Ground Up 032 - Risking Everything w/ Rich Roll

if you are on the outside looking in you'd be like this guy's this guy's got a good life but on the inside I was dying it was like this whole time I'd been trying to jam this square peg into a round hole I was deeply dissatisfied with my career choices it was feeling like a low-grade depression I wasn't taking care of myself physically I put on all this weight and terrible lifestyle habits is this the rest of my life that's rich roll he's an ultra endurance athlete author of the best-selling book finding ultra and with more than 25 million downloads he's got one of the most popular podcasts in the world in our conversation we talked about the huge risks he took early on how he deals with pain and also how he became one of the 25 most fit men in the world you're listening to the ground up show a podcast that inspires creatives to make meaningful content and pursue their passion my name is Matt Dee Avella and I'm a filmmaker best known for the Netflix documentary minimalism and I'm sitting down with creators to talk about their process the lessons they've learned on how to make an impact [Music] rich thanks for being here I appreciate it yeah thank you for having me so we were talking a little bit before the podcast started about some of the video stuff you're doing it seems like you're you're making moves there and you're starting to be really consistent with it have you always done video I wouldn't say that I've always done video I've always been interested in video in fact but long before any of the stuff that I do now I was getting into filmmaking and writing I wrote and directed a short film that did the festival circuit in 2005 and even won some awards so yeah I was called down dog it was a satire on the LA yoga scene it's up on Vimeo you can check it out it's like a 22 minute short that I shot on 35 millimeter with a full crew and the whole thing so and and I went to I did a summer intensive filmmaking program at NYU back in 1990 1991 or 1992 so I've always been interested in film I've peed on movies and things like that I open up a youtube account you know probably 2008 and started doing a little bit of stuff here and there but never really fully invested in it and then I did I took a stab at making a couple vlogs like you know over the last two years and really enjoyed that and I love editing and I love storytelling but I just couldn't do it on my own you know I just needed help because it was just overwhelming and it was eclipsing the other things that I was working on which is why I brought on David I've always been looking for a collaborative partner so that I could step into the video space and in a meaningful way and do it sustainably as so much of my time today is spent in editing I'm wondering should I like I feel like I needs to hire somebody because there's other stuff that needs to be done like I'm trying to build a podcast I'm trying to keep an audience engaged and keep them interested in what I'm making mmm and yes you have to do the work but I feel like it's not sustainable long term to keep turning out these videos that take 8 to 10 hours to write but you're a filmmaker like this is what you do like you could justify that time investment but I'm writing books and I'm doing all these other things and but I love the medium like I made this silly little video maybe a year and a half ago called vegan on $25.00 where I just spent a day going to different markets and seeing what you could buy for 25 bucks and I pulled an all-nighter to edit that thing like I literally stayed up all night I I'm pulling an all-nighter in 10 or 15 years you know and I came home at like 9:00 in the morning and my wife was like what are you doing and I was like I got obsessed I was like every little cut you know and that video is now has like two hundred and seventy thousand views it's the most viewed thing that I've done on YouTube so it's gratifying in that sense but I'm like I can't this this is not what I'm still like this is not what I'm supposed to be doing how do you approach that perfectionism where I know sometimes I'll just get caught up on a video and it's like every single edit I'm like re I'm probably spending way too much time looking at the details but like sometimes it's that video that takes off gets 200,000 views and it really has an impact so it's like how do you know when to justify putting in the time I don't I don't know well I don't do that well I'm a perfectionist to a fault which is a strength and also very much an Achilles heel and I carry that into the podcasting that I do in the writing and everything that I do and it makes me a bit of a control freak and I think ultimately it caps my growth you know so my journey has been about learning to focus on the things that I do best that other people can't do and learning to let go and empower other people around me to do you know to do the other tasks and that's challenging for me because I want to have my paws on everything and and you know that idea like oh only I can do it you know that's just an ego driven thing that will just drive your business in your life into the ground it's easy to get caught up in what other people are doing to you see somebody else make an amazing video or you see them doing a podcast in a specific way and you're like maybe I should do that maybe I should change it up you know it's really interesting to track that in both podcasting and YouTube you know when Casey came