#241 ‒ Living intentionally, valuing time, prioritizing relationships, and more keys to a rich life | Ric Elias (Part 2)

Hey everyone. Welcome to the Drive Podcast. I'm your host Peter Attia. This podcast, my website and my weekly newsletter all focus on the goal of translating the science of longevity into something accessible for everyone. Our goal is to provide the best content in health and wellness, full stop, and we've assembled a great team of analysts to make this happen. If you enjoy this podcast, we've created a membership program that brings you far more in depth content. If you want to take your knowledge of this space to the next level, at the end of this episode, I'll explain what those benefits are. Or if you want to learn more now, head over to peterattiamd.com subscribe Now without further delay. Here's today's episode. My guest this week is Rick Elias. You may remember Rick as we released a podcast with Rick back In November of 2019, I think it was episode 79. We spoke at great length about his experience on Flight 1549, also known as the Miracle on the Hudson, in which his plane went down and was miraculously saved by Sully the pilot in the Hudson River. If you haven't yet listened to that interview, I recommend going back and doing so prior to this conversation. Because in this conversation we don't really repeat any of that amazing story, and I think that that story alone is worth the price of admission. In this episode, we talk about a bunch of things. We talk about what's been new in Rick's life since the last interview, which has been over three years. We talk about raising kids and how we should think about our relationship with them as they grow older. Talk about the importance of looking forward and not looking backward and how that ties into aging. In fact, there's a line that I use in the epilogue of my book that came directly from a discussion about this with Rick. Talk about the importance of true intentionality in how we live our lives and how we often don't really value our time if we think about it in relation to that. Talk about Rick's view on relationships and the impact that you can have on others. The importance of staying true to yourself and the importance of struggles and more. This conversation is a great follow up to the recent podcast with Bill Perkins. Both Bill and Rick have a lot of insights to share as we think about how we live our lives, how we live every day. And every time I speak with Rick, I learn something new and walk away with a new insight, something that I'm challenged by and something that I need to think about. As a reminder, Rick, Rick's the co founder and CEO of Red Ventures, a portfolio of digital companies and hosts his own podcast called Three Things with Rick Elias. So without further delay, please enjoy my follow up conversation with my dear friend Rick Elias. Rick, great to have you back and great to be spending time with you. Obviously we had dinner last night which was wonderful. So thanks for coming to Austin.

That was such a treat last night, getting to see you in full dad mode and beautiful family and great meal and lots of protein.

Indeed, lots of protein. So although we're in touch constantly, from the standpoint of the listeners, the last time they got to interact with you was probably almost exactly three years ago, 2019. Sometimes when I have folks back on, especially if it's a technical podcast, I kind of want to talk about. Okay, well, what's new information since that time? Well, this obviously isn't very technical. Hopefully folks remember a lot of the story that we talked about. But nevertheless, what do you think of as the highs and lows for you of the last three years? Because I know there have been both.

Gosh, Peter, go back to that time. And we had a specific conversation about leadership and we were talking about leaders, our only leaders in a time of crisis. And we had talked about how the last decade had been super benign and how do we show up in crisis. And then 60 days later, 90 days later, boom. Covid hits. So a lot changed. If you think about it, the last three years have been the most tumultuous three years, no matter where you are in the world, not in any one country. And then you layer that with lots and lots of changes. My kids have gone to college, my mother, which we talked a lot about in the podcast, and my father in law and my aunt, which was like a second moment, all passed in that window. Our business went aggressively into offense when the market changed because we saw some opportunities, we bought some very meaningful businesses and then everything kind of further imploded in one way. And then, you know, and now we're living in the middle of a war, in the middle of uncertainty and all of that. So the world like always keeps changing and surprising us. We tend to project kind of today's reality into the future, but it's always changing.

And how much of your even keel around all of these events, personal and professional, do you attribute to what happened in January of 2009? In terms of perspective, I mean, a lot.

I really, I don't have a lot of lows and I don't have a lot of high highs. I just, to me it's this understanding that this too shall pass and doing what you can in the moment when you can is all that you really can do. And if you don't tie yourself up to the outcome as much and you're just really trying to stay in the process, I'm able to navigate this in great part because of that experience.

One of the things we spoke about in the first podcast, that you always have these moments of podcasts that sort of stick with you. And that's probably true for a listener. It's certainly true for the person doing the interview. There were a handful of moments. One of them was this image of raising children is playing a game of tug of war that you eventually lose. Now you can't lose it immediately. You can't just say, ready, go, let go of the rope. But by the time they're off to college, they've pulled you over the line, metaphorically. At the time we had that discussion, you were still engaged in that tug of war that your kids were not yet in college. Now they are. I'm in the middle of that game, but I think about that constantly. Maybe start by retelling a little bit of that and explaining kind of if at all your thinking has evolved or what you've learned about that game in the last few years.

So that was probably the last meaningful lesson I got from my mom. She had onset of Alzheimer's, and we would have moments of that. And I came and I was having coffee with her and I asked her some advice about our daughter, who was plenty teenagerhood. So she looked at me and said, my son raising teenagers is a tug of war. And then there was this silence. And then she says that you ultimately must lose. And it is, like you said, such an insightful, all encompassing statement about parenting. And it's really the transition from really being, they'll always be your kid, but you will not always be their parent. And is that transition from no longer being their parent and maybe being more of a coach, maybe being more of an advisor, a friend, all of that, you will always treat them like your kids. So in our example, we're on the other side of this. I don't think of myself anymore as, you know, the parent. I will always be that, but I'm not the parent. So the conversations are very different. And I love it. There have been times where both of our kids have looked at us and said, I really appreciate your opinion, but this is what I'm choosing to do. And to me, that's a sign of really good kind of sense of your own decisions. And we disagree with them. But it is good to see them in their journey of adulting, now on their own. Yeah.

I don't know why I'm not looking forward to it, but it's one of those things that, you know, is healthy, good, important, but, you know.

But have you noticed a difference in teenagerhood and how they start pushing away?

Oh, yeah.

And I've always believed that the reason why teenagerhoods, teenagers are such a pain is so that you don't miss them when they leave. And I tell you, we love our kids and we're lucky that our kids love us back, but we high fived each other when we dropped them off. We did not cry. We were like, you know what? They're ready. We're ready and empty. Nesting. It's a beautiful thing. You know, you still talk to them all the time and you still see them, them and all that. Then the funny part is that they're doing the same things that drove you crazy. You just don't see it. So it doesn't feel as intense.

So let's talk a little bit about. Well, I want to bring up something that happened kind of recently over the summer that I thought was spectacular. So early summer, you called me and said, hey, I'm having a get together in July, a couple of days and I'm inviting. You gave me a bunch of details, none of which meant anything to me. Right. What I took away from it was you wanted me to come out for a couple of days to your home, and there was going to be a bunch of other guys there, at least one of whom I knew, but most of whom I did not. And you prefaced it by saying, look, I know it's a big ask. I know how much you hate to travel. I know I had just come back from travel and I was just leaving the next day I would have to fly back and then hop right on a plane. But you really urged me to come. And interestingly, I thought it was a birthday and I sort of committed that I would think about it and then talked about it with my wife and said, you know, I think this is special to Rick. I'm going to go because I have a feeling it's one of those things where I'll spend the entire flight there kicking myself for going, but if I don't go, I suspect months later I'll kick myself for not going. So there's an asymmetry and regret.

Yeah. Yeah.

So I ended up going. And it had nothing to do with your birthday, which I think was like five months earlier. So I don't know where I got that from. Tell us about what was the motivation for that and why do you think that ended up being a really special time for. Were there 40 of us there or something?

About 30. Yeah.

