Million Dollar BRAIN HACKS With Rich Schefren And Chris Guerriero

Rich Sheffrin, man. Welcome, brother. How are you?

I'm very good, Chris. Excited to have a conversation about what we're going to be talking about.

Dude, I am, too. Also, this is probably one of the most requested topics that we get when it comes to entrepreneurialism. It's brain health, and it's how to do how you do more than what most people do. Right. Because you're tuned in. But before we get into that stuff, let's just wrap for a couple seconds. How's your day so far?

My day was pretty good. I got up early, jumped rope, had a few meetings, did a little bit more jumping rope in between meetings, and you're my last call of the day that's at least scheduled. So now I can just kick back and have a good conversation and not worry about anything else.

Dude, let's talk about that, because I am. I don't know if I've. I think I've told you how fascinated I am by what you do with jumping rope. Like, you. You don't do this. Like, I do it like I go out back at night time and I jump a. A little, you know, rope that normal people jump. Not like your children jump, but like. Like a normal person's jump. You jump with a. A real jump rope. And you do it almost competitively. Like, not competitively, but yes, competitively. Right. With the. You still use the app?

Yeah, still use the app. You know, I get friends using it every once in a while, and then that's fun to see them jumping rope. Like, Felicia right now, who runs my business, she's been starting to jump rope, so I just saw she put like a thousand jumps down. Pretty cool.

So what's your average?

Mine?

Yeah.

Well, last year I did 1,550,000. The year before that I did 1.1 million. And the year? This year I'm hoping to do 2 million, but that might be too much of a stretch. It just depends on how many travel days I have and how many days I'm completely out of action. But generally a good day is anywhere from like 5,000 to 10,000 jumps, which can take anywhere from like 5,000 jumps is pretty much like an hour. So 10,000 is two hours.

So today you did what, you broke it up into two today?

Yeah, today I did 5,000. This morning that was about an hour. And then in my breaks that I've had, I've done another 2500. So I'm at 7500 for the day. And I'm sure that I'll do some more tonight before I call it a day. Because I really do want to get, if I'm going to try and hit 2 million, I want to get some, some lead as to where I should be. And right now I'm really where I should be, not ahead of it. And I know I'm going to miss days and stuff like that. So that's why I want to get ahead.

And you on this app, if I remember correctly, you, you, you rank and depending on how much you jump during that one day will determine where your ranking is. Right. And then somebody, you know before the end of the day, somebody could knock you down or you could knock other people off or whatever the case is. Correct?

Yeah. And there are some people that are monsters that, you know, I mean, there are days when I'm the best in the world or the most in the world, but, but that's on days when the monsters are not playing. Because, you know, the most I've ever done in a day is like I think 23,000 or 25,000. It was something like that. But there are Koreans, or at least they look like they're Korean, like they're the language that are posting like 23 to 25,000 a day every day. And I'm like, Jesus, when I do 25,000, that's like, I'm not doing anything else that day. And it all started because I've always done the elliptical a lot prior to, and thought I was in really good shape because of the elliptical. And then one summer we were out at our house in the Hamptons and, and at that time I was taking jiu jitsu and there was no jiu jitsu place. So I found a boxing gym and I don't know how to box, but figured, okay, this be cool to learn. And I went to this boxing gym and when I went to the boxing gym, half of the room were like amateur boxers who were in amazing shape. And then half the room seemed like overweight housewives and in bad shape. And you know, the instructor, the instructor comes out and he's, okay, we're going to warm up. You know, the most important thing in boxing is your cardiovascular system. If you don't have the ability to go three minute rounds, like, you're going to get hurt very badly. So we're going to start with three three minute rounds of jumping rope. And I hadn't jumped rope. I don't even remember, like, you know, I had one when I was a kid and so I started to jump rope. And after, I don't even Think I got to like, before I even got to a minute, I, it was clear to me I was not going to make it to three minutes. And, and I looked over at the amateur boxers who, you know, they had no problem whatsoever jumping rope for three minutes. And I looked over at the housewives and they had no problem jumping rope for three minutes. So I was the only one in the room that could not do it. And, and that had me reevaluate whether I was in good shape or not. And I stopped at Target on the way home from the gym and bought a smart rope. Pure. That's still the same jumper I use now. That counts for me and you know, is gamified and all that kind of stuff. And I've been using it ever since and you know, the numbers have gone up over time and I have found it to. I have a very obsessive personality. If I, you know, I don't seem to do anything in moderation. It's something that I'm working with a therapist, maybe one day I will be able to do things in moderation, but I struggle to have to do things in moderation. And you know, I, I guess I would also say that I was a fat kid and I've struggled with my weight my whole life. And so it's, you know, I enjoy it for the gamification part. I enjoy it for the fact that I can jump rope so much now and it being a barometer of my fitness. But it's also a way of feeling more secure about not ever having my legs rubbed together when I walk or, you know, have. Be embarrassed by my weight, etcetera, etcetera. So I still have that like fat young kid somewhere inside me that makes it less of a choice and more of a must, I guess, you know.

Yeah, listen, I, I think there's two ways to go about that, right? You can go to therapy for a long time and get rid of that fat kid impression in the back of your head and then lead a life of quite desperation probably because you don't have that motivation or let them keep screaming at you and keep pursuing bigger and bigger goals when it comes to your health. Because I've known there is.

But you know, there's also like, at least not that we're going to go down this long road, but just. But it is interesting from this standpoint because I was taught. I really just started going back to an old therapist of mine that I hadn't seen in over 10 years, but felt it was a good time to work on a Few things. And, and if I can't jump rope right now, right, like, let's say my ankle hurts or something like that, it really impacts me. Like, it affects me mentally. Right. And, and that's, that's a concern of mine that I have to be this active to feel good about myself. And the reason why that is bothersome to me, I mean, it's great right now. It has me jumping rope a lot and feeling good about myself and all that kind of stuff. But there's a reminder. It reminds me of how, like, of other shifts that I've had to make in my life that were not necessarily shifts that I wanted to make, but shifts that I had to make. So, you know, in my 20s, in my 30s, and in my early 40s, I could pull all nighters relatively easily. In fact, most of the work I got done, most of the writing I did, I did late at night when everyone else was sleeping. And I was used to that way of working. Like I did that. I worked that way in college too. Like, I would cram and go like a day or two going through a textbook. And when I hit, like Sometime in my 40s, I was no longer capable of doing that. Not because I couldn't pull an all nighter. I still could. But then the next couple of days I was not at my best, whereas before I would immediately rebound. And so I had to change the way I worked, even though I worked that way from college to my 20s to my 30s to my 40s. And it was very difficult for me to actually make that shift of like, working during the day, not like, you know, goofing off during the day and then just plowing through work at night. And I recognize that, you know, I'm shooting for 2 million jumps this year. 53. At some point I'm not going to be able to do this, you know, like, it's just not going to be possible. Just like it's not possible for me to pull back to back all nighters anymore and feel good. Like, it just. I'm not that same person anymore. And so, yeah, so like, the goal is, is to feel good about myself without having to do that. Not to negate doing it, but to just have other ways of satisfying that, like, obsessiveness inside me. Yeah.

Hey, so you, by the way, that very important. And I don't want to skip past that, but you, you said a bunch of things in there that I think are really super important. And I want to highlight one thing that I, that I don't believe anybody understands yet about you, at least not the people who are watching my channel. And it's your past. So you have a very deep history in building businesses. Right? You and I are, we have something very unique in common in the circle that we are in right now. Our uniqueness is that you and I have a very long history in both online and offline companies. Right. Buying companies, selling companies, building companies. And, and when I met you, I, I believe when. I don't remember this. Maybe you remember when you, when I first met, but it was at least 15 or so years ago and wherever the heck we met must have been a Steven Pierce.

Alicia.

It must have been, it must have been at one of those events that we were both at. But I remember you said something, you were working on something, and at the time you had an office in Florida, I believe, and you said, why don't you come down to my office and we'll have dinner and we'll talk business. And I don't remember what business you were building at the time, but I remember we walked into your office and it was a impressive office, a real office, not like an Internet marketing office. Real office, real desks, real computers everywhere. But I don't think anybody else was there because I'm pretty sure it was like 12 o' clock or 1 o' clock in the morning and you were still on fire and you were so excited. We popped open a computer and you were showing me everything that that was being built in there before we even went out for sushi that night. So what company was that, that you built, that you were building?

I think it was probably, I was probably writing a report, I would assume.

Now, I don't recall. That was before. That was before the manifesto came out, I believe, or right around the time, 15 or so years back.

It had to be, had to be something around that. Maybe something for my coaching program back then, but, but you have always. To get my best work done late at night, you know, and I used to love that. I used to love goofing around all day and then at night time when everyone else was like at home and sleeping, like powering through work.

Yeah, I was the same way that never, never really early in the mornings, but all night because it was so peaceful and there was no, just no distractions, nobody disturbing me. And I was able to do a lot of things, but in order to do that, my brain was just naturally highly caffeinated. Things changed, obviously, and I think I, you know, it's, it's really fascinating how we go through these cycles in business where you, you, you get to the point where you've grown so much that now you realize massive work isn't sufficient anymore. Like in your 20s and 30s when you have so much natural testosterone that it's just like pushing you to wake up early, excited about freaking everything, you know, when that starts to peter off and you don't have that same drive. But you still now need to be a leader, you need to be a role model, you need to make good fast decisions and you need to still have the mental energy to be happy and motivated at the end of the day so you could have a family life or a life with your friends. That's when at least in my life I started studying brain health and brain performance and how to, how to really do things to optimize myself physically and mentally so that I could make split second decisions so I could be, you know, focused no matter what time of day it is up to the point where I'm ready to like turn off and then when I turn off, you know, I don't want it. I don't want to do anything as it relates to work. I don't know about you, but like I want to, I want to sit down.

Well, I tell you that like that was a feeling that was very foreign to me when I was younger.

Yeah.

But now, but now it's like, yeah, now I get to like 6pm Yep. And I'm tired. Like I don't want to like, you know, I've dealt with enough problems throughout the day that like I don't want to deal with any more problems like personally or professional. Right. And yeah, and that makes it much more real like the work I have to get done during the day because yeah, there's not that like oh, I can just do it later kind of thing.

You know, what's a normal day look like? Like let's, let's put you in a scenario because neither one of us have normal days. I don't think so. Scenario where you've had meetings, you're going to have meetings all day. You're going to have to be able to access creative thoughts as well as analytical thoughts to be on fire. I know you do some, some coaching with a couple of really high end companies now. So you maybe you do some of that as well as your team stuff. So you have a day like that coming up. How do you optimize everything starting that morning for that day?