on the scene and started vlogging like he reinvented that genre in a beautiful way but then so many people have mimicked that and copied that and so the real question is what's next like where's the white space what people what are people not do where is there a need or a void that can be filled and you know I'm my podcast I started it it's been five years so I wouldn't say that I was an early adopter of the medium because it was online in 2006 or whatever I started in 2012 but it wasn't cool to have a podcast started you know the growth of this medium has exploded just in the last two years alone and it's really become kind of the new blog and I've stuck to my guns and have enough experience now to know how to do it the way that I want to do it and I don't spend a lot of time paying attention to what other people are doing but I am trying to evolve with it as well and you know we're in a video culture so my you know evolution that we were talking about just before we started this was stepping into video and like how can I do something creative and interesting in that space that isn't copycatting but it's also capturing you know the wisdom and the experience of the guests that I have on and translating it in a way that's dynamic to an audience that isn't necessarily listening to podcasts on their iPhone you know I mean I think the YouTube audience and the podcast the audience if you drew a Venn diagram they overlap but they're also very different yeah that's when I saw you start to do the video and brought on David to start making these really high quality beautiful videos and also filming your entire podcast episodes I was like damn it that was like that's what I thought was like making me unique because I haven't seen anybody doing it that way whereas they will be soon yeah it's gonna it's gonna happen do you see anybody today doing at that level there's a lot of documenting and there's a lot of kind of crappy camcorder type you know visuals that correspond with that go along with podcasting but I haven't seen anybody elevate it to an art form yet and you know with you I mean look the minimalism documentary you made is amazing like I love that movie like you're gifted and talented I've no doubt that that what you're creating now and will create or what this will evolve into will probably set the bar for that but I think that's the next that's the white space right so there's there's people videoing there gasps with GoPros and camcorders but how can you do it in how can you elevate that medium and make it a little bit more interesting so a big part of this podcast it's called the ground up show so it's going back and kind of deconstructing how you got here how you started the podcast how you got into fitness and everything in between back in college when you're thinking about going out into the quote-unquote real world what was your idea of success what did it look like for you my idea of success at that time was a very traditional one you know premise Don the American Dream you know I grew up upper-middle-class in Washington DC I went to a private all-boys high school I wore a coat and tie I was a good boy I never got in trouble but I was also a very awkward insecure kid I had a patch on mine or the headgear and was the last kid picked for a kickball and all that kind of stuff and ultimately found solace and success in the swimming pool so by the time I was a senior in high school I was a top-ranked recruit in in swimming and got into every college that I applied to you know I had my pick of the litter and went to Stanford you know unbelievable academic institution and also the best swimming program in the country at that time and so I was somebody with a lot of promise and somebody who grew up in a household where education was was paramount and I think you know not explicitly but there was expectations both placed on me and internally driven to like live up to the opportunities that I was lucky enough to have right so it started out with the idea of being a doctor you know like I thought that I always thought I was gonna be a doctor I was good in biology study that in college the first couple of years but but you know really my collegiate years are mostly about my introduction to alcohol and that and that was something that was new to me at the time I didn't I wasn't partying in high school I was swimming but when I when I got to college partying and having time really took center stage and started to really put a drain on my ambitions and I lost interest in in the sciences and shifted my major and ultimately by the time I graduated like I just where's my next good time I never really put a lot of thought into what I wanted to be or what was unique about me or what made me happy all of that energy was was in swimming and when swimming was over I was like well I never really thought about what I wanted to do all I wanted to do was party so like I moved to New York City because it seemed like a great place to get drunk and then law school just seemed like well that's what you do when when you know you have this pedigree that I had and you're not sure what you want to do my dad's a lawyer he loves being a lawyer but it was never like he wanted me he never put any pressure on me to be a lawyer it was almost like a default thing well that's a good career path it's safe you know you get to wear a nice suit and go out to nice lunches and talk about intellectual things like that sounds good you know listen it wasn't