30. Okay.

When you go back through your year and you go back and ask yourself what was truly memorable of the year, at least in my case, there may be eight or ten things that you will remember well into the future. And what is universal about those things is they're usually experiences and they're experiences with people that you have a deep connection with. So I have become very, very focused on creating experiences with people that I love as a way to create memorable moments of the year. Because I think that really is what we grow old with, is the memories. But the memories alone are not enough, is the memories with people. And the more that kind of the richer. So I wanted to experiment with the concept of let's create a friend Summit. Let's bring 30 super interesting friends. The uniqueness of it is everybody's been curated by me. Everybody there was a friend. So I think immediately everybody showed up with like, okay, if they're Rick's friends, I'm going to be open minded. I'm not there kind of doing like, what do you do? Who do you are? It's more around how do you know Rick? And then what is interesting about each other? You know, we had a lot of the same participants speak that we curated the. We didn't over orchestrate it, but we curated the agenda and then we had all sorts of things around, food and magician and all this other stuff. And the greatest thing happened, which is one of the things that I love most, is when my good friends become great friends. And I know for a fact, because I was with Rick Hendrick a week ago and we spent 15 minutes talking about you, about Matt Walker, about other people that you guys all have become friends. And what greater currency in life than spreading love through friendship? And it was a huge home run because everybody there, even those who came as a gift to me, I think left with the gift of new friends. And at our age, it's not easy to make good new friends. And it is something that we can do by leveraging our own friendships. And you've been good to me in this regard. I asked you when I heard your interview with Matt, I said, hey, would you introduce me? And we become dear, dear friends. Like, I talk to him all the time. So I don't know. It's all around this currency that friendships really matter in life. Memories, memorable moments, really matter. And how do you bring all that together?

I was surprised by the number of guys I walked away from that meeting with, who I couldn't wait to see again. And it's like, hey, when I'm in la, I'll give you a call. When you're in Austin, you give me a call. What did you learn during that summit? Because there was some structure to it as well, where there were folks that it was kind of like a bunch of fireside chats. Effectively. Did anything surprise you? Did you learn anything?

I learned don't schedule something like that right after a vacation, because I spent my whole vacation thinking about. I, in essence, kind of interview most people, including you. So that was a lesson, which is create some gap between something and your relaxing time. I learned that I think all of us, no matter what, need moments like that, where no matter who you are to the outside world, you know, you're the one and the same in that group. So, you know, there were professional athletes, there were governors, there were CEOs, there were true people like our, exceptional in their field, like you, but everybody there was the same. I think that this knows this essence of the Guard can be down from everybody. And yet, for me, I got to, like, hang out with 30 of my best friends and give lots of hugs and catch up and have moments and create memories. And, you know, relationships take a lot of effort. And that was a really efficient way to make huge deposits into a bunch of important accounts.

I'm blanking on his name. He was the older gentleman on the very last day that spoke.

Walter Green.

No, no, no, not Walter. I remember Walter.

Marshall Rausch.

No, Walter was amazing in his own right. And actually, Walter's someone I want to have on the podcast.

You should.

You know, it's really funny. We used to be neighbors in San Diego and didn't even know it.

Oh, my goodness.

Lived in the same neighborhood. Like, lived a mile from each other.

I love Walter Green. You know, Walter mentors 100 people like us, and we're all better because of it.

So that's someone on our hit list for podcast guest. So Marshall, who's. I don't know. The guy's 200 years old.

99, actually.

And I think from Marshall came one of the most interesting lessons that you drew out. And it's a lesson about looking forward versus looking backward and how that ties to age. Do you want to recount that story?

Yeah. So I've known Marshall about 20 years. I've had, I don't know, a hundred lunches With Marshall. So when I met him, he was probably 81, 82, and he was still driving. And he'll come in. And there was something about Marshall. There is something about Marshall that is incredibly appealing and attractive. It is that every time you see him, once a month, every other month, he has a list of things that he has learned that he wants to talk about. He has ideas about things he wants to do. He's constantly evolving and thinking. And what I've learned from Marshall is that your age really can be told by what you think about aging. Of our spirit, not of our bodies, not of our mind, but of our spirit. It's really about which mirror you're using. Are you using the rear view mirror or the windshield? I told a story there, right? Where he's, like, completely worried about one of his kids and really thinking about giving them a tough lesson because it is time, and he's asking for my opinion. I said, marshall, how old is your son? And he goes, 72. So it was a point of he never stopped thinking in doing that. And that's how he leaves. He turns 100 in February, and we're gonna do something super special, I hope.

The other story I like about him was, I think when he was 96, he came to you with a pretty serious business idea. And it was really predicated on trends over the next 10 years.

Correct.

And it was like, look, today, this isn't necessarily an enormous opportunity, but here's all the data for why ten years from now. This is a home run. We need to act now and make sure we build this business. And you're sort of thinking you're 96 years old. Why are you thinking about a business opportunity that's going to mushroom in the next 10 years?

He was a senator for North Carolina for 26 years. There's a highway named after him. His uniqueness. He's Jewish, but he made all his money selling Christmas ornaments. All the things that are so unique about him. And he's incredibly close to his kids and his grandkids, and he sees the world so clearly. Even when you talk about current events and politics today, he has a wisdom about. He literally played basketball at Duke in 1939, I believe he went to World War II, this guy, and all of that. And he has had tremendous hardships. He lost his wife, he's lost some kids. And the dignity by which he handles it is just distilled in the wisdom of life that I find super attractive, I really think.

And again, this is one of those. There's the soft Science. And there's the hard science. I spend most of my life thinking about the hard science of living longer. The things that we can measure, the metrics we can measure, the biomarkers we can measure, how we can predicate our assumptions of risk based on X, Y and z. But there's simply no question that there are these soft metrics that we can't quantify, but they must matter. And I look at my dad as an example of this. So my dad, who is 85 years old, not the healthiest guy in the world, but he has outlived everybody in his completely unhealthy family by more than two decades. This is a guy who came from a family where there were nine kids. One died as a child, the other seven have all died. Again, nobody came close to his longevity. And to be clear, he's not remotely a beacon of health, even as your dad, huh? No, no, no. Wouldn't listen to a thing I've said if my life depended on it. Never mind the fact that his life depends on it. And look, he probably doesn't have that many years left on this planet. But I deep down believe that his relatively modest longevity, again, relative to what I think his genetic capacity comes down to exactly this phenomenon is he never is looking back. He is planning. He is planning. He's got an idea. I mean, when he should have been retiring, he bought quarries. He bought swaths of undeveloped limestone land, you know, in his 60s, with the idea that this is going to be, you know, there will be a demand for high quality limestone, dolomite and granite in the next 30 years. And he's out there in a quarry every day, barely able to walk because his knees are so messed up. And I'm convinced to my greatest sadness, that one day he's going to fall on these rocks and smash his head or something. But the idea of just sitting around, that couldn't possibly occur to him, let alone relaxing. Now, again, we could talk about whether I think there's some. Maybe one should enjoy life a little bit more. But for him, I think enjoyment is building, is thinking about opportunity. Like, there's this niche for this market of limestone that nobody has really appreciated the value of, and that's where he's going to pour himself into. And it reminded me of that story with Marshall.

I've studied a lot of people that are finishing life well, 70s and 80s, I think we're all pretty predictable. We just got to find patterns that we relate to, that relate to us. And I have lots of friends, like, you know, Henry Kravis is a very, very good friend. Henry's in his mid to late 70s, and you know what? He is a complete stud. And I'm sure he's changed and evolved a lot as one of the great leaders in Wall Street. But you sit down with him, and he has more energy and more passion, and he's thinking more about the future. And I think there's something to be said by staying in the arena, even if you downshift, I think there's something that we say to. Your brain stays connected, you stay relevant. You don't feel old because you don't feel irrelevant.

Have you read Arthur Brooks's book From Strength to Strength?

I've read excerpts. I listened to your podcast. I talk to him. I don't know him as well as you do, but we know each other. I think a lot of what he says, it's around this and this crystallized intelligence that he talks about. I think it's interesting because I lack about 30 points of IQ vis a vis the two of you. Like, literally, I listen to the podcast and I'm like, all right, I gotta pause and go look at some stuff in the dictionary. But to me, the crystallized intelligence is more, to me, of the evolution of our brain and the aging of our brain, but a way that we stay productive for the tribe, for the society, more than a elevation of it is an evolutionary of notwithstanding. I thought your podcast with him was tremendous.