Okay, well, I'd say the first thing is waking up consistently at the same time. Right?

Yeah.

Doesn't really matter what time, but that it's consistent. So I wake up at 6, 6, 6am and the first thing I go through is kind of what's called, it's broken up but superhuman protocol which is developed by da Vinci Medical, the guy that runs that. And it's PEMF followed by red light.

Can I interrupt you because I know you're not going to, I'm not going to blow your train of thought. No them but describe what these things are because pemf I know what they are.

PEMF is pulsed electronic magnetic frequency. It's similar to grounding but times 100. Right. Like and there's a lot of benefits to it. It supposedly helps your blood declump it which then helps transport more oxygen through the body. Plus a bunch of other things I use. The brand I use is called the Cloud and it comes in two sizes. A like kind of portable size and also a bigger mat. The bigger mat, like that's what I did this morning when I got up at 6. I, you know, I put it down and I just lie on that on my bed like so it's like I'm in bed for an extra 15 minutes while I'm doing that. This happens to be a smaller version of it that just opens up and like so a lot of times I'll put this on my chair and sit on it during the day, you know, especially if I'm not sure. The goal with this is you're supposed to do it twice a day, 12 hours in between to just keep things working. But this is pmf and then the next thing I do is red light. I'm a believer in that. I've got, let's see, I've got big juve panels like you know, four of them on, on one thing with wheels right over there and then I have another one to the right so I stand in between them like front and back, do that for 20 minutes. You know there's a lot of benefits to that like for skin, for mitochondria. But I also just use it because I, I don't know if it's the bright light, I don't know if it's psychosomatic. But it also just makes me feel happy.

And so eyes open or eyes closed?

I do it with my eyes open.

I just started.

Bothers your eyes? You should use the, you should, you know, you should use like the eye things but they don't bother my eyes.

Do you notice any, any difference with your eyesight since you started doing that?

Well it certainly, when I don't do it. My eyesight is not as good.

Okay.

And there's some scientific reason for that. Like even on the Andrew Huberman podcast, even though he's not as big a fan of photobiomodulation, which is the red light, he is a fan of it for improving your vision, your current eyesight in the moment that day. Right. Like, because it gets more energy into the mitochondria, I guess, of the eyes or something, I don't know. But I will do that. Then I'll jump rope. This isn't an ideal thing. I'll jump rope for a little while, a couple thousand jumps, possibly like three or 4,000 jumps, which will be anywhere from like 30 or 40 minutes. When I'm doing that, I generally have my sauna heating up and I'll jump in the sauna like immediately. Like with my heart rate elevated, I will jump into the sauna, like from jumping rope. And then after the sauna, although I've been a little remiss recently. What temperature are you at in the sauna? It's 196 degrees.

Oh, okay. And I know you've got a traditional. Like. I do, yeah. So we're not talking.

And it's 196, like midway towards the top. I've moved that sometimes to see. And when I move it the big really down to the left hand side, then it gets to like 240 degrees in there and I can't stand it. So I've moved it back to like.

Yeah.

Now because what I did is I moved this to the temperature sensing mechanism. I moved it all the way to the right, took a regular temperature thermometer, put it up where it was where it used to be, and then that's getting up to like 240. But then I can't stay in it for more than like eight or 10 minutes and I want to stay in it for longer than that. So I generally stay in between 20 and 30 minutes, usually 30. The last five minutes really suck for me. Like, I can feel my heart rate throughout my body. Like my whole body is like my temples pulsing. And from there, then generally I jump in the cold plunge, which I've been a little remiss this, this past couple of weeks on, I've been doing it, but not as much as I normally do just because I've been a little bit of a wuss. No reason other than that. And then I will generally heat myself back up because I tend to stay in it for about four or five minutes. That's how long it takes for my heart rate to get to its lowest number. Um. What's that?

What's your temp on that?

40 degrees.

Got it.

Yeah. So, like, my heart rate will go up to, like, about 130, 135 in the sauna. And then I will get into the cold plunge, and then about three minutes later, my heart rate will be going down somewhere. The lowest it's ever been is 30, but it's generally somewhere between 30 and 40 beats per minute. And then I get out, and the cold plunge to me is very easy. Like, I. There's reluctance because it's not pleasant, but it's really not that bad. It's. The cold plunge for me is not as bad as the last five minutes in the sauna. If I had to get. If I had to. It'd be very difficult for me to get into the sauna. If it felt like those five minutes immediately, like, you know, I kind of, like, warm into it. But then after the. After the cold plunge, I'm freezing. Like my girlfriend, she jumps in. She only goes in for like, a minute. She doesn't get that cold afterwards. She's much more colder while she's in the cold plunge. I get much colder after I get out of the cold plunge and tend to shiver quite a bit if I don't exercise, I'm shivering for the next hour and a half to two hours. Yeah. My body takes a long time to heat back up if I don't exercise. If I exercise, it heats back up in 10 minutes. Generally, that's when I'll do ewat, which is the third part of the superhuman protocol, which is exercise with oxygen therapy, where you're going back and forth between breathing 14% oxygen and then breathing 100% oxygen. Then 14. You're doing it on a bike, so your heart rate is up. You're then depriving your body of oxygen, then you're flushing your body with oxygen, then doing it again and again. That's like. Takes about 10 minutes. It. Oxygen. Oxygenates. I can never pronounce that word. Yeah, that's the body. And then I might jump more rope or depending on, like, time that I've done everything I needed to do, you know. And, you know, there was a time in my life where how I started my day was very different. And I think that when I used to start my day this other way, it was very beneficial for me. I think I've reaped a lot of those rewards for all the years that I was doing it differently. And What I was doing differently back then was I wasn't jumping rope. I was doing the elliptical, and I was speed reading on the elliptical. And what I'd be speed reading were my book notes from books I already read. So I was training myself to read faster. At the same time, I was reviewing a lot of the books I've already read and highlighted, and these were now the highlights. And I did that for years. And I think that I put in so much time doing that that so much of that is now locked in my head that there's a part of me that feels like I'm kind of like I should really be still doing that, because I know how beneficial it was for me doing that for so many years. But I also find that I have access to all those things in my head at this point. So. And I probably will go back to that at some point, just when I want to do a refresher. But I bring that up because oftentimes I would go through books that were relevant to whatever I was working on. So if I was working on something related to copywriting or something like that, then I might be that morning on the elliptical and I would do an hour. I might review all my highlights on all the copywriting books I've read over the last bunch of years as a refresher, just to kind of have it in my head. Right. And. Or whatever the topic was. I've generally read a bunch of books on it, so I haven't. And so that was really useful for me back then, and I'm sure it would be useful for me now, but I just have different priorities.

Yeah. I. So I want to go. I want to go deeper into, like you did, the physical aspect. So I want to go into diet and then I want to go into supplements and, And. And then anything else that we could talk about as far as that goes with peptides, meds, anything like that. But. But let me. So. So I think we're both very much in alignment with some of the things that we're doing. And you and I have had this conversation many different times. We do things in slightly different orders, but you do so much more than I do when it comes to cardio. It's so like you.

Like, I'm blessed, too. Like, I'm blessed from the stand. I mean, everyone's different. Everyone's got a different body type. You know, what I struggle with is I can gain weight really fast. That sucks. Right. The plus side of that, though, is that I also put on muscle really fast. So most people Think that I lift a lot when I don't lift at all, right. That. So, like, I benefit. Like, the jumping rope is enough for me to put on muscle, to do everything that I want, right. And I don't really want to be any bigger than I am now because I feel like I'm a good size. I'm not big, but I'm also only 5 9, and if I got bigger, I feel like I would look even shorter. So I'm happy. Like I'm. I want to stay exactly the way I am, maybe get more lean, but that's about it. Nothing, you know, so it's, it can be easy when, you know, when you're, when your body responds like mine does. I guess that's my point.

Yeah, I definitely, I, I'm, I, I'm definitely impressed, I should say. But the, the amount of cardio that you do is, Is something that I strive for. I don't do a lot of cardio. I don't do a lot of cardio for many different reasons. Most of the biggest reason is that I'm a puss and I just hate it so very much.

You gotta find your jump rope.

What's that?

You gotta find what will be the equivalent to you as.

Yes.

Jump rope is to me. I mean, I love jumping rope, like, but it's much more fun than being on the elliptical. It's much more. It's fun for me, you know?

Yeah. I don't find it that way. I don't agree with you at all on that. I, I'm. I go out back and I watch, you know, the palm trees at night time and I jump rope and I jump rope for a hundred jumps. And 100 jumps for me is. I'm so happy when I get to 100 and oh my God, that's great. Like, I've done it for 500 and I'm amazingly exhausted at that point. Like, I'm. That's a, that's a chore for me. And that's not all at all in one shot. That's. In five different shots, I'll do five sets of 100. But 100 is good for me. But, but in other case, in order, like, I'll, I'll wake up and I do, I do. I don't do the same kind of red light you do. I just do it for eyes. It's not that I don't believe. I believe heavily in full red light. I just haven't, I haven't gotten a unit yet, but, but I do red light for eyes. And then immediately go into ice. So again, you and I do things slight in slightly different orders. I get into ice. And the reason is because I. I vehemently hate the ice bath. I mean, with, with every cell in my body. I have to tell myself a story as to 12 reasons why I need to do this in order to get my ass into it. Every. And it's hysterical. Every morning I'm like, man, maybe today's the day. I won't do it. But I do it and I do it and then as soon as I get out of it, I go and I work out immediately and, and then right after my workout, I get into the sauna and. And you know, and then I'm. I'm pretty much done by the way. I'm doing all that fasted. So I don't eat or drink anything other than water and a little bit of salt or something in the morning. And. And then I'm working. Like I'm ready to work at that point. Like I eat breakfast and then I'm ready to work. And I piled through everything and I'm good to go for many hours. And then when I'm done, I'm done. Like I'm done mentally, I'm done physically. But before, you know, part of my nighttime routine for the last two years or so has been jump rope for a short hail. For a normal person, I jump rope for a long time. For you, I jump rope for a very short time outside if I'm smoke.

If I'm jumping rope at night, generally I'm getting stoned and which might sound weird to people, but yeah, I will get stoned and then I will jump rope and I find it's like I go into like a tunnel, like because I'm stoned and I can still keep my rhythm and stuff. And yeah, and I like, I'll generally jump rope in this office. I'll make it dark, I'll turn on a TV and I'll just be like watching fighting or something. And I just get into a zone.

