SPEAKER_01: 0:00

I was told from one of my mentors, Take the opportunity in front of you right now. It's like a jungle gym. Grab the bar that's in front of you right now. Don't worry about the last bar. Just worry about getting a good enough grip on this one. And if you do it with urgency and excitement and you're curious and you're passionate, it's almost promised, bro. It's almost promised. Like today is Sunday, tomorrow's Monday. You're going to get another opportunity based on the first opportunity you've got. Oh, we're back. Failures Podcast. Rich, another week in the books, my boy. Cheers. You hear that crack? That's the episodic energy drink sponsorship open void. I think we know what energy drink it is, but we're not going to give that one away yet.

SPEAKER_00: 0:56

Yeah, yeah. Until they start cutting the check. We're not there yet.

SPEAKER_01: 0:59

Listen, today's episode on Failures Podcast, we're talking about risk versus comfort. This is something we've been seeing come up in our community a lot. A lot of the younger guys in their early 20s, even some teenagers asking, they need advice on taking a big leap in life or how do we feel about taking advice in your 20s or risking too much in your 20s? How does it affect you in your late 30s? The question is pretty much the same. Hey, I want to do this thing. It feels crazy. I don't know if it's a smart move, but what is your advice from someone in their late 30s for someone in their early 20s to take a risk like the risk that I'm about to take? A lot of these young guys come from good families two parent households whether it's a question about college or moving to a new city or just backpacking for two years so they can see the world before they start working there is this idea that they're taking a risk but I felt like you had a different perspective on it you know as an older person in your 30s can you share some feedback on the idea that these guys are coming up with for what risk may seem like to them versus how you saw risk when you were in your early 20s or maybe when you were a teenager

SPEAKER_00: 2:08

yeah for sure I mean I would say that this is exactly why we started this podcast. We named this podcast Failures because we noticed a bunch of younger people struggling with the idea of failure. It's right in line with taking risks. That's exactly what they're afraid to do. They're afraid to take a bold risk that ends up in failure. Once they feel like they've experienced failure, then now they're going down a rabbit hole of negativity and struggling to get out of that all because they took a risk. But at its core essence, they're afraid of failure more than they are the actual risk.

SPEAKER_01: 2:54

I'm glad you put it that way because that's how I was reading it until I started getting into the actual situations that we're going to get into later. We talked about this off air. I think when you talk about the idea of risk, what you're really saying is, I want I want to do something that's outside of the norm. I want to do something that I believe that if I take a leap from this side of the mountain to this gap to the other side of the mountain, there is a possibility I could not make it to the other side. But if I made it to the other side, there's a truth waiting for me that I really want to find out about myself. You said it, that's what the whole premise of the show is about. We ourselves are doing very well professionally. ourselves are getting our personal lives in order, but we're also a little worried about this idea of being too comfortable. And we came together to create a platform that was a huge risk for us, which was go online and create a platform that we are the faces of, knowing that our employers will see it. There's a huge risk there, but the risk is worth the reward that we see on the other side, right? So I don't want to get too deep into it because I do know we will have some personal stories that we want to sharing. Rich, there was something about you being a teenager that you wanted to share with our community. But the greater point is everything is case sensitive based on how much risk you can take. Are you risking your time? Are you risking your money? Are you risking personal relationships? Are you operating out of emotion? Are you operating straight off adrenaline? Because a lot of young men are filled with a lot of adrenaline. What is it that you want to do? And I think that's what we have to unpack. So like a great gym trainer told me, Justin, everybody wants to lose weight. Everybody wants to look good. But when you work with people from 18 to 70 years old, the first question I like to ask all of my clients is, well, it depends. What do you want out of this situation? So same way a gym trainer would tell someone who's looking to be more fit or to look better, it's a very vague question to ask is, I want to take a risk. Well, it depends. What kind of risk are you taking? And I know that that's a part of the conversation we will get into, but you mentioned something off air that I think we have to start with, Rich, and we'll get into personal stories on this episode. We'll share some moments in our lives where we've taken crazy risk and we failed and bounced back or we didn't fail and learn something about ourselves. And then at the end, we're going to get into like personal advice, you know, actionable advice, something that our community can walk away with as some sort of tools for their toolbox. But talk about what you were saying earlier about things that you did when you were younger or things that maybe i did that you remembered that kind of had us operating at a deficit some personal stories that you want to share

SPEAKER_00: 5:49

yeah for sure i was just kind of like reflecting when uh when you hit me with the title of the podcast you were saying uh what are some risks in your 20s or even earlier that you took that had sort of like a cause and effect and you know i brought it even way way back in the day where I'm like, man, I've been playing life in hard mode this whole time, right? I'm 37 years old now. But even going back to elementary school, I failed two grades in elementary school and had to go into an alternative program to kind of do two years in one and just play catch up. And just knowing your personal story, I know you had also failed two grades in elementary school. So I'm like, damn, me and Justin have really been playing life in hard mode. We've just been trying to catch up to everyone else and then that kind of led me to think that the reason why we're playing life on hard is because of the decisions that we made right like we were probably fooling around class clown trying to be cool not focusing on our education and that had certain repercussions and it kind of led me to think that in your 20s and even early on man you should really dedicate the time to focus on yourself like if it's not serving you like Don't even put any energy towards things that are not serving you. I also think about at 19, filing for bankruptcy. That was a very pivotal moment in my life where I met a woman. She leased a car. We ended up putting it under my name. I ended up racking up my credit card bills to max, and I got to an amount of debt that I could no longer pay at 19 years old, making like$6 a month. an hour. So unfortunately, I had to file for bankruptcy at 19 years old. I think the debt was somewhere upwards of$30,000,$35,000, which doesn't seem like a lot today, especially now that we're doing a lot better in life. But at the time, it felt like a lot of money, and it felt like a hole that I couldn't climb out of. And bro, at 19, to reset your entire financial literacy, your entire bank account, and And to start at zero was extremely difficult, right? There's kids at 19 where like their parents are handing them 30, 40,000. I'm like, oh, here, here's a college fund or here's a 501 account that I've been saving for you since you were a child. I started at zero, right? But why did I start at zero? I started at zero because I made some poor decisions. And, you know, with the partner I was with and the relationship that I was in with the financial choices that I made led me to start at zero at 19. And when I think about failing elementary school, filing bankruptcy at 19, not starting college right away, I think I started college at maybe 22, right? When most kids are exiting college, I just started to enter, right? So I've always felt like I've been behind. So man, if there's one single piece of advice I could give somebody in their twenties, it's just like, really focus on you, right? Don't focus on like a girlfriend. Don't focus on being the class clown. Don't try to focus on trying to be cool, trying to impress other people. Like if it's not serving you personally, you know, you shouldn't have the time or energy to spend on it.

SPEAKER_01: 9:28

There's a lot of things I want to talk about that you touched on. One, you just told our entire community that I failed two times in middle school, which I'm I've never told anybody, so I appreciate you for reminding me about that. Actually, it's funny because sometimes you spend so much of your life measuring risk versus reward once you kind of have a good idea of how something that can have a consequence can affect your future. It's one thing when you know you're not ignorant to the risk-reward ratio. It's another thing to be completely ignorant as a teen Or someone in their early twenties and just be risk adverse. All you do is just like do shit that could either get you locked up, get a girl pregnant, get you into trouble with your family, put you on the outs with really close people, fuck up relationships with mentors. Like as a young man, I did all of that.

SPEAKER_00: 10:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 10:28

And I did it ignorantly. I had no idea how all those mistakes I was making were going to affect my future and to kind of bring it home. based on the point you made is it really had both you and I operating at a deficit. So when the gun for the race went off and everybody jumped out the block and had a fair shot at 18, they were going to college. Even some of our friends were going to college at 17. Me and Rich were still in high school. And we had these bullshit jobs at Whole Foods, at Pizza Hut, and we were scheming and scamming to get by and we were operating at a deficit because we were short of money. short-sighted and ignorant. So I don't even know if that's really the conversation that these guys are asking. These guys are smart enough that at 22 they can ask, hey, I feel like I want to do something. They may compromise my future self, but I'm inquisitive and smart enough and someone taught me enough about life to know that is it worth putting this money into Bitcoin? This seems like a volatile risk. Is it worth me getting a down payment on this home knowing that taxes are going to inflate over the next five years? I find that either the community we have or the generation of young people today are so knowledgeable that they look at everything through this risk reward lens. And there is a I guess the point I'm trying to make, there is a happy medium between the level of ignorance and fuck it. I'm going to do whatever energy and this hyper optimize. I got to measure and wait and equate and calculate all the things that I do to make sure that I'm giving myself leverage going into the next 10 years of my life. I think there is somewhere in between that is the right answer.

