How One Decision Can Change Everything Feat. Ken Rideout

What if the hardest season of your life is actually the doorway to becoming the strongest version of yourself you’ve ever met? In this conversation with Ken Rideout, I sat across from a man who has lived more lives than most people ever will. From growing up in chaos and addiction, to becoming a Wall Street trader, to falling deep into opioid addiction, and then rebuilding himself into one of the fastest marathon runners in the world over 50 years old. His story is not just about winning races. It is about becoming someone you can respect when no one else is watching. We got real about what it actually feels like to win. Not the highlight reel version, but the truth. Ken said something that stopped me in my tracks. Winning is not the explosion of joy people expect. It is relief. It is the quiet moment where you realize you endured something most people would have quit on. That hit me because it is exactly how success has felt in my own life too. We also went deep into identity. How do you build belief in yourself when you were not raised with it? Ken opened up about going from confidence as a kid, to losing himself in addiction, to rebuilding his identity through effort. Not talent. Not luck. Effort. He made it clear that the biggest lie people believe is that they have limits. That belief alone is what keeps most people stuck living a life far below what they are capable of. One of the most powerful parts of this conversation is how his entire life changed from one decision. Getting sober. That single decision led him to running, which led him to discovering a level of greatness he never knew existed inside him. It is a reminder that you are one decision away from a completely different life. You do not need the whole plan. You just need to start. This episode is for you if you feel stuck, if you are battling something internally, or if you know deep down you are capable of more but have not tapped into it yet. Ken Rideout is living proof that your past does not define you. Your decisions do. Key Takeaways: Why winning rarely feels the way you expect and why relief is often the real reward The lie most people believe about their limitations and how it keeps them stuck How one decision can completely redirect the trajectory of your life Why effort will always outperform talent when sustained over time The difference between quitting and pushing through and how to know which is which How to rebuild your identity when you have lost belief in yourself Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at https://shopify.com/mylett 👉 SUBSCRIBE TO ED'S YOUTUBE CHANNEL NOW 👈⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ → → → CONNECT WITH ED MYLETT ON SOCIAL MEDIA: ← ← ← ➡️ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠INSTAGRAM⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ➡️⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠FACEBOOK⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ➡️ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LINKEDIN⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ➡️ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ➡️ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠WEBSITE⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Ed Mylett?

  I hear so many small business owners say the exact same thing. They just never have enough time in the day. Well, I measure time differently. I've compressed, condensed, heck, I've bent time. My first day is 6:00 a.m. to noon. My second day starts at noon and goes till 6:00 P.M. And my third day, 6:00 P.M. to midnight. I now get 21 days a week. Stack that up over a month, over a year, over five years, and my life's completely different than it would have been otherwise. And if you want to win as an entrepreneur, you have to compress your time, too. And you definitely can't afford to waste it. Waiting weeks on a big bank for capital? Your best bet's to work with my friends at Cardiff. They know how to compress time for entrepreneurs. They get your business approved in minutes and funded the very same day. They're America's favorite small business lender, and for good reason.

• 0:45Ed Mylett?

  Over 20 years in business, over $12 billion deployed to small business across America. Stop letting bank delays slow down your momentum. Head to cardiff.co/ed. That's cardiff.co/ed. Cardiff.co. Real growth, fast funding. Cardiff. Borrow better.

• 1:02Speaker 01

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• 1:31Ed Mylett?

  This is the Ed and Myron Show. All right, welcome back to the show, everybody. So I got to tell you something. My son sent me this man's book and his story. And I instantly, I knew I had seen him before. I said, I want him on the show. He's like a Renaissance man. His stories bananas. So today is going to be a ride, you guys. And I have to tell you something. Think a picture of this. We're both Boston boys when we were little boys. Both grew up with a lot, around a lot of dysfunction. I thought I saw like kind of a brother in him.

• 1:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:58Ed Mylett?

  Kind of drugs and alcohol everywhere in his family. And then he's got this crazy life, like he becomes this kind of Wall Street trader guy, Cantor Fitzgerald. Then he then he becomes an opiate addict, right? So there's that part of the story. Then he starts doing like marathons and ultra marathons. This guy's the fastest dude in the world, over 50 years old, running marathons. He's completed the Gobi March, it was 155 mile crazy race. And then he's like connected all over the world.

• 2:24Speaker 03

  Not just completed, I won it.

• 2:25Ed Mylett?

  Well, he won it. Let me, thank you. Not only did he complete it, he won it. And we were talking about this off camera too, about how he did that. So today it's going to be interesting. If you kind of want to remake your life a little bit later, he's remade his life multiple times. So this is for you. If you're overcoming some sort of thing in your life that's holding you back, it's for you. And if you're young and you want advice from someone who's lived a full, complete life in his early 50s. Ken, write out your guy. His book is The Other Side of Hard, and this is going to be a great conversation today. Welcome to the show.

• 2:54Speaker 03

  Thanks for having me, I appreciate it.

• 2:55Ed Mylett?

  Yeah, let me make sure you do give you credit. You did win the race. So let's make sure that we do that.

• 2:59Speaker 03

  I'm teasing you.

• 2:59Ed Mylett?

  No, no, it's awesome. So I gotta, I have like, I don't do this for most interviews. I have probably like 60 questions and we're probably only going to get to about 10 of them. Because there's so many different things I could ask you. But I want to, the first thing is this, like when I think of you, I think of like, all right, probably mental toughness is probably the first thing that I think of. How does somebody know, like you, they're talking about this hard thing. How does somebody know I should quit or I should keep going? Like in a race, in life, after a business? Because not all quitting is bad. So I kind of want to go the antithesis of what's in the book. Someone's listening today, they're thinking of quitting a relationship, quitting a business. How do you know what's quitting and what is pushing through what's hard?

• 3:38Speaker 03

  Great question. And to summarize, I would say, don't quit. I mean, there is a difference between quitting and knowing when to throw in the towel when you're like losing in business or or or a relationship in particular, right? You're in a relationship, like you should know, like, all right. But there's a difference between. Having some intelligence and pushing through and persevering when things are hard. Because nothing in your life that you've that you'll uh that's worth attaining is going to be easy. None of the success you've had has has been easy. It's not easy being in shape. It's one of the things that's nice about showing up in shape like we were just talking about.

• 4:15Speaker 03

  When you walk in and they're like, okay, this guy's in shape. They know about ten things about me already that at least I have grit, determination, delayed gratification and all the things that go with it. But I can tell you that when you quit, when you you know when you're quitting, and I can tell you from experience, when you quit, the sting of quitting will last with you for the rest of your life. The first time I qualified for the Ironman in Hawaii on NBC Sports, I it was so hard to qualify. Only two thousand people out of hundreds of thousands try to qualify. And it's the best of the best and everyone's good. And I got there and I was so happy just to be there. For me, at forty years old, it was like qualifying for the Olympics. But you qualify in your age group, so it's all relative. And I get there and it just got hard when I got off the bike.

• 4:58Speaker 03

  I I got on to the run. It was hard and I just quit like a dead dog loser. My wife was standing there recording. The minute I quit, she's recording, yay, go. And I'm like, cut. I'm like, I can't do it. I'm I'm too tired. And she was literally like, what? Are you crazy? Just keep walking. And I was like, I was, part of me was embarrassed. I wasn't doing well. So in my mind, again, this is where you need mental toughness. My mind was telling me, it's okay. You're not gonna win. Like, come back again another time. But meanwhile, my wife has like put up with all my selfish training for years. She's like, this is it. After this, you did it. You reached your goal. We're done with this. So I also knew this was probably the last chance. She would let me go back and do it again because of the the disaster that I created for myself.

• 5:39Speaker 03

  But that sting of quitting on that day in Hawaii, I I I get emotional thinking about it now. I'm so ashamed of myself. My wife would say, who are you embarrassed in front of? Myself. And the only opinion of me that matters and that should matter is my own. Because if I don't think highly of myself, why would my wife think highly of me and respect me? And I really, it's some of this stuff sounds corny and cliche. I get it. But if you. Don't think highly of yourself. Trust me, no one else will either.

• 6:05Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 6:06Speaker 03

  You have to be your own biggest advocate.