I really enjoyed speaking with Arthur. I enjoyed his book. I read it twice, and I really. It hit home a lot, because even though I'm not yet 50, there's simply no question I don't have the horsepower I had when I was 20 or 25, like, where I feel like I was really at my cerebral peak. And I think as he talked about and wrote about the transition from fluid to crystallized intelligence, it really gave me some comfort in accepting this transition. So that, to your point and why I brought this up is, yeah, I think it is important to stay on the field, but I also think it's important to understand that it's okay to move to a different position.

Well said. I think that replacing this notion of, like, I don't have the horsepower is redefining what that horsepower is that gives us continued feeling of growth. I think the importance of life is really not necessarily the looking forward is constantly growing. I think the day that you stop growing is the day you age.

I agree with that completely. And this kind of brings it back to what we talked about a minute ago, which is I mean, I am sad when I think about my kids not being little. And I'm not sure what that's about. But we talked about it very briefly at dinner yesterday because you got to see both my boys in complete action, which we're not shy about. We don't make any apology for the fact that they are high energy. We were hugging.

You were so physical. I really was. So reminded me of my relationship. But I also felt your joy and love.

What Jill and I often say to each other, you have to say this in the bad times. So yesterday they were well behaved. But there's equal number of times when, I mean, you'd think that they're psychotic. You can't believe how poorly they behave.

You know, like we've all been there, literally.

Jill will kill me for even telling this publicly. Like the other day she walked by, the youngest one, and out of nowhere he just took his pencil and stabbed her in the butt unprovoked. It's not like she said, go to your room. But in those moments I say, I know it can be really hard. If I could freeze time, I would. Which is a totally irrational thing to say. Why do you think that is? Did you feel that way when you and your kids were at this stage, which is you are their world. You're still Daddy, not Dad. I think this is an amazing stage and I feel fortunate to be going through it a little later in life when I think I can appreciate it. I think had I been presented with this 20 years earlier, I wouldn't have had the maturity to embrace it as much.

Maybe I think that's right. You may not have the same energy you would have had, but you have plenty. And especially. And I think that's trait that we have when we have kids younger or older. The great thing about having kids is we get to kind of almost relive life. And I think there's something very subconscious about rediscovering things or seeing things through their eyes that brings the child back in us. You know, I think that child is a safe place in all of our Personas. I also think that there's this notion of this is how we are relevant in the world. This is how we are going to stay here when we're no longer here. It's through them because a lot of us will live through them. And that's why we are so committed to it. And it's such a powerful job to have a responsibility that is heightened in every sense and the good and the bad. And the reality is that all the things that they're doing are just normally growth moments of their own brain development and all that good stuff. And we talked a lot about it the last time in the podcast, but I think we were over.

Parent Harry, the youngest, is obsessed with math right now. You know, he's five. He's starting to learn how to add. And the other day we were sitting there, he's sitting with me on the couch. Reece, three years older, is sitting at his desk doing some coloring. And he goes, you know, when I'm a hundred, Reece is going to be 103. And then he looks at me and he goes, how old are you going to be? Wait, 70? And I go, no, I wish, buddy. I'm going to be long dead when you're 100.

Oh, that's.

But if I were alive, I'd be, you know, 140, whatever. First of all, that's an amazing thought to me because I do think that kids today will quite easily be 100 years old. You know, today to make it to 100 right now is a pretty remarkable feat. You know, centenarians are exceedingly rare, about 0.004% of the population. I tend to think that kids that are born now will reach that level at a far greater frequency. And so it was a bit of a sobering thought. It's like I'm looking at this little, chubby, cute kid that I can't stop wanting to squeeze and hug and kiss and realizing he's gonna be a 100-year-old man one day and I'll be probably long gone. All of that stuff is sobering. I guess it brings me to the idea of how do you. I mean, you strike me as a person for whom a lot of purpose came from your kids. And so as your kids are older, do you feel less of that? And has that caused you to put more of your sense of purpose into something we'll talk about later, like philanthropy, which is also very important to you?

I'm very challenged by this notion of how do I help evolve our relationship into more of a coaching relationship in a way that I can be still their father, but also be a sounding board amongst many others. And this morning, I had a conversation with my son a lot around something he's dealing with. And I said, I'm going to talk to you as if you were a mentee of mine. And I gave him what I thought as an advice and said, you got to do whatever you want, but I want you to know that I am a resource for you. You're not alone in solving these problems. And just like you have other people. And I really enjoy kind of this morphing of the relationship. It's early for us, but by the way, I think that's why people enjoy grandkids so much. It's not that I can give them back when all that. Yeah, yeah, that kind of really matters. It's a chance to almost do it again, do it again with lower expectations of like, oh, is it reflecting on me as a parent? Or is it. All this stuff is just. We have this innate desire to perpetuate ourselves, and we do that through our kids.

Yeah. You've probably heard me talk about the centenarian decathlon. And for me, one of the greatest motivations personally, and I do find that for many of my patients, because we talk about this in such detail, I think it's true for them also is what they want to be able to do with offspring and more importantly, the children of their offspring. And you've probably seen me do this, but we do an exercise where you kind of build a timeline. You know, you put your age down and these are your kids, and then you start to estimate, you know, or bracket. My kids will likely have kids when they are this age, this age, this age. I will therefore be this age. And you don't need to spend too long doing this to come to the realization that the things that you want to be able to enjoy doing with your grandkids will range from the really extravagant, like, I want to take them on the greatest vacation. We're going to go to Egypt, and we're going to scale the great pyramids and go down the Nile. Okay, well, that's great. Alternatively, it's going to be the really mundane, like, I want to be able to play catch.

I wanted to share with you a story that I haven't shared yet, which is, after the plane crash a couple of weeks later, I was watching my daughter perform in kindergarten. It was a really important moment of the realization of, like, for now, this is my most important purpose, which is to really help my kids become adults. And it came full circle without me knowing it. I was at her graduation from high school. She's a sophomore now in college. And they're coming down and it was outside because of COVID and they're coming down this kind of hallway. And the same emotion that had not happened for, I don't know, 11 years happened. I started bawling uncontrollably as I saw her. I didn't expect it. It came out of nowhere. I'M not a crier. I'm not afraid to cry, but I'm not walking around. And it was a realization that I had lived to the moment where she had become her own person. And the graduation from high school was a lot more meaningful than just the graduation, at least in my experience. It was a realization that she can fly on her own now. It was a moment. It was a moment for me in that realization, but in also realizing that, okay, I now have more capacity to broaden purpose. I think we're all seeking purpose. So it's not like you finish it, it's just you evolve it. I was very grateful to have had that experience because seldomly in life do you get to see the end of the circle come back. It's usually a line that goes somewhere or nowhere.

When we last spoke, I think you talked a little bit about any follow up or interactions you've had with either the crew from that flight or Captain Sullenberger himself. What's the latest on that? I imagine that I don't remember how many people were on that flight. 100?

154. Plus the crew. 58. 158 total.

There's 158 of you that I'm sure some people have passed away due to natural causes since, but that's a very tight knit group, I'm guessing. Do you all collectively celebrate that anniversary together?

There's always something. And there's Facebook groups and all that stuff. I've been more on the fringe. I've participated in a couple things. It's just time. I got a lot of what I needed, especially at the time, from my closest friends and family. But you asked me at the last podcast because we were presenting him that award at the Points Guy event. Have I seen him enough? And why not? And I told you that I was planning to do something. Well, it is happening. I don't know if you know this, but the plane itself, which it's worth seeing because it is banged up like a plane will be banged up if it hit a wall at 150 some miles an hour. So it really is not the plane is a shell of. The plane sits in Charlotte. And for a bunch of different reasons. The old hangar and museum, we lost all the facilities. So the airport, they were going to move the plane to Dallas.

Wait, it ended up in Charlotte because that's where US Air was based out of. So just by total coincidence, in your backyard.

And then there was of risk that we were going to lose. And there's a bunch of other planes there but that's the anchor plane. So a number of us rally in the community.

Is that normal, by the way, after a plane wreck that I would have guessed that they normally scrap planes.