SPEAKER_00: 12:20

Yeah. I mean, listen, with any decision that I make, I operate or any risk that I take, The first question I ask myself is, what's worst case scenario? That's a legitimate question that everyone should ask with any decision you're making, any risk you're taking. If the answer to that question is, all right, it might take me 12 months to save up$10,000 for this investment that I'm about to take, then that's worst case scenario, right? You invest this$10,000, that investment doesn't pan out, now you have to take another 12 months to save up$10,000. up those$10,000 again, right? It's a year of savings. It's a year of maybe not going out or not going on vacations, but that's the worst case scenario. Like what is the positive if that$10,000 investment does pan out, right? And then that's where you start to get into risk reward, right? Does the risk of investing those$10,000 and being right about your investment outweigh the risk of not being right and having to save for another 12 months. So simply ask yourself, what's worst case scenario?

SPEAKER_01: 13:32

You know, I love that you bring up the point of worst case scenario and financial runway. This is great. I think we got to take a step back. And I want to hear more about your story about what was it about the nature of the relationship you had with your baby moms and having a kid young that led you to bad decisions, risk that had you operating out of a deficit. But the one thing I I want to point out to our community is there's a difference between what you think is risk. Let's say the risk is minus one plus one. You either fail and you're at a minus one or you succeed. You're at a plus one. Risk only makes sense unless the risk is minus one. But if you succeed in five years, it's times 10, not plus 10 times 10. So the risk and the reward makes sense because it's like, you know what? It's worth me sacrificing getting up every day at five in the morning to learn how to become a salesperson so I can at least have a skill set of someone who understands sales in the event that this hobby that I have for creating my own business is going to lead me down a path where I'm an entrepreneur, but I can make$10 million a year because I own my own business versus what I know most people make with my degree, which is$100,000 per year. I know that sounded kind of complicated, but that's what risk and reward is. Any person who's accomplished anything that you find to be admirable, they jumped out the window and did something that might've been a net negative, but they did it knowing that if it landed and it worked out, it's a times 10. That's risk versus reward. Rich, specifically, I think what happens with this generation, and again, it's 20-year-olds asking two guys in their late 30s, hey, what do you think? I want to do this. It's not risk versus reward. It's risk versus comfort. They want to be comfortable, but still get the beautiful girl. They want to be comfortable and safe, but still get rich on a Ponzi scheme or some crypto scheme or some Trump coin on some Melania coin. They want to put minimal effort and get a hundred times return. That's really the conversation we're having.

SPEAKER_00: 15:51

Yeah. I mean, listen, unfortunately, progress and And success involves a lot of discomfort, right? A lot of failure, a lot of trials and tribulation. And if you're the type of person that you seek comfort and you're rattled by the unknown, it's going to be very difficult for you to move forward or make decisions or take risks that are going to elevate you to another level. I don't think there's anybody successful on this planet that has done anything incredible that hasn't taken an absorbent amount of risk. Even you, right?

SPEAKER_01: 16:24

Like take Taking a loan, not the one that made you file for bankruptcy. That was you being stupid. You weren't being smart. Even taking a loan now to buy your home, that's a risk, right? Because you lose leverage when you take a loan because you got to pay the loan off. If you were mitigating all risk out of your life, you would have saved until you had, I don't know,$300,000,$400,000,$700,000 to buy your house cash. Unfortunately, you're not in a position to do that. So you measured it out. So talk about that. Like even buying a home or invest in crypto early, which I know you did. There's risk there, but it's like either I can lose all of this money or I can gain, right? Or am I framing that wrong?

SPEAKER_00: 17:04

No, no, that's right. I mean, that you would classify as calculated risk, right? Like what was the purpose of me purchasing a home in 2020? Well, number one, rates were extremely low, right? So I can get a mortgage for cheaper than any other year. Two, I was renting for the last 15, almost 20 years, right? So I had the opportunity of purchasing a home where essentially you're paying back yourself, right? You're not paying a landlord or a management company. So you're starting to pay yourself in the form of equity. And then third is, I think houses, I don't know what the percentage is, but houses appreciate in value, I think five to 6% annually year over year. So it is classified as an asset that it is an investment. And yeah, and I've been fortunate enough that it's panned out, right? Everyone who's bought a house in 2020 and prior has super low mortgage in its entirety and houses have like almost doubled since 2020. So everyone's investment is up. Everyone has like a lot of equity in their home. But so back in 2020, that was a calculated risk, right? I was like, all right, I have enough for a down payment on this house. where is the best place that I could put$30,000,$40,000 that will net me a high rate of return, right? Could have chose the stock market, but it just made sense to take the leap, take the risk, take a calculated risk, purchase a home that I'm going to own and occupy and continue to build my nest egg, build equity and a five to 6% secure rate of return year over year.

SPEAKER_01: 18:54

Now, That's exactly what I'm talking about. But I have to remind you, we're talking to 20-year-olds. So maybe, I mean, listen, some kids are out there crushing it, so they probably have homes. But I want to put this in a different way, which I'll frame in a question. If me and Rich are 20 and 21-year-old versions of ourselves, and you came out to a house party I was throwing in high school, you came to my party, and Rich was single, hasn't been with a girlfriend six months ago. So that means he'd been dry for six months. Hasn't gotten wet for six months and we're at a party. And I tell you, yo, I got a few friends meeting us before the party. Some girls are coming up. My girls come away home girls. You should come early to meet with them. So you pull up, put your best outfit on, throw some cologne on. You get there early. Now you standing at the function with five girls there, one of them being my girl, you have four girls that you can start a conversation with. This is the 19 year old, 18 year old version of risk versus comfort. The risk versus reward, the calculation has already been made. Either you're going to stay who the fuck you are. You're going to go home alone and not have no bitches in your life. Or you can get a little bit of pride in yourself, maybe get a little beverage, a drink to give you some courage and walk your ass across that apartment and start a conversation. Because the reward of making a girl your friend or having a girl be interested in you romantically or physically find you attractive or find you to be charming or funny or love the way you dress. the reward is not even a question. So what we're really talking about is risk versus comfort. So back to your point, Rich, buying a house, putting a down payment on a house in 2020, no brainer. In hindsight, because you live in your house now, you have two kids, you have a girlfriend, you seem like a genius in hindsight. Same way a guy feels like a genius and feels like the man once he's been with his girl for three or four years. But what he did in that moment is he took to leap and the leap was math that was too simple either i don't do anything and remain the person i am at this very moment forever yeah or i can take a risk so risk versus reward versus risk versus comfort i think is a summary that we have to run a lot of these filters through because we have two stories we're going to get into today from two people that are i would say two very uniquely different situations so we have to apply the phrasing of well it depends or We got to look into the situation and really understand what risk is. But the one thing I did want to ask, and it came directly from our community, which I'm interested to know what you have to say, Rich, is as an older person in your late 30s, complete this sentence. The riskiest move I took in my 20s was, and how did that pan out? Do you still look back at that time with regret? Or do you see that even though it was a risky move, if it did or did not play out, do you regret it or do you not regret it and why?