• 6:07Ed Mylett?

  Let me ask you about, by the way, it's not corny from you, and here's why. Cause you've actually done crazy things in your life. I'm being serious, like, there's a lot of people online or that have books, they say, maybe I haven't even one of them. Say a bunch of motivational stuff or whatever, but like you've lived this, like, I'm picturing you in the 143rd mile. In this Gobi channel, like, I'm picturing this, right? Like, I'm picturing you trying to overcome this addiction. I'm picturing you where several of your friends are blown up in the World Trade Center on 9/11. Make your lives bananas. So let's stay on this thing about, cause I'm a big believer. Most of your life, you're gonna get what you believe you're worth and you deserve. This identity thing, and you talk a lot about identity in the book.

• 6:45Ed Mylett?

  And you and I both come from an upbringing, in fact, I'm talking to you today, I think it's a blessing, today, as we're recording this, is actually would have been my dad's birthday. And he was a central person in my life of, you know, there was addiction there, as you know, and some other stuff. But I, I think it's hard for people. When you weren't raised being poured into. You're great, I love you, you're incredible, you can do it. Or you don't come from winners. So most people listening to this or watching it relate to that to some degree what you and I grew up with a little bit. And you somehow. Powered through this where you were not only, in his upbringing, if you read this book, you guys, not only was it not successful. It was, they were pounding into you the reverse that you were great most of the time.

• 7:30Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:30Ed Mylett?

  And doing harm to you, even your mom, you know, and many times, God bless her, but even your mom. How does somebody begin to, this is a hard question, I'm giving you all the hard stuff, I sent this title book. How does someone start to change their identity? They're listening or watching, like, I don't feel good about me.

• 7:44Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, I will say, from my earliest childhood memory, I didn't feel like I belonged in this like house of horrors that I was living in, right? I was constantly, they beat the shit out of me all the time. There were always people doing drugs, fighting, it was violent. It was anxiety ridden because even as a kid, I remember thinking like, how am I related to these people? I'm not supposed to be here and. It's crazy, like if someone believed in reincarnation, they'd be like, oh yeah, he's reincarnated and came from a normal situation and now he's dealing with this. So growing up, I I I always knew the right thing to do, like I didn't have any rules. I could come and go as I please, like my my parents weren't like, get in before the lights come down. Like I could stay out all night and and do whatever I wanted.

• 8:26Speaker 03

  But I never did those things. I was like a good kid. I got along with the principal of the school. Like I was the quarterback of the high school football team. I just instinctively wanted a better life for myself and I was like pretty happy with myself and and not arrogant, but I was confident and um as you've seen in the book, then I I get into New York and and we'll get to it and I get addicted to drugs and all of those positive things that I thought about myself were like stripped away. And I was like, really had a negative self opinion of myself to the point where I would ideate on suicide, where my addiction was so bad, I was like, if I don't get sober, I'm not living like this anymore. Cause I'm not a loser, but my behavior is that of a loser. And to your point about the book about giving advice, right?

• 9:10Speaker 03

  My book isn't a how to, I'm not telling people do this, do that. I I matter of fact, I say to a lot of people, don't do what I did. Like I was a drug addict. I thought money was the answer. I got rich and then became addicted to drugs because it didn't fill the voids that were really there that needed to be dealt with that I also talk about when I go to onsite uh trauma healing center. But what I try to demonstrate in the book is like, hey, here's the here's the things that I've here are all the mistakes I've made, some of them self induced and or some of the trauma that's happened to me self induced. And here's how I fixed it. And basically, the only through line in this whole book is my mindset and believing that I could do the things I wanted to do. You see me, I'm the most average person in the world.

• 9:53Speaker 03

  I'm five, ten, a hundred and seventy pounds. I don't have any natural gifts. I wasn't getting division one scholarships. I was like a decent athlete. But when I as I got older and started to emerge from the addiction, I realized that effort counts for so much more than everything else. If you get a guy who's willing to die to win. Yes. And it took a while to get there and I know it can sound like hyperbole, die to win. Yeah, like there's times in the race where I'm like. If I die, I don't think I'm gonna die, but I'm not gonna give up because I know what that feels like. And that sucked, and I'd rather be dead than feel like a quitter and a loser. So I'm just gonna keep pushing and it became a mantra. And the crazy thing is, it worked.

• 10:33Ed Mylett?

  It works.

• 10:34Speaker 03

  It worked. I won a marathon the day before I turned fifty, the whole thing, not just my age group.

• 10:39Ed Mylett?

  Jeez, eh eh, when you walked in, eh, I don't say this a lot in interviews, I really feel like I was meeting, not joking, I kinda like a brother. We're about the same size, we come from about the same place, um, our upbringing's similar, right? And yet, things have turned out, and I think success leaves clues. There's this great Chinese proverb that says, if you wanna know the road ahead, ask those coming back. And you and I both, I don't feel like I'm coming back yet, but you know what I mean.

• 11:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 11:08Ed Mylett?

  And I think you have something, I just wanna like, cut the crap, like, I wanna get to something that you knows true about you, I knows true, and I'm wondering if someone can develop it or they're born with it. Here's what it is. You, since you were a little boy, when I'm reading this book, you wanted to be somebody all your life, like, inside you, I wanna be somebody. I wanna be great, I wanna do something awesome with my life. I'm not like these people around me, right? You got that dog in you, right? Can that be developed, or do you and I have that? Do you know what I mean, right?

• 11:39Speaker 03

  I think you can develop it. I, I, eh, an example I use is, we were talking earlier about fear. And I was watching my middle son was playing baseball. Every time the pitcher threw the ball, he would step out of the batter's box like he was scared. So I said to him at the game, I go, buddy, if you have to stay in the box, it looks like you're scared. And he goes, I am. And it, it made me realize, like, I used to be that. I was scared. I, when I played football, I was a quarterback. I didn't wanna get tackled. At some point, though, in high school, while I was playing football, I was getting creamed on every, on every tackle and drill we were doing, I was running the ball. And the coach finally said to me, hey, num nuts, are you just gonna take hits on everything, or are you gonna run like you mean it? And whatever clicked to me the next time I ran the ball like I'm gonna run this guy over.

• 12:22Speaker 03

  And when I felt the what that did for my confidence, yeah, it hurt all those things. But like I would tell him, if you're gonna get hit in football, it's gonna hurt anyway. Why not deliver the hit and control the fear and and harness it for yourself? I know it's not gonna be easy. I know a lot of the things that I'm saying are easier said than done. But they have been done and I did them. But to your question, I was scared all the time as a kid. I talk about in the book going to the Somerville Boxing Club. Which by the way, isn't like the local Thai Bowl class and box aerobics. The heavyweight champion of the world was training in there. It was a boxing gym in its rawest, purest form. Intimidating. No one was, no one was like, oh buddy, come on in. It's twenty bucks a month. They were like, can you afford to pay? Cause if you couldn't afford to pay, it was free.

• 13:08Speaker 03

  And I went in there scared shitless and just kept going every day, sparring, getting better. The fear never went away. But what I did is like I said earlier, I just got comfortable with like, okay, I'm fucking, I'm fighting this guy. There's no sense in being scared. I'm gonna get punched in the face no matter what. In a fight, you're gonna get hit. And in life, you're gonna get hit. You're gonna get kicked in the ass. I was just telling you. All of the things that I've accomplished and by the way, when you're rattling off the things I've done like, I can't believe I did them. I'm like, I, I did that? There's still part of me that's like, I'm a drug addicted loser. I did these things. But through all those things, you come out and I'm like, wow, I did this. The book's coming out.

• 13:50Speaker 03

  The book was like a few months out. All the work was done and my wife gets diagnosed with cancer. And I would have given, I would have taken terminal cancer, given away every single thing I have to make my wife healthy in that moment. Thank God it was stage one. She's all good. She just had her last surgery this week. But the point is, a rich man has a million problems and a sick man has one. And the hard things in life never stop. So if you don't have resilience and the mindset that people like yourself have. You're gonna get chopped up. It never gets easy. You could be like, I sold my company for a billion dollars. Now what? Okay. Let someone get cancer and see how how much the money makes you feel better.