driven by a passion for the law or some desire to right wrongs or you know kind of an innate desire to to to pursue justice or anything like that so it was about like being safe being secure not taking risks you know that was very much my mindset was there any other options for you at the time at least that as you saw him well it was different I mean when I graduate from college I was in 1989 this is pre-internet you know I had that old Macintosh you know little the original Macintosh computer and I remember like going to the career like the career counselors like building at Stanford and you think this is Stanford like you know they must have like all kinds of interesting opportunities for people and it was just brochures for consulting companies and you could sign up to get interviewed by these investment banks but it was pretty limited it was like consulting and Investment Banking and being a paralegal in a law firm like it seemed like those were the only options which is weird like the idea that you could go online and that this whole world would open up to you where you could explore all these different interesting compelling dynamic career paths as a young person I didn't I couldn't find that I did I it didn't seem like it was available to me I'm sure it was but you know and I'm sure I didn't look very hard either but I just sort of took the path of least resistance I suppose I'm curious about the transitions in your life because you go from college to joining a law firm and then from the law firm to doing freelance and then freelance to fitness and being an author and podcaster like those transitions to me are fascinating because they're terrifying and they seem incredibly risky so you must have been making pretty good money as a lawyer and building a career in LA yeah I mean right after college I worked at a law firm in New York City as a paralegal which was a horrible experience a big wall street law firm and I just you know the people who were working there I was like a large didn't it didn't resonate with me at all and it's shocking to me now in retrospect that I that I went to law school after that experience but it was like well that's what you do and I went to law school and somehow squeaked my way through that despite you know the fact that my alcoholism was really starting to cause problems in my life got a job at a law firm in San Francisco then moved down to Los Angeles to work in an entertainment firm and that's where the [ __ ] kind of hit the fan in terms of my alcoholism and my life fell apart at that time and that's a whole other story I'm happy to get into if you want but ultimately got sober at 31 and the next eight years was about trying to repair all the wreckage that I'd created as a result of my drinking and using and I kind of took all of that compulsive addict alcoholic energy and invested it in workaholism and I was successful in our in that regard by the time I was 38 39 years old successful legal career living in Los Angeles met my wife building a family decent income all the good stuff like all the stuff you know like nice sports car and and if you were on the outside looking in you'd be like this guy's this guy's got a good life but on the inside I was dying it was like this whole time I'd been trying to jam this square peg into a round hole I was deeply dissatisfied with my career choices it was fueling like a low-grade depression I wasn't taking care of myself physically I put on all this weight and terrible lifestyle habits and all of that and I was desperate to try to figure out how am I going to is this the rest of my life you know I've looked around in the law firm where I worked and I didn't aspire to the lives of the partners they all were making great money and we're successful and some of them really enjoyed what they did and and good people but I just didn't I was like I don't see myself in that role but I was trying to force it you know I was like denying who I was at my core because I've never really looked at that and explored like well Who am I what is it that I'm here to express and what is unique about me and what makes me happy like those weren't questions I asked myself nor was I ever encouraged to ask myself and it really was sort of fomenting into this existential crisis like and you know I've only changed my life as a result of being in pain you know that's been the only true motivator to get me to shift my ways and it wasn't an overnight thing I mean there's a lot of things that came into play and it was a long road in many years of trying to recalibrate my professional career in my personal career and it wasn't easy like I I didn't stop practicing law until the day my first book came out so I was practicing law and writing a book and training for all these ultra distance events that none of which was really generating any money you know and kind of slowly escalating out of what was then a solo law practice I was no longer in a big law firm but still couldn't see the path forward you know how am I going to even though I wrote a book and got paid to write that book it wasn't enough to support a family with four kids like how am I going to craft a career based on the things that I was slowly learning you know that I was passionate about and that I had a voice and a platform to to pursue there was no template for how to do that and it was I had to like craft it out of whole cloth I think in it and and it wasn't it wasn't linear by any stretch of the