danny matta, the first marathon episode

Summary

new year, new podcast formats. I’m splitting the show into three modes so I can deliver more value without watering down what’s already working.

1. field notes: short, tactical, real-time lessons from the businesses I’m running right now. not theory. what just happened this week.

2. breadcrumbs: book and course reviews. the key takeaways, the parts worth your time, and what to skip.

3. marathons: long-form conversations with the people who’ve actually shaped how I think. less interview, more sit-down.

the first marathon is with my business partner Danny Matta. we get into personal growth, business strategy, the snowboarding trip in Utah, and the experiences that have shaped both of us. one of the threads worth pulling on: how doing hard, unglamorous jobs early on changed how we lead now.

Transcript

introduction to the new podcast format for 2025

The most impactful business is the business that genuinely improves another human, a better human business. And to grow a business like this, you have to continually improve yourself. This podcast is a documentation of that thesis, scaling businesses and also personal growth. My goal is for you to shortcut this journey.

So if you’re ready to try hard, subscribe. If you like what you’re hearing, please share and enjoy. What’s up, everyone? Jerred Moon here and welcome to the Better Human Business podcast. You might right off the bat be like, is this a mistake? What the hell? Why is this in nearly an hour and a half episode on the Better Human Business podcast?

I want my 10 minute episodes. So let me explain what’s going on. As I’ve been reviewing my content over the past year and looking into what I want to do in 2025, I’ve decided I want to do three new things at the Better Human Business podcast. Don’t worry. I’m doing what I’ve been doing and going to keep short two times per week, 10 minute episodes.

That’s going to continue to happen. But the types of podcast episodes will trickle in here as these new ideas have kind of emerged in something I want to get out there. So the first one that I’m going to be implementing is field notes. So field notes is going to be where I am actually sharing a strategy that I’m working on right now.

launch of the first marathon session with Danny Matta

I do these sometimes, but I want to be a little bit more consistent with them in 2025 because I think it could really help you out if you know exactly what I’m doing, the thought process, the strategy behind it. Anytime I publish one of those, I get a lot of great feedback or the mistakes I’m making.

So you can expect those in 2025 on a more frequent clip to make sure that you’re seeing progress and you can learn any lessons or avoid any failures that I’m experiencing as I do them in real time. So that’s the first one. The second one is breadcrumbs. I just want to review any books or courses or material that have had a significant impact on me in my life, in business, as an entrepreneur.

I’m a big avid reader or really listener. I listen to a ton of books. I’ve listened to hundreds and hundreds of books, taken extensive notes on a lot of them. So I want to share those and go into the weeds a little bit still within 10 minutes, but like really share my big takeaways, books that you might want to read, recommendations, things like that.

So breadcrumbs will be another addition. I want to be more consistent in, you know, going into 2025 in the last one I’m calling marathons. And that is this is the first official published marathon. It’s with my business partner, Danny Matei. So I want to dive in and do infrequent, infrequent interviews in 2025.

discussion on the evolution of our annual snowboarding trips and their significance in our business partnership

I don’t want the Better Human Business podcast to become an interview show, and I don’t want to do extensively long podcast episodes on a frequent basis. But I have some amazing human beings in my life who I would love to introduce to my community, Danny being one of them. I’m also going to interview other business partners I have.

So you can cover all the bases and kind of understand how we all work together, how we have created the businesses that we’ve created. And I think you can’t fully understand things that I’m working on or who I’ve become without really knowing my business partners. So that’s where I’m going to start.

And then I’m going to get feedback. I’m going to get feedback from you as the listeners. How do you like the marathons, these marathon podcast episodes, because they are much longer. But we’re going to go, you know, we’re going to talk about all sorts of different things in these in this one with Danny.

I absolutely love the conversation, but I love basically every conversation I have with Danny. We talk about everything from raising our kids to growing and scaling businesses to why the hell, you know, Danny decided to randomly start snowboarding on a finance trip that we took. So all of these things we’re going to discuss and I think you will get a lot out of it. But what I ultimately want from you is feedback.

insights into developing a business culture organically through shared experiences

You can do that on Instagram. Reply to any of my newsletters. Just let me know how you like these podcasts. Like I said, they’re not going to be a common weekly occurrence, but periodically maybe once a quarter or something like that. Someone who’s really impactful in my life or I think can have a huge impact on you and your business, your life, you becoming a better human.

I definitely want to talk to that person because I do have a pretty extensive network, which I’m really not tapping into at all for this podcast. So anyway, looking for the feedback without any further ado, here is Danny Matei. All right, man, we’ll we’ll jump right into it. So, Danny, welcome. Before we get into anything, I want to start with kind of a question.

So we back in the day, we’re in Utah, right? We’re we’re there. You, me and Eve were in Utah for like some sort of business finance event. It’s actually a really good event. Yeah. But you randomly have this idea to like. You were going to we’re going snowboarding and skiing and we’re in Utah, it’s like late spring, it’s not an ideal time to go.

You’ve never gone before, if I remember correctly. I haven’t gone in years. We have no gear for this, but it’s kind of turned into a tradition now amongst the partners. But like, where did that come from? That’s that’s kind of where I want to start. Like, why did we go snowboarding randomly on this trip in Utah?

Danny’s perspective on balancing perseverance with flexibility in business planning

OK, yeah, I remember it very well because I wasn’t sure I was actually going to make it down the mountain. It took me so long, but yeah, we were there and it was May. So it was the beginning of May and. To long story short, it was a finance conference, we blew off a day because it snowed, it snowed in May, there was snow on the on the mountain when we got there and I did not grow up skiing, snowboarding, anything like that.

Right. But for me, if I can like try to learn a new skill, experience something that I’ve never done before, and especially like a snowboard like that was always something that I was interested in. But I never frankly, my family never had the money to do that. We never lived in an area where there was like cold weather proximity.

You know, it just it never was in the cards for me. And then when I was in the military, I was never stationed anywhere like there either. So this was like the first opportunity that I saw where I was like, holy shit, I’m so close. Like this was something that I was interested in. And Eve and I know the two of you had actually, you know, skied and snowboard for an Eve more recently, had started to go with friends and things like that and pick up the sport.

in-depth exploration of personal development themes and their impact on business success

So I just thought it sounded awesome, you know, and way more awesome than sitting in a finance, you know, conference for a day.

So, yeah, we had to rent. We rented everything. And I remember everything, jackets, pants, like everything, everything. We didn’t even know places did that. Like I had been skiing a bunch, but I always brought my own gear. So when we were like planning on going, I was like, I guess I’m going to kind of wear I mean, it’s May like I’m going to wear these pants.

I was like this jacket I brought kind of waterproof like that. Those are my thoughts. But they’re like, no, no, we got you. We can give you all that stuff. They had everything. Yeah. So they were in Salt Lake City. We went to some random sports store and picked up all this gear. There was like, yeah, not even the right size gear or whatever, just whatever they had.

Danny’s journey from a constrained financial mindset to a more expansive approach

Who knows where they got it from? And we went out to the mountain and I dude, I remember walking up and I thought there would be, you know, like beginner lifts open, all these things. Everything is pretty much closed towards the very end of the season. And so all they had was like the lifts at the very top of the mountains.

And I remember buying my ticket and I asked the lady at the ticket desk, I was like, hey, this is my first time out here. Which runs should I start with? And she goes, you shouldn’t be out here. All it was like really steep blues and blacks at the top of the mountain. None of this, the beginner runs were open.

So didn’t start out so great with that. And then eventually I found a little like, you know, beginner hill. And I walked up to, you know, halfway, which was so sophisticated. Now, I just I would basically fall all the way down while Eve gave me a little bit of advice. Eventually, some guy came by and he goes, you’re not going to learn snowboarding on this hill. You know, you just got to get up there is what he said to me.

the role of financial literacy in enhancing both personal satisfaction and business efficacy

So I said, all right, whatever. And then I didn’t know how to get off a lift, dude. Like I literally had no idea. I ended up obviously falling. And then I wrote like combat, rolled my way out of everyone’s way and then eventually got to the edge of this of this run. And I couldn’t believe how steep it was.

It was the steepest freaking mountain ever been on my life. Like it was terrifying. I remember sitting there and I was like, this is a bad idea. And I’m stuck now. I can’t go back down. But, you know, eventually I did get down. It took me like 45 minutes. I was so sore, my butt, my wrists, like I eventually figured out how to kind of snowflake down a little bit, but it just took forever.

And I went up, I went up twice and then I went down to the bottom of the mountain, wait for you guys to go a little bit longer, drink this huge Gatorade. And then as I sat there, I realized my pants were like really wet and I didn’t know once. And I had apparently there’s a there was a zipper, which is if it’s hot, you can unzip it. And it was unzipped the whole time.

closing thoughts on the intertwining of business acumen and personal growth

So as I’m sliding down the mountain, it’s just getting packed with more and more snow. So my freaking like I was so wet. I might as well have just not had pants on by the time I was done. But that we went on for one day and from there we do an annual snowboard business planning trip. You know, we go somewhere in the country and it is like one of my favorite things that we’ve ever started to do.

It’s one of my favorite things I’ve ever done just with anybody in my life. It’s awesome because I like business. I like snowboarding. It’s a great way to get out, see a new area, go out in the morning, get some movement and get a good little like, you know, a snowboard session in. But then your mind is pretty clear and you can work on, you know, the important things for the business the rest of the day.

And then, you know, just hang out. It’s it’s awesome. I’m really thankful we did it. But, you know, for me, if I could try something new, I just hate like I would regret it if I hadn’t done that, because in my mind I was like, oh, this would be cool. Why not? Well, and it’s like a branch down to this company culture thing.

preview of upcoming topics and guest features for the podcast in 2025

So is that twenty nineteen? I think I feel like it was because if I hadn’t happened yet, so we did it in twenty nineteen, twenty, twenty one, twenty two, twenty three, twenty four. And then we’ll do it in twenty five. So that’ll be our seventh. This coming up, at least, you know, when this is being recorded, coming up, we are seventh trip. And I’m not going to lie to you.

