Faith & Flow #1: Find Flow Through Leaps of Faith with Dr. Kevin Ham

Even if you are an atheist that doesn't believe in a higher being, and this, like, this has all been designed versus happening by randomness, right? You still have to make these leaps of faith. And so the people who have that in a fractal level, right, it's just they have some other bedrock, but they just haven't gotten to this, like, grander bedrock. What does it take to do the impossible?

What is it?

What is What does it take to level up your game like never before? What does it take for individuals, organizations, for even institutions to achieve paradigm shifting?

Nothing is ever the same again.

Breakthroughs.

Our mission is to decode the neurobiology of flow and cognitive peak performance. Access the minds of maverick scientists, groundbreaking innovators, and world-leading experts to understand what it takes to achieve ultimate human performance so you can feel your best, perform your best, and accomplish accomplish your boldest goals. I'm your host, Rhian Dorris, and together with bestselling author Stephen Kotler, I present to you Flow Research Collective Radio. Dr. Kevin Hamm and Michael Hamm, welcome to Flow Research Collective Radio. Really excited for this episode. It's going to be a unique one and so great to have you both here.

Great to see you. Pleasure to be here. Yeah, excited to talk about flow and our respective stories.

Super, super. Thank you both for making the time today. Kevin, I wanted to start with one of the funnest things I found when, when researching both of you, and it was a magazine cover from a magazine called Business 2.0, and it has your face on it and a huge title that says, "The Man Who Owns the Internet." So I would love if you could give us some context on how you ended up being on a magazine cover with a title like that. And what they were referring to. And then Michael, we'll throw to you for the background context on how you were both brought up, because for everyone listening, you're both brothers. So it's going to be fun to touch on that side. But Kevin, you can dive in first.

Yeah, I, you know, that was really serendipitous. It took me by surprise being on the COVID of a magazine that I follow and really love. It's now defunct, no longer, you know, in publication, right? But it's like the Inc. magazines, Fast Companies, Wired, you know, I've read these since 2000 and on a pretty weekly basis, and Business 2.0 was actually my favorite one of those bunches. And I was in Vegas at a domain conference, domain name conference, and some person came up to me and he asked me if I was the person behind something called, uh, the Cameroon thing. Nobody knew who had done this thing. Um, basically it's, uh, Cameroon has the extension.cm. So how we looked at it was, how do we get all this data on the.coms? We had registered millions of domain names, and we're trying to figure out which domains are the great ones, which have predictive traffic and value, and we wanted this dataset. And at the beginning, we first worked with.co, Colombia. After 6 years of getting, you know, approval from the president, minister of communications, and all this, it actually wasn't happening. So we thought, what's the next one? .cm. So these endings are basically, you know, they wildcarded, meaning anybody who mistypes the.com, you get all the traffic data. So they would be a proxy of like which.coms were valuable. So we did the Cameroon deal fairly quickly, within a year, and so people are really surprised. Anyways, I thought it was going to be a story on me and a bunch of other domainers, we call ourselves. But I think what Paul Sloan, the reporter, said, the story was so fascinating because I'm a pretty private individual. And you'll notice on the COVID if you see it, it's only half my face because I said I didn't want my face in the magazine, but it's also in black and white. And the reason why it's called The Man Who Owns the Internet was We had wildcarded all the.cms, which are proxy to the comms, and I had said this thing that domains are like the virtual real estate of the internet. If you own enough domain names, you can control the internet. I think he took that and created this title, the man who owns the internet. The reason why I agreed to Being in the article, not necessarily the COVID I was actually pretty disappointed that he put me on the COVID story, which became syndicated across every newspaper, a bunch of other magazines. I got, you know, it was a— I think most people dream of being on the COVID of a magazine and getting all book requests, you know, documentary requests and all that kind of stuff. But I I didn't kind of go down that path. I actually stopped talking to media after that. So it was an interesting thing. Definitely put my name in the spotlight, and as well as my company, Reinvent, at that time. So it was, it had the pros, obviously it had also the cons of publicity, right? I don't know. For me, it was not my spiel, but it's definitely an interesting part of my life.

And could you give a little bit of background context, Kevin, on the domain industry and on how you went from being in med school to literally owning a sizable chunk of the internet in the early 2000s? From a domain perspective at least?

Yeah, it was business. I'd never taken a business or a computer course or anything like that in the past. I was really sick at the age of 14. I wasn't able to walk or move. I was hospitalized for a few weeks. And at that time I said, if I live, I wanna be a doctor. So at age 14, I knew my path. So I went to the local here, University of British Columbia Medical School. Did my residency in family practice. And while I was doing my residency, I realized that I was doing the same type of lifestyle that my father was in. And growing up, he was 24/7, 365. He took no holidays. I don't remember— the only time we saw our father was when we worked with him after school in his laundromats or his dry cleaners. Uh, he had to work with him to hang out with him. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, even on Christmas, right, he would have these arcade games in the laundromats, so we'd play the video games even during Christmas, right? Uh, and he bought a grocery store. We both, Mike and I, worked there. Uh, even when I was going to med school, I was working at the grocery store. Uh, my father didn't pay us, uh, but we got these kind of interesting experiences, right, of what it takes to earn a living. My mom was a graveyard— did graveyard shifts as a nurse, so she, she was always trying to take care of us, but she also didn't have a lot of time because she had to sleep during the day as well. So we kind of grew up— I kind of thought, I'm never gonna do what my father does. I want to spend time with my kids and my family. And what I realized in medicine was, well, you're called 3 times a week if you're not there, you're not really practicing medicine. So I was like, it's a different profession. The notion of helping people is really altruistic. But really what I thought was, I'm in a similar situation as my father, right? And I was like, how do I get out of this? Like, seeing 40 patients a day, I want to spend more than 10 minutes with the patient. 'Now patients are waiting 2 hours for me. I feel bad about that. And how do I get out of this system?' And I thought, 'Okay, I have to detach it from the finances.' So I thought, 'Okay, what better way than start an internet business that runs on its own?' And I always had this notion of doing something on the internet because I believed it would be one of the greatest revolutions in history. right? It would combine all media forms onto it, to it, it'd be accessible to anybody for education, for information, for media. So I wanted to be part of it. And I thought, what could I do in my spare time that would create the self-managing type of business? And I was thinking about, well, if the internet is a new form of media, what is in the existing world that you could kind of port over? And I was thinking in the beginning, everybody would need to know where to go to. So I was thinking of an online Yellow Pages version, but it was too big, right? So I thought, okay, how can I do Yellow Pages in a way that will help people who want to be building something on the internet? So I thought of web hosting companies and domain name companies. You need a domain name, And when I was trying to register a domain in 1997, it was like every domain I thought of, it was not available. And I was like, okay. So I remember thinking of a company called— naming the company Inkblot, right? Based on the Rorschach's, right, design. And I was like, for sure that must be available. And I was so shocked that it wasn't available. Then I was like, okay, What else can I come up that's more creative that nobody would have registered? And I thought turning Inkblot into Incblot, like incorporation blot. I was like, surely no one thought of this name. It was taken. I was so shocked. So my first domain I ever registered was inc-blot.com. I had to put a dash in order to register it. So Later, when I discovered, after I built these web hosting Yellow Pages and a domain resource Yellow Pages, I offered this service where you could register names that are not yet registered, but are pretty good. And so I would come up with all these names, sell a subscription service, and I made $5,000 to $10,000 every month just on the subscription service. And I made $20,000 to $30,000 a month within 6 months while during residency on the Yellow Pages because the web host would be advertising on my Yellow Page directory. I learned what not to do. I use a scientific method of just rapidly validating hypothesis and disproving assumptions because I was biochemistry, I did a lot of research. That's what you do, right? And because I wanted cash flows, I always thought, like, how can I make cash flows? And I learned that from my dad, right? So ultimately, when I finished med school, I was making $30,000 US a month. This is as a resident. I was making $45,000 Canadian, and a US dollar was $1.60 Canadian at that time. So I thought I would, um, kind of do this another 3 to 6 months and go back to medicine, but I had so much fun and I've enjoyed it so much. I've been doing e-commerce and internet business for 22 years now.