Hey, how does that. So you track everything, right? I don't know. You're using an aura ring, but you are you tracking.

I use an oring, a whoop. And then I also have. Okay, so I'm monitoring three different devices because I feel any individual device could potentially be off.

So I agree.

I like to rely on three. So when they all agree, then I, I take it to the bank. But if they don't all agree, and I'd say they all agree about 60% of the time. You know, sometimes two of them agree, one disagree. Like, but when all three agree, that's. Generally, I feel like, okay, I can. I can bet that this is right.

So what is the difference between your tracking your measurements from when you're not stoned to when you are, when you're jumping rope, or is there not? I imagine there has to be.

Really. Not really. Ask me that. Like, I'm not sure what between what and what.

So jumping rope.

Yeah.

And jumping rope. Stoned.

Yeah. There's. There's not a big difference. And what's interesting. Well, okay, so let me. We talked about this off air, but let me just also mention here that my body is somewhat unique. Everyone's body is unique. But my body's like, seems more unique than most in the sense of how my body responds to things. And so I'm generally like, I take a lot of stimulants during the day, whether it's nicotine, caffeine, and everything else that I'm sure we'll talk about. And the dosages that I can take of those things would, I think, give a lot of people a heart attack. And when I am smoking, because I go on and off with smoking, I see no difference in the amount of deep sleep or REM I'm getting. Although I hear that for other people when they smoke before bed, they get less rem. That has not been the case for me at all. And generally I have a lot of rem, so that's never been the challenge. If I had any challenge with sleeping, it's about getting enough deep sleep. And pot supposedly can help with that because you're getting less rem. But I haven't really found that to be the case either. And I'd say, and I think you are probably in the same boat, probably the biggest area that I struggle with is sleep. And I don't really generally have a problem falling asleep most of the time. That's generally pretty easy. But staying asleep and not waking up many times over the course of the night is what I struggle with. And I've experimented a lot, and I can't find any, like, significant enough pattern to replicate. Like, there are days when I don't wake up at all during the night, but they're so rare, and I can't trace it back to something specific. So, yeah, so I would just want to caveat that, that, like, anything that I'm doing, especially when we start talking about different things and dosages, just appreciate that. Like, yeah, my body generally like what I take for a microdose like, of psychosylvan mushrooms. Right. Like, when I give that to my girlfriend, she's like, I don't even know whether I took it or not. And sometimes I take a second one by accident because I didn't know I took the first one. And the only way I even can tell that I took two that day is because colors seem maybe a little bit brighter than they normally are. But, like, when my girlfriend has one of my microdoses, it's not a microdose for her. She's tripping and, like, significantly, like visuals and everything. So, yeah, my body just responds differently to most things.

Yeah. So let's touch on that real quick and just say in. In my opinion. I know again, we talked about this prior to starting to record. In my opinion, and you agreed. I believe that everybody should start everything. Even. Even the things that we've talked about so far, which are all lifestyle changes. Everybody should start with, you know, getting a really great doctor. A really great doctor. Like, a doctor is not a doctor. You know, I'm talking about a doctor who understands performance. A naturopath doctor who's an md who really understands how to optimize performance, mentally, physically, whatever their specialty is. Preferably both. And then get blood tests. Now, I don't know how often you do. I do blood tests about six months.

Every three months.

You do every three months. Great. So double me. Damn. That's rate. So now I gotta up that. Let me write.

Well, I'm always experimenting. That's why. Right. Like, and we're adding stuff, subtracting stuff, and then we're taking a look at the blood test to see, like, oh, maybe too much of that.

Do you get all your blood tests through your doc or do you do it through an app?

I do it through my doctor. I've tried some of the apps, like Inner, whatever that. The one that advertise on Huberman and a bunch of the other. Was that inner tracker, I think inside tracker, inside track.

Yes.

But, like, when I tried them, like, things that they thought were concerning, like, my creatine levels were really high. Right. But then my doctor's like, well, you take creatine, so there's no. Like, it's not a problem. Right. Like, so, like, where they had red flags, like, my doctor saw none. And where they saw none, my doctor had some concerns because he knew every single thing I'm taking.

Yeah.

So, yeah. My relationship with my doctor is one of the most important relationships of my life.

I agree. Yeah.

Yeah. For sure.

And it's by the way, it's blood tests are, and I don't mean to interrupt you. Please don't. The, a blood test is, means nothing. Right? A single blood test means nothing. It's the story that you learn and a good doctor will be able to read the story. He's not just going to track these markers on a three month, six month, one year basis. He's going to look at that or she's going to look at that and they're going to say, ah, look at what this is telling us. And that story is then how you can optimize yourself, which is super important.

Yeah. That and also like having those blood tests done when you're at your best. If there's some other time when you're not at your best, we can kind of track down what might be the problem.

Of course. Yeah, yeah, of course. And, and, and, and for anybody who's going to get really anal about it, like, like you and I like to get, it's, it's not just you know, taking the blood test at your best, it's taking the blood test in your home territory. At least that's what, what I learned. Like my very first blood test, I, at the time I was living in New Jersey and I flew down to Florida where my doc was and we went out the night before because he's, you know, he's a friend also. So we went out. Not, not crazy, but we went out and we had a really nice dinner together and then I fasted until the next morning, went to his, went to his, his office, got blood draw and then we went and we shot guns for the rest of the day. Right. So it, I mean it was a fun trip.

Right.

But then when we got them back, he's like, well, you know, some of the things that you had that night, even though it was outside of the fasting time, you know, they're, they're showing up in your blood over here. So that's why some of these things I think are off. So we're going to use this as a base and then the next 1, 2, 3 blood tests that we take in the future, then we're going to learn a whole lot like this is not a short term fix. This is, we're, we're together for a long time and I think that's the relationship you need to have with your dog, somebody that you trust that much.

Agreed. Yeah, I mean, yeah, the, yeah, I just, I totally agree. One of the most important relationships of my life. I certainly credit a lot of my health to the relationship. I Have with my doctor. Yep. And him being on top of stuff for me.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so let's go. Let's go into food. Like.

Right. So then. Yeah. So morning happens. Right. I generally. So I've been on testosterone for. Geez, well over 20 years. Wow.

I didn't know that. I know.

Yeah. I mean, I had my. I, I was told in my 20s that I had low testosterone. I didn't do anything about it, but, like, Even in my 20s, doctors were telling me when I did a blood test, like, your testosterone is really low. And I. Probably when I was about 30, I. Yeah. So it's been over 20 years. I started with the cream, like, and I think my, I think my testosterone way back then was like 180, might have even been lower. But anyway, I got it up to like about 300, 400 with the cream, and that was better. Did that for a bunch of years, like putting the cream on my chest every morning. And then went to injecting. Probably about at least 10 years ago, maybe 15 years ago, I started injecting. And then when I was injecting, I was injecting twice a week, like in my thigh. And I'd say like about two years ago, maybe even a year and a half ago. But sometime more recently, I went to injecting every day, smaller amount, obviously, and using a diabetic syringe as opposed to a bigger needle, and doing it in my shoulder and, you know, and just rotating one or one. And so I do that every morning. And I like how it feels having that, like, consistency of 1/10 of 1mL every day. Right. Like just doing that. Then generally I will throw some nicotine gum in my mouth, something I've been chewing for over 20 years. And this is where my dosages start to get a little bit wonky.

Like, can I stop you and go back to the test real quick? So I don't, I don't know the dosage or the, the protocol for testosterone, but, you know, you and I have talked about peptides. You and I both done peptides. I'm sure we'll talk about that on this show too. But, but the test, the testosterone, I don't know about. Do you need to. Because peptides in the morning, best case scenario, you're not eating. You're not eating anything before, you're not eating anything after for quite a while.

So that they have testosterone. It doesn't matter.

Okay, that's. That was my question.

Yeah. It's much more stable. Right. So.

Okay.

Yeah. So generally I'll do it in the morning, but I'm afraid to do it at night because maybe it might disrupt my sleep. I don't know. But this is it, right? And this would be like a 10 week supply.

Okay.

So you know, and in 10 weeks it's 2000 milligrams of testosterone. So I'm doing 200 milligrams a week when I do.

And that keeps. So where's your number then? You said your number was at like 300 with a cream.

Well, when I was injecting and just injecting, it was around 600. Nowadays it's actually higher. Even though I'm not injecting any more than I was before. It's now other, other things that I'm taking have made a big difference.

So. So I'm curious about that because my, my levels went up from the ice bath and I, by the way, I don't know for sure. Coincidentally, yeah, that, that the same time I started doing that, maybe two or three months later, I had my next blood test. It is either that or the sauna because I started them both about the same time. So.

Yeah.

What is it that's impacting you?

It could be also the sauna and the ice bath for sure. Nowadays, my testosterone is. The last couple I've done have been between 1200 and 1400, which is insanely high for me. But I like how I feel and none of my other blood markers are a problem because when I first saw it, I was like, holy crap. And called the doctor. I'm like, do I have to like, do something like, is this a problem? He's like, there's no problem. Your blood looks fine. Like, if you feel good, keep it going. So, yeah, so I, I will throw some nicotine gum in my mouth like I just did. Right. What I just threw in my mouth though is 16 milligrams. So if you're a five pack a day smoker, they recommend that you chew one 4 milligram piece of gum at a time. I just put four of those in my mouth and I won't feel it at all. Like, just because of the tolerance.

Did you ever do any research as to how long that'll stay in your system?

No, I've never done that.

I, I actually, I was just driving someplace.

I can hear you. I'm just grabbing something while you're talking, so keep going.

I was just driving with a buddy of mine who studies this stuff a lot and he was talking about nicotine because he takes, he uses it every day. Also, I use it, but I use it on. On occasion. I don't use it every single day.

What's a half life?

I don't know. He said it's very short. He said you could take nicotine at nighttime with dinner if you're out with friends and it's not going to disrupt your sleep. I personally, I have disrupted sleep if I use it at nighttime. And I have. I've used it several times at nighttime, thinking, well, maybe the first one or two times was a fluke, but every time I use it at nighttime, I have. I could feel my heart while I'm laying in bed. Not crazy, but I could just feel it a little bit more, which, you know, I don't like. Like you, I don't have any problem falling asleep, but I do have a problem staying asleep on nights that I'll have nicotine at nighttime. Definitely. I have problems falling asleep too.

