The Secret of How to Think Like + Live an Entrepreneur | Alex Charfen

The fact that you're different from everyone else is exactly the message given you by the universe, that you are here to change the world. You are here to make a massive contribution, and no one should tell you otherwise. When I was a kid, I thought I was so fundamentally removed from this thing called success that I would never get there. I started obsessing over the lives of successful people to understand why there are certain people that we remember. There are certain people that matter to be remembered. And, Josh, I thought I was going to go out and find this, like, incredible specimen of a human being that was so much different than me, but what I found was the opposite. What I found was over and over again, that the people who change the world are the people who are different than all of us. Thomas Edison was sent home at 5 years old because he was too slow to go to school. Look what he did. Albert Einstein couldn't tie his shoes or remember his phone number and failed algebra, and he's fucking Albert Einstein. And so there's this personality type in the world that looks at the world differently. The people in the world who are getting up every morning, going into the future, creating new reality, and then coming back to the present and demanding it becomes real. So if you look who we are in today's world 10,000 years ago, the people who are running businesses and creating things and all that, we would be the small part of the tribe.

Yeah.

Gathered sticks and stones in the morning and went out on the hunt. We spend our time in the future just like a hunter would. The entrepreneurial personality type is really the evolutionary hunter. And when you ask an entrepreneur, haven't you been on the hunt your whole life? The answer is always yes.

Tell me real quick about your shirt, dude, before we get on.

I have this concept that entrepreneurs are the evolutionary hunter.

Yep.

So if you look at who we are in today's world 10,000 years ago, the people who are running businesses and creating things and all that, we would be the small part of the tribe.

Yeah.

Gathered sticks and stones in the morning and went out on the hunt. And when you look at. When you play out that analogy of who we are, there's so many reasons it makes sense. Like, can you turn it off?

The what?

Your life. Can you turn it off? Can you turn it off like, your mind?

If I do some very deep supplementation and breath work before bed? Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. So this is what every entrepreneur says. They're like, yes, I can turn it off. If I take the right dose of mushrooms and I do some breath work And I have the lights off. And I have the. We really can't turn it off.

Not really.

Evolutionarily. What segment of the population would not be able to stop the segment of the population that keeps us alive? And so there's so many reasons why the entrepreneurial personality type is really the evolutionary hunter. And when you ask an entrepreneur, haven't you been on the hunt your whole life? The answer is always yes.

A hunt for home, a hunt for freedom, a hunt for sovereignty.

What are you hunting right now?

The juice of life. I want to grab the orange of life and have it drip down my elbow.

You're running a business. You're trying to raise your kids in the best way possible. You're trying to enhance your marriage, your body. We are not like the rest of the world. The rest of the world doesn't hunt. You know, people who get up every. And it's okay, but there's people who get up every morning.

Yes.

And they're in the present doing what they need to do in the present. We spend our time in the future just like a hunter would.

You know, it's interesting is I don't even feel like I can rest at night unless I've killed something.

100%.

Not, like, from a place of freneticism, but, like, truly, like, have I done a good job today? For me.

Yeah.

Not have I made, like, $10,000 in one day or $20,000 in one day, but, like, did I move my own needle? Yeah. Am I reaching my potential? We're already rolling, bro. I'm going to leave all that in. Alex, thank you for being here.

Oh, it's such a pleasure, Josh. I'm glad we finally got this together.

Me, too, man. I was chatting before we hit the record button, like, this was probably the longest marinade and anything that marinades for more than six months. As far as scheduling. I know it's going to be good, dude. And we have so many mutual friends and Mike Dillard and my buddy Chris Dufay. We were just talking about you yesterday, and he said he would take a bullet for you.

Holy cow.

Which is interesting because that's a pretty strong phrase. So it begs the question, like, this ripple effect that you've created, not just with simple operations, but just you as a man. I remember seeing you maybe five, six years ago when I just started hosting panels at Paleo fx, and you were running around with your Vibram shoes and your glasses, and you were with Keith at that time, and there was all this TV crew following you. And at First I was like, who is this driven motherfucker? Who is this guy? Like, he. I felt a connection to you, but it took this long for us to be here, man. So if people don't know you, like, what's the high level? Don't go too deep. What's like the 30,000 foot of who Alex Charfen is today? Who are you today, man?

So I wrote a book called the Entrepreneurial Personality Type. I've obsessed around successful people. I've obsessed around the topic of successful people my whole life. And I have this hypothesis that there is a misunderstood. And the most important population among us is the people who live in the future, the people who create the future. And it's guys like you and I, and it's the people in the world who are getting up every morning, going into the future, creating a new reality, and then coming back to the present and demanding it becomes real. And I've done a lot of work with entrepreneurs. We have a company called Simple Operations that helps visionaries build teams so they don't have to do everything themselves. But the way I look at our mission is really we are helping the people in the world who create reality get leverage so they can create a better reality and they can change the world. Because, dude, if there's ever been a time where the world needs us, it's now. Yeah.

And if there's ever been a time where leverage is so freaking important, it's now 100%. I think of leverage. Like if you lose your keys in a car, you put one of those little blocks and you pound it down, then you can reach in and grab the keys, but without leverage, you're screwed. And leverage is something that I think people have heard about, but, like, leveraging human capital in a conscious way. I think about John Mackey. He wrote a book, Conscious Capitalism.

Sure.

And I love the way he did that because I thought, oh, my God, for so long in my life, I had this massive money story, Alex, that money was bad, rich people make people suffer, money is evil, and on and on and on. I'm sure you see this in your groups, and it comes up in a lot of conversations. Even in the circles we run in for freaking millionaires, multimillionaires, there's still like this money conversation at what point during your journey, you know, people have already seen shots of you speaking on stage in the intro, and all the things that you're all about. Like, there had to have been a click. Or maybe it was this cumulative bathtub that filled up for you where you Were like, okay, I actually love the energy of money. I love what money can bring to me and my family. But most of all, I love what money can make an impact in the world and change in the world that I know is possible. Was that a click? Was it something that you, that you found through trial and error, getting bloody, like businesses failing the 2007 housing market? How did it actually occur to you that money was love and money was energy and you were going to use it for good? When did that come on?

So I grew up in a family that was when I was very young, was very wealthy and, and then starting at about five years old, struggled a ton and did not have a lot of money. So as a very young child, I live in Mexico. We had people who worked in our house. There was a staff there, we had a really nice place. My dad was a partner with in a huge accounting firm with Deloitte Touche. And then we had to leave Mexico and we moved to the States. And from that point forward, things got rough and financially really rough. So when I was a kid, most of the stuff I ever got was from a garage sale. I watched my parents struggle. I knew that there was challenges there. So when I was young, money was this thing we didn't have. And I felt like I had to do anything I could to get it. And then I started making money. And what's shocking is as an entrepreneur, when you start making real money, how fast it loses importance to you. Like when you actually have money in the bank, it's not enough anymore and it wasn't motivating anymore. And so I had to examine my relationship with wealth, with money. And what I started to feel was this reality of what you just said, that money is actually an energetic and capital. In a capitalist society, in a place where people can choose where to put their money, money flows to the person making the greatest contribution. And it's hard to make an argument otherwise unless you start looking at, like, government intervention.

Yeah, the Fed.

Yeah, all that.

Somebody pushing a keypad.

Well, and like the war machine, the big pharma, big food, all that stuff like where governments get involved, things get a little messed up. But when you look at when people can put their money in a place, what they're doing is they're exchanging energy for the energy they want back. They're exchanging energy for the contribution they want back. And in my opinion, the people who make the most money in the world, outside of the things that I just mentioned, are the ones who are making the greatest contribution. And so when money stops meaning what it used to mean, you know, for me, money was safety, money was stability, money was being okay. When I had all those things, I had to find another level of why is this important? And it became the fact that if money is coming in, if you, if people are exchanging that with you for what you're doing, that is proof that you're making a massive contribution. And I think so many entrepreneurs get caught in this place, especially, especially contribution driven entrepreneurs, spiritual entrepreneurs, those who really care about the world around them. They get caught in this, like, almost catch 22 of like, making money is not the goal. Helping people is the goal. And so they get stuck where they're not helping a lot of people because they've turned off this affinity for money. And if you kind of look at that and change the equation, if you want to make a massive contribution, then make a massive amount of money and you have proof that you've done that. And for anybody who says money doesn't matter or money doesn't buy happiness, it's simple. They haven't given enough away. If you want to see money buy happiness, make a whole bunch of it and then give it to places and to people and to causes that need it. And you will see just how important it really is.

