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

Episode 427: Sam Parr (@TheSamParr) and Shaan Puri (@ShaanVP) speak to Ken Rideout (@KenRideout_), one of the world's best masters runners, successful businessmen and entrepreneur. Ken talks about how he overcame addiction, built a lucrative career, forged mental and physical toughness, and where that's going to take him in the years to come. Want to see more MFM? Subscribe to the MFM YouTube channel here. SHAAN'S NEW DAILY NEWSLETTER --> shaanpuri.com ----- Links: * Teddy Atlas Podcast * Do you love MFM and want to see Sam and Shaan's smiling faces? Subscribe to our Youtube channel. ------ Show Notes: (00:23) - Why Ken is blowing up (12:25) - His finance background (23:45) - Ken's Struggles with Addiction (25:40) - How he got into running/media (31:25) - Who are the toughest people you have met? (38:20) - How to deal with adversity (41:50) - Story of Ken talking smack to Lance Armstrong (44:30) - How does he make money? (53:35) - Does this level of activity increase longevity? ----- Past guests on My First Million include Rob Dyrdek, Hasan Minhaj, Balaji Srinivasan, Jake Paul, Dr. Andrew Huberman, Gary Vee, Lance Armstrong, Sophia Amoruso, Ariel Helwani, Ramit Sethi, Stanley Druckenmiller, Peter Diamandis, Dharmesh Shah, Brian Halligan, Marc Lore, Jason Calacanis, Andrew Wilkinson, Julian Shapiro, Kat Cole, Codie Sanchez, Nader Al-Naji, Steph Smith, Trung Phan, Nick Huber, Anthony Pompliano, Ben Askren, Ramon Van Meer, Brianne Kimmel, Andrew Gazdecki, Scott Belsky, Moiz Ali, Dan Held, Elaine Zelby, Michael Saylor, Ryan Begelman, Jack Butcher, Reed Duchscher, Tai Lopez, Harley Finkelstein, Alexa von Tobel, Noah Kagan, Nick Bare, Greg Isenberg, James Altucher, Randy Hetrick and more. ----- Additional episodes you might enjoy: • #224 Rob Dyrdek - How Tracking Every Second of His Life Took Rob Drydek from 0 to $405M in Exits • #209 Gary Vaynerchuk - Why NFTS Are the Future • #178 Balaji Srinivasan - Balaji on How to Fix the Media, Cloud Cities & Crypto * #169 - How One Man Started 5, Billion Dollar Companies, Dan Gilbert's Empire, & Talking With Warren Buffett • ​​​​#218 - Why You Should Take a Think Week Like Bill Gates • Dave Portnoy vs The World, Extreme Body Monitoring, The Future of Apparel Retail, "How Much is Anthony Pompliano Worth?", and More • How Mr Beast Got 100M Views in Less Than 4 Days, The $25M Chrome Extension, and More

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Back in like the late 90s, Trading Desk was like a locker room. It was very like alpha driven, um, a lot of hazing and shit. But I mean, I was at the time boxing for the New York Athletic Club. I had played hockey. I mean, I was, I worked in a prison for four years. So these nerds were hazing me and one day I just cuffed the guy. I just slapped him across the face and almost knocked him out of his seat. And needless to say, they fired me. But I was covering these young guys at Enron and they told the senior traders what had happened. And one of the senior traders who happened to be from Marjorie's Vineyard outside of Boston called me up, said, hey, I got a job. I didn't even know we had competitors. That's how naive I was. I didn't know there were other brokerage shops. I was there like two months and um, I mean, I barely knew what a bidding and offer was. What were?

• 0:43Speaker 00

  And um, this other competitor offered me a job starting the next Monday.

• 0:55Sam Parr?

  All right, we get right into this. Ken, uh, thanks for coming, man. I uh, do you know at all what you're getting into or no?

• 1:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, I heard Andrew Huberman on the show, my friend Andrew.

• 1:05Sam Parr?

  Good. Well, let me um, I'll let you kind of do the intro, but I want to tell our audience what I know about you and why I think it's cool that we have you. Basically, I was telling Sean, you're, so we take pride in like finding people a little bit before they explode. You're getting quite popular. You were in the Wall Street Journal the other day, so things are happening for you. But you're to me like, you're like the next David Goggins in my mind. Like, you know, you're kind of a freak athletically, but you're also more so a freak mentally. And you talk about a lot of like just being tough. You got some crazy quotes that we'll talk about later about how uh, uh, you know, like you like running because it's all about suffering and things like that. And so you said a lot of really interesting things. Sean and I are also huge combat sports fans, so I listened to the pod with Teddy Atlas that you're on.

• 1:46Sam Parr?

  And I know a bit about your background. And so I wanted to have you on to talk about that. Typically, we talk about business stuff. Huberman was a little bit of a, we had him on, that was a little non-business. You're a little bit non-business, but you had like a interesting background where you worked on Wall Street, worked on, worked at Enron, I think. You did a bunch of interesting stuff. And so that's kind of why we had you on. What um,

• 2:07Sam Parr?

  Well, how do you give your introduction? What do you, what do you say you do?

• 2:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, that, thank you for that introduction. When I hear people introduce me sometimes, I almost don't feel like they're talking about me because I, I think part of what makes me unique is I, at times have, don't have the highest opinion of myself and always feel like I, this, I should be doing more, but um, I think that the comparison to David Goggins is somewhat accurate, although

• 2:35Speaker 00

  it's, it's accurate, I can see why others would think that, but I don't think that it's a perfect analysis, and I take it as a compliment. No, I don't think he's soft at all. He, I think he's probably maybe more, more aggressive and uh, alpha than I am, I would say. I tried to be, I don't know, I think that the way I come across, you know, I, I, when I was on Rich Roll, he described me as being, his, his initial impression of me prior to meeting me was that I was very aggressive and uh, alpha and intimidating, and I don't see myself that way. I see why other people would see that, but I think of myself as that, that alpha or aggressive exterior is almost like a defense mechanism because inside I think I'm very

• 3:15Speaker 00

  emotional and sensitive and so much so that my way of protecting that sensitivity is to be so aggressive externally that it really takes someone unique and special to kind of see through it. Um, at least that's my take from uh, the, the, the psychotherapy I've been involved in, but.

• 3:33Sam Parr?

  The reason, and the reason we had you on, we typically, so it's usually just Sean and I, or it's like, we'll have like billionaires and stuff on, so like these like, wonderful people, but something that like, I've been thinking a lot about lately, and I've been talking to Sean about lately, is just like toughness and like, how it feels like good to get out there and work hard physically or to spar, do things like that, because even though we're doing cool shit behind the computer, it's still behind the computer and it feels good to live. And you say you're not an alpha, but I think in the Wall Street Journal article, you said uh, I'm the biggest male, I'm the biggest alpha male on the starting line, I'm ready to die.

• 4:03Speaker 00

  Thank you, thank you for pointing that out, because there was context to that quote. I said, my, my exact quote was, when I'm on the out, when I'm on the start line, when it's time to go, hundred percent, I'm alpha, I will step on your neck to win, I want to kill you, I want to destroy everyone. But, the minute that race is over, I'm everyone's best friend. If I see someone fall down in front of me, I will stop and help them. I've, I've in triathlons, have asked people, yo man, you all right? I'll stop and help you. I'm not. I say step on your neck and kill you to win, but not really like this is. This is my mental process that I have to go through to get to the dark place that I need to get to, to suffer to the extent that I need to suffer to get the most out of myself.

• 4:46Speaker 00

  Running, you know, I ran 36 hours ago, I ran the Tokyo marathon in 22919 and the day before that, and the day before that Outside Magazine wrote an article, "How 51-year-old Ken Rideout Runs Sub 230 Marathons", and I saw the headline and I literally had an anxiety attack. I'm like, oh my God, the pressure is on. I mean, I've run sub 230 three or four times, but it ain't easy. And I know that that last five or six miles, the suffering and the darkness that's coming with that, I can't, it's, it's literally the physically the hardest things that I've ever done. It's like you're, everything in your body would be like, if you're driving your car and every single warning bell is going off, the radiator's overheating, the oil's low, you're gonna run out of gas. And you literally are like, I can stop and no one would care.