Got it. Yeah, that makes sense. Although I haven't noticed that. I'll. I'll pay attention for that then. Generally, I take a bunch of supplements. Like, I have my supplements broken up into take on an empty stomach. So those are. That's what I take first. Right. Then I have a bunch that take with food. So I will take that whenever I have my first meal. A lot of times I do have breakfast. So I will have it with breakfast. If I don't have breakfast, I will wait until lunch and then I have an afternoon pack and an evening pack. Right. Like, but I will generally have caffeine. Especially, like, I'll have it like, on my way to jumping rope. Like, as I'm like walking to the red light panel and stuff like that. I'm already grabbing. And I'm grabbing a bottle like this of iced coffee. And then like, I either I go down one of two roads. A lot of times I'm just drinking the coffee. Okay? But there are times when I want to be really stimulated. And when I want to be really stimulated, I will add a compound called bromintain to my coffee and I can. Bromintain is a unique chemical. It's a research chemical. So this is one of those ones that, like, I take it, I'm not necessarily recommending anyone else take it, but they can do the research and decide whether they want to do it. It's a stimulant that's also an anti anxiety. It's a very rare combination because generally with stimulants there's more anxiety. There's not generally stimulants that stimulate and also calm you at the same time. Bromantane is one. And you can get it in liquid form like this. This comes from Science Bio. That's the website. And this is liquid form. But I also have it in powder form where I might measure out, like, you know, 200 milligrams and then throw it in the coffee and shake it up and then take that. It helps with athletic performance. It also helps with your ability to deal with cold temperature and hot temperature. So it's kind of nice. And then. And so, like, bromintain is for when. And I'm a stimulant junkie. Let's. I'll just put it out there like excess. Probably not healthy. Like, you know, but my mom took amphetamines the whole time she was pregnant with me, so that could explain quite a bit.

That's, you know, when in the. Winning the argument with that.

And then. But there are times when I want to. Because I use so many stimulants. There are times when I want to reset. And then I won't be adding bromintain. And if I'm doing bromintain, like, maybe in the afternoon, I'm also doing Adderall. Right. Sometimes not. Sometimes the bromitane, I just ride that. But there's another chemical that I take that I do like, you know, I'll cycle on it first, like a period of time. And that's nine dash me dash bc. And what it does, it was a experimental drug for Parkinson's that got shelved, but it generates new dopamine receptors in the hypothalamus, and it's one of the few things that do that. So you burn out your dopamine receptors by taking too many stimulants. And this is a way of actually counteracting that so that I still get the benefit from it.

Notice the benefit from that, because I know ever since I've known you, you have been. I can tell stories of hanging out with you where you were. You know, there's people who are chain smokers. You were a chain Red Bull drinker.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

Well, it just like, I noticed that when. After I've gone through a cycle of that, that stimulants just impact me more.

Oh, okay. So then it probably is doing a lot of benefits of repairing that.

Yeah. And, yeah, I'm due to go through another cycle of that pretty soon.

Yeah.

But, like. But I'm taking a. You know, and I can share, like, with you if you'd like. The spreadsheet, like, I have a spreadsheet of everything I take. And so but just to circle back. So the stuff I take for testosterone is I think the thing that's made the biggest difference. I thought it was Tonga Ali and Fidosius Agrestis. Both of those had an impact. But now, like in hindsight, looking at what I took and everything, I think actually DHEA made a bigger difference. And I think that's something like once you're beyond 40, like is useful to take depending on what your numbers are. But I take DHEA as well. And then right now I'm experimenting, just started. So I'll have to see what the next blood test is. Cistanch.

Oh, I don't know that.

It's Supposedly boost testosterone quite a bit.

How do you spell that?

Let me see. Hold on a second. It's. Hold on, I'll share my screen so you can see it. Oh, you have to let me share it.

Yep, I'm doing it.

All right, that's your share.

Yep, There you go.

All right, cool. Cistanch tubulosa. And at least when I did the research, it's like this part, the 50% A. Whatever, whatever that says, like, that's the important part. And so this is why I get it from them. No, Tropics Depot is a good place. So. But I'm experimenting with that because I've heard a lot of good things about that. And the. But I do take a lot of things also for my mind, you know, like, it's hard to. There's so many things I'm taking that kind of overlap. You know, they could be adaptogens like Ashwagandha or some of those. Like, I take a lot of different things, but. But what is consistent is generally some kind of stimulant nicotine gum. And yeah, that. That's pretty consistent. Then I have a prescription for Adderall. I don't take it daily, but I take it quite frequently. I also have a prescription for Modafinil or Provigil that I take even more sparingly because I find that that will impact me. I can't take that. The only time I can take Provigil is early in the morning because the half life seems really long for that.

What happens if you take it too late?

I just. Then I get even more sleep.

Okay, got it.

Yeah.

So let me, let me backtrack.

But I will say that like one last thing. Just like I. So when I first got diagnosed with ADD and they put me on Adderall, it was mind blowing. First, like I remember the very first dose I ever took. Took. It was Watching television. I was like, I think I'm gonna go clean the garage. Like, the garage has been a shit show for, like, two years. And all of a sudden, in that moment, I felt the strong motivation to clean the whole garage. And I did. But my dosages went up so high with that stuff that, like. Because, like, it would work for a while. Then I was taking it every day, which nowadays I don't do. Like, I'll take the weekends off and stuff like that just to avoid the tolerance. But working with my psychiatrist, and he wanted to go even higher, and I was like, I think we're done. I think I'm going cold turkey. But I was at 120 milligrams of Adderall XR, right? So that's four 30 milligram tablets and two. That's high. That's very high. And then 400 milligrams of Provigil. That's two, 200 tablets. Every day, on the same day, every day. One hundred and twenty milligrams of Adderall and 400 milligrams of Provigil. And I wasn't feeling anything even from that. That took maybe two years. But I was like, this is absurd. I don't want to go higher. And so I did. I stopped cold turkey. What was really shocking to me. And it's like, maybe a topic for another day. But, like, there's no withdrawal from either of those things. Like, you quit coffee, you have a headache. Oh, yeah, a bad one. You quit Adderall. There's no headache. There's no. Like, you might feel tired. Right? Like, but there's no physical withdrawal. Like, your body's craving it like it does for caffeine for some strange, bizarre reason. But anyway, like, then I took a long break from it. And nowadays I take it like more of like a normal human being. And I'm just cognizant that I don't want to do it every day consistently, because I will build a tolerance really fast. And I find that doing it, like, five days on, two days off, that works well. Or just not even taking it every day if I don't need it.

Yeah, I remember. And I don't know that we should be sharing this, but we're going to. I'm going to bring it up. I remember we had it. We were sitting around and Kim said something. Your girlfriend. She's. She's amazing. She. She's like, I don't know what the. Is going on inside of his body, but he takes all his. And his doctor says whatever you want to do. Man, your blood work is always spot on, which it's crazy because you do, you do abuse yourself just a little bit.

Yeah, yeah. It's genetics. Like, I'm very fortunate. I, I, where I have really bad genetics is my teeth. So, like, I get it. Like, I get how lucky I am in every other area of my life, like, as it relates to my health. But I just had a root, I just had a root canal redone. Like a root canal that they did 15 years ago. It didn't hurt at all. They were surprised it didn't hurt. Now they put the medicine in. Now it hurts like an mf, right? Like, and if it, if it keeps hurting, that root canal is going to have to come out and I'll need another implant. And I already have four implants. And I need another four implants. And when I was diagnosed of having the first four implants I needed, I went to every place that does the whole mouth in one fell swoop because it's around the same price. Like four straight up implants are like the same price as the whole mouth, like with these longer screws. And nobody would do it for me. They said, you want to hold on to your real teeth? And I was like, why? I have a problem with every tooth that I have. My kids have problems with their teeth. Like it's, you know, it's genetic. But anyway, yeah, I'm very fortunate. My doctor makes jokes about it all the time.

Listen, I mean, it sucks. That sucks. But everything else you've got, you know, you've got to pay dial when it comes to your health. That's wonderful. Okay, so.

But it is kind of crazy, I'll tell you this, right? And I know this is like a little bit of a tangent, but like, so, yeah, I had this root Canal done 15 years ago. About a year ago, they told me there's a problem with it, right? They could see like there was a pocket and that's filling with bacteria and stuff like that. And they, they're super shocked. That doesn't hurt me. They're hitting the tooth. You sure this doesn't hurt? I'm like, no, it doesn't hurt, right, like, and so anyway, they do the, they take the old Renuk canal out, the old pins, they stuff a bunch of medicine in that hole and they prescribe me antibiotics, right, like for it. And what's really interesting is like on day two of the antibiotics, all of a sudden I got like, I had hit like a slump in my jumping rope, like as far as Number of jumps I could jump without hitting my feet, which is really annoying when you're hitting your feet not because you're tired, just because you missteped, because you lose all momentum. And if you have to, you know, I like to jump, like, 300 to 500 jumps in every before, like, you know, even stopping for 10 seconds. And if I have to stop every 50, it gets a lot more tiring, a lot faster. Like, it's just frustrating. And. Yeah. So I don't know if, like, that fighting the infection in my mouth for a long period of time was actually taxing my performance without me even knowing it. I don't know. But certainly interesting. And then just the last thing, something that my doctor recommended to me about three years ago now that he was excited about and shared it with me, and he's been taking it for the last three years and so have I, is extremely high dosages of lysine and N acetylcysteine. And now I take it because those are the two precursors to glutathione. And your body, after the age of around 45, starts making a lot less glutathione. And so this restores it to its natural balance, which is supposedly better than just taking glutathione directly, because having too much glutathione is just as bad as having too little. And I think it's one of the reasons why, though, I never get sick, everyone else around me can be sick. And I know right now, like, there's a horrible, like, flu, cold, Covid, whatever that's going around. And I like, you know, Kim has it right now. She's convinced that, like, I get it, but my body just totally fights it off. And then I give it to her, which I guess is possible because, like, I just went to Puerto Rico and back, like, you know, maybe I got it on a plane, but I didn't feel it. Yeah. And she listens to Dr. Huberman all the time. And Huberman was talking about NAC, right. Which is one of the part of lysine and nlcysteine. That's the nac. He used to take it daily. Doesn't take it daily anymore. And the reason he doesn't take it daily anymore is so that he can take it when he starts feeling sick because it gets rid of the sickness really fast. I just take it all the time. And I'm taking it not to not be sick. Although that's nice benefit. I'm taking it because when they give it to people in their 70s, every marker improves dramatically from their cognition to their.

