The War of Art: Steven Pressfield | Joe Polish and Dan Sullivan

When I sit down to write in a day, I don't hold myself accountable for the quantity of work. You know, I don't ask myself, why did I do 750 words? And I don't hold myself accountable for the quality. When it's all done, I don't say, boy, was this good or was this terrible, Right? All I ask myself is, did I put my ass in this chair and hit it for three hours? Or however long it takes? Because I know if I do that every day, I'm going to have it when all said and done, you know, like, you know, Dan, I'm going to have a book, I'm going to have a movie. I'm going to have something. And it's all from simply putting your ass where your heart wants to be.

Hello, this is Joe Polish and Dan Sullivan.

Dan Sullivan and Steve Pressfield.

Here's the thing. I was going to say, Steven, amazing guest, Mr. Steven Pressfield. Not a doctor, but he should be called a doctor. Dr. Pressfield. So, Steven, this is the first time you and Dan, I think, have officially met in person, even though you've known of each other for 20 years. And this is the second interview that me and you have done. The first one was in 2003 at my little office in Tempe, Arizona.

And it was so great. I remember it well.

Yeah. And I even have a copy of the War of Art. The first time we did a interview was on the War of Art. And this is a book that I have read more and given away more than any other book. And I've read over a thousand books and it's phenomenal and I've always loved it. And I was journaling today. And then I'll ask you guys about yourselves and we'll give a quick intro. But I wanted to mention this. I was journaling today and there's this little journal app that I used. And it said, what advice would you give to a teenager? And actually wrote to read the book. Steven's new book, Put yout Ass where your Heart Wants to Be and the War of Art. I mean, that's literally what I wrote down. Because I think any young person, the sooner they could get the message into their minds of what you offer, the better. And you're an incredible writer. So let me just give the quick bio and then Dan will go into this. So Steven Pressfield is the best selling author of fiction and nonfiction, including the Legend of Bagger Vance, Gates of Fire, the Lion's Gate and Classics on Creativity and the classic on Creativity, the War of Art, Turning Pro and Do the Work. His Wednesday column on stevenpressfield.com is among the most popular writing blogs on the web. That's a short intro. And, Stephen, the name of this podcast is 10x talk, and we're also doing this on video so people can watch it wherever videos are offered. How would you describe yourself if someone just, like, kind of ran into you and said, hey, what do you do? I mean, what's. What's the Stephen Pressfield response to that?

Real quickie, I guess. I mean, I'm a writer. I'm a writer of fiction and nonfiction. And maybe the one thing that would stand out to somebody meeting me for the first time is that it took me, like, more than 30 years from the time I first quit a job to try to write until I actually had a book published. So I'm sort of the poster child for having no talent, but, you know, hammering and hammering away and finally getting, you know, good enough to crack something through. So there is life after 50. And that's. That's. I guess that's what I would say is sort of a nutshell version of my story.

Well, here's one thing, too. You both are the. You're the same age right now at the time we're doing this. You're both 78 years old. And Dan, I think before we started recording, you said that is. Who's six months older.

Yeah. I think, Stephen, if I remember, you're November of 43, right?

Yeah, September, actually.

Yeah, it was September of 43. And I may have. I was born two weeks before Normandy, before the Normandy. Normandy invasion. So I was born right at the, you know, the last year of the Second World War. And that had a lot of influence. I mean, I would say that being born at that time has been very, very influential. Influential. And I don't know if you found that, too, because all the adults that you were surrounded with for, you know, like the first. My teen, right through my teenage years had had, you know, some of them had World War I experience. They had the Great Depression experience. They had Second World War War experience. And it was a big deal, you know, I mean, you could tell that really big things had happened and were happening right when you were born.

Yeah. Could you elaborate a little bit on that, Dan, why you feel like that was a big influence on you?

Well, I tell people, you know, when I was born, Stalin was alive, Hitler was alive. You know, Mussolini was still. I think Mussolini was dead when I was born, but I think he was alive when you were born. And then you had. Churchill was alive, Roosevelt was alive, and then you had all these great military people, the army, the Navy and everything. And there were just such momentous forces unleashed during that four or five year period which really remade the world. I mean, we're living in the world that's more or less still a consequence of what happened 75 years ago.

Yeah. Although I'm sure the names you just rattled off, you know, 20 year old kids are going, who, who? Churchill, Stalin, who?

Yeah, who do they? Yeah, what's their band? What's the name of their band?

Well, I mean, so look, both of you were in the military, so Stephen, you're a Marine and Dan was in the Army. I mean, how. I would love to hear how that influenced who you are today. I mean, you always talk about Stephen in your books how the, how Marines. And I've never been in the military, so I can only speak to my friends that are and you know, just observation how Marines literally are trained or love to suffer. And so this is the thing that.

I sort of apply to, to being a writer, being an entrepreneur, being in any. In the arts. It's like the Marine Corps on the people. Marines are going to get pissed off at me when they hear this. But the Marine Corps is not like the Special Forces or the Navy SEALs in the sense that you have to pass some amazing. You have to swim, you know, five miles and you know, carry a thousand pound log or anything like that. Pretty much, if you can breathe, if you have a pulse, you know, you're in the Marine Corps. But what makes the Marines elite, in my opinion, is that Marines take tremendous pride in suffering more than any other branch of the service. Like if there's like the shittiest assignment, you know, the worst possible enemy that you're up against. If any other outfit gets that assignment other than Marines, Marines are really pissed off. It's like we want to go in there where it's the worst. And if you think about the episodes in Marine Corps history that the Marines take the most pride in, they're not like tremendous victories. They're places where the Marines just suffered the most. You know, Tarawa, Khe Sanh, things like that, that's what they take pride in. So I feel like as a writer or an artist or an entrepreneur, you gotta have that attitude too, because you're gonna get the hell beat out of you over and over and over again. And you just have to somehow kind of, you know, embrace the suck, as they say, and not let it get to you.

How old Were you when you went in the Marines?

I think I was 21 or something like that.

Yeah, well, you were. You're an old guy. They like the 18 and 19 year olds. Yeah, they like the ones who think they're immortal.

Yes.

I was drafted right at the beginning of Vietnam. So I, it started in April of 65. That was the Gulf of Tonkin. The, you know, the. What was given as the reason for starting, starting the most ugliest war in American history. And so I got my draft notice and what they were doing is that they just went 25 years down. And, you know, I was 20, so 45. I was 65. I was 21. And if I had been drafted, I wouldn't have, I wouldn't have, you know, I wouldn't have enlisted. But when I got there, so it's only two years and, and I got to basic training and I just heard people talking about, boy, this is a waste of two years and everything else. And I said, I am totally not going to waste these next two years. I'm going to get, I'm going to squeeze every bit of value as I possibly can.

So. And lastly, you were thinking like you're thinking now. Yeah.

And long story short, in about. So that was. I went in in June of 65 and then I, I ended up in South Korea. So I was in South Korea and within about eight months, I was now the entertainment coordinator for half of South Korea for the USO shows and everything. It was just as the one. The other rule was never volunteer for anything. And I said, wow, if nobody volunteers for anything, I wonder what happens to the person who volunteers for everything. And doors just open up because most of the army people, you know, they're, they're lifers, you know, the sergeants, the officers, and when that draftee comes in, he's really excited and really enthusiastic. They just knock themselves out to open doors for you and give you opportunity. And I was sorry when my, you know, my time came up and I put on five plays. You know, I, I was a theater major in college.

Let me interrupt you, Dan. Can you tell a story about Frank Sinatra doesn't move pianos? Because this million times quoting you.

Yeah, Frankson. You know, the, the, you know, during wartime, the USO brings famous people. You know, they bring Bob Hope and, you know, they bring all sorts of people. Korea was a backwater, so we didn't really get the, we didn't really get the, you know, the main. We got mostly the never wass and the has beens, but they were better than you were, so they could entertain you. And. But I had a guy who worked with me in the entertainment center, and he. He had worked with Frank Sinatra. He had been, you know, on a crew with Frank Sinatra. And he said to me one day, he said, you know, he says, the one first thing you notice about Frank Sinatra, Frank Sinatra does not move pianos. He's got a team that comes ahead of him. He's got a team that does everything. And he says, you have to understand that's why people want to get to the top, so they can just do what they do. They don't have to do all the. They don't have to do all the crap. It's like Major League Baseball. The biggest reason why a lot of people want to get to Major League Baseball is they don't have to do their own laundry anymore.

Yeah, but I mean, out of that came your idea of unique ability. Right. That you've really taken and run with it for years and years. And it's been. What's so helpful to me when I heard Joe's interview with you years ago, and you were talking about unique ability when. Which I'll give you the super short version of it, is that as an entrepreneur, your job really is to find out the one thing that you do well and then delegate everything else. You know, and when I was. I wrote a book about the Israeli Arab war of 1967, the Six Day War. And if you remember, the great Israeli general Moshe Dayan was kind of the genius of that era. And one of his axioms was, I never want to do anything that somebody else can do. If there's anybody else in the organization below me, some colonel, some general, and they can do it, let them do it. I want to do only what I know how to do, which is at the super top, top, top of the. Of the food chain.

Can I ask you a question about that? I find. I'm 78, and every quarter I find something that I've been doing for 15 years. And I said, I don't know why I'm doing this. It's got to be some. There's got to be somebody who can do this better. So it's like peeling an onion. You know, you think you're down to the core, but there's another. There's another layer below it. So I, you know, I. And I don't know if you got the book, My Plan for living to 156.