It, it won over medicine for, for flow and enjoyment. It sounds like that's a great breakdown, Kevin. Thank you for sharing that. Michael, I want to go to you for a moment. You touched on it there, Kevin, but the description that I got from both of you when we were spending some time together in person was just of the quintessential immigrant work ethic being installed through the degree to which your father, it sounds like, and mother was a role model for you both in that respect. So Michael, I would love to hear the backstory just on, on what the immigration looked like to Canada and then what it was like growing up with that level of work ethic being demonstrated to you all the time.

So my parents were born in South Korea. So right now everyone knows South Korea for K-pop, you know, Korean food, all this, this cultural stuff. But back in the, you know, when my parents were growing up, it was one of the poorest countries in the world. And over the last 50, 60 years, it's actually the fastest growing economy out of any country. A lot of people are shocked to know that, but when my parents were like coming up, my dad didn't even come out of like elementary school, right, Kev? And my mom, she came out of nursing school, but this was in the '60s. And so in order to provide family and for family, My dad went to Germany as a miner, you know, mining in the mining rigs and stuff. So they were pretty much going there essentially to send money back home, right? To support the family. Huge, huge, bold decision. Internationally, they were also recruiting Korean women for nursing positions. So my mom went to Canada. And after a few years of my dad being in Germany, he decided to go to Canada. And that's where my parents met. And that's where we were all born. But, you know, think about— just thinking about going to a new country, not speaking the language, having to make a living, and then starting a family. It's actually quite terrifying in a way. But I think that's what the immigrant experience is. It's about trying to find new opportunities for your children that you didn't have. And as I explained, Korea was in such dire straits at that time. I think I have a lot of respect for all immigrants, right? Because of those things. So yeah, we saw our parents growing up just working, working, working. And like Kevin said, it's like, Oh, I'm not gonna do that when I have my own family. But I think if you talk to our family members, it's the exact same thing, right? Just we're much in a much better position in the way that we were educated, the networks we've been able to cultivate and grow. And it's all, we're lucky. We're lucky to be where we're at. And for us, because we've seen how difficult it is for our parents, and how fortunate we are, we want to translate that into maximum positive impact for others. I think Kevin and I can both say that the work that we're doing is really more to provide a positive impact on people. For myself specifically, it's like the environment too, because we're in such a great climate crisis. So how do we impact people's health and reverse some of the damage we've done to the planet.

Amazing, Michael. Yeah. The pattern I've noticed with that sort of immigrant work ethic is that it is sort of like the inversion of entitlement where there's a tremendous amount of appreciation for the opportunity to be able to work and do so with effectiveness and with reward to oneself and impact on others. How did that work ethic get transferred? Was it just that it was an absolute norm because you were living in it and with it and didn't know anything else? Was it explicitly taught? How did it transfer over to you both? Michael?

I think when you grow up, what you see plays a huge factor in what your belief systems are. So just seeing and watching, I think there's some form of osmosis that comes through. And then just being associated with colleagues and professionals, not only, it's not only family, it starts there as a foundational basis, but in the industries that we are both involved in, it's like you see people, you see the work ethic and the passion for making a difference, that also has a major factor. So the family life growing up creates really a bedrock from which to build on. And then it's like continual relationships that reinforce that, I think.

Kevin, when I was doing research online, I saw in a number of places your faith being mentioned. I don't know if you're comfortable with me asking a question about that, but I, been reading a book called Titan. Now, if either of you have read it, it's about John D. Rockefeller's life. I'm about halfway through. It's about a 900-page book. The biggest insight I've had from it so far is the extent to which his faith and religion contributed to his behavior and also arguably contributed to the success that he had with Standard Oil. And I'm curious just if you could describe a little bit for the listeners what your faith is, Kevin, and just what impact you feel it's had on you and your life and also the results you've been able to produce for yourself and others.