• 14:28Ed Mylett?

  This is such a blessed convo, bro, I have to tell you. So I I do the podcast a lot. We're like, I kind of just let people listen to me having a conversation. It's not so much of an interview. So it's got to tell you how right you are. And then I can't wait to start asking you about the opioids and the races too. Like, how do you win? A hundred and fifty five mile race. How are you the fastest dude in the world at over fifty in marathons? But the last week I was back in Boston.

• 14:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 14:51Ed Mylett?

  Actually, let's tell you this. Back in Boston, and I just had a day that was like, not a good one. Like, bunch of business stuff happened. A thing I thought was closing and exit didn't come through and isn't gonna happen and just horrendous day.

• 15:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 15:05Ed Mylett?

  And I'm like, this is hard. Like, and even at my age, I'm like, what am I doing? And I'm I'm in this hotel that I'm in. This is no joke. I'm in the middle of this like, this is really hard. I'm feeling bad for myself. I'm not exaggerating this, brother. I look out the window, swear to you this is true. And this little girl's walking up the steps into the hotel. And in like, kind of her pajamas, she's probably seven, eight years old. And almost all of her hair had fallen out. And her mother was walking behind her. And so I looked down at the little girl and she had clearly like a medical bracelet on. This little child, say, seven years old, clearly was fighting some form of cancer. And I thought, you idiot. This is hard compared to what?

• 15:50Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 15:50Ed Mylett?

  But in other way, not only just being that child, but even being the parent of that child. So whatever you're going through, it's like, you know, compared to what, right? Like, compared to what? And so it just really struck me that that was so profound what you just said, man. Like, it just pause in life and get perspective.

• 16:05Speaker 03

  That's one of the challenges with being a dad, man. You're only as happy as the saddest or sickest child. Very difficult, very difficult, man. When my kids are struggling, I have a, I have an adopted daughter. She's fifteen, she's Ethiopian. She struggles sometimes with being different, right? Because it's predominantly white, but we have some awesome black families in the neighborhood that are just incredible in, in Nashville. But it is very hard when she's, and she's not like coming to, you know, she's a teenager. She's not gonna be like, hey dad, listen to what's going on, but I can kind of decipher and man, when she's, when she's struggling, I'm struggling and I'll tell my wife like, I wanna go down there and smash everyone. She's like, you crazy?

• 16:40Ed Mylett?

  That makes you a good dad, by the way. There's a bunch of dads who aren't even there and don't care, so that's a credit to you.

• 16:45Speaker 03

  You're right.

• 16:45Ed Mylett?

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• 17:29Ed Mylett?

  Go to ro.co/milet to see if you qualify. That's R-O dot C-O slash Mylett to get started on Ro. For side effects of GLP-1 medications, including boxed warning, go to ro.co/safety, ro.co/safety. So when I, when I ended up buying the island, we had to do all of our outdoor decorating, and I spent a fortune in the first half of the place, and I'm like, I don't wanna do this anymore, but I want the best stuff. And that's where Wayfair came in. My wife wanted to get this new garden bed, and Wayfair was the place that offered the perfect solution. Wayfair also helps you create a home that stands up to real life with quality products, great value, and trusted reviews. Wayfair verified products are hand-vetted by product specialists. They use a ten-point quality inspection system. Here's what I can tell you, the stuff has lasted over time, it looks great, and I get compliments on it.

• 18:14Ed Mylett?

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• 18:46Speaker 04

  Wayfair, every style, every home.

• 18:48Ed Mylett?

  So let's go, let's go into the little bit of the story because I think people are going to be moved. So you end up, he's just a scrapper, you guys. He ends up playing college sports. He's not the biggest dude in the world. He's got success. Matriculates over to becoming in the kind of the trading world, the financial world. Now he's doing really well there. So he's found a way to win because that's what winners do, right? He finds a way. And I think a lot of times in life, you think, okay, I'm listening to all these podcasts. I don't come from a great family. I'm not successful. I, and then you convince yourself you are, right? And then all of a sudden, someone will relate to this today. You have a setback or you start behaving like where you came from and you're like, ah, I was just faking it for that little window. But I really am who I grew up with.

• 19:31Ed Mylett?

  And so all of a sudden, you kind of start to become who you grew up with a little bit in the sense that now you're drug addicted. Now you're doing opioids. What, how did that affect you? And then how did you break through it?

• 19:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, it destroyed me. It destroyed everything that I thought and believed about myself. It crept up on me. I was taking the pills every, you know, a couple of times a week, then quickly like every night. And then I was like so hung, feeling in the morning from taking drugs the night before that I'd take them in the morning. Once I realized that they would give me a little pick, pick me up in the morning. Then I was taking them in morning, lunch and after work I would. But I would always exercise and I always treated the drugs as like a reward in this like crazy system that I had in my brain. But even when I got my first job in finance, like I talk about in the book, the the guys are like kind of hazing me a little, which was crazy to me at the time. They're like screaming at me right this. You know, I'm writing the prices on the whiteboard as they're shouting them before electronic trading since like ninety six.

• 20:28Speaker 03

  And one of the guys throws a dry eraser at me and I just slapped him across the face and they fired me and I was like, oh, I couldn't control myself. I let my emotions get the better of me. But when that happened, some of the traders at Enron, the which was the behemoth in the market. The guy was like the Gordon Gekko, the head of trading there. He was the biggest commodities trader. He heard the story, loved it and like. Two days later, I had a job making twice as much money and now I had, he's my client. So that's when my. Career just went through the roof. Like I went from making forty grand when I slapped the guy to eighty grand the next week, which to me was a million.

• 21:04Ed Mylett?

  Yep.

• 21:05Speaker 03

  And then within a year I was making a million dollars, just like a drunk sailor and um. I mean, I was flying on the Concorde back and forth to London for canner. I ran all of European and Asian commodity sales and trading, which. In in that business on a trading desk, we were inter dealer brokers. So we were brokering trades between banks and and utilities. So you you can make a lot of money, but you're on the bottom of the totem pole in terms of Wall Street prestige. So in my mind, and this is how I've like kind of done my career, everything in my career and racing. I'd always look. What's the next level up? Like, what do I have to do to get to the next level? Because this is a good.

• 21:43Speaker 03

  Job, but this isn't a good career. If I lose two clients, no one's giving you another client. There's and there's only so many traders. So. At at the anxiety of of dealing with that pressure and the anxiety of thinking, oh, my God, I'm making so much money. What if I lose this money? And the anxiety of having it and losing it was a thousand times worse than never having it because I never had. I didn't know.

• 22:06Ed Mylett?

  That's right.

• 22:06Speaker 03

  What it was like to just spend money and not think about it. And um I had an ankle. Surgery in New York when I was around thirty. And from thirty to forty, I basic, once I took those drugs, I was like, no more anxiety, no more imposter syndrome, fraud complex. I was just confident.

• 22:24Ed Mylett?

  Really?

• 22:25Speaker 03

  And.

• 22:25Ed Mylett?

  So you attribute it to the drugs?

• 22:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, the drugs gave me this false sense of security. They made me think that I had all the charisma in the world. And to a certain extent, maybe people thought it was. I mean, I was irrational and crazy, but. In my, but it wasn't me and I I had to live with this. So I would push that down of like, you're a loser. No, no, no, I'm okay. I'm making money. It's it's good. I'm just like you were saying, I was faking my way through and I kept feeling like they're gonna eventually figure out that I'm an idiot and fire me or I'm gonna get run out of this job. I really believed that subconsciously.

• 23:00Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 23:00Speaker 03

  And it took probably until I was in my late forties where I would say to my wife, I'd get a deal done or something good would happen financially or professionally. I'd be like, yes, I'm like, oh, God, and I could never get a deal done like that again. She and I go, I gotta make this money last. And she's like, since I've known you, every time you get something good done, you think it's lucky. If you win a race, you think you will, no, all the competitors that showed up stink. There was always a reason. She's like, at some point, you should believe that like you actually have some acumen to do these things.

• 23:30Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 23:30Speaker 03

  And recently I've started to accept like, okay, maybe I'm okay at this. But I think to you, I I think though for people like you and I, I really believe this, it's a blessing and a curse.