SPEAKER_00: 22:08

Man, I have a whole... A whole bunch for that one. One that comes to mind, it was late 20s, almost entering my 30s, but I spent seven years at one particular job at a bank. It was going great. Everyone at work was pleasant to work with and I build a camaraderie amongst my peers and my colleagues. But something in me told me like, all right, it's been seven years, we've been stuck in the same spot. I've been getting bonuses and raises every year or So I was moving forward, but not at the rate that I wanted to move forward in. And, you know, the risk I took was, let me see what else is out there. Let me go try to find another job. And that scared the hell out of me, right? Like, all I've known is this job for the last seven years. And now I have to take this plunge and go and apply to places, start somewhere new, build new friends, have new peers, right? Sure. share my skill set with brand new people, get familiar with bosses. And just the idea of making that transition brought me a lot of discomfort. So I had to go through a mental hurdle to really break that cycle and say, bro, people do this all the time. They go seek jobs where they're better paid, where their skill sets are highlighted, where there's more flexibility, more work-life balance, or whatever the case may be. So I ended up finding a job with a crypto company which was something that was a little bit more aligned to my passions and I took the plunge and this was like an unknown startup you know not a big place not like a fortune 500 company like it was very much like startup like hey you might have a job for a year you might have a job for two years like nothing's guaranteed but like we are extending you this offer so I had to leave something that was very very secure for the last seven years the job that actually help me save enough money to purchase my home versus take a risk that brought a lot of discomfort and take a leap of faith to say, I'm going to go work at the startup because I'm confident enough in my skill set to do well in this new company. But that whole transition between leaving something that was secure versus entering the unknown was like a mental hurdle. But back to your point too like one of the reasons why I decided to make the transition was towards the end of my seven year tenure there I had to take a self snapshot which I think we all take every birthday every 12 months maybe even every month of ourselves and just look back look around us and say are we are we happy with everything that's around us are you happy when you look at yourself in the mirror are you happy with the girlfriend you have with the job you have are you happy with this life right and if the If the answer to that is no, then all right, well, how do you change that? You got to take some risks, my boy. You got to make certain decisions to change your environment or change the things that you don't like that's happening around you. But just taking a self-snapshot and being like, huh, I guess this is the way it is. To me, personally, that's unacceptable.

SPEAKER_01: 25:32

What's the phrase, like, if things don't change, things don't change?

SPEAKER_00: 25:35

Yeah. You need to make the right decisions to change what you're doing. what you're not happy about. I'll share this story that, it's not so much a story, but kind of like an introspective thought that I had recently. But I was walking to work. I work out at Hudson Yards, New York City. And I crossed this luxury parking lot. So there's Porsches, Lamborghinis, Corvettes, all the time. And in this one particular day, I'm walking and this guy parks his Lamborghini Lamborghini, gets out the car, regular looking white guy, you know, clean cut, but not in a suit, just like regular plain clothes. So I look, he gives me a head nod, I give him a head nod. I don't think anything of it and I keep it moving. And about 30 seconds after that moment or interaction, I see this like junkie sitting on the bench, right? Literally 30 seconds apart, right?

SPEAKER_01: 26:35

Like a drug addict. A drug addict. Somebody that was just out of it,

SPEAKER_00: 26:38

yeah. Yeah, so like 250$50,000 car or whatever Lambo costs, right? Clean cut guy, obviously very wealthy or doing well for himself. 30 seconds later, complete opposite, extreme poverty, drug addict. And my initial thought was, damn, what's the difference between this guy and this junkie? And I thought about it and I was like, it's just decisions. Like if you, if you want to like really dumb it down to in its simplest form, It's like, yeah, obviously circumstances and resources and luck have a lot to do with the equation, but decisions to me stood out because both of those guys had decisions. Not

SPEAKER_01: 27:25

only decisions, but those moments where you can feel that cognitive dissonance, meaning your mind is trying to make sense of how your body is moving every day, but your body is telling you your mind, hey, I'm not happy. This reality no longer fits me anymore. If you had a rock in your shoe, you wouldn't keep walking and ignoring the rock until you felt comfortable about the rock being in your shoe. You would eventually change something. And that starts with bending down, untying your shoes, taking the shoe off, taking the rock out, putting the shoe back on. Now, somebody might look at that as a metaphor for their life and say, yeah, that's easy. But that's basically what's happening when you have cognitive dissonance. You're saying, well, if I stop walking, I'm never going to get to where I want to go. So I can't allow this thing to stop me. So I'm going to keep pushing through. But what happens is we get older and with time you start building more resentment. So that rock in your shoe not only hurts, but it starts becoming the reason why you hate everything you do. because everything's uncomfortable. You're not going to get there in the time you wanted because you had a path and you had a time that you were taking based on the steps you were taking. So while you get there a half a year later, a year later, three years later, hell, seven years later, but at least you're not taking the entire journey with a rock in your shoe and being uncomfortable and trying to justify it. That's how I see a lot of these scenarios. And we're going to get into a young man named Eric who was going through a pretty tricky situation, which it kind of reminded me of what you just said, Rich, one of our community members, and he wasn't scared to share his name or his situation. But there's a lot of cognitive dissonance that does go into, man, I know I want this thing, but my entire body is telling me where I'm at currently is not for me anymore. But I justify it every morning. I justify it to myself so I could feel good about the decisions I made in the past. And I think that's what we're talking about here. You know what I mean? Like little decisions that you make based on the way your body feels about something, the way your energy feels or something is trying to tell you, like, we've grown out of this situation or this situation is no longer for us. Let's make a change. And that's pretty much what the idea of risk or reward is about. You know what I mean? That's what it comes down to. It's like, yeah, you're going to keep growing and learning. And the more you grow, you learn, you have to make changes based on the new information you have. So I love everything you said, because it's like just trying to contextualize how you went through that in your personal life, but you're in your late thirties with the prospect of to be like, yeah, if I didn't make that change based on the job I didn't like, bro, I would have still been there. I would have not even known that the crypto job led to the job that I have now.

SPEAKER_00: 30:14

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 30:14

You get what I'm saying? And I'm happier now than I was seven years ago. But it took a little reroute to get to where I was really going. But you know what wasn't the answer? Where I was at at that moment. I just felt uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_00: 30:26

Yeah, that's valid. And to your point, I think in our early 20s, we spoke about this on a different podcast, but we get enamored with like where we want to be and that turns into just the end result right so like you look at yourself in the mirror shirtless and you're like damn I just seen you know 20 UFC fights and those guys all had six packs and look at me right like I want that right it's just like bro do you understand the amount of discipline and changes and decisions you need to make in order to reach that final product you have

SPEAKER_01: 31:01

to sacrifice everything

SPEAKER_00: 31:02

right but that's the disconnect right between knowing that you want to change and then viewing that change as the end result

SPEAKER_01: 31:11

the guy on the couch is you right now and the UFC fighters looking chiseled with beautiful women around them ready to enter a battle that you're willing to pay pay-per-view money to watch the distance between you and that person is the cognitive dissonance you're experiencing in your mind you want that result but in reality, you're right here. Great point.

SPEAKER_00: 31:37

Yeah, and by the way, you can get there, but the change starts today, right? And then the changes compound over time, and then you look 12 months later, 18 months later, and then you are there, right? But just watching, just sitting on your couch eating chips, you know, pointing at that UFC fighter with a six-pack and saying, damn, that's where I need to be. There's a big disparity between wanting to be there and starting to make the changes to get there.

SPEAKER_01: 32:09

Action, action, action is king. Reality is the boss and action is king. These are two mantras that I live by. If you're confused and you don't know what to do, but you're uncomfortable and you're scared to do something, take action, bro. Just start, start where you stand, just start walking. And reality is the boss because reality, you could believe what you want to believe about yourself. You could, by the way, you could believe either man, your mother could I could tell you the most handsome boy in the world. Your grandmother could say you look just like your grandfather when he was 22 years old. But when I bring you around some beautiful women and you get zero airtime, nobody laughs at your jokes, nobody looks at you, reality is the king. That means you're not as funny as your grandmother told you and you're not as handsome as your mother tells you. You got a lot of work to do, my boy. People just don't do shit in the real world and reality just to make you feel better. So sometimes you got to hop off Reddit, Sometimes you got to hop off Discord. Sometimes you got to hop off your favorite stream or live stream, and you got to take a little bit of action in life. But we're getting off subject, Rich, because I feel like we could talk about that one forever. More importantly, I think about risks that I took in my 20s, and I was just sitting here thinking like, what's a quick story I could tell so our listeners could have context? And I'm going to give it the fast version, but maybe we'll unpack it another time. If 21-year-old Justin, one year out of high school, didn't go to college, working at a car making good money, I might add. If I didn't take the radio show that we did every week at Rutgers University, where we would have to drive an hour and a half, spend our own money to get there, buy our own food, pay for our own gas and toll. If we didn't, and I'm saying me and you, because we're on this journey together. If we didn't dedicate the 40 plus hours we dedicated to building our music media platform, We're in our 20s. I'm not sure if Justin Duran, the music executive that has won awards for being alleged great music executive, is even here right now if we didn't make the sacrifices we made and the risks we took to even start something that we didn't have any entry point for. None of us know anybody in the music business. We just kind of created a platform and we risked a lot of our time, energy, money, relationships. I could have been doing a lot in my 20s, my early 20s, but I dedicated it to building a platform with a lot of our friends who are building this platform with us. And I know for a fact I wouldn't be where I'm at today without that risk I took. So I asked you the question, but I was thinking about the answer myself. And I was like, damn, I would definitely not be here right now if I didn't take that risk in my 20s to start a media company and really lean into a radio show at a college that I wasn't even qualify to go to. I had a 1.5 GPA, didn't take SATs out of high school, graduated at 2021. I was like one of the oldest fucking seniors of all time in high school. And I went from being at a car dealership and I just kept focusing on the radio show. And that radio show opened up every door, which led me to eventually getting an opportunity to go to Rutgers University based on a program they had for people that were contributing to the radio station. So