No, I didn't.

Oh, I gotta send that to you.

Send that to me.

Yeah. And I just, in May, I just hit halfway. I just hit the halfway mark. So I said, okay. So my life is two stages. First 78 years, I just completed 78 years, and that's R&D. Next 78 years, now I get real serious, you know, but it's all about unique ability. And, like, when I write my little books, I have nine other team members who are part of the process of producing the books.

Oh, really?

Yeah. I don't write them. I create outlines and I'm interviewed by someone, but I'm a copywriter, and we can talk about that. Stephen, the one thing that advertising teaches you, that no other form of writing will teach you, that you write to 6 inches and you write to 30 seconds, and you write to, you know, you write to a minute. And so when I do the book, I know exactly how many pages is going to be in it. I know exactly how many chapters. I know there's going to be two pages in cartoons, and every one of them. So I know right off the bat. And so I can outline each of the four pages and. But I can talk for a half hour. But the writer, when they get the transcript, they got to put that into four pages.

Yeah. You know, one of the things that, you know, you and I both worked in advertising when we started as copywriters. And I'm going to go over to Joe on this one day.

Same agency, actually. Same agency.

The one thing you really learn in advertising is what your book, Joe, you know, what's in it for them is the title of your book, and which is really great. And I recommend everybody should read this coming out real soon. And the gist of it is. I'll let you jump in, Joe, anytime. This is what you also learn in advertising, is you can't talk about. You have to talk about what the person you're addressing, what they need, what's their pain, as you would say, Joe, what problem do they have that you. So it takes you completely out of your own self, you know, and you have to keep asking yourself, you know, is the person following me, am I boring him? Is this a bunch of bullshit? Or is people being paying attention to this thing because we're addressing their needs? So which really goes deep, deep, deep. Joe, I want to talk with you about this as we go along here. The whole thing of what's in it for them? What's in it for the other person?

First off, this book that I put together. So what's in it for them? I don't think I've ever had any piece of writing or anything that I've ever done that I've put more work into than that. That particular book, I went through it five different times. I recorded the entire book out loud. Thank you both for obviously giving endorsements for it. I really appreciate it. And one of the things that I'm also doing in the world of writers and the world of books is that there's so many books that have quotes by famous people that have never written read the book. And one of the things, I even had several very famous people that I had sent the book to and with a note, like I did everyone, saying, if you don't have time to read the book and you don't like it, please don't give me an endorsement just because you like me. And I even had a couple that sent me back messages saying, can you write something up for me, a blurb? And I'm like, no, I'm not doing. I'm not doing that. I want. Only write me a blurb if you actually like the book. And part of the whole premise is I've always loved the book. You know, how to win friends and influence people. I imagine both of you have read Dale Carnegie's book, the classic. Yeah. And one of the things, though, is, you know, having studied the world of persuasion and influence, which you almost have to in order to be a copywriter, in order to do advertising, because you're wanting to persuade. One of the things that always struck me is if you're for yourself, you want to win the right friends and influence the right people. You know, what does it. You know, what's the benefit of influencing people and getting friends unless it really is aligned with you? And so part of this, one of the things I learned along the way is that if you are approaching someone from the place of being a genuine giver, meaning everybody wants something. We all want something. We all showed up today to do this recording because we want to hopefully create something awesome, have a good conversation, share with people. So everybody wants something, but when you want something from somebody, does your give equal your want? And when people approach you and they want something, but they're not showing up with anything to give, you kind of get a visceral reaction like, yeah, you know, we got a taker here. And if you think about your closest friends or the people that you really like, they're the ones that bring value. You know, it's this thing that, Dan, I heard you say years ago that money earned ethically is a byproduct of value creation. And so I Want to, as much as I can, share the things I've done. Well, the mistakes I've made, the stupid stuff I've done, where I've been very effective. Cautionary tales. So that the givers of the world can actually use the skill of being a giver in the right way. Because you could literally be a martyr. I mean, you could give so much. You know, Zig Ziglar had that very famous line where you can have anything you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want. And it's actually not true. You can help other people get a lot of what they want and they can abuse the hell out of you. They can just take from you. So I love that quote. In the right context. In the right context is if you give of yourself and give value to people that you're aligned with and people that appreciate it and people that are reciprocal, you don't have to show up with an agenda. You don't have to show up with some sneaky little weird thing of trying to act, you know, using flattery, which does work. I mean, as much bullshit as it is, you can flatter people, but to a point. And if you are genuinely showing up and thinking about the other person, not about yourself, like, how could I be useful to them? How can I reduce suffering? How can I be beneficial? I think that's the best way. Develop not only great business relationships, but great personal relationships and genuine friendships. And I believe in karma. I mean, I think the more you, you put out into the world, the more it's going to come back. And so if there's anything that served me in my life the most is just, you know, being a giver. Life gives to the giver and takes from the taker.

You know, I have a question I want to ask both of you guys. See if I can phrase this correctly. Where would you put ethics and ethical behavior in. In the world of entrepreneurship or marketing? You know, because a lot of times we think that success equates to unethical behavior. Right. You always see a lot of people that are cheating and lying and so on and so forth, or that if you're too ethical, you're out the door. Right? So, and I know that you guys each have a real kind of deep take on this. Let me ask you, Dan, start, start off. Where do you put ethics and ethical behavior in the realm of marketing or success?

Yeah, it's, you know, it's really interesting. And I, you know, I'll, I'll join another word to ethics, and that's Morality, you know, that the. The two go together. Ethics, you know, I mean, morality has to do a lot with your mindset and, you know, the values that you have. But ethics is really about your behavior, how, you know, really, the ethics is your morality in action. And. But one of the things I've noticed, I read an article once about inner city kids, you know, who are, you know, who could be dead at 8, they could be dead at 12. South Chicago. So part of the year, I live in Chicago because our main US Company is right near o'. Hare. But it's a war zone down there. You know, there's two postal zones. America is really organized. If you go to any big city, you go to the police, you know, police headquarters and police headquarters, and you want. You talk to the officer in charge of violent crime, you know, in the city, and you bring a map and you give them a marker, and you say, where should I not go in this city? And they always do it by postal zones. And in Chicago, it's two postal zones. Isn't it interesting how Americans organize crime according to. I mean, what a country, you know, and anyway, so those kids do not have enough certainty about life that they can think more than 24 hours at a time. So when there's a possibility of stealing something, their first thought is, can I get into trouble in the next 24 hours? So what I came to is that ethics is a function of your time perspective. Okay. If, on the other hand, you have a time perspective, if I do this now, what's it look like 10 years from now? The behavior that you will exhibit during the next 24 hours will be ethical. And the reason is you don't want to be doing something today that costs you ten years from now. And so my sense is that ethics is really a function of time perspective.

Ah, very interesting. One of the things I really admire about both you guys, Dan, is you guys both have really interesting perspectives on stuff. You know, it's not just the usual that you read in books, you know, like, who else would come up with that? I mean, I think you're absolutely right, you know, but over to you, Joe.

What's your.

What's your take on ethics and business?

Yeah, you know, it's. It's considering for even the carpet cleaning industry, which is where I started off. I created a thing called ethical services. And I tried to. I've always tried to use the whole concept of, like, Dan. I asked Dan years ago. Let me start with this, and I'll try to share several different ideas in A little riff that I'll do here. So I asked Dan what's, you know, what's your favorite definition? What's your definition of selling? And he just blurted out, and I don't know how many years ago this was now dan, probably like 15 years ago or something. And he said, selling is getting someone intellectually engaged in a future result that's good for them and getting them to emotionally commit to take action to achieve that result. Now, I have that memorized because I thought about it quite a bit when he said it. Yeah. And Dan always has these very interesting quotes that he shares. And let me just say this, too. I probably should have said this early on. Do you know between both of you, do you know how many, God knows how many hundreds of thousands of people, maybe in the millions range, that both of you have inspired, encouraged, have them show up to face incredible difficulties with, you know, maybe not in the funnest of ways, but just the ability to get through life when life is very difficult. I mean, both of you have been such incredible mentors and role models, if you've intended to be that or not. It's just what you are. I mean, by the very nature of. I mean, Jesus, just look at how many reviews the War of Art has, right. And how much both of you impact people. And so everyone has something to sell. Part of it is the bigger future, though, in a way, to look at life. And so when I asked Dan that definition, I started asking my clients, what do you think are the most important words in the definition? Getting someone intellectually engaged in a future result that's good for them and getting them to emotionally commit to take action to achieve that result. People would say engage, they would say action, they would say commitment. And most people didn't get the three words good for them. And I always thought you can get someone intellectually and emotionally engaged in porn and shitty food and doing something damaging. I mean, what I've liked about the War of Art is it's always about the higher self, not about the lower self. I mean, you can, you know, yeah, you can be a degenerate and you can get involved in vices and all that that does. There's, you know, that, as you say, you know, resistance will give you a free pass on that sort of thing, stuff. And so as it relates to ethics, I always think of, you know, what's good for someone, and would you sell it to your best friend? Would you sell it to your mother or your father with the assumption you like your mother and your father, you know, for someone that you really care about, if you're in a situation where someone's going to go down a bad path or something, that could be damaging or could be rotten or it could be scandalous or not good for them, and you cared about that person, you would try to intervene. You might use words, you might use a challenge, you might use an intervention. You might try to block them from harm's way. And so who are we in the best of terms? When we care about someone, we're selling, we're being persuasive, but we're doing it with the mindset of we're trying to care for this person and we're trying to protect them. So when it comes to. I think everything in my life is about connecting, connecting other people with ideas, with each other, with things that make them better, not always feel good, but. Like, for instance, you wrote the. The Warriors Ethos, which you recorded in 2011. Everyone would be very. Their lives will be enhanced if you download that book and listen to Stephen read it. It's called the Warriors Ethos. Like, I think it's less than 90 minutes, and it's great. And you talk a lot about, you know, Spartans and you have such. This deep knowledge of so much of history. But anyway, you know, there's. The whole goal of making someone better is not always going to make them feel better. It's not always about happiness, Right? And we live in this culture. Everyone wants to pursue feeling, you know, sweet and loving and all that sort of stuff. But the fact is, human progress oftentimes takes enormous effort and in many cases, sacrifice. And so when it comes to connecting, there's true connecting because you're either in communication with someone or you're trying to escape, you know, and when you are connecting with someone, you care about them, you're operating from a good place. Connecting, though, is when you're conning people and making it look like connecting. So there's connectors that use con artistry, and they con people and they blow smoke up their ass and they sell crap and they make promises and they. They don't that they have no intention of delivering on, or they're selling crap on a box, and the very best thing you're going to ever see from them is their sales pitch or their marketing. But then there's real people that when they sell something to somebody or when they offer something to somebody, they actually really care about that person being better off as a human. So for me, I don't. There's a difference between situational behavior and situational ethics. I mean, you might tell really crude, dirty jokes to your buddies that you would, you know, were in the military with. That could be vulgar. That could be inappropriate to many people, but you might not say that to someone's grandma. Most people have drank beer. Most people have gone to church. You usually don't drink beer in church, although I'm sure people drink beer in church. There's a difference between situational behavior and situational ethics. And I like people who understand the distinction in who operate that way, because we've all met people that, man, they just put on a great show. They really act like they care about you, but they're using narcissists or sociopaths or they have just created a value system, you know, that is different than, you know, the ones that we made it adhere to. And the weird thing. And I'd like to ask you guys about this, you know, as I'm rambling here, what I'm thinking in my mind is that I think most people think they're right. It's that saying that, you know, we judge others by their actions. We judge ourselves by our intentions. And I first heard that when. I don't know if you bought. Well, Dan, I know you know Harvey McKay. Do you happen to know Harvey McKay?