• 23:41Ed Mylett?

  I do too.

• 23:41Speaker 03

  We can't really enjoy it as much as we should. We don't get to walk around like narcissistic idiots like, dude, I'm the best. Look at what I did. Because if we did, we wouldn't be grinding as hard. And I don't want to speak for you, but like I have no natural skills. I have no marketable skills. I just have what you're sitting right here. Hustle, grind, attitude. So I I I can't hold myself in that higher regard, but it's a curse in that I don't get to really enjoy it as much as I do. So but but I can't, I can't have one without the other.

• 24:08Ed Mylett?

  I know, I know. I think about this a lot because I I feel often to this day, which would surprise people in my audience, but I'm open about it. Like I'm still fluking it. And then I could lose it tomorrow. But I've asked a lot. I had Sebastian Maschalk, who has become a good buddy of mine, the comedian, say, hey, man, are you afraid you're gonna lose this? He goes, yeah, all the time. And I think that that's a sense of humility. He's confident that he's a great stand up and a great actor, but he's humble enough to know that this could go away.

• 24:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:35Ed Mylett?

  I've seen more people flame out. After short-term success than people could imagine.

• 24:41Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:41Ed Mylett?

  I mean, even in sales, guys that'll close a bunch of sales and they're like three weeks in Cabo. I'm like, what are you doing? Do you agree with me? You know what I mean? Or win a race and then not train for six months.

• 24:49Speaker 03

  Well, it's like when you see someone who sells their company for a hundred mil, two hundred mil, and then they're building something even more difficult, you know? And, and I know people that will be like, if I had that money, I'd drop social media, I'd move over here. But you're not gonna make that money because you don't have that mindset.

• 25:02Ed Mylett?

  You don't have that mindset.

• 25:03Speaker 03

  It's, it's very rare that you get one without the other.

• 25:05Ed Mylett?

  Do you, I, off the record, well, on the record, but off the, not on my questions. When you see a guy like, because as we're recording this, Tiger just went through.

• 25:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:14Ed Mylett?

  Something and it's probably pretty clear that he's developed some sort of, I mean, I hate to speak out of school.

• 25:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, I know, he's obviously addicted to drugs.

• 25:21Ed Mylett?

  He's, he's addicted, right?

• 25:23Speaker 03

  You can see the pictures of him.

• 25:24Ed Mylett?

  Yeah, right. He's certainly, and by the way, there's a part of me that has some empathy coming from a family of addiction, knowing, hey, this dude's had a hundred and fifty thousand back and knee surgeries and these things do feel good for some people when they take them. And so, you know, he may have sort of just developed this for pain in the beginning. So I have empathy for him at the same time.

• 25:42Speaker 03

  I'm sure he's in a ton of pain.

• 25:43Ed Mylett?

  But if you, if someone was listening to this and they've developed some sort of an addiction in their life, their addiction could be worry. Their addiction could be drugs, porn. It could be gambling, it could be alcohol. It could be their addiction to not believing in themselves, whatever it is. But if Tiger walked in here right and everybody else, what would you say to them about breaking that cycle of addiction?

• 26:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, I would say to any, well, I would say to anyone who thinks they're gonna help him, like, there's only one person that's helping Tiger, that's him. But it has to come from within. You, you know, it's, it's a, it's a recovery saying, but you just get sick and tired of feeling sick and tired. He's got a bad deal in that he's got a lot of injuries. But for what it's worth, he can't, he, he's obviously abusing drugs. But I'm sure he's telling himself he needs them. But I think that he's not as deep in a hole as others would think like if you're walking around with two single pills in your pocket like that isn't like an addiction that you're like, oh, my God, like if he had fifty fentanyl pills, I'd be like, yeah, he's deep in this, but two pills like, I mean, that's that for a drug addict, that ain't gonna move the needle.

• 26:46Ed Mylett?

  But you don't know how many he took.

• 26:48Speaker 03

  Right.

• 26:48Ed Mylett?

  That were in the pocket before that.

• 26:49Speaker 03

  Right, but if he took eight and he had ten, he would have taken them all.

• 26:51Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 26:52Speaker 03

  So that's what I'm thinking is that if he's carrying around two, he probably thinks two will offer some relief. He it might not be that deep.

• 26:58Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 26:59Speaker 03

  And it can be fixed, but there's, there's only one way to to do this, and that's to walk through the fire, or you're just gonna keep burning slowly. It it's getting sober was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. Nothing in the book even comes close, including my childhood, to dealing with that addiction. Your brain is so conditioned to want and need this that you can't fathom a life without it, but it's like it's it's like the Gobi March race or any other difficult challenge. You just have to start the journey. It's like if you see someone overweight and they start to see a little bit of progress, they can gain momentum. It starts to get a little bit easier, the ball's rolling downhill. It's the same thing with recovery, just get one day of sobriety, don't worry about the next day.

• 27:39Ed Mylett?

  Yep.

• 27:40Speaker 03

  Cause you get one and then you're like, ah, I did one, I bet you I can get another one. And it's like anything in life, you you have to build some confidence in yourself. But the first rep, the first step is always so hard.

• 27:51Ed Mylett?

  Yep. By the way, my audience, because they know my work's gonna say that's the power of one more, the one more day.

• 27:56Speaker 03

  Yes, yes.

• 27:57Ed Mylett?

  One decision, one day at a time. I think a lot of times people think like, oh, success is this huge mountain I gotta climb. But I've had enough people, and that's why I want to listen. Why are you here today? One, once I read your story, I was like, oh, my gosh, right? Like with your upbringing and the opioid addiction and you were a traitor and this and that. But the re the reason you are here is where we're gonna go now for me. I'm like, okay, this dude is a world class athlete, right? And it developed late in life. You were a good athlete, you're five ten, you played college sports, but there's, there's nothing about you that would say this dude's gonna be running mega ultra marathons, a hundred and fifty miles, and he's gonna be the fastest dude in the world.

• 28:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:37Ed Mylett?

  Like, so everyone's buckle in here now because you don't know at what point in your life you become great at something finally, like great, like you're a good athlete, really good athlete, you're very good in business, but there were better business dudes.

• 28:51Speaker 03

  Hundred percent.

• 28:52Ed Mylett?

  Guys making more money. But at this, you found something, you're like, this is my gem. Which crazy is, I can't find any evidence in the book that there was a lot of preparation physically for this.

• 29:03Speaker 03

  No.

• 29:03Ed Mylett?

  So how do you start, let's start, how does a dude go, yeah, I'm gonna start running marathons? Like, what happened?

• 29:09Speaker 03

  I didn't. I was like, I'm gonna get sober and I'm going to like, run every single day to get these drugs out of my system. Even though I wanna die. I mean, I was running and sweating and freezing and like, I'd go through a hundred different like, ecosystems. Although I'm running in Central Park, I'd feel like I've run on the top of a mountain, down in Death Valley. Like, my body was just in chaos mode. So part of it was penance, like, I'm gonna run until I die. And I just wanted to get away from the pain. And the, and there was part of me that was like, I'm running, cuz when I'm running for ninety minutes, at least a day, I'm not thinking about getting high. I'm thinking about one thing, getting this over with. When people are like, did you get a runner's high? I'm like, yeah, every single time, as soon as I stopped. I was like, yes, I did it.

• 29:53Speaker 03

  Um, but I didn't have any designs on winning anything. I was like, I'm just going to run and get sober. And then I started to enter some races, because nothing keeps you honest like a competition. Just races in Central Park, there's races every weekend for people in New York. It's the best place to be a runner in the world. Cuz you, they have everything you need. And I would just enter racing, I mean, dude, if I was in the top twenty in my age group, I'd be like, wow, look at, shall I run? I'd tell my wife, look, I ran under seven minute mile in this one mile. I would end up running a marathon at five thirty, five thirty nine per mile for twenty-six, which at the time seemed crazy. But you can't beat the guy who was willing to die to win. And as I started to get a little bit of positive reinforcement in terms of the results and seeing the improvement.