And money is oxygen. I remember, like, 10 years ago, I was, I was tuning into, like, the beginning of my entrepreneur, like the true entrepreneurial journey where I had actually burned the boats and I wasn't willing to live life any other way. And I was listening to Tim Ferriss. This is a long time ago, man. And he was talking about money being the tip of the spear. It's funny, you have this evolutionary hunter shirt on which, you know, maybe you can jam with the audience on what that is, because I, I love the meaning behind it. And Tim was talking about at the tip of the spear, in olden times, we would actually kill and bring it back to the tribe. And that was our worthiness as men. That was our value that we would provide to our women, to our tribe. And now in modern industrialized society, it's like the tip of the spear is actually money. We don't have to be good at hunting anymore. I mean, unless you live, you know, out in the sticks or something.

Unless you want to.

Unless you want to for fun. But now the tip of the spear is money. And so this evolutionary hunter piece is huge because who else is going to hunt the biggest game? Biggest game, meaning that is the change that the world needs besides entrepreneurs. It's not going to Be somebody who's just chilling on the couch, working a normal job, and it's no, no judgment to them. But, like, if the world's going to create change from people, then people have to hunt. They have to be this evolutionary hunter. So share about that. I love it.

So I wrote a book called the Entrepreneurial Personality Type. And I don't think this is gender specific. I think there's evolutionary hunter, men and women. In fact, if you look at a lot of the evidence of the tribes that lived thousands of years ago, men and women hunted. And I think there's this sub population within the world of people who have our personality type. And we're different from the rest of the world. We're dramatically different from the rest of the world. When I look at the world, I see kind of four personality types. So the first one is what I call the caretakers. It's the people in the world who really love taking care of other people, who their body, their mentality, their way of getting positive reward in their system is by helping others, by taking care of others. And a lot of entrepreneurs identify with that. They'll say, oh, I think I'm that caretaker personality. So I have a qualification question. It's do you like changing bedpans? Do you enjoy changing bedpans? No, no, no, I don't. Here's what's interesting. If you're around a caretaker, a true caretaker. Cause Katie was in the hospital a few years ago, and I've done this a ton of times, but this was one specific time a nurse walked in to help her. And she's like singing and talking to Katie and she was really happy. And Katie got up and went into the restroom. And so I was talking to the woman and I said, hey, you seem to really love what you do. And she's like, every day is a blessing. I get to come in here and help people. And I'm like looking at someone in scrubs doing something I would never want to do. And so I posed the question, do you like changing bedpans? Like, there's got to be something you don't like, Right? And her answer was, if there's a bedpan to change and I'm helping somebody. And then I feel like I've done what I need to do for the day. I feel like I need to write a check to make it so that I don't have to do that.

Yeah, me too.

But, God, I'm glad that that caretaker's there. So the second type of person in the world that I see is what we call the communicators. They love communication, they love talking, they love exchanging information. A lot of entrepreneurs say, oh, I think I've got to be that one. Right. I'm the communicator. The qualification question for communicator is, do you enjoy small talk?

Sometimes, not all the time.

Which really means no.

Yeah, maybe like 20% of the time.

Yeah. Because the 20% of the time you enjoy small talk is that it leads.

Exactly. Yeah, it leads to the 80%, which I like.

So the only way we like small talk is if it actually does or achieves something.

Totally.

But dude, you take two communicators, put them in a water cooler and they'll talk for 45 minutes, about a 30 minute TV show. You know who I'm talking about? And there's nothing wrong with that. You know, evolutionarily, we needed the communicators. We needed the person who carried on oral tradition. We needed the person that said, hey, don't go over there, there's a cliff. Don't eat this thing, it'll kill you. There's a woolly mammoth that's going to run you over. We needed that person. So the third type of person that I see in the world, or the third dominant style in the world is what I call the coordinators. Coordinators love order. They love rules, they love red tape, they love contracts. Not because there's a deal, because there's a contract.

Wow. Definitely not me.

Yeah, it's not me either. But man, am I glad they're there. And the qualification question for a coordinator is, do you like being on committees? Do you?

No, no.

I mean, I like being on a committee if I'm running it. And even then it's kind of tough because I don't like that structure.

Yeah.

As soon as somebody goes, this meeting is called to order, I'm like, how fast can I get out of here?

Right?

Because I know I'm going to be in some system or structure that doesn't suit my personality. Now, the fourth type of person, if you look at our evolutionary tribe, we go back thousands of years. We have the people who are taking care of other people. We have the people who are carrying on oral tradition and communicating. We have the people who are putting things in order. What are we missing? The people who get up every morning, gather, that small group of people in the tribe that are just like them, grab sticks, stones, say an intention, go out and kill something. And the qualification question for evolutionary hunter is, can you turn it off? Can you?

Sometimes.

But it Takes effort.

Yeah, yeah.

So in order to even get to turning it off, like, that's what a lot of entrepreneurs tell me. They're like, yes, I can turn it off. Okay, tell me how. I do a meditation. I sit in front of a red light. I have a PEMF machine. And, you know, after a 45 minute process, then I can get a small window where my mind is not telling me I need to do something. Is that fair? Yeah.

Yeah.

And so doesn't it make sense that evolutionarily, this personality that gets up every day and goes out and keeps the human tribe alive would be genetically epigenetically programmed to never stop and to keep going and to have this drive to do what we do every day. Because being an entrepreneur, you know, you just mentioned leverage earlier. Being an entrepreneur, I believe, is one of the hardest paths a human being can choose. You and I need more help than the average person to get to what we want to do, because we want to do more. And yet every time we request help or every time we ask for help, we feel super vulnerable and exposed. And so there's this personality type in the world that looks at the world differently. And, you know, when you look at the communicator or the coordinator or the caretaker, they live in the present. They're in that space doing that thing in the present.

Yeah.

And for us, as evolutionary hunters for entrepreneurial personality types, we are the percentage of the population that lives in the future. We don't just live there, we create it.

You're 100% right. I just went through Scott Jackson's NLP training and part of the test, there's an assessment where it says, you know, are you past, current or future based? And I was like, off the charts on future based.

100%.

This is not a shocker. And I love what the future can bring because the future reminds me where I used to be. I used to be in a really shitty spot. I'm talking like 280 pounds. You were 300 plus pounds at one point, which I want to jam with you about. That's a crazy story. I mean, because you're close to £200 ish now. Yeah. Right.

So 220. Yeah.

Okay, so that's almost £100. Like, that's a whole human being that you, like, took off of your skeleton. Like, there's a lot of emotional stuff that you, I'm sure, had to let go of. I was thinking about this before we sat down today, and I was like, okay, what does it really mean? Like, what is the gravity. What is the etymology of entrepreneur? And the etymology of entrepreneur is rooted in the combination of two Latin words. Entree, to swim out and prende is to grasp, understand, or capture.

Yeah.

So to me, I'm just like, okay. Entrepreneurs literally expand the possibility of consciousness. That is no easy task. If you look at anybody who's ever been on a stage or orated anything or done anything that has risen consciousness, they themselves had to go through this crazy, cataclysmic journey, like a big one, or maybe even multiple heroes journeys. So I wonder for you, like, when I read that, have you heard that before?

Oh, sure. It seems like there's a lot of different definitions. That's a. That's a good one.

But, yeah, that's a good one. It's one of the ones I found online. And so I think about, like, swimming out and capturing and really, like, harnessing or grabbing potential, like, human potential. That, to me, is the most exciting, fun, sexy, cool, incredible thing I could ever do. Like, somebody asked me, like, what would you want to do before you die? And I would say, I would want to reach my ultimate potential and not be one of those people in a graveyard that, like, left a dream unfulfilled or didn't put out something to the world. But what. What comes up for you, like, you know, later on in life, if you were to reflect on that, that meaning in Latin, what would it really mean to you to live life truly as an entrepreneur?

I think that for us as entrepreneurs, the drive that we all have, and this goes back to being the evolutionary hunter, is to contribute. I call it the call of contribution. So there's. There's. There's kind of three milestones that I think that entrepreneurs pass through or entrepreneurial personality types pass through. The first one is you realize you have this innate motivation. You know what I'm talking about? Like, that's. That you can't turn it off. Other people need to be motivated to do something. Entrepreneurs are so motivated, we have to find something to do. Does that relate?