I think this one because they wanted to keep it. Right. And so a group of people in Charlotte rally and I made a donation with asking for the naming rights. So the thing that I'm going to do to honor Sully and the crew and perpetuate this notion, I was doing my job. Remember that statement is we're going to name the museum after him.

And the museum will be in Charlotte.

In Charlotte. So it will be the Sullenberger Aviation Museum of the Carolinas or something like that. But it will be his name. And I called him to ask for his permission, and he was interesting, hesitant at first. And then he called me back and I said, okay, let's do it. And the naming and all of that will happen in January.

So it'll be a big event, the 14th anniversary.

Yeah. And it'll be a beautiful day. But I wanted to find something that will outlast both of us as a way to honor his commitment to doing his craft and to saving our lives.

By this point in the podcast, I think most people, if they haven't familiarized themselves with this story, should probably go back and listen to that section of our podcast. Is the way I think you. You tell that story. This is probably the longest version you've told of it because obviously you have a TED Talk where you go through it in some detail, which is really moving. But I think also just the, you know, I'm still. So. Remember how I said from our first meeting, there are a couple of things that stand out. The other thing that really stands out from our first podcast, which is something you sort of said in almost passing, do you know what I'm about?

Say no.

I've shared this with you. But it's when the plane is coming down and you're going through. Once you realize there's about 10 seconds until you're going to die. You said a couple things. One, it's very calm. You weren't scared. You were sad. You're very sad. And you put your hand on your leg or on your other hand on your arm and said, I love you, as the last thing you said to yourself before you would have died.

Close my eyes.

And I just couldn't believe that. I was like, that's the last thing I'd ever think to say.

What would you have said?

I probably would have said nothing. I probably would have just been Very sad. And yeah, I don't think there would have been any gratitude or anything like that in me. Have you actually asked any of the other people on the flight what they did, said, thought in the last 10 seconds?

No, I haven't and I will because I think it would be interesting.

There's a whole book there.

Yeah, for sure. And remember that we had no suffering. I imagine if you're dying in some level of distress, your mind is in a very different place, coping.

But that's what makes this such an interesting quote unquote control experiment is, yeah, you weren't on fire.

And it's 90 seconds. A lot of people have near death experience that lasts a second or two seconds. I've reflected a lot, Peter, on the TED Talk was a moment in time. And it was all around, okay, here's kind of the three regrets I felt as the plane was coming down. And we talked a lot about them in the other podcast.

We should revisit them, by the way, just so that folks can see it all in one place.

So it was this notion that everything changes in an instant, so time really, really matters. It was this notion that relationships are at the core of the richness of life, but yet we spent a lot of time with our ego kind of leading the charge. And then this notion with around my kids, which is I wasn't living true to what I discovered was my true purpose at the time or my main, main purpose, which is seeing my kids. And it was the regret that I felt at the time of my look like death to had missed it, to have nothing being clear that that really was, I don't know, the map, the key to living a better life. As I reflect on all of that, what's interesting is nothing has really changed, but it's not around regrets say more, for example, instead of it being around. Everything changes in an instant. So live in the moment. It is that, but is wrapped around a notion of having true intentionality about how we live our life and true intentionality about how we live our life is a really big deep bucket that I spend lots and lots of time thinking about. It has a lot to do with time and the reality with time. And I've heard this and I love it is like the problem with time is the same problem that we have most things that are free, we don't value it. If we like had to get up and like really spend real money on time, I bet you we will behave differently. And the problem with time is, as we have learned about sleep, is you have to do a lot of things to extend your time. Some so that you're more productive the next day, like sleep and some like nutrition and exercise so that you have more time. Right? So a lot of what you are really trying to do is convince people that there are things they can do to have more quality, meaningful time. But it is a lot more than that. To me, to live with. Intentionality is around kind of combining a lot of things into where we spend our energy and what the things that we stop doing and how do we kind of reverse things that we don't want to do. So I really think that this notion of having complete intention is really at the core of living a more rich life. So I feel my life to be very rich because, for example, I have 242 weeks left until I turn 60. I have all these little exercises where I'll say, okay, what are my big intentions this week? Because at 60, I'm in a different energy level. I'm probably paying a bunch of physical debts back. There's a lot that will come back. And I live in chunks of my life with just great intention. It is because of that, because I realize that everything really is fleeting, but it's not just around time and time only. And that manifests itself in the second one. When you talked about relationships, what I realized is that, you know, a little bit of the event that we were talking about, I want to continue to meet new people that I can learn from. I am addicted to learning and growth. And the best way to do that is through other people. So the amount of energy I put into friendships, because it's not relationships, you know, the good news is when you're in business, you have a lot of deal friends. The key is how do you convert them into real friends? Who do you want to convert into real friends? And to be a real friend, talk about a skill to be learned, talk about it being a never ending journey. Now how do you approach that? So I'm really, really. I have an inordinate amount of great friends, more than most, because I spent the bulk of my time on that. If you go back to time, there's only three things you can do with it. You can waste it, which a lot of teenagers do. You can use it in things that are value and then you can invest it. There's nothing else you can do with time. So the ratio of what you do with those three components has a lot to do with it. So guys like you and I, at least we don't waste a lot of time. The Question is how much are you using it for things that gives you pleasure or things that you want to do and how much are you investing and that will ultimately continue to pay dividends in life. So if you look at your time, you'll know how much of that it is. And if you using too much in something at some point becomes wasteful, you may so relationships are super rich. And then the last thing is this notion of purpose is how do you expand that? So I spent a lot of time trying to continue to evolve the gift and not look at it as a moment in time, but as some level of a map into the future. And as I continue to age, what.

Do you think the next decade holds for you in terms of Red Ventures? So maybe give us a bit of an update on. Well, maybe again, remind people what Red Ventures is. It's not an easy thing to explain. It's not like we make a widget.

It's funny because I explained it in the last podcast three years ago differently than I'm going to explain it now. It really is basically a private equity platform of companies that we control. So instead of investing as a passive investor, we control a bunch of companies and we have about 17 companies. Those companies de facto is we don't own 100% of them, but we control all of them. And they're all over the place. They're in Europe, in Brazil. We're starting the first bank in puerto rico in 26 years. And then we own a bunch of brands in the U.S. mostly digital brands. We own services companies. So it's just really a platform of tech and data and digital and really, really strong culture and a purposeful place to work.

How many employees do you have now?

We are up to 4,500 employees.

When I came out to visit you for a business review circa 2014, 2015, how big were you then?

1200.

1200. Beautiful campus is still the same.

Still beautiful. It's just people are not going in as often. The world has really changed. Our relationship with work has really changed.

For better for both.

Like anything in life, everything has pros and cons. And I think Covid did a lot of good for society. I think Covid realized that this fixed way that we thought about our relationship with work didn't have to be and that those rules got established way early in the industrial age for control. And control is a false premise in every regard. But at the same time, I'll tell you my reflection on this and what I worry about a little bit and a little bit of a Different topic. But I think that one of the unique things about the US and you don't see this in a lot of other countries, having studied a lot of Latin American countries, is that the decade between 20 and 30 is a decade of true apprenticeship. And that all these companies and corporations and hospital systems, they're really training people into their second third of life. So you spend the first decade of your life, hopefully if you're lucky, you have good enough parents where you learn a lot, then school becomes a place you work, and then whatever your profession is, that third decade of life is incredibly important. And that's where you really built a lot of depth and learn on someone else's nickel and all this stuff. And I worry that we're going to look back in 10 years in the US with a loss of sense of competitiveness because a lot of these people coming into the workforce are getting a fraction of the tutoring and coaching and experiences and intuition that they would have had. And 30, 40 years from now, we would have lost a lot of our edge because we stopped investing in the people and their creativity and their skill.

Meaning that's a downside of not being in an immersive culture, at least for.