• 30:37Speaker 03

  So I was running, then my legs started bothering me, so I bought a bike. I didn't know anything. But I was like, oh, these guys, there was a guy in my office who was like, talking about he's a great bike rider. And I was like, I'm gonna get a bike, and these guys are really good, I'll try to ride with them. And when I rode with them, I was like, either these guys stink, or I'm pretty good at bike riding. But I'm like, I, I'm not nearly as far down as I thought I was. I mean, it was probably a combination of both. But I started riding, like, I mean, I end up training with Lance Armstrong. We did a friggin' race together on the same team, like, I, I did crazy things.

• 31:09Ed Mylett?

  Are you hearing you?

• 31:10Speaker 03

  I know, it's great.

• 31:11Ed Mylett?

  Really, like, I know when you write a book, you write a book, you, you kind of almost forget.

• 31:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:15Ed Mylett?

  Like, are you hearing you?

• 31:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:17Ed Mylett?

  You, bro, like- Let's just unpack a couple of things here really quick. There's such a huge lesson in how you ended up doing this. Napoleon Hill in Think and Grow Rich, I've morphed it into my own thing, but I teach this. He says, if you can survive temporary pain, on the other side of that pain, you get introduced to your other self. And I, when I speak, I'm gonna say it today when I speak, I'm a big believer that God gives you access to parts of yourself you never knew about. When you go through pain, like my speaking ability on stage was developed because I had to learn to talk to my dad when he was drunk.

• 31:51Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:51Ed Mylett?

  And I didn't know at the time, but God was saying, if you'll survive this time in your life, you're gonna unveil a gift of yours.

• 31:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:57Ed Mylett?

  And so a lot of times, everyone listening or watching, it may be the pain you're going through and how you get out of that pain. There could be a revelation to you of a new talent, a new gift, a new relationship. You're one decision away from changing your life.

• 32:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:10Ed Mylett?

  For you, the catalyst of all, the reason you're sitting here was the decision to get sober is what it sounds like to me.

• 32:17Speaker 03

  A hundred percent.

• 32:18Ed Mylett?

  Isn't that bizarre that the sobriety decision ends up introducing you to this? You weren't a runner?

• 32:23Speaker 03

  No.

• 32:24Ed Mylett?

  You were not a runner, bro, and now you're the fastest dude in the world.

• 32:28Speaker 03

  Well, it's a combination of other people start to slow down who might have had running success.

• 32:32Ed Mylett?

  Stop it, don't be humble. You did not grow up on the track team, you did not run college cross country or track.

• 32:38Speaker 03

  Didn't know anything about it.

• 32:39Ed Mylett?

  You weren't running marathons in your twenties, you weren't doing any of this stuff, and now you're the fastest man in the world, over 50 years old.

• 32:45Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:45Ed Mylett?

  Like, just let that soak in. And it happened because you were a drug addict.

• 32:49Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 32:49Ed Mylett?

  And got sober. That's nuts.

• 32:51Speaker 03

  Well, I always say that like the hardest things in your life are where all the gifts are found. And I'd like slapping the guy in the face, like, I was like, oh my God, I've lost my job, I'm screwed, I'm gonna have to go home. I didn't have like two nickels to rub together, I didn't have like a nest egg. I was making money, paying the bills, I barely had enough to pay my rent and student loans. And then I had like maybe a hundred dollars left over for the month. Building up credit card debt, just believing something's gonna happen and I'm gonna make money, but I had no roadmap. No one was like, oh yeah, once you, once things start to work, you'll make a load of money, it will happen quickly. You know, so I I was just like having blind faith and the same thing with the running. I was just running and running and like training, but I never I've never identified myself as a runner.

• 33:35Speaker 03

  I was like, I'm just like, I'm exercising. And and and even like in the in Eastbound and Down, that Kenny Powers TV show, when the guy's like, oh, I do triathlons. And he said, uh, do you do triathlons? And the guy goes, no, man, I play real sports. I'm not trying to be the best at exercising, which always makes me laugh, because then I always say like, yeah, I'm the best exerciser in the world. But the point is, I I didn't, I I was toiling in darkness and anonymity for so many years. And then all of a sudden, I started to win a couple bigger races, the Malibu Half Marathon. My times just kept getting faster and faster. But to your point about not knowing anything about running, I didn't even have a coach. I worked my way down to a two thirty three marathon and won a handful of races without ever having a coach or a structured training plan.

• 34:19Speaker 03

  All I did was run a minimum of ten miles a day in the hills in Malibu. It's funny, because Reggie Miller gave me a quote for the book, and I'd see him on his mountain bike. We'd be the only two people out in this like desert looking mountain. And we'd be riding, he'd be riding up the hill, I'd be running, you know, you're going about the same speed up, you know, on a mountain bike. And we start, we just struck up a friendship and people like, how do you know Reggie? I'm like, to be honest with you, the only time I see him is when we're training. And then he would, then he gave me an awesome quote for the book. But I I was just there working and working and not having a goal of winning races. It's just, I just worked so hard that they couldn't deny that I was better than that, that I was faster than most people.

• 34:59Ed Mylett?

  What, so, yeah, but then you do decide to start, you want to win.

• 35:02Speaker 03

  Then I did, once I get a taste for that, then I'm like, what's next? I start looking at every race, I'm like, you know, I'm looking for the races that don't have prize money, because those attract like real pros. And like, I'm not a professional runner. I mean, a professional runner is running like two, under two oh five, right? I'm running two, two twenty eight. Um, so I start looking at all the local races that don't have a that don't have a prize person. I'm like, I just start showing up at races and winning. And I won a big one in um two thousand and nineteen, nineteen or twenty, right before covid at the Pasadena half marathon at the Rose Bowl. And it was like eight thousand people and it's winding through Pasadena. I'm like, holy shit, I'm leading. There's a motorcycle in front of me. And I turn and come into the Rose Bowl. And you know, there's probably like a hundred people in there, but it's finishing

• 35:44Speaker 03

  in the Rose Bowl on the field, live on the news. And the announcer like, here he comes, he's doing a, oh, my God, he's forty eight years old.

• 35:52Ed Mylett?

  That's so crazy.

• 35:53Speaker 03

  That's crazy.

• 35:54Ed Mylett?

  Come on. So what point when you're doing a marathon, or an ultra marathon, or an Ironman? There's a point, I think, I've never done them, so I'm speculating. But there's a point where like, the quit question must come up.

• 36:08Speaker 03

  Every second, every step of the way, I'm thinking of like, almost like in real time, looking at all the systems checks, like on a, like a fighter pilot, looking at all the monitors, like, how's the oil pressure, like the whole, I'm evaluating myself every step of the way. And early in the marathon, I'm like, all right, am I going too high? Let me check the pace. I want you got to really manage the effort. And marathon takes a lot of experience. Because you can easily go a step too fast for the first few miles and end up like walking to the finish line. And I've never had to walk, but I have like blown myself up in some races, a big one in Berlin, where I friggin blew an easy win there. Um, but the whole time, I'm wrestling with that thought of like, oh, my ankles, I tweaked

• 36:51Speaker 03

  my ankle, should I stop? The whole time, this is like this, the the difference in, as you get more experience is the voice that's telling you to quit becomes smaller and smaller. When you first do a race, you're like, this is really hard. I don't know if we can do it. And this guy's like, you can do it. But now the two voices in my head is like, one's like this huge alpha fucking lion, and the other one is like a chihuahua, like, oh, he should stop. And this one's like.

• 37:15Ed Mylett?

  But you're aware there's two voices.

• 37:16Speaker 03

  Hundred percent.

• 37:17Ed Mylett?

  This is important.

• 37:18Speaker 03

  Soon as I hear those self doubt or feel that self doubt, I'm like, what the F is wrong with you? Everything good in your life has come from grinding. Nothing good happened when I took the easy road.

• 37:29Ed Mylett?

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• 38:14Ed Mylett?

  the Quince app for app-exclusive offers, or go to quince.com/ed for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK, too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E dot com slash ed. So you know, I've been trying to take my health and my morning routine to the next level, and I used to do a whole bunch of different stuff, tons of different supplements, and then I found all-in-one in a drink with IM-8. IM-8 is the way to simplify your supplement routine, finally, once and for all. 16 supplements replaced 90 ingredients across nine major organ systems in one drink. You can have all these supplements for $2.61 a day. I've changed my mornings. The whole IM-8 routine has changed my mornings.