imagination it doesn't seem like there is a template now even today to say these are the steps that you have to take in order to get where you want to go no I mean for me it was very much like a leap of faith gets thrown around very cavalierly but it but it was I was like I'm not practicing law anymore I have no idea where I'm gonna my next paycheck is gonna come from I don't know how that's gonna work at all but I trusted that I knew myself well enough and I knew the feedback that I was getting from the book was potent enough to say there is something here like if I fully devote myself to figuring this out like I will I will figure it out and I don't know what that's gonna look like and you know it was we went through some very difficult financial times and we almost lost our house like I risked everything and I put a tremendous amount of strain on my family my wife always had my back she was like you're not going back to being a lawyer like this is what you have to do like you just have to stay the course and without that support I'd never would have been able to do it but it was really just showing up every day trying to pay attention what can I do and it was being in it was just being in service like what can I offer well I'll write this blog post or I'll go give this talk or I'll go do this none of which I was getting paid for the podcast I began I did it for two years before I made a single dollar on it like I just did it because it just seemed like a way to continue the conversation that my book began I didn't start it as a thinking it was going to be some kind of professional enterprise it was just something I felt strongly about I felt called to do and I think the lesson that I've learned as a result of that is that if you've done the internal work to really know yourself and what you're passionate about and you can if you can have the courage and the faith to step into that that indeed the universe will conspire to support you and you will find your way and it doesn't mean that it's gonna work out the way that you want it to work out or think that it's gonna work out and your timeline is not gonna be the timeline that you know that that's gonna play out but my experience is that by but by remaining steadfast that that is how I was able to see it through and be able to sit here and talk to you today yeah I believe pretty heavily in calculated risks so I graduated college with 96 thousand dollars in student loan debt and then I did the smartest thing I could think of I bought a brand new car that is about a hundred eighteen thousand dollars in debt so I was in no place to just risk it all and I guess risk it affects everybody a little bit differently some people can take risks a little bit more easily than others but I think that's probably one of the biggest things is that what can you stomach how like how little can you live on can you live on rice and beans or the next two years trying to make it work probably most people are not willing to take enough risk and they're also not willing to do the work or what it takes to achieve that life like they don't want to live on rice and beans they don't want to sell their car or you know they want to be able to maintain their lifestyle and and like live the dream occupation and I think you have to be willing to sacrifice quite a bit if that's what you want and ultimately you know my experience is that and this is I'm sure you know this from you know being in the world of the minimalist like this when when you're actively engaged in something you love doing that is personally fulfilling to you all that other stuff doesn't mean anything anymore when I was making a bunch of money and I was miserable I would just obsess on like what am I gonna get you know I want I need a new suit or I need like this pair of shoes or it was all about like what am I gonna buy to make me feel better because I wasn't even aware of how much I was suffering and I felt like that would be that would make me that would that would sell that won't on an unconscious level and now that I get to do whatever what I like doing and I'm fulfilled in that like I don't think about stuff it seems contradictory to a lot of people to say I want to stop focusing on the money that's when the money comes it's kind of ironic how that happens it's a spiritual equation it really is because if all you're doing is making something to in the hopes to get rich and famous you're so misguided in your direction that I don't think you're actually gonna realize all the ways that that's gonna affect your art and what you're creating and what you're putting out in the world I'm actually curious about as you evolved and as you started to get into fitness what was the the tipping point for you to get into fitness and start exercising I was pursuing this legal career I was having this existential crisis and meanwhile I wasn't as I said I wasn't taking care of myself physically 50 pounds overweight and shortly before I turned 40 this existential crisis that I was having sort of collided with with a health scare I was walking up a simple flight of stairs up to my bedroom late one night this is like shortly before I turn 40 and had to pause halfway up halfway up the staircase like winded out of breath and tightness in my chest that had me kind of buckled over and and really scared you know heart disease runs in my family my grandfather who had been a champion swimmer at the University of Michigan in the late 1920s had died very