• 5:32Speaker 00

  Or I can push myself and know that I didn't have another effing ounce to give. And that's, it sounds cliche or might sound corny, but that's my process. That's where I have to go to get to where I've gone to, to the point where guys like you with this awesome podcast want to talk to me like I'm, I'm a regular guy. I'm a dope. I, I don't see myself as special with the exception of being willing to die to get the most out of myself physically on these particular days at races.

• 5:59Shaan Puri?

  And you, so you said you just ran, you just ran the, the marathon in Tokyo 36 hours ago. You're here now and I didn't know much about you before Sam brought it up. Sam goes, oh, I really want to have this guy on. Are you, are you down with it? And I, I thought, I've heard that name, but I don't know, who is that? And I was like, oh, is that the Teddy Atlas Podcast guy? Oh, wait, what's his story? And I, as I started looking into it, to me, there was a few things that really stood out. So there's the kind of the obvious headline that here's a guy who's over 50 years old and is basically flying through these marathons or running super fast speeds. I don't know the exact records or what, whatnot, but you're one of the fastest, if not the fastest, correct? Did you're kind of in your bracket?

• 6:40Speaker 00

  Over 50. Yep.

• 6:41Shaan Puri?

  Yeah. So that's kind of remarkable. And I think that's, you know, that's the key thing I want to get to is like, that's an extraordinary thing and that doesn't just come out of nowhere. And so you talk about being able to go to that place at the last five miles. What happens pre-race? Where do you, how do you flip that switch? What is your sort of like a a mental state of mind or your psyche? What do you do mentally to prep yourself for these races?

• 7:09Speaker 00

  That's a great question and thank you for the opportunity to explain this because I think that it's important for people to understand when they look at this just on the surface like you just described like wow, it's extraordinary. And by the way, when I hear it, it doesn't even seem like you're talking about me. So I I don't at times have the highest opinion of myself because of the struggles I've gone through with addiction. So as I'm telling you this, I'm super cautious that about coming across like a narcissist. I don't want to come across like that. I want to be I want to be very humble in how I describe this, but I'm going to be honest with the process prior to the race.

• 7:47Speaker 00

  I've spent before a race and this one in particular, not no different than any other. I spent 10 or 12 weeks like devoting all my physical energy or at least 90 minutes to two and a half hours a day of preparing for this for let's say 12 weeks. When I get to Tokyo, the week before I always go by myself, my wife, I have four young children. Even some of the local races, they don't come to even when I think, oh, I'm going to win and you can see me win a race like they've come to a few of them and it's kind of uneventful for them. They come to expect me to win and I in my mind think they're going to be so psyched when they see me win. And then they're like, okay, dad, can we get out of here now and get a donut?

• 8:24Speaker 00

  So, um, anyway, long-winded way to say I have a very, um, a very specific process that I have to go through in the days leading up. And again, I don't want to sound like I'm like some elite professional runner, but this is how, this is what I do. This is the process. I have to get there. In the case of Tokyo, without 14, 15 hour time change, I need to get there at least seven days early to get my body and my circadian rhythm on track with what I'm about to do because again, I've spent 12 weeks devoting so much energy to this. I don't want to mess around when I get there. It's very specific. I don't make plans to go to dinner with people or very rarely. Mainly because I'm a jerk. I know it. I'm very selfish. To me, again, I'm not a pro runner,

• 9:06Speaker 00

  but to me, this is my version of the Olympics and I am not there to mess around and have fun. It's like I'm on a work trip. So I get there and I just need to be alone by myself, think about what I want to do, try to stay positive. Uh, I'm a big believer in mindset and, and, and what you tell yourself is the truth. Reality doesn't matter. Like, what other people think about you doesn't matter. It's the only thing that matters is what you think of yourself. And that goes into the same, that same thought process goes into preparing for this race. In my mind, I am a professional runner and I'm gonna win the, you know, Olympic gold medal on Sunday. So I get there early, I go through my process and on race day, I've said this before in interviews, it's like, I'm not, I'm nothing nice. On race day, I don't wanna make friends. I don't wanna chit chat. I don't,

• 9:50Speaker 00

  I'm a jerk. I know it. So I try to stay completely by myself. I don't put my shit on other people, but I don't want them putting theirs on me either. So I stay by myself. The race goes off. I know what's coming. Some people were like, how were the sights in Tokyo? What were the people like in the race? I said, I couldn't tell you if we ran through the frigging Imperial Palace or not. All I know is the road in front of me and I get into like a tunnel vision where I can't see any, I mean, obviously if I look around I could, but I don't waste an ounce of energy. I don't even try to look at my watch for, I, I don't wanna move any movement that isn't completely necessary to get from A to B as quickly as possible. I'm trying to run the straightest line. I'm focusing. If people get too close to me, I'll like kind of give them an arm like, dude, you're getting too close.

• 10:34Speaker 00

  Like I don't wanna trip. Someone at the start of the race in Tokyo, I was on, right on the start line and two or three people right in front of me toppled and it was like they were caught in the whitewash. It's surface, just arms and legs flailing, elbows and knees smashing on the ground as people just trampled them at the front of a major marathon. It was crazy. So I don't want them doing that to me. So I'm like, that's what I meant about being a bit alpha at the start, but I don't wanna hurt anyone. I don't wanna affect anyone, but I don't wanna be F'd with either. Um, and uh,

• 11:02Sam Parr?

  Did I see a, did I see a picture of, of you and Jason Calacanis over there?

• 11:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, I mean Jake, J Cal, yeah.

• 11:09Sam Parr?

  How do you know him?

• 11:10Speaker 00

  My friend Casey Neistat, who is, uh, do you know his YouTube?

• 11:14Sam Parr?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 11:15Speaker 00

  Casey, so I trained Casey last year for the New York Marathon. My friend Neve Schulman, who's the host of Catfish on MTV, he connected us. So I trained Jason and, uh, not Jason, uh, Casey and Neve for New York City Marathon. And then I heard Jason mentioning, um, running a marathon on, on All In. And I just mentioned it in passing to Casey. Casey connected me. I saw Jason was in it. We, we connected via text. I saw Jason was in Tokyo. I sent him a text and then we ended up going to dinner one night. And then, uh, a Tokyo food tour. The next day we went to like some super high end sushi place and then a bakery. J Cal is like, he's dialed. He knows where he wants to go. I know nothing. Hey, I was just like, just tell me where we're going and I'll be there. Just text me the address. Um, that's what I mean about the.

• 11:59Sam Parr?

  Dude, you're, you're in the in crowd. You're, you're, you're hanging out with all the, all the cool guys.

• 12:04Speaker 00

  Brother, again, when I think about my friends like Andrew Huberman and David Sinclair and Joe Rogan, I think I can't believe these guys are my friends. Um, I, I feel like the luckiest person in the world and I'm so humbled and honored that's, guys like you want to talk to me. It's just mind blowing, but it comes back to this point of, I don't have anything that anyone listening to this show doesn't have. I promise you, I'm not a good athlete. I played division three sports. I was just a hustler. And when I found running as a way of getting over an addiction issue with opioid, opioids, I just decided I was done being mediocre and we'll get into the career stuff. And I'll tell you how I did, applied the same practice to my career in finance. But at the end of the day, you know, not, again, not to sound cliche,

• 12:49Speaker 00

  but if you're not all in, there's just too many competitors out there that are going to eat your lunch. If you don't bring your A game every day, but when you do dedicate your hundred percent effort to one particular goal, it's very hard to beat the guy who wants to die to win. And that's kind of what I applied to running and, and, and it's attracted these other kind of people that recognize that I am like serious about the things that I get involved in.

• 13:12Sam Parr?

  Well, the thing that you're interesting is the you you just have an interesting life. Did I read? Did you used to work at Enron?