And that’s one of I it’s one of the biggest things I look forward to every single year. And it’s like, I don’t know why. Like, I mean, I love traveling with my family and my kids and like all that stuff, too. It’s just like for some reason, those trips are so awesome. And so what happened was like we started that.

We did that in May and then we’re like, OK. And now it’s turned into tradition and company culture. And so every January we pick wherever we’ve been to Montana a couple of times, Tahoe. Where did we go? Somewhere in Colorado. We’re rich. Yeah. So it’s just been awesome, man. And I really do look forward to those.

I’m looking forward to it right now. I’m just like amped. I’m like excited to go. And like even if we didn’t ski, I think if we just sat in like a cabin where it’s snowing and had coffee and did business planning, I’d still think it’s an it’s an awesome trip, like aside from what we do. And I think the funny thing about that is, is the company culture side of that.

I mean, it’s more of the business partners, company culture. We haven’t got employees involved in that. I think eventually at some point we’ll we’ll do something along those lines. But do you think that is how company culture is formed? Do you think it’s like more of these like organic things that just kind of happen and then they turn into traditions and like that’s how we should be going about it?

Or do you think it’s something that should kind of be forced and planned out? Because I think, you know, we both struggle with this to some degree because we have a completely virtual online company. Right. And so it can be a little bit difficult to. You know, have that company culture, but we do a decent job because we at least get to meet in person twice per year through our live events.

And when I say we, I mean, you, me, all of the team and then also, you know, people part of the mastermind. But going back to company culture, like, do you think you should just kind of give it time? Let it happen naturally. Or do you think it should be planned and kind of forced? I think the best company culture, you know, ideas come from organically.

Right. It’s like really it’s it’s kind of the people around you and you’re like, oh, this would be cool to be fun. You know, if we do this or whatever. And I mean, even for us, like for instance, one thing that we did whenever I was at we had our clinical practice right before we sold before we sold it.

One of the things that we would do as a company was there’s a there’s a local nonprofit in our neighborhood. And what it is basically it’s like it’s short term housing for women that are homeless with kids as they’re getting and there’s an education component to it where they’re learning the skill and then they move to an apartment complex they own.

But they’re just like they’ll be like eight people in a room like barracks basically. Right. And it’s just big old house. And it’s just, you know, it’s pretty close to where we live. So we would go there as a family. And around the holidays, my family would cook dinner for everybody there. And then my kids would have to, like, you know, go serve everybody and clean up their plates and all that shit.

And so we started doing as a family, whatever, start talking to our staff about what we were doing. They’re like, oh, that sounds awesome. Can we come, you know? And so we didn’t even think about, oh, maybe our staff would like to do this, too. And every year that we had the company, we would get together as a company.

We would all make different things or we’d cook over there and we’d all go together and we do this. And that was actually something that as we looked at, like around the holidays, one of the things that I think from a culture standpoint was very organic. But one of the things that we enjoyed the most and really getting people together in a different setting and doing something that is, you know, is helpful to other people is great. Right. And that’s just as an example, not necessarily something we sat down and planned. Right. Like, hey, what are our core values?

What does that align with? I think that’s helpful to start with. But, you know, one of the things it’s like I feel like life leaves you these little breadcrumbs sometimes where it’s like, you know, you can you can decide to go down that path or you can ignore it or whatever. But I found, you know, that if you’re doing something cool, if you’re doing something that’s enjoyable, other people do want to do that with you.

And as long as it’s like not cost prohibitive, like maybe you can’t buy your whole company to go hike some trail you love in Hawaii. OK, got it. Like that’s cost prohibitive. But maybe your staff likes to do, you know, like they like they like to run. Cool. You guys all train for a 5K together and you do that once a year or whatever it might be. Right. Or a team race or something like that.

And anything you can do that’s going to kind of help bring people together, especially outside of work, I think is just awesome. But I don’t know. I think it has to be a mix early on. I think you have to sit down and think about it. But as your company grows and as you get more experiences with people, you start to realize, oh, they like this, too.

Or, you know, that was a good experience. And sometimes it’s a shitty thing, right? Like sometimes you do stuff and it sucks. You got it. You know, I mean, that happens, too. But, you know, keeping those things that people really enjoy. I think that’s how you build like a really, really organic culture that not only that continues, even after elite, we sold that clinic.

They still do it. And if they still do the same thing because they find so much value in it. And I think that’s huge. I think if you can just pick like one or two things, you can build like traditions within traditions because just going back to that one, we don’t have we don’t have like a checklist for this thing. I mean, like we pick a spot.

We go like, yeah, we’re going to do business planning for the year and then we’re also going to have a good time, whatever. But there are other little things that happen that are kind of funny that just like happened like organically is like one thing I know we’re going to do is we’re going to all meet at the airport. We’re going to get a car and then we’re going to go to Whole Foods and like buy groceries and we’re going to get it.

We’re going to get way too many like chocolate chip cookies. And I’m going to overload on bottles of water. Like last time I was like I acted like we were going to run out of water somehow. We bought so much water and it just like left you guys with all of it. But we got it anyway. We go to grocery shopping.

We buy all this stuff, buy a bunch of chocolate chip cookies primarily for Eve. Let’s be real. I mean, it’s for him. And then we typically pick a movie like, you know, movie night, like, you know, all these like silly things or whatever. But like it’s that’s why I look forward to it. And I think having those things in your company are really important.

But I kind of view it the same way as you do is like. These breadcrumbs, like they pop up and you just kind of have to go with the flow and I get these questions like from a leadership perspective, people wanting to build culture. And unfortunately, it’s like it’s time, it’s like, OK, I want to be my best friend.

And so I’m going to tell him what I basically did. I told you that like pretty early on. I was like, you know, we’re going to be best friends. You’re like, oh, OK. But ultimately, like it just it’s like it takes time, right? Like it’s the same thing with building company culture is like to some degree.

I don’t want to say you don’t force it, but you can you need to pick the direction like you’re saying, follow the breadcrumbs. But then it’s just it’s time. It’s like time under tension. And you just got to sit there and like let it happen, let these things develop. And I think that’s how you get a really awesome team.

And these things do trickle down to the rest of the team and the overall productivity and mission. And I think I think these things are really important. But I kind of want to talk about. All of this bigger picture, which I don’t get to talk to you about very often, it’d be like talking to my wife about like her thoughts on marriage.

Right. It’s like, well, we’re married. Like you and I are business partners. But what are your thoughts on business partnerships? I talk to a lot of people about in all honesty, it being like a superpower, like it’s just a huge unlock. But, you know, for me personally, we’ve achieved things that I could have never done on my own.

And like we move at great speeds. We all complement each other really well. And so when I tell people that they’re like, got it, going to start a partnership. And I’m like, well, I don’t know, like I don’t I don’t know, like if I got lucky or if we got lucky or, you know, we put in the work or whatever had to happen.

But like I’m just going to ask you big picture, like what are your thoughts on business partnerships? You know, generally, I think in my experience, what I’ve seen with friends that I have that have been in business partnerships. It seems to go one of two ways. It’s either amazing or it’s terrible.

Right. And there seems to be like I don’t see a lot of people that they’re just sort of, yeah, it’s OK. It’s all right. Right. Yeah. That doesn’t really seem to work out. I mean, because I wouldn’t say I have not had a business partnership that has gone south, but it has, you know, people that I know, they’re friends of mine, have at least at least one, you know, if not multiple with the same person with different companies.

And when you get around serial entrepreneurs, which is, you know, I never really classify myself as that. But at this point, it’s pretty much I don’t know how anybody would say we’re not because we’re starting now multiple companies and, you know, and so that kind of an individual. The mixture of personalities can be really hard.

Right. And I think what is important when looking at a business partnership, because I do agree with you, I think it’s a superpower. And I was lucky to have married my first business partner, right, who we started the practice together. We didn’t know that we had these opposing skill sets that were beneficial to help each other.

But she’s very operationally driven. I’m very much not. And that means we didn’t step on each other’s toes and we could move really quickly and trust that the other person was doing a really good job, but also like check each other in different scenarios, too, because I will come up with all kinds of crazy ideas.

And if she’s like, this is done, we shouldn’t do that, then I just listen to her. But every once in a while I’ll say something and she’s like, I don’t hate it. And if that if that happens, then I know that this has maybe some likes to it and I should pursue it a bit further. Right.

And I think what’s interesting with you, me and Eve is we are very like there’s overlapping core values that and I think this is really important in the business part of your business part of the way that they are with their family, the way they are with their friends, the way that they are at home and they’re not, you know, doing work things.

If there’s they don’t have to you don’t have to love the same things by any means. But from a core value standpoint, what do you want out of life? What do you find meaning in you know, what do you know, what do you what do you like on for a personal integrity standpoint? You know, these are things that they’re huge red flags to me.

If there’s anything that I see that I’m just like it doesn’t align with me personally now on the business side, we can all have different strengths and weaknesses or even ideas of which directions you want to take something and being able to listen to each other and know that like, oh, this is a smart person, like I should really think about what they’re saying versus I think most of the time it’s one business partner dominates everybody else and they’re unwilling to listen to anybody and they just want to say they’re laying to be quiet.

And I think that’s where a lot of animosity develops and frustration, you know, with folks. So for me, if you align with somebody personally, like you believe it, like it’s it’s somebody that if you died, you’d be fine with them managing your finances and, you know, helping your wife get through a difficult time.