Every marker improves dramatically in those studies based on N acetylcysteine or the combination.

Of the combination glycine and lcysteine. Yeah. And in the studies it was 100 milligrams for every kilogram of body weight. So that would have me at roughly 8 to 9 grams a day of both glycine and 8 to 9 grams of NAC. I end up really taking like between 10 and 12 just to error on the side of plus. And then just recently, like in the last, I guess eight months or so, my doctor also told me to like really step up the amount of taurine I'm taking. So Now I take 9 grams of taurine a day, which is hard in the stomach, but eventually your stomach gets used to it.

Why? What's a taurine for?

Also anti aging. There's been a lot of studies as of recent about taurine and its benefits. I'm taking a look at. Yeah, there's a bunch of research came out, let's see, back in June of 2023, about Taurine declines with age. And when they supplemented more taurine in mice, the. Their lifespan increased pretty dramatically. And humans make less taurine as they age. And so the study came out in Science magazine. Taurine deficiency as a driver of aging. That was the name of the study.

What mark or what specific mechanism it's working on inside there, whether it's mitochondrial health, telomere length or what it is. That's fascinating. So I know.

Obviously, here's the summary of the article. It says aging is associated with psychological. Sorry. Aging is associated with physiological changes that range in scale from organelles to organ systems. But we are still working to understand the molecular basis for these changes. Studying various animals and then it lists like a author found that the amount of the semi essential amino acid taurine in circulation decreased with age. Supplementation with taurine slowed down key markers of aging, such as increased DNA damage, telomere deficiency, impaired mitochondrial function and cellular senescence. Loss of taurine in humans was associated with aging related diseases. And concentrations of taurine and its metabolites increased in response to exercise. Taurine supplementation improved lifespan in mice and health span in monkeys.

All right, well, taurine's on my list now. Yeah, magically that just appeared. I know you and I spoke about the glycine in the NAC a long time ago.

Yeah, I mean, anyone that I care about that's over 45 who can handle taking 16 pills a day, I recommend it too, because I think it's when you read the studies, it's pretty insane. Are you talking about the glycine that's. It's short. Glynac is glycine and N Acetylcysteine. I take both separate, but the studies are just Glynac because it's glycine and L Acetylcysteine. Yeah.

That's amazing. Okay, so what I was going to ask is anything else on the list that you think it's really, really important as far as supplements that go into your body. But I want to get a little bit more focused into peptides, which is fascinating. I mean, it's a fascinating topic. I know that my doc brought it up to me years ago and I thought, eh, it's a passing fad and I don't want to have anything to do with it. And then slowly he introduced a couple to me for my main focus is longevity and, and part of longevity for me is keeping my joints healthy so that I could continue to, you know, be active. So you know, the basics like the BPC 157 for, for joint health. The.

You're taking that orally or you're injecting.

Well, so listen, in. It was injectable for my shoulder and, and then, and whenever I first started it, it was injectable. Also I had a stomach issue maybe a year or so ago and, and he switched me to oral because the. Or obviously BPC157 is a gut. Is a gut peptide and taking it orally. The idea is. And by the way, it's a liposomal oral. The idea is it, it will affect the gut a little bit more if I take it orally. So I don't know if there, if it's more efficacious that way for me from a gut standpoint. But I do know that I don't have any gut problems anymore.

Yeah, I mean, yeah. And BPC157 is great for injuries. That's what I associated with. And fortunately I've had no injuries to need it. But friends of mine who have hurt themselves have had very rapid recoveries from it.

Yeah, I've heard some crazy good stories about it.

Donnie used it.

I've never, I've never had a miraculous thing happen. Like I, like when I hear people, like when people tell me wonderful, wonderful things about any consumable supplement, medical anything, I immediately discount it because I don't, I don't. I believe that a lot of people get placebo effects from things. You and I, you know, we're at a different level when it comes to our health.

So.

So things affect us a lot differently because we're already healthy. So it's not like we're putting vitamin C into our body and we're so lacking in vitamin C that all of a sudden we become healthy, right?

Yeah. Right. Like, I mean, I certainly felt that way about nad, Right. Like, I've injected nad, I've done the drips, and I don't really get the same feeling that a lot of people have. And I think it's because I just have a high level of NAD to begin with. So it's not like it's not really doing much for me. Maybe when I get older in my nad.

Do you what does it smell like when you open up a bottle?

I don't even know.

Like, what happened was that it's not a potent smell.

The like, only because, like, when I've done it in the IV drip, I'm not smelling it at all.

I apologize. I'm not talking about nad. I meant nac.

N. Oh, nac. NAC supposedly tastes like shit. So the reason I say that is Kim, my girlfriend, cannot take pills. Right? Like, I can grab literally a handful of 30 pills, put it in my mouth, take a coffee, and you're good? Yeah, and I'm good. She literally has to take one at a time and then have a little piece of food and then another. Like, it's a. It's a 30 minute process to take 10 pills. Right. So I'm so sold on the combination of glycine and acetylcysteine, I wanted to see if. And I haven't even done it. I bought it like about six months ago. I bought glycine as a powder form and NAC as a powder form with the hope of possibly mixing it up together for Kim so that she could take the proper amount of dosage. But we haven't done it yet. And I've been slow to do it because when I told my doctor about it, he's like, yeah, it's going to taste like shit. And because of the nac.

Well, I'll tell you, NAC stinks like shit.

Yeah.

It's got a very sulfurous smell to it when I open up the bottle. And I've got it from a lot of different manufacturers. The only reason why I ever even started to notice it though, is because the very first time I started taking it, which was maybe two years ago, I started to smell a little bit and I'm like, oh, really? Is that smell? And I was taking a Lot of NAC at the time, and apparently it stinks, you know, and eventually, if you take too much of anything, starts coming out of you. So, you know, that's my story about nac. Not a good story, but I. I stopped taking it for quite a while, and now I take it intermittently because I'm afraid I don't. You know, because I don't want to smell. That's why.

Who does? If I ever start smelling, you'll have to let me know.

I would. I would be the first to let you know if I smelled something next to you, but. And I would hope you would do the same thing for me.

I would. I would. I. There's other things that I take that do smell horribly. Like, I'm looking up, like, one of them was recommended by Rhonda Fitzpatrick.

Yeah, yeah.

It's like sulfur urethane or something like.

Oh, yeah, Sulforaphane. You take that smell?

I take that every day. Yeah. Do you.

That's wonderful for you, but I have never taken that in any form other than by grinding up broccoli sprouts.

No, I take. Hold on. I'll tell you where I take it. See. Yeah, it's from. The brand is B, R, O, Q, and it's just straight sulforaphane. And that was the brand that. That Rhonda Patrick mentioned. And you. Can I buy it on Amazon?

Yeah, I'm gonna. I'm gonna look into that. That is. That is super good for many different things inside your body, longevity wise.

Yeah. You know, but like, I take as it relates to, like, brain performance. Right. Like, I take a little bit of Huperzine A each day. Like 200 milligrams or micrograms. Rather. I take. I'm just looking down the list. L. Tyrosine in the morning. Creatine supposedly also helps with mental performance.

Yeah. So how much of that are you taking? Because I just upped my creatine for mental performance.

I take just 5 grams a day, but I'm testing. But there's a different type of creatine that supposedly gets much better results.

German?

I don't know. I texted it to my doctor a while back. Let's see if. If I can find it in the. In the conversation. Or you know what? I could just do creatine. Creatine. All right. Yeah. Can't find it right now, but there's a creatine that supposedly is more powerful for the brain effects. But I.

Well, I'd be really. If you. When you find that, text me. I'd really be interested in that. So I. I just had a really good. Spent. Spent time with a good friend of mine who's a doctor. Not, Not. Not my concierge doc, but another one. Wonderful, brilliant dude. And. And we were talking about cognitive performance, and he's like, dude, you. You gotta try 20 grams of creatine. Take it from 5 to 20, short period of time, couple of months, and see what happens. You know, I don't see a difference in cognitive performance. I don't think. I think much faster than I have ever. But do you eat a lot of meat? I don't. I don't. Well, so compared to you, I do not. So I'll have meat. I won't have meat every day. I think you have meat multiple times a day, right? Yeah, which I used to for many, many years, but. So I don't have meat every day anymore. So the creatine, you know, is. Is important to me. But. But that's interesting. So, okay, so what else is on your list that you want to talk about? Because I got. I want to.

Yeah, just other things that, like, make a difference. Let's see. Just looking at the list here, I take a very low dose of lithium.

Okay.

I need micrograms or.

What is it? Dopamine or serotonin? Is that.

No, for. You know, there's just been a lot of studies that in areas where there is lithium in the drinking supply, naturally there's less suicide and less depression. So I just take, you know, 50 micrograms is a very small amount. And since I think that I tend towards slight depression, like, my natural state is somewhat depressed. I think, like, my dad was that way. And I think I'm kind of the same way. I'm vigilant, like, as it relates to staying more positively framed and like. So when I came across those studies, it was impactful to me. I also take Korean red pan ex ginseng. I'm just looking at my list and which ones, like, make a difference. I take alpha gpc.

Okay. Me too.

You know.

Yep.

I take. I mean, I take a lot of things, but I'm just. I'm just looking at the stuff that can affect mental performance. Lion's mane. I take that daily.

Oh. So I've never. I mean, I've. I've played with it, but I've never done it on a consistent basis. Do you like it?

Yes. Okay. I take a high dose of acetyl L. Acetyl L. Carnitine. That's more for energy and stuff. Let's see. I'M just looking to see what other things here are more mental. I take dopamucana.

I don't know that. Okay, I'm set up.

That's. That has a. It's a extract from the mucuna plant, but it also has L dopa in it. So it's like dopamine. I take EC egcg. Right. That's from green tea. I don't take this often because it's too strong for me, believe it or not, but. Raul sign.

What is it?

Raul sign. R, A, U, W, O, L, S, C, I, N, E. It's a type of yohimbi, but it's, like, amped up. And when I take it, I'm like, whoa. Like, so I don't mentally, or both physically and mentally. And it might be combining with other stuff. That might be why. But, like, I don't know. Like, I don't remember the name of the brand, but there used to be these energy drinks that came in these, like, blue. No, no, no. That. I think it was called Redline. They came in these blue bottles. This is like, 15 years ago. Okay. I'm sure they're off the market because they, I, I thought they were strong, and if I think they're strong, like, it's probably killing some people, but that, I sometimes feel that with that. And then at nighttime, you know, I'm taking all the stuff that supposedly ramps you down, you know, from magnesium, L theonate.