SPEAKER_00: 35:33

yeah,

SPEAKER_01: 35:33

Locked doors are locked for a reason, but certain doors, if you don't twist the knob, you don't know what's behind them. Again, I use this shoe analogy with the rock in your shoe. Sometimes it's going to seem uncomfortable. Sometimes it's going to seem weird, but if you don't knock, you don't know what's behind the door. Action is king. Reality is the boss. You definitely got to take risk in your early 20s because you can always rebound from them. I think that's important.

SPEAKER_00: 36:00

In that example, what was worst case scenario for you at that point, right? Like, yeah, you were losing money on gas and tolls, but, like, you were learning how the radio business works, right? Like, you were sharpening your skill set as a radio personality.

SPEAKER_01: 36:14

Building crazy contacts. My whole music network came from doing that show, yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 36:19

Contact, the resources that spin off into your Def Jam internship, right? Like, it's hard to see the risk when there was way more upside than there was downside if you had failed, right? If you had failed, you still walked away with a lot of information, resources, skill sets that you could have leveraged and propelled in a different way. Those type of risks are no-brainers, right? You should absolutely, 10 out of 10, always take those type of risks.

SPEAKER_01: 36:51

Well, I think hindsight 2020, Rich, because at that time, there was a lot of motion going on for us in our 20s. We were going to a lot of parties. We were popping out at clubs in New York. We were throwing our own house parties. There's a lot of young man energy that went into a lot of the fun shit we were doing. I was making decent money at the car dealership. That's true. I was getting fresh. You know what I mean? I could have put my energy in to just have emotion as a young man, but I was still living with my mom, and I had graduated high school three years after everybody else. That's true, too. But at the time, it makes sense now. That's what I'm saying. These young guys are just like, damn, should I do it? Should I not do it? It's like, bro, a lot of these are fucking no-brainers, but with hindsight, they seem like no-brainers.

SPEAKER_00: 37:30

Well, I mean, yes. And we didn't know it was going to become a formal business for us. I think going through it in our twenties, we just thought it was something fun to do. Right.

SPEAKER_01: 37:43

We followed our interests and you said that earlier, whatever, whatever's pulling you towards it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 37:47

Yeah, for sure. If you're following your, like we were all like real, real big hip hop heads and we just knew from midnight to 2 AM that time slot was for us to nerd out over something that we all loved collectively, which was like hip hop and rap. So, you know, it was fun to us at a very bare minimum. Turns out that that passion project we formalized into a legitimate business. And that's kind of like where the hindsight comes from. Like we weren't sacrificing our time to build a business. We were sacrificing our time to have fun in a different way, which was like not going to the club or not going to frat parties, but just following our passion.

SPEAKER_01: 38:31

Or knowing a lot of people in the streets that were making making money

SPEAKER_00: 38:35

yeah we're making real money yeah we were running into these dudes on our way back to the radio show like we're dropping a quick check we're dropping each other off at like two in the morning three in the morning and all the dudes in the street that we knew that we're pushing like we just saw them outside

SPEAKER_01: 38:51

and they all became rappers and they all wanted to get interviewed and we still know them to this day rich we're going to cut to a quick sponsorship break for a sponsorship we don't have we're going to come back with two stories from our community from two guys that are asking for advice on, they're scared to take a big risk in their twenties. And as someone who's older, that's you and I, we're the old guys now, what do we think about the risks they want to take? And do we think it's worth it? So we're going to get into the story of Eric and another anonymous guy who his girlfriend cheated on him and left the house that he bought. And now he wants to sell the house and start a new career in a major city. We'll get into that in a little bit. Failures Podcast will be right back. All right, we got a tricky one today, Rich. Part of our failures community, and at some point we're going to give the Discord and the private WhatsApp community that Rich and I are a part of where a lot of young men are sharing their personal stories, giving advice to each other, and Rich and I occasionally go in there and give feedback. This is one story that came directly from our community about this episode. It comes from a young man named Eric. Eric, this is just the top line information to catch everybody up to speed. There is a longer version of this, but we'll spare you the details. Eric is 23 years old. comes from an immigrant family, stable family, more of the kind of family that is doing well, but they only know one path, you know, like doctors, engineers, computer scientists. So whatever the father does, the son has to do. The father is a pretty big executive. He has an opportunity for his son once he graduates to make X amount of dollars right out of high school. And he has a computer science degree. But secretly as a childhood hobby, Eric always wanted to be a coder for indie games. He started his own Twitch live stream where he shows people how to be a coder for independent games. And an independent Los Angeles studio just dangled a$38,000 a year junior development role and with equity for him to start this job the minute he gets out of college. The catch is his parents are going to take away his free rent. They pay for his phone and insurance. They're going to take that too. And they're going to pause on helping him pay back his college loans. So basically, he could make$80,000 right out of school working with his father, or he could take the$40,000 he'll make at this job, but it's his passion job, and his parents are going to pull. He could live with them, but he got to pay rent, and his father's not going to pay for any of the amenities. Eric's stuck between loyalty to his family, following family tradition, or doing what he's passionate about. Rich, this is a tricky one. What would you say from your standpoint? a risk that is worth taking in his 20s? Or how would you approach the situation?

SPEAKER_00: 41:49

Yeah, it's certainly a tricky one. My initial thoughts are your sort of passion are being held at ransom, right? Wow, yeah. And not to get too introspective, but like, bro, we all have one life to live, right? And it's ours to live. Not our parents, not your significant other, not your children's. It's yours to live, right? And if what you want to do is develop indie games, and that's what you're passionate about, and you're putting all the poker chips into that one basket, I think you should absolutely take that risk and that plunge, even if it means defying your family wishes. Because at the end of the day, what I realized about family, especially coming from immigrant family, is that it's very difficult for them to see the vision. you're

SPEAKER_01: 42:43

speaking from personal

SPEAKER_00: 42:44

right yeah yeah i mean my family are from dominican descent uh they they came to this country with not a lot of resources and when i presented me going to school for computer science they were like wait what so you want to be a scientist and i'm like uh not exactly like there's a lot of education that had to happen there for me to explain to them what what i was trying to do and you got to understand these are older folks grew up in the 60s and 70s, like, where technology wasn't paramount, they don't really understand these new industries. Like, you try to explain to them AI, and they look at you like, what, robots? Like, what's happening? Yeah, that's a great point, yeah. Like, they're absolutely clueless, right? So

SPEAKER_01: 43:27

you're saying, for this young man, you could only imagine what he's trying to explain to his dad that is a potential career opportunity. He probably thinks it's some bullshit on the internet.

SPEAKER_00: 43:38

Yeah, I mean, what's their source of reference? Like, Super Mario Brothers? They're just, like, this guy is a clown like what is he just trying to spend all his time playing super mario brothers is like no i actually i'm a coder right like it's a very unique skill set like i build 3d worlds right i do a lot of uh algorithmic equations right it's very difficult to explain to someone from older immigrant descent so my advice is coupled with do what it is that you want to do But at the same time, put yourself in your parents' shoes and try to understand that they have no idea what it is that you're trying to do. So try to spend some time educating them and not give them the entire vision, just little by little, right? Like, oh, look, this is what code looks like. It looks like Chinese, right? Like, yeah, it does, right? I know how to read and write this Chinese.

SPEAKER_01: 44:38

Wait, did you say that because Eric is Asian or you just made that up?