Right. And then like whatever, like keeping up with their kids, like that kind of person you can partner with. If that’s not the kind of person, then when she gets horrid, I think you’re going to struggle on the business side and you’re going to lack that foundation personally. So for me, that was kind of a no brainer.

You know, I didn’t know you all very well. I knew Eve better than you. And we when we started partnering together, but as a parent, like the way you would talk about your spouse, we talk about your kids, the way you take care of yourself from a fitness standpoint or health and wellness standpoint, you know, these are really important things that you hear people talk about.

And you can also hear people that are shady people the way they talk about those same exact things. And you definitely want to stay away from that. On the business side, though, opposing skill sets is huge, but I’m good at your you are so much better at so many other things than I am. And Eve is so great at things that we are.

We all suck at it. But yet we can kind of like you and I can come together and talk about finance. And we both understand that. And that’s really helpful. It’s not just like one person understands that Eve probably doesn’t care. Like he’s just like, OK, just whatever. What’s what’s the distribution?

Right. That’s fine. It is a focus on that. But then when he looks at product stuff, you know, we may not see it through the same lens, but he loves that stuff. And it’s so helpful. So, you know, like that’s a superpower. And it’s very hard for one person to be the three of us. We’re all like independently really good at certain things.

We get to kind of stay and focus on those. And, you know, and you can hire those. But hiring somebody is never going to be the same kind of ownership factor as a true partner that can help you work towards whatever that bigger common goal is. And I’ve never officially started a partnership. You technically, right, like started the PT Biz partnership.

So go back to that time, you know, 20, I think 2018 is when we decided to, like, start working together. Like, what are your did you have any struggles with that? Like, was there any like, well, you know what? I’d rather just own it all myself or, you know what, you know, we’re going to break it up like it was there a lot of that you had to work through towards the beginning of all this?

Yeah, that’s a good question. I had gotten advice from a mentor when we started at this potential that was to never ever partner with anybody in business like and this is somebody I really value their opinion. And he’s like, just your spouse. That’s it. Like, you don’t need anybody else. And so that was actually my mindset with pretty much any business stuff that we ever had.

And anytime we had a conversation about any sort of partnership with our practice, it was like, dismiss it. I want nothing to do with that. But when we started working with clients, so, you know, like Ashley and I would just do one off stuff with people that were interested in help with their clinical practice on the business side.

And when I first started working with a small group, that very first group of people with PT Biz, I don’t think it was called PT Biz at the time. I remember when that actually transitioned to the to the name of it. We just was it just was an offshoot of our clinical practice. But we had we had eight people.

And one of those people was Eve. And it was very apparent to me just in the in the year that we that I spent working with that first group that he was like, well, why you’re ahead of everybody else as far as understanding business, but also like I don’t know what it was, but people in the group would gravitate to him to ask questions.

And he just sort of fell into like somewhat of a leadership role within that small group of people. So, you know, as I was looking at, OK, well, what could this could this be bigger than I think? I just thought maybe this is going to be 10, 12 people I work with each year, cohort style, almost like a residency.

And then they just graduate and they move on. But of all those people that I worked with, every single one of them want to stick around and continue to work another year to work on their business. So, you know, I started to realize that maybe there’s more to this. And I realized I’m going to I’m going to need help coaching like first.

This is the first thing that I need help with. And, you know, he was the obvious person that made sense to me because actually couldn’t help me. She was running our clinic. You know, I didn’t really know where do you hire a coach? I’m not sure. And even I end up going to a marketing conference down in Orlando, kind of last minute hit him up, told I was going.

He said, I’m in, you know, whatever. And while we were down there, you know, I got a better idea of sort of his like capabilities and what he was interested in. And also was just somebody that is not somebody that I could hire. Right. And that’s actually what I like about that partnership is like you as well.

Right. Like I couldn’t hire you. I couldn’t hire you. And, you know, so that was the first person I was like, OK, this can work. I like this person. They see things very similar to me and I know I can trust them with coaching people. But what we were missing was an idea of how to scale a digital business.

None of us had done that. You know, we learned about digital marketing, we learned about whatever, you know, all this infrastructure stuff. But we never done that. And I honestly didn’t know anybody that could help with that besides you, because back back in the day with the Doc and Doc Pockets, the first one I had, my co-host Joe and I, we hired you to help us create, you know, a monetization structure for that podcast where we could have something that could sell or, you know, we had ads, we had we had other stuff, stuff that was going on.

And we interviewed you and we’re like, this guy’s smart, maybe he can help us. So, you know, we asked you, you told us what it costs. We paid you, you helped us out. And it was it was helpful, like it worked the so I didn’t really have a Rolodex. I was like, I know one guy, you know, just one time he was in the Air Force.

That’s a meaningful thing to me. You know, anytime that I have a shared military background with somebody, I check the box that they’re they get more credit for me than if they don’t like I’ll warm up to them faster, better or worse. Don’t know if that’s actually a good strategy or not. But in this scenario, that helped.

So, you know, but. I didn’t know you much at all, right, and except for that, you know, you’re talking about and when you had a chance to come and come to our first event in Atlanta, that wasn’t just these eight people, I think we had 15 or something, right, 15 or 16 people. And you had a chance to present.

You know, it’s obvious that you really knew what you were what you were doing. You knew you knew you were talking about and it was a missing link for us that we just knew we need to help with. So, you know, for me, the discussion was, OK, well, what does that mean as far as equity is concerned and how this is this all can grow?

Because at the time it wasn’t an insignificant business. You know, it was. I think I think we were making like four hundred thousand dollars a year on the side, not including our practice. Right. So like and when you’re just straight up doing all the work yourself and consulting like it’s 80 percent profit or whatever.

Right. Yeah. So it’s not like it was an insignificant amount of revenue. Right. So the deal that we came up with, I think actually if anybody’s thinking about bringing a partner on that, that, you know, wants them to have a feeling of like earning it and like actually helping the business to gain equity because you should earn or buy equity.

You should not give it away is a very important thing. So what we set up was, OK, we basically have to hit one million dollar annual run rate for this business. We have a year to do it. And we were roughly halfway there when we started. And if we don’t, you guys get no equity. I get a free year of work.

And if we do, then equity percentages kick in and we’re good. Right. And so for me, I was like, all right, this seems like a fair deal. If they can really help with this, we’ll see. And that’s what we did. And it was pretty clear within, I don’t know, I feel like six months in, we should hear your thoughts on this because you obviously see from a different perspective.

But for six months in, for me, I was like, I don’t give a fuck if we hit these numbers or not. I think it’s working. So it’s something we are going to have to do. And we ultimately did. But yeah, for you, take it. That’s a pretty sketchy deal. You know, I don’t think most people would say yes to something like that.

Yeah. I, you know, I’ve talked to other people about that as well. And the big reason I was OK with that deal, kind of two things is like I had a mentor at the time who talked to me a lot about business partnerships and how you don’t want to be tied to somebody long term if it’s like if it’s just not a good fit.

In fact, she didn’t even call business partners. She called them wealth determiners, which I always felt was like a kind of a cool term, but like it puts a little bit more impact on the like on the other person. Right. It’s like you’re you’re not just one of my business partners. You determine my wealth and I determine your wealth to some degree.

So it’s like it just frames it in a little bit of a different light. And so I was like, yeah, let’s let’s do this deal, because if it doesn’t work. I don’t want to be here long term anyway. You know what I’m saying? Like if we’re just kind of limping along. Putting in a bunch of time, effort and a business isn’t growing like that’s that’s not gonna be fun for anyone.

But at the same time, I actually thought it was going to be fairly simple. You know, I don’t like to use the word easy, but I was like, like you said, like we’re halfway there. This is a much higher price point than I’ve scaled already. Right. Like so it doesn’t take as many customers. I was like, I think we can do this.

The only thing I was unsure about was audience size. Right. So that’s the only missing factor. But once I realized kind of was there, I was like, yeah, I think this is gonna be great. But I felt the same exact way after a couple of months and I was like, yeah, I will even if we’re not building this, like I’d build something else with these guys.

Like it’s you know, I think it’s a it’s a great fit. And now it’s got to the point where it’s like you guys are like a security blanket. I’m like, I don’t really want to do anything new unless I’ve got Danny and Eve there as well. It’s like I just need the desk. Like that is something I’ve noticed, actually, with people that I’ve met that are multi-time founders.

They tend to when they when they find people that they trust and they work well with, they just tend to do other shit with them because they know there’s a big trust factor there, which is very hard to get over. You know, like it’s it takes a long time to really be able to trust that somebody is going to do the right thing, as well as like on the monetary side, being able to trust people because people can get weird with money.

Yeah. So a significant amount of money involved, like they can act really weird. And yeah, I mean, we could literally you could say, look, man, I got to start. You have this idea for this black coffee, only coffee shop, right? You’re like, dude, I got to do black coffee, only coffee shop. If you’re you’re like my fucking I’m going for it.

I got. All right. I mean, what’s the what’s the marketing strategy like? Let’s figure it out. Like how much capital we need to raise because, you know, it’s it’s fun to do. Like it’s it’s somewhat of a game. It really is. It’s just a game business in general. It’s a fun game to play with other people, too.

I’m more of a team sport guy than I am the individual sport. I was gravitating towards like basketball, baseball, stuff like that. So I enjoy the team side of it. And yeah, I mean, I like the challenge with the right people because I know they’re smart people. I like our chances. I don’t really care who it is or what the industry is like.

I just think I like our chances in whatever it is, because most people are kind of lazy. They don’t do what they say they’re going to do. They give up. They don’t plan. You know, they’re they’re not good at sales, not good at marketing, not willing to learn new things. They’re not good leaders like I feel like we have a lot of those boxes checked and it can really be whatever we want.