Yeah, sometimes I'll be laying around and I'll be like, did I do the thing I wanted to do? It'll just pop into my head all the time, actually.

Yeah. Yeah. Or if you don't have anything to focus on, your mind will stay so intrinsically busy until you find something that you can do. You know, we. We. I call it, like, kind of being in momentum. We have to be in this place of forward progress. So that's the second gate. The first one's innate motivation. The Second one is this search for momentum. We want to be making things happen. We want to be moving things forward. We want to be contributing. We want to be changing the world around us. And it's like this drive that literally will keep us up at night. We can have no needs in the world. We can be well fed, have money in the bank, you know, have. Have what we need taken care of. All of Maslow's needs are taken care of. But still we sit there in this obsession for how do we do more, how do we move forward faster, how do we stay in that momentum place? And then the last milestone is what I call the call of contribution. And I feel like every one of us hears it. And it starts as, like, this whisper that says, hey, you need to do more. You need to be more, you need to leave more behind. You need to help those around you. Then it's a drone, and then it's the only thing you hear sometimes. And that compulsion to contribute is what I feel drives the majority of entrepreneurs. Now, let me qualify this, because there's a lot of entrepreneurs who, early in their career are not the greatest human beings. In fact, you know, when you look at. Or maybe they don't have the greatest behaviors. When you look at a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of us have had periods of our lives where we behaved in ways that today, maybe we'll share, maybe we'll talk about, but we probably don't want our kids to use it as an instruction manual. But what happens over time? And you can see this in the lives of entrepreneurs over and over again. Henry Ford started out as a bigot, publishing articles against Jews and blacks and publishing books like distributing books against minorities. And by the end of his career, democratize the automobile and give it to everybody. And Bill Gates, at the beginning of his career, complete and total, absolute horrible human being. If you look at all of these. His early stuff, and then now wants to save the world, not in the greatest way. And I think he's making a huge amount of mistakes.

We might not want to go into that topic.

Let's not get crazy.

I'm not a fan of Bill Gates.

Yeah, neither am I. Okay, But. But when you look at the. The buildings around us, when you look at the theaters, when you look at the museums, when you look at, you know, the. The civic centers, there's a name on there, and the name is there because somebody like you. And I stroked a check and said, I want to get back. I want to live on. I want to contribute. I want my contribution to Be known.

Yeah.

And so for me, entrepreneurship is all about contribution. And the faster we understand that, the easier our lives as entrepreneurs become.

There could be intrapreneurs too. I've heard that phrase, like somebody in a company that has an entrepreneurial mindset that's using. I tell Marketa and Lauren this all the time on my team. I'm like, hey, treat this like it's your own business. Because it is. Like everything that we do that's revenue dependent, it's because of your efforts and the fruit that we all share together.

Yeah.

So for the intrapreneurs, for the wantrepreneurs, for the entrepreneurs, they're all preneuring to something. They're all swimming out. You know, they're all reaching for that thing. What actually is the deciding factor to whether or not somebody reaches the shore, to whether or not somebody can actually, you know, have traction and begin the journey to being a true entrepreneur? Because really, at the end of that road is freedom. That's what entrepreneurs really want. We want freedom, and we want to be of service. We want those two things. That's what I do.

Yeah.

What do you think?

I don't know, Josh. I look at it differently. I don't think there's a finish line, but we die. Yeah, but I don't think there's a finish line while we're alive as entrepreneurs. When you say, like, how. What's the difference in getting traction in the beginning? I think it has a lot of different factors. It's who's around you and what network you have and what opportunities you have. But then we look at people all the time that had none of that. Oprah Winfrey, when you look at her as a child, grew up in poverty, molested, raped, left for dead. I mean, this is a human that did not look like they were going to be Oprah Winfrey. And now her name means something forward and backwards. And when you look at who we are as entrepreneurs, I don't. I don't think there's a finish line for us. In fact, this is like a condition of our personality. When we set a goal and we're pursuing that goal, there's this phenomena that occurs that as we approach the finish line, it loses importance to us. Has that happened to you?

Yes, for sure.

Yeah.

And so my first goal was like, how do I make a hundred thousand dollars?

Oh, I remember that goal.

Yeah.

I didn't even know when I had. If I looked backwards and I was like, oh, I did it. It didn't matter. And then it Was like, how do I make million dollars?

Because as soon as I got close to it, I was already thinking about the next level.

Doesn't that sound like a hunter for sure. Because as soon as you make that kill, what do you have to do? Go take a little rest, collaborate with your tribe, and then go out and do it again. And so for us as entrepreneurs, I think it's this never ending quest to be in momentum, to be making a difference. And I don't think it ends. I've known too many entrepreneurs who are wildly successful. I'll share a quick story with you. So during the foreclosure crisis, I got really close with ReMax and the real estate brokerage and I got really close with Dave Lineager, the founder, multi billionaire. Dave and Gail Linegar, incredible human beings, dude. At one point NASCAR went to ReMax and said, hey, we think you should have a car in nascar. And Dave's like, great, I think it's a good idea. He drove, he went and like, actually he drove under the name Davey Lineager and came in like second and third place a couple of times. Like, he's just a phenomenal, incredible human being. So I think it was 2009 or 10. I'm standing out in front of ReMax waiting for Dave. He pulls up. This guy has the largest house in all of Colorado, largest private residence, second largest house in Arizona. He owns a golf cart called a golf course called the Sanctuary, where there's a PGA tour event played. There's two, two members, him and Gail. He pulls up and he's listening to Acres of Diamond. Like, that's an old school Earl Nightingale personal development. So even though he's at the absolute top of what we would consider entrepreneurial success, tallest corporate office in Denver, 12th floor is his office. It overlooks all, everything. He's still improving himself. I don't think we finish ever.

Yeah, agreed. I like how you put that. And I'm going to change my stance. It's not about reaching the island, it's about reaching the island so you can reach the next one. The reason I say that metaphor is because so many people, the intra the mantra and the entrepreneur, they. They really want to do something. I can't tell you how many people have like written me an email or be like, how do I launch a podcast? How do I have my own business? How do I be an affiliate? How do I do this and that? And I'm like, well, you have to begin. You have to have to believe in yourself and you have to have the courage to actually do it. That's a big one. And that courage is about emotional intelligence. A lot of entrepreneurs, like you said, they have this life where maybe they were like sex addiction, porn addiction, addictions of any kind, because all that, like almost entrepreneurial fire was going sideways. It was like leaking out into something else besides them being of service. So I don't necessarily know. And I wonder how you feel about this. I don't know if it's about, like reaching the dreamy island. It's about how do you take somebody from where they are now? And maybe you don't do this anymore because simple operations is for people that make, you know, 300k or more. So. But can you, can you pull the E brake back and think about for people in their late 20s, early 30s that are seriously motivated and just literally need guidance and shepherding to push them in the direction where one day they will truly be the embodiment of an entrepreneur. Like, how do they even begin that process?

So we have a framework called the Billionaire Code, and it's the nine levels that it takes to go from $0 to $100 million. And tons of entrepreneurs have used it as kind of the roadmap for success. And it's nine levels and it has exactly what you should focus on. I take a different approach to where you start. See, I think that for a lot of entrepreneurs, the place that they start is trying to end up somewhere. But for us as entrepreneurs, the more that we take care of ourselves, the more that we hydrate, the more we eat the right foods, the more we exercise, the more we, like, make self care a huge priority, the easier it is for us to do what we do, to see that future opportunity, to see the next steps, to understand where we can make a contribution. And the reason I bring this up is because in the entrepreneurial world today, it looks like the goal is the opposite. It looks like the person who beats themselves up the most works every day, 15 hour days, stays up at night, like, you know, totally destroys themselves, is the one that is successful. And I call BS because the reality of the people that I work with, the reality of the really successful companies I know, is that entrepreneurs are taking care of themselves and they are clear and they understand where they're going to go and they understand what they're seeing. And I think we have this culture in the entrepreneurial world that you must sacrifice everything for business success. Well, in my world, sacrificing everything means there is no success. And so if you're in those early stages, focus on Yourself. You know what's interesting is if you take someone who doesn't really know where they're going, doesn't understand, doesn't really see clearly, they start hydrating their body and their brain, come online, they start meditating, they start calming the voices and seeing more opportunity. They start really eating healthy and working out. They get into this physiological momentum where we feel. Feel the progress we're making and suddenly they start seeing opportunity everywhere.