• 13:19Speaker 00

  No, good question. I I I was working in finance. My very first job, if you want me to kind of walk through my career, I don't want to like jump around. I started in, I moved to New York right after I graduated college. I had a pharmaceutical sales job for a few months, but when I moved to New York, I saw all these younger guys my age working in finance and making a ton of money. And I was like, I was making like thirty six thousand dollars and my like rent and student loans came to more than my take home pay. I was basically like living on borrowed time in New York, living in a shitty walk up. And um, long story short, I was playing pickup ice hockey at Chelsea Perez and a French Canadian kid

• 13:58Speaker 00

  who played minor league hockey asked me if I wanted a job as a um, like a trading assistant on a on an inter dealer brokerage desk, brokering uh electricity trades between the utilities and Enron was one of those clients. And the way it worked was the junior guys at Enron would trade like next day power, which was like the commission was like literally like five dollars. But if you didn't do that as a service for these accounts, they weren't going to trade the like big ticket items with you. So, long story short, I was doing that. The guys on the trading desk, you know, back in like the late nineties, trading desk was like a locker room. It was very like alpha driven, um, a lot of hazing and shit. But I mean, I was at the time boxing for the New York Athletic Club. I had played hockey.

• 14:41Speaker 00

  I mean, I was, I worked in a prison for four years. So these nerds were hazing me and one day I just cuffed the guy. I just slapped him across the face and almost knocked him out of his seat. And needless to say, they fired me, but I was covering these young guys at Enron and they told the senior traders what had happened. And one of the senior traders who happened to be from Marjorie's Vineyard outside of Boston called me up, said, hey, I got a job. I didn't even know we had competitors. That's how naive I was. I didn't know there were other brokerage shops. I was there like two months and um, I mean, I barely knew what a bidding and offer was, were. And um, this other competitor offered me a job starting the next Monday. I was making forty grand. They offered me a job at eighty grand. I mean, to me, that was more money than anyone I knew made.

• 15:23Speaker 00

  So I was like, and, and the other thing is this guy's hazing me. I had a huge black eye from a fight at the New York Athletic Club. Like, I was not like a punk that you could just like, like, I, I didn't strike you, come across as like, hey, bully me, I'm a big sissy. Like, I was a guy, you know? So when he did it, I was like, you got the wrong guy, dude. And I cracked him. Needless to say, he almost started crying because I was like, when you leave this office, I'm gonna beat the crap out of you. And he's like, I'm not, I'm not gonna leave. I go, you're gonna have to sleep here because when you come outside, you're getting a beating. And they were like, okay, Ken, you gotta go before we call the cops. And again, I had no safety net. I couldn't call home and ask for money. There was like, I work in the prison. My stepdad and brother were inmates in the prison. No one was looking to help me in my finance career in New York. To them, I was like an anomaly, you know?

• 16:08Speaker 00

  I was already like the richest person they knew just by having a job in New York City. So, um, yeah, it was nerve wracking. And, uh, so that's how my career started. And the guys at Enron were just like good customers of my clients that like literally changed my life.

• 16:22Shaan Puri?

  But it, it worked out all right. I mean, I think at, at the end of your career, I mean, you're killing it.

• 16:26Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, so when that happened, I mean, when, from the minute that happened, within two years, I was making like, I mean, again, not sound like a narcissist, and I don't have a lot of money. I don't know a rich guy, but within two years, I was making like $2 million a year, doing things that to me were like, I, I didn't even know what we were trading. I just knew people and I had relationships and they were just doing trades with me. I was living in London. I was running, uh, I ran sales and trading, commodity sales and trading at Kenner Fitzgerald out of London and Hong Kong. And I was flying on the Concorde back and forth from New York to London on a regular basis. Every single time, the novelty like just never wore off. Every time it happened, I was like, I can't believe that this is my life, much like I feel today. I can't believe I've done this.

• 17:08Shaan Puri?

  How, how were you making that much money? That's just commissions or, uh?

• 17:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, so.

• 17:12Shaan Puri?

  What, what goes into that? How do you jump from like 80K to 2 million? What, what, what happened?

• 17:16Speaker 00

  Yeah. Good question. So, um, I was brokering, um, electricity trades and electricity deregulation had just taken place. So you're putting together trades for like commodities trade on monthly contracts. So we were doing that and, um, When Enron went bust, I got basically sent from New York, from London, back to New York because the business had dried up. But I was like one of the biggest producers of commissions at the time. Again, like I was so unqualified. I didn't know anything about the technicalities of what we were doing. I just knew how to find buyers and sellers. It could have been houses. It could have been baseball cards. I just was, had a knack for it.

• 17:52Shaan Puri?

  Is that like a lot of networking? Is it cold calling? What were you, what were you doing to actually be great? What did it take to be great there?

• 18:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, good question. I hate the word networking. I feel like when you're trying to network, you're already like us behind the curve. Like if you're trying to make friends, people ask me frequently now, like, how are you friends with Rich Roll and Andrew Huberman? I'm like, I don't know. I just, I must have something that they like and they have something I like. We just find each other. But I certainly didn't make a conscious effort ever to be friends with anyone. It's just a natural process. So to answer your question, I just had, I just had an ability to connect with people and I tried to have, live a life of honesty and integrity. And if I say I'm gonna do something, I'll do it. And I like to tell the people that I'm close with or when I have a close friend, someone's like, oh, are you friends with that guy?

• 18:43Speaker 00

  I'm like, oh, I helped that guy bury a dead body. I like him so much. Like, that's my guy, you know? And I think that people know, people that are my friends know that that's the truth. If you need me, someone's coming over to your house, they wanna fight with you, I'll come and help you. Like, and I think, like I said, I think the people who are tight with me, they know that that's a character trait that I have. And I think it's what's helped me build the rapport with the people that I've built rapport with. But to your question, so I had this ability to connect with people. So when Enron went bust, they sent me back to New York. And again, talking about reinventing yourself, Enron goes down, I'm making a ton of money. And these businesses like Cantor Fitzgerald, investment banks, et cetera, they're ruthless.

• 19:25Speaker 00

  So the minute shit went sideways with electricity trading, they were like, okay, we'll send you back to New York. And this was, I lived in London during nine eleven and Cantor was on the top floor of the World Trade Center. So when we lost three thousand people, they sent me back to New York and said, hey, can you take over our credit derivatives business, which happened to be the most lucrative business in the, in the institution at the time? Now, if I didn't know anything about electricity, you can imagine how little I knew about credit derivatives. I knew less than nothing. I knew as much as a plumber would know. But I knew people and I knew the lingo and I just, I picked up the phone and just in hindsight, I don't even know. I had a, I developed a relationship with a guy who's still one of my really

• 20:10Speaker 00

  good friends called Colin Stewart, who worked at Morgan Stanley, who happened to be a huge trader of these things. And then market was so new, credit derivatives, and we just hit it off again, just became friendly. We went skiing a couple of times and um, he started to just do a ton of business with me. And at the time, when a product is new, the commissions tend to be big until people realize how much they're paying on an annual, monthly or annual basis. But I can remember one time for context, and again, I'm only sharing these numbers because of the, for context of the podcast, I, I, I don't want to come across like, hey, look at me, how much money I'm making because.

• 20:46Shaan Puri?

  Hey, our podcast is called, it's called My First Millionaire, alright.

• 20:49Speaker 00

  Alright, so I'm on a trading desk, there's a group of credit derivative brokers, just generic credit derivatives. I was trading credit derivative, like correlation products, like super sophisticated, high-end bespoke, one-off trades. So the credit derivative desk has like 12 guys and that was like the product du jour. Everyone wanted to be in credit derivatives. It was jamming. They were, credit derivative, basically think of it as an option on a bond. So these guys were jamming and we had a super busy day one day, everyone did. And the kid who ran the CDS, credit default swap desk says to me, dude, we had a huge day. We made 250,000 in commissions between like 10, 15 guys. So I said, hold on, let me see. And I start telling other

• 21:31Speaker 00

  thing, I go, oh dude, I, I was a one-man show. I said, I did 262,000 in total commissions and I think I was keeping like either 50 or 60% of that in one day.