Kevin Davitt First, I want to mention that book Titan had a profound influence on me. It is Probably one of my top 3 books. It is a big book, biography of John D. Rockefeller, but how he lived this life, he had 2 goals, right? One was to make $100,000. His father was kind of like a squawk, right? And the other one was to live 100 years. I think he was born in 1839, but died in 1937. '07. So, you know, 2 years short. But, you know, he was— he definitely made more than $100,000, right? So he was close. And he kind of almost designed and was very intentional on his life. But all throughout, like you said, he— his faith was a driving factor. He taught Sunday school, right? Yeah, every Sunday. And, uh, till the— to the end of his life, um, he set up University of Chicago for, I think it was like Baptist Christians. But he also had this philosophy of reading every letter and trying to help a lot of people who had written to him out of need or some cause. And his experience with University of Chicago was such that he didn't want to fund the whole thing. So it's like he wanted to help, and ignite the movement or the cause or the need, but he didn't want people to be fully dependent on him. So he had this kind of philosophy where he would only donate up to 50%. So I love that because he said you have to leave the rest to God. I don't want to replace myself as being God, right, was kind of his philosophy and his insight. And he had a nervous breakdown because of like How do you decide who to help and who not to? And if you helped all the people, you would have nothing in the end, right? So you have to— one of my mentors said, if you had $10 billion or $7 billion and you gave a dollar to every person in the world, you'd be poor. So that was a really, really, really impactful book for me. And I would say for myself, my faith. So when I was 16, I went to a Bible conference, and it was the first time I really got taught what was in the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, and how that, uh, related to Jesus Christ. Obviously, most of the Jewish people, they don't believe Jesus is the Christ, right? And the New Testament, which is written in Greek and now translated into all these languages, testify that Jesus was the Christ. For me, when I, um, realized the association between the two, uh, parts of the Bible, the Old Testament and New Testament, and why Jesus is the Christ, why his death, why he had to shed blood in order for forgiveness of sin, which is kind of the basis of this whole law of loving God and loving your fellow man right? How, how is sin dealt with? You know, so when I realized that, oh, sin— life is, is represented by blood, and when you sin, that, that punishment or wages of sin is death. And so to solve the problem of sin and death, life has to be paid. Like, life— the price of life has to be paid, and that price is in blood. Right? And so for that, no man can pay for his own sins. You can try, but you know, it's, it's like a futile effort, right? So anyways, when I realized that that's why Christ had to die for all people's sins, it was just— it's connected for me. So that's when I was 16. People call it a born-again experience or salvation. You know, it's like a new birth. We're all born upside down, head first, And then you have to be born right side up. And I— one of my other role models was another David, like John D. Rockefeller. I think D stands for David, right? So I have a lot of Davids as my role model. David, King David and Goliath. David is a huge role model for me. He had many sins too, right? Bathsheba and adultery, and he killed her husband. Murder. Um, but David Livingstone was another huge influence for me. So on my path, what I, what I was thinking is I'm going to be a doctor and I'm going to be a missionary doctor like Dr. David Livingstone, who went to the heart of Africa, uh, and kind of spent his life devoted, um, to helping people of, of need, right? Um, both physically, emotionally, and spiritually. And so that, that was kind of my ethos as wanting to help people. First it was physical, then it became, okay, emotional and also spiritual. And then I took this turn, right, into being an entrepreneur. So I never left health, the health aspect, and that notion of helping people on all those three levels, physical, mental, and spiritual. And I try to inject that into how I conduct business. So for me, my core is my faith and the love that comes from it. And I always seek wisdom from above, or try to, because I realize I'm very foolish most of the time, my thoughts, my actions, right, and behaviors. So how to get more wisdom is like one of the principal things. So one of the things In the Bible, in Proverbs, Solomon says, you know, he's supposed to be the wisest person in all history. He says, wisdom is the principal thing, therefore get wisdom. And with all you're getting, get understanding. And from wisdom comes all the fruits. Like when Solomon asked for wisdom, he said, not only will I give you wisdom, but I will also give you riches and honor. And if you obey me, I will also give you a long life. But Solomon kind of did not retain wisdom in his old age, and he didn't live a long time. I, I'm guesstimating he probably lived into his 60s. It's not, not a full life, right? Because people, you know, have the capacity to live to 120. Uh, we know the oldest person documented is around 120, and there— but very few people actually get past 115. You know, maybe 10 to 15% can hit the 100-year mark, um, and our average being 80 now, right? But I think it's not just about the longevity of life, it's, it's how— what you do with the time that you have. So you have people who, like Mozart, only lived to 35, but look what he did, right? Um, Chopin, I think he lived till like 38. A lot of the poets like Byron Shelley, right, they only lived into their mid-30s, but astounding what they were able to produce, right? They might not have been recognized during their time, but it's, it's so amazing that their, their heart and their works have lasted this long. So whether you live, you know, 20, 30, 40 years, or you live 100, like, what, what are you doing? And so that's what's interesting about flow It's like, how do you remove all the constraints and live according to what's in your heart and not based on what other people are saying? So I think when you have a core foundation of faith, it's bedrock. You can become your own person because you're not— it's like you're building your house on rock versus on sand. And when you think about your life goal, or your life purpose. What is it? I often ask people who, young people, people who come in to work for the first time, what's your life goal? And they're like, I'm not really sure. I was, well, everything that's been designed in the world has a purpose. Like a chair has a purpose, right? You could use it for other purposes, but it's been designed in a certain way. And I believe that each of us are gifted with our unique experiences and unique gifts that allow us to impact or influence the world and the people in the world and the things in the world a certain way. But you have to let it flow, right? You have to let your heart— you have to be allowed to dream and to believe that those dreams are the things that you are purpose and destined to do. So for me, that's where faith is that bedrock for me to allow me to do all these other things despite any, any differences in opinions or critical feedback from others, right? Because everybody will have a different perspective or paradigm. But at the end of the day, I believe that we are eternal beings, that we are spiritual beings in a physical body and this physical body will one day die. I don't think anybody will escape that. So what is that spirit being developed and being free to do, which we call our heart, even in business, we call it entrepreneurial spirit, right? So you gotta let that heart and the thing inside you that is trapped on a, in a prison of criticism or what's kosher in the world. And I think the people who have done that in history, you might have heard about them because they've done— they didn't conform to what the world was saying, this is the box that you should all live in. It's kind of like Matrix. So it's a long answer, but I think it's really important for people to have something that is bedrock for them, and for that, it's faith. For me.

I love that description, Kevin, of it being sort of this bedrock that everything else stems from and it gives you kind of this unwavering conviction in the face of external variables. A lot of folks, given that we focus on neuroscience, who listen are very skeptical and scientifically oriented. Some are even devout atheists, I'm sure. And I'm curious if you think you can achieve a similar level of bedrock, as you put it, in a secular fashion.

Yeah, I, I, I believe, uh, even if you don't have that, there are different degrees of faith in something, right? Can you— like, most people put their faith in something that is tangible, that they can see. Uh, when you make the leap between something you cannot see, we call that a leap of faith, right? So Pascal talked about this. He also died at a very young age, under I think in his late 30s. But if you ever read Pascal, he's so brilliant. I mean, a mathematician, but he said that the reason— there's a point of reason where you realize that actually there's more that you don't know and you have to take these leaps of faith. So even if you're an atheist that doesn't believe in a higher being, and this has all been designed versus happening by randomness, right? You still have to make these leaps of faith. And so the people who have that in a fractal level, right, it's just they have some other bedrock, but they just haven't gotten to this like grander bedrock, right? Because it is, it's like looking at the manifestation of something and saying, behind this there is some creator behind the creation. Whether it's a work of art or any tangible thing you see, it first existed in the invisible world, in the thought world. So what is that presence? People call it all sorts of things, right? Universe, nature, Mother Nature, right? So I think it's definitely possible without that, but then What happens when the waves and the storms of life hit you? You know, ill health, death of loved ones, right? I think it's a lot harder when you don't know what happens afterwards. There might be some solace in saying, well, there's only— that's the end, right? That's the end of a book, that's the end of a life, nothing thereafter. But Pascal's wager is Well, what's the upside and the downside, right? If there's no eternity after this life, like you passing into some eternal afterlife, then no problem, right? But if there is, then there's huge downside and very little upside, right? So that's Pascal's wager. And I kind of think of it like that. When you're in your womb, that's only 9 months, but what happens in the womb dictate your life however long you live in this world, up to 120 years, let's say. But your life in this world dictates what happens in the next phase of life. To me, they're all tied that way and you can look at finiteness is just a limited set of infiniteness. You just keep on adding one, to a finite set and becomes infinite. So for us, it's hard to grasp this idea of timelessness and eternity. But when you approach the speed of light, time disappears. I think that's when you enter flow state, when you're in the dream state or the flow state and time no longer matters. You can travel anywhere with your mind, right? With your heart. And then when you get back to reality and you're in the confines of time and space, you're like, oh, that was a silly idea. And it fades away. But the people who persist in those dream states, they change something in their life. They influence other people. And people think, wow, that's crazy, but I love it. Right? I love that energy that you're coming from. And I think that comes from this idea of letting that spirit, this invisible, or this thought world come into fruition and persisting and focusing on that. When you're in that, you could start to see all sorts of things that you weren't aware of before.

Trey Lockerbie It's an amazing breakdown, Kevin. Thank you. There's a book I want to recommend to folks who are listening to this that goes into this topic in a way that I at least found very compelling by David Brooks called The Second Mountain. I'm not sure if either of you have read it. It's a great book, and I definitely recommend folks who are curious about the way you're describing faith as a bedrock, I think people will enjoy that breakdown on it. Michael, I'm curious because Kevin, it sounded like you found faith independently of your family in a sense that it was sort of your own individualized experience. I'm curious, Michael, if you share similar faith and if it was within both of your upbringing or whether it was more unique to you, Kevin.