I love you have the podcast momentum podcast, which we'll link in the show notes. And I was listening to an episode this morning, Addicted to change and program to accept failures. And I love the content because it's super short, it's digestible, and then there's a place for people to go at the end of it. It's mastery in marketing. When did you start to become a marketer? And on top of that, when did you start to become a conscious marketer? Because like you said in the beginning of anyone's journey, maybe they don't always have things perfectly in integrity. Did you ever have a place like that where you came from?

Sure, yeah, absolutely. Well, I mean, we can go way back to when I was in distribution of substances that aren't completely.

We got time, Alex, come on. So open the kimono.

When I was very young, I ran some businesses and had some challenges and had had like some issues that came up. And so, you know, I like sold some drugs, I did some other stuff that I'm not really proud of, you know. And then in my 20s, I ran a wildly successful company. It was called Sales out. And we were a manufacturer's rep firm and consultancy. And we were responsible at one point for over a quarter billion in sales. We were a multi million dollar company. But Josh, the way I approached that business, I look back today and it's. It shocks me like we were in business to put other people out of business. And I looked at it as like an achievement and accomplishment. My whole 20s. We used to sit down, I would sit down at an interview like this and you know, a manufacturer like we worked with Fuji, Targus, Memorex, Belkin, Monster Cable, huge brands and helped them put their product into Florida, Southeast and Latin America. And they would say, why would, why should we hire you? And I would say, look, the other firms will sell for you. We'll kill for you. We'll take your competitors out of the market completely. We will put people out of business. And in our company, we actually had a board where we would keep hash marks for all the companies we put out of Business. And we were proud of it. That was like this scarcity driven, battle driven, warrior driven mindset that I think I came into this lifetime with. And through a lot of work and a lot of introspection and a lot of support from really incredible human beings, I've been able to overcome that and understand that we all live in a place of abundance and we don't have to. You know, my, my gain doesn't have to be somebody else's loss, but there was a period of my life that that's how I ran everything.

That's so insane. I can't imagine you like that. I've said this like five times. I'm gonna say it again. Bob Proctor, rest in peace. He said, you take from abundance. Abundance is still there.

Yeah.

And it took me a long time to think like that too, because I was like, wait, how many podcasts could there be? There's so many pot. There's like a million podcasts out there. It's like, yeah, but they don't have the authenticity and the flavor of your speech. They're not who you are. They're just someone else. And I actually read that most people that start them, they never produce more than seven episodes. Like over 90% of podcasts out there, they never follow through. There's gotta be some type of emotional intelligence that's different. Maybe it's in the EPT book that you have the personality type. There's gotta be some kind of emotional intelligence that, that we're born with that maybe other people aren't. And it doesn't make us better, it just makes us different. Right. That's why we're kind of swimming around in a cosmic soup. Is there some type of emotional intelligence that makes entrepreneurs successful? And by the way, success meaning they have their mental, physical, emotional, spiritual and financial wellness nourished. All of it.

I don't know, Josh. I don't know, because I don't think that inherently in being an entrepreneur, you think about those things. I think when you look at the early stages of almost any entrepreneur's career, it's sacrifice everything for this thing that I need to have. And I think so much of our needs, our wants, our desires are born out of the, the trauma that we all had as children. And when I say we all had as children, I absolutely believe 100% of successful and non successful entrepreneurs, and let's get real, probably 100% of human beings have experienced massive unrecognized trauma. We're not willing to look at what really happened to us when we were younger even at birth as well, 100%. I mean, I had a surgery when I was. Well, let me start it in a different way. My whole life, when somebody in a white coach approaches me, I get heart palpitations, my blood pressure goes up. I never understood what it was. I would go to the dentist and literally be sweating in a panic in the waiting room. And I never understood it. Whenever I was like going into a hospital, my entire nervous system is on fire. Well, as an adult, I found out that as an infant I had surgery for peloric stenosis where my entire abdomen was opened up. And it was in 1973 in Mexico and there was no anesthesia used. So I had an operation anesthesia free. And I still remember the echoes of that operation. I still, you know, as an adult, I understood, I processed the heck out of it. I don't have as many heart palpitations now. My blood pressure doesn't go up to like heart attack levels like it used to. But every one of us has trauma. And that's one example from my lifetime. But when you look at who we are as humans, I believe that the entrepreneurial personality type is a highly physiologically sensitive momentum based being that is highly reactive to constraint. And when you look at the world around us, you know that caretaker, communicator, coordinator, there's a lot of them, there's not very many of us. And when you look at the systems and structure in the world, whether it be schools, whether it be jobs, whether it be government, whether it be any bureaucracy, those systems are set up in a way that does not serve our personality type. They might serve the rest of the world, but not us. And so when you have our personality type, you get into the place where you're like, okay, how do I make this thing called the world work for me? And I think a lot of that is driven by what we don't want and where we were lacking and where we were hurt. And you know, Rumi says the wound is where the light enters. And I totally believe that. Like when we understand that, it changes our entire impression of the world and then what happens? And this is such an incredible transformation to watching entrepreneurs. For the beginning of our career, we are running away from what we don't want. And then there's this transition where we have, where that's taken care of, like what we don't want is no longer in our lives. We're not under threat, nobody's picking on us, we have plenty of money, we are stable, we are secure. And then we have to go from running away from something to what are we going to run towards? What is the thing we're going to do? What really matters to us? What change do we really want to make? You mentioned John Mackey with conscious capitalism. You know, you look at what he did. He took a small, like, failing supermarket.

Right here in Austin.

Yep. And turned it into Whole Foods. And I wish he wasn't so against us eating meat because I'm never going to stop doing that. But I love John and I've had the opportunity to meet him, and he's an intense human being.

I bet.

But when you look at where did conscious capitalism come out of? Whole Foods was doing so well and on the way to selling to Amazon. And now it's like, what am I going to do next? Well, now he has this whole mission to turn as many companies as he can into conscious capitalist companies. And that's a running towards, not a running away from. And so I think that transition for us is such an intense thing to watch. And if you study the lives of enough entrepreneurs, you see that transition. You see, like, this massive shift in outcomes and what they're driving for.

I love that you said that they do not enjoy. What did you say? They. They have a block against constraint.

Yeah, well, yeah, we're highly reactive to constraint. Okay.

Definitely. Because there's a movie out there. I think it's James Dean. It's like Rebel Without a Cause.

Yeah.

But I want to be a rebel with a cause because all these people on the wall, like, Martin Luther King. Oh, my God, can you imagine what he had to go through? He literally had to be like, I will not be constrained.

Yeah.

Same with Larry King. Same with all these people. That's why they're on the wall, because they remind me, like, in order to actually push the boundaries of what's possible, I have to break rules. Maybe I even need to, like, be an outlaw or go to jail in some way. I'm not saying that. I'm not condoning that you go to jail, you guys. I'm just saying, like, we have to really be able to step outside of the life that we were imprinted by. By our parents. And even the trauma that you talked about and live the life that we were destined to live. There's a maturity in that. There's like a spiritual maturation, especially as a dad. And I know you're a dad as well. Like, and you don't have to be a parent to have this, but sure does make it quicker.

It's an accelerator yeah, it's.

Being a parent is a maturation accelerator. Like, so I wonder how you feel about this. So looking at the curve of maturity, and there's the adage of, like, Joseph Campbell's hero's journey, separation, initiation, return, I feel like it happens every three to seven years, and my maturity either grows or my maturity stagnates, depending on whatever God, universe, higher power, whatever you deem as that brings to me. Have you seen the same thing happen for you where, like, every three to seven or ten years or so, you've had to face a part of yourself that you literally didn't even know was there, and you either met it with maturity or you stagnated? Did you have an experience like that you could share?

Yeah, but I think there's periods in my life where that loop has been much faster. And what's interesting is I'm now 50, and I'll be 51 this year.

They're good for 50.

Thank you. Thank you. I work.

You're eating your own dog food.