SPEAKER_00: 44:42

No, no, I made that. I mean, it could be Hebrew. It could be anything. It could be anybody. For someone who doesn't code, if you show them computer code, it looks like Chinese, right? This is like, it's not the English language. It's not Spanish. It looks foreign to them. So just showing them like a page of code and letting them process like, wow, this seems very complex could be the foundation for them mentally to say, oh, okay. My child works on complex things. I I might not understand them, but they're complex in nature. Like maybe he's onto something. Right. So yeah, do what you want to do in parallel, educate your parents on exactly what it is that you're trying to do with the understanding that they might not have the mental capacity to understand what it is that you're trying to do and what your hobbies are and what your passions are. And ultimately like what the end goal is. Like, do you want to own your own indie gaming studio production company? Right. Like, do you want to build the best video game in the world? Do you want to work for Epic Games? What is the end goal? Is it just an actual hobby or passion project or is there a fruitful career at the end of this job offer? Because partly what they're scared of is our baby boy is going out and doing this passion project. Will he be able to self-sustain himself with an apartment, with food, be a provider in the future, right? These are all legitimate concerns. I feel like sometimes it's very easy for you in your 20s to just look at your parents and be like, oh my God, they're always going against me. They never let me do what I want to do. But you got to put yourself in their shoes and understand where they're coming from. It's like, are you going to be self-sufficient with the career path that you're choosing? Because if not, that's a burden on us. We're going to have to go in and save you from a potential bankruptcy or save you from making financial mistakes or paying for your rent or whatever the case may be. Your parents can be a crutch for you your entire life.

SPEAKER_01: 46:51

I think that might be the best thread that you pull from this whole situation because when I first read this scenario, I felt bad for him. I felt bad for Eric. I felt the manipulation, like you said, from his parents. But you are a father, Rich, and you are the father to a soon-to-be teenager. So I think you can see through the bullshit a little bit when it comes to young men where you're just like, yeah, Eric wants to have his cake and he wants to eat it too. He's 23 years old. He still lives with his family. He wants to take risk, but not absorb any of the downside. He wants his cell phone paid for. He wants his rent paid for. He wants his laundry washed. He wants to be able to come home with his girlfriend and, you know what I mean? Like hang out in his room with his girl and his parents' house. But he also wants the upside of chasing his dream. Something convenient about that. I missed on the first read through. And you're saying as a parent, what you have to help them understand is I'm going to absorb more of the risk. And how you do that is a totally on you. You can take the job where your dad for the first year, cause he already kind of set up a foundation for you. And maybe the same way you were doing it throughout high school and college, you could keep streaming on Twitch, keep building your platform and kind of balancing both worlds and not getting any sleep, but proving to your parents that I do understand that you guys are keeping a roof over my head, but on the flip side, I'm going to continue to pursue my passion and my dream. And you're saying that's more of a safety net for a parent. So at least they know, okay, cool. I know he's capable of taking care of himself, but he's also doing this hobby

SPEAKER_00: 48:29

on the side. Does that sound right? Yeah, for sure. It can get a lot more complex too, right? Like if he's the only son and the only heir to like the family business, that opens up on a whole nother can of worms. Because it's like-

SPEAKER_01: 48:42

What is your perspective on that?

SPEAKER_00: 48:44

It gets more complex, right? Like dad wanted to pass down this business to me. I'm the only heir to this business.

SPEAKER_01: 48:52

So we got to get the father on the podcast because he might be emotionally fucked up. Like his whole life he'd been working to pass this to Eric and Eric is like, nah, I want to play on the internet. That's the way his dad is translating.

SPEAKER_00: 49:05

Yeah, I mean, it could get complex very quick and it's a battle of two dreams, right? The dad had the dream of passing the business that he busted his ass to build onto his child. And his child is battling to keep his passion of being an indie gaming programmer and following that passion. The battle of two dreams. There's no

SPEAKER_01: 49:34

right or wrong answer. It comes down to the base question, which I think is what Eric wants to know. Do we think it's worth worth him taking this risk in his early 20s as two guys in their late 30s who can look back at our 20s and say, yes, even the failures and the ignorant moves that I made wound up being worth it. Because if I change anything from my past, I have to change who I am today. And I'm actually not mad at who I am today. Because bumps, bruises, risks, failures, ignorant young boy shit that I did and I know you did, it didn't net out negative all the way, because even if I didn't get the immediate reward, I definitely learned a lot from a lot of those situations and I would never do them again. So the summary of the whole situation with Eric is like, is it worth taking the risk in my twenties? What's your response?

SPEAKER_00: 50:27

Yeah, it's worth taking the risk in your twenties. And to piggyback off your point, if that risk doesn't pan out and you end up going back to your dad's business and working for him, at least you tried, right? Like you made a decision to try something on your own. Whether you fail or not, to your point, you have those bumps and bruises to speak on it. I find that in my 20s, I was constantly guided a certain way. And the only way that I was able to learn anything was just by doing it myself and actually failing myself and letting life kick my ass for me to be like, damn, I should have probably listened to that advice. But there's just certain things that you have to go through. experience and fall. You know what I mean? Like I could tell my one-year-old daughter, hey, don't do that. You're going to fall. You're going to fall. But until she falls and feels how it hurts to fall, you know, or like when you tell a child like, hey, don't touch the fire, you're going to get burned, right? Until they feel that first burn in their fingertips, they're like, ah, damn, that shit burns. Yeah, you're right. And they don't know what it feels like to be burned. That's a stove. Yeah, that's a stove.

SPEAKER_01: 51:38

Now, scenario number two, Rich, and I do want to get to probably the most important part of the show which is actionable advice for our community members. But I think the second one is really good, not only because it's a scenario where my heart bleeds for this young man, but you mentioned it at the intro. It's a scenario that you're actually kind of familiar with. So it kind of hit home for you. So I'm looking forward to your feedback on it. We have a 26-year-old community member who's anonymous. They don't want to give his name. We'll call him M, M like M&Ms. M broke up with his girlfriend of eight years. He was with her since his, senior year of high school. He put all of his life savings into a house he bought with her in a small town that they both grew up in. He's 26 years old. She cheated on him and it's a very long story he wrote, but what it came down to was her saying that she's still young. She felt like she was losing a lot of her younger years in a soon to be marriage and his obsession with the relationship and planning their future and buying a house and buying a car. She just kind of freaked out I guess she spazzed out and she wanted him to focus on himself more and it was the reason for her wanting a change in her life so she left him so now M anonymous community member is stuck with this house that reminds him of his ex that he's been with his whole life and he's in a small town that he grew up in and he just wants our feedback and he's trying to sell the house in the next 30 days because he wants to get the money from the sale which is not a lot of money because he has and owned it for very long. And he wants to move to a major city, New York, LA, Texas. And he wants to pursue his dream. He wants to be an entrepreneur. He's a big fan of Elon Musk. He left us a very, very long message. But the short version is that if anybody wants to extend it, I'm sure we could figure out a way to put it in our notes. So 26 years old, basically went through a divorce, even though he wasn't married, owns a home, wants to sell the home. And he wants to do it fast. Rich, this of all the scenarios as we talked about feels like a risk that is an actual risk what's your feedback on it and if you want to share your personal story because I know you talked about a little earlier on how this scenario kind of hit home for

SPEAKER_00: 53:54

you yeah I mean this it sounds like this person made his relationship or his ex like the priority right like his identity since high school yeah yeah and it seems like it got overwhelming for her she She wanted change. Selfishly, she made the decision to remove herself from that life. Obviously, being on the other side of that as a male, that shit is devastating, heartbreaking, right?

SPEAKER_01: 54:24

She didn't know, by the way, when he was doing all these things that that's what was happening? Or did he just wake up one day and have a house, a car, and love her? Anyway, let's be on the point. This is about Em. This is about our anonymous guy. It's not about her. I just want to make that point. Because when I was reading this shit, I'm like... damn, this woman is, that's fucked up. Yeah. But he is where he's at. So let's stay focused. I'm sorry. I almost lost track.

SPEAKER_00: 54:51

Nah, it's all right.

SPEAKER_01: 54:52

You're right. You're right. Your framing was that's life. Sometimes you get dealt a crazy hand.

SPEAKER_00: 54:56

Yeah. And listen, but by the way, for, for this anonymous person, there will be a significant other out there for you that wants all the exact same things that you want. Right.