Oh, it was definitely a family thing because our parents, you know, the tough immigrant life, always seeking community and being able to share. They started to bring us out to church, and we kind of grew up in that. Unlike Kevin, who found kind of his truth or the answer to his life when he was 16, I really had no interest in it. I was just interested in you know, hanging out with my friends, playing sports, all the fun stuff that life has to offer as a teenager. But I, um, I had a second time I went to Korea for an extended period of time was when I was in college. And around that time, I had a chance to study the Bible in a similar manner that Kevin did, and I came to understand history, the significance of the Jewish nation, the Old Testament and the New Testament. And at some point studying all that, it kind of hit me too that, wow, this really has a lot of validity to it. It makes sense. And there are two outcomes in life after we pass. It's either up or down. And I started to think about it a lot more deeply and kind of talking, kind of going back to what Kevin was referring to. Like when you, as someone who's getting older, approaching midlife, and actually talking to a lot of older people, the one common thing that I see a lot is no matter what the age is, everyone seems to be at the same, like everyone feels young in heart, right? Because it's the body that's aging, but really the inside stays the same. It's very youthful. It feels like we can do a lot. And, um, it really comes down to what is that, right? What is that inside us? And so learning and studying the Bible, it talks about what happens after we die. And we think about it a lot because there are people around us that pass away, and a lot of people, they say, oh, rest in peace, we'll see them again. But the real question is, are you sure? Are you sure? So those are the things that I think are extremely important to be able to reflect upon and answer. And fortunately, through the Bible, that's where I got my answer, right? Where my fate lives if, when I die or I pass from this earth. And so that's the bedrock that Kevin is talking about, that assurance of faith and what will happen afterwards. And everything stems from there.

Amazing. Yeah. Thank you both for the breakdown there. Really, really interesting. I'm going to pivot us slightly here. Kevin, the way you described how you use your time was fascinating to me. And I actually want to throw this question to you first, Michael, and then we'll come back, Kevin, to the way you think about time as well. But Michael, could you give us actually a breakdown of the the companies that you're currently building and running. And then I would love to hear about how your week looks from a time management perspective, given what you have on your plate. And then I'll go to you with a similar question, Kevin.

Yeah.

So right now I run two companies. One is a regenerative organic tea company. So when we say regenerative organic, what's the difference between tea, organic tea, regenerative? Organic teas are— there's no restrictions on the use of pesticides, the way that the farm is tilled. So conventional makes up the majority of farming and what we eat. And organic, because studies have been showing how foods are losing their nutrient capacity over the decades and exposure to toxins. They created the organic standard about 30 years ago here in the US, and it really started to boom. So organic really focused on the health of the soil, the, the absence of GMOs and all the harmful things that can be consumed. But as the organic industry became a multi-billion, close to, you know, tens of billions of dollars a year industry, the big food companies, the organic standards started to get diluted. So now there's a movement to regenerative, which is really focused on the health of the soil and to be able to put a standard on it. And the great thing about regenerative is because the root system and the microbiome of the soil is so rich and strong, it actually has the ability to pull carbon from the air. So it's actually not only creating a greater crop or nutrient-dense crop, it's reversing climate change by pulling carbon out of the air. So there's a huge movement towards that right now. And we're kind of like at the front of that in the tea industry with our company Wild Orchard. So that's one business. The second business is using technology to create optimal environments for our health. So whether it's your home or your business, in this day and age everyone's afraid of COVID virus particles flying in the air and things like that. So it's really about creating optimal and removing it through technology, purification, ventilation, and to have it on the screen so people feel comfortable walking into the screen or what— seeing a screen about the air quality being in the green zone. So we're all about automating that. So it's a little challenging to— it's so much work. And I think it's really about optimizing the team to be focused. So what I do is I usually have team meetings according to category once a week, usually 1 to 2 hours. And then for the rest of the week, we just do our work and we try to optimize what we do that week. And then we reconvene the following week. And we keep, we keep refining it over time. I find that works well. But it's, it's a full week. And one of the things that we talked about with our family, we hardly spent time with our, our parents, right, in terms of leisurely setting. So at least on the weekends, especially on Sunday, I try to reserve for, for family, but the rest of the week is just crazy.

Nice, Michael. Great breakdown of the two companies as well. Kevin, maybe you could give a breakdown of Perry's philosophy around Renaissance time and describe also how you use your time. You were mentioning to me that you take Fridays, we're currently on a Friday, as a reflection day and that each year you're aiming to shave off a day, which I loved. So if you could give a breakdown on the Perry Perry model and then how you apply it, that would be fantastic as well.