Yeah, I don't mess around. I take health and wellness and, you know, being optimized very seriously. But I feel like the older that I've gotten, the shorter that loops become. The older that I've gotten, the more processing there is and the more learning there is, and the more the maturation happens in a quicker period of time. And I think that's because as an entrepreneurial personality type, as an entrepreneur, I am constantly asking the question, like, what's next? And where do I need to work on? And where. What are the. What are the challenges that I have? What are the addictions that I have? What are the behaviors that I have that I can improve to? Be a better father, be a better husband, be a better leader, be a better shepherd of the people who follow me? And I know that that term sounds very religious. I don't mean it that way. What I mean is, as entrepreneurs, we all have this opportunity to help a population of people. And in my belief, if you are going to lead people, if you're going to guide people, if you're going to share insights and wisdom with people, then you should be working on yourself to the point where you never look back and say, man, I wish I had understood that back then, and I led people in the wrong direction. I've done that, Josh. I've done that more than once. You know, I've had that realization where I'm like, oh, how many people did I tell this thing? That didn't really make sense. And so for me, that Push for growth is constant. I'm, I'm constantly being coached by at least one, two or three coaches. You know, I'm, I'm doing a lot of personal exploration and personal introspection on a daily basis and making sure that like the contribution that I make is real, it's valid and it's, and it's, it's lasting. It's not going to be something that's just ethereal and goes away when I.

Hear you say that. My experience of you though, and actually hanging out with you and having conversations with you and just getting to know you in the way that I do now, I feel like that comes from experiential learning. Like when you're in your 20s, you were £300, you're on drugs. I think multiple drugs.

Yeah, I was on five prescriptions.

You were literally like, I saw a photo of you. It's on the screen right now. You guys, check this out. It was crazy. I'm like, I didn't even. I can see you in there, but I can't really see you out here. Yeah, it was very interesting and it flashed me back. My photo's on the screen right now too, at 280 pounds with my grandma right next to me. And so we share that journey. Coming from the weight that maybe feels like it'll protect us from the threat, but the threat is actually self caused because you literally, the things you share with your community now and already what you've talked about on this podcast where you said it's not really about getting to there, there's no finish line. But it seems like when I look at that photo of you in your twenties with you being £300 plus and being on drugs, maybe you did have a mindset back then that if as long as you got to here financially, then you'd be okay. Was that a fallacy? What was that fallacy for you?

Fuck. Oh, we can cuss on.

Absolutely cool.

I don't cuss.

And fuck is good, by the way, for unlawful carnal knowledge.

There you go.

So fuck is actually a good word sometimes. So just don't play this around your kids.

Yeah, exactly. Sorry everybody. If your kids.

It's all good.

So the reason that I rail against this business success at all cost, entrepreneurial success at all costs, because I lived it so early in my 20s, I wrote a biography or I read a biography of Bill Gates and in that biography they said he never took a day off in his 20s. And when we were kids, like I said, I'm 50. So when we were kids, Gates was like this beacon because he dropped out of school. He founded Microsoft. He's the rebel massive billionaire. Oh, not only the rebel got interviewed, you know, got. Got interrogated by Congress, and he wouldn't answer their questions. Like, it's like, dude, this guy's standing up to the entire US Government. Like, when we were kids, that was the guy to really watch. And again, not. Don't agree with a lot of what.

He'S doing here, that's fine.

But when I look at my 20s, I was in that place of success at all costs. And by the time I was 30, I was on five prescription drugs like you said I was 300 pounds. I would get sweaty walking upstairs. I was working harder than I've ever worked in my life. When people say that people who are fat are lazy, I get so angry. Because being overweight, it's one of the hardest fucking things in the world to do. Everything is harder. Everything you do is harder. Everything you do takes more effort. Everything you do is a lift. Compared to actually being in health and being optimized and having vital health, it's like the easiest thing in the world. And I was when. When I listened to somebody today and, you know, you've heard this. When I listen to somebody say, the best morning routine is the one that gets you to work fastest. Get up in the morning, grab a cup of coffee and go to your computer and work all day. You don't need time. You don't need space. It is a person who hasn't reached the level of maturity to understand that life does not have to be that way. There's this fallacy that in order to create something great, you must destroy yourself. And that's just not true. It's just not true. You know, we, as entrepreneurs, we're the small percentage of the population that get to play a game where we make up the rules. Why don't we write them so we win?

It's like, where the hell did that come from? I'm trying to trace back the origin of that thinking.

Here's why. Because it's the easiest. So people want to hear from somebody who justifies their challenging behaviors. That's reality. Like, we want validation of the behaviors we have that we know aren't that good for us. We want somebody to say, hey, it's okay. It's okay to have another drink. It's okay to work all night. It's okay to stay up. It's okay not to take care of yourself. It's okay to just jam in whatever food you can. And so when you look at the people who are gaining popularity off that type of thinking, they are justifying, like, hey, you can lean into this really incredibly unhealthy way to live, the argument or the proposition that you can have it all is a much more difficult argument to make, but it's a far more mature one, because when you look at the most wildly successful people in the world, they are not sacrificing everything. In fact, I've known billionaires besides just Dave, but I've spent time with people who are multibillionaires, worth nine figures, have multiple houses, have teams, have staff. If you ever step inside their worlds for a day, you will see one of the most taking care of human beings you've ever seen. Stuff is happening automatically all around them. They don't worry about a lot. There's a lot of process and structure that other people are running that makes sure they're okay. They're not really concerned with what's happening, because billionaires and the wildly successful people in the world are that tiny percentage that will not tolerate what the rest of us do. And so when that person is saying, get up every day and go to work and kill yourself, what they're saying is tolerate everything. And that is not a path to success.

Did you go to, like, a traditional college?

I went to college. I didn't graduate.

Okay, interesting. Yeah, that doesn't surprise me.

Yeah, I didn't. I went to five or six different schools in Southern California.

Yeah.

After high school, and I took business courses, and then as soon as they would tell me I had to take, like, the history of Latin American literature, I'd go to another school and then take business courses until they caught me, and then I'd go to another school.

And so, yeah, the reason I say that is because we're in a literally unfolding of the ivory towers of education, of real estate, of everything. I mean, look at, like, how Airbnb came to pass, and look at Turo and all these ways that people are thinking outside the box. Like, we're in a place right now of radical change, maybe the most we've ever had. And I think it's really exciting because it's coming from people that did not follow the traditional path of, like, 2.3 kids. White picket fence. Your house has to look like this, and your house, you know, will be in this neighborhood and get the right degree. Now, granted, I'm not poo pooing all of that. I'm like, you know, if there's a doctor or A specialized field. Maybe that is a good path for them to go to college and follow that straight and narrow, because those are some specialized skills. But for the rest of us, like, 95, 98% of us, we actually don't need college. I've hired and fired people with master's degrees. I never finished college. I think I went for, like, three months or something.

I saw a job description the other day. It was my favorite job description ever. They were hiring a cmo, and it had all the requirements. And at the very bottom, it said, Harvard, Stanford, Princeton or Yale. MBAs need not apply.

Really?

It was like the first time I've ever seen an exam.

Why do you think they did that?

Well, first, I think it was in jest because they want to attract the personality that says, I'm not one of those. I'm a rebel. I'm different. I'm not from the Ivy League. But also because I think that a lot of traditional education creates more barriers than anything else. And I think when you go to one of those structured schools where you're learning in your MBA degree, you're learning stuff that's five or six years old, by the time you graduate, it's already outdated. Part of the reason I dropped out of school was I was in marketing classes and in business classes, and I was also running a company. And in the marketing and business classes, they were telling us, you can't do what we were doing. There was. And the day that I walked out of school was a week where I was in a marketing class where the instructor was talking about direct mail and how on direct mail you could get like, 1 to 4% open rates. And 4% is, like, crushing it off the charts. It's, like, unheard of. And, you know, 1% is really good. Well, I had a business where we're getting 12 to 15. And I said that, and he denied me. I'm like, I'll bring in our numbers. We're getting 12 to 15. We're sending out custom packages. We have the person's name on it. It's really an intriguing package. We know they're opening it because they're sending information back to us about 12 to 15. We think we're getting open rates way higher than that. And he was telling me, you couldn't do it. So the next time I come to the class, he's talking about graduating. And this was at Cal State Fullerton. He's talking about graduating from school with the different business degrees and what the opening salary would be. And he put this up on the overhead projector. I don't know if you remember those, but slide on the.

He used to write with the Sharpie on it 100%.

It was way back then with, like, the dry erase. So he put it up there and I looked at all the salaries and I was making double the highest one. And that was it. I packed up my stuff. That was my last day in school.

Yeah. I think, you know, another fallacy is that if you go to school and you get a good job, then you'll be successful. Oh, I missed one thing. If you work hard. Yeah. Go to school, get a good job, work hard. That actually seems like a triangulation of lies, because, yes, you do get to work hard. Yes, you need education, and yes, there is a special lane that if you follow it and it's connected to your soul, you'll succeed.