• 21:44Shaan Puri?

  Amazing.

• 21:45Speaker 00

  It was insane.

• 21:46Shaan Puri?

  And so how did you, how did you leave that? Why, how do you let that go? Or, you know, what happened? Take, take us, continue the story.

• 21:53Speaker 00

  Alright, so.

• 21:55Speaker 00

  When I went to London, I was in charge of like a bunch of grown men and and I was like twenty seven years old, but I was very immature. Like when I went to college, I've said in previous interviews, like I I wasn't prepared for adulthood. I I just I grew up around junkies and degenerates and like it was a very hectic childhood and my brother was in and out. My brother never went to school past the ninth grade. He's only eleven months younger than me. So it was just total chaos where I was and I just knew I had to get out of this. So I applied to college. Like I literally went to the school I went to because on the application you could like fill in the little dots with the pencil next to the letters and it was like like path of least resistance in terms of applications. And I could work and I had a

• 22:39Speaker 00

  job offer to work as a guard in the prison full time in the summer and then a few days a week during the school year, which I did through college. I started at the prison like when I was one week out of high school. So if you can imagine being in a men's maximum security prison, I mean, I was eighteen, but I probably looked like I was fifteen. But I also knew prison is very segregated, right? Blacks and whites don't necessarily mingle with each other freely. It's not like it's it's like a different world. But I knew most of the white guys because I grew up in like white Irish Catholic, almost like not in housing projects my whole life, but in that in that sphere. So when I got there, I knew some of those guys. So I wasn't as scared as I might be if I didn't know anyone going in there,

• 23:21Speaker 00

  which I know it sounds crazy in hindsight. Now, people know me like you knew people in prison. I'm like, the difference between guards and inmates is like the inmates have been caught. The guards are just as bad. It's like that was that was a big part of my motivation to get out of college. It's like looking at what my prospects of life looked like if I didn't go to college and working at that prison. I was like, I'd rather be dead. It was the worst worst. To this day, it's the worst experience of my life, just the thought of having to do that every day for twenty years. So um. I'm I'm working there paying through college. I'm I I go to London. I'm now in charge of basically in in on a brokerage desk, whoever makes the most commissions, they're the manager, regardless of having management skills.

• 24:01Speaker 00

  So I guess the what I was saying in a long winded way of saying like I had no experience or no. I didn't have the maturity to be a manager, so I really didn't know what I was doing, but I knew I was good at brokering trades. And I was suffering massively like from a fraud complex, imposter syndrome, and I had a minor surgery on my ankle. I was introduced to Percocet. And the minute I took those Percocets and the opioids, I was like, oh, I have all the confidence in the world. No one can stop me. And thus began like a ten year odyssey of being high twenty four seven, save for like. A week or two here, a month here and there, like I'd get sober on my own, just white knuckle it, like go through the physical withdrawals of, you know, basically opioids, just like heroin. I was.

• 24:45Speaker 00

  I was a mess. Like in hindsight, I I tell. People now when I speak to like junkies at like N A meetings or A A meetings, or I speak at at prisons, I say like. I was a good drug addict. I could get away with it. I had resources. I was resourceful. I could find drugs anywhere. I could get people to give me prescriptions all over the country. I just. I'm embarrassed to say I was really good at it. And I was a functioning addict for a good ten years, and I'm sure people that worked with me during those during that period just think I was fucking crazy, not necessarily whacked on drugs, but. It is what it is. It's it's embarrassing. Like I'm I I could. I get choked up thinking about it, because. I I just can't believe I behaved like such a loser and um but I did it and um.

• 25:30Speaker 00

  And once I finally um. Got sober, um when we start, when I I started having children with my wife, I have an adopted daughter who's twelve years old from, we adopted her from Ethiopia as a newborn. And right before we adopted her, I just went through like an outpatient detox, got clean and. Have been sober since. I mean, I haven't been without slip ups over the last several years, like I might, you know, slip up here and there, but I mean, for the most part, I've been sober longer than I've ever been in my life and it's um. You know, it's like. Of all the things I've ever done, it's the one of the things that I'm most proud of. The fact that I was able to um kind of, I don't say get over because it's a constant struggle to stay sober.

• 26:11Speaker 00

  When you've been addicted to those kind of drugs, they're so physically and and and um mentally addictive.

• 26:18Speaker 00

  But nevertheless, it is that that's kind of my journey, but um.

• 26:22Sam Parr?

  Where'd the transition go from just being a normal guy to this kind of, I don't know, personality or whatever you want to call what you are now?

• 26:29Speaker 00

  Yep, that's what I was gonna get to. So in two thousand and ten, when I got sober, I started doing um triathlons. I did the Ironman in Hawaii three times.

• 26:39Sam Parr?

  What was your first time? Or what was, what, what time, what time did you finish in your first uh triathlon?

• 26:43Speaker 00

  Uh, probably eleven hours and then my best.

• 26:45Sam Parr?

  Oh, you broke twelve hours your first time?

• 26:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that's like that. Again, that goes back to mentality like, oh, my God, twelve hours.

• 26:52Sam Parr?

  By the way, Sean, that that that's like pretty good. I mean, twelve hour.

• 26:55Speaker 00

  Sounds like a very long time. I, as somebody who's never.

• 26:57Sam Parr?

  No, breaking twelve hours for your first time, that's like, uh, that's a, that's a great accomplishment, right?

• 27:03Speaker 00

  Pretty good. In like three years, I got down to a nine thirty six, basically, without even knowing how to swim. And I went to Hawaii three times. But again, part of that journey was like learning about myself and figuring out how to suffer and learning that quitting is much harder than suffering because the first time I went to Hawaii, to me, it was like I had um made it to the Olympics. And I was so happy just to be there that when, when I got off the bike, you know, it's two and a half mile swim in the ocean, hundred and twelve mile bike ride in the Hawaii sun in the heat. And you start a marathon around one o'clock in the afternoon, which would be crazy even, even to do as a training run. And um the run got hard and I just quit. I just stopped. I was like, I'm, I'm dying. This isn't my day of like.

• 27:45Speaker 00

  I, I just told myself every story that I needed to tell myself to justify quitting. It's been a long year of training. You made it here. That's the big thing. And as I walked back to transition, literally like crying to myself, like crying like real tears, like it just is so shameful. Because I knew I didn't have to quit. I had a lot more to get, even if I walked. And um, I went back the next year and finished in like nine hours and thirty nine minutes, which was, you know, I don't know where I finished overall, but that that was, I was very satisfied with that. And that process of, so, so, so I used the endurance sports to deal with my addiction and then through endurance sports, I discovered my, an ability to suffer through adversity and I also learned the pain of quitting

• 28:28Speaker 00

  and the emptiness that I felt when I didn't give a hundred percent to something that I had committed to. And um, and that really began the journey. So that was like in two thousand and twelve or thirteen, where I was like, you know what? I'm done being mediocre at anything in life. I'm, whatever I do, I'm gonna do with a hundred percent conviction, including work. And if you like, I'm happy to come back to like my career and how it transitioned into what it was, into what it is, because this is all part of the same story.

• 28:56Shaan Puri?

  Well, let's stay with the, with the mind shift. I wanna talk about two of them. So you had said kind of like, uh, we adopted my daughter and I decided to get sober and, you know, uh, made a decision, but what, what was the thought? Uh, because you know, after ten years of addiction, I can't imagine that that was just so easy.

• 29:16Sam Parr?

  That's the worst addiction. Opioid, I mean, they, they're the worst.

• 29:19Shaan Puri?

  And so I can't imagine that that was just so, as simple as saying, okay, okay, well now I'm, this time I'm gonna do it. So what, what was the thought? And do you, can you take us back to that moment where you kind of realized, okay, I'm gonna do this? Or was it many false starts before it finally happened? How, how did it happen?