Yeah, Perry's broken down time into 4 quadrants, right? A 2x2 matrix. And one is about being productive on one axis, and the other one is about being predictable. So predictably productive is kind of the work ethics that we're talking about. And when you're predictably not productive, he calls that barnacles. You know, that's like checking your email 20 times a day to see what's come in, and social, maybe social media and things like that. And then things that are not productive but they're unpredictable are kind of like what Mike was talking about, family time, vacation time. Perry calls that the sweet life. And then there's this other quadrant that's productive, but it's unpredictable. And Perry calls that Renaissance time. That's like meditative time. That's like doing things that are not like routine, but it's like getting the ideas in a shower or while you're— I like biking, climbing on mountains, things like that. Richard Koch, who wrote The 80/20 Principle, after he's done his 1 hour of work ethics, he gives himself a problem and then he goes for a 3-hour bike ride. And he lets just nature kind of let the question ferment and maybe the answer comes or some insight or another question comes. So that's Renaissance time. And I was thinking about Renaissance time during my Renaissance time. I was like, well, what does Renaissance mean? It means like a rebirth, right? The Renaissance period was like this rebirth of thought, right? Of how people viewed life. It was kind of an enlightenment. Light bulbs went on, right? People were like, wow. They saw all these beautiful paintings, all these beautiful art, and it inspired them in some way that they couldn't really express. And I think that happens during Renaissance time. So I thought that was really cool. And how he— if you have your Monday to Friday work week, he draws a diagonal across it, and you should spend more time in Renaissance time at the beginning of the week where you just come off your weekend, right? And so you could be more creative. It's like the cream off the top rather than checking email right away and doing all the work ethic stuff and the barnacles. Move that all to the end of the week or the afternoons, right? So your Mondays and your Tuesdays and your Wednesday might be half Renaissance time and half, you know, then work ethics, um, and then barnacles, right? Uh, and then sweet life, right? And so when you think about the four quadrants, like, how much time do you play in each? Most where you take from is from the barnacles. Which is probably 5 to 6, 8 hours a day for barnacles, and you move that into Renaissance. Let's try to start with at least 30 minutes of Renaissance time in the morning, maybe an hour. And that helps people do meditation, gratitude, prayer, reading. Perry has a really good suggestion of reading books that are pre-Gutenberg, 1455. Once the printing press was there, you could mass-produce books. A lot likely that there's a lot more books once that happened. Before that, they were all hand-printed, right? So you— I think it was the Library of Congress, you have two Bibles. One is the Gutenberg Bible, which is the first printed book ever, um, at least in the Western world. The Eastern world actually printed books before the Western world. And then you have another Bible that's 1455. I think it's the Mainz Bible. It's all like, you know, manual. Right, so it's interesting, this divide. So anything that survived, just imagine, pre-1455, it really, really had to be great, right? So I find that pretty interesting. So I do— I mean, the Bible itself is— I have these old Bibles. I have a 1611 Bible, which is a printed Bible, right? But The Old Testament predates that, right? New Testament also, right? So they are old, I guess, sources of information, but they've survived the test of time, all the wars and the plagues and everything, right? We've witnessed in our lifetime, you know, this pandemic, right? Which is interesting. I mean, Newton was stuck in a pandemic in the 1600s. I believe he wrote Principia, and I heard that he left it in his drawer for 10 years before he actually came into the public eye. You know, can you imagine that? Like, you're stuck in— back then the quarantine was like you didn't have access to all the things that we do. We were, I mean, we were quarantined, but we still had access. We had Zoom and all this kind of stuff, right? And Peloton, and they didn't have that. And if you got quarantined back in those days It was— they built a wall, they brought food down. A lot of people didn't even survive the 40 days of quarantine, right? Because they just didn't want the bubonic plague to spread. It was pretty interesting. And I think my philosophy on time was, okay, how do you invert the 5-day work week to a 2— and 2-day weekend to a 5-day weekend and a 2-day work week, right? So How do you have Renaissance time? You flip it, right? And so it's like a— I thought maybe I will shave off a day on the weekend. So start with Friday and you have a 3-day weekend. Add a Monday, you have a 4-day weekend. Add a Tuesday, you have a 5-day weekend. And ultimately you're left with Wednesday and Thursday. And Wednesday and Thursday, how do you get that flow and productivity and clarity so that everybody can go be in flow, right? So that was kind of like my idea of like inverting the work week, which is an arbitrary thing, right? Like a Sunday to a— you know, for me, the Shabbat or the Sabbath is starting on a Friday evening to Saturday evening, and people, just Orthodox, like really follow that. So like we were in New York and one of my daughters wanted to go to B&H Photos, but They shut down at Friday at 4:00 PM until Saturday. And Saturday is supposed to be one of the busier shopping days, because that's when people have time to go shop. But then this notion of keeping the Sabbath rest, not doing any work, your servants not doing any work, not walking 2 miles, it's like, that's a really good practice to put in your life. And then you have this notion of sabbatical year. Every 7th year, you work 6 years, 7th year is a sabbatical. So the education system has that, but do you have that in the work life? So I try to implement a sabbatical every 5 years, right? Because it's like not that many people work for the same company for like 7 years, right? It's rare in this day and age. And so how do you like, so every 5 years, and then how do you, How do people actually take that time off? Whether you give a month off or 2 weeks off, that kind of extended sabbatical rest. Um, and how do you fractalize that into your, uh, months, your weeks, and then your day? So when you get to your day, how do you have that sabbatical rest or the Renaissance time? And I think the best time is in the morning. Uh, for me, I got a lot of that actually late, late at night, and When you do judo, you're supposed to be like the shadow, right? You're supposed to leverage the other person's push into a pull, right? And if they're pulling, you push them, right? So you're leveraging that. So late into the night when you have no more energy and you're kind of now in this semi-dream state, that's where these crazy ideas come from, right? And then you wake up the next day and you're like, oh, that was ridiculous, right? What we were talking about. That kind of flow state. But I think you can have it in the morning because you just come out of the dream state and your mind's fresh, but you don't pollute it or distract it with all the barnacles and the work ethics to begin with. So what I do is I've been doing colon cleansing every morning since 2005, like the last 17 years. It gets rid of all the junk in your system. And while I'm doing colon cleansing, I'm reading like pre-Gutenberg stuff or listening to pre-Gutenberg stuff. And then once I finish that, I do my little kind of 2-minute, 4-minute kind of strength toning, stretching exercises. And then I go into my Renaissance or meditative time. And so I do that in a kind of— and then I write in my journals. Even before I get up, I do gratitudes, right? And I'm especially grateful for simple things like I have issue with my retina right now. So just being able to see and not distorted is like amazing. Just being able alive, I think just waking up is amazing, right? There are people who don't wake up right from their sleep and who knows, right? What will happen in the day? So I think having that gratefulness exercise, I do this in the company. When Alan, he wanted to be part of our meetings in Hawaii, and we had a company strategy company meetings, and we started with everybody doing what they're grateful for. And then the next thing we did was we recited from a paragraph from a book called As a Man Thinketh by James Allen. And the last chapter is called Serenity. So it's like the conclusion. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. right? So you think in your heart, like it's usually when you say think, you think like from your brain, right? So it's like, what are you thinking in your heart? And how do you get to this point of ultimate serenity? So how, you know, so I have like, I want my team to like memorize Serenity. It's 7 paragraphs and it starts with, I love the first sentence. Calmness of mind is one of the beautiful jewels of wisdom. It is the result of long and patient effort in self-control. Its presence is an indication of ripened experience and of a more than ordinary knowledge of the laws and operations of thought. So immediately you start to think, okay, how can I have calmness of mind in a world that is like producing these winds and storms, right? And so we have every quarter would be like, okay, memorize, recite, read, right? Memorize these first two paragraphs. Now second quarter, now third and fourth paragraph. And then third quarter would be the fifth and sixth. And then the last part, that's the last paragraph of that chapter is the thing that I love the most. How it ends was, keep your hand on the helm of thought, right? In the bark of your soul reclines a commanding master. He does but sleep. Wake him. And then it says, self-control is strength, right thought is mastery, calmness is power. Say unto your heart, peace be still. So I think when you have that calmness of mind and that presence, I think that comes from all this kind of Renaissance time, right? And I would be the first to tell you, I used to go to work sometimes in the past, like many years ago, where I would lose my voice because I was yelling at my kids to like, hurry up and get out of the house. And then, you know, I do a few yells and my voice is gone. I go to work and people are like, oh, what happened? You have a cold? I go, no, I was I was yelling at my kids, right? And I was like, oh, why did I do that? Okay, I'm not going to do that. And then I would— but I would do that every so often because I would have these stresses at work, right? Or in my life. And I think just this practice of doing the gratefulness and meditate— what I've learned over time is, wow, okay, how do I get this calmness despite all the chaos that might be happening around? Or sometimes you get some news that feels like a punch to the gut. How do you get that calmness? Right? How do you tell your heart, peace, be still? Like it's a, how do I command, right? My heart to be still, right? It's a very hard thing when you're, when you get this emotion coming up. And I think, you know, I was thinking about being in the zone, being in the flow. It's not that you're ignoring the things that are coming from the outside, but you just are able to take it in stride. Or just you don't react right away. You give this kind of time to think and then respond. And I love it. And so what I realized is I had written out as a man pickets every day for 100 days. Took me 18 minutes or so. And every day I try to recite it in the morning and the evening. And then I realized, actually, I don't truly understand it because I haven't really gone into depth with the first 6 chapters. So I'm rereading the first chapter. And the first paragraph says, a man is literally what he thinks. His character being the complete sum of all his thoughts. Now you're thinking, what are all my thoughts? That determines my character day in, day out. What are you allowing to come into your thoughts without you guarding and cultivating those thoughts? What are you purposely, intentionally allowing and growing a garden of these thoughts that will dictate your attitude, your words, your actions, your behavior, essentially, right? So to me, it's, uh, wow. I'm like, okay, I'm still a white belt here in all this, right? Because the laws and operations of thought and how we, how we, how we think and behave in this world. And what I found in my businesses, it's like that Thought time is— the thing is not the answers, it's asking the questions. What are the questions I need to be asking myself and other people that then we need to try to figure out? Because those powerful questions are questioning assumptions, right? The thing that you think is the way that the world works might not actually be. And I think usually with wrong assumptions, you have like You have to experiment. People call it failing fast, and hopefully by failing fast, you're also learning fast. So I, I just, um, you know, what I realized is I always believed that I might— if I lived to age 40, that would be a blessed life in health. Now that I'm approaching 52, I'm like, whoa, everything's bonus time, right? So how can I live my life in a way that is influential and impactful for the people around me. I don't need to go to Africa. There are so many people, including myself, that have these deficiencies and needs that we can grow to our unlimited potential. I think the unlimited potential is not in the physicality of our being, but more in our mental and our spiritual part. The physical part, like, it's hard to increase that even by double, right? Like, if you run a marathon in 4 hours, to run it in 2 hours is really, really— that's world record time, right? But for you to think 2x or 10x or 100x, you can go there. People write books, people produce movies, right? That's a dream state. Walt Disney was able to do that, right, with Disney World. I love Disneyland, right? Because that's a world of thought. It's like living proof of someone's dream that becomes other people's dreams, right? So I'll stop there.