And I like the side that I would say I find I think we find a lot of enjoyment in helping people that are actually making a meaningful difference in other people’s lives, like the businesses that we have obviously do that. So, you know, there’s an interesting like they almost feel like a nonprofit that’s a for profit.

And that’s a fun place to be. Having like been around a lot of nonprofits and my wife, you know, working with them like they’re basically you’re basically a volunteer. You get paid so little less than minimum wage and they work your ass off. And it’s because they get such great personal satisfaction from those career fields.

But to be in a business where you can actually like make a good living and really help people the same time. It’s a sweet spot, man. It’s like literally the best business kind of model to be a part of. So, yeah, I’m down. Like, whatever it is you want to do, I’m sure you feel the same way we’re in.

Well, we got to talk about that business opportunity real quick because I so here’s the deal. I am letting the listeners know and then you can fully hear the plan and you see if it’s a good business model or not. So I want to open a coffee shop called Black Coffee. And as its name implies, we serve black coffee, really good black coffee, though, not like Bulger’s.

OK, so it’s like you want something you want something amazing. You’re going to pay a premium price because we’re going to import it from wherever you should import it. That’s going to be amazing. I don’t know enough. I’ll do my research before we before we launch. So inventory, we got black coffee, we’ve got cups, we’ve got lids and then the staff.

And then we will let you have cream, but we’re not doing it. We’ll put we’ll put a cream station for your whatever you want. You can mix it yourself. And so ultimately, that’s that’s what I want to run. But at the same time, what I want to do is Planet Fitness has the Lunk Alarm. You know, if you’re like, you never heard of the Lunk Alarm, so I think it’s Planet Fitness.

You if you are like Planet Fitness doesn’t want any bros like gym bros in there. They want like average everyday people like trying to lose weight, tone up a little bit. They don’t want anybody hardcore in there, like deadlifting 500 pounds. They don’t want any of that. And so if you are that guy and you’re like making too much noise, you’re dropping weight or whatever, the Lunk Alarm goes off and it’s this blue light and it like there’s like a siren that goes off, the light spins and they’ll kick you out.

They’ll kick you out of the gym if you’re like too hardcore of a person at Planet Fitness. It’s called the Lunk Alarm. Grunting really loud. Yeah, grunting really loud, dropping weight, just doing all the things that like you can go do a different gym.

But I want the same thing at the black coffee bar to where if you come in and you have more than two words, which is black coffee, or if you just say coffee, then you’re just you’re going to get the Lunk Alarm and then the whole staff shuns you and tells you to get the hell out of the establishment, which Emily thought was a little aggressive when I told her that’s the plan.

She’s like, maybe not the Lunk Alarm, but everything else sounds good. So what are your thoughts? You think you think this has legs? Terrible idea in this in this scenario, because I think it’s I think you will have to have more than two words. I mean, maybe you can use it at your discretion. If somebody comes in and they let’s say they’re like, do you can you can you give me like an oatmeal latte?

And then you’re like, right? And then everybody’s like, get out of here. Like, okay, yeah, I could see that. I mean, listen, I think nowadays, if you can do something that really like leans into like ones like people may feel very strongly about their black coffee only right now, I can make a counter, you know, I guess business where it’s I could just make it lattes only.

And, you know, all we do, all we do is if you come in and you ask for black coffee, then we hit the little like alarm and then you have to leave. But the difference would be I feel like your black coffee only company is going to have better margins because you obviously have less. You don’t need as much skill if you can charge the same.

Right. I think in the people, though, like it’s like people who drink black coffee are slightly more passionate about that. Like a person drinks a latte. I feel like they can go they could drink anything. It just can’t be black coffee. You know what I’m saying? It’s like they’re not as they’re not true believers, if you will. It’s feel like what percent of the population will be male versus female.

Yeah, I don’t know a lot of my picture of this turning into like a bunch of old dudes sitting around and like just harassing people when they do come in and ask for like more complicated drinks. Eventually we get shut down to some sort of like. Cancel culture or something like that, I think that’s or it goes viral because people are it. Here’s the thing, you pick a side and somebody is going to hate on it and somebody is going to defend at the same time just to make sure that they’re like toe in the line for their side.

This is actually where I think, you know, we could actually do a test.

You could do this. I could do, you know, lattes, lattes only. And I’ll make it look like an Instagram post in there. And it will literally be like different types of latte or and like it’ll blow up on Instagram. Right. But then everybody will hate on me for being a liberal and they’ll say like, oh, I don’t even serve black coffee.

These assholes, you know, and then I’ll get a bunch of people that will lead into this and be like, exactly. Yeah. And the same didn’t happen to yours. Right. So no, I think I think it would work. I just yeah, I you would really have to define like your culture. But I love the idea of having less skilled people with great coffee and not a lot of choices, because, I mean, that’s going to make you so much more profitable.

Have you seen the number of options that you can have at Starbucks, by the way? Oh, it’s crazy. And you just make up your own stuff is like make up your own drink. It’s crazy. It’s literally like eighty thousand variations or something of things you can get. It’s an insane number. And if you’re just like we have black coffee, we have one.

And if you want some creamer, put it in yourself over there. Like, yeah, I mean, that’s a very efficient business model. Yeah. No, man, you should test it out. Like just, you know, where would you do it there? You’d have to do this in Texas for sure. We don’t say I’m more of an urban areas, more of a suburban area or like where I need more market research, because I actually I’ve been like doing small like sample size tests, if you will, like when I’m in a group of like you and other team members or like me and like family members.

Anytime I’m in a group of like three, four, five, six and we’re all ordering something, I’m generally the only one who gets black coffee. And so I’m like, maybe people don’t want just black coffee. Maybe there’s not really a market for that. Most people are ordering at least something like coffee with cream, you know, like at least something with it.

So, yes, I’ll tell you, listen, man, like for me, if I get a really strong black coffee, what the acidic, you know, whatever I guess elements of it, it will like really irritate my stomach if I get like really strong, just black coffee. And if I get it like so, so I’ll do that. But it also like it I don’t know if there’s more caffeine in it, but it will make me fucking jittery as hell.

Like I think it does. I think the fat and cream slows the caffeine down and like the ingestion of the caffeine. And so without it, it’s just like a main lining. It’s like straight to the bloodstream. So and that’s actually like I don’t drink caffeine for energy. I drink it to concentrate. So if I drink really strong black coffee, I’m like I’m almost I’m inefficient because I’m literally just like, oh, we could do this.

But then it crashed really hard. So for me, my morning routine, like I literally make I make a little mini latte every morning and I fucking love it because I will like I’ll try to make it like when I was in Australia teaching, I found out about this thing called a flat white, which basically is a very small latte.

So they have them around here, but they’re not really the same thing. Like it like the phone has to be a certain type of phone and it should be like at least the smaller ones. It’s like 50 like coffee to milk. I don’t want a bunch of milk. We try to drink a bunch of freaking milk in your big ass latte.

Don’t give me that. I want mainly want coffee and the least amount of milk I can put in it where it’s going to like not like irritate my stomach. So for me, I found I have these little mini. This is my coffee cup. Little mini latte. Yeah, it’s about half coffee of espresso. And then I found the milk myself.

I take this very seriously. I try to make latte art, which here’s what I do. I do it and it comes out. It’s like a was it Rorschach test like the blob test. I look at it for a second. I think to myself that looks like a man on fire today or whatever, you know, and then that’s just sort of how I diagnosed my thoughts in the morning.

I’m going to drink it and then I go work out and that’s what I do. So I would not. I would not visit your coffee shop. Maybe once and then you realize it’s a huge mistake. Well, unless you wanted me to be like totally, you know, unhinged off of caffeine. And then in that scenario, I probably have to drink half of the happy cup.

Well, maybe we’ll do a half coffee you’re talking about. So you hit up that in the morning. I recently started. I’ve always kind of woken up early and like I’ve done different things. I’ve had like a morning routine. I’ve done stuff. But one thing I landed on the last. Honestly, it’s probably been about six weeks I’ve been doing it.

And it’s just it’s perfect because it’s a combination of things I’ve been doing. But like, you know, what got you here won’t get you there. You know, that phrase, that book, all those kind of things is like I used to have this very specific morning routine that I would go through. And I just it lost its like bite after a certain amount of time.

I was like, I just don’t feel like I need to be doing a lot of these things. And so what I do now is I got this. I think it’s called a Bialetti espresso maker. I know exactly that. Go ahead. Yeah. So it’s like it’s stainless steel. It’s like you grind your coffee, put it in the top, you put it on the oven on the stove.

I mean, and then you heat it up. It takes a couple of minutes and then you have espresso. So I’ve been doing that every morning. I prepped it the night before. And then like I have that same similar situation. But then I just sit at my computer after that and I write and I challenge myself to come up with something.

Like a good idea, but not over elaborate, that’s that’s my tendency when I write is like if you’re like, hey, just sit here and write, I could write 500 words, I could write a thousand. I could just not stop. I could over explain things. I could just do it. And that’s what I used to do. I set a word goal and I’d be like, OK, 500 to 1000 words, and I’m going to hammer it out.

But it was another thing that I was like, I don’t think that serves me anymore. So now I’m like, get an idea across. And again, no word goal. It’s not like, oh, it can’t be more than 200 words, but it typically ends up being less than 200 words. So you’re averaging probably like 150. And I get this idea out.

And what that helps me do, because I’ve done workouts in the morning, I’ve done all this other stuff, is it for some reason it checks a box for me mentally that I’ve done something productive. I’ve done something creative and I feel good about the rest of the day. And I think I’m going to continue this again for a really long time until it doesn’t serve me anymore.

But I wanted to dive into that with you on like the habits, routines, ritual side, like what does that look like for you? Not necessarily. It doesn’t have to be a morning routine, but like I just kind of know a little bit about your structure of the day from your rucking to your flat white to all these things.