No.

Stephen. He wrote a book years ago, his most famous book he's written a bunch of books, was called how to Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive.

I've heard of the book.

Yeah, yeah. Sold millions of copies. And he's now 90 years old, and he's a dear friend of mine. And so Harvey, he was doing the small event that he invited me to. It was like, kind of a brainstorm with a bunch of. A bunch of business owners. And one guy was. Chris Widener was talking, and he said to the. To the group, he's like, how many have ever been ripped off by someone? About half people raised their head and he's like, how many of you ever ripped off anyone? And no one raised their head? And he said. He goes, huh? He goes, that's interesting. He goes, you know why? He goes, because you know, the reason you've been screwed by someone, but you don't think you screwed anyone is we judge ourselves by our intentions. We judge others by their actions. And I thought about that quite a bit, and we all, like, you could intend to do the right thing, but do your actions actually show that? So I think it takes a deep level of awareness and looking at the. The byproduct of your behavior and your. You Know, because all of us have times where we're loving and we're caring and we're doing well in life and others where we're desperate and we're self centered and we're tired and we're exhausted and we're maybe taking advantage. And so part of it is not that there's some perfect, you know, angel human that's always operating out of, you know, perfect ethics and morality. It's just being able to set up a way you operate and way you behave and the way you conduct yourself in your character. Like my whole book is not about capabilities, even though I share a lot of them. It's about character. My goal of my book is to not just build, you know, Hitler had enormous capabilities. I'd say it'd be really hard to say his character was a good character. I mean, look at the destruction that some of these people. You know, when, when Dan, we were talking earlier with Stalin and Mussolini, I mean, they all had capabilities. You don't rule a country. You don't do what these people did without capability. Some of the smartest marketers I know have enormous capabilities, but their character is kind of shed. And so, but that's my opinion because if you were to ask them their intentions, they all think their value system is their value system. So there's a lot of den of thieves. It's. I grapple with this, you know, one person's freedom fighters and other person's terrorists. So you know, what is it? But those are my thoughts. That's, that's at least some of my thoughts about ethics and morality is what's the byproduct of what your life is about and where it leaves people? Does it leave the world and people and you know, around you in a better place or does it cause destruction?

But I think you would say, Joe, that like as a, as a marketer or an entrepreneur that the more, and I'm sure you would say the same thing, Dan, the more good you can do, the better it is for you or even for your, your own selfish interests. Would you agree with that?

I would, I would totally agree with that. And Dan, I'd love to, love to hear your thoughts on it. And I have more thoughts on it, but I want to, you know, kind of. Yeah, sure.

Well, I think the other thing is that, you know, that there's a matter of, you know, leading a very complicated life for a simple life. And you know, I'm a straight ticket Republican ever since I could vote and in Canada, I'm a state straight ticket Conservative. But one of the, one of the presidents that I admire most was Harry Truman. And after, you know, because he's the one that had the big decisions, you know, I mean, so many big decisions. And you know, and I remember there's a story, it might be apocryphal, but the day after Roosevelt died, of course, he was sworn in as the president and he met with Roosevelt's cabinet. And he came in and he said, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, you know, you know, here comes Harry, a hick from Missouri. And he said, and you, you, you're used to Roosevelt, one of the great gods of American politics. But he says, here's the facts of it. I'm as powerful as he is because I'm President of the United States. And guess what, you're still Cabinet, Cabinet secretaries. And I can fire you just as easy as he could fire you, you know, and it just put everybody straight because he knew they were going to scheme against him. He knew what they were doing because they schemed against Roosevelt. You know, the, they do that. But he's had a great saying. He says, always tell the truth. It's more economical. You only have to remember one version. And I think that ethics is a form of truth and that is you can be the same person in all situations. And I think that, you know, a lot of people, they have to check out their surroundings to figure out who they're going to be in that situation, or they have to figure out who they've told what, what, make sure that, you know, they're keeping their story straight. And their story is so complicated, it's very, very hard to keep it straight. Yeah, and I said that that all comes at the price of what you're really good at. You know, that comes all that. I mean, if you do that, you're totally non creative, you're a totally reactive human being. And I think that ethics gives you a very simple, energizing path into the future where you only have to be the same person all the time.

Yeah, I mean, another way of looking. I haven't really thought this one through. I'm going to be blathering as I say this, but another word for it, it seems to me, could be authenticity in the sense of when you open your mouth and you speak, you're really saying what you really think and not what you think is the other is going to create a, you know, a favorable impression in somebody else's mind.

Yeah, one of your, you know, in the, in your current book, the book's coming out. You were talking about what your attitude has to be when you're writing and you can't think about, oh, this is. Is this a great book? Is it, you know, is it, you know, am I, you know, is this really going to move people? You say, I'm going to throw myself completely in it, and I'm going to finish it, you know, and get the book. And I remember Reagan. I'm kind of a Reagan type of writer. And when Reagan, you know, got to governor more, I don't think so much when he was governor of California, but when he became president, people say, yeah, everybody laughs at me because of the movies I was in. You know, what about crappy movies? And he said, well, I have to tell you, back then, they didn't tell us that the movie had to be good. They said they didn't want the movie good. They wanted the movie Tuesday.

Yeah.

And it's kind of like that. And I think that's a copywriter's attitude. I know. In other words, you got a deadline. I mean, people say Shakespeare, you know, Shakespeare. Oh, I could be like Shakespeare. I said, there's two things you have to remember. He did it for money and on deadline.

Yeah, yeah. And Dickens, like Dickens, too, that was writing, you know, install.

He did for money. And so my feel. My feeling is that. And Joe brought it up at the beginning. Joe brought it up, or you brought it up, Stephen, that the best way to be really good in yourself is have it be for value for other people. In other words, that you have in mind who you're doing this for. And so is it going to make a difference in that person's life? And how are they going to feel after? You know, I mean, how are they going to feel about the value that they got from you? If you have your emphasis on that, you're taken care of. You know, your friend who is in 24 that you visit with in Sundance, the actor Glenn Marshaw. Glenn Marshaw. And he's fascinating guy. And I have to say that if you looked at his life, you know, he's, you know, Hollywood. Hollywood actor. He does movies, he does TV and everything. I bet he is the most fully employed actor in the history of the United States over the last 50, 50 years. And he was telling Joe, he said, well, you know, he says, you got to look at it from the standpoint of a director. He says, you can't look at it from any other standpoint of the director. And the director needs two or three stars to even get on the Board. He said, so I'm not a star. Okay. And then he comes down to about number five. And he said, who am I going to put in number five? And he says, I'm always number five in the directors. In the directors. And he said, I always prepared. I always show up on time. I'm always a great team member. And he said, I'm always grateful and thankful for every role I get. And then he's employed nonstop for 50 years because it isn't about him. It's about the. It isn't about him that when the director gets to number five, oh, we'll put in Glenn, because that's an easy one. And my sense is the other thing is also to know your value to other people and what can they always count on you for? You know, I spent a lot of.

Time saying it can be a hard one, you know?

Yeah, what can. You know, I always show up on time. I'm always prepared. I always come up with something new, you know, and my team just depends upon that. My clients.

By the way, I was going to ask you, Stephen, do you know who Glenn Morshauer is?