I love that. Yeah, well, I love that last point, Kevin, that the mental space is less constrained by the laws of physics. It's more nonlinear in terms of the change that's possible. There's two things I want to underscore as well from what you've mentioned. For folks. The distinction between work ethic time versus Renaissance time versus sweet time and barnacle time, I think is really, really useful for people. The key one I want to touch on there is the difference between work ethic time, which as you said is both productive and predictable versus Renaissance time, which may involve things like journaling or reading or thinking or meditating, which is productive but unpredictable in terms of whether it will be productive or not. But often in that Renaissance time, as you mentioned, the productivity that does emerge is drastically larger than the productivity that emerges in the work ethic execution time. It might be an idea that tilts the direction of your life for the better for the next decade or two decades. So I think it's really useful for people to think about productivity in those two buckets of there's the execution, the doing the work, the work ethic time, and there's the Renaissance time, which is more thinking and reflection oriented. And then the other thing I wanted to mention, which I absolutely love that you mentioned as well around the Nuremberg press is The Gutenberg press, excuse me, is related to what Simta Lab says about the Lindy effect, which is the idea that the more ancient things are, the more futuristic they are. I have a close friend who has a rule that he will only read books written by dead people. But I think that the pre-Gutenberg is even more impactful because that's, as you said, they really have to have demonstrated the Lindy effect, that they are able to withstand the test of time and obviously are touching on some infinite and enduring principles if able to do that. Kevin, one thing I wanted to ask you based on everything you went through there is the sabbatical. I found that fascinating, taking a year off every 5 years, also very rare. And people tend not to think about rest and recovery on that long-term timeframe because people tend to just not think long-term generally, I would argue. So So what does that year of sabbatical look like for you? What do you do? What does the first month look like? What do your days look like within that sabbatical year? I'd be really curious for a breakdown there.

Yeah, I mean, I haven't got to the year part, sabbatical year part, but taking that concept of sabbatical and extending it to that, right? So freeing up, what you love to do, what you, what you enjoy to do. Like, I love being on my bike, and, uh, Perry had mentioned to me, uh, beauty is usually standing for something. It's not the object, uh, really. The objects represent some other thing. I told them, you know what, I know exactly what my bike represents. It represents a Black stallion, uh, because when my mom was sleeping, I took my younger brothers to the library and we'd just read books all day until it's time to go home and for her to wake up, right? Because we were noisy, we didn't bother her. And I fell in love with Black Stallion. And then he asked me, what does the black stallion represent? And I was like, you know what, I never really thought of asking the same question to the previous part. What I said to him was it represents freedom and joy and like liberation. Like imagine riding on a black Arabian stallion, a wild stallion, but now it's one with you, right? So for me, it's like doing those things. So like riding in Israel with professional cyclists like Chris Froome and You know, I had bought my bike because of Chris Froome in 2016, right? And riding behind him in Jerusalem, in Israel, was such a joy. You know, it was like the most fantastical experience, um, combining like two big passions of visiting the Holy Land and riding with Chris Froome and all these other people. And I couldn't keep up with them on the mountain, right? There's a long climb to Jerusalem. And they were starting to like push me as we were riding together. And it was first as one rider and then the rider on the other side. And later I heard the riders pushing those riders who were pushing me, you know, up the long climb to Jerusalem. But it's kind of like that, um, I think notion of doing the thing that you enjoy most. So whether you take a year, whether you take 2 months or a month, like this July, I'm going to go to Tour de France. You know, my plan is to spend like a month, month in the race watching the riders. I get to go behind the scenes with them. To me, that's, that's like a sabbatical. And the crazy thing is, it's like you don't have to be productive. Like, you don't have to take the sabbatical and Renaissance time thinking, I gotta get something out of this, right? If nothing comes out of this like it's a failure of Renaissance time. What you realize is it's the enjoyment, it's the contentment that comes with being still, or you're feeling in the zone. You just feel like oneness, right? There's no expectation of some reward or some objectifying something, which we tend to try to do that, but I think the purpose of all this stuff is just to find contentment, like peace, peace of mind, calmness of mind, right? And if you have that in your life, if you have peace, if you have love, if you have joy, and therefore you have contentment, I think that's a beautiful life. And when that translates to other people, like it ripples outwards. Very, very powerful, right? So I think that comes from this— my philosophy is this comes from this wisdom from above. Obviously there's this earthly wisdom. You can observe creation, you could know the principles of life, of different disciplines within life, and obviously you can do well there. Uh, but at the end of the day, you know, it's like I ask people who have lived longer than me, I ask them what's the secret to life, right? And it's very simple. They usually say 3 words or 2 words. Um, yes dear, you're probably right, are 2 kind of, uh, things I've heard a lot, right? Another guy said just get a dog. We recently got a dog, and I'm not a dog lover of any sorts, but Dog is what— it kind of brings you joy because it's always attentive to you, right? So it's pretty interesting what people come up with in life if you have to define what the wisdom of life— and for me, I'm very curious about, um, he who walks with wise men will himself be wise. You surround yourself with this wisdom within people, but you have to draw it out. And I think the other one is kind of the wealth of life. Uh, you know, it could be material riches, but really it's the wealth of experience of life, the wealth of relationships, the wealth of like influence and purpose in one's life. Um, and obviously health, right? Because if you lose your health, it's, it's like even if you want to do all these things, it, it becomes hard because you don't have the energy. Uh, and also like it gets worse If it goes deeper, like if you lose the health of your mind, right? My grandmother in her later stages, she lived to 92, but she had dementia or Alzheimer's. She couldn't remember. Who's that woman with you? I mean, that's my wife. Did she even eat? I didn't eat, but she did just eat, right? She forgot that she ate, right? And then there's the help of the spirit. So I think it gets more powerful the more core you go.

Kevin, another thing I've been really struck by with you is the way you memorize things and the process of repetition and writing things out. And I'm curious if you could describe more about that process and why you find that effective and why you're committed to memorizing long passages or or works?