How much of that do you take?

I take 1500 milligrams of that.

You take 1500 milligrams at one time?

Yeah. At night time, I take. I take 250 milligrams of apigenin. Yeah, I take, I take 2000 milligrams of GABA, and I take 200 milligrams of HTP. I take 1000 milligrams of L theanine, I take 1500 milligrams of L tryptophan, 5 milligrams of melatonin. And. Yeah, that's why, like, I, it knocks me out. Like, it knocks me out. And I know this because I once grabbed an evening baggie for my afternoon bag, and an hour later I hit a wall so hard I had to go take a nap.

That's hysterical.

Yeah. So I know it works.

Yeah.

Because I'm like, why am I getting so tired? Like, what the. And, and then I look down, I'm like, oh, like, that's why. Well, at least I know it works.

I, I, so I can't. I, I don't take the melatonin. In fact, I, I don't take most of this at nighttime because anything that I take at nighttime other than maybe 500 milligrams of magnesium helps me to fall asleep deeper initially. But I'm up guaranteed. Like, like I, I, I can make it. If I don't take anything at night time, I can make it to maybe three, 3:30. Yeah. And then I wake up. But if I take melatonin, I'm up a couple of hours earlier than that. Like I'll go deep for two hours.

Are you thinking time at least? I'm sorry, mine's time released.

No, I don't. But yeah, you know what, one of the thoughts I had as I was awake last night at about 3 o' clock in the morning because I ruminate over a lot of things, have some great ideas about stuff including how to stay asleep. It's really a magical time for me. Rich. I thought what would be great is the magnesium brianate in a time released, not capsule, but you know, time released something because that would then release. If it released, if it released everything within maybe four, three or four hours. I think I'd have a great night's sleep because what I do sometimes is if I, if I do have the ability, like on a Friday night or a Saturday night where I don't have to do anything the next morning and I stay in another hour or two when I wake up at 3 o', clock, I'll have another magnesium and then an hour later when I finally fall back asleep, like I'm solid for a little while.

That makes sense.

Yeah, yeah. So that's on my list of things to locate.

But also, but you know, but melatonin does come in time released for that specific purpose. Because if you don't like, you are more likely to wake up sooner.

Yeah, but there's, there's a lot of studies around melatonin that are contradictory and it gets me a little.

There's a lot. Yeah, there are a lot. And because melatonin is also one of the major antioxidants of the body.

I know that, listen, I mean we.

Could like and, and we make less melatonin as we age.

I get it.

So I've read some people like doing mega doses for the anti.

Yes.

You know, oxidant things.

Right.

But I'm not as.

There's also that shuts off puberty and like it's a major trigger for kids when they go through puberty. It's when their melatonin increases and that begins to shut off and by the way, I am absolutely not qualified to make any of these.

Yeah, like, these are all. Like, this is, you know.

Exactly. So. So I have good friends who tell me about these things who I believe are highly qualified, and they've. They've. They've sufficiently scared me away from taking melatonin and for any length of time, unless it's like, I just got off a red eye and I need to sleep or something to that effect, which happens. So. Okay, so, hey, we didn't talk about. We didn't talk about food that much. Okay, so let's. And. And again, your diet. Your diet and my diet are similar in that we're high in protein, but the sources of protein are different. Yeah.

And I think you're more disciplined than I am. I don't know if that's the case.

Oh, I totally thought it was the exact opposite.

So I go through periods where I'm very disciplined, and when I'm in that groove, it's very easy to stay disciplined. And then if I go out of that groove, it's a show. And, like, and I eat a ridiculous amount. Like, that's the old fat me. And, like, just can't get enough. Like, I can eat a box of cookies myself, no problem.

Oh, yeah, I don't do that.

Yeah. Like, you know, if I want to have a binge day, like, Kim's like, yeah, let's have a binge day. And after she eats, like, four Oreos, she's, like, ready to tap out. I'm like, like, you're such a bad partner. Like, I'm gonna finish this box of Oreos. I'm then gonna go and have two pints of ice cream. And then after that, I'm gonna have, like, you know, so, you know, it's like, a lot of things in my life, I thrive under routine, but there's a part of me that resists routine consistently. And so right now, like, yeah, I'm eating. I haven't been eating that well the last couple weeks. I actually wasn't eating well like, at the beginning of the year. Then reset did, like, a five day fast, then was eating well, then I was traveling again and started eating crap. And I haven't gotten out of it again yet.

Oh, didn't. Didn't we see each other right after your five day fast?

Yeah.

Yeah. So, yeah. And I haven't. I've done fast before. I haven't done a five day.

Well, if you've been in ketosis consistently like I have been, then fasting is relatively easy. Because there's no hard transition from glucose to ketones.

Right.

You know, and, yeah, my body, like, I spent a lot of years in ketosis straight, and I think because of that, my body's very used to it and is very inclined to immediately switch over. There's no ketone flu or anything like that. Because I was a big proponent of Atkins, like, in my 20s. That's the first time I got thin so much. So I brought my dad to Atkins, and it was crazy because my dad had really bad diabetes and was totally able to reverse the diabetes and go off all medication eating that way. But he decided he couldn't eat that way. Like, he'd much. He'd rather die younger eating pizza and french fries and, you know, hot dogs with the bun. And so he made up his mind, and he did die early for that reason. But. But, yeah, I'm a big proponent of it.

Okay, so normal day of food.

Normal day of food. If I'm eating breakfast, I'm going to have scrambled eggs with cheese.

How many?

Three or four. Then generally, I. It's rare that I. It's rare that I have two meals during the day. It's either one. It's either breakfast or no breakfast. And then I'm having, like, steak for lunch. If I don't. If I have breakfast like I did this morning, I had scrambled eggs, then I probably am not going to eat again until dinner time, and it's going to be some kind of meat, and that'll be, like, the day. And generally, that's my general. Like, when I'm thriving, that's generally what I'm eating. I will have eggs in the morning with cheese, mozzarella cheese in it. And then for dinner, I'll have some kind of steak and some vegetables.

So brain performance, you see. Do you see a marked difference if you were to inject carbohydrates in there, or marked difference if you eat more food?

If I'm eating carbs, I get tired and I'm more fuzzy.

You're less focused with carbs. Yeah, is what you're saying. And what about with more meals? More or less focused?

I. I don't like having lots of meals. So I've never been a big, like, many meals a day kind of person. I like. It's takes too much time. Like, one of the things I like about fasting is how much time you get back. Yeah. Like, and you never. You're not even thinking about, like, it's crazy, like, how. I don't know, it just seems like you Have a lot more time all of a sudden when you're not taking any time to eat. And so because of that, I, Yeah, I've never been a fan of like, six meals a day, like, small, like, because to me, it's like once I start eating, if I eat, I try to eat when I'm hungry, you know, and if I'm not hungry, then I'm not eating. That's kind of the deal. And that's, that's great. Yeah. And I remember, like, when I first started doing that years ago, like, I would tell people, like, I'm, I only, like, they'd be like, wow, you lost a lot of weight. You're in great shape now. And I'd be like, yeah, I'm just eating when I'm hungry. And, and I'm not eating any other time. Even if it's lunchtime or dinner time or breakfast time. I'm not eating if I'm not hungry. And then we would go out for lunch and I'm not eating. And they're like, why aren't you eating? I'm like, I told you I'm not hungry right now. I'm not eating. And what was interesting was, is that that was different for me. So much so that I found that eating when I was really hungry and stopping eating when I am no longer hungry, that only works if you're only eating when you're hungry. Right. Like to stop when you're not hungry because, you know, and I was a lot less hungry. I realized how much less I ate if I only ate when I was hungry, you know. And so, yeah, I, if I don't, if I don't eat breakfast and I don't eat lunch, I do hit a wall. And it's interesting, it took me a while to figure that out because I'd just be a little tired and I couldn't understand why. Then when I had dinner, all of a sudden I felt wide awake again. And I'm like, oh, okay. And I can totally get it for someone like me because I've burnt thousands and thousands of calories jumping rope and doing everything. And if I have not yet, like, replenished. Yeah. At some point, I'm feeling like I didn't get enough sleep last night when really, my money, my body just doesn't have the raw material to do what it needs to do.

Yeah, I, I, I, I am slightly different than that. Like, I need, I find, like, I need food for my brain to really function well. I don't need to eat until after I'm done training, working out, but I do need to eat prior to working. Like if I start a work day and I don't have a meal and my meal is similar to you, it's eggs, six eggs without, without the cheese in it. But I'll have a piece of toast with it and then when I'm splurging.

I'll have a piece of toast with it.

And a whole handful of different vitamins. And then, but, but listen, I, I had to get used to having these. I have these organic homemade chocolate protein muffins which either, either I'll make or somebody else will make for me. And, and the reason why I need them is because often I won't stop work. Like I'll be in meetings back to back with my team or with the club 28ers or whatever it is, and I won't stop. And then all of a sudden I'll start to be like, I'm thinking just a little bit slower, I'm saying, and, but more while I'm talking to people and it's not impressive. Like, I notice it and I'm like, I feel stupid right now. Like, so I'll grab four of those, which is a good amount. It's almost 60 grams of protein and a coffee. And I'm good. Like, it's, it's a, it's a good snack to get me through, but I need that. And then I, I'd like to really protein up for dinner with vegetables.

Yeah.

Hey, so I got, I got some rapid fire questions for you because I, I don't, I know we're running heavy on time here, but I'm loving every second of this and I really appreciate your time putting into this, but. Okay, what do you think three things are that we as entrepreneurs do not? Maybe not you and I, but maybe you and I, but normal entrepreneurs do, that are killing their ability to think clearly during the day.