• 38:57Ed Mylett?

  I feel great, and I bring energy to the entire day. Go to IM8health.com/ed10 right now, or click the link in the description and use code ED10 for a free welcome kit, five free travel sachets plus 10% off your order. That's code ED10 at IM8health.com/ed10. Code ED10 at IM8health.com/ed10. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Dude, I'm wondering right through a wall right now. What lie do you think most people believe about themselves that keeps them weak?

• 39:39Speaker 03

  They put limits on themselves. They think they can't do certain things like I'm here to tell you like you can do anything you wanna do. There's eh eh eh especially for sales guys. I'm sure a lot of sales guys watch your watch your content, right? And I would tell you this, if you're just a sales guy and you I know my product really well and I'm gonna buy the guy a steak dinner like no one gives a about that like I will pay you to not take me out. Just tell me what you're gonna do for me.

• 40:01Ed Mylett?

  Yep.

• 40:02Speaker 03

  However, if you can be interesting. Every sales guy will have a handful of clients, right? Some of those clients are gonna be into things that you might be into eh it might be golf. Be a scratch golfer like have something that you're special at. You could be a nerd. Maybe you're into Dungeons and Dragons. One of those people you're selling to could be the biggest Dungeons and Dragon dweeb in the world. Tell that guy you know everything Dungeons and Dragons, but you have to have something unique and something differentiating yourself from other salespeople and it's not just that you know the product the best and you get the best prices like. There's been many times in my life where I'm like, I don't even care what the price is. I just don't wanna deal with you. Or I like you so much. I want you to make some money. Just tell me what the right price is and make sure you're making some money on it, right?

• 40:47Speaker 03

  If you like the guy selling you something, guy selling me a diamond ring. I'm like, look, I don't know anything about diamonds. Do me a favor. Don't embarrass me in two months when I bump into a buddy who knows diamonds and I'm like, this is the ring I got. What's the deal look like? I said, I like you, so build in some profit, but don't get rich off me like, right? Get me a little bit over over time. Don't get me all at once.

• 41:08Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 41:08Speaker 03

  And it's like. Same thing with car dealers. I'm like, buddy, make some money, but don't make me the sucker of the month.

• 41:14Ed Mylett?

  Right. That's exactly how I feel. I want you to make some money, but don't make it all in the first one. How do you know? Okay, so I thought of you. I'm like, this is kind of my version of Goggins a little bit. You are and um. Goggins has been on the show. I love David and we speak at probably three events a year together. So I not only know Goggins, I know David.

• 41:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 41:36Ed Mylett?

  He's a wonderful man. Most people don't know David's actually a really kind, good person and a good friend and uh. In fact, I saw versions of him like at his birthday that he's just, he's just a, he's actually a really sweet, good man, which is completely contradictory to stay hard, but hard's in the name of your book too. But one of the things, so having said all that, someone that I admire very much, David. Sometimes I worry about my friend there that he's addicted to pain.

• 42:05Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:05Ed Mylett?

  More than even growth. Sometimes I say that with love and respect and admiration.

• 42:09Speaker 03

  I get that a lot.

• 42:10Ed Mylett?

  What about you? And what about that concept? There are some people that do grind forever.

• 42:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:15Ed Mylett?

  Because they've become addicted to grinding and pain and not just the growth and the reward of it.

• 42:21Speaker 03

  I got you. I know exactly what you're saying. And to the people that say like, you traded one addiction for another. I say, yes. One addiction had me suicidal and feeling like a loser. And the other addiction has me sitting here talking to you about my book. I have four children, like David, we, we have a lot of similarities, but we have some major differences, right? Like I, I live with my four children, like they watch everything I do. I can't be, and I, I can't be hard all the time. Like there has to be a balance with the things that I'm doing too, right? Like I, I have a, I have a job, like I, I interact with people all the time.

• 42:57Speaker 03

  And it's funny when I meet people who only know me through like the book or, or podcasts, similar reaction, they're like, oh, you, you seem much more relaxed and sensible. I'm like, no one is a, I don't know what perception I'm putting out there. Like a lot of times I'll say to my wife, I'm like, I think these people think I'm someone that I'm not. It's like a little bit unsettling at times because I'm like, I think they're expecting me to like come in and like start punching people or something. I'm like, I genuinely like love people. I'm like, a lot of it is a defense mechanism. If I'm super aggressive, maybe people won't like get too close to like hurt my feelings.

• 43:30Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 43:30Speaker 03

  Which, yeah, of course. I mean, I'm, I'm super sensitive, so much so that I'm like, let me, I, I gotta tell you about all my weaknesses before you find out about them. So that was part of the book is like, here's all the mistakes I made.

• 43:43Ed Mylett?

  You do do a lot of that in the book.

• 43:44Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, a lot of it is like my own form of therapy. It's like, these are the worst thing that's ever happened to me. And the only way I can get comfortable with them is just to talk about them. And like in the book, I talk about in high school, I'm playing quarterback, last game of the season. We get, we, we, we end up tying the game, but we should be winning and I'm, I'm not playing well. And all of a sudden they hear a crowd, right? Oh, it sucks. Right. Dude, I was suicidal for like three months. I was like, I I'm gonna kill myself. I can't believe that the whole crowd was chanting, I suck. But to an eighteen year old brain that doesn't have a lifetime of experience, that to me was like, I can't believe, they really think I suck. Like, I didn't think I sucked. I wasn't playing good, but I suck. And what it was, it was probably a couple of and then everyone was like, ha, ha, let's do this.

• 44:29Speaker 03

  Not realizing like the damage that it did to me at the time. I mean, now I can laugh about it, but man, that really hurt my feelings at the time.

• 44:36Ed Mylett?

  You're making me think, you know, I have this debate often with Andy Frisella, who's my business partner and Arite, my coaching program.

• 44:43Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, I like that.

• 44:44Ed Mylett?

  And and Tim Grover's a great friend. We debate something together often. And John Gordon's a friend who's take kind of the other side. And so these debates we have is to be successful, I think this will probably be an Instagram clip right here I'm about to ask you about. But in to be successful, do you leverage what good um what Grover would probably call the dark side? Leverage the dark side, meaning you're moving away from something. I'm gonna prove these people saying right out sucks wrong. I'm gonna prove my family wrong.

• 45:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 45:14Ed Mylett?

  I'm gonna move away from the pain of being not six foot three and whatever. So you leverage that pain, you leverage the dark side, right? That's one mechanism for motivation and inspiration. And that Ti- Tim believes that's something like what Jordan or Kobe would do or Brady or they would leverage that. And and then there's the other side, which is you could be chasing something instead of moving away. You're chasing the dream, the pleasure, they're leveraging how great it's gonna be when you cross the finish line to win. So there's these two polar opposite mechanisms that can drive us, right? Which do you use more of and which do you think is healthier and more effective?

• 45:52Speaker 03

  I use, I try not to let other losers impact my life, so I I have done a very good job of blocking out the like, I'm gonna prove them wrong. I'm like, I'm all I I you're already wrong, cuz anything you think negatively about me, you're wrong. I know I'm like a good person. I know I'm a good dad. So I'm chasing the validation of being like I did, like I'm chasing my own goals and and and. You know, it's like anyone who's talking bad about you or thinking negatively or trying to like hoping for the worst for you like those people have nothing going on in their lives. I'm not trying to appease or prove haters wrong because those people, anyone who's got time and energy to hate other people,

• 46:32Speaker 03

  they're losers. Like I genuinely am like, I feel bad for you. Like I wish I had enough time to scroll Instagram and leave terrible comments about people like, how bored are you? Like so some guys did it the other day. I had Oz Perlman on Oz the Mentalist and the guy wrote in the comment, can I curse here?

