll?

  And then watch, uh, his little short film about why he loves Instagram.

• 58:46Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, I forgot, it's a classic.

• 58:49Rich Roll?

  That was cool. It was cool when that happened too, because your Instagram exploded like overnight when that went viral.

• 58:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I really regret not putting a um my own Instagram handle in that movie, which I didn't do.

• 59:02Rich Roll?

  Oh, you didn't do that? I didn't even know that.

• 59:04Speaker 01

  If I'd known a million people were gonna watch the movie, I'd have, you know, put a little follow me plug at the end.

• 59:09Rich Roll?

  Yeah. What's next? What's anything exciting?

• 59:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I have two really, really exciting movies that are both coming out in early March. Um, and if a movie shot on a cellphone of my car being stuck in a pond is the lowest end of my production, these are the highest end of my productions. I have a movie coming out the first week of March called My Kid and Me. And it's this movie that I've shot over 12 years, but it's like kind of the story of my kid and me. And I finished it like two years ago. So I don't know if it's any good anymore, but I remember it being really good. But I'm gonna release that the first week of March. And then this project that I'm doing for J. Crew right now is just gonna be so awesome. We threw everything we had at it.

• 59:51Rich Roll?

  Cool. When is it? Is that gonna debut on YouTube?

• 59:53Speaker 01

  Everything always. YouTube is the only currency that I that I function within.

• 59:59Rich Roll?

  Alright, I love it. Alright, man, thanks.

• 1:00:01Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:00:01Rich Roll?

  Alright, peace. Plants.

• 1:00:09Rich Roll?

  Alright, people, that's our show. That's it for today. I hope you enjoyed it. What a treat. I love that guy. It was super cool to be able to visit him and sit down with him. So I hope you guys dug it. Definitely check out his YouTube channel. Check out his Instagram. You will not be disappointed. Uh, and at richroll.com in the show notes, I will have that Nike video up, the Make It Count one, as well as the Walter Mitty Philippines video that he made. And you should definitely also check out his snowboarding video. Once you start watching his videos, though, be careful. It's addicting. You might be sitting there for hours because he's got lots of them up there. In any event, I want to support their podcast. Go to the Amazon banner ad at ritual.com. Won't cost you a cent extra on your Amazon purchases,

• 1:00:51Rich Roll?

  but Amazon kicks us some loose change out of their massive coffers. And I really appreciate everybody who's been doing that. It's been awesome. And you should feel good about yourself because it's allowing me to pay Tyler, my son, to produce this show. So by using the Amazon banner ad, you are supporting entrepreneurship, you are supporting youth, and I thank you, and Tyler's thanks you. What else? The big announcement. Finally, we got the Plant Power t-shirts up at ritual.com. Super excited to now be able to make those available to you. I know there's been a lot of demand. And we've got three initial designs up there. We've got a Star Wars themed one, and then we have the original plant design with the hashtag Plant Power on it. All 100%

• 1:01:35Rich Roll?

  organic cotton. We have men's and women's styles, and we've got all the sizes there. So go check that out. Also, in case you didn't know, I wrote a book. It's called Finding Ultra, sort of my inspirational memoir of my personal story. A lot of plant-based nutrition information in there, too, but predominantly just a good read, if I do say so myself. And it's now available in paperback. So you can pick that up at Amazon. Of course, by using the Amazon banner ad, it's super cheap, too. If you want a signed copy, I've got signed copies of Finding Ultra in paperback at ritual.com, so you can do that as well. If you want to learn more about how to get more

• 1:02:18Rich Roll?

  plants into your diet, interested, curious, you're plant curious, check out our course at mindbodygreen.com. Three and a half hours of streaming video content and online community, downloadable tools, all sorts of stuff to help you notch it up a little bit, whether you're a long time plant-based person, or just new to the whole idea, not sure where to start. We're really proud of it, and I stand by it. So go check that out as well. Okay, so that's it. Thanks for stopping by. I know you guys have a lot of choices when it comes to content. There are so many podcasts out there, and it really means a lot. ...to me that you would spend a couple hours with me every week.

• 1:02:59Rich Roll?

  So I am doing my best to continue to raise the bar and I've got some great guys coming up. So until then, I'll see you next week. Thanks for stopping by. I'm out of here. Peace. Plants.