I would say first and foremost, probably having a scheduled time to go to bed and a scheduled time to wake up. I noticed a huge difference in my own life when the more consistent that is, the better I do. And I think that's partly because your body is highly adaptable. And if you consistently go to bed at the same time and consistently wake up at the same time, your body will adjust to making sure you get what you need most. Because it's not haphazard. It knows what to expect. And I think that there's tremendous benefit from that. So that would be the first and probably one of the most important things I also like on that, I notice that like when I used to pull a lot of all nighters and stuff like that, how much light impacted me. So if like I got to be careful like being at this desk that I'm at right now because there's a lot of light being thrown on me and you know, I have lights like all around me and if I turn them off right, like so like this, like if I come in here at night and I want to do something quick, I want to put it to this because this would wake, wakes me up. It's great. Like as a hack to stay productive, not so great if I'm working late and then I want to go to bed because it ain't happening. So. But yeah, a standard schedule, really important. I think I'm trying to think of just a lot of the conversations I've had with people. You know, I wouldn't say that you need to have a stimulant, that would be probably too. But I do. And so I don't know if that's it, but I would say physical exercise of some sort, if you're not moving enough, that's problematic. I mean, I stand at a, like right now I'm standing, I spend most of my day standing. I, I and it's not so much like I don't have any back problems or anything like that, but I just feel like, like standing is more how I want to be in life. Like as far as like engaged and ready to pounce or attack. And I don't feel that way when I'm sitting down. I feel kind of laid back and in a different frame of mind. So that I would say is second. And I'm also a big fan of sunlight and stuff like that. I'm just trying to think of, you know, I've had friends who like took nootropics and they would get headaches and that's because they didn't have enough alpha GPC in them. Right. Like if you take alpha brain and it gives you a headache, it's because it's using up, you know, certain brain, certain brain chemicals that you don't have enough of. That's why you're getting the headache. And so I would say that. But I think that, yeah, some kind of fitness routine, really critical. You have to, if you don't feel good about yourself, it shows in a lot of ways. And I think that, I think it, it is the way it is. I'll just say it. Even though people might not like it, there's a tremendous amount of discrimination for obese people. You know, when they ask kids, like, you know, who would you like more? Like, like, you know, kids in kindergarten, right. Like, who would you more likely be friends with? Like, they show them a picture of like a normal sized person, like missing an arm versus like a fat kid. Right. And they'll generally always pick the one that's missing the arm or the leg or the like. Yeah. So there's like that discrimination is built in is all I'm saying. And as someone who was heavy themselves, like having that feeling of like being embarrassed the way I looked, like you just can't resonate power and comfort and like happy with yourself when you feel that. When I felt that way, when other people feel that way. And I think that that's, it's certainly important. Like there's no doubt that I have more energy than someone who is very sedentary, you know, just because of the amount I move, the amount of jump rope, the amount of stuff I'm doing. And I think that that's really critical. I think people, we judge each other a lot more than we realize. I guess I'll put it at that. So I'd say those are like the critical things. I'd also say though, that probably something that we haven't touched on, but. And it's not as present in my life right now, but like I said, it was present in my life for many, many years is, you know. Well, I would say a couple things that, that we haven't touched on. One is, is that it's keeping a journal. I've kept a journal for 30 years. Not every day. I mean, I try to do it every day, but I'd be lying if I didn't say I'd miss days. But I find that that's the only place that I really spend time thinking, like heavy duty thinking by myself. I mean, I'll spend time thinking with others like in a, you know, like in a zoom call like this or something. But I don't spend a lot of time thinking if I don't have my journal open and actually like writing stuff. So I, I find that's really valuable. And then the other thing is, is that learning how to speed read was critical for me. I took a bunch of courses when I was in high school and college, but I never had the discipline do the practice. And so I never really took because it's all about the practice. And then I was given an iPad as a gift and I really didn't see the need for an iPad because I had my Mac Air. I had my iPhone. I like, I'm like, where does this even fit in? But it was probably the most transformational device I ever had for myself because I found two different apps that really made the doc. It made it really powerful. One is called Voice Dream and the other is called Quick Reader and Voice Dream. Where's my iPad? Hold on a second. What I have here, it was there. Oh, there it is. Okay. Ah, the. So what Voice Dream does is it allows it will read you a book while it also paces so you're seeing the words across the screen. And it's also reading to you. The fastest that it goes is 700 words a minute. With headphones on, you can totally understand it. And you know, most people read like 250 words a minute, so that's already going to jump up the speed. And then Quick Reader is more of a. It's not reading to you aloud, it's just pacing through the book. Right. And you can tell it how big of a pace, how many lines. I do one line, half a line. So I'm looking at. And that's what I used to review my notes in. And I would practice at, you know, a thousand words a minute, 2000 words a minute, 3000 words a minute, 4000 words a minute, then back it down to 2000 and then 2000 would seem kind of slow and then that would increase my overall reading speed for when I was reading and highlighting books to put in there. But that, and I did that for at least a decade and I read thousands and thousands of books that way. And I think now I'm coasting a little bit on that amount of like reading that I have done. But I think, you know, it's like physically, you know, maintain the ideal that you can physically, mentally, like, feed in, like reading, like powerful books, good ideas, things like that, you know, not just in business, but potentially other things that impact you, maybe philosophy, self help, whatever. And, and then consistency. I think those three things are like the key to entrepreneurial success. And then I would, what I would say is that making sure you have the right goals that, you know, for me, you know, I went through a midlife Crisis in my 40s when I was not. I wasn't happy, felt alone, and had achieved everything that I thought would make me happy. And I. It was a really tough time in my life. But one of the things that helped me pull through that, besides learning a lot, reevaluating my life and stuff, was also recognizing that I personally feel most alive when I'm pursuing something that matters to me. And so I don't look at, like, I would never say the phrase, like I'm not motivated to achieve my. Like as a complaint, like I'm not motivated to achieve my goals because the whole, for me, recognizing that the achievement of the goal brings happiness for like a week or two and that's it, right? Like it's much more about the pursuit of the goal. And if I'm pursuing the goal and that makes me happy, then it's the right goal. If I have to be motivated to pursue the goal, then it's not the right goal. Because the goal, the whole purpose of a goal is to inspire and set a trajectory. And if it's not inspiring you to actually go out and do the thing, then it's probably a weak goal. That's the way I look at things. But so it's like picking the goals are really important because they have to. I don't. As someone who was a move away from person, right. You could kind of break people up into moving away from pain or moving towards pleasure, right? And I think most people have a tendency one way or the other. I think that the most successful people in the world are probably move towards people. Unfortunately, I'm not a move towards person, I'm a move away from person. And move away has tremendous energy and power and force in the beginning. But you know, like I work out not to have a six pack, even though I do. But I'm working out because I'm afraid of being fat. But the further I get away from fat, the less power moving away from has, right? Like I started a business because I didn't want to be poor. I not like I didn't have dreams of riches, I just had this vision of being poor and not wanting that. Right. Which makes it really easy in the beginning to fight against, right? But as you get further. That's the problem with moving away. Moving away works when you're close, but as you move further away, the momentum becomes less and less. Whereas if you're moving towards, you're getting closer and closer. That could be really inspiring. Unfortunately, I'm much more of a move away person. So therefore I got to pick things that I want move towards very carefully because they have to be inspiring enough to matter to me or I'm not, I'm going to be fighting it all the way through. So it's important. Like I think, and I don't know if you would agree with this, but I'll throw it back to you. Like I think in my 20s and my 30s and maybe even in my early 40s, it was like white knuckling it like I needed to succeed no matter what because I didn't want to fail. I think from 40 on, you know, about to be 53. So the last 13 years it's been much more about like understanding who I am and how to get the best performance out of myself personally based on like knowing like when goals inspire me, I'm much more likely to pursue them that like, you know, all these little things that make a difference for me, it's about like understanding myself better and better. And I think that's part of maturity is like understanding yourself and what, how to, how to manage this biology in a way that gets the best out of yourself. And I think like after you spent 30, 40 some odd years on the planet, you should have some idea of like how you operate at your best.

Yeah, I would say I understand and I agree with that. I see it in my life as the, my early years were I busted, busted my ass because all over the world, right? Oh yeah.

Stages everywhere, right?

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I used to, well that was when I was in my, my 30s. I was doing four to seven speaking gigs a month and on stages with, you know, tremendous, tremendous people all over the place. Different, different country every freaking couple of months. It was wonderful. But before that, you know, I would, I would work 16 plus hours a day and be excited at the end of the day and be excited in the beginning of the day and I'd wake up like going. And it was often to build something for me. And then I don't know where it was. 35 to 40, somewhere around there. It, it has been since then, building for other people.

People.

It's, it's. How do, how do I look in front of my kids eyes? How do I. Am I building something for my team, my employees that are going to help them be their families longer and make them proud and you know, so. And it's not purely either one of them, but certainly 80, 20 here maybe, you know, 80, 20 in the opposite direction now from you know, that age forward. So it's a totally different driver. I totally get it. I am more of a moving towards person than moving away from person. From what you were saying before, you know, I, I look at what I want and I'm like all right, here's the path now. That's it. Which is difficult in the beginning to get the momentum because the, what I want is so far away, right? So which becomes it? Be you, you have to become Very good at chunking things down, which I'm not good at. Like, I think that there are people who are wonderful at that. They work for me and they chunk things down for me. But I look at things and it's like, well, this is a 10 year goal or this is a 5 year goal or whatever the case is. And this is huge, it's grand. It's going to be great for everybody. And then we have to reverse engineer everything. In many team meetings on big whiteboards so that I can see what our future looks like next month and then because the team will be able to see it much better than I will. But I need to see it so that I know where to put my little magic source sauce or what I need to keep my finger on in order to move the needle in the right direction doing whatever I do in the company.

Got it?

Yeah.

Cool.

Okay, so let me just see. So hey, you said something about reading which like I have to touch on because when we're talking, by the way, I'm going to, I'm going to ask, I'm going to ask another question also because this is super vital and it's has nothing to do with supplements or, or eating or lifestyle, but it has to do tremendously with mental performance. You said something about reading. That's one of the questions like fricking, I believe reading. I don't know how people perform without reading. I believe reading is an exercise that improves our brain. And I, I read every single day for my, my entire adult life and it's a tool that I use to help me fall asleep at nighttime. Like it's, I, I, I, I read before I go to sleep every single night. I don't read business books, I don't read personal development books. I don't read anything that is going to make me think about something that I could be doing better. I read adventure books at nighttime and I read business books during the day. If I, if I'm going to read during the day. But it's, I think the act of reading. I like paper. You know, the, the digital media is wonderful, but at nighttime before you go to sleep, probably counter, counterproductive for sleep, but, but I think reading is amazing. My, my final question though, again, nothing to do with anything that we talked about. But the benefit is there purely from I need to, I need to optimize my brain. Which means I need to become more organized. Which means how do I become more organized when I got a lot of shit to get done? Like one of the tools that I'VE used for many years is an assistant. So your view on I need, my brain needs to work better. One of the easiest ways to do that is clear. Some of the fucking clutter. One of the easiest ways to do that is hand the fucking clutter to somebody else. So your view on an assistant in.