young of a heart attack which devastated my mother I don't think she's ever really fully recovered from that and she used to tell me my whole life like you got to watch what you eat and heart disease runs in the family but it's like you know bah bah bah when you're young you know you don't it's like in one ear out the other and having that experience at a young age and still thinking of myself as like this fit stanford swimmer even though I wasn't really woke me up and made me realize like I really need to fundamentally change my priorities and how I'm living and that's what launched me into this exploration of nutrition and food and that was something that you know wasn't overnight either but ultimately led me to attempting a plant-based diet because I tried everything else and nothing seemed to really work and it was like the one thing that I had in one box I hadn't checked yet because I didn't I don't really want to do it it sounded so extreme like oh you're gonna no animal products and no process feel like what's left to eat like life is over there's not gonna be any joy anymore but I guess you know you still want to live right so I tried it it was an experiment to start yeah an experiment you know I just was like I was trying to find a way to feel good you know in my body like what does it feel like to have the energy of a teenager you know is this like what does it feel like to like want to move your body like it was something that I just as a young person like my life was swimming in fitness and I loved the pool and I loved competition and I'd moved so far away from that and that had brought me so much joy as a young person and I was trying to recapture that because that was the one time in my life like that was something that made me happy and as you grow older its are like well that's kids play like now you're an adult you don't do that anymore but I was like so desperate to just reconnect with something that that gave me that sense once again and within a week or two of this plant-based diet experiment I started to feel myself again like I really had this restoration of vitality that was pretty profound and that's what gave me this impulse to start taking care of myself once again and that started out very low-key like you know pulling an old pair of running shoes out of the closet and going out for a jog for the first time in a long time or going back to the pool for the first time and as long as I could remember and my wife bought me a bike for my 40th birthday and you know I I didn't have any desire to be competitive in sports anymore I just wanted to like not have a gut and I wanted to be able to like not walk around feeling like [ __ ] all the time really that was it but I had a couple like breakthrough moments like the weight was melting off and I went out for this run one day after I've been doing this maybe four months or so and I I just I was like in the zone man and I ended up doing like a 24 mile run I hadn't run longer than an hour prior to that and it was a crazy like watershed moment where I was like wow like not only is this plant based diet agreeing with me like I feel like I just unlocked a part of myself that I didn't realize that I had and and it got me thinking a lot about the resiliency of the human body and spirit which is something that you know I experienced going from you know being a pretty gutter rat trunk into being sober and and what other areas of my life had I overlooked and and you know what is the you know where is the hidden potential in my life that that I'm blind to right now and and that's what got me interested in the world of ultra endurance sports because it's like this template to really push that and explore that so that's what lured me into this crazy world of doing these you know wild races that I've done over the years yeah I want to get into the races I really want to touch on the the you tend to shy away from the word vegan it's kind of become a bad word is it more plant powered I mean I don't I don't shy away from it I think that that yeah whether it's plant base plant out you know plant power or I like to call it because it's sort of a positive affirmative you know way of looking at it I don't shy away from the word vegan but I think the word vegan gets conflated with politics and I think people have a certain predisposition or idea of what being vegan is I think that's changing a lot now but even like four or five years ago or in 2012 when my book came out you know if you if you use the word vegan everybody has a mental construct of what that is like it's a it's a dreadlock dude kicking a hacky sack up at Humboldt or you know what I mean like which is cool like but I never identified with that like I never thought I would be vegan because I don't like that's not me like I like those guys I have friends like that but like that's not my vibe so plant-based is more neutral plant power it is more empowering I think but it's it's it's the same and I and I would say as a caveat to that that when I began this journey like you know it wasn't because I had some deep compassion for the animals or the environment I really just want to feel better yeah that was it I want to lose weight I want to feel good plant-based worked for me but the idea of bringing politics into it didn't seem like that just wasn't where I was coming from but having now been somebody who's lived this lifestyle for the last ten years like those issues have become much more important to me