• 46:49Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 46:49Speaker 03

  The guy wrote, this loser. And I I assumed he was talking about Oz, but so my comment was like, fuck you dude, you're a loser. He wrote back like, this guy lied about selling books and then sent me a DM like, he did this, he did that. I go, buddy, do you realize how stupid you sound leaving a comment like that? I said, how about this? The next time you wanna talk about someone you don't know, leave three comments, super kind comments for strangers and watch how much better your life gets. By the end, the guy was like, yeah, you're right. I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that.

• 47:20Ed Mylett?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 47:20Speaker 03

  And he followed me too. I'm like, dude, if you're following me and talking to people like that, we have nothing in common.

• 47:26Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 47:26Speaker 03

  And I tell my kids that all the time. I say, you can't worry about the people that aren't those people. There are certain people that aren't gonna like you no matter what you do. They're not gonna like you because they're not you. You could walk on water and they're gonna tell you it's because you can't swim. Those people exist. So I'm always chasing like,

• 47:44Speaker 03

  again, I don't have all the answers. Some of it is a validation. I want people to like love me and think I'm great and I wanna love myself.

• 47:52Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 47:52Speaker 03

  But it's but I'm definitely more chasing the win than trying to like distract myself with the opinions of idiots. The people that love me want me to win.

• 48:02Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 48:02Speaker 03

  And they're happy when I win.

• 48:03Ed Mylett?

  You you have something. I'm always trying to like get to the bottom of it. I said earlier, you got that dog in you, like you wanna be somebody really bad. You also run pretty hot.

• 48:12Speaker 03

  Very.

• 48:12Ed Mylett?

  You're intense.

• 48:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 48:13Ed Mylett?

  And I think sometimes people lack certain elements of being successful and it's just invisible to them. They're just oblivious because it's not talked about a lot. So it's like, I don't know what I'm missing. It seems like I got them all dialed in. And one of them, if I'm being honest, like I've had 900 guests on the show, the real winners, they run a little hot. They walk a little faster, they talk a little faster. It's a blessing and a curse. You and I were talking about our UFC friends, like just speak to that just for a second, like you probably take for granted that you're that way. But do you know when you meet someone, be honest, who doesn't have that thing?

• 48:48Speaker 03

  Oh, my God, yeah. I was just talking to one of my business partners and he was asking, we represent a lot of scientists, doctors and thought leaders through my agency. And they're like, hey, this particular doctor, here's his credentials. I go, dude, he's a super nice guy, but he doesn't have it. I've spoken to him a few times and I'm like, something's missing here. I don't know what it is. It's not a bad thing. It's just like, I'm like, there's nothing that's magnetic about him. I'm not like, dude, tell me, what are your thoughts on NMN? What are your thoughts on peptides? Like I just, I'm just like, all right, if I get a cold, I'll give you a call. Like I don't, you know what I mean?

• 49:21Ed Mylett?

  What do you think it is?

• 49:23Speaker 03

  There's some sort of dynamic element of people that they just have. I used to think, and I was talking to my buddy, Rob Moore, who produces Andrew Huberman's podcast and he produces my podcast. And he's like, he's one of my most important friends. He really understands everything. For years I was like, I want to write a book. He's like, I wouldn't do it yet. Like you still have things to do. I don't know what it is. And he would always tell me, no, no, no. And even introducing me as a podcast guest for some of the big shows that he has relationships with. In particular, Rich Roll, which was the first big one I did. He's like, not yet. He's like, I don't know. We'll get there. And it was like years and I was so frustrated. I'm like, He knows these people. He could get me on. I know I have an interesting story to tell.

• 50:06Speaker 03

  But I took my time and I did it the way he suggested and and everything worked when it was supposed to work. But I would say to him like, tell Rich, like, tell him I'm really interesting. I have an interesting life. And he's like, I don't think that that's the selling point for you. He said, I think that the most important thing about you is you're interested in other people. He's like, you genuinely seem to be interested in everything. And it's true, like, even you could tell me you're into Dungeons and Dragons. I'm like, what the hell is that? Like, explain it to me. Like, what am I missing?

• 50:34Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 50:34Speaker 03

  I think of it as like a nerd game, but

• 50:36Ed Mylett?

  Yep.

• 50:36Speaker 03

  you know, the people into it are like, yeah, I don't, I don't care if it's a nerd game. And I, there's something about someone being confident, like, I don't care if you think it's a nerd game. It, I like it.

• 50:45Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 50:45Speaker 03

  Like, be yourself.

• 50:46Ed Mylett?

  Yeah, I, I'm with you a hundred percent. I, I think the it thing is, is like, I don't know if it's like laser focus and they, they have a different frequency about them. They vibrate a little bit differently. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but I know when I see it and I know when I don't.

• 50:59Speaker 03

  You know what I like to think? If, if, if we're neighbors and friends and I'm like, and, and again, this has to do with my, my upbringing, because my wife is like, when would that ever happen? I'm like, Ed, so and so is coming to my house to fight me. He's bringing his buddies. I need you to get over here.

• 51:15Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 51:15Speaker 03

  There are some friends that are gonna be like, I'll call the cops. And there's other friends that'll be like, I'll be right over with no questions asked. And my wife's like, no one's coming to fight you. I'm like, you never know. I wanna know who's gonna come and help me and who's gonna be hiding under the bed.

• 51:28Ed Mylett?

  Yeah, it's a perfect example, by the way, and they don't have to have all the info. Well, why or what? They're just there.

• 51:34Speaker 03

  Exactly. Like the scene from the town where he's like, I, I, you can't ask me any questions. We're gonna hurt some people. And the guy's like, whose car are we taking?

• 51:41Ed Mylett?

  It was exactly what I was just thinking.

• 51:42Speaker 03

  That's my, tho- those are the people that I grew up with in, in Boston, like.

• 51:46Ed Mylett?

  Same here. Maybe that's why I like you. Okay, let me ask you this. We don't have too much more time. This has been so good. I feel like it's flying by, by the way. But what's it feel like to win? Everyone listening to this is like, hey, I wanna run whatever my metaphorical races of my life. What's it like to win?

• 52:00Speaker 03

  Well, I, I, I'm afraid I'm gonna disappoint everyone because when I won the world championships in Chicago, I call my wife. By the way, I go to all the races by myself because it's business. Like, I don't take my wife on business trips, right? So, and I'm a maniac before. I'm very moody. I just need to be around. I go to the, whatever city it is, I rent the best hotel so I can be comfortable, relaxed. We're staying at the St. Regis in Chicago. Win the race, I get, I get finished, I look up the results like, yep, I won the age group. I call my wife, I'm like, I did it. I won the age group. And she's like, oh, great. Now, I had been trying to win my age group in all the major marathons, Boston, New York, Chicago, London, Berlin, and Tokyo. And I had won all except Berlin and London. So in Chicago, she's like, oh, my God, you did it. Great, great, great. I'm like, no, no, no, this was the world.

• 52:45Speaker 03

  This race was the world champion, the age group world championship. She's like, oh, my God, and starts to get emotional. She's like, how happy are you? I'm like, I feel just relieved. I'm just so glad it's over. Probably like selling your company and you're like, yeah, I'm happy I got the money, but there's like, almost like a bittersweet ending to like, there's something super rewarding and refreshing about being in the struggle. When I'm training for the race, I'm like, I have purpose. I'm progressing. I'm, I'm, I'm like, ready to go. And then it ends and you're like, okay, I did it. Yeah, I'm happy. I definitely happier than if I, if I lost. But there is a feeling of relief like, oh, thank God I can breathe again. I did it.

• 53:24Ed Mylett?

  Yes. By the way, one of the most honest, true answers of all time. Cause whatever successes I have or haven't had in my life, that's exactly how it feels.

• 53:32Speaker 03

  I wanna jump around and be like, I did it. Yes. But I'm like, I did it. It's kinda like a guy scoring a touchdown and just hands the ball to the ref. You're just like, yeah, I did it. I knew I could. I trained like this.

• 53:44Ed Mylett?

  It almost feels like you've been there before.

• 53:46Speaker 03

  I won this six months ago in the pissing down rain or in the snow in Nashville. Like I did, I, I've already suffered.

• 53:52Ed Mylett?

  Yeah, you did the suffering.

• 53:53Speaker 03

  Duty pageant.

• 53:54Ed Mylett?