• 29:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, no, that's an excellent point. There were many false starts. No one who's suffering with addiction wants to continue to wallow in that because they call um, those medication perks that like painkillers, but they're really joy killers. So what happens is you initially take them, you feel great and you can maybe do that for like a week. And every single time you take a, a, a dose, you get a euphoric feeling, maybe the first time for an hour or two. By the end of the first week, it might be half an hour. By the time you're in the throes of addiction, you're only taking them so you're not sick. And I mean, anyone who knows anything about um, withdrawals from opioids knows like, I'm talking, imagine having the worst flu of your life for seven frickin' days and it can stop whenever you're ready to start taking them again.

• 30:20Speaker 00

  Or are you strong enough to get through this week to ten days? So then, again, just like quitting at anything. You're sick. Oh, something came up. Any justification where you're like, I can't afford to show up here in like the throes of withdrawals. I like can't go two feet from the toilet because I might have to use the bathroom. I'm sweating, then I'm freezing cold. Everything hurts. I'm an emotional mess. I could cry at like a drop of a dime. And so there had been many, I had gotten sober for weeks and months at a time. And then, you know, found excuses to go back to using. But when we were adopting my children, I was like, I cannot live like this with children. I have to be in my right mind. I, I, and yeah, it wasn't as, so to your point, it's not just like I just switched

• 31:04Speaker 00

  the, uh, uh, I switch, flipped the switch. But I will say in terms of being hard, finding someone that's been able to get sober from opioids is like finding someone like with a story like from The Biggest Loser where you see someone who weighs like three fifty, four hundred pounds. Then the next time you see them, they're ripped to shreds and they're living like an athletic lifestyle. That's, I think, how rare it is to find someone who was heavily addicted to opioids and is now living a clean and prosperous, emotionally prosperous life. That's how I feel. It's, it's, it's so hard. And only other junkies who've been through this can recognize the struggle that went into it and the strength that it took to get out of it. Like I said, I've not always been perfect, but I'm so grateful and thankful to be where I am versus where I was with regards to

• 31:47Speaker 00

  the addiction. But yeah, it was not, it, it, I, I know I'm different. I know when it comes to mindset. I know that I have some mental strength that other people don't have. I say that with humility, but it's the truth. I, I, I just decided I'd rather die than live like this and I don't want to die.

• 32:08Speaker 00

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• 32:10Speaker 03

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• 32:24Sam Parr?

  You have an interesting perspective because you grew up with a bunch of people that are now in prison and you worked in a prison, then you worked in New York on Wall Street. But now you know a lot of these like, you know, these celebrity fitness folks. So you have like a, you know, a bunch of interesting people. And you also work with Teddy Atlas, which I imagine through that you've been able to meet Tyson. And it looks like you have Dustin Poirier on the, on your, behind your shoulder on a picture of him. So you've met a lot of like traditionally tough people, or at least people who from an outsider's perspective, from my perspective, are like these tough guys. Who are some of the toughest people that you've met and you admire when you think about how would this person behave in this situation when I'm struggling, physically or mentally?

• 33:06Speaker 00

  I would think one of the toughest people I know, I don't want to get emotional. One of the toughest people I know is my wife.

• 33:16Speaker 00

  The fact that she was able to like stick with me through all this bullshit for the,

• 33:22Speaker 00

  for the sake of my children has been incredible. It's easy to be physically tough because like I said, I mean, catching a beat and it's like, okay, I got beat up, like, okay, not the end of the world. We've all been falling down, bike crash, car accident, whatever. Like, physical pain is just momentary. Emotional pain lasts forever. Someone that's able to withstand emotional pain and show toughness and perseverance through emotional pain is a special person. Because like I said, with like using addiction as an example, there's a lot of ways to escape emotional pain, drugs, alcohol. Ultimately, they're all shortcuts and, you know, like a finger in the dike of the problem. Like, the only way through, the only way to deal with adversity is to go through it and

• 34:07Speaker 00

  go through the fire. You know, like the expression, when you're going through hell, keep going. Or you're in a hole, stop digging. So to that extent, in terms of emotional toughness, my wife showed incredible conviction and perseverance to stick with me when I was just... Of a mediocre finance clown addicted to drugs behaving like an asshole worrying about materialistic possessions and worrying about keeping up with the Joneses versus worry about just living for myself and trying to be the best person that I could be which in my heart is like who I really am. And so to that extent, my wife is tough, but you know, in terms of traditional toughness,

• 34:48Speaker 00

  I'd say any of the fighters we've had on the podcast that's Dustin over one shoulder and Regis over this Regis Prograis who's 140 pound world champ. Those are two incredibly tough guys, but anyone who has the courage to get into the ring or the octagon and have a fistfight for money in front of other people. Can you imagine anything physically tougher than that? I just, I have such admiration.

• 35:13Sam Parr?

  How do those guys, how do those guys describe that? I mean, like this weekend, I don't know how many people bought the Jon Jones fight, but I imagine he had millions of eyeballs on him. He's like, well, I'm gonna get in my underwear. I'm gonna basically, I'm basically naked and I'm like gonna fight to the death in front of all these people.

• 35:28Speaker 00

  That's right.

• 35:28Sam Parr?

  And like I've read some like Chael Sonnen and Cowboy Saroni, they're like backstage, they, they're these tough guys and they like at the weigh-ins, they're puffing their chest and they're flexing their muscles and they're like, I'm gonna F and kill you, yada, yada, yada. But then they'll tell stories. Once they're retired, they're like, I had to throw up in the backstage ahead of that fight because I was so afraid. And at the beginning of every fight, it's just like a race. You have these feelings of like, what am I doing? I don't want to do this. Why do I keep doing this? What am I like? This is the worst feeling. And so they're kind of human. But what do you think? Or what have some of those people said right before they're about to get in the arena and just fight to the death? What's that? What did they go through?

• 36:08Speaker 00

  You just hit the nail on the head. I've had some fights myself, boxing matches, and it's whether you're in the UFC or fighting in a VFW or a convention hall.

• 36:21Speaker 00

  Every single person that I've ever met and spoken to and I've been in the locker room of fighters before fights, many world champions, UFC boxers, Teddy and I trained the light heavyweight champion of the world, I was basically Teddy's assistant, Teddy trained him, but we were in the locker room for a pay-per-view main event fight, and I can tell you, every single person feels the same things that you and I would feel, or that average person would feel, they're not different, they're not special, they're not unique. The coward and the hero, as Teddy Atlas would say, they feel the same exact thing. The only thing that they do differently is how they behave. Some people let that fear overro- overwhelm them and they cower, and like, I, I, I, I compare it to like surfing, the waves are crashing down, and there's that like break

• 37:05Speaker 00

  zone where you either have to get out of the water or get through the break. And the coward either gets washed out to sea or goes back to the shore, and the hero goes through the break and knows that on the other side is calm waters, and is the place where you want to be with other heroes. So, I think, to answer your question is, they don't feel any different, everyone feels the same thing, they're not immune to the fact that there's millions of people watching, no one is, it's just exactly as you would imagine, the only difference is how they behave. And you just forget that the, what, this reason they train, you train as hard as you do, or they do is because, at the end of the day, you've got to block out all

• 37:45Speaker 00

  the bullshit, because all that fear that we, we've just described, is all noise, and the, the, the amount of things, and again, this is all knowledge I have gleaned from working with Teddy Atlas, all of the scenarios and potential nightmares that could happen, Teddy calls them like the ninjas of your mind, the ninjas that coming over the wall as you're getting ready to go into the ring or the octagon, and all of the possible scenario, there's endless scenarios of things that could go horribly wrong, you could die, you could get knocked out, you could get your arm broken, but at the end of the day, what are the odds of any of those things happening, because you know you've trained like a dog, you've been in fires with these kind of sparring sessions, you, you've done the running, you've done the training, and at

• 38:28Speaker 00

  the end of the day, you have to block out the fact that everyone's watching, this is now simply a more aggressive sparring session, and you're just going to focus on the task at hand. And once, at least in my own experience, whether it's a fight or a race, once the gun goes off or the bell rings and you start jabbing or running, You have to get your mind into that place of like, hey, I've been here before. I know what's coming. I know what to do, even if it's not going right. I know how I'm supposed to behave. And Teddy would say, you know, the difference, what makes a fighter a fighter or what makes a fight a fight? Is when there's something to overcome. You're not really a fighter if you're just in there beating the brakes out of shit competition. You become a fighter when there's something to overcome. When you dealt some cards that you weren't expecting.