That segment or that age of the population. Now, I would argue that I think what we learn in Covid is flexibility is king and we should celebrate and look for flexibility. And we shouldn't be able to sacrifice raising kids if you're a working mother or working father or we don't have to travel crazy like we were traveling. So a lot of that is baked into changes in the rules of engagement. But this is all a moment in time. You know, if we go into a recession, some of these habits may return. I hope we never lose the flexibility we gain. I don't love going to work every day at the same time and leaving at the end of the day. I love having a lot more freedom. And I think most people do.

Do we know if. I mean, presumably there are certain jobs that work really well remotely versus not. And there are presumably certain types of people who work really well remotely versus not. I don't and haven't spent much time looking at any of this, but I imagine given the size of your company and the footprint of Red Ventures, do you have any insights into that?

I think there's two components to that. One is productivity, which is, at least in some functions, fairly easily measured. So we have lots of editors that write real content. They are as productive or more. They don't have to commute and do lots and Lots of things that are distracting in the office. There are some places in engineering where that is also true. Maybe some of the places in the back end engineering where you're not doing a lot of collaboration. And those people. Net Net, you would argue that remote, not hybrid, very different things, Net Net may be more positive. Now, the second side of that equation, I think being alone or being in your home every day has a real tax on mental health were it designed to be with others. And I don't think we know the real value or tax on that. Now, a lot of the other jobs, hybrid, in my opinion, where you're collaborating with people, where you're learning experientially, where you're building intuition, it's a healthier way to gain expertise on something.

Do you mean hybrid like you come in sometimes and you work remote sometimes?

There's a lot of things we do during the week that you don't need to be in a place. My hope is that ultimately work evolves into what are the things that require people to be together versus what are not. And then depending on where you are in your career and your proficiency, you have even more flexibility.

How long do you think you'll be doing Red Ventures as your quote, unquote day job versus working on some of the many things that seemingly are of just as much interest to you but are more on the nonprofit side?

I feel super healthy in great part thanks to you, literally. I feel like I've at least slowed down a lot of the aging, and I'm really grateful. So as long as I feel healthy. I love this perch. I don't. Back to the Marshall conversation. I don't intend to. I never want to replace happy with happier in anything in life. And I'm happy as can be, you know? Would it continue to evolve? Yes. Would it continue to change? And one of the big ahas in Covid, you know, Covid to me was unique in so many ways. One, I got to do something for a second time, which we usually don't do in life when something kind of goes away. Goes away. The fact that we got our kids home for like a year and a half, it was wonderful. But for me, Red Ventures will continue to evolve. But what will happen is a lot of our companies will gain independence. So instead of Red Ventures being one thing, we will find the right outcomes and marriages of a lot of our businesses with the right partners and allow those people that become CEOs of their own businesses and will create monetization and return for our investors. But our ability to stay private and stay independent and stay away from all the other stuff that public companies have to deal with. It's non negotiable. So I see Red Ventures in a bizarre way, returning to its roots in the next 25 years to a much simpler thing where most of our businesses will evolve out. We'll continue to buy businesses in the next 10 years, but my guess is when I turn 80, I'll have 15 people and we will be hoping to give all our money away.

Speaking of giving money away, you've recently signed the Giving Pledge?

Yeah, about a year and a half ago.

Tell us a bit about that. I mean, I think people have heard of the Giving Pledge, but what does it mean and what type of people can sign it and what are the implications of it?

It was not something that we did without a lot of trepidation. It's something that really Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett started. And it was around creating consciousness of the people that have had more luck than others in creating real wealth to create a commitment and responsibility that you will give at least 50% of that wealth back. That's what the pledge is about.

That's during your lifetime as well, correct?

Yeah. Or when you die, it doesn't matter. But you are committing. That's the pledge you sign. And there's hundreds of people that have signed it all over the world. Right. So it's a bit of a community too, where you learn how to give it in ways that reflect what you want to do and all of that. So there's real value to being part of the community.

Community.

When we first met, we had the privilege of having dinner in Omaha with Warren Buffett. And they were trying to convince people at the time our kids were still in high school. And we didn't want this burden because it does create negative energy around it. And it gives a lot of people.

Meaning because it makes public the amount of wealth that you have.

It's a threshold, which at the time we were private companies, so no one had known. But when the New York Times wrote an article and all this stuff, it kind of became public what it was. But it's just more I wanted to shelter them from anything negative that may come out of that. They were too young. So we waited until they went to college. So when they went to college, they called back and said, hey, you said, when your kids were going to college, you do it. And when we did, and we're grateful we did, but we were planning to do this anyway. And we do it more as a Pledge that hopefully others realize that this only works if it works for everybody. It doesn't work if it works only for a few. And putting it back into the system in the core, that's what you're hoping to do.

Did you ever hear the podcast I did with John Arnold?

I did not.

Okay, so definitely one you'll want to listen to. So John and Laura Arnold, who've also signed a giving pledge, are probably two of the most deliberate philanthropists I've ever met. John was, I think you could say, hands down the most successful energy trader in the history of energy trading. He was a trader at Enron right out of college and became their most successful trader. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, I think his personal book of business was generating a billion dollars a year for Enron, just his own personal trades. When Enron imploded, he was handed a severance check of something like $5 million. And he took every penny of it, put it into his fund, and went on a 10 year tear of unparalleled returns. Something like 30% per month. Okay, so at the time that John shut his fund down, which I think was 2011 or 2012, before the age of 40, he basically completely turned himself to what he's been doing for the last 10 years, which is just philanthropy, but doing it with a level of rigor and analytics. In other words, he's done something that I think is really interesting and highlights something really hard, which is it's actually not that easy to give away billions of dollars. I mean, if you want to do it intelligently, I mean, you can obviously give money to entities that build buildings, build a hospital, those things are great. But when you look at the sort of projects that John is interested in, it takes time. And I think John and his wife correctly came to the realization that they can't wait until they're 65 to start doing this. They will run out of time because they have too much money. How do you think about that balance? Because I know there are things that you are really committed to. Maybe we can talk about some of those things. The two that jump to mind, of course, are the children. I forget the exact name for undocumented kids who are not born here, but brought here young, educated here, and then can't work. And then of course, a lot of the disaster relief in Puerto Rico, but also just infrastructure and building up there. So let's talk a bit about these things.

So first, I really think that only governments have the muscle to really solve problems. And I think even people with the wealth of Bill and Melinda Gates have come to a lot of that conclusion. You can attack singular problems and maybe eradicate a disease or something like that if you have billions and billions of dollars, but through systemic issues. I think the role of any nonprofit is to gain momentum, to create a roadmap, to create the case for governments to really put real funding behind things or create the systemic changes to changes. I don't think that the illusion of, like, we're going to fix a real issue. To me, this is more around.

But there is something you or. And when I say you, I don't just mean you personally, but I mean there is something that the philanthropist can do that the government won't do, which is you can take a risk financially that a government can't do. You can demonstrate a proof of principle that, as you said, then becomes a template or roadmap for a policymaker to say, well, here's a pilot study that was done that demonstrated X, Y and Z. This was very high risk. We never would have done it. But, oh my God, look what we learned. This is now something that could be replicated at scale. And you bring in. In other words, the philanthropist can effectively function as the angel investor or the early stage vc and the government comes in as the PE investor.

And in that regard, I think bringing an entrepreneurial spirit and putting real business savviness behind it is really important. I think it was Jeff Bezos a long time ago, he said something around. In philanthropy, you're not really necessarily looking for the perfect business plan. If you're helping somebody, you're doing good. And that's a little of my approach, like do things that are good for the world and it's good for one person. Then you're doing something and trying to do it in scale and with purpose and all of that as it relates to what we're doing. Peter, you know, it keeps evolving. We're really focused on this 16 to 24. That's our concentration on people that are under resourced. And it is more than undocumented kits, although we just close our applications again and these kids are still in limbo, meaning there's no path to anything. They just have this basically permit that gets renewed, but no one can get the permit anymore. So every year, about 80,000 kids are graduating high school that have no ability to get a work permit. It's just insane.

So, just so people understand, these are kids that came here undocumented. So they're born in another country, they've come here, they've grown up here, though, they've gone to high school here. They could go to college, but they wouldn't get financial aid because of course, they're not residents. Tell me what actually happens. How many of them say, I have to go back to the country I was born in versus I'm going to get in college and somehow take a bunch of debt without any financial aid.