Sure.

But the traditional way of doing things, I think it's dead. I really do. I think it's been dead for a long time. And I wonder for people that you coach, because these are people that are earning multiple six figures a year. Did most of them not go to college?

I would say the majority of our membership probably hasn't.

Yeah.

And, you know, we work with people that are making multiple six figures, seven figures, and multiple seven figures. And yes, there's definitely some that have degrees. Rarely do they have a degree that's actually what they're doing. Like, rarely do they have a business degree. They went to. They had a degree in something. We have some incredible genius people that we've worked with. They have degree in engineering or in some type of science or in something. But when you look at the people who are in our world who are achieving that type of success, the path that they took to get there was not a traditional one. It wasn't the one that's laid out for us. And often it's funny, we had one client who. She's from Nigeria, and she says, you know, when you're Nigerian, and I think this goes for a lot of different cultures, she said, you know, you can be a doctor, a lawyer, or a disappointment. I'm the disappointment because she's an entrepreneur and she decided she was going to do what she wanted to do. I think for most of us, the traditional path is something that feels like constraint, like we talked about.

Okay, I'm going to speak on a family basis. I didn't know I was going to go here, but, like, it seems like it's the perfect time for me to say this, so. Shout out to Emily Hansen. Trent she's my sister in law. I love her so much. And you know, we were just there in Tennessee, Alex, for a couple weeks and I was spending time with her and we're sitting at the dinner table. She's an amazing chef and baker and cook and she's so good at what she does. And I was talking to her about Jen Sincero's book. You're a badass at making money and just giving her some resources. And when we really got down to it, I think I asked her like three or four questions and she started to cry. And she has a space that's already been built in a town right side of outside of where they live. She's already bought the space, she's working on the business plan. She's doing all the things that would make somebody, I guess you could say, quote, quote, successful. But it's been a year and there hasn't been any movement and we really got down to it. Alex, what she was most afraid of was there was an unconscious block in her that if she became successful and if she made money, and I hope you're okay with me saying this, Emily, it's going to help a lot of people. I'm going for it. That if she made money and she, she actually opened up lively Iris and made this a success, that somehow it would be disappointing. All the struggle and all the pain that her father went through and that if she did that, then somehow she would be honoring money. And she had a huge anger block around money and why her dad had to struggle. And the reason I say that is because how many people are dealing with that type of unconscious block? A literal rage against money. Rage against the Machine was a band back in the day. Like, have you, first of all, like, mad respect to anyone that's even going on that journey that wants to look at their money beliefs? Because for me, I had a ticker tape that played for a long time. I remember the first time I ever gave a public talk. It was at my old buddy Sean Croxton's mastermind in like 2016. And I told the entire crowd, I was like, hey, I used to have this belief. And honestly, I'm still unpacking it. Money is bad. Rich people are evil and expect the worst to happen. Those were the three things that I had baked into my psyche. So I'm sharing my story, I'm sharing Emily's story. Because how many people could literally be leading the best life, hitting their potential and doing everything they want to do to serve other people if they just had the courage, first of all, and then the intelligence and the maturity to get in there and really see what's there. Because it's not theirs. It's just something that out of love, they formed a trauma bond or they formed some kind of a system where it would actually dishonor their parents or, you know, it would go against their community. Like, have you seen this type of story play out? Maybe not in your own life or maybe. Maybe somehow.

No, for sure.

But definitely with entrepreneurs. And I say this with love. I got so much love for you, Emily. I'm saying that because, wow, you're going to be successful. You will. And along the path of success, the unconscious beliefs around what money actually is and how other people view us that make money, none of that matters at all. What matters is what we do with it, like you said, how we share it, how we give it to the world. So have you seen this story play out? Like, does the story come to mind for you personally or professionally, Maybe somebody you've helped where they really came in with some trash and it was time to take out the trash?

Yeah. You know, Josh, I think that in my experience with myself, with my clients, with being in groups of entrepreneurs and just really with human beings, I think if you elevate above what we're talking about and you look at what is the. The predominant human patterns, one of them is that we recreate the energetic of our childhood as adults. And you can see this clear as day in so many people's lives. Like, you meet somebody's wife, you meet their mom. There are so many similarities. You meet somebody's father, you meet their. You know, I always tell men, like, be the person you want your daughter to marry, because that's what's going to happen anyway. And we.

We.

It's true. It's really true.

So good.

You know, we. We repeat the patterns that we had in childhood. And so if our childhood was a pattern of overcoming pain and a pattern of addiction and a pattern of. For me, I had a father who communicated in three ways. It was either rage or silence or punitive teasing. And I spent a ton of time with him. And so as a child, I was always afraid of setting him off. I was terrified of him teasing me because I would get emotional, and then it would make the teasing be even more. And I was kind of happy when it was just nothing. And so as an adult, I had long periods of time in my life where I isolated, where I didn't go around other people, where. I mean, I went five or six Days in an office by myself without seeing people. And so I think that when we understand that so much of where we are today is motivated by what we're overcoming from our past, and that's just universal. We can change things like crazy. I'll share one story with you. We had a. And it's. I've got tons of these. But we have. We had a client, still a good friend of mine. His name's Cosmo Kosravi. His name's actually Darien, but he goes by Cosmo because in his world, he is a world champion Pitmaster. I didn't even know this existed. But he's like, barbecue, huh? Yeah, yeah, he's. He. And now he sponsors like seven world championships, champion Pitmasters. And he's got a company called Cosmos Q. So Cosmo came and we were working together, and I think his business was at about 2 or 3 million. And we put some structure in place, we put some. Some systems in place, we put our planning systems, our simple operation system in place, and the business started growing. And we were at one of our events and he sat down next to me and he's like, alex, so you see what I'm doing, and I want to grow more, and I want this to really get out there more. What do you think I should do? And I said, cosmo, I think you need to work on yourself. He's like, what do you mean? I said, well, dude, I've been around you enough to know that you are overcoming some massive trauma you've had as a kid. And it's probably something you've denied for a long time or you're not aware of, or you don't really know what it is, but I can feel it. And I feel like if you work on that, it's going to change everything for you. And he kind of got a little emotional. And he said, yeah, you know, when I was a kid, I got burned and I was in a hospital. I can't remember for how long, he said, but it was forever. It was like months or maybe even over a year. And his family got to the point where they didn't really visit him a lot. And he was in massive pain all of the time. He was in this burn ward recovering from really, his whole lower body had massive third degree burns. And when Cosmo went and started getting some EMDR therapy and started dealing with the feelings and the energetic patterns that were still in his body from that period of time, from the abandonment issues, from the solitude, from the pain, just the massive amounts of physiological pain, Almost immediately, his company exploded. He went from like 3 or 4 million to, I think, 13 or 15 million. And it had made such an impression on him that Cosmo has a YouTube channel and a podcast that goes out to all these Pitmasters. And he's sharing EMDR with them and telling them that they all need to go get therapy. And that is not like a therapy.

That's not the traditional space to have those conversations. Have you thought about your childhood?

Right. But it changed so much for him. And like I said, I can repeat this story hundreds of times, because here's what I believe about our personality type, and I think this happens to everybody, but I think it's way more dramatic for entrepreneurs. If we are truly evolutionary hunters. We have this ability to rapidly and severely repress the emotions we're feeling in the present. It would make sense if we were hunting and you and I are running towards something and you're a really good friend of mine, and you get hurt. I still need to go finish this thing. I'll do that later. I'll feel those feelings later, maybe, or maybe I'll just repress them until I don't. And I think that for us as entrepreneurs, the more we get into that place where we are repressing, we are repressing, we are repressing depending on the person, finally, that is the thing that starts to affect us the most. And when we're willing to draw that stuff up and process it and understand it and bring it out into the light and say, okay, here's what I'm dealing with, and we can overcome those things and process the feelings that we didn't have, that's when we really unleash this massive amount of potential that we have. Because that suppression of our emotions create suppression everywhere else. And so many of us as entrepreneurs, as kids, we were suppressed anyway. I mean, how many times were you told to sit down, stop talking, stop moving, quit making everybody else uncomfortable? Did you hear that dialogue?

Of course. Yeah. There was also a lot of bullying, too. I was overweight when I was in school. Like, that was a thing.