Like, do you attribute any of that to your success or like is it a box that just has to be checked? Like, how do you feel about these habits that we’ve created for ourselves and we’re doing every single day? Okay. Let me start with the Aleti because it’s fucking awesome. And I didn’t know what this was until this summer.

And this past summer, I went to help teach a course that Kelly Strait was putting on in Milan and we rented an Airbnb and no coffee maker that I recognized inside, right? And he pulls out this little teapot looking thing and like, what the fuck is this? And it’s so smart. It is the smartest espresso maker I’ve ever seen.

And it’s shit old school. Yeah, we went to like the factory they had. They had a few was in Florence or somewhere or Verona, something like that. And there’s like so many of them and they have like they’re so ornate. Some of these is crazy. But anyway, that’s fantastic coffee. I would drink that black for whatever reason, like that coffee crushes it.

So yeah, if you don’t know, be Aleti, like go check that out. That’s a fantastic way to make coffee. Now, as far as morning routine goes. So what I used to do, it’s different than what I do now. What I used to do is I used to wake up at four thirty and then I would I would drink coffee and then I would write.

I would like type something up. I would like try to get some amount of like writing done first thing in the morning. And that was great, especially when I was writing my book. That was very, very helpful. And I kind of just maintain that process because at the time do a lot of email marketing.

But I would just write all kinds of I have like literally like all kinds of word docs of just chapters of stuff that I haven’t ever, you know, actually pulled together, but might need one day. And that was for years. I did that as if I would say the last the last 12 to 18 months, my routine has changed.

And mainly because I have a trading partner now, which I actually think is fantastic. Yeah, like it’s like a business partner, but just for working out. And the guy that I train with. So so now I wake up at five fifteen. So I actually wake up a little bit later and my morning looks like this.

I wake up and I never hit snooze. Never snoozes for losers. Actually, this is this story. Actually, you’re not a loser, but don’t hit snooze. Just get up. All right. So turn your alarm off, get up and just get into your day. It’s going to suck no matter what. So I get up, I go downstairs, I make coffee.

I actually listen to I’ll listen to a podcast in the morning like and I try to what I try to do is listen to something health and wellness related in the morning podcast because I don’t really live in that world anymore like I used to. But it’s a good reminder to me to, like, remember to take care of myself.

Like, for instance, even something as simple as I was listening to Kelly’s podcast in the Heberman lab and he talks about sitting on the ground for 30 minutes at night at a minimum, like sitting on the ground and trying to like move around in like different shapes and stuff. And just earlier this week when I was listening to it, I was like, shit, I’m not doing that anymore.

And now my whole family has to sit on the ground. They hate it, actually. They’re like, but like our dogs come over. It’s great for like 30 minutes. And it is an easy way to get like a little bit of like pressure, movement, mobility, work and just be in different shapes on the ground. We’re not really doing.

But that’s just me. Let’s do a podcast in the morning. Then I go train from six to seven with my training partner. And he just does whatever the fuck I want to do. Like, he’s just like, this is not my world. You tell me what we’re doing today. If we need to modify something, which we don’t really need to do.

I do that Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, we train. And then on Wednesday mornings, I have a ruck group that organically started. And I actually think this is the greatest community building slash health and wellness tool that you could possibly have for a motivated, high achieving individual. Like I would put myself into.

And the reason why is people that get up at to ruck marsh, no matter what the weather is at six o’clock in the morning. And let’s be honest, it’s a men’s walking group. OK, I formed a men’s walking group or a little bit of weight in a backpack. That’s what it is. You’d be shocked at how many people find out about it and want in on this.

But it’s a litmus test. If you don’t show up, you can’t get coming. Don’t tell me you’re going to come and then not come. And also, we leave at six o’clock in the morning. There was a guy that I met that was supposed to come. He was five minutes late. We were gone. And he was like, where can I catch up with you guys next week?

Motherfucker show up on time. We leave at six and we’re not waiting for anybody. So, you know, I mean, that is amazing. And it’s so cool because we have now 10 people that would potentially come. Usually it’s between six and eight. But you get a chance to walk around, talk to people that are similar stage of life as you.

It’s hard enough. You can make it as hard as you want more weight. You can make it as easy as you want. You know, post I had knee surgery about a month or two and a half months ago. And when I got back into it, I just walked with nothing. You know, I was just walking. And people can do that, too. But it is fantastic.

Finish our day at seven. And when seven starts, I’m helping get my kids ready for school. I take them to school every single morning. My son usually rides his bike. So maybe it’s my daughter. Take a little bit further. And then when I get back, one of two things is either happening. I’m either rolling right into like an early meeting or if not, then I’m going to sauna.

So I should turn this on and I’ll sauna after I get back from them. Take a shower and then I’m rolling right into the work day after that. So if I can sauna, it’s great. I actually really like it. It sort of pushes my start of my day back a little bit. But I find me doing that first in the morning after I train.

It’s great. It’s like just really helps me, you know, start the day really well. I feel like I’ve knocked all the shit out first thing in the morning and the rest of the day I can just concentrate on what to do for, you know, work, family stuff and whatever else in there. So I’m not as strict as people might be where they’re like, I need this much light in my eyes at this time.

You know, I mean, like for me, no, you get up. I listen to something I think is beneficial health and wellness. Some people will say not to do that, right? They’re like, oh, don’t don’t inundate your body with information first thing in the morning. I’m like barely awake listening to it. Fuck knows what I retained.

But I’m at least focusing on something that I don’t really, you know, really spend a lot of time reading about anymore. That is helpful for my health. So that’s my day. You know, I don’t know. Kick it apart. What would you do different? No, I think it’s great. I mean, I think I’m the same way. So I used to wake up really early, like in the fours.

I’d push that to my alarm on my watch goes off at five twenty. I’m generally up like before that. I don’t know if I’ve just gotten used to it so much. I’m like I’m normally up at like four fifty to five ten. And I still like wait, though. I’m like, yeah, maybe I can fall asleep for 15 more minutes.

Like, who cares? I don’t know. I just get up when I when the alarm actually goes off. And then I think I think it’s all good. Like, I don’t think, you know, you’re talking about like putting in like bad info into your brain. Like, that’s all good info, right? Like, I don’t think you should sit on your phone and like scroll Instagram or TikTok for 30 minutes before you start your day.

Like, I think that’s a way to like piss you off. Or if you were to like, you know, consume something like. I don’t know anything that could be triggering, like political, financial economy, like anything that could like set you off, I think is a bad idea. But again, that’s person dependent because some people wouldn’t enjoy that stuff.

And that’s fine. But I think I think anything that good, good inputs can make good output. Right. So if you have like good health inputs, I think that’s good output. But I think I think that is awesome. I think the ruck is awesome. You know, I had a guy try something like that in my last neighborhood or two neighborhoods ago when it was more of like a neighborhood where people.

I don’t know, I just I live in neighborhoods now that are a little bit more rural, so it’s not like there’s just not as many people. And so and then he tried to charge for it after. Yeah. After a couple of months, it wasn’t a rucking group. It was like there was like this grass, like key, just like a median that like you could go like you could play soccer on football.

It was like a cool spot. And then he was like, yeah, we’re going to work out here for like we’re going to meet for workouts and all this stuff. And then he tried to turn into a side hustle and he broke the whole damn thing down. Like I would go every once in a while because I’m doing my own training.

But I just did it for like the reasons you’re doing it now is like, yeah, let’s meet up with some other some other dudes. Let’s like do something hard together. Like and I would go occasionally. And then he tried to monetize it, which I thought was hilarious. And anyway, the whole thing fell apart because people like I’m not paying anything for this.

Like he said, we’ll go put together the workouts. And like now, bro, like it’s really not that challenging for you. But then no one everyone feels awkward of like, well, you guys can do it down there. We’ll do it down here. Like just know the whole thing. The whole thing fell apart. So anyway, I think you have a good a good structure.

But I think that social factor to you is a superpower, whether you realize it or not is like I was thinking about this as I was preparing for this podcast. And I kind of mentioned to you on our most recent trip in Charleston is like, where will Danny Matei take me next? It’s like always like I write a book on this at some point, but it’s like I’ve you know, just things that we’ve done are cool.

But like some like highlight moments is like, OK, we’re having lunch with this guy who’s worth like close to a billion dollars in the second largest house in North Carolina about a business opportunity. I’m like, never would be talking to him being if it wasn’t for Danny Matei. You know, we were walking into other partnerships now and opportunities where it’s like similar situation.

It’s like, well, this has the ability to change my life forever. It’s like I’d never walk in this opportunity if I had never met Danny Matei, like just these things over and over again. And even going back to that finance event in Utah. There are hundreds of people at this event or maybe 100 people, that’s probably about what the event size felt like.

And then you’re like, I’m going to run up and talk to this guy. You can talk to him. And then the next you can’t come back over to me and even you’re like, all right, tomorrow morning, we’re going to meet at his house. We’re going to do more and he’s going to make us some lattes. Yeah, and I was like, what are you talking about, man?

We’re just here for the event. And you go to the guy who started the whole company, the event. And then you got us like this next level access to be able to talk to him in his kitchen and do this hard work out together and all this stuff. So I wanted to kind of talk to you about that. Were you born that way?

Is it something that you strive for? Or is it just these things happen? They just happen. You don’t you’re not in control of like, how do you how do you do this stuff? Who knows? Like, I’m not I’m not the most social person in the world. That’s actually what’s really funny to me is like, I just got I got invited to go to this.

There’s like a there’s a group in my neighborhood called the Concerned Fathers of Ormond Park, which is where I technically don’t live in Ormond Park. It’s the neighborhood next to me. But we used to live over there. And so I get invited to this. They invite this. They invite me to this every Christmas.