SPEAKER_01: 55:08

Great fucking point, Rich. Yeah. I love that. That's great. Right now, this young man, my boy Anonymous.

SPEAKER_00: 55:15

Yeah,

SPEAKER_01: 55:15

she ain't it though. That just made him very happy. So yeah, let's start there. Let's start with the most obvious advice. You think you're losing a home, but what you're really losing is a fucking anchor, a weighted vest, somebody that you would have been miserable with for the rest of your life. So I love that you brought that up first. Fuck the risk part. Let's get to the most important part. Bro, you just took a major headache out of your life early even though you're on the other end of this heartbreak, which I feel you. I've been through it. Rich has been through it. Go ahead, Rich.

SPEAKER_00: 55:48

Yeah, I mean, listen, my second point would be, this goes back to an earlier point, is to take a self-snapshot, right? You want to sell the house to become an entrepreneur, which you don't just wake up and want to be an entrepreneur. That's probably something that's been burning inside of you for many years, and it's something you've been wanting to do, but you ended up prioritizing house, family, car, et cetera. So there's an internal conflict there, right? Take a personal self snapshot of yourself and figure out who it is that you are and who it is that you want to be, right? Because you could sell the house, move to another city and go through that whole entire timeline with a completely different woman and possibly end up with the same result, right? Or you could go through all of that again, like sell the house, move to another city, prioritize being an entrepreneur and building a product or starting a website or e-commerce or something and live a completely different lifestyle, one that doesn't prioritize settling down, purchasing a house, buying a car, having a child, building a family, right? So there's an internal conflict there. Do you want to be an entrepreneur and have a new company be your baby or do you want to start a family and really actually have a baby. You know what I mean? That's something that I would decide on before even selling the house.

SPEAKER_01: 57:18

I know we're going to get into the actionable advice section and we're going to get into steel man arguments to strengthen up our advice. But one thing that he said in his very long and detailed heartbroken exposition of his life, which we're just teasing him, but we're here to help, is he kept saying, I know what Elon, like Elon Musk is his God. And he brought him up like eight times. And he kept saying, I know what Elon would do. Elon doesn't waste time trying to over-calculate or save money, or he would just do what he knows is right for the betterment of his company. And he wants to start his company now. So that's why he's in a rush to sell his house. So he's like, don't tell me about runway or sleeping on it. I know in my gut, this is what I have to do because Steve jobs, Elon Musk, Zuckerberg, these guys all went with their intuition. And that's the part where he kind of loses me at because I'm like, okay, so you had this methodical eight-year run with this girl that you weren't in a rush for any of this shit. But now that your heart is shattered, you just turned into Elon Musk overnight. You just adopted all his top 10 things Elon Musk would do if he started a business today, YouTube channel, guru, God shit, that's the part that throws me off. And I feel like we need to address because it seems like he's emotional on being irrational.

SPEAKER_00: 58:49

Yes. And I'll tell you what that is. He's chasing feeling something other than pain. Wow. He's chasing feeling something other than pain. He wants the excitement of moving to a new city, the excitement of starting a new business. the excitement of starting fresh, but all that new excitement is just masking the pain of the heartbreak. And he thinks if he accelerates feeling excitement, that'll block out the heartache, right? He could forget about her quicker because he's working on a new business and he's in a completely different city where like physical interaction with her is barely possible, right? Because he's in a completely different city than her. I don't think that's the right way, man. I think I stick to my guns on this self-snapshot. There's a lot of internal work that needs to happen there. A lot of irrational decisions being made. And yeah, he needs some champagne for the heartbreak.

SPEAKER_01: 59:56

By the way, you snap. You're snapping on this whole... I feel like this is a very unique pocket that you have a lot of strengths in. Because... We talk about a lot of things on Failure's Podcast. There's something specific about this scenario and you immediately understanding what the diagnosis was for this guy that I want you to build on a little bit more. Have you ever been through anything where you were so, like you said, don't confuse excitement and the newness of adrenaline be... a mask for the pain that we know you're dealing with. We'll dig into that a little bit more. Like what should he be doing instead of trying to get quick advice from us, move to a new city, sell his house? Because that's where the risk comes in, right? Because a lot of fucked up things can happen in the next 30 days for this

SPEAKER_00: 1:00:47

guy. Yeah. I mean, I would evaluate like what went wrong, right? Like you made this person who was part of your life for the last seven or eight years sort of resent you, right? And feel like they needed to detach themselves from you, right? So what were you overemphasizing that just became too much for this person, right? Because if you meet another woman, chances are you're going to be the exact same way. Like if you don't learn from your failures, you're just going to keep repeating them over and over, especially when it comes to relationships. I could personally identify with this guy because when I went through a heartbreak and I was a homeowner, my ex spend a lot of time in my house and the house would remind me of her and different moments we had. What did I do? I put the house on the market for rental and I moved to, to a luxury apartment, like to forget, refresh. I forgot about that. Yeah. To reset. Right. In hindsight, it turned out to be the right decision because I got into a mental head space where I needed to be. And then. Hey,

SPEAKER_01: 1:01:51

easy, easy. Cause right now you just

SPEAKER_00: 1:01:53

told them to do all that. Make sure you give them, make sure you give them more context. No, no. Listen, I, I'm advocating the move. I think the sale's a good idea. Don't be irrational, though. Don't be irrational about it. That's my advice.

SPEAKER_01: 1:02:06

You're in your feelings. Most people make the worst decisions in their life when they're in their feelings. When your emotions are driving the masculine truck, 4x4, 8-wheeler,

SPEAKER_00: 1:02:18

you

SPEAKER_01: 1:02:19

could destroy a lot of shit when your emotions are driving. Yeah. Let some logic seep in. Let some logic seep in. Let some thought seep in. Link with some close friends, some people that really know you, that love you. Not your mom. It's not a job for your mom. If your pops is around, go find your pops. Just find some stand-up people that can give you some good feedback because Rich, what you said and it really hit home for me because I've been through this too, is sometimes you got to do some personal evaluation. You got to recognize, man, I've owned over five plants. Every time I go to Home Depot, I buy a new plant. But three months later, every plant that I have, it dies. Man, these fucking plants. They just suck. It's like, my boy, maybe it's not the plants. Maybe it's you. You're not good at what you think you're good at, and you keep trying new things, and the result is the same because you have to do some self-evaluation. So I love that advice, man, and I don't want to speed past that. I think that's very helpful for young men for sure.

SPEAKER_00: 1:03:20

Yeah, and giving yourself a window of 30 days to sell the house, right? Because you're giving yourself time constraints, you're going to inevitably let the house go for cheap. Yeah,

SPEAKER_01: 1:03:35

where does that time constraint come from?

SPEAKER_00: 1:03:37

Like, what is it? Yeah, he's going to let the house go for cheaper, right? Because it'll sell quicker, but then that's less capital that he'll have to move into the new city with, right?

SPEAKER_01: 1:03:48

Oh, I get what you're saying. It's the equivalent of drinking alcohol, right? Like, he just wants the pain to go away. It's like a Wachata record or a country song. Like, it's really just about the moment. Yeah. There's no perspective.

SPEAKER_00: 1:03:59

Right. You're rushing the process. You're going to walk away. with less money out of the sale because you want to rush it because it doesn't meet, you know, the price you want. It's not going to meet your timeline. And it's just one potentially devastating decision after another that's going to lead to a vicious cycle of looping you back to where you originally are.

SPEAKER_01: 1:04:22

You know, you said something earlier, which I think the inverse of that point works here as well. You said good decisions and good momentum compound. You had mentioned that earlier, like just keep stacking small wins and keep moving in the right direction. These things compound over time. I think the inverse is true too. Short-sighted, emotionally driven, heartbreak decisions for the adrenaline and the dopamine rush of just doing something to get out of the pain. I don't know what the reverse of compounding is. I guess a reverse compound, that happens too. The momentum and the weight of that snowball when it goes backwards is even heavier and happens quicker. So I think that's a good way of framing it, Rich, and I'm glad you brought it up. Just be mindful of all these bad decisions you're making in a small window based on your emotions and how you feel. The men and the word feelings, you got to be mindful about when you start combining these words because young men specifically, and this is science, not me being a fucking male chauvinist pig, men are more risk adverse because they're just designed that way. They're the most likely to go to war. They're most likely to be on a kamikaze plane and become kamikaze pilots for the name of their religion. They're more likely to save a woman from a burning building they don't know. They're more likely to drive a motorcycle 700 miles per hour just to impress women. They're more likely to put, this is a personal story, 40 extra pounds on the bench press just to impress the girl that's in the gym and let that shit just fall on your chest and you almost break your shoulder trying to impress somebody men and emotions and feelings don't go well together because men are naturally more risk tolerant and we do crazy shit and then when you add emotions all your logic is gone you just you're just mashing the gas because now you feel like it's the right thing but slow down my boy you about to fuck your whole life up in the next 60 days because you want to get revenge you Yeah. Now, Rich, you brought up a good point. We're not saying don't sell. Shit, if you're going to sell in the next 30 days, I got something for you. Why don't you start a group chat with me and Rich and we'll buy that house off of you?