• 39:11Speaker 00

  When you get punched in the mouth in a shot that you didn't see coming and now you're tested. That's when you see who's really a fighter, who can come back, who can get off the canvas. We measure a man much more by how they get off the canvas. Versus how many times they knock someone else to the canvas. So when you have losses and setbacks and you've experienced that feeling of having quit or not giving a hundred percent. That's when you find out who you really are and that's, at least that's what's worked for me. And again, a lot of reality, the, the reality of situation isn't nearly as important as the narrative that you have in your head. Because the narrative in your head is going to control how you behave and control your mindset. And that's something that's well within your control and you can learn how to harness that ability over time and through practice.

• 39:55Speaker 00

  And that's why we train the way we do.

• 39:57Shaan Puri?

  So I wanted to ask you about that exact thing because uh, you know, not, you, you run and you run these crazy marathons and it's crazy times. I think you basically have just been getting faster and faster every year, you know, every year since you were 35 years old, which is kind of amazing. I'm not going to run. I'm not a runner. It's not something that's of interest to me. But everybody hits adversity. And so I think this is probably the most important thing that I want to learn from you, which is uh, when you, whether you're in a fight or you're in a race and adversity strikes, what is the self-talk that you have developed that gets you through that? Because uh, you said the difference between like a coward and the hero is the behavior. But I think the behavior, I would guess, comes from

• 40:42Shaan Puri?

  a conversation that happens in your head. Uh, deciding which way are we going to go? Are we going to walk off the field or are we going to continue on, right? Um, and so what is that self-talk and how do you train that?

• 40:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's a great point. And I think that at the end of the day, we all know what the answer is. I like try to use a professional analogy, like a business analogy. If you're a research analyst, right, and you're covering a particular stock and you know that there's like, let's say realistically, 15 other guys covering that stock is like, who's gonna go the extra mile to get it done, right? We've all, just like at the start of race, everyone shows up, everyone there is good. Everyone there is fit. Who's the healthiest? That's a big difference. Who's done all the little things? So if you're doing research, have you uncovered every stone? Have you turned over every stone? Like Warren Buffett talks about that he would pour through company reports.

• 41:38Speaker 00

  I don't even think he uses a computer. He's just old school. He's just reading, reading company reports, reading balance sheets. And I think that we all know, whether whatever our profession is, we all know what we could do better. And I think when you sit with yourself and you ask yourself, have I done everything? Think about how much free time, how much time we waste in the day. And if you need an example, every single time you open your phone and look at it for anything, Instagram, Twitter, I do it myself. It pisses me off because it's such a waste of time. I've like contemplated getting rid of social media every day for like the last two years. But it's, I would be lying if I didn't say it's been helpful to me in terms of getting my message out there and kind of sharing some of the knowledge I have in terms of what I've been able to do with running.

• 42:23Speaker 00

  But I would say that to simplify is like, we all know what needs to be done. You just have to do the little extra things that you know that other people aren't. Is someone else leaving early to go have drinks with their friend? The people who are great, that's their priority. And again, back to the concept of all in, if you're all in on one thing and you decide this one thing that no one's gonna beat me at.

• 42:46Speaker 00

  No one has to tell you what you need to do. You know, everyone, you know, spend more time doing the thing that you love doing. If you do something more than anyone else, I'm pretty sure you'll become the best in the world. And if you want to be the best piano player, there's going to be people that are just virtuosos. So let's take out the outliers. But if you want to be a piano player and there's 20 other people in your class, I promise you that if you train more than them, practice more than them, you'll be the best. And I unfortunately, the only example I have for me is running. I've just run more than other people and I've been able to stay healthy, which is, you know, I maybe part of it is luck. I just have the physiology that absorbs the miles, but I do a lot of other things to maintain my overall health in addition to running.

• 43:27Sam Parr?

  You keep saying that you're like this, you're like, I'm a humble guy, you know, and it feels crazy. Well, you don't say I'm a humble guy. I think you said, I don't want to be a narcissist and talk about this and that. But you're you kind of are like this alpha cocky guy in a good way. That's a compliment. Because I read this story and you just you're a funny guy. You're like, you're like the character, you're like the real life version of Mark of a Mark Wahlberg character in a movie, because you say these, these, these funny wisecracks, because I read this story that's like 10 years old. Apparently Lance Armstrong was hosting like a man camp or some type of like, you know, like tough guy camp. And I think the story is, is that like, you were kind of chirping at him. You're like, I came this close, you told the reporter, I came this close to beating Lance Armstrong in the first race. I attacked him like a rabid dog. I

• 44:11Sam Parr?

  had a gap on him. And then on the ride, apparently a rock hit Lance or something from one someone's tires. And you said, I hurt Lance Armstrong. I broke him. I made him bleed. And then you actually, you got close to beating him, or maybe even you did beat him. And you said, I'm the winner of man camp. Lance, I need you to clean my bike and hose it off for me.

• 44:31Speaker 00

  Yes, the initial quotes are slightly out of context, because it sounds a bit like a dork. Like, I would never be like, I came this close to beat him. I just would never talk like that. There was more to the quote. Where I was, and I did beat him in a couple of those climbs, but he probably hadn't ridden a bike in like six months before we did this together. So like, there's a lot of context that's missing there. But Lance is a good friend of mine. A rock did bounce up and hit his finger. And I said, yep, I made you bleed. Now clean all the bikes. We kicked your ass. And, uh, and then I probably said to him, make sure that no one gets a blood sample of that, uh, make sure no one gets a drop of that blood and runs a sample on it. I don't want to find out that you're still doing any kind of performance enhancers. But it was obviously said in jest, but.

• 45:10Sam Parr?

  But you're, you're chirping at him in a fun way, but even like, even though you had the confidence to chirp at him a little bit, I think it's hilarious and awesome.

• 45:16Speaker 00

  Why wouldn't I? He's a bike rider. Have you ever met a bike rider that was gonna physically like do anything to anyone? I was like, I think at some point I said to him, like, you're used to dealing with like 115 pound European cyclists. Now you're dealing with real men like this is. We're peers. There's no like, you know what I mean? I can't imagine a less intimidating group of guys than professional cyclists.

• 45:40Shaan Puri?

  Sounds like you better take Lance to Bandcamp, actually.

• 45:46Sam Parr?

  Yeah, classes in session that day.

• 45:48Speaker 00

  That's the thing is if someone heard all the conversations out of context, number one, they wouldn't be fit to be published. They were like very, um, much like a locker room, but Lance is my buddy and, and, and all of that set stuff was just said in jest and teasing each other that probably wouldn't all be for public consumption, but, um, you know, I, I, anytime you see quotes where it's like that, like, I came this close to be Lance. It makes me sound like a fucking dork and like, I wouldn't talk like that. I would have said, I'm gonna kick your ass and when we get out there tomorrow, I'm gonna do this and I'm gonna do that. But again, I would say that too. I'd tell Dustin Poirier the same thing if we were gonna have a sparring session. I just, that's,

• 46:26Speaker 00

  but that's all, and I, I don't, I don't wanna sound, I, I don't at all, I don't feel cocky or arrogant whatsoever. I know that there's some things I'm good at and I know that there's a lot more things that I'm bad at. So, if I've come across as cocky, I apologize. It's certainly not the message I want to send. I, I think, I try to be as humble as I can and know that there's a lot of things that I'm not good at. But suffering is one thing that I know how to do.

• 46:49Sam Parr?