No. No.

Yeah. So he's not like Dan said, he's not like some, you know, a list celebrity. But.

No, that's why he doesn't. That's why he doesn't.

His face. I'm sure I would know, but every director.

Every director everywhere knows who he is. Is.

Yeah. Let me share a story that Dan knows this one, but years ago, me and. Me and Glenn were speaking at an event in Las Vegas, and it was. I think it was 2009. 2000. Yeah, I think it's around 2009, 2010. And Glenn has been in more military roles than any living actor. And so he's. Yeah, he was on every episode of 24. Other than Kiefer Sutherland, who was the main star, he was on every episode of 24. And at the time, there were pictures of Kiefer Sutherland on People magazine, I believe, National Enquirer, basically all the tabloid type of magazines on the COVID with him drunk on the sidewalk outside of the Viper Room in L. A. And I was asking him, I said, so what's. You're asking.

You were asking Glenn, correct?

Yeah, I was asking Glenn, what's the story on Kiefer? He goes, well, now that he's been outed, he goes, you know, I can maybe, you know, say a few things. He said, you know, great guy, super professional. Shows up, does a great job. Everyone likes working with him. Awesome guy. And he said, at the end of. You know, at the end of his. Of the day, he finds it sometimes easier to sit and hang around and, you know, drink in his trailer and on set than go home to his mansion alone. That's. He said. And at this point in Kiefer's life, he goes, his fame is globally inescapable. He said, there's nowhere on the planet that he could go without being recognized. And he said, you know, a single piranha won't do much damage, but a swarm of them will take down a great creature. And he said, if you get into this business. He was referring to the entertainment business. Without knowing who you are, it will misinform you. That was the statement he made. And I was like, yeah. I go, that's really interesting. And. And when I first met him in Sundance, we're having lunch, a friend introduced us, and all these people were coming up to him asking for autographs. And I said to him, I go, does that ever bother you? And he said. He goes, you know, sometimes, you know, if you have to really be somewhere in a hurry, it could sometimes be challenging. He goes, but I am. He goes, I wouldn't even have a career if it wasn't for these people. He's like, I am so appreciative that anyone likes what it is I do. He goes, how would I even do what it is I do without these people that like what I do, like my work? And appreciative. He goes, why on earth would I have anything other than gratitude for these individuals? And he had an incredible work ethic, and he was gen. And I've seen him in many situations, and he is. Always loves his wife, is just a super caring, grateful, appreciative person. And therefore, he gets roles and. And gets opportunities that others do not, because he just comes from that place. But he also has done a tremendous amount of work on himself, and he's really quite aware of, you know, don't take yourself too seriously. You know, like my dear friend, you know, Dave Keckage, who unfortunately passed away at 78 years old last year from kind of a malpractice surgery. It was horrible. And Dave wrote, you know, he was my friend who was paralyzed from the chest down for half of his life. And he had one of his credos. He had 100 credos called kekich Credos, Cacaj's Credos. He had an interesting last name. And he said, things are seldom as bleak as they seem when they're going wrong or seldom as great. As they seem when they're going, well, lighten up. You'll live longer. You know, just having the state of mind on how you approach things. Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video. And I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out, and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video, or you can Simply go to joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

If we can go back and pick up on the ethics. The ethics topic. So, you know, I looked at your biography. So I looked and I, you know, I got to the end of your biography, and I said, oh, another guy into a university, and these were all the classes he took, all the. All the, you know, the different occupations you were in the oil fields, you were a fruit picker, you know, and you did air and B. Airbnb in your own car or somebody else's car and everything else. So lots of different kinds of people, lots of different kinds of situations, including Hollywood, you know, being in Hollywood and, you know, being in the, you know, movie, writing scripts and writing books and everything else. But from the standpoint is that ethics in one area of life is the same as ethics in another area of life.

Mm, definitely.

There isn't any industry that's more ethical than any other industry.

No. And like. Like you were saying about the actor, your actor friend. I mean, showing up and being ready to, you know, hit. Hit your mark and say your lines and. And not, you know, be shafting anybody else is at least as important as talent, you know, and. Because somebody will.

Somebody will bring you back, you know.

And you will bring them back. You know, that's really like. Joe, you. One of the things you've always said, and this actually comes from Dan, too, that part of being an entrepreneur is not only doing what you want to do, but doing it with the people you want to do it with, you know, and so in order to be with those people, you have to be for them what you want them to be for you. Right. You have to show up for them and deliver the goods for them and be somebody that, you know, that's. That's ethical. Right. That's not gonna throw their buddies under the bus when. When the heat gets applied, you know? Well, I mean, I just want to say this before I forget it. You were talking about how we judge other people by their actions, but our own selves by our intentions.

Yeah.

And that One of the axioms in, in screenwriting or also in novel writing, in any kind of story writing is that the villain never thinks he's the villain. From the villain's point of view, he's doing the right thing. Right. And that's. That's, you know, if you think of any of sort of the great villain speeches like Jack Nicholson's one in A Few Good Men, you know, where he says, you know, you can't handle the truth, and he, you know, he's the guy that, you know, basically, you know, okayed the murder of this young Marine. Right. But from his point of view, he goes, this wonderful, great speech that Aaron Sorkin wrote about, we have to stand on a wall. There are bad guys on the other side of the wall, and God damn it, you need people like me on that wall, you know?

No. So it was one of the finest movie speeches of all time, by the way.

It's a great one.

Yeah.

But sort of ethics, too, in a crazy.

Oh, it is.

I'm sure, you know, if we had Putin on the. On that show right now, he would say, God damn it, the worst thing that ever happened was when the Soviet Union broke up. My people were crushed mentally by that. And psychological.

Greatest tragedy of the 20th century.

I'm going to bring the USSR back and I don't care who I have to kill or what I have to do to do it.

Yeah.

And I'm sure that in his mind, he's a saint. And to, you know, tens of millions of Russians, he's a saint, too.

Yeah.

Not to the Ukrainians, but to the Russians. It's an interesting to do with anything, but it's just a thought.

No, here's. I mean, I think it's a lot to ponder about, like, what do we believe and why do we believe it and what are we really trying to do? I mean, I don't. I don't know about you, Stephen, but I've done, you know, in other countries, I. I've done several ayahuasca journeys and one of the.

Okay.

I would encourage that for both of you at some point.

So have you ever done it while you're doing your frigid bath? Have you ever.

No. A cold plunge.

You're very adventurous, Joe. I'm just laying out some possibility for.

You, which, by the way, Stephen, I do saunas and cold plunges and breathing almost daily. And so I've. That's one of the newest things I've started. And it's going on now, oh, probably eight months where I always do breathing.

I always do breathing. Every day.

No, a specific type of breathing day.

So.

Okay, so during one of these medicine journeys, and as I say all this. Let me preface anyone that's listening or hearing this, that going back to the famous Timothy Leary line, which is. It's set and setting, there's a lot of people running around calling themselves shaman, putting people in very dangerous situations. And we have a whole new culture of people getting high under the guise of consciousness. I mean, it's kind of ridiculous. But all that being said, so this is neither a. An endorsement or, you know, it's just my own experience. And I've done interviews with gabor mate and Dr. Andrew Wallen where we talk about different stuff like this, but in terms of this, there was this one. I was in a jungle in Mexico, and I was with Gabor Mate, who's very smart, smart doctor, and a few people. And during this journey, during this vision, a couple of things happened. One, there was this small, like, doe, like a. A deer, and it was going into a pit. And I was kind of having this vision of watching this and very, very real. And this little deer was kind of scrambling around, scared and frightened, and it was noisy and it was like this intense pressure. And then it just got obliterated, every part of its skin and flesh and bones crushed and demolished and just liquefied. And I'm just like, what the hell is going on? And what am I seeing? What am I witnessing? And there was this incredible mental anguish, and it's almost impossible to put into words this sort of stuff, to try to describe it. I mean, I can't put into words. All I can do is share pieces of this. And I felt this enormous feeling of the pain and the suffering and the terror that humans in life and nature brings upon the beings that inhabit this planet. And how to make sense of it. On one hand, to have compassion and know that, you know, factory farming and the animals and, you know, I'm. I'm. I'm a carnivore. I eat meat and all of the things that go into life. And where do you draw the line of what is right and what is wrong and where you have to go out and bring home the bacon you have to kill in order to eat, and you have to protect yourself and your family. And along the way, every life, something's going to die in order for something else to live. From plants to animals to whatever. In just trying to make sense of it all and to. And to develop a value system and to, you know, be a Compassionate human. And so these are the things where I often think about, like, what does all of this mean? And what is the answer? And how do you make sense of some of the pain and suffering that people do to each other when you're talking about war? That. I mean, God. Stephen, you've written some of the most incredible, descriptive, powerful. I mean, I think you channel from God knows where, but you. You. You definitely. I don't know how a human could contain the level of wisdom that you have written in so many of your books, from Gates of Fire to Everything. I mean, but so much of it has to do with war, and war is organized murder. That's what a war is.

Yes, exactly. I wrestle with that same thing, Joe. It's like, what kind of a world did God design where in order to live from one day to the next, each creature has to kill another creature and eat it? I mean, what. What the hell is that all about? You know, couldn't we just have a solar panel on our head and get energy from that? You know, and just. And it does make you wonder, you know, as beautiful as this world is, are we in some kind of purgatory? You know, I mean, did we commit some horrible crime and that's why we're here? But then, on the other hand, it's. It's such a beautiful world that if you ever think of. Of leaving it, you know, you hang on with everything you've got. So it's. It's a. It's a hell of a mystery. And, you know, I sure don't have any. Any wisdom. Dan, tell us, what does it all mean?