Yeah. When I was in high school, there was this commercial that ran that said, don't squeeze the Charmin. And it was people squeezing this toilet paper. I don't know if you remember it, but if you look it up on YouTube, it's there and walking. When I was a freshman and a sophomore in high school, I was very small and overweight, and people would run up and grab the sides of my waist and squeeze as hard as they could. And yell don't squeeze the Charmin or don't squeeze the Charfen. And dude, I would come home and have bruises on the side of my body. And so there was like this amount of suppression of who I was and how I was and how I felt and how I thought. And I feel so fortunate that in my 20s, one of the things that really changed things for me was I got into trauma therapy and I started talking to an EMDR therapist and I didn't. And I got. First I got into cognitive behavioral therapy, which was fucking horrible. Sitting across from somebody and like spilling your guts and having to go, how does that make you feel? By the third time the therapist said, how does that make you feel? I'm like, I literally said, I feel like I want to come across the room and punch you in the face. She's like, what are you talking about? You can't threaten. And I'm like, look, I'm not going to do it. But I feel like this is totally unproductive. Like, stop telling me, ask me how I make you feel. Like, how does it make me feel? Fuck, I'm here because I'm not feeling great. And you just keep asking the same damn question. And it's worked. So I feel lucky. I found EMDR therapy because it's a different type of processing and I've recommended it to literally tens of thousands of entrepreneurs. And not a week or a month, not probably a week or two weeks goes by that somebody doesn't reach out and say, hey, I just had my third session and it's life changing. And, and it's, it's one modality. I think there's a lot of them out there.

Yeah.

But when we are willing to process what we have repressed in the past, I believe we release and enhance all the abilities we have in the present.

See, this is why this is a totally different life changing conversation about really what abundance is. Because you're including the talk about trauma.

Yeah.

The physical, emotional, spiritual, body, they all connect.

Yeah.

The on the screen right now is our model. Right. It's the Pentagon. So you start with the physical, like you said, when you start eating well, hydrating. I think you have a hydration program.

We do.

You guys gotta check this out. Alex is gonna teach you how to drink water the right way.

Getthirstynow.com okay. All right.

Shout out to getthirstynow.com. so, yeah, you start with the physical, then that goes to the mental, then the emotional, then the spiritual, and then the financial is really what ties the roof in. So there's no way. This is why I just so love you and this conversation. There's no way that we could ever become wealthy or abundant unless we're managing all of those. Would you add anything to that? I'm curious. Like, we look at those five pieces. Those are the things that I believe we signed up to master here on planet Earth. And furthermore, to deny one of them or to rob one of them of energy to, you know, what is that called? Pay Peter to give to Paul some Bible verse. When you take away from one to give to the other, the other is essentially having a band aid, but then the other is going to suffer. It's about balancing all of them and feeding all of them. Really giving the nutrition to yourself in those five ways that I personally, at 43, can say, yeah, that's actually the path is to balance those five things. Would you add anything to that?

I would suggest a different word than balance.

Balancing.

Yeah. Not balance. So here's here. I just. That word freaks me. Me out, Josh. Because here's what balance implies. If you think about balance, what balance really implies, like, this is the visual I get, and maybe it's not the visual that everybody gets, but I think energetically, we feel this balance is like walking across a tightrope. That's balancing. You know, when I was a kid, there was. I can't remember the name of the.

The.

The tightrope walker, but there was this night where this guy was going to walk from one building to another building. It was this huge thing, live TV. You can look this up on YouTube. And as a kid, I was watching it, and he was. I think it was like Grand Canyon or something crazy like that. And he was walking across, and the wind started blowing. He had the big stick, and the wind started blowing. It was getting, like, really wavy and kind of crazy. And then he got to the point where he, like, slipped and dropped the stick. And there was this, like, prelim to everything where he was talking about, like, you never dropped the stick. It was in the, like, early part of the show, like, you never dropped the balancing stick. That's your guide. That's who you are. That's like the way you get across. He dropped the stick, and about 30 seconds later, he fell off the rope. And whenever somebody says balance, I remember that visual. And I remember being a kid and being like, holy shit, you can't undo that. I prefer integration. I think that when we integrate our finances and our health and our relationships and the life around us and our spirituality, when we create integration with those things. When we create activities where we're spending time with our family, but we're also working on ourselves. When we create activities where we are with our community of people, but we're working on ourselves spiritually, when we create a team of people around us who are true believers that believe in us, believe in our mission, know where we're going, we integrate those things. And integration does not imply that we're going to fall off of anything. Integration is how we actually create the life that we want. And the only thing I think I would add to what you said is there's this for people like us, I think there's this blanket over all of those of the relationships that we have and the people we touch in this lifetime, because all of those things are incredibly important. But when the way that you and I truly grow, if you really look at your life and you look back and you think about the times where you've grown, the times where you've changed, the times where you have felt that reality of abundance, it's all always. When you're making a contribution to someone else and they're making one to you, always, 100% of the time, it doesn't even have to be a person in the room. You can be listening to an audio tape of somebody. You can be watching a documentary that somebody made. You can be learning from someone who's no longer on this planet. But when we're feeling that contribution from one person to another, when. When we are. When we are getting the shortcuts that other people have either created or left behind, and that, I feel, is one of the biggest accelerators to growth for our personality.

It's beautiful because the relationship I have to Josh is a mirror to how I'm going to relate to Alex. So if I'm loving Josh and if I trust Josh, if I'm in integrity with Josh, well, then that's what I can offer you. I can't offer that to you unless that's real. And so the relationship piece. I love that. I actually never asked a guest to improve our model, but I figured with simple operations, we can make it more simple. It almost feels like the relationships both to the self and to others is fundamentally a glue or even just like maybe the ether, the etheric field that we operate in. Because why the heck will we be here having kids, having a business, making an impact, doing anything, than to serve the people that we love and the people that we love when we're gone? There'd be no point to it all Otherwise we're just kind of like masturbating out here and making money just for the hell of it, which, you know, some people do that. The thing that comes to mind for me with you is legacy. Because, you know, when. When we go, and hopefully 97 is my time, I'm like, 97 is my goal. That's. I want to make it to 97. Do you have a legacy that, that if you could wave a magic wand and maybe you're in the process of gathering the pixie dust now to like do that thing that you would want to leave for your family and for all the people that, you know would learn from you when you're gone. We have so much content that's going to be around. Can you imagine this? There's going to be like tens of thousands of pieces of content that we've created by the time we go. It's pretty exciting. Somebody's going to filter through those. What would you want them to feel? What would you want them to take away? And. And what would be the legacy you'd want to leave?

So for me, I was always a completely different kid. You know, I did not get along socially with other students. I didn't get along with most teachers. Thank God there was a few that saved my life. When I was a kid. I thought I was so fundamentally removed from this thing called success that I would never get there. And I started obsessing over the lives of successful people. Not just business people, but I read biographies and autobiographies and third party accounts and articles and like, what anything I could get my hands on to understand why there's certain people that we remember, there's certain people that matter to be remembered. And Josh, I thought I was going to go out and find this, like, incredible specimen of a human being that was so much different than me. But what I found was the opposite. What I found was over and over again that the people who change the world are the people who are different than all of us. There's equation that this equation we have today in the world that if you don't look like everyone else, talk like everyone else, show up like everyone else and learn like everyone else. We need to diagnose you, medicate you, and fix you so you're just like everybody else. And history has proven without a shadow of a doubt there's no way you can make the opposite argument, that the person who shows up different, who doesn't look like everyone else, talk like everyone else, walk like everyone else, learn like everyone else, is exactly the Person who always changes the world. No exception. Helen Keller. Couldn't see, couldn't hear, couldn't. Couldn't speak. Changed the world for disabled people. Thomas Edison was sent home at 5 years old because he was too slow to go to school. Look what he did. Albert Einstein couldn't tie his shoes or remember his phone number and failed algebra and he's fucking Albert Einstein. And so the. The legacy I want to leave behind. Sorry. Is for people like me who have been in that place where you feel like you're completely alone and you're a party of one and the entire world is against you and it doesn't work for you and you either have to survive the system or game the system in order to live. The legacy I want to leave behind is that every person who's ever felt like that knows without a shadow of a doubt that not only do you matter, and not only are you capable, and not only were you put here to do something, but the fact that you're different from everyone else is exactly the message given you by the universe. That you are here to change the world. You are here to make a massive contribution, and no one should tell you otherwise. And if you have ever felt that way and you're listening now, I want you to know something. History has proven that you are in exactly the right place. History has proven that you are here for a reason. And there is nothing wrong with you. And you are not alone. Because no matter what you're suffering through, no matter what you're dealing with, no matter what you've gone through in your life, somebody just like us has done the same and gone on to change the world. And you can, too. History has written it. This is not just me saying it. It's what we all need to believe. And if I can leave that behind, if I can leave that impression for everyone who's ever felt like I felt. That is my ultimate goal in the world.