My guess is that 95% of them end up taking minimum wage jobs or jobs that are underground and stuff like that. There was a process there where you can get a daca permit. There's 650,000 of these kids that have DACA permits. So you can work. Unfortunately, in the last administration, DACA got rescinded, so there's no new DACA. So if you're a high school student, you're 17, you can't get a work permit. So at that point, you grew up here, your family's now here. Going back to your original country of origin may happen, but it's really, really hard. You have no roots there. You have no resources. You may not even know the language, for that matter. That's the craziness of this. We have invested.

What's the distribution of where these kids are from?

Do we have a sense of probably 90% Latin America? Probably 2/3 of those Mexico just because of how they came in illegally. But you see them a lot from Southeast Asia and other places. We just. Our yearly scholarship grant, we just got 1200 applicants, literally closed last week. I believe over 300 of them have close to a 4.0 unweighted GPA.

You're providing scholarships for these kids to go to college because they don't need to be residents to go to college. They just need the funding.

The funding? Yeah. So you don't get federal financial aid and about half the states don't get you in state tuition. So it's almost like you would have to go to school as a, you know, to a private school and pay 60, 70 grand a year.

And is the investment you're making, Rick, that if these kids crush it in college, they're going to get an H1B visa on the back end or they're going to land in some legitimate dual intent visa with a path to citizenship based on their education?

Well, until three years ago, because they were all daca, they had a path to getting jobs. And there's many now that have jobs. We have 520 kids in the program. About half of them are graduating. But we keep thinking this is the last year. This is the last year because Congress Just needs to pass a law. There's plenty of reasons why it hasn't happened. But now the kids that are going to start graduating next year, they're literally in limbo because they can't get a work permit. So the H1B visa and all of that can't do it. You can figure out a way to marry and then take that route. You can, can look for asylum. But those are all really, really hard paths.

I didn't realize that. So you're telling me that if a kid goes through a scholarship. Oh, because they're not doing it on.

An F1, they're not DACA that expire and doesn't exist. That's the argument now is like not only do you have the DACA kids in limbo, but now you're like 80,000 kids every year that were. And the crazy thing is we invest in them in primary school and secondary school. We don't ask the kids question when they go to our school systems, but then we invest all that money. Why don't we make them taxpayers? We have an issue. There's like this massive decline of kids applying to college. We have all this college infrastructure with not enough students. Why not educate them and make them pay taxes and give them a path, whatever that is, to citizenship? To me, this is one of those things that makes absolutely no sense. But what we did is we expanded that to, you know, after the George Floyd event, we as a company kind of rally around. We have to find opportunities into our inner cities and have used a lot of the same platform to broaden it. It's called Road to Hire, where Golden Door Scholars is a part of it. But here's something really cool. We start teaching coding in North Carolina. Mostly black and brown students, mostly from Title 1 schools. We go into the high schools and start teaching there and then we do an apprenticeship program and then we partner up with all the corporations in Charlotte. We are graduating more black and brown kids with computer science expertise than the whole North Carolina system is. Now this year we have over 220 of these kids graduating and they all have jobs on the other end. So we give them an apprenticeship and then we have a whole different, sorry.

These are high school or college, they're.

Not going to college. These are kids that are 22, 23, 24, mostly black and brown kids that we're teaching them how to code. We pay them to teach.

So they're high school grads that didn't go to college.

We give them a two year apprenticeship where we're paying them on behalf of all this corporation and it's working tremendously. Here's the crazy thing. This 21 year old kid who was driving Uber after two years of the apprenticeship, they are as competent in technology as someone who graduated from NC State.

How do you think that can be scaled? What do you think is the magic in that? This is a great example of what we said earlier. You can't solve that problem across the country, but can you provide a roadmap for that?

You start with the jobs and at the end of the day there's hundreds of thousands of jobs that are unfilled because they don't have the skills. So pick this. By the way, it's the same thing with high school teachers today. There's a shortage of, I believe it's 350,000 teaching vacancies that is projected to be. But we get, we pay 42,000 in most states. And it's crazy, right? But keep on technology where there's a big gap. The reason our model works in Charlotte and North Carolina is because it rides on the rails of the system. It literally partners with the county and with the city. It partners with the schools, with the high school systems. All title one. It connects to the public school. So there's a lot here. And then the corporations all basically offer a job on the other end. The key to this is to start with the job and then train into the job versus start with education and hope they get a job. So go fill the job that is not getting filled. And by the way, solve the diversity challenge that all these corporations have. Solve a lot of the other issues, but don't show up into the nonprofit arm of a corporation. Solve a problem that they really have. And that's the connection. So I think it will have to happen more at the city level. So there's a big initiative called 110 that a number of high profile CEOs have built. To try to do this, it just takes a long, long time. And my concern is when the economy turns, these are the kinds of things, things that get scrapped. These are the kinds of things that people stop giving that job for or investing in. Yet we go back to this negative spiral that we tend to have.

Obviously you and I both are kind of cut from the same cloth, which is that of immigrants. And I think with that comes a little bit of disbelief as to why the US would not as a country want to embrace an amazing asset. Do you see this changing? Do you see this as just being a season?

I do. I am super optimistic on our country for as flawed as we are, I would rather be nowhere else.

Yeah, I agree with that.

And you know, there's just things unfortunately take time. You know, I'm reading a book called Brothers about the Kennedys and you realize that there were real serious issues there around the mob and like all these things that we don't hear about today. So I do believe that the trend line is up, is just not linear and it's not fast enough.

And I think we just have more information, much of which, if not all of most of which is noise that distracts us a little bit. I think back in the 60s, there's no question it was a more tumultuous era. I mean, there were political assassinations on US soil. We don't have anything like that today, knock on wood. But the noise today is unbearable.

Yeah, it's unbearable.

The never ending cycle of nonsense news, cable, social media, I think makes it feel more dramatic. But that could also be the undoing.

You know, and these are pendulums. I think we are at a pendulum right now where the country's super divided. I believe that there will be a series of leaders in our future that will bring us back together. We need a common enemy. Maybe it is this risk of China that becomes our galvanizing thing. I find it super interesting when there's a real crisis in our country, 9, 11 or even Covid at the beginning, we all behave like Americans and then we need something that brings us back to being Americans and not Republicans or Democrats or black or white and all that stuff. And the common enemy tends to do that. And I think this peaceful times allow for a lot of room for us to subdivide.

Let's pivot a little bit to talk about health, which is you're a very health conscious guy. But there's also been some changes, I think, in your life over the past. I think I've known you now for nine years. Basketball used to be kind of the only thing you did for exercise, which was great because it kept you running around a court, but you can be prone to injuries and things like that. How would you describe overall kind of your mentality towards your health, your longevity? What changes have you made? One of my favorites, which I'm sure you'll get to, is your approach to your body weight, which cracks me up.

I realized that I want to be here for as long as I can and I want to be here in as active of a way as I can. I'm committed to that. You know, it's this notion of time, but it's time on the other way. So for the first time ever, in the last, you know, especially in the last four years, I've gotten into the gym and I have a trainer and we go through it. I don't do the crazy stuff you do, but I would argue that I am so much stronger from grip to balance to all the things. And, you know, I try my version of it. I don't consider myself to be an elite athlete in that regard, but I feel so much better. I transitioned from basketball, so I played my last official pickup game about three months ago and had a bunch of pros come. And it was great because it's been such a great language for me and so many relationships came through basketball, so much self learning and self awareness. And I now picked up tennis and, you know, now why did you do that?

Why did you completely stop playing your favorite sport?