And I always turn down because all it is just it’s like binge drinking in some terrible band forever. And it’s always like a Thursday or Friday. And I’d rather sit at home and watch a Christmas movie with my wife. Honestly, not interested. Right. So and it’s not that I have an issue. It’s just not really my thing.

You know, if I want to hang out with people like I would rather wake up at six o’clock in the morning, go on a rock with all these guys. And let’s go do that instead of, you know, go just go get like hammered and watch them serve a band. So like I’m just I’m not the most social person in the world.

And I know people that are like incredibly like they have so many friends in this huge network. Right. And I find that actually quite exhausting. But I don’t know to your point. Yes, it is weird that somehow I stumble into these interactions. And they’re like, and you don’t have many stories about just random shit that has happened to me that people are like, how the fuck does that happen?

I have no idea. I just don’t know. But I’m also not I’m not, I guess, unwilling to go and have a conversation with anybody like I’ll just go. I don’t really care who they are. I’ll just I’ll talk to them or I’ll I’ll put myself out there, you know, if I think somebody is interesting or if I have something to ask them.

And I think that is maybe people don’t do that. That might be one thing. Right. And they’re just like, oh, he’s probably busy. I probably shouldn’t talk to them, whatever. And I just kind of look at I just view people as being people, even when we were, you know, like with our with our practice, I had a ton of professional athletes that came my way, mainly because I would work with pro athletes.

And I don’t really get I don’t really care who they are, what they’re doing or how much money they make. Like, I just you just I’m going to talk to you like a regular person. We’re in the same conversation, no matter if you’re a teacher or if you’re starting line backer for whatever. And I don’t think I think people in those situations in particular, that’s pretty rare.

Like they don’t get treated normal that often. Or somebody who was watching me from them, you know, or they want to use them in their marketing. Every time I’ve taken a fucking video, somebody put on my Instagram or somebody I worked with as a professional athlete. Zero times. That’s how many because I’m not doing that.

That’s not unprofessional thing. You’re coming here and ask me for help. So I think in some ways I’m a very lucky person. I think it’s a real thing, actually. Like I used to think, oh, it’s not a real thing. My daughter’s lucky as fuck. Shit happens to her similar to me. She’s so lucky and she knows it.

She knows it now. Like I wasn’t aware of that. So, you know, in some ways it’s also self-fulfilling. If you think you’re lucky and you think you’re going to be able to accomplish X, Y and Z, you’re more likely to actually try to do it. You know, and it’s like a weird form of confidence that comes from you’re like, I’m pretty lucky.

I think I got a shot. You know, I like my chances and you may be wrong, you know, and whatever. But yeah, I’ve had just like really, really fortunate events in my life with interactions with people that have turned into, you know, very positive things for myself and my family. And I don’t know why I really I really don’t.

I think it’s just, you know, I don’t know. Maybe it’s the way the way I was born. It’s something in the universe I don’t understand. Maybe it’s just something that I do that I don’t even understand that I do that other people see as either attractive or off-putting. But yeah, I don’t know, man. I just like rub my head and go buy a locker lottery ticket because I think you might improve your chances somehow.

Yeah, I think just keeping your ideas, your mind open to the fact that like this conversation could lead somewhere like I’m so utilitarian. It’s like it’s bad. I’m like, oh, I would ever talk to that person. I don’t know if I’ll ever talk to them again. I don’t see any use in this relationship. Like it’s like it’s it’s kind of bad.

I mean, I honestly have been trying to work on it to some degree, but like I think at least having that I that openness to like, I don’t know where this could go, but like, hey, let’s let’s have a conversation. Let’s let’s see where it goes. And, you know, I think it’s not something that you’ve had to work on it.

It comes naturally, but I think it serves you really well. But I think that in business, there are lots of things that we have had to work on, maybe on the personal side. And I did want to dive into that a little bit because I think you and I had similar I don’t know if I’d call it upbringings or ideas or whatever about finance and like, you know, being a little stingy with money or like having limiting beliefs around money, something like that, you know, those kind of things.

I think you and I had similar background and we’ve had to overcome those things. I feel like we like met each other on that path, like at the perfect right time, like we had worked through some of that stuff on our own in our previous businesses before we got to work together, you know, like going back to business partnerships.

That’s another thing I think that was like. Why our business partnership has been successful is like we did a lot of work on ourselves before we even got to the point where we were business partners, not that we stopped working on ourselves, we still done like I don’t know anybody who’s more into personal development and work on ourselves than like the three of us as partners, like we’re all like very into those things.

But what do you think or how do you think you had to overcome those things or like work on yourself? Like, how necessary are those things, not just in business partnerships, but like for growth in general? And you could tackle that from the finance side or like any limiting beliefs that maybe you had.

But like. The what my point being is like you have some things that work really well in your favor, but like there are some things that you probably identified like this is not going to serve me like I got to do something about it. How did you identify those things and know that you had to work on stuff to overcome it?

Yeah, well, I think that I think that starting a business will is like a magnifying glass for the positive and negative parts of you, right? And like no one tells you that I thought it was starting a business to be able to like not have to work for somebody else. And then quickly you realize, oh my God, like I’m a psycho when it comes to these things and I’m terrible at these things.

But for some reason, like I’m really good at these and it’s almost like instant feedback, right? You know, to me, it’s like if I’m getting back into shooting a bit more. And I hate shooting these paper targets because I get no feedback. Like if I if I hit a if I hit a metal target, you know, I hear it and I get that instant feedback.

And like I think a business is like that. It’s like you get instant failure, success or failure immediately. Right. And there’s there’s two things that, you know, I would say that I really noticed there were the things I need to improve. And one of those and it may sound strange because like I’m I think I’m a relatively like pleasant person to be around, but I have a very short temper, like very, very like quick to get angry individual.

And I’ve just I’ve been like that, you know, for my whole life. And my family, you know, they would they always say, oh, we’re we’re Italian. Italians run hot, you know, and like that. I don’t know how many generations my family’s been saying that, but it’s been a lot, you know, like I’m like as I’ve dug into my like genealogy, like, dude, my great grandfather murdered somebody at a poker game.

You know, like my grandfather got put in jail in the Air Force for getting in trouble for like fighting. And like this, this is like we’re just like kind of short tempered people. Right. But that doesn’t mean you can’t improve that because as an adult, I can’t go around and punch somebody. This is a terrible idea.

And it’s just it’s something it’s self-control is all it really is. Right. So for me, like I had to work really hard on that because it’s not like I want to punch a staff member, but I would like to verbally I could lose my temper if somebody would frustrate me or it’s like, we’re going to see it my way or somebody would talk back to me in a way that I thought was disrespectful.

That would never happen in the military. Right. And you can’t take that. You can’t take that same level of I guess like you’re expecting people to have a bearing about them in a military setting versus civilian settings. And that’s where I was coming out of. Right. So that was that was tough for me, like to just to be able to, like, you know, control my own sort of emotions around that.

And this is a lot of self-work, man. I worked through like a lot of different, you know, personal development individually, but then through different kind of like variations of therapy and things that frankly helped me a ton. And now that was a big I would say number one. But number two is definitely money mindset and money mindset for me.

You know, I think we do come from very similar background military, you know, family background. But my family is they’re not I wouldn’t call them like they’re not like cheap, but they have very specific rules about what you should and should do with money. And it’s there was never enough. Right.

It was a scarcity mentality that I’m assuming comes from their parents who were like legitimate, you know, Great Depression, didn’t know if we’re going to have food kind of people. And I would see that like we go visit my grandparents and they would literally boil a ham for the week. They would boil a ham and we would have ham and eggs for breakfast.

We’d have ham sandwiches for lunch. We have ham and cabbage for dinner. And that would be like five days straight of ham dishes. And we my whole family to this day hates ham because of this live off of like the cheapest food possible. They would like to stretch everything. And my parents were like that, too.

So we’d go if we went to a restaurant, you know, which was rare. We very rarely went out to eat. It was no appetizers. And you sure as hell better get water. Swear to God, if you like, if you get fucking sweet tea, you’re you. Oh, man. My dad would lose his shit whenever we get out of there. Right.

He would lose his mind. And so never, ever happened. Right. Just give me water. I remember once I went to a Mexican restaurant and, you know, pay for the salsa. And he was so fucking mad, like, just piss. He’s like, they’ve bait and switch this. And, you know, so that’s kind of the way that I looked at it was like this finite resource, never enough.

It’s, you know, you got you got to scroll it away. You have to, you know, save, save, save, save. But don’t ever spend it on anything or enjoy, you know, the money that you that you make. And as I got to that point where we start to make more money, it was very hard for me to actually spend it on things, you know, because that just wasn’t the way that we were brought up.

I didn’t ever have a problem with saving. Like, if anything, that was actually a superpower that they gifted me with. But enjoying it was another thing, which is actually very hard. So, you know, kind of working through that and realizing, like, what’s the point, you know? And I find actually like giving it away or helping people with things, buying things for friends and family members or like helping them go on experiences with us.

And maybe they can’t afford. I love that. I’ll spend on that all day long. I don’t really care about, you know, new things. Like, I don’t really care about like what my truck looks like or not like I’ll drive whatever, you know, as long as it gets me where I where I need to go. I don’t care about a fancy watch or whatever clothes like I just rather would like do cool shit with people that I like.

And if they don’t have to pay for it, even better. Right. Like so. So that’s something that for me, that’s been a lot of like, again, self-work and talking to other entrepreneurs, too, because like talking to other entrepreneurs that are very successful, if they’re further ahead of you. One of the things that I found is really cool is they do want to tell you their experience and they want to help you not make the same mistakes if possible, because they kind of see, you know, you on the same path that they are.