  Are you making most of your income right now from your main? I think you have like a, like a small advisory, right? Are you making most of your income now from that? Or are, are you, and are you going to try and go full transition to become like this? I don't know what the right word is, what we call these goggins, but whatever that is, a personality? That sounds like lamer than it actually is, but you know what I mean?

• 47:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, I know. This is a great question. So I've made the most of my income through finance and what I've done. So, so in 2015, I left New York and went to California with a fintech startup called Electronify. We were brokering trades between institutions for corporate bonds. So right now, when you trade a corporate bond, you have to call like Goldman, Morgan Stanley, and you have to find they, you tell them, I want to sell these bonds. They find a buyer. Sometimes they'll, they'll buy them from you, which was the old traditional investment bank model, right? They, hey, I got 20, 20 million of these bonds to go, okay, we'll take them there. And then they try to sell them at a slight markup. Now they're basically just matching buyers and sellers for all intents and purposes. So we created a new, an electronic marketplace that could let these like fidelity and PIMCO trade directly with each other.

• 47:54Speaker 00

  So I went out to New, I went out to LA to cover the West Coast, knowing that there was a good chance that this startup wasn't going to work. It didn't, we sold it to a competitor. But I, my, by moving to LA, I basically forced myself into an uncomfortable position because there aren't sales and trading jobs in LA like there are in New York. So I knew I'd have to figure something else out. And you know that expression of like, hey, if you're waiting for everything to be perfect to make a move, it ain't ever going to happen. You have to make the move and make it perfect. And long story short, I was riding my bike. Everything that good in my life that's happened has been through endurance sports. I was riding my bike with a guy in my neighborhood and we were, um, he ran an asset management firm called the Palisades Group, and they had maybe $2 billion in assets under management.

• 48:35Speaker 00

  They were running money for all big household managers, like all the household names, like Apollo, for instance, and, and they had separately managed accounts. So the fees weren't huge, like a traditional hedge fund or asset manager. And I said to him, he didn't have a, um, any business development. He wasn't actively out there trying to raise more capital, which is what he would need to do to really grow his business. So I said, let me run business development for you. And, and he said, you know, Accurately, you don't have any experience and we're friends. I don't want to put you in a losing position. And I said, okay, I'll work for free for three months just to see if it works. And again, every time I've been willing to take a bet on myself, it's worked out in that in that brokerage

• 49:16Speaker 00

  commission rule that we discussed earlier, I was paid just straight commission. So when I was making all that money, if I didn't do any trades, I don't make any money. But because I was willing to do that, I got to keep more of the commissions. So anytime I've been on myself, it's worked. Thankfully. So he gave me an opportunity and I came in and in two years, we grew that from two billion to five billion. I raised two discretionary funds, which is basically like raising a hedge fund, first time manager, managing discretionary capital. We couldn't even hire banks to help us raise the money. They basically laughed us out of the room. And I said, they said to me, you think, why do you think, and I, they said, why do you think you can raise this fund? Like, it doesn't seem like you'll be able to just based on the track record, experience, the asset class.

• 49:58Speaker 00

  And I said, why do you think you can't like until someone beats me at the New York marathon? Like, I'll convince myself that I could win this whole race. And long story short, we raised the money. We raised a $35 million fund and $150 million fund. And once I did that and kind of started to believe in myself that I could raise money. My boss at the time, who's like one of my best friends, Jack McDowell, who's like.

• 50:22Sam Parr?

  But he like, just go off and go off and do this on your own.

• 50:25Speaker 00

  He said, dude, you're wasting your time. Go do your own thing. And the first mandate that I worked on was with David Sinclair. At our life biosciences, I helped them raise $50 million. At one point, David and I were raising capital in New York and we had dinner with Wendy Murdoch and Tony Blair and Bennett Miller at Wendy's like New York City Triplex apartment on Fifth Avenue. It was literally like I was watching someone's else's life unfold as I was sitting there having a conversation with Tony Blair over dinner. And so once I had, once I had raised money for a few different in independent private placement mandates, I just started doing that full time and have since worked on a bunch of mandates in the health and wellness space.

• 51:07Speaker 00

  And now I'm back raising a on a consultant basis, raising a third discretionary fund for the Palisades Group. And so that's kind of one way that I make money. I also have some invest, I've invested in a lot of these deals. I have some advisory roles. I mean, I guess for lack of a better term, some influencer deals um with some big brands that have been, you know, I just feel so incredibly lucky that brands want to affiliate with me. It's like a dream come true. And then I also have a um a TV project I'm working on.

• 51:39Sam Parr?

  What's the next like five years gonna be? How's this transition gonna look like? And what do you want it to look like?

• 51:44Speaker 00

  Well, in a perfect world, I just filmed a pilot um with a big production company for a network that's um confidential right now. But if if the network likes what we recorded and I think they will, it's unbelievable. I think a lot of people will like it. It's a non-scripted kind of show um with where I'm ho- I'm the ho- main host and um in a perfect world, the network will like the show, pick it up, and I will do that and see where that takes me. But I I like the idea. I always tell people like, when you work for someone else, when you're employed, you're you're kind of a slave. Like, they own you. You you can't just do whatever you want to do. You get to have a couple of days off a week.

• 52:25Speaker 00

  They provide a little bit of safety for you, and in turn, you give them like X amount of your time. But the main thing that you miss out on by being an employee is you miss out on the opportunity to pursue interesting opportunities when they are presented, like this media project I'm working on. If I had a job, there's no way I'd be able to do it because they were like, hey, we're gonna record for a week. And, you know, out of town. I would never have been able to do this, but because I was willing to bet on myself and, you know, take the risk of having to get my own health insurance, not being sure if like, you know, something happens to me and people don't want to be affiliated with me anymore. I get injured, I can't run. Like, okay, now what do I do? I guess I could always fall back on a finance gig, but I don't want to do that. I wasn't happy doing that. And to that point,

• 53:11Speaker 00

  I've said this before, and I think it's relevant for this podcast, is that I I've said to people, like, like, money doesn't make you happy. And people are always like, oh, bullshit, you have money. And I'm like, no, I've had money and lost money multiple times. When Enron went bust. You know, when you're making a lot of money, you spend a lot of money. And when that ends abruptly, you're very quickly out of money, especially if you have a ten, twelve thousand dollar mortgage. And now you get paid, getting paid ten grand a month, which is what happened to me when Enron went bust. Things can change quickly. And the reason I say, the example I give you is, I was making a ton of money and I became a drug addict. So it didn't make me happier. It caused me different anxiety. So money can alleviate a lot of stress, but it can also add stress that you didn't know, stressors that you didn't even know existed.

• 53:57Speaker 00

  And yes, it's easier to have money than to not have money. But if your only goal in life is to make money, I would say be careful what you wish for. Cause I was making money and I could have, I could have comfortably continued to do what I was doing. But I'm so much happier now, wearing the risk of not knowing where the next deal or paycheck is gonna come from. But I've never been happier in my life and, and, and this didn't, this transformation didn't happen until my late forties. And when I finally like had the courage to bet on myself like all in, in my late forties, it's been the greatest gift I've ever given myself is to like, bet on myself and, and, and, and, and live and die with my own results. So in five years, I hope that this media stuff becomes more of a reality and I can continue to kind of share my experiences and um,

• 54:42Speaker 00

  you know, knowledge of, you know, knowing how to suffer and deal with adversity. And I like, I like sharing that message. I've done some speaking recently. That's also contributed to uh my financial well-being. And that's something that I actually really enjoy, which is crazy, right? Cause every time I do speak to people, I go, hey, is anyone here get nervous about speaking in front of an audience? And every single person raises their hand. And then I go, guess what? I do too. But I'm dealing with it. And like I tell my kids, it's okay to be scared. Like when they, my youngest son's playing baseball. He's like, dad, I get so nervous when I get up to bat. He's seven. I said, buddy, everybody does, but sometimes we just have to learn how to do things while we're scared. Once you get comfortable uh operating while you're scared,

• 55:28Speaker 00

  you can't lose. It's just has to do with repetitions and experience.