Well, here. Here's. You know, it's very, very interesting. You're reading the book. My. One of my small books, and your attention, your property.

Yeah.

And, you know, we live in a very interesting business age, and it has to do with the technology companies. Okay. And they had antecedents, they had the broadcast, you know, the broad. You had the newspaper business, you had the. But it's really gotten to the point where a lot of people. And what. The antitrust rules in the United States are very, very interesting. And they've gotten very narrowly defined. And this. These came in that the corporations had monopoly power. And the sign was that as soon as. As soon as the large corporations get monopoly power, you can tell, because they raise the prices for the consumers. And Google and Facebook and Twitter have really pulled off a trick. They have monopoly power. They're huge corporations. But they say, yeah, but we not only don't raise the prices, we Give it away for free. And this has thrown everybody because they have. They're exhibiting power in the political spectrum. They're exhibiting power, and there's a pushback, but nobody knows how to get a handle on it. Nobody knows how to get a handle on it. And the essence of my book is if they tell you it's free, that means you're the product.

Yes. Which you are. Yeah.

You're being bought and sold.

Yeah.

And you think you're getting a free experience, but you're getting. Every day you're getting bought and sold because you're giving your attention. And I say it's your property, and you're giving your property away. It's you who's giving your property away from free. And you're getting no return on it.

Yeah.

And that's what I.

Attention, right.

Yes, Your attention, your property. And I stopped four years ago just to. For a lot of reasons, but it was part of the point. I just stopped watching television one day. I said, you know, this really. I don't think this does me any good now. I will say this. I'm an Internet junkie, okay. But television is different because, you know, they package it differently. And broadcast television, of course, it's their time. They're telling you the time when you have to show up. You know, streaming is different. You can do it. But I just stopped. And right now it's four years. I've gone four years. I've watched a minute of television for four years, and I got 800 hours back a year by now watching television. And I used half of it to read. And I'm a history buff, so I did a lot of reading of history. And, you know, I like knowing where things come from. I know I like, you know, things we think are new actually started. Somebody said it 2500 years ago. And I think it's useful to know that. But the big thing about it is, I think that the 21st century, as we go it, is that you are going to be successful to the degree that you understand that your attention is your property. And think about the property that you love. Stuff that's property, like land or, you know, it's a dwelling or it's your furniture and everything else. And I say, can you tell me what your favorite property is? And they'll go right down the list. I love this. I love this. I love this. But the big thing is, I think that this. We're in a sort of a no man's land right now, where what being conscious means as a human being Is that what you put your attention on is your property? And people will tell you that you shouldn't bother with that. And I say, I think you should bother with that. And as a matter of fact, I should train you to give your attention only to the things that you think are important.

So by you stopping, watching television, like you say, you gained 880 hours of 800 a year. So 800 a year, and that's your attention, Right? Well, you took your attention away from television and put it someplace else, right?

Yeah. And I noticed that the world improved because I wasn't watching television.

So what should you, what should we put our attention on?

Well, reading, I mean, I think reading, I mean, I was, you know, I. When I was. I was first grade in 1950. So I went to first grade in 1950 and I hated school. I grew up on a farm and I was free as a bird on the farm. And then they put me, you know, where you have to sit in a desk. And it was Roman Catholic, So I had 12 years, and this was Roman Catholic when it was a tough church. You didn't understand. You didn't understand the language. They could still hit you. Everything. I mean, this, this wasn't, you know, this, this wasn't.

They had your attention captured.

Yeah. And I couldn't move. And my mother knew that I hated it. And she said, in the first grade, you're going to learn how to read. And if you learn how to read, you can go anywhere with your brain. And that's why you're going to school, you know. And she said it's much more important learning how to read than going to school. And guess what? You have to go to school. And so anyway, the reading. I've just been a passionate reader ever since I was a kid. And I got 400 hours back. And it's either history, I'm reading murder mystery thrillers, you know, a lot of the ones that you like. And, you know, I've read all of Lee Child. I've, you know, Michael Connelly. I love Michael Connelly. You know, right in LA there. Creepiest city in the world, Los Angeles. And you know, a couple of British. One Mark Dawson. I don't know if you've read Mark Dawson. No, I haven't. The John Milton stories, he's got about 18 of them. And then. Yeah, just some great, great writers. And they get you in the first paragraph. But I give my attention to that because they tell a great story. And I think we like storytellers. I think storytellers are Good. Because there's all they. They're depicting life in a full sense. I think your stuff does. Look, let me get my power cord or I'm out of luck here.

Yeah. And you know, let me ask you, Stephen, about what do you. What. You are such an incredible writer. I mean, have you ever read. Are you familiar with the book, Write Useful Books?

No. No.

A guy named Rob Fitzpatrick. I wish. I don't have a copy right near. I would go grab one. But he basically wrote a book about how to write useful books so that the marketing is built in. And he mentioned two of his favorite books. One is a book by Ernest Hemingway. I can't even remember the name. Go figure.

And the other one is probably Old man in the Sea.

Is that what he writes about?

I mean, it's. It's one. I think it's the Nobel Prize winner. The Old man in the Sea is.

No, but I don't think it's that one. In the book. Write useful Books. He mentions two books that are his favorite. Rob Fitzpatrick, the author. And the other one is the War of Art by Presley. Yeah. And. And he. He based. And I have a friend named Anna David, who I told her to read the book. And I. Because it's a really good book and it shows you how to structure a book so the book would be really useful. And he goes through and describes why the War of Art is a really useful book in the way that it's written. But the interesting thing is he makes the comparison about. Look at how many reviews for the Hemingway book are on Amazon versus the War of Art, which is infinitely greater. And he said, because people share it. And when I read that, I never really understood why do I tell so many damn people to read the War of Art? And so my friend Clay Hebert, you know, he talks about what he calls portable stories where you. There's, you know, there's so many little quotes and so many things in the War of Art about resistance that makes it easy to tell other people why to share it. And that's why without. I don't think you ever did a marketing campaign for the War of Art. I think you just wrote a really good book and it's a really useful book. And throughout, people just keep sharing that book. I mean, how many, you know, how many people have. That are famous, impactful, influential people have referred to the War of Art as being such a great book. And you wrote it for a purpose, to have all of your writer friends that are asking you, how did you do all the things that you've done and you got sick of trying to give them pep talks and just wrote a damn book to share with them. But the point is it's about being useful and you know, and so to go back to what gets the time and attention, like I don't use this terminology in my book, my newest book, you know, what's in it for them. But I write about Tammy. The things that you can spend I refer to as, you know, time, attention, money, effort and energy. And so wherever we, you know, that could spell. It's a weird way of spelling Tammy, but wherever we put our Tammy has everything to do with what do we want to, what do we want to have happen. And a lot of times I think this whole process of pursuing whatever you want to call it, success, growth, living, is you find yourself putting a lot of time, attention, money, effort and energy into things that produce incredibly poor results. And that's, you know, the Johann Hari line. The opposite of addiction is connection. And so in the pursuit of trying to fill that void, you know, one of my favorite quotes from Bill W. One of the founders of aa, he said, as alcoholics, we're trying to drink God out of a bottle. And whenever people are trying to connect or fill that void, I often think, what in there doing it? You know, addiction is looking for love in all the wrong places. It's trying to fill something. It's either trying to the pain away, eat the pain away, work the pain away, gamble the pain away. I mean, all these different things that we have as humans that are pain and we're finding the cotton candy non nourishing way to try to fill that hunger, that emptiness. But when you can tap into it, when you can get to that other side, when you can go to your higher self, you can find the work that you're doing so much so meaningful and so connected. And that's what I believe the flow state is. And I think in a lot of ways so much of what you write about, even using, you know, war and using all the analogies is to tap into that as Dan uses unique ability. It's, it's finding that place, you know, Dan's whole process of, you know, the gap, how you actually look at progress, how you look at where you put your time, attention, money, effort and energy so that you can create, you know, the best life, that whatever God given capabilities and talents, resourcefulness that you have, if you can tap into that, what are you capable of doing with not only your own life, but for the lives of everyone that you have the ability to influence.

You know, I'm just. I'm just thinking now, Dan, thinking of what you said about attention, and I'm just kind of asking myself, where do I put my attention? And I'm just thinking this right now. And being a writer, where I put my intention is into that place where the next book is, you know, where if I have an idea for a story, a piece of fiction that might have just a little kernel at the start. It's like, I don't know, entering a cavern somewhere, you know, a big, huge, you know, with a little flashlight on the top of your head, right? And I'm just. I'm enter. That's where my attention goes. I'm entering that space, and I don't know what the hell is in there, but I'm very curious about it, and I know there's something in there, and. And it's. It's some. Someplace I've never been, and that's kind of where my attention goes. And I take it to a spiritual level. And then I kind of. I really feel like that cavern, that, that space where a story exists, is coming from the muse, coming from the gods. You know, they know the story, but I don't, you know, the story exists. And so, you know, in a way, Joe, it may be a little bit like an ayahuasca experience where you're, you're, you say to yourself, okay, I'm going to give you the keys. You, the, the, you know, the gods, right? You take me on this trip, you know, I'm going to sit, buckle my seatbelt, take me where you want to go, right? And you're there with your eyes that big, right? And your ears that big, wondering what the hell is happening here and what does it all mean? And so it's really kind of a very brave thing to do.