And that could go very bad. I know you met some entrepreneurs where their life is a fucking mess outside. And some it’s like they got all their shit together. And I really like I bias who I pay attention to based on what their life looks like outside their business. Like, I would much rather look at somebody that has a moderately successful business, but is crushing it in life than somebody that’s just like killing it in business.

Everything else is falling apart. I don’t really look at it as a as positive thing at all. It’s a huge failure, in my opinion. So some it’s been mentorship. But a lot of it’s been like a lot of reading, a lot of self-work, a lot of working with professionals on improving these things. But once I got those two things dialed in, man, my life got like so much better.

Yeah, and I think it’s funny is I picked that up from a guy in pilot training. I’ll never forget where we were driving. And it’s just very easy in pilot training to kind of know who the best pilot is. It’s like not. I’m sure it’s like that on like athletic teams and like sports teams or like whatever, you know, like at these higher levels.

But I was talking to a friend about it. I was like, yeah, he’s he’s clearly the best one here. Like, he’s just he is like some people. It’s just so easy for them to pick everything up. And like, they’re really naturally talented. And some of us had to work for all that. And he’s like, he’s like, yeah, but the rest of his life is like a mess.

Like he was like about to get a divorce and like all these other like he was a phenomenal pilot, but everything else sucked. Like he was just he was an asshole. And like ever since that, my friend at the time said that to me, I’ve taken a similar mindset to you is like when I look at other people’s success, I’m always like, and it’s it’s not necessarily like looking for an excuse as to why they might be further ahead than you and you’re not there.

That’s not what it’s doing. It’s like it’s more like, is your life or do you even enjoy your life? Because I know a lot of entrepreneurs who don’t, you know, they just are like. They’re they’ve the business has taken over their life, they’re not having a good time, they haven’t done any of the work that we’re talking about, and so they’re not able to enjoy it.

And I think we’re at a point now where we’re we are able to enjoy it, you know, even while still growing the business. And, you know, going back to the finance thing, it’s like I always tell Emily, I’m like, if I die unexpectedly because like maybe at some point I’ll get this written out a little bit more, but if I die unexpectedly, just take our finances to Danny.

Here are like some spreadsheets and like life insurance and stuff like he could probably just look at this for like a week and then just be like, OK, here’s what you need to do and like just trust whatever he says. And that’s the level of trust I have in you on the financial side, you know, as a friend, as a business partner, but also like after I’m gone is like, hey, he will straighten everything out.

So I think. To your point of like it’s something that we had to work on, but at the same time, I feel like some people can go in the opposite way. Like I feel like I did this for a small amount of time, wasn’t long. And I think it’s because my upbringing to where I was like, you’re being too ridiculous with money, you’re saving too much, whatever, just like just spend it.

And it’s just like and I slammed the gas pedal in the other direction. So I was like, well, we’re just screw it. We’re going to take all these nice trips. We’re going to buy more expensive things. And still, even for me, it wasn’t crazy. Like some people would be like really crazy. It still wasn’t that crazy.

But I was like, you know, went that other direction. But then I’ve kind of like settled. I feel like in a very comfortable place where like I’m not afraid to spend money on things like you’re talking about, like, you know, a trip here or like whatever. But again, the same thing. I don’t care. Like I actually just reminded me the other day, like a picture came up like we have that skylight calendar.

I think you guys have one, too. And like a picture came up of me from like 12 years ago. And I was wearing the same T-shirt that I was wearing in that one. And I was like, damn, I need to like I need like a wardrobe refresh or something here, man. Like that’s that’s crazy that I still even have this T-shirt.

So I’m unwilling. I just don’t spend money on some things, but I’ll I’ll spend a bunch on like, yeah, my family traveling or anything. So do you feel like that has served you now to where you’re in a better position to where it’s like? Because we were brought up with this like limiting belief mindset on finance and like we could point the finger and be like, our parents sucked and that was awful.

I mean, not actually sucked, like sucked in giving us that. But it’s like it’s also kind of rooted us as we’ve earned more money to be like good stewards of those resources and not necessarily like spend it or like whatever. Like, do you think that unfortunate upbringing, like limiting belief mindset was necessary to kind of get you to that blend where you’re at today?

I think in some ways that, yeah, I think there’s advantages to it. Right. I can’t say that I’m taking that approach with my kids. You know, it’s it is going to be my next question is like, and so what are you doing now? You know, like with your kids to try and because I’m on that line all the time, like sometimes it’s like I’ll hear myself say something to them, like it’s too expensive.

And then they’re like, oh, yeah, OK. And I’m like, no, that’s not what I wanted to say. It’s like it’s not valuable enough for us to spend our money on. Like it’s, you know, something I got to rephrase things a lot of times with the kids. And I find I find it difficult. Well, I think it’s more about I mean, some of it, I think, is nature nurture, right?

Like some kids are more interested in money than others. And I think when I think because starting and running a business is so hard, it’s so hard that the money that we make as, you know, income that comes from those businesses. I don’t want to waste that on stupid shit because I know how hard it is to actually like build a business.

It’s very difficult. And versus if somebody let’s say you just inherited a bunch of money. I think that’s where people they don’t really they don’t see the value in it because they didn’t earn it the same way. Right. And so that never was the case for me. And I doubt that’s going to be the case for my kids.

I just don’t even see a world where I’m leaving them money like significant money. Right. I mean, there’s things we’ve done that we’ve been able to put them in a place where they should be able to have like a safety net with certain things. But I think it’s really important for them to understand that they need how to add value to the world and also just to understand where money goes and what it’s used for.

Even the other day, my daughter came home. She’s 11 and she had this mock budget they had to do in school. So it was like, you have this much money. You can decide to live in one of these three places. Each nicer is more expensive, whatever. You can decide to eat out or not. You can decide to have a pet if you want.

You decide to give money away. So anyway, she has a little budget and she’s going through it and shows it to me. And I’m like, this is good. Yes, this is great. I was like, do you want to see an actual budget, you know, where things actually go? Because I use this app called Monarch Finance. I think it’s called Monarch Money.

And we’ve been using it now for over a year. So everything is like indexed in a really clean way. And there’s charts you can show. So I actually just pulled up our monthly budget that we have as a family and I took her through it, you know, and she was like, oh, my God, groceries. So this is our actual budget, right, with my 11-year-old daughter.

And we’re going through everything. You know, what was funny is I actually caught it. I was like, what is this shit? You know, and it was like a free charge that I meant to cancel and may have canceled. So but anyway, I took her through everything. And I don’t know, I think for a lot of people, they maybe wouldn’t want to do that because they don’t want their kid to know how much their mortgage is or whatever.

But for me, like, I want to show her, hey, this percentage of what we make is what we spend on where we live. And this is how much we spend on food. And this is how much we spend on our dogs. And this is what, like, we put money towards that we’re allocating for other things, like for summer trip or whatever it might be.

And, you know, maybe for her, she didn’t have all the context for that. But I’d rather start that conversation where she understands it and she has, like, a strong understanding of money and how to use that and also to respect that. Because all my kids, like, they try to sell shit constantly. My daughter had a bake sale yesterday.

They made $121 on a bake sale. And with her and her friends selling freaking cookies. I’m like, this is a small business if you do this every week. Like, this is impressive. But I want them to actually understand that stuff. So but as far as respecting it, like, they don’t just get shit like they have to earn stuff.

They use their own money that they’ll get, like, for allowance only by doing the things that they’re supposed to do. And then they can only use a portion of it to then go whatever they want to buy, you know, whatever, a pair of shoes or go out to you with their friends or something like that.

But I’m not giving them money for no reason. Like, I think it’s a great way to raise kids that don’t understand money. And then you expect them to get out into the world. And then it’s like, oh, this I have like no money left over because I spent it all on pizza and beer. You know, it’s like, OK, well, lesson learned.

But now you’re 18 years old and no one’s ever actually like had a conversation with you. So I think it’s actually very, very important that they have a healthy relationship. But also, I want my kids to be driven to make money like, yeah, fucking cool life like a super I am so fortunate to just be in the position that we’re in.

And it’s because we’ve been able to have successful businesses. Right. And my kids see the ability that we have to do things to help other people to go on amazing trips to live where we live, you know, to not really have to freak out if somebody charges for salsa at a restaurant. Like these are things that I want them to get accustomed to and that they’re going to want it themselves and they’re going to have to go get it because I’m not going to give it to them.

You know, like that’s just the way it is. So I want it’s like a carrot for me. I want them to see what’s possible. And then cool, man, go do it. Go do something that’s going to allow you to live a life like this as well, because you see how awesome it is. And so do you think that you want them to be entrepreneurs or do you think like because we know that there’s a double edged sword to that, right?

Like and maybe we can help them through that. But that’s something I think about frequently is like, do I want them to be an entrepreneur or work for someone else and be happy? Like it’s like if you if you got to pick, I mean, they ultimately got to pick get to pick. But like, what do you what do you want for them?

Oh, yeah, I do want them to be happy. I think it’s I think it would be hard for my kids to long term work for somebody else after what they see with Ashley and I having like we have complete flexibility over what we decide to do or not do. Right. And I definitely see a world where they can get a get a job working for somebody else.

But in the end, both my kids are fascinated with making money like they I just see it in both of them. Like they just they’re just like, oh, I can take this thing. I must have super into cards. So like he wants to buy cards, flip them with his friends and then be able to like have stack more value than what he had before.

And he understands like this car’s worth this and this is worth whatever. And like that’s that is owner is like a little mini business, right? If there’s an arbitrage there, there’s sales and negotiation. It’s great. Like my daughter does stuff like this where she’s constantly trying to sell stuff and she’s organizing with her friends.