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:06:44

Bro. We'll take it at the low price that you're selling it for because we got plans for your house.

SPEAKER_00: 1:06:49

Yeah. Bro, for a full circle moment, going back to the analogy I said earlier about the Lambo versus homelessness, the Lambo guy could be Eric, right, who the his father and ended up selling his indie gaming studio for millions of dollars and he's the guy in the Lambo and this anonymous guy who sold the house got a hundred thousand moved into the new city could be the homeless guy the guy who ended up homeless on the bench

SPEAKER_01: 1:07:18

right that's crazy a tale of two stories the little decisions that could affect it yep

SPEAKER_00: 1:07:23

yeah it's like this guy went down one path you know Eric went down the another path and all with in 30 seconds of each other, you have abundance and homelessness. It's crazy.

SPEAKER_01: 1:07:38

Rich, I want to close out the show with actionable advice, as we always do on every episode, but I also want to mix actionable advice with steel man arguments. And what steel man arguments are, Rich and I, we go through all of these forum boards and we watch videos and we'll check in with our community and we'll see the traditional counter arguments to the points that we're going to make. It's always the Don't eat paint warning. Like, yeah, easy for you to say, but that, that, that. So, In this scenario, I could almost see the number one most upvoted comment when we post this video is, these motherfuckers are hypocrites. In the beginning, they're telling us, take more risk. You're young. Look at the upside. And then on the second half, they're stopping Eric from pursuing his passion and starting his own company. And they're stopping anonymous guy M from selling his house and moving to to a big city. I know that's not what we meant, but what is your response to this inevitable number one comment that we're going to have on our YouTube channel?

SPEAKER_00: 1:08:48

Yeah, I mean, listen, the common denominator is that we all have choices. We all have to make certain decisions. And going back to my earlier point, our decision compound over time, both positively or negatively, right? But based on the decisions that you make, and I'm sure like we could do like a family tree spider web of like a a successful person and a not so successful person. And if you did a family tree of decisions, right, if you just connect the dots, there's a pattern between the guy who ended up being successful versus not. And ultimately, it was just a compounding of hundreds, if not thousands of right decisions, small, micro, incremental decisions that leads you to a certain result. But we try the best we do to guide. But all those decisions are on you to make, right? You're the owner of your domain. This is where your neon sign would have came in. Yeah, yeah. We're getting the neon sign. No gurus, no gods, just guides. Just guides. We can't tell you. I'm not your fucking

SPEAKER_01: 1:09:57

father. That's basically, that's the one I'm going to get. I'm not your fucking father. You're going to get a different. All I know is how to dance salsa, how to talk shit when I'm playing pickup basketball, and how to market music to the masses outside of that I'm not saying I'm anybody's father or an expert So to your point, everything is contextual. You got to live with the decisions you make. It's not a cop-out. It's like the gym trainer reference, right? It's like, it all depends. If I'm training a diabetic, that's different than training a 90-year-old guy that wants to be in the MMA. Like, everything is contextual. What I can tell you is get good sleep, eat high-protein foods, and if you want to lose weight, low calories. If you want to gain weight, high calories. And make sure you're consistent. If you're a skill-based frame of health, then work on your skill while getting stronger. If you're a diabetic, I would say, aguanta la boquita. Don't eat everything that's in your fucking pantry. Take all the sweets out of your house, throw it in the garbage, and that's your fight. Everybody got a different fight. No one here is going to give out one remedy that's going to solve everybody's problems.

SPEAKER_00: 1:11:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:11:13

Now, Rich, one thing that you harped on, which we have to talk about. I think when we do the transcription of this show, it's going to be the one word that was said the most. If you're unhappy, take a snapshot of your life. Now we're in the actionable advice portion of the show. What is it about that that you kept going back to? If you're unhappy, take a snapshot of your life. Why is that good actionable advice to you for all these scenarios?

SPEAKER_00: 1:11:37

Yeah, because we always harp on the end result, right? It's easy to look at others or watch TV or watch reality or look at someone who's successful in your life and being like, I want that. I want that. But like, do you understand the necessary decisions, actions, changes? You have to pay the price. Yeah, you have

SPEAKER_01: 1:11:59

to pay. Everybody has to pay. You want a pair of shoes? You got to pay the price. You want a car? You got to pay the price. You want what other people have in terms of physique or finance? Yeah. You got to pay the price.

SPEAKER_00: 1:12:10

Yeah. And if you don't take that self snapshot to understand where you are today, how do you know what are the changes you need to make to get to tomorrow, right? You're looking at Z and you're forgetting that B, C, D have to happen in order to get to Z. But if you don't take that self-snapshot, you don't even know where the starting line is. And that's what we're saying. We're saying take a self-snapshot, evaluate where you are today, what you're not happy with, the changes you want to make, and understand that, okay, I'm about to go on a journey of action to get to said end result.

SPEAKER_01: 1:12:53

I love that you said journey of action. That's a good way to frame it. I could tell you're already getting used to being the YouTube guru guy because you're speaking in like cool phrases that people can tweet. I actually see that being as a book that you wrote. You know what I mean? But the one thing that I wanted to say from the actionable advice section is you have to fight past your discomfort.

SPEAKER_00: 1:13:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 1:13:14

If you're feeling stagnant, It's time to move and go with your passion and go with your interests. We talked about that a little bit earlier. I know we got more detailed with the two guys that had given their story, but have you just skipped to the actionable advice portion on this fear that you have of taking too much risk in your early 20s and you want to know from two guys in their late 30s if we think it's worth it? Yeah, it's definitely worth it. Don't eat paint warning here. It's all context-based. Depends on the situation But very simple, actionable advice is fight past the discomfort. If your body is telling you something about something you keep doing every day and you're not happy with where you're at in life or the people around you, then that's the world and your body telling you it's time to make a move. It's time to make a change. I have a rock in my shoe. I'm not going to keep walking forward until I take care of this first. And I think that's important. So you might be confusing the idea with risk. with discomfort. You're just uncomfortable right now. You got to start moving in a different direction. And the other thing is a lot of risk that these guys are talking about is not risk because it's going to take at least two years to even execute what you want to do. So you'll get a lot more information as you move forward. So start moving in a direction. You don't have to make that decision right now. As long as it's not money or something crazy, you're just going in a different direction. It's not risk. You just want to look into a crystal ball and say, okay, if I dedicated 12 hours to this, Am I going to get exactly what I want? That's not how life works. You're going to find out more shit as you move forward. I was told from one of my mentors, opportunities bring other opportunities, meaning take the opportunity in front of you right now. It's like a jungle gym. Grab the bar that's in front of you right now. Don't worry about the last bar. Just worry about getting a good enough grip on this one. And if you do it with urgency and excitement and you're curious and you're passionate, It's almost promised, bro. It's almost promised. Like today is Sunday, tomorrow's Monday. You're going to get another opportunity based on the first opportunity you've got. It may not be exactly what you want, but sometimes you got to put the outfit on, put the cologne on, get in your car, go to the party. And I promise you that's taking advantage of opportunity number one. Opportunity number two is you went to the party. There's a girl there. Opportunity number three is you drank enough to go up to her and start a conversation. These things happen in sequences. They don't happen. immediately. So fight past the discomfort. That's my advice.

SPEAKER_00: 1:15:50

Yeah, absolutely. And we're going to make a whole episode about this, but that's usually fighting the doubt monster, right? That's what prevents you from moving forward and taking that risk is doubt, right? Like, am I going to come out positively on the other side after taking this risk? And not every risk has a parachute, man. Sometimes you just got to take the plunge.