Your life, incredibly important, right? I'm dysfunctional without an assistant at this point. I'm the type of person who, if I'm driving my car and an engine light comes on, I'm probably going to ignore it until I have a problem. Right. With an assistant though, I don't ignore it. I just, when I, when my assistant comes in, I'm like, hey, the engine lights on my car, can you take care of it? And then it gets taken care of. Right. I'm much more proactive when I don't have to do the grunt work associated with the things I notice. Right. I don't like to go into my email box like, because my email box represents everyone else's priorities, not mine. I don't send very many emails, therefore they're not replying to me. Therefore they're not my highest, they're not what's most important to me. What's most important to me is texting. And even then I, my assistant comes in behind me every day to let me know like which text messages I did not respond to so that I can make sure. But yeah, I, I can't function without a good assistant and they can't really be overpaid for the right person. I was actually, I don't want to give out numbers here, but Mark Ford, I was talking to Mark Ford about this like the other day. I don't remember what, how we got on the topic, but I've, I've had it where many times in my life I've had a right hand person that's not my assistant, that's like higher up than that. Right. Like literally my number two anywhere. And that person would get a salary, but also would get 10% of what I make. Right. Like as a way of kind of like making sure they're on the same page and all that kind of stuff. Mark's assistant makes a couple points on what he makes.

Wow.

So his assistant is a millionaire many times over. Right. Like because even 1% of a billion is a lot of money and it's, that's how valuable a good assistant is, you know. And so yeah, I'm on the same page with you. The other thing is a place I would say, like, I would say for me an assistant is completely, like, absolute, vital importance. Also, just having a second person around keeps me a little bit more honest with my schedule.

Yeah. And gives me the ability to brainstorm every once in a while, even when it's just brainstorming to data dump or to hear my voice. So amazingly important to me.

Totally agree. And then I also think that, you know, it's like, there should be a place where you store your intellectual capital. I use Evernote for that. But my friend Donnie and I, he just bought an apartment for his ex and his daughter. They're in Miami. They're not coming for another six months. And one of the things that we talked about was that him and I are going to spend a weekend down there before they move in, where we're going to buy a course on Rome, ingest the course on Rome, and switch over, because he's also an Evernote user. Switch our stuff from Evernote to Roam, because Roam allows for interlinking much better than Evernote.

I've never even heard of it.

It's pretty cool. But, like, I'm a. I'm an Evernote user. And one of the things that, you know, it's like when I used to write reports, like, free reports, and I'm thinking about writing one right now, which is actually kind of interesting. Haven't written one in, like, over a decade. Yep. Like, when I used to write reports, like, I used to, like, have index cards with all the ideas on it and put them in order and be thinking about it. And it's like. And it really bums me out that, like, I have these boxes. Like, you know, I did a ridiculous amount of research on attention when I wrote the Attention Age Doctrine one and two. That's. That information, for the most part, is gone. And I just wish that I had it in a. I mean, I could scan all these in and do that, but it would be too much of a pain in the ass. But I just wish that I was. I was keeping my Evernote at that time, because then I'd have easy access to it all. And I learned something from Tiago Fort, who has a course called Building a Second Brain. And one of the most valuable things that I learned from him is that a note has value. A note's value is proportionate to how much time you've spent with it. Right. And so he talks about what he calls progressive summarization. So, you know, I read books. I highlight books. Those highlights go into Evernote. But then. But I highlight a lot. And so then what progressive summarization Is is like, okay, now that's a new note. All my highlights from the book. Now I'm going to read through those and I'm going to bold any. The first passes, I'm going to bold anything that's important. Then the next time I see that note, I'm going to highlight. I'm only going to read what's bolded at this point, and I'm going to highlight what I think is most important to the bolded. And then I will actually take everything I highlighted, bring it to the top as bullet points, and I might go through that process again, or I might now start writing my thoughts about it. And it's not that every note goes through all those stages. It's when I'm working on something and that note pops up again because of a search or because of something, I will then go through the next process of that. And so based on how a note appears, I know how many times I've touched it. And the increasing summarization, the increasing culling of what's most important, kind of like, over time becomes increasingly more valuable to me. And so I think that's really important, especially since most of us are not going to be doing the same thing for our entire life. That's just the way the world works. So having, like, having a place where all your good ideas, everything that you ever came across that made you think is all in one place becomes highly valuable. And for me, it's especially so. And I think, like, on the mental side, that's. That's huge.

Yeah. Dude, I. I am so grateful for this time. Like, we went over so much more than I anticipated. This last piece was huge. The organization with the apps or whatever, the assistant, the supplements, the food, the lifestyle, the everything. Like, I appreciate you opening up. I know this is not the normal thing that you do, but this is awesome.

It's my pleasure. And you know, and also, like, back to the assistant for a second.

Yep.

It's about. I don't know if this is normal. And my thinking is it might not be. So that's why I want to just talk about it for a second. My assistant knows that, like, part of her job is to help me be as productive as possible with the knowledge that I'm not going to be if she's not around. Right. Like, so she recognizes that. So it's, I'm the boss, she's the assistant, but we work much more like a team. And if she thinks I'm wasting time on something, she tells me. And if I have, like, an opening in my calendar. And I'm like. I'm thinking about. She's like, but don't we have that other thing? Like, we. We work together like equals. Right? And. And I am. And when the someone on the team really needs something from me, they're talking to her. Right? Like, which is great. Like, I would prefer. We're all, like, working on this. Like, we're all rooting for the same thing, you know? And so I'm. I've never been the type that pretends to. To be anything other than what I really am, like, as it relates to important relationships. Right. Like, and. Because, like, I really want to lean on those people to help me be at my best, and I wouldn't be if I didn't have people like that around. Like, I. You know, I. To me, it. It's not shocking to me that, like, my income and my notoriety and everything really increased dramatically for me when I had, like, my first coach, who was an older woman who believed in me more than I believed in myself, kind of giving me something maybe that I missed as a child, like, not having a mother who did that. That really, like, made me thrive. Right. It was some outside force that cared about me that, like. And it's not that, like, to this day, I still have, like, an older woman as a coach. I don't. But it's also recognizing, though, that, like, I'm not alone. There are other people who want to see me succeed because they do better as I succeed, and I want to enlist them into the reality of whatever is true for me, with an understanding that, like, I might struggle with this, but we want to collectively handle it better, whatever that looks like, you know? And. And I have found that, like, one of the best brainstorming things is actually chatgpt. Going back and forth with chatgpt lately, I agree, because it always adds something to what I'm talking about that I didn't know. Right. Like, and actually, I was just teaching that to Jay Abraham the other night, but. But, yeah, that's. That it sucks. Well, like, putting your head on the pillow at night, knowing that you could have been better that day, you know, knowing that forget about what you got done and what you did, but that whatever you got done, you could have gotten more done. Like, you know, like, evaluating the day and recognizing you really didn't play full out, and you didn't really move things as far as you could have. Like, you took the easy way out. And that's what I'm trying to avoid, and that's what I'm trying to get the people around me to help me avoid.

Yeah, that's amazing. And the assistant helps. Hey.

A lot.

Steel Air winners. Yeah, I want to, I don't want to wrap up without given a little bit of credence to steal our winners. It's a, that's one of your babies. Yeah, right. I mean, that's a monster. Which, by the way, I, when I, when, when you first told me about it, had no idea.

Right.

How big or how powerful it is. It is amazing. I hear about it from good, good friends of mine, tell me things that they're learning on that platform. So give, do you mind? Give me, like, that's not what this was. You weren't expecting me to ask this question. Give us a quick rundown on what it is and then, then we'll, we'll wrap. Because I feel like I'm really overusing your time.

There's a. It's actually what I'm working on right now. Let me see if I can just pull up the graph, because I can. Yeah. So marketing is really interesting from the standpoint that as far as there is cumulative knowledge in marketing, right? Like positioning, customer segmentation, the principles of direct response, consumer behavior, those kinds of things. That's cumulative, that's timeless. Those are principle based, et cetera. But then on a tactical level, tactics come and go. And when tactics are first introduced to a market, they tend to deliver a disproportionate result, like much more than you would have ever expected. And I've personally witnessed that many times over my two decades online, right. Whether it was bringing like the VSL to Agora and watching them go from 200 million to over a billion in one year, or me being a coach, making like $25,000 a month and hoping to get like 10 clients or a dozen clients writing a free report that happened to be the first like viral free report, but totally changed my life. Like that one report. Like there's never been in my life a bigger significant before and after than that 30 page report or when we invented the automated webinars or a bunch of other things. And so what I think most people who might not have the same history that I've had online, they haven't been on as they haven't seen as many things as I've seen, or they haven't been online as long as I've been, might not recognize that all tactics kind of go through these stages of where they provide insane results and then over time dissipate. And so what, steal our Winners is all about, is about providing people information about tactics that are crushing it right now with the idea that there is a time lag between when someone figures something out and of course, being out about it. And so, like, I have this diagram and what I'm working on right now is actually to figure out ways to make this diagram clearer for people, like by giving them lots of examples and things like that. Right. But that, like this is the way I see marketing tactics. I see marketing tactics that the yellow line represents the results that the tactic provides, right. And it goes from insiders to masterminds, to courses to forums and groups until eventually everybody knows. And when everybody knows, it never produces the same result as it did years earlier when it was just an insider strategy. And the blue line represents the effort to get the result, because the effort to get the result goes up over time. You know, I'm sure Chris and I could go on for hours about times when we were able to sell a lot of something a long time ago that would not work today. Right. Like many different things. And that's part of the reason there. So, so I. What Steal Our Winners does is it just delivers two new tactics each and every week. So 104 episodes a year. It kind of looks like Netflix. We have over 200 contributors. And the whole idea behind it is what is working right now and what is working best right now. Because if you don't have anything like that in your marketing arsenal, you're paying a very big price for it. You don't need everything that you do to be on the left hand side of that graph, but you do need something on the left hand side of the graph. You need something that gives you an advantage over competitors. Because if you have no advantage over competitors, then your business is probably not going to ever break out. And every business that I know online that has broken out, broke out based on some high, some tactic that was really providing much bigger performance to the whole company. And so that's what we do at CLR Winners. We deliver those types of strategies and tactics that are working the best right now with the experts that invented it. And yeah, every episode's like 30 minutes to an hour. And you can find it at strategic profits.

Well, well, well, well worth it.