Like she literally got all her friends together. She set up everything. You’re going to make this. We’re going to price it at this. You know, we’re going to go here at this day because like we live across from a school and they get out early on Wednesdays. So they timed it so that school was getting out when they had their little bake sale in front of our house.

And there’s just so many so smart, dude. So they sold out like they could do it every Wednesday and probably have the same response. So when she organized all this and I’m just like, I don’t see a world where she’s going to unless she has like a company that’s big and she feels like vested into it in some way, I don’t see a world where either one of them are going to just like take a nine to five for just a paycheck.

I don’t really see it. I think they’ll do something. And selfishly, I would love to start a business with my kids like I and like a real one. Like I’m not going to I will take equity in their company like and I’ll let you do something in it and they’re going to have to sit down with me in the finance and like whatever.

Maybe I’ll give the business to them at some point. But like we’re going to start out and it’s going to be a legitimate learning lesson. We’re going to put work in whatever it is. I’m going to put a lot less work in than they are because I’m going to be old. But whatever it is, like we’re going to do something together and like in my I don’t know, like long term, a huge win for me would be some sort of family business that we can actually work on together.

It’s fun. It’s like a passion thing that we actually like really enjoy that they want to do and they can uniquely like, you know, thrive in that as well. Maybe start competing coffee shop. Maybe we’ll just do straight lattes and go that route. But probably not. That seems like a tough business to win.

Yeah, I think restaurants in general. And I think that’s where I’m the same thing. I think about that all the time. I want a long term like family business. I don’t know if that’s going to be black coffee or if that’s going to be maybe something more real estate. Emily and I love building houses and like so like maybe we can do that for other people.

And so like I think about those things, too. But the biggest thing I try to get to across my kids is the value, like just value in general. And I think if they can understand that long term, I will be less concerned about them. It’s because like I correct them constantly if they if they ever if they’re ever saying something that’s more like trading time for money.

I’m like, that’s not really how it works. It’s it’s value. It’s like the more value that you can create in the bigger problem that you solve, the more money that you’ll you’ll make because you’re creating that value. And I think if they can understand that fact, they’re going to understand it’s not like, oh, I get paid $20 an hour, $50 an hour.

It’s like that’s irrelevant. No one cares. Like you shouldn’t care about that. Like it shouldn’t be chasing the highest dollar per hour because that’s not how value works is values like what can you shortcut for somebody that they don’t have to do now? So because you did it for them and like we talk about it in every like the smallest capacity of like cutting someone else’s grass.

Well, he really wants to get into that. I’m like, dude, you’re not going to you’re not going to crack into this market like you’re just not like nobody wants like a he started next year, a 13 year old like cutting their grass like when they’re already paying like a crew of six to come out here and like it’s just not going to happen.

But I want him to try it somewhere. Like I wanted like where can I can I drive you somewhere with a lawnmower? And he’s like, yeah. So what do I get paid per hour for something like that? I’m like, it’s not that man. It’s like what you’re saving somebody from them not having to do it. And that’s also the way you got to approach it when you talk to them.

It’s like, hey, you want to have dinner with your family this weekend instead of focus on, you know, trimming the hedges? I got you covered. If you can if you could do it, if you can phrase it that way, you’re going to cut a lot more yards than like talking about what your dollar per hour rate is. Well, my so my son’s already doing something like kind of what you’re talking about, where he called it trash tacklers and he takes people’s trash and recycling cans to the street on Sunday night like that’s where they pick it up Monday mornings.

And he went to like, you know, we have some of our neighbors. He went to him. He is with I think he has four or five of them. They all pay him ten dollars a month. And it literally takes him almost no time. And he has to do our shit anyway. So he literally goes out. It takes him, I don’t know, less than a couple of minutes to put him out and to bring him back in.

And, you know, for him, like he has really taken any further than that. I think he’s just cool to make 50 bucks a month or whatever or something that doesn’t take a lot of time. But the responsibility that I take this much Sunday rolls around. There’s plenty of Sundays where he’s like, damn it, I got to go to it’s raining.

And I guarantee you, like my neighbors are like, I’m glad I have this little kid to do this for me. But he had to go around and ask them about it. Like and that was so terrifying for him, for him to go up to our neighbors who we actually know and ask them if like he can do this for them and save them time.

Like he got turned down by one of them. And then the other five of the guys said yes. And he just was like it was like he hit a home run. Like he couldn’t couldn’t believe how exciting it was and how cool was it. He could actually get paid for this thing. On the flip side of that, I think it’s very, very important that people experience what it feels like to work a shitty, shitty job.

And this is something that my dad went out of his way to do this. And I know he did on purpose. I’ve asked him about this. I say, why did you get me a job driving a dump truck for a heating and cooling company with prison release workers that I was in when I was driving around in rural South Carolina with?

And he was like, well, I didn’t know about the prison release workers at the time. But like I wanted you to be outside in the summer with a hard manual labor job. You know, and like he did that for us and he would finance these jobs up like we would not want to do these at all. And I think it’s very important to do that or be like a waiter and realize that people are shitty and they can treat you poorly in the service business.

Like that right there gives me perspective for the other things that I eventually did. So, yeah, you better believe it. My friend owns a pool cleaning company. And as soon as Jack’s a little bit older, he’s going to be out there in the summer, cleaning pools with him. And I know that shit sucked and he’s going to hate it and he’s going to be tired.

He’s going to be like exhausted, but he’s going to make some money. He’s going to realize what he doesn’t want to do one day, you know, and that’s important perspective, I think, as well. Awesome, man. Well, I think we’ll wrap it up here. I know we have a meeting that we’re actually both rolling into right after this.

I appreciate it. I think this won’t be the last time you come on. I think we can always talk about a million different things. But if anybody’s interested in hearing more of your stories and what you’re doing, like, you know, where do you want to point anybody who’s listening to this episode? Yeah, I mean, probably the easiest thing is just, you know, the Peachy Entrepreneur podcast, which is the business podcast that I started.

I don’t know how long ago we’ve been doing it for a long time now. There’s like seven or eight hundred episodes in that people can listen to. And it’s mainly like clinical business focus. You can definitely go there. And then, you know, on Instagram, PT Biz, you know, that’s our business to be out together, as well as just Danny Matei.

PT is my handle there. Pretty easy to find. But no, dude, I appreciate the conversation. Hopefully other people like this. I feel like we would have this conversation no matter what. And I don’t know. Those are actually the podcasts that I like listening to the most. It’s just two people that know each other kind of talking about stuff that they would normally talk about anyway.

It doesn’t have to be scripted. And, you know, I got to make sure I hit these talking points about your new book or whatever. I mean, we’re just like literally two people at a similar stage of life that are trying to figure out, you know, how we can continue to improve and add value to the people around us and just have like a meaningful life.

I think at the end of the day is all it comes down to. So, yeah, hopefully people get some value from that. And maybe we said something that can help you in some way, or maybe we just wasted an hour of your time. I don’t know. But either way, I enjoyed it. So thanks. Yeah, man, I think we would have this conversation either way.

I’m glad that it got recorded. And yeah, these are the ones that are most interesting to me, too. And that’s why I probably, you know, we I don’t do a lot of interviews on this. You’re actually the first one I’m recording that to be released. And I just don’t. I’ve done that before. I know you’ve done it as well.

Like this podcast really originally started as the Better Humanology podcast. You were actually I interviewed you back in the day before we have business partners on that podcast. I’ve had a lot of people on there, but it’s just like it’s not as meaningful. Like it’s I get like cross pollination of like audiences.

And sometimes you actually just want to reach out to someone. They’re interested. Interesting. And you do want to have them on your podcast. But I feel like once if there’s an established relationship, the conversation is just better. And it’s more entertaining and educational, which are like the two box you want to check if you can on any podcast episode.

So thanks for being here. Only problem for us is we’re not really super current or up to date on current events. So, you know, like if there’s anything like relevant going on in the world, we’re probably actually like not good at talking about any of that stuff. But yeah, if you want to chat about business and family stuff, man, all day, you know, and we need to get into some of the health and wellness stuff, which I think is just so fascinating for most people that, you know, you are probably one of the more knowledgeable people in that area that I’ve ever met.

And, you know, it’s interesting. You focus a bit more on business now, but the mixture of the two, I see you see it with like the Schumann lab, for instance, like Andrew Schumann, who I just listened to his podcast with Kelly’s to read, by the way, which you haven’t listened to that. It’s like three and a half hours long.

Yeah, I picked and choose on my Heberman’s. That one I will listen to. But it’s like he has to have a guest that like or a topic where I’m like, all right, I’ll do it. It’s just like the time commitment there is crazy sometimes. That was interesting because I mean, like Kelly has been working at Stanford for a very long time with a couple other professors there.

So like, I mean, they know each other for a long time, like well, well before the Heberman podcast ever started. Right. So it is kind of interesting because they have they have a lot of experience around each other. They know each other well. So it’s an interesting listen as far as that’s concerned.

But if you think about Sheberman and when we were at the HubSpot conference up in Boston, like he was one of the keynote presenters and I’m like business events. Yeah, dude. And not only that, but yeah, it’s like a tech conference and he’s talking about contrast therapy and, you know, sleep optimization.

And you’re just like, holy shit, there is way more crossover here than there ever was before. So I think it’s an interesting parallel. And it’s cool to see people that want to learn more about taking care of themselves in that world. So anyway, I think you’re in a sweet spot as far as the two are concerned and how you mix those together.

So, you know, I’ve seen the podcast has gone well, but I imagine that your newsletter is going to continue to be really, really popular because it’s trending that direction. And I think it’s a great trend. Thanks, Ben. I appreciate that. We’ll have to hop into health and wellness a little bit more next time.

But Danny, I appreciate you being on, man. All right, man. Thanks so much. Appreciate it.