I take, you know, Steve, I was reading one of the murder mysteries, but one of the characters was talking, you know, you don't know the difference between an amateur and a professional. And the person says, what do you mean, what's the difference? He says, an amateur is someone who practices until they can get it right. He says, a professional is somebody who practices until they can't get it wrong.

That's pretty good. Yeah.

And I, I get the sense that that's happened to you.

Well, I, I, in a way, I sort of feel like. I certainly don't feel like I can't get anything wrong. I feel like everything is new to me.

But that's how it looks to you. That's not how it looks to other people.

But in any event, I think, you know, that's kind of where I, I put my attention. Joe, I would ask you, where do you put your attention? It's, it seems to me like you're exploring a lot of aspects of your, of yourself, you know, including deep, deep layers, unconscious layers, the past, the future, whatever. Where, where do you put your attention?

Well, towards consciousness and curiosity. And Dan has this thing where he talks about entrepreneurship is where you make it up and make it real. And, and I am really curious about a lot of stuff to the point where I will put myself in situations even if I feel incredibly uncomfortable. Like, I went back and listened to the interview that me and you did in 2003 and it's on YouTube. Actually, it's not a video, it's just the audio recording because I was doing that for my tape of the month club back then when we had these things on cassette tapes and there was no podcasting at that time. And so, you know, podcasting was not yet invented. And I listened to the way that I introduced you and the way some of the things that I said, and it's a bit embarrassing. When I look back, I was like, oh my God. But I was nearly 20 years younger. But what I also have to do is quit shaming myself and saying, you know what, you're just a young guy that was just trying to figure shit out by asking people questions. You're always pursuing, trying to figure stuff out. So for me, I think as much as one could get into a flow and into a creative state, that tends to be where I find my happiness. Meaning I usually will feel better in the middle of a really hard yoga class than if I put together some million dollar business deal. I mean, that's cool too. And it makes money and it allows me to have my entrepreneurial endeavors. However, it's the feeling of feeling really connected. And when I come up with ideas and I'm able to make them up and then let my mind make them real. In the same way that when you talk about the kernel of an idea when you're writing a book, you literally make it up and you make it real. I mean, your books so speak to entrepreneurship. It's not even funny. Like for instance, I bought a ghost town. I bought a 40 acre ghost town called Arizona, right? And then that led to buying 260 acres of silver and gold mine clothes claims. And then we bought a four, a 400 acre ranch that we're turning into a private ranch. And like, I know Nothing about real estate. I know nothing about revitalizing the whole town. But I went into this thing with, with this town cleaner that has supposedly eight living residents. But when we went there for the first town meeting with me and my two partners, Jason Campbell and Mike Leone, we have another one named Ben Hoodie, but it was me, Jason and Mike. We go up there and all these people, 60 people show up and I'm like, I think more than eight people reside in this town. They're squatters or whatever. And we had to win them over. And part of the thing I said is like, I'm not going to kick anyone out unless you're an asshole or you're doing criminal behavior or you're being violent, as long as you're collaborative. We're here to make this place better. We want to turn this into cool. To the coolest little ghost town in maybe the country. Right? And so Dan came up with this great idea that we're going to really do our best to create, you know, a sheriff's association, the largest sheriff department.

In the world that's going to have 20,000 deputy at 20,000. And I'm number one. I'm number one deputy. Number one deputy. And I say you charge. It's like an NFT, you know, the new thing. And it's $2,000 to, to become a deputy. And you have to go to the town at least once every two years to get your deputy renewed, you know, and then you start raising money for all the sheriff's departments in Arizona and you invite them to come in. And if you, every day you have 20 or 30 sheriffs there, you've just handled your security problems.

Yeah, okay, so let's take that. So there's all these different ideas, including I'm a co founder of a VR company and so we just filmed putting Cletr in VR. We've sold Cleator NFTs. There's. This is stuff that I never would have done had I not started this idea. It's what Dan refers to as a strategic byproduct. So to go back to attention, I put my attention on things that seem like I'm always trying to put myself in a position of trying something that there's a part of me that says don't do that, that's crazy, that's rational. You know, so I, I heard early on in my life, do something every day that scares you. And that's different than like running out in the middle of traffic. That's just stupid. So like doing something that scares you that there is resistance to. So to take your whole concept of, you know, resistance with a capital R, you know, I had to really ponder this idea. But then I'm like, okay, like I'm capable of doing this and if I'm not capable, I can get the capabilities elsewhere. You know, I don't have to know how to do everything. It's the who, not how. Right. And so I partnered with a couple of who's and they love my vision. They're really good. I mean, this town that was established in 1869 as of last week, for the first time in its history, has fresh water to it because we went and got a well built that we put a lot of money into it. We built. I own the Cleaner Bar and Yacht Club Club. Even though it's leads to me, which is hysterical. And they've got 6,600 members and people go there and it's up to 200 people on a weekend show up to this place, they hang out in their ATVs and it's, it's this wild stuff. But the, but the whole. So the whole thing is, I love things like that. To me it's, it's like an interesting playground. And this came after taking last year as a one year sabbatical. I mean if I would have not taken the one year sabbatical, I had to really look at my ego, I had to really look at who I give my time and attention to. I realized that not being on social media, where it was way more inspiring to my brain than reading inspirational quotes on social media. I, you know, Dan has this saying which we did a whole podcast on is, you know, entrepreneurs that are too tightly scheduled cannot transform themselves. And I wanted to have a transformation. So I kind of unbundled myself because I didn't realize how burdened I was with decision making and I needed to free some of that space up. And when I freed up my mind, it's, it's unbelievable what happens when you give your brain the ability to ponder. And I think you as a writer, you've just really developed yourself. You're a great ponder. You think about things, you connect with things and then you, you let it out through your hands and your, into the keyboard and it produces, you know, it produces words that will live long after you are living in the current state that you're living in.

I gotta say of both of you guys, why, one of the reasons why I admire you both is for this, for the same thing, is that you, you're both tremendously original thinkers you know, you're not following, you know, any kind of cookie cutter logic. You know, I was saying that I sort of felt like sometimes when I'm writing a book, I'm going into a dark cave, right, and trying to see. And I think you guys do that, too. Like, the stuff that you come up with, Dan, you know, I've never heard it from anybody else, and I know you're just sort of. You're looking at the world, world. You're sort of asking questions. Why does this work? What are the rules of this? What are the principles that are involved here? And you. Oh, this is a principle. And nobody's come up with that, you know, and it's a great gift, you know, and you do the same thing, Joe. You're going off on all these wild and crazy adventures and putting yourself, like you say, at sort of the cutting edge of the unknown. You're sort of. You're not really happy in the known. I don't think, Joe, you know, neither of you guys, you like to kind of push into that little shadow space, that dark space, and go, you know, well, what's out here? Let me open this door and see what's in here. And. And then you kind of come back to the rest of us and say, oh, here, I found this thing over there. And that's. It's really a great thing. So my hat's off to both of you guys. It's great. You know, you guys have both really enriched my life.

Well, no, thank you. I mean, and likewise. I mean, this is awesome to be talking to both of you at the same time, because I. There's been so much of my thinking and thought process that has been influenced by the work that you guys put out into the world, and I will refer to it as work. I mean, even one of your books is called do the Work. And if you often think about what is work like, and I'd like to have that conversation with both of you, like, what is work? Work? What is this thing that people get up and do and that, you know, Jordan Peterson had a really interesting riff on work where he said, you know, they call it work, and you incentivize people to do it, because much of it, people just would not do if there was not someone paying them to do it. So it's not supposed to be always this pleasant thing that, you know, it's work. That's why they call it work. But the whole concept of how I work, what type of work I do, and how I'm influenced by it, and There's. I need to say this because I haven't mentioned this because, you know, when you talk about attention, most of my attention is the way I think about it when I'm thinking from my higher place is how to be useful in the world, how to produce more than I consume, and to look at human suffering and try to eliminate or reduce or what I can. And know the distinction between some suffering, like getting into a cold plunge, sucks, but by doing it, you build up cold tolerance. You build up your ability to handle and endure difficult things. And it makes life easier by doing the difficult sort of things. So there are certain things. But my goal, Steven, like in the current iteration of it, is to change the global conversation about how people view and treat addicts with compassion instead of judgment, and find the best forms of treatment that have efficacy and share that with the world for free. Just put out education for free. Because a lot of people that struggle with addictions don't have resources. And if I can utilize my entrepreneurial endeavors to fund my ability to do that, I actually feel really good about it. For some reason, I get enormous fulfillment by knowing that I can share or do anything that will reduce the pain and the suffering of addiction because I struggled so much my life with addiction. And secondly, you know, I think it's a good thing to do in the world. So that's kind of. That's. So I'm willing to do work as a result, to have that be the byproduct of it. So that's my riff on that. I'd love to hear how you guys think of work. What is work? And most people that are watching or listening to us right now are probably trying to do better in their work.

Dan, over to you.

Well, it's. It's really interesting, and it relates a lot to the topic of creativity and what I'm discovering, that there really are two kinds of people on the planet. The people who don't know where things came from, and the people who are very, very clear that everything gets made up.

Elaborate on that one.