• 55:32Sam Parr?

  How are you? So I'm a former competitive runner. Now I'm, I'm, I just, I'm pretty into fitness, but all types of well-rounded fitness stuff. And I get hurt. You seem like you do not get hurt. Is that, and part of that, I think is like just biology. I think some people are just built where they can absorb miles, like you said. But what are you doing to stay healthy?

• 55:53Speaker 00

  Um, I try to sleep eight hours a day. I eat a very healthy diet. I do a lot of strength training that I think a lot of runners don't do. Um, and I do a lot of recently, I hadn't done a lot of stretching and stuff in the past, but lately I've been doing a lot more stretching and um, I feel like it's especially in the last like six to 12 months, tons of um, preventative care, electrical muscular, I've got every like met device under the sun, electrical muscular stimulation, theragun, etc., etc. It's been um, I spend a lot of time trying to keep myself healthy, but it gets getting harder over the years.

• 56:31Sam Parr?

  Do you think that, you know, running 70 and 80 miles a week, do you think that that's gonna be, that's gonna make you live a longer or healthier life? Or are you just happy to, do you just like how it makes you feel? Because when I, you know, think about like some of these, I did a half Ironman, nothing like you did, and I didn't even do it fast. But I remember doing all these miles and I'm like, man, I don't know if this is gonna, if this is gonna make me live to be 120, it might not like, or maybe just like lifting weights and going for walks might be a little bit better. But how do you think about that?

• 56:59Speaker 00

  I agree with you 100, 100%. I always tell anyone who's interested, I don't know that this is the answer for me, but you're talking to someone who is living the life of a drug addict. To me, okay, if it makes my life a little bit shorter, but it's adding the quality of life that I'm experiencing right now, that's a bet I'm willing to make. Um, yeah, I don't know. Like, I wish I had an answer for you. I don't know what's gonna add to my overall longevity, um, in terms of my mental and physical well-being. Um, but I know that right now, this is the best way for me to live my life. Look at what it's given me has been, it's been immeasurable. Um, but I think that there are a lot of things that contribute

• 57:44Speaker 00

  to longevity. I mean, obviously, there's the famous longevity study out of Harvard that suggests that the most important element to live in a healthy, fruitful life is um, Relationships and to that extent, the one thing that this lifestyle and my kind of newfound station in life has provided me is the quality of relationships. When I worked in finance, this doesn't apply to everyone in finance, but a lot of the people I worked with were real assholes and I didn't like them and it was keeping up with the Joneses and I, if I never had to sit on a trading desk for the rest of my life, I'd be perfectly fine with that. Again, not everyone. I met some people there that I genuinely love, but there's some also some people there that if I saw them, I wouldn't mind giving them a smack in the mouth.

• 58:26Speaker 00

  There's been some real idiots I've worked with and I could go on forever. But my life now, when I, if there's someone in my life that I don't appreciate or don't respect, I can just cut them out and move on to the next thing. I don't need,

• 58:44Speaker 00

  the thing that I have that some billionaires don't have is enough. I have enough. I have everything I need and I'd love to have more money and I'd love to put in a pool and renovate my house and splurge on a lot of bullshit. But at the end of the day, I have the one thing that I need and that's enough. And I have my family. And so, you know, finding what you, finding something in life that you're passionate about and that you genuinely joy and joy is the key. And to me, and people say all the time, find something you love doing and you'll never work a day in your life. There isn't a single week that goes by that I don't say to my wife, can you believe I don't have an effing job? Am I the luckiest person we know? And she always laughs and goes, you're definitely the luckiest person I know. But it's interesting that the

• 59:28Speaker 00

  harder I work, the luckier I seem to get.

• 59:30Sam Parr?

  You're an interesting guy and we appreciate you coming on. You're, I've been following you now, I think since 2020, whenever you joined Teddy Atlas, because I listened to that a ton and I've shown those too. And so we appreciate you coming on. You're You're different. You're built different. You're a different guy and we appreciate that. We like those types of people.

• 59:50Speaker 00

  Well, I, I want to say again, thank you so much. I really hope that I didn't come across as too alpha or cocky. I just tried to be more than anything, I tried to just be honest, man. It's like the, the, the world and the internet is so big. If you if you embellish or bullshit about something, there'll be someone coming out of the bushes like that didn't happen and this didn't happen. Cause I know a lot of my stuff sounds sensational and crazy, but I'm like, I think if anything at times I'm downplaying some of the stuff because I know it's how crazy it sounds. But um, yeah, anyway, I, I do feel very humbled and honored to be here.

• 1:00:25Shaan Puri?

  This is a place where cockiness and alphaness is actually appreciated. So, so even if you did, that would be, uh, you know, right at home here. We just like when people are the way they are and not trying to manage.

• 1:00:36Sam Parr?

  It's at home because we, by the way, we don't get a lot of cockiness or alpha, Sean. That's why we like it.

• 1:00:41Shaan Puri?

  Yeah, we enjoy it. It's a good change. But you know, we're a business podcast for the most part, entrepreneurship and uh, you know, we're, we're a bunch of people with carpal tunnel syndrome. You know, it's, it's not a bunch of alpha males coming on the pod typically. Uh, so, so you know, I think there was some good stuff here for, for mental strength, toughness, adversity, you know, but basically, uh, what I think is the most important thing, which is the little managing the little voice in your head. And, uh, that little voice in your head that, you know, that's who you, you go through life with. And I think that, um, you're a great example of what happens when you really like, you know, work on that. And so, so thanks for coming on Ken. I really appreciate it.

• 1:01:20Speaker 00

  I would say this before I leave, like that voice in your head is not little. That voice in your head is all, all powerful. The most powerful, right? It's the voice in my head is the one that tells me to get high when I know I shouldn't. The voice in the head, the little voice tells me to go run when it's pissing rain or freezing cold and snowing. So that voice in your head shouldn't be little. It should be big and it should be like screaming from a megaphone that you're the best and you can do anything you want to do. And to your point, if you have a bunch of carpal tunnel guys here that like might consider themselves nerds and like intellects. Good, because the one thing that you can control is your physical. Actions. Anyone can do what I've done. I promise you, I'm not special.

• 1:02:03Speaker 00

  I wish I had the intellect as some of these copper tunnel guys because that's the one thing I don't have. And that's where I'm trying to overcompensate by being so physical that maybe my intellectual shortcomings can be overcome through physical intimidation and alphaness. But anyway, I say that in jest, but honestly, everything that I have is available to anyone. I'm just, literally, the only thing I'm doing different than most people is physically is trying harder. Well, Sam, I don't know about you, but in 10 minutes, I'm going to do my workout. And I think it's gonna be a good one today. I think I got a little extra juice. Not thinning, you know it is.

• 1:02:40Sam Parr?

  But you gotta follow, you gotta follow him on Instagram. There's videos of him shadow boxing and right before he's about to go running or right after he got done running and he

• 1:02:48Speaker 00

  I always feel foolish posting that shit. I really do. And then I'm like

• 1:02:52Sam Parr?

  No, I like it. I watch it because I like running a lot, but I don't want a runner's body. And you're, you're, you're cool because you don't have a runner's body.

• 1:02:59Speaker 00

  That's my mission in life is to not look like a runner.

• 1:03:02Sam Parr?

  You're well-rounded. You're well-rounded. It doesn't matter if you're 53 or you're 23. You look, you look, you look good. You know, I always, I joke, I'm like, the point of working out for me is to be able to kill or outrun everyone in a room. You know, you want to be able to kill and eat them or outrun them. And we'll add a third thing, which is you also want to look good naked. And so in your, in your, in your, in your checklist, it's check, check, check. All right, all right.

• 1:03:27Speaker 00

  If you're not gonna look good for yourself, think about your spouse. So that's kind of my closing salvo.

• 1:03:35Sam Parr?

  You're the man. Thank you very much. We appreciate this.

• 1:03:37Speaker 00

  I appreciate you guys. Thank you for having me.