Yeah, I mean, I went to med school, right? And anybody who's done university or school, you get into this thing where you have to memorize to do well on the test. But what you realize is, did I really understand what I just read or did I memorize? Typically, I crammed, so I typically forgot a lot of that stuff. And so you don't understand the principles. You don't ask why. 'Cause it's like deductive versus inductive. And what I've realized, especially I went to a Perry Marshall event where he asked, has anybody read this book by Richard Koch, The Star Principle? And I was like, the book sounds so familiar. And I even started to picture the COVID of the book, like this blue cover with a star, yellow writing. But I couldn't remember if I read it or not. And then I'm like, I was about to put up my hand, and then he asked a second question, can anybody explain the book in 2 minutes? I don't even remember if I read it, how could I explain what's in the book? And so then he goes on and explains in 2 minutes what the book's about, right? It's another 2x2 quadrant, which is very powerful, meaning you should, you should be a star in any business or in anything that you do. And if you're not a star in it, build a niche from that bigger thing, right? And if you're not a star in that niche, like, keep on slicing it down until you built a niche that you're a star in, right? It's an interesting concept. So I went back and I think at certain periods of time I used to write, like, when I read the book and it was all highlighted, but I didn't remember it. So That was the first time I was like, you know what? I really want to be able to say what's in a book. So, you know, in one of our talks, someone asked, what's your top 3 books? And I forget who said it, but someone said Think and Grow Rich is one of their top 3 books. And I asked, do you remember the 13 principles in Think and Grow Rich? And he was like, I think it was Austin, right? He was like, no. And then someone asked me, do you know it? I go, I think I could name Most, if not all of them, right? So it's interesting. Someone told me they're reading this book on 8 Pillars of Prosperity. I'm like, what are the 8 pillars? They're like, oh, I haven't read it deeply enough to tell you, right? So I think it's, if you have your favorite books, most people read a book once, maybe twice, maybe 3 times. But I have this notion that I learned from different people, that I was always impressed by how they retain something and were able to talk about it even 10 years later, right? So I'm very captivated by this power of repetition and being able to understand, not just repeat. So one of my big goals is to memorize all 31 chapters of Proverbs in the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament. Because I had this habit of reading it every— like, if today is, what is it, the 8th, right? I would read Proverbs chapter 8 today, and then tomorrow I'd read Proverbs chapter 9. And usually there's 31 days in the week, so I'd read the Proverbs every month. But if he asked me, hey, what's in Proverbs chapter 8? I would have been like, actually, I can't remember. Right? And so I I just decided, okay, in my 50s, I'm going to attempt to memorize all of it, 4 chapters a year. I'm going to repeat as often as possible over the 10 years. So if I read— so this is the second quarter. So I'm on Proverbs chapter 6 now. Go to the ant you slaughtered, consider her ways and be wise. And I'm like, wow, Perry gave me this book on the Red Ant or something like that, The Soul of the Red Ant. And I was like, oh, I'm too busy, I'm not going to read it. But now because of that little proverb, I'm like, maybe I should read that book that I got gifted, right? To understand the ways of an ant so I could be wise, right? So it's pretty interesting to me because then I'm thinking, I wonder how many people in the world have ever memorized all 31 chapters of Proverbs. And then if I could memorize— when I memorize all 31 chapters of Proverbs, then in my 60s I want to be able to understand it. So I'm learning Hebrew, and I'm like, you know, I got a rabbi in Israel teaching me to learn Hebrew through the Proverbs. So I'm memorizing Proverbs in Hebrew. I memorized chapter 1, verse 1 to 19. I mean, For me, it's incredible to be able to say it in Hebrew. But now I got two contexts of Proverbs in English and the original language, right?

Do you mind sharing a couple of sentences, Kevin, in Hebrew? Not to put you on the spot, but let's see.

Sure. I mean, the first verse starts with "Mishlei Shlomo," and "Shlomo," it cracks me up, but that's Solomon's name. I know him as Solomon, but I'm like, "Shlomo?" And Mishlei is Proverbs, right? So Mishlei Shlomo ben David, which is son of David, melek Yisrael, which is king of Israel, right? So that's how it starts. And, you know, I probably have to review all 19 verses, but I'm on Proverbs 3 right now. So I just started Proverbs. I just had my Hebrew class. Yesterday, I only do 1 hour. I pay him like a lawyer, so I attend it and he teaches me well. And I say, after 1 hour, you have to stop, right? So I try to be pretty disciplined of doing it weekly. And I think I will, in 10 years, my Hebrew will be pretty good, but it'll be more biblical Hebrew. I'll be able to talk about wisdom, hopefully in Hebrew. You know, in my 70s, hopefully, if I live and blessed to live that long, hopefully I can apply it and teach it. You know, I'm sure there's going to be some overlap. Well, actually, even my rabbi, he asked me about certain verses because I'm studying this stuff. I've been thinking about it, and I asked him lots of questions. What does this mean, right? And, uh, but, you know, it's pretty interesting If you get to know one thing really, really well, like one book really, really well, you become an expert in it. So what is the thing that you're so passionate about that you want to learn? I want to memorize these poems that I love, right? So I memorized Hope is a Thing with Feathers that Perches in Your Soul by Emily Dickinson. I just love this notion of hope being like this bird in your heart. Right? That's always there, that doesn't expect anything of you, but it always gives you this energy and hope in life, right? And I'm making this birthday book for my daughter. April 17th is her birthday, and in there I put the poem "If" by Rudyard Kipling, but in the end it says, you will 'You will be a man, my son,' right? If I change it to 'You'll be a woman, my daughter,' right? And I'm gonna tell her, like, I gave it to her when she was young and I said memorize it, but I'm like, okay, let's memorize it together. And memorizing something, as you know, it takes repetition. And as you repeat it over and over, you start to wonder, what does this really mean? How can I apply this to my life? So just that, um, yeah, I really like it. I want to know— I'm a generalist, like I'm a family, you know, general physician, family, um, doctor, right? So I, I know superficially a lot of things, but I'm not a specialist like in surgery or cardiology and so forth, right? I know enough to, you need this specialist, right? And CEO, same thing. Like, you know enough technology, marketing, sales, but you're not like the expert in it, right? But you know enough to direct, enough to ask the questions, and the specialists can come up with the answers. So I love this notion of also being a generalist, but in the areas that really, really light you up, to be a specialist.

I love that, Kevin. And the memorization approach you have, I find very inspiring actually. It reminds me of the quote that we need to be reminded more than we need to learn, which I think is a great point. There's not that many principles necessarily. There's an infinite number of tactics and specific ways to do things, but the principles are are of a much lower volume. Kevin, I want to just give us a quick pivot here because we're coming to the end. I would love you to describe for folks what it is that you're currently working on because your current business is really fascinating to me and I know it will be to others. So let's touch on that and then I have one final question for you after that.