Yeah, well, you know, I'll give you a story, you know, and I have sort of, you know, historical role models that, you know, I really get a lot. I get a lot of insight. And George and Ira Gershwin are one of my role models. And arguably, you know, George was perhaps the greatest composer that America ever had. And, you know, he did Broadway musicals, he did Hollywood musicals. And then he was really, you know, before he died. He died very, very young. He was 37, 38 when he died. And but he was getting into a entirely new kind of classical music. And it was really, you know. Rhapsody in Blue. Yeah, fantastic. It's really, really. Clearly, it's. It's a classical piece and it's brand new. It's a brand new genre. But anyway, they used to go to Los Angeles and New York. They used to go between the two because they were always working on a Hollywood film and they were always working on a new play. And so it was super luxury trains, New York Central in those days. And they. They made a trip from Los Angeles. And so George had his music notebooks out and he's writing. He's just writing. You know, it's two or three day trip and they sleep, you know, they sleep at night on the train. And then about six hours out of New York, he gives the notebook to Ira. And Ira was the lyricist, you know, and they had been working together since they were like 6 years old. So Ira was the older, George was the younger. And so Ira's looking at. He says, oh, this is great. And he can hear the music. And he's putting words to music as he's doing. He says, fantastic. They get to Grand Central Station and there's a hustle because they have an evening event and they have to get everything together. And the porters come in, they get their bags and they had a suite at the Waldorf Astoria. And they're in the suite and George. George or Ira is just, you know, he's searching around madly. And he said, I can't find the notebook. I can't find your. I can't find the thing that you just did. And George said, well, call the hotel concierge and tell them to call the station and talk to the train. They know us. He says, we're, you know, we're taking trips every couple of weeks so they know who we are. They'll look around. Supposed to probably, you know, we left it in the suite. And then they have to go out for an event and they come home and Ira's just crestfallen. And he says, I lost the notebook. And George says, ah, don't worry about it. There's more where that came from.

Ah, that's a great story. Is that a true story?

Yeah, well, it should be. Ah, if it's not. If it's not, it should be.

You know, I've heard a similar version about Cole Porter that, you know, when he worked for Hollywood, he would bang out songs, right? And. And he had written some wonderful song and it had been rejected. And a friend of his Came up to him, said, man, how do you deal with this? Cole? They. He just wrote something great and they just dumped all over. He said, there's another one coming down the track every 20 minutes. You know, he said, I got a million of them.

That was like George Harris, was it? You told me the story, Joe, because you made it into an exercise. And the Beatles are getting together and they have to create a new record. And they said, okay, let's write ourselves a swimming pool.

Yeah. Yep. About. Yeah, I believe this is John. John Lennon and. And Paul McCartney. And he's saying someone had said the Beatles are not materialistic. And he's like, that's not true. I remember sitting down saying, let's write ourselves a.

And so.

But thinking of that, let me ask you both.

What I mean is that the, the power of creativity is a byproduct of people knowing how to work.

Totally. And. Yeah. And you both.

And for other people. And on deadline.

Yes.

Well, you know, in the war of art, Steven, you have the one thing about you ink where you put on the. You put on the cap and you have, you know, you treat yourself as a pro. Here's the one thing I don't want to. I want to make sure we cover this because I imagine there will be lots of young people that listen to this or watch this conversation and might be thinking, you know, I'm not that good. I'm just starting out. And these guys are talking about being, you know, world class writers and having great businesses and that sort of stuff. And every single one of us has had. I mean, if you look at the history of what Stephen went through and Dan's life and, you know, you had two bankruptcies, Dan, when you were 34 years old on the same day.

No, no, that's a waste of bankruptcy. No, I had a bankruptcy and I had a divorce on the same day. And I.

That's what I was trying to say.

And I arranged it so the divorce was in the morning so I could keep my credit card and celebrate at lunch for the divorce that was happening in the afternoon.

Yeah. Well, what did that teach you about failure, if you even want to call it that.

It's just extreme market research.

Yeah, it is, right? It was your practice marriage and no.

One else wants to know about it. Yeah. Yeah. Dan, hey, we're having a party and can you come over for the night and kind of talk about your divorce and bankruptcy? People are very, very considerate. They just leave you totally alone.

No, you were making a point about work or. Yeah, just A few seconds ago.

Yeah, like, you know, with work, you have all these young people that are, man, I. It. It's the world from where we grew up and how it is today is quite different. And there's many things that are the same. And the. The fact is that you have resources inside of you and that are available outside of you, that if you learn how to tap into them and utilize them and weave them, like, in, like a piece of clay, you can develop a great life. And you also will, like it or not. Like, I gave a speech once in one of the lines, I said was, if I would have known how much work becoming successful was, I would have stuck with being a loser.

And.

And the fact is, there's a lot of shit. I mean, there's just a lot of shit. And what I learned about success. And again, this is only my perspective, in my opinion. Take it for what it's worth. I don't think the treadmill of crap ever stops. I think what happens is my ability to navigate it, how to frame it, how to think about it, how to address it, how to avoid it, has everything to do with what I do in my life and what I don't. And a lot of that really has come from being in strategic coach since 1997. You know, Dan is really good at reframing adversity and challenges, as are you, Stephen. I mean, like, the. In so many of your books are about reframing how to think about something. And I think Dan is a really good framer. And so the concept of work for young people. I'd like to ask you, what advice would you give based on all of your life experience? You've been asked questions like this a bunch. I think it's important, though, and I. I don't think a young person can ever hear it enough. And I also believe that even if you said the same exact piece of wisdom, it's like the book what to expect when you're expecting. Every day there's a new woman that gets pregnant and has now become a prospect for buying that book. And every day there's a young person that's heard stuff from their parents, heard stuff, but it just clicks when they hear it. And I would like. And I call those the first domino. I call that the domino moment, where something. You hear it, or you read a book or you've done something and it changes the trajectory of your life. I know the war of art has been a first domino for so many people. I know so much of Dan's work has been a First domino for so many people. So I'd like to ask you guys, as it relates to work, what sort of advice or insight or any, whatever you want to call it, could you offer to young people as it relates to making the most of themselves in their work that could operate as a domino for them?

Well, I'd say for myself, that work, the idea of hard work really saved my life, you know, it was like a breakthrough. Like what you mean I could actually work? You know, I could actually dig myself out of this fucking hole that I'm in, you know, and the idea that nobody can stop you from working, you know, they. Whatever crappy job you got, you know, you're busing tables, you know, pretty soon you can. You can be a waiter. Next thing you know, you're managing the place, you know, but beyond that, I think that if you can find, going back to Dan, your unique ability, and it might take you 30 years or 40 years like it took me, and it's. It's almost always in the last place you want to look, right? You never, you know, but if you can find that, whatever your gift is, which is like, what you've been searching for, Joe and I know Dan makes you a strategic coach. You got to write page after page after page, right, to try to get to what it is that you really bring to the party. But if you can find that, whatever that is, and then apply just plain old ass kicking, work day after day after day, the slog, you know, the ditch digging. Hard, hard work and not give in to all the temptations and distractions, then I don't know if success is the answer, because I don't think that money, who cares about. As long as you have enough to pay the rent to live, you'll find what makes you happy, you know, but. Every kid is looking for a shortcut, right?

A tip. Yes.

Hack. Work for 60 years and, you know, maybe you'll be okay at the end of that. But work, if you look at it in the right sense, that it's. That it's a privilege, that it's fun, that it's what you. It's just life. It's just what you have to do, then nothing, nothing can stop you, you know?

Yeah.

No, that's good. Well, Dan has a. Has a coach at strategic coach named Lee Brower. And Lee was telling the story of, like, how many of you, you know, hate to take the. Take the trash out. And so a bunch of people raise their hand and he's like, do you know how many people are in the world that would love if someone would show up at their house and just haul their trash away. Like, you know, how many billions of people on planet Earth? That would be a dream come true if they could just drop trash off and people would literally come and haul it away. He goes, so you don't have to take the trash out. You get to take the trash out. And I like that analogy as it relates to the whole concept of work. And so, Dan, hopefully you're not choking on water over here.

I tell you, I went through a big shift about when I turned 70, and I realized that a lot of my emphasis up until 70 were my skills. And I was working on my skills, and I deemed at 70 that my skills were good enough. And I said, now the real trick is how can I connect my skills with other people's skills? So. Because at 70, I don't think I'm going to get too much. I'm a good enough writer. I'm an artist. You know, I. I have a good layout sense. I'm a good coach. And, you know, and so what I said is, from this point forward, all progress is measured in successful teamwork. Expanding successful teamwork, which means that I should only do what I'm good at and encourage people to do it. Other people do. Only do what they're good at. And if we do that together, it's exponential, you know, And I think the book, you know, that's when I decided a book a quarter. We just have tremendous teamwork. It takes me 35 hours to write a book, you know, and every quarter, I try to start it earlier, get it started, and the team loves it. You know, I've got one person who's the interviewer. I've got one person who is the cartoonist. I've got one person who's the layout artist. I got the one person who's the artist. I got one person who's the sound editor. I've got one person who's the video person. And they all have their parts. And every quarter, you're working on a structure you already love, but it's a teamwork structure. So more and more I said, you know, as long as I. It's not about me and my skill, it's only my skill as part of teamwork. I find time slows down and I find the work is actually absolutely enjoyable, you know, and, you know, but I'm. But what it means is that you always show up on time with your part so that the other person can do their part, and that's. That's kind of my passion right now is never, never keep somebody else's talent waiting. So I find, I find as I get older, then it's not about me, it's just about my part of ever expanding teamwork.