  Yeah, by, by the way, that's why preparation matters so much. So Huberman, who you were talking about earlier, I just saw him on something not too long ago. And he actually said they've proved now by tracking dopamine, as I understand this in the brain. And that even in a race or in an achievement, that you're getting a greater dopamine hit during the pursuit. Than when you actually cross the finish line. And in fact, it dramatically falls off a cliff after you win. So you, you've actually described, by the way, which I like because sometimes people are like, it's the greatest thing in life in the world. And it, you know, there's been moments in my life where that's been true. But very rarely because I, you have, you're probably not gonna win if you don't expect to be there.

• 54:30Speaker 03

  That's right.

• 54:31Ed Mylett?

  And you were winning during that suffering of running in the rain. So good. It's such a great combo. Okay, last question and then we'll, I'm gonna promote the book one more time. Cause the book's like, I, I told you, I read it in a, in a day. And it's not short. I don't know. Is it 200 pages, 220, something like that? It's, by the way, the name of the book, you guys, is The Other Side of Hard, but I read the whole book.

• 54:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 54:51Ed Mylett?

  I didn't skim it. I read it because it was that good. But someone's listening to this today and they're like, oh my gosh, I'm listening to a dude who's done crazy things in his life.

• 55:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:01Ed Mylett?

  You're kind of like the Dos Equis man a little bit. You are. By the way.

• 55:04Speaker 03

  Best compliment anyone's ever given me.

• 55:06Ed Mylett?

  Well, the other thing too, for those of you that are on audio and not on a video, he's also ripped. So he's being really humble about the fact that, you know, he's 5'10" and I think he's probably 5'9 1/2. But, but, um, but he's ripped and, uh, and he, so he is a billboard of what he teaches, right? But someone's listening to this like, dude, I want to have in my life before it's over, I want to cross my finish line. And I'm kind of lost.

• 55:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 55:33Ed Mylett?

  Maybe I've even had a couple of losses lately. And I've just, I gotta get started doing something. What would your advice be? That's a hard question, but that's why I put it last. Like, what would your advice be to somebody says, look, man, I, I admire you. And I want at least a piece of my life to feel like I think what you're doing and what, what you feel.

• 55:51Speaker 03

  I tell everyone, keep showing up, keep going, meaning you, you have to take the first step. And you can't look for other people to give you external validation. You don't need cheerleaders. Cause and you don't need motivation. And it's again, sounds corny. I know everyone says you need discipline. Discipline is whispering in your ear at 5:00 AM when it's snowing out and you have to, you only have an hour to like get this work in. Get up and do it. No one, no, and guess what? If you don't do it, no one cares. And no one will care if you don't show up and do anything. But the person who, whose opinion you should be trying to like satisfy is your own. You know, if you're doing the work. So I wish there was an easy answer, but it's like, uh, Jaco's book, you know, taking extreme,

• 56:34Speaker 03

  extreme responsibility. You have to take extreme responsibility for yourself. You're only doing this once. Your physique, the way you take care of yourself, that's a byproduct of hard work. But that tells another person, everything they need to know about you. No one wants to do business with someone who comes in all disheveled and sloppy and they look like they don't. Care about themselves. Your mental and physical health is your number one responsibility in the world. It has to come before even your family, because if you don't take care of yourself, they're gonna take care of you. That's my biggest fear is that my children have to like worry about me. I wanna be like the pillar of strength until I can't do it anymore. And to me, that's like much later in life. And I want them to recognize that their dad was there.

• 57:17Speaker 03

  Showing up honoring himself and showing up with confidence and showing up like a dad is supposed to. Like that's my dad over there. If there's any problems, my dad's gonna settle it. And it's a it's not about being tough, but it's like taking responsibility for yourself in a way that looks like. Yeah, I I I care deeply about the things that are important to me and and there is no bigger. We all have that responsibility from the cradle to the grave. No one can tell you, Ed, to go work out today. No one can tell you what to eat for breakfast. If you wanna have pancakes with whipped cream and sugar, be my guest. But after a couple of days of that, you're gonna start to look like someone who eats like that. And to me, I'm like, this is the easiest win in the world. Take care of yourself.

• 57:58Ed Mylett?

  Hmm, I'm sorry, we're going one more. I'm I'm trying to pick it apart. That was such a great answer.

• 58:05Ed Mylett?

  You've mentioned your family and your kids a lot of times. I'm just curious. When you are at that quitting point, because I think this is a huge lesson in the race, do you flash to them?

• 58:13Speaker 03

  Of course.

• 58:14Ed Mylett?

  What do you think?

• 58:15Speaker 03

  I think I I again, I've made so many mistakes and and and. I'm far from a perfect dad. I get very um emotional and scream at people and like a monster. Who left his damn milk out? How many times I gotta tell you? Who left the garage open? So when I'm when I'm thinking about things like that, because to me, those are the easy wins. I have time to think this is happening. The way I behave in the next couple of minutes is gonna dictate a lot of how the rest of the week and month goes. And I love these kids, man. They're they're like they they they. If I've done anything right in my life with my children is making them proud. When I my daughter sometimes when she was just becoming a teenager would be like dad, you don't have to you don't have to drive me all the way to the front of the school. You can leave me over here. And I was like

• 59:00Speaker 03

  Tensei, if I get the impression that you're embarrassed of me, I will get out, hold your hand, walk you into the classroom and kiss you on the lips. Don't tell me. But my son, she doesn't do that anymore now because with the book, she's like dad, all my friends want to come over for a signed book. And my sons will be like I was dropping them at a party. My son said, dad, can you come in and meet uh meet Rashra's dad? And I was like, me to what? I said you could go like I you don't need my permit. He's like, no, no, the dad wants to meet you. And I was like, this is the greatest thing, like the greatest gift. Actually, you know who lives around the corner from me? It's funny dad's story. Alan Ri- Alan uh Richmond Reacher, who just beat up the guy.

• 59:38Ed Mylett?

  Just beat up the guy on the street.

• 59:39Speaker 03

  I saw him the next day at that thing and I'm like, Alan, you're my hero. I go, the restraint that you showed, you like that was the perfect dad moment. The guy's like attacking you in front of your children and you show restraint, show restraint. And then finally crack his ass, but don't hurt him. I was like, this is like how dad should behave. Buddy, please, don't do this. The kids don't stop. And then the guy's like, hey, this is what happened. Then Alan releases the video, his body cam, which thank God he had. It's like, ah buddy, that's not at all what happened. You completely instigated that shoved him off his motorcycle. Crazy.

• 1:00:14Ed Mylett?

  Yeah, well, most of their kids is caught not taught. And by the way, that is a great example of what he did right there. But I have to, I don't think enough people, when they're thinking of quitting or pushing, link their love for their family. Because if your love for your family is greater than your fear or the pain you're going through, that can be the leverage, the catalyst that keeps you to be keep pushing through. And I knew that's what you did during.

• 1:00:33Speaker 03

  When I was a kid, all I wanted was a normal family. I wanted my family to be the family I have now. So when I think about my children now, yeah, I can be a bit of a maniac with them, but it all comes from love and they know that. And it's like, I try not to spoil them. But they also like have way too many pairs of Air Jordan shoes and my wife will be like, "No more shoes!" And I'm like, because as a kid, that was my like validate. I was like, "I want to have nice shoes." So like I just, subconsciously, I like maybe spoil them a little bit.

• 1:01:00Ed Mylett?

  You've become the dad you didn't have, bro.

• 1:01:02Speaker 03

  That's exactly right. I've created the life that I dreamed I could have and I can't believe it's happened.

• 1:01:07Ed Mylett?

  I'm real happy for you.

• 1:01:08Speaker 03

  Thank you, brother. I appreciate you.

• 1:01:10Ed Mylett?

  This really was good.

• 1:01:11Speaker 03

  Thanks.

• 1:01:12Ed Mylett?

  You know it was too. You guys enjoy this today? This is what it's like to win, you guys. It's what it's like to change your life. The other side of hard, that's Ken Wright Out. Share today's episode, you guys. This was so good. This is the real stuff. God bless you. Max out.

• 1:01:28Ed Mylett?

  This is the Ed and Myron Show.

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