SPEAKER_01: 1:16:13

Rich, in the advice section, I wanted to add something you mentioned earlier, and And I want you to kind of take the ball and run with this because of the two of us, you're definitely the more financially responsible one in our whole time being alive. You had mentioned runway earlier or saving money so you can give yourself the freedom. How would you put that into an actionable advice frame for somebody like Eric, the kid that wants to move out of his parents' house but also wants to be an entrepreneur? Describe runway and put that into an advice kind of packaging.

SPEAKER_00: 1:16:44

When it comes to financial advice, I default to the, just save as much as you can, right? Like a six month cushion is always the sort of default that every like internet financial guru gives to anyone. If you have a six month safety net, that's usually enough runway for you to make some, any decisions, even some, some poor ones, right? You had to pay six months of rent and you have that in a savings account. It just gives you more of a level of comfort that you could take a little bit more risks. Try out a new job. If it doesn't work out, you have that safety net there. If you get sick, God forbid, right? And you need to come out of pocket with some medical expenses, you have a little cushion there. So that's my default is I would save six months of expenses for anything that may come up.

SPEAKER_01: 1:17:34

So to put it for the financially illiterate and the people that think everything is risk, everything, if I go outside, I get hit by a car, that's risk. If I go on a hike, a Cobra could jump out and attack me. It's like, yeah, bro, you can't You can't live in a fucking plastic bubble your whole life. You're always going to be exposed to risk if you want to do anything in life. But what you're saying is a lot of these questions we're getting from our community, from young people, which obviously they don't have a lot of real life experience. You're saying a lot of the questions you're asking us is not about risk. It's about how you mitigate risk. And all you really need is a cushion to make sure that if you don't succeed immediately, it's not risk. That just means you failed. If you don't succeed immediately, You have a cushion to recalibrate and to keep going forward. So that's not risk. You're just saying, just give yourself six months to figure it out. It's going to take some time. Not everybody figures it out in their first shot.

SPEAKER_00: 1:18:29

Yeah, that's exactly right. And yeah, I couldn't have said it better myself.

SPEAKER_01: 1:18:35

Another actionable advice that I wanted to share, Rich, and we could wrap on this one. Maybe you have another one, but I read this somewhere and I loved it. I don't good process to have even what we're doing in building failures podcast which is a media company that we're investing time and money into write down the downside first yeah we have a pre-mortem

SPEAKER_00: 1:18:57

yeah

SPEAKER_01: 1:18:58

i didn't even know what a pre-mortem was until i seen somebody write it in our community and i was researching it so basically it's like if everything went left and we experienced catastrophic failure we didn't get one win out of this whole thing that we're trying that is risky What's the plan for that? We start at the worst case scenario and then we reverse engineer from there, which I kind of love that because it's a good way to manage, okay, this is the worst case scenario. I lose this much money. I lose this much time. I spent this much time with this person and now we're not together anymore. Am I a broken person? Am I homeless on the street? Did I go crazy and lose my mind? No, I'm perfectly fine. I got two legs, two arms, two working eyes, two working ears. I'm not going to die if I fail. So if you work from the postmortem, you're going to write down all the trap doors and how you can resolve in case this trap door does present itself. Here's a contingency that I have put together. So I think it's a step because a lot of these young guys, they're so smart that they trick themselves into not doing anything because they want to optimize everything. But I think the premortem is a good in between because it allows you to live in that negative headspace, but to plan as if something went wrong. I I don't know if that makes

SPEAKER_00: 1:20:17

sense. Yeah. I mean, listen, I think you need to do your research, right? Like there's nothing new under the sun. If you're pursuing a career in music, I promise you there's 5,000 other people ahead of you that have already gone through every internship, every sort of music industry vertical that have existed. You just need to do your research and find who those people are and where they live and what forums are on, what subreddits are on, what YouTube channel they're on. And information is out there. So I think you need to spend time doing the research on some of these so-called risks that you're wanting to take. And other people's experiences will help you identify worst case scenarios for you, right? Because what was real for them might not be your experience or might be a little bit different for you. But you got to put in the work. You got to do the research and help the experiences of others influence your decision making or how you would modify that particular decision making.

SPEAKER_01: 1:21:21

Now, one last actionable advice I wanted to give. We already gave it, but I'm more interested in the steel man argument because I did see this in the comments section. So one thing we talked about, Rich, was a lot of these guys are younger. When you're in your early 20s, it's an opportunity for you to build your skill set, take some risks, do some things that, you know, the upside is very high when the downside is very low. And one thing we talked about was The 20s is the time where you're supposed to learn, build your skill set, gather information, go through mentorships, you know, take some shots. One dude in the comment section said, which is falling onto our steel man argument portion is, Bro, skills don't pay rent. Cash does. I love this. This is one of these nerdy motherfuckers that annoy me. When inflation is at 7%, the student loans loom and girls are not trying to be with anybody who doesn't have it right now. Rent is 50% of your take home. So only talking about maximizing skills and donating your time for free as somebody that obviously lives with a silver spoon. I think he's saying

SPEAKER_00: 1:22:33

we have a silver spoon. I hate this take, but continue.

SPEAKER_01: 1:22:36

Yeah. You can always buy courses later, but eviction kills dreams today. Take the shot. By the way,

SPEAKER_00: 1:22:42

classic internet. Yeah, for sure. This is definitely like a fucking bro. I got a response for this bro. Listen, by the wait classify the type of person this dude is potentially bagging dating etc like the girls who want it now like are chasing vanity a real woman bro who's trying to build a foundation of longevity will look at a man as a fucking stock and be like I think this is early Apple stock early Amazon stock like I agree I see the potential he might not have it all the way put together but he got a car he got an apartment He got a job. He's been there for a couple of years. He got a little savings, right? Like I see the trajectory of where he's headed and I'm subscribing to this. Let me take this chance. You want to be with that woman, not the woman who wants you to have it today, splurge on me, take me out here. You know what I mean? It's just two different ways of thinking when it comes to dating and forcing a guy to have it altogether. for the benefit of tomorrow. That grinds my gears because you know who those are? Those are the frat bros that live above you.

SPEAKER_01: 1:24:01

You know, it's funny. Me and my girl call them the crypto bros. The crypto bros. There you go, bro. That motherfucker's definitely ran into a lot of money and just terrorizing people in their late 30s. Real quick, this actually came from the same guy I was looking through the comment section. He said, bro, you're going to listen to old people tell you that you need to compound, build skill, network, and focus on low return investments and equity. Me, I'm in my 30s and I'm what I call a specialist. Someone who chooses one lane since my early 20s and I haven't pivoted since. While you're mastering 15 different things, you could build a decade of momentum to work in your favor and make yourself impossible to catch up rather than doing a million things and not knowing which one you want to pick in your 30s.

SPEAKER_00: 1:24:54

That I agree with. That, I think, is some sound advice. I was actually telling my son this yesterday as we were walking. I said, you know what people make the most money in life, period? He's like, what? I'm like, people who are one-of-ones. The world will compensate you handsomely if you are one-of-one at what you do. LeBron James is one-of-one. Kobe Bryant is one-of-one. Most, if not all, UFC fighters are one-of-one, right? Yeah. So I told him, whatever it is that you decide to do in life, pick a lane and try to be the best at that lane. Now you're

SPEAKER_01: 1:25:33

right. Drewski is a one-on-one. Kai Sanat is a one-on-one. The dude who used to fucking hunt alligators and was funny as hell, who had that TV show, One of One. You know what I mean? All different lanes, just people who master their craft.

SPEAKER_00: 1:25:47

Yeah, exactly. I do agree with that advice.

SPEAKER_01: 1:25:49

There you go. Rich agrees with the bros, making Rich a bro. Rich, I know you you said you wanted to make sure you mentioned something at the end of every show feel free to throw it into this episode you wanted to like subscribe what was it that you were oh you wanted people to comment there

SPEAKER_00: 1:26:07

you go comment yes we read all comments even the trolls so comment let us know your feedback your thoughts suggestions curse aside if you want to and we'll respond on the next episode

SPEAKER_01: 1:26:22

there we go failures podcast this is our risk and we're Until next week.

SPEAKER_00: 1:26:28

Until next week.