No, that's. That's pretty awesome. That's pretty awesome. So. So, I mean, you know, I first learned about the origin of the word entrepreneur from, from Dan. So the first recorded use of the term entrepreneur was in 1804 from a French guy, John Baptist. Say, that said, an entrepreneur is an individual that takes resources from a lower yield to a higher yield to a lower level of productivity to a higher level of productivity. And so right now, the word entrepreneurship is kind of fetishized. And I mean, Even going back 20, 30 years ago, many people didn't even know what the word entrepreneur meant. And most people still can't spell it. But there's a lot of people that want to be entrepreneurs. They want to be business owners, and.

They.

May have a job and they call themselves entrepreneurs, or they may have an idea and they call themselves entrepreneurs. Then there are people that really, I look at entrepreneurship is if you think of like resistance, Stephen, when you write about it in the War of Art, where, you know, doing something that's going to take things to a higher level, and that's when you're going to get the most resistance. Entrepreneurs that are really trying to better themselves, better their industry, better a product, better a service, better the world, whatever the betterment is, they have to make it better. I mean, I don't put a lot of things into the category of entrepreneurship that are making the world a worse place. People that are selling poisonous substances, behaviors, things like that. There's certainly money that can be made selling vices, but does it take things from a lower level to a higher level? And I think a lot about entrepreneurship, if you can take someone's thinking from here to hear, that's entrepreneurship. If someone could read the words that you've written and it allows them to be a better human, a more productive human, a happier human, more capable human, that is entrepreneurship. And so I think in a lot of ways, the work that both of you do resonates most with people that are entrepreneurs. Is there anything you would would say to that or add to that? And then I want to talk about Stephen's new book, and then we'll wrap this party up.

I would, I would say sort of another way to look at that is from the inside in the sense of if you are not an entrepreneur, let's say the Opposite of an entrepreneur is you work for somebody else. Yeah, right. You're an employee, and your day is structured for you. Like if you're in the military. Right. You know about this, Dan.

Right.

You have the plan of the day, you have the uniform of the day. Your whole day is laid out for you. And that I don't think is very good for anybody. Maybe at a young stage of your life, it's okay. But to be an entrepreneur is to be responsible for yourself. Right? To let nobody else define for you what you're capable of, what you want to do, what your life should be, how you assess how you. How you judge success or creativity. And to take responsibility for yourself is something that is really new in the world. You know, it really didn't start until ancient Athens, and then it kind of went away for about 2,000 years. And in many ways, I think the crisis that we are in in this country now is that we are on the threshold of a world where people are taking responsibility for themselves. But we're sort of groping, you know, we. We haven't figured it out yet. You know, there are a few people who've done it, but I swear, even these guys that. That take their AK47s or, you know, AR15s and kill people are somehow in that paradigm. They're in the process of. They're lost. They're absolutely lost. But they're trying to be. You know, it's probably a really bad example. I should put something a lot more positive. But people are trying to, or for the first time, have been empowered. Like the Internet is a great empowerment thing where you, You. You really actually can have your own business. You don't have to start, you know, the Ford Motor Company to have a business. You can do something. And people are grappling with that. Talk about resistance with a capital R. You immediately come up against that. Your own tendency to, as you say, Joe, to addiction, to self sabotage, to taking the easy way out, to crapping out, or to become, on the other hand, over arrogant, over, you know, that sort of stuff. And so people are now. It all comes back to sort of ethics, what we were talking about in the middle in the beginning. People are now sort of groping with, how can I be myself and not be an. How can I bring something good to the party and not try to, you know, my buddies, you know, and, you know, that's sort of the side of entrepreneurship, of. Of taking responsibility for your. For your own life and your own self. And that's the challenge that we've never really had as a society, but we're having it now.

Yeah, no, totally makes sense. Yeah. Dan, what are your thoughts?

Yeah, well, I agree with the timelines that Stephen put out there. I think the Athenians were, you know, they were grappling with the fact that they were the first ones to really come to grips with thinking, actually that, you know, that thinking was a human skill, you know, and you had Plato.

Rationality.

Yeah, Plato and Aristotle, you know. But the problem was they were. They. They were living in an age where the only multiplier, the real multiplier of ideas was various forms of slavery.

Yes.

And it was until really, I think the year is 1776, because three things happened in that year. One was the Declaration of Independence. America declared independence from the greatest country in the world. They were a colony of a much larger entity. And it was the year that Adam Smith wrote the wealth of Nations.

Oh, he did.

Which basically defines how wealth is created and through the division of labor. A division of labor is that don't do everything. You do the thing you're good at, and we'll put it into a process. And that does it. And that goes for countries. Don't you try to do what every other country does. You do what you do. And the other thing was James Watt produced the first steam engine in 1776 that had 25%. It gave out 25% more energy than it took. And that was the breakthrough. You don't get entrepreneurism until you get an exponential power source that doesn't involve human labor, animal labor, wind power, and anything. And then you just see it take off. You just see it take off. But most governmental setups in the world couldn't deal with this force. And if you look at the most successful countries in the world, they all came from English common law. When the English. And the first, you know, the first freedom in English common law is the freedom to own your own property. Your own property. And they were too crazy. They didn't really fully develop it because they were too close to France, you know, and of course, that undoes everything. And, you know, the French created two words, one as. One was entrepreneurism, and the other one was bureaucracy. And we said, we don't have a need for this first word. Somebody else can take this and run. And so my sense is that that were 230 years later. And I think for the first time, entrepreneurism is now, I think, probably since the microchip came along for the first time, Entrepreneurism is a real central force in society. And there's a lot of people who don't like that.

Who are those people that don't like it?

Well, it's about individual freedom. That an individual can create their own freedom of time. They can create their own freedom of money, they can create their own freedom of relationship, and they can create their own freedom of purpose. And you can't regulate it from the outside.

So, Steven, you have an awesome book. I just finished it a few days ago. You sent me a copy before it was released. And by the time this interview is put out there, people can go and get this book. And it's called put your ass where your heart wants to be. And very interesting title. And one of the things I loved about the book is where, you know, midway through the book, you talk about ass equals commitment. So put your commitment where your heart wants to be. But why'd you title it that? What's the book all about? And why'd you write it? The.

I just always. I love that phrase. I'm not. I'm not even sure I take credit for it myself, myself, but I might have. Somebody else might have said it, and I might have stolen it. But I love the. You know, people will sometimes say to me, well, how do I become a writer, right? What do I have to do to be a writer? And I always say, sit down in front of one of these things and just put your ass there and stay there. And that's the answer, right? If you want to be a dancer, put your ass in the studio and dance, right? If you want to play the piano, sit down at the keyboard and do it. But then when you sort of take it to a deeper level, that's when you say to yourself, well, what does ass mean?

Right?

In that sense, it can mean your physical body, but it also means, like you just said, Joe, commitment. Like when people say, if she screws this up again, it'll be her ass, right? You're. You know, you've gotta be. So basically, the whole. It's everything we've been talking about today about work, you know, about ethics and about so on and so forth. That phrase means, put your time, your attention and your commitment into what your dream is, where your heart wants to be. Whatever it is you want for yourself or what you want to become, sit down and do the fucking work. And that's the answer, you know, you don't need a hack. You don't need it. You know, you don't need any tip or any breakthrough or anything like that. Just commit. And the bottom line of the whole thing for me is I think that all the great religions of the world, this is really what they teach. You know what they're really. When I say where your heart wants to be, that equals your spirit, your soul. And what your ass is, is your world, your material world, your flesh, your attention, your brains. And what the great religions teach is take that part of you that's the ego, that's selfish, that does the work, that lives in the material world and move it into this higher realm. Like if you're an artist, if you're Hemingway, what is that great book that you want to write? It's out there, right? It's in this other space. It's in this higher space. Move your ass, your time, your attention, your work into, into communicating with that area and then you will find what you're looking for. You'll find yourself. So to me, put your ass where your heart wants to be. It's just sort of another way of, of standing up to resistance, of standing up to our tendencies to addiction, to distraction, to going down that, down the tubes. And you know, it's just what you guys are saying, do the work, you know, just put your butt at where it needs to be and stay there. You know, like I say when I sit down and I'll stop soon, Joe, I just want to do 1 32nd thing here. When I sit down to write in a day. I don't hold myself accountable for the quantity of work. I don't ask myself, why did I do 750 words? And I don't hold myself accountable for the quality. When it's all done, I don't say, boy, was this good or was this terrible. All I ask myself is, did I put my ass in this chair and hit it for three hours or however long it takes? Because I know if I do that every day, I'm going to have it. When all said and done, you know, like, you know, Dan, I'm going to have a book, I'm going to have a movie, I'm going to have something. And it's all from simply putting your ass where your heart wants to be.

Yeah, I totally agree.

That's what the book is about.

So for everyone that has either watched this or listened to this, if you would like to learn more about Steven pressfield, go to stevenpressfield.com read what he writes. It's amazing you can get any of his books wherever books are sold. Highly recommend. Get his new book, put your ass where your heart wants to be. I hope you found our discussion today really valuable and insightful and of course you can find out about me and Dan just by, you know, wherever you heard this podcast, strategiccoach.com and joe polish.com and so thank you both. You have been so instrumental to me and my life and so many others and it was a real joy to do this have this conversation with both of you today.

Thanks Joe. And I say the same to both of you guys. Dan and Joe, you've been tremendous, had tremendous influence on my life and thank you very much just for doing the work that you do and for being the guys that you are.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to click here and if you want to watch some more videos that will be useful and awesome, click here. Go ahead. They're over here. Do it now. Come on.

Thank you.

Watch them.