Because I watch a lot of people my age just blow an Achilles and a knee and all of that. And those are all signals that we should listen to. I didn't want to get to that place. And now the more I play, the more my knees were sore and, you know, my body's talking to me. It actually talks to us all the time. And I wanted to leave on my terms, and I wanted to leave knowing that it served its purpose. It doesn't control me. I picked up tennis in the pandemic, and it's something that we're doing more as a family, but love the apprenticeship, the struggle. So I have a coach. I go twice a week. It's a great workout. I get my heart rate to 130. I get into zone two. I stay there for an hour. So I get a lot of multiple values, and I'm really not good. Footwork is different. Everything is different. And I love the grinding of things. And it's a reminder of humility. Everything that we now take for granted, that we think we're so good at at some point was really, really hard. So I have now a list of things. It's embarrassing. I'm Puerto Rican. I don't know how to dance salsa. I can't die as the only Puerto Rican who can't dance salsa. So last night you were grilling, and I'm like, I used to grill a lot more. And so I have this notion now that I want to keep learning things. I have a list of about eight or nine things. And eventually, if we end up living part of the years in another country, that language I want to try to engage in. And it's just this notion, I don't want to get old. Not by my age, but I don't want to get old by stuff.

I want to talk about that last game of pickup basketball. How sad was that?

Zero.

Really.

No, I'm grateful for what I had. Not because it ended. It's life. The biggest self growth I've had since the plane was in that middle bucket of relationships. And what I realized, Peter, is that the most important relationship we have, the most important friend we have, is ourselves. And that unless we get that right, everything else will have a lot of friction. Everything else will be a worse version of what it can be. And what I've realized as I study this is that we in society, and it's almost every religion, I'm going to say almost all, because I don't know, but most religions that I know are anchored in some level of guilt. And guilt as a way of teaching us or as keeping us connected to something. And I've realized that guilt is the most useless emotion one can have. And I have spent the last five years just basically getting rid of guilt to the point that I joke that it's a complex I no longer suffer from. I still have others, but I feel no guilt. And when you feel no guilt, what you realize is that you can change the dialogue that you have with yourself. I am super kind to myself. I constantly make mistakes. I constantly do things. And I'm like, oh, gosh, that wasn't right. Or I don't show up the way I need to show up, but I have nothing but love for myself. I will say things. Yeah, that wasn't your best. Okay, next one it is.

And help me understand that. So it's hard for me to imagine you showing up as poorly as I can, but let's say you. You're in sort of a pissy mood. You come home, you had asked your wife to do something earlier. It's not done. Instead of saying, hey, sweetie, did you have a chance to do that thing I asked you to do before you sort of snip at her? I don't know if you've ever done that.

It happens. Yes.

Okay, how do you. I think it's really easy to feel bad and feel shame for snapping at her, and then that actually impairs your next interaction. But how do you break that cycle?

I own it. Because it just takes a little bit of time. It's like, I'm sorry, I just took out something on you that it was not on you. That was unfair. I hope you forgive me.

How long does it take you to man up to that?

It's not long, 20 minutes, 30 minutes. Like you're very self aware and you can read body language. You can see that what you just said kind of cut through in a way. And then you're like, huh, what did I do? But more importantly is I don't feel bad. I don't carry this notion of oh my goodness, I just did this. Even if I do something that I didn't want to do, I just said, okay, it's part of being human, it's part of growing up, it's part of learning, it's part of your humanity.

But do you think that that can only happen because you're able to immediately make amends?

I think it's a habit we walk around.

So how do you break that habit then? Guilt is a pretty strong habit for a number of people, I'm sure.

Yeah, it's like any habit, it may be worse than smoking. Smoking is hard. I never smoke. But it's a really habit. But if you want to break it, you break it. 98% of your thoughts are with yourself. So first of all, you got to be very aware of all your thoughts and you gotta be able to objectivize what you're hearing. And you have to be able to evaluate and say, you know, what is this productive? Is this helping me? Or am I doing this because I've always done it or because this is how my parents kind of related to it? And I think the more we move away from the emotion of guilt and it becomes self love, it becomes a notion like the safest place for us to be is with ourselves. And the kindest place to be is in our own heads. And there's no judgment, there's no anything. Like life becomes self so much simpler and then that, that you give yourself, you can give to others. You know, when we talk about purpose, we're very lucky that we can impact people through your platform. You're impacting lots of us. And you know, I'm lucky that in my platform I can impact people. But you impact people every day with little things. How you show up to the coffee shop in the morning, the type of connection that you make, the taking time, like all of that is making an impact. And the more that you feel at peace inside, the more you want to give it. So I am now addicted really to like good energy. And that doesn't mean it's maybe 95% of the time, but oh, I love that place. And I give it freely and I give it with expecting Nothing in return. And to me, this is like the happy place. I live in a happy place.

What do you think is the relationship between happiness and wealth? Do you think they're uncoupled? Do you think they're correlated positively? Do you think they're correlated negatively?

I think we decide what they are. Some of the happiest people in the world have no wealth, so they cannot be coupled. Now, wealth can give you a set of conveniences that allows you to solve for whatever your priorities are that may heighten your ability to do that. And therefore it gives you more happiness. Or like in many people, you pursue wealth your whole life because that's what our society wants. And when you get there, you just feel so empty. And then you feel so guilty for all you sacrifice for it. And you're in the worst place, which is you got what you wanted and it was a mirage and it meant nothing. And there are so many people out there that feel like, oh, my goodness, I was running the wrong race. You know, we talk a lot in life, Peter, around the best way to run a race. No one steps back and ask, am I running the right race? And I think really focusing on reevaluating the race you're running. So when you ask me questions about red ventures in 10, 20 years, I made it very clear after my playing event that I was going to run a different race than everybody else. I wasn't looking for being public. I wasn't looking for being the wealthiest. I wasn't looking for my race was to enjoy the race and to enjoy the race. I am crazy. So I love growing. I love being challenged. I love competing. I give no power to anybody. And I try really hard not to take power away from anybody.

What do you think are the ways that people even inadvertently take power away from people?

We as leaders can overlead and not let other people have. Let them be celebrated and not take all the credit for things, or, on the contrary, take responsibility for things that may not have been truly your responsibility. So I think leaders have an ability to really manage the power equation with intentionality. I think how you treat somebody. We talked about this in the last conversation, but I think the best way we can parent is by showing our kids how to treat strangers and how we give people respect no matter who they are or what they're doing. And how do we not give anybody too much respect just because society made them be something? Everybody puts their pants on the same way. Everybody has insecurities. Everybody has issues. When you look at people as like, you know, we all are in this imperfect journey with imperfections. It just makes it really level field and simpler.

One of the really enjoyable, I mean, there were so many. But certainly one of the enjoyable highlights of the Friends Summit was when Simon Sinek got up and talked about finite versus infinite games, which, of course, is the name of a book, maybe for folks that aren't familiar with that. I know it's a book that you love as well. How do you implement that ethos into both your business and your life?

You know, when Simon sent me an early book and said, hey, what do you think? It was almost like he was writing what it was in my brain. I just don't have an ability to write a book. But he wrote a book. I'm like, he actually was rewriting a book by somebody that had come before, yet put it in more modern terms. It became kind of codifying a language that I really believe in. And at the core of the infinite game is that there's a bunch of principles of the game and how you play the game and all of that. But the core of the infinite game is that there's no winning. That the whole objective of the game is to stay in the game. The reality is, if you really read into it, the real, real, ultimate objective is not just to stay in the game, but to perpetuate the game. So what you're doing through your podcast, through your book that's coming out, through your kids, through everything else, is you're perpetuating the game, you know, the game that matters to you, and that's living with purpose, because you are now. You have a purpose of what you're doing. I feel the same way. So when you give up the winning or losing, when you don't look at things, you give away a lot of the jealousy. Like, I don't feel jealousy. It's an emotion that I am like, just because you have it doesn't mean I don't have it. You know, maybe a little envious at times. Like, wow, I wish I had the knowledge that Peter has about this stuff. But zero jealousy. So the infinite game, it makes it really, really simple not to get caught up on winning or losing. Just play the game and therefore get away from back to this notion of, like, oh, I came in second, I came in third. And you and I have talked a lot about this kind of stuff. It's like. And by the way, I don't think it affects the outcome at all.