Okay, great. Just before I answer that question, I just want to say like I think that eternal principles are so important. So if you, if you base your life on these some principles that you really love, then the way— like, it's, it's like 3 primary colors, but you get all these colors of rainbow. What are the 3 principles that you want to kind of base your life on? Um, 7 musical notes. I mean, if you include the black keys, there's like 12, but look at all the melodies that you could play, right? So think about What are those principles for you? And everybody will gravitate to probably different ones. For me, I want to make impact and influence. And I, you know, in my business 20 years, I've been blessed with a lot of opportunity of meeting great people, partnering with companies, right? Big companies, small companies. Most of my business experience was B2B because I didn't want to deal with a lot of staff, a lot of consumers. And so when we built our first company, we did over $100 million in revenue with high, high profit margins with only like 15 people, right? Because it's all digital, right? And all platform-based. We had so many domains on our platform, ours included, but also monetizing other domain domain companies' portfolios. So it was a top 100, you know, ComScore company. It's a tremendous traffic. One of the domains I had registered was blackfriday.com in 2002 for $8. You know, I didn't even know what Black Friday was. Even when it became popular in the US, being in Canada, we weren't exposed to that because Black Friday falls after Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving in Canada is in October, not in November, right? So, uh, but we built a business around that, um, sold it to a public company. Um, and what I realized is, you know what, I want to do something in my own home country where I was born. I had this great education, uh, but it's not as like— what do you say— the scale is not like the US, which is 10 times bigger. There's more— way more US is filled with all that opportunity because of the scale. Canada is smaller than California, right? But the landmass is big. And one of the problems that we have, what I realized is doing one of the e-commerce businesses in the past, was shipping prices are just so high. And you know how e-commerce is kind of the future of retail. Well, when you have high shipping prices, you're not able to sell. So if your product is $20 and shipping price is $20, who's going to buy it? it's gotta be like $5, right? But that's not happening in Canada because of low population density, huge landmass. And we're only, you know, we're almost effectively part of the US except for a different country. And this is border, right? Most of Canada's population lies right by beside the border. So I thought, okay, someone's probably gonna solve this problem. Then I thought, yeah, but who and how long? I just had this notion, you know how Elon Musk is accelerating the adoption of electric vehicles? I thought, why can't I just accelerate low shipping prices? Yeah, so I started to embark on that in 2016, late 2016. It's been about going on 6 years, but my first 5 years I realized I'm going to build a platform enabled to do this. So we have really reduced the shipping prices a lot into the US. Now we're trying to do that across Canada because what I believe is what unlocks the entrepreneurs in Canada to compete and effectively sell against people. Like, it's easier, it's cheaper on many fronts to ship from US into Canada than from Canada to Canada, like Toronto to Vancouver, Vancouver to Toronto, which is mind-boggling to me. And with Amazon controlling 70% of e-commerce, the postal companies like United States Postal Service and Canada Post, they're not busy anymore because 50% of the volume has just been pulled out of them. So you got all this changing landscape happening at the same time. All this opportunity, but you got autonomous vehicles, you got drones, you got robots, right, running around on the street delivering stuff. I mean, it's crazy, right? Everything's converging on e-commerce. So being in the heart of it is really interesting. It's really hard to tie physical trucks and branches and, you know, physical products to technology, but I'm like, I come from the technology world, and bridging it, interfacing it. And what I talk about is putting the heart inside logistics, right? It's like the human element into something that's 24/7. So how do you apply these principles that we've talked about and bring it into this world of logistics, which is just the time, getting to point A and B, and just being ruthless about it, right? The whole 6 Sigma, lean manufacturing, all that kind of stuff, right? So instead of being just only a machine, how do we also bring in the human element and the human hearts into this, which is obviously like difficult, right? The other one is sold most of the portfolio to GoDaddy, but have 11,000 premium domains. So this concept of it's really hard to build out even one domain. We did that with Black Friday. It can take 5 to 10 years if you're successful. If you're not, usually 1 year and it fails, right? But when you have 11,000, there's no way you could build those out. So how do you help connecting great domains or brands with great ideas and entrepreneurs? And so I had this concept of how the real real estate world did it, commercial real estate. You don't have to buy the land or build the building or own the building, just lease it. Now, how do you have leases virtually that are perpetual? So there's not much risk. We pay leases on all our branches, $3,000 to $20,000 a month. Why can't you do that for domains instead of paying hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars for the asset? For the real estate, right? And if it doesn't work, you can just cancel anytime. You don't have to get locked in. So that's kind of our notion around Venture.com, and our shipping company is called Chitchats.com.

Amazing, Kevin. Yeah, it's fascinating, the domain leasing approach as well. You mentioned Titan was one of your top 3 books. What were the other 2?

Number 1 for me is the Bible. I read it every single day. In Titan, what I did was I did a summary, 20 pages I will read every so often to remind myself. I really, really love this book, As a Man Thinketh. My goal is to memorize the whole book. There are 7 chapters. Yeah, there are 7 chapters in it. I've memorized the last one. I'm going to memorize the first one. I'm going to skip the second one. There's a chapter on thoughts and its effect on health in the body. I'm going to memorize that. And then there's a second last chapter, it's called Vision and Ideals. Uh, right. I love that. And then I think the one before that is something about dreams. Um, but I want to be a master on that book. It also comes from one of the Proverbs, right? Like Proverbs 23:7, as a man thinks. So it's incredible to me One little proverb, this guy writes this book on it. That's a perennial seller, right? It's a thought breeder. It's very fantastical in its notion of like, this thought can become a thing, right? A dream can become a thing. And it's the people who dream that change the world, right? It's the same story, but it's like if you really, really grasp it and you apply it, it's very powerful. I mean, you have the books like Think and Grow Rich and things like that, right? But which I think rich is not necessarily money. You could be rich in life, right? Rich in relationships. So you could apply the same concepts from these books and you don't need to know, like I have, I don't know, I have libraries. I don't know if you had I show you my stack of books, very messy. I got all these books everywhere, right? But it's like you don't need to know all of them. You just need to know a few important things and then apply, understand them, apply them. And once you're able to do that, then you could talk about them, you could teach them, right? Because most people, it's hard to have the breadth of all these things and then have the limited time that you have to apply these things. So what are you going to choose? And for each person, it's going to be different things. There are so many books that I want to help cure cancer, right? I'm helping with Perry, trying to do that as well. I meet with doctors every Saturday, 7:00 AM, for a couple, 2 to 3 hours. I do like— I ask the pertinent questions. Right. 1 in 2 people get cancer. The question is what's causing it and how to prevent it? What kind of lifestyle will reduce your risks on those sorts of things? So, yeah, I think I went over it. I didn't— did I answer your question? I think so. Right. Bible. As a Man Thinketh.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I just want to say thanks, Kevin, for being so generous with your time today. I know it's It's your most precious resource, so I appreciate it immensely. Is there anything you would like to leave the listeners with? Any final points or reminders to folks who are trying to live a fulfilled, high flow, and successful life in business and personally?

Yeah, one of the gems I got from Alan Bernard, who you interviewed, Dr. Alan Bernard on Theory of Constraints. I read this book from his mentor. Eliyahu Goldratt. He wrote a book called The Goal. I have not yet read it, it's a thick book, but what I read was his last book, which is really thin, called The Choice. And I asked Alan to talk about that book, and he summarized it really well. And then later he went on to tell a story that really, really was impactful for me. Eliyahu asked Alan what his life goal was. And I don't know if you told this story during your talk. No? He asked him what his life goal was. And Alan said, you know, it's like these fast cars, all these objects, right? And Eliyahu was shaking his head. And he said, I think my definition of life goal is different from your definition. And Alan would tell this more beautifully, but he basically said a life goal is something that after having accomplished it, you're ready to die. I was like, whoa, okay. And then he asked Alan, okay, here's the riddle of life then. Can you predict when you will die? No, you can't, right? You can't guarantee or know when you'll die. So then the question is, how do you ensure that every day you're living your life goal so that you're ready to die that day? And to me, that was, wow, what a definition, right? Uh, so for me, um, it's been about how to inspire and unlock the heart and soul of unlimited potential in people, right? Starting from myself. So can I do that today? Can I unlock some part of me that is of this unlimited potential in my spirit, in my mind, maybe my body to a lesser degree, right? So I, I love that definition. Uh, so my question to everybody in the audience is, what is your life goal that you could tell somebody that you could live every day and that today you're okay to die?

Amazing, Kevin. What a note to end on. Yeah, I absolutely love that breakdown. Listen, thank you so much. Hopefully I'll have you on again at some point. in a few years down the line or even sooner. And again, thanks so much for the generosity with your time, Kevin.

Thank you, Rianne. It's been a pleasure and I look forward to connecting again.

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