Thank you, man.

My pleasure, Josh. Thanks for creating a space where I could share it.

Thank you so much. I love the. I feel like the table just integrated what you said, that just soaked into the Perota here from Costa Rica. That was so beautiful and that was true beauty. Because, you know, there's so many things that are glamorized about entrepreneurship. I think Gary Vaynerchuk has a dual edged sword. I think some of his work is good and some has probably harm people. But I haven't heard one thing you've said today that I fundamentally disagree with, which is good. And I'm thinking about the world that we're stepping into, 2024, it's so fucking uncertain. It's literally like producing people that are unfortunately going to feel the way that you don't want them to feel because of the environment they live in, because of the small mindedness, the narrow mindedness. Like we live in a world of squares and the world is round. You know, the world is round. We have so much square thinking, but we live on a globe. We breathe in and breathe out in a circle, not in a box. This circular thinking versus the square thinking. Like, like, do you have any parting guidance for people on that? And by the way, it could be for moms, dads, grandparents, entrepreneurs, just human beings that find themselves trapped in a certain way of square thinking. Like, how can you, do you have any advice on how people could initially change their thinking to be more holistic, to be more integrated in the way that they actually use their brain and have, you know, rapport with their unconscious mind?

You know, I think, I think there's two ways to look at the world today. I think there's one way to say there's all these things that are going the wrong direction and there's all these equations that are like not working in the right way. And there's all these move towards constraint and towards a lack of abundance and towards pain. But man, I think there's another way to look at the world. Shit is changing so fast right now and people just like you and I are creating tools. I stand on the shoulder of giants and so do you. The fact that we're able to sit in front of these microphones, be at this table, have these cameras, none of that was created by us. It was created by somebody just like us who first envisioned it and then created reality. And today, the tools that are being put out there, whether it's artificial intelligence, whether it's the systems that you can use as an entrepreneur today, whether it's the connectivity that we have, where I can work with people in the Philippines, I can work with people in Asia, I can work with people all over the world from my desk here in Austin, the opportunities we have to improve humanity are overwhelming. And the way I look at it, Josh, is that if you look at any crisis we have ever had in the history of the world, and there's been some bad times. The dark ages were real, the plague was real, slavery was real. Look, there's some bad fucking shit that happened in the world. Like horrible, horrible times. And then you contrast it to today. I believe that the world will change. Like it always has. Whether crisis or issue or challenge or human constraint, we feel someone just like you and I is going to rise above the noise, create an idea, get it into momentum, and take the world with us. But I believe in entrepreneurs. I believe in people like us. I believe in humanity because we have always been there. And we will overcome anything that comes in the future, because we always have.

Hey, man, I'm with you and that book, the Fourth Turning. I don't fundamentally agree with all of it. There is cycles that we go through.

Sure.

And maybe we are at the Fourth. Perhaps we perhaps could be here, because if you look at the meltdowns that we're experiencing, there's also radical opportunity. You know, the movie that comes to mind. I love movies because, you know, a child can feel a movie. And we learn by story and metaphor. You've told so many amazing stories on this podcast today. I think about Finding Joe, which was one of the very first movies I watched in my entrepreneurial journey. And they talked about the Golden Buddha. I think it was even Gay Hendricks, and he was talking about, you know, we all are the Golden Buddha, and we pick away all the paint from the village that left the statue there for 100 years or something, and they forgot it was there. Like, we are literally remembering who we are.

Yeah.

So I believe that whether it is chaos or pandemic or craziness or just insanity or wetico that Paul Levy talks about, Native Americans call that the mind virus. All of this stuff is real. And there's an equal and opposite love on the other side of it. So it truly is. I know I'm being reductionistic. It truly is where we focus.

That's it. Yeah.

It's like the Creator made it that simple for us, but we complicate the shit out of it for some reason. I don't know why we do that. And as we say goodbye, I'm curious, why do we do that and how can we make it more simple? Because simpleoperations.com is where to go to make your business more simple. Right.

So funny to talk about an operations company with the conversation we've had.

Come on.

This is where it comes from. You know, I think that it is in our nature to be concerned and to be frustrated and to feel pain and to feel challenged. But it's just as much in our nature to create the systems and the structure and the ideas and the innovations that get us out of those things. And it's impossible to argue the other side of that. I mean, I'd love to have that debate with anybody who'd be willing, but I'm going to embarrass them, because when you look at humanity as a whole, yes, there is a side where we go in that direction, but the prevailing winning side has always been contributing and growing the world and making this place a better place. You can see it today because it's so much better than it was 20 years ago. So much better than was 40 years ago, so much better than was 400 years ago. And I only see that going in the same direction. And what you said is so true, Josh, if you want to focus on all the negative in the world, holy shit. There are some organizations that will serve it.

There's heaps waiting.

Yeah. I mean, by the way, for free. Yeah, they'll give it to you for free and as much as you want and as consistent as you want, and.

Then they'll sell you shit to make.

You feel better 100%. But if you want to flip that coin and go look at all of the positive that's happening in the world and all of the abundance that's happening in the world and all of the lives that are being changed and moved in the right direction for the better, that's just as easy to focus on. It's so much more fun, and it moves you in a direction of making a massive contribution. And I think that's why we're all here, brother.

I agree. This has been so good. I've gotten multiple body chills as we've sat here today and many different times. So just thank you from my heart for sharing so powerfully, man. Like, true, true emotion is power. Energy in motion. Right? Emotion. And the energy cannot be faked. You can fake it for a while, but eventually people figure you out. And for you, like, I haven't had any moments in our times at PaleoFX, or seeing you at Mike's house or just sitting with you today where I haven't felt trust from you. You're a very trustworthy person. And so, look, I'm not putting you on a pedestal, but if I were to put you on a pedestal, y' all could go to simple operations dot com. That is the website. And the podcast is called Momentum.

Momentum for the entrepreneurial.

Momentum for the entrepreneurial. As we say goodbye. And I really will let you go this time. You know, this podcast is called Wellness and Wisdom, and it's those five things which, you know, maybe we can talk about the integration of relationships, being the glue that holds that house together. I really. I really like that. Yeah, but. But the wisdom that we all learn, it comes, I believe, through experience. Sometimes the experience makes us bloody £300 and lots of drugs. Sometimes the experience doesn't have to be so hard. We can just meet the right person and next thing you know, we're on a yacht in Barbados or something. But. But that. But with that experiential wisdom, I believe that that is what we eventually embody. We. We go throughout our lives and we. We learn through experience, and then we share that with other people. What can you share with us? What wisdom can you share with us about how you live your life? Well, in other words, how does Alex Charfen live his life? Well, what that mean? Does wellness mean to you to live life? Well?

You know, I focus on optimizing on a daily basis on supporting myself physiologically, psychologically, and. And making sure that I have what I need around me. But I think that the lesson that I've learned is when we feel what is really going on is when we heal and when we're willing to step into that place of emotions, when we're willing to step in that place of vulnerability, when we're willing to say what's really going on for us and just be transparent and share with the world around us is when we make the most massive progress. And for so much of my life, Josh, I lived in a Never let them see you sweat. Never let them know what's going on. Always keep the positive front and always keep that facade. And it almost killed me. And when I started being honest with myself, that created honesty with the people around me, which created a completely different community and relationship with the world. And I think that is the biggest change I've experienced in this lifetime.

I like to take pauses when we talk because it allows the wisdom to seep in. So thanks for being here, man. Thanks for coming to the studio today. And, yeah, just super grateful for you and to be able to get to know you. So until we see you again on another podcast, we're both wishing you love and wellness. We'll talk to you soon. Hey, thanks for watching this video. If you love this video, hit subscribe. That way you'll be automatically notified when new videos come out, new episodes, and also share this video with a friend. If you loved it, they're gonna love it too. Check out some of the videos on this screen that are perfectly curated based on the video you just saw. Make sure you follow me and I'll see you in the next video.