Is that something that you have the luxury of playing because you run a private company, but If Red Ventures were a public company, would you be able to live by that, or would quarterly earnings and other metrics that shareholders would be privy to and have an interest in change that? In other words, do public markets demand winning?

I think, by and large, yes. Now, you could argue that Jeff Bezos at Amazon Forever never made money, even though the public markets were demanding that he did this. And he basically said, no, I'm gonna continue to lose money and you're either gonna like my story or not. You could argue that Elon Musk is playing the infinite game in many ways with the decisions he's making. And even Mark Zuckerberg, yeah, with Meta, like, he clearly has lost 75% of the value of the company. So I think you can do it. You just have to have the temperament and the stomach to be unpopular. And you know what? The best way to not be unpopular is not to read. I don't read anything about us, about me. It doesn't matter. The opinion of a stranger has zero value to me. Now, if you call me and say, dude, I heard you say this or do this, and that feels like not you, I will listen because I know that you know me and you care. I have no desire to be popular with people I don't know. I want to be respected by people that I care about.

That's an amazing lesson. That, to me, is a very difficult feature of living in the world today. It's. Do you look at what people are saying about you on social media? Do you read comments? Not very often, but a little bit. I would say I'm probably 95% compliant with the notion of ignoring it. And when I do read it, I'm rarely perturbed by it, largely for the reasons that you put forth, which is you understand that it's kind of irrelevant, but I can't imagine what it would be like to be doing that from a real stage. Look, I'm kind of a nobody, but could you imagine being Mark Zuckerberg, for example?

You know, I think he doesn't care. I think it's all irrelevant. Peter, there's no stage that is different or bigger than ours. There's just different stages. Just because someone has a bigger platform than we do doesn't make their stage more important than our platform. We're all the same.

No, I think it just means that the attacks are louder potentially, but doesn't.

Matter if you don't read them, if you stay true to yourself. It was all circular logic.

Have you imparted a lesson like this on your kids? We've talked about this a little bit. On our first discussion. You made an interesting point that I've thought a lot about, actually. I think I had historically thought of it as our kids have it so much easier than we did because we came from little. They come from plenty reasons going on and on. I think you framed it this way, but this is certainly how I think about it, is I feel like me, from my parents, from their parents, from their parents, there was an inevitable trend that the child would exceed the accomplishments of the parents. That was just the nature of moving from the industrial revolution to now. And maybe it's our kids that will be the first one for whom it's not just going to be falling off a log to exceed the accomplishments of their parents in whatever metric we use to think about that. And you came from a real point of empathy, which is I want to make sure my kids aren't under some unnecessary unrealistic pressure that they have to do something that their parents did. Say more about that. And how has your thinking sharpened?

But it stems from the premise. I think our kids have a lot more comfort, they have a lot more access, they have a lot more experiences. But that's different if you're defining this about feeling a level of satisfaction with life or a level of happiness. Back to what we've been talking about. There's two separate things. They're divorced from one another. I think the fact that we're starting with the premise that achieving more than your parents financially is the objective of life, it's like a goofy starting point. I think what I would love my kids is to feel like they were able, given the opportunity, to really find their gift and to do it within a place of love and that they are great parents. And then as a result, we as a family did good in the world. And none of these things kind of make any sense when people are like, oh, we don't know, we're. I just think it's hard. It's hard when you are Peter Attia's daughter or Peter Anthea's sons. And we should be mindful of that because it's a burden that is put on them by others that they don't know how to accept. You know, that's what I really meant by that.

I saw a really interesting clip. I'm sure we'll be able to find it for the show. Notes. It was Arnold Schwarzenegger, a very young Arnold Schwarzenegger, so I'm guessing he would have been late 70s, early 80s, so had already accomplished a lot, but obviously had more to accomplish. Right? This is before he would have become the world's biggest movie star and go on to become the governor. But he was being asked and I think it was like Barbara Walters, it was some highbrow interview. So it must have been the 80s by this point. What accounts for your greatness? And he sort of said, look, to have this level, he's referring to his own level of drive. It must come from a place of hardship. He, much more eloquently than this, described that basically everything he has comes from a singular focus of escaping and being better than and improving. And he said, look, the reality of it is kids who don't come for this, if your kids don't come from this level of deprivation, they can't be great. They can be very well adjusted and that's really the best thing you can hope for them, but they can't be great. And I really thought about it a lot. I was like, that's really, there's a lot to reflect on there. Because first of all, there's nothing wrong with being well adjusted. It could be a perfectly reasonable goal for kids who come from privilege, kids who are never to want anything, to be perfectly well adjusted. But he's arguing that's the best case scenario.

But great in what? Great at lifting weights? Great at being a movie star?

Being exceptional.

So that's different because you can be a great human being. Being the elite 1% of something has a huge amount of tax on other things.

Absolutely. And I don't think, look, I mean that's the irony I guess, of his life is he couldn't see the crystal ball of the lows that would come with the highs.

To me that's the problem with hyper successful people. They're trying to repeat what they did and ends up being more self destructive than not. And I would argue that most people can't handle greatness because it is addictive greatness as reflected by being the best at something or the very best for a period of time. And those who are able to accept the fact that none of that matters and it will change and evolve, live better lives. What do you want for your kid to be the greatest at something for a moment in time and miserable? Or do you want them to be not self adjusted? Because that to me is like a consolation price.

I think being well adjusted is a fantastic objective, frankly, which actually by the way, kind of is just a very extreme version of the yin and the yang between fluid and crystallized intelligence. The more extreme one is the harder you know, the more extreme your fluid intelligence is, it might be harder to make that transition to crystallization intelligence. And that's true in intelligence, but I think that's even more true in what is it like to be Tiger woods or Michael Jordan.

That's why I think really, really great 40 perfect students struggle to be super productive in life because they never had to deal with adversity. They never had to be coached. They've never had to be in a place where they're forced to be good at it. It is better to struggle so that you learn to struggle then to be great at something because life is full of potential struggles.

Well, Rick, as always, awesome to sit down and catch up on life. Congratulations on all of your successes in the past couple of years in particular. And I'm really excited to hear about this museum in North Carolina. I think the next time I come out to visit you, I hope we can make the time to go and see it because I would actually love to see that.

No, I would love that, Peter. And I can't say enough to you. You've had an incredible impact on my knowledge of myself and exercise and nutrition and how I'm going to live. And I know that the last 10 years of my life I should name after you because you've helped me a lot. And I love our friendship and I love how we can be so honest with each other and raw. And I'm humbled you would have me, especially a second time. So great fun.

Thanks, Rick. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of the Drive. If you're interested in diving deeper into any topics we discuss, we've created a membership program that allows us to bring you more in depth exclusive content without relying on paid ads. It's our goal to ensure members get back much more than the price of the subscription. Now to that end, membership benefits include a bunch of things. One totally kickass comprehensive podcast show notes that detail every topic, paper, person, thing we discuss on each episode. The word on the street is nobody's show notes rival these monthly AMA episodes or Ask Me Anything episodes. Hearing these episodes completely access to our private podcast feed that allows you to hear everything without having to listen to spiels like this the Qualys, which are a super short podcast that we release every Tuesday through Friday highlighting the best questions, topics and tactics discussed on previous episodes of the Drive. This is a great way to catch up on previous episodes without having to go back and necessarily really listen to everyone. Steep discounts on products that I believe in, but for which I'm not getting paid to endorse, and a whole bunch of other benefits that we continue to trickle in as time goes on. If you want to learn more and access these member only benefits, you can head over to peterattiamd.com subscribe. You can find me on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, all with the ID PeterAttiaMD. You can also leave us a review on Apple Podcast or whatever podcast player you listen on. This podcast is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute the practice of medicine, nursing or other professional healthcare services, including the giving of medical advice. No doctor patient relationship is formed. The use of this information and the materials linked to this podcast is at the user's own risk. The content on this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice from any medical condition they have, and they should seek the assistance of their healthcare professionals for any such conditions. Finally, I take conflicts of interest very seriously. For all of my disclosures and the companies I invest in or Advise, please visit PeterAttiaMD.com where I keep an up to date and active list of such companies.

Sa.