yeah and I think there are things that we need to talk more about that's exactly how I feel about minimalism I got into minimalism because I was personally dissatisfied I didn't I felt like I would never be successful I never achieve anything so it was really personal and kind of selfish but then once you get into it it starts to open up these other ideas for you in terms of the vegan being vegan and experimenting I actually I started three days ago my 30-day challenge to begin yeah so I'm three days in now I feel pretty good I mean my body's changing it's pretty clear my body's changing and I want to go the rich roll way which is people have the the false assumption that you're gonna be weaker by being vegan and I really like going to the gym and lifting so I want to get stronger by the end of the 30 days so I guess what missteps and might I make in my first week or so in I think that well yeah I have to look like get granular on what exactly you're eating and not eating I think but in terms of like common mistakes I think some people if they're saying they feel weak they're probably not eating enough calories because they're used to eating more calorically dense foods meat and dairy tend to be that way so then they go plant-based and they're just eating salad and they're not they're just they're just not fueling themselves with enough food so I would say don't worry so much about the volume of food that you're eating if you're eating plant-based foods close to their natural state like knock yourself out these foods are so fiber rich like you can use as punch as you want and you're gonna be okay don't worry too much about the protein thing I mean you want to make sure you're meeting your protein needs but you're not gonna have a problem doing that just make sure you're eating beans and lentils and quinoa and things like that that are higher that you know are higher in protein in the plant world and I think you're gonna be fine you don't have to go nuts with protein powders and I don't know what you were doing with that before Josh came over the other day and he saw the I have this massive protein yeah yeah and then I he was that he just was dying laughing cuz he's like I've never seen a protein thing that big it's like they wanted like the bodybuilders on it but the thing is though when I first got into fitness so I went from being a hundred and twenty-five pounds 265 in my like towards the end of college so I'd always been a really scrawny guy and then putting on weight for me with the protein shakes helped out in the very beginning like that's how at least in my eyes I was able to to do it and do it very easily so it's always been something that's been a part of my workout it's like before after it just kind of becomes a ritual yeah here's what I would say there's this idea oh you're going plant-based so you're gonna be sacrificing your body's ability to be strong which is a misnomer it's misguided it's a myth in fact my experience has been quite the opposite first of all you're eating foods that are much more nutritionally dense like much more dense in terms of phytonutrients and micronutrients so you're actually fueling your body with what it needs secondarily you're eating foods that are that are much more alkaline forming and anti-inflammatory by and large not every plant food is anti-inflammatory but when you're eating tons of dark leafy greens and like healthy fruits and vegetables you are eating a much more anti-inflammatory diet than the standard American diet or even a clean diet that includes meat and dairy meat and dairy a very acid-forming they're very inflammation provoking and this is important in the context of being an athlete or performance because the more anti-inflammatory your diet the more rapidly your body's going to be able to recover in between workouts and you know as somebody who goes to the gym that you don't make gains in the gym you make gains in the time in-between your gym sessions right so the better that you can take care of yourself in between workouts through nutrition and other you know practices we have and all that kind of stuff the harder you're going to be able to train in the gym so I would say that that it's not accurate to say that eating plant-based makes you a better athlete or a stronger athlete but it will allow you to and this is my personal experience it will allow you to train harder recover more quickly so that the next time you go to the gym you can train harder again or train longer you're less likely to get injured or get sick and then miss workouts so over the course of several months or a year you're going to experience greater gains than you would otherwise so it's the recovery enhancement aspect of eating plant-based that I think has been almost a secret weapon for me and I think it's what allowed me to go from relatively sedentary to competing in races like Ultraman in a fairly compressed period of time in terms of this 30-day challenge where do you think I might slip up I know I've done this before but not to this degree I've done no dairy no milk cheese and I will you know be out of the movies and just you you go into these old routines where I'm like okay get popcorn and then sit down and then I'm halfway through my thing of popcorn and I realize oh [ __ ] I was not supposed to eat dairy where where am i I slip up and what do I need to be prepared for what are your what are your hot-button foods like what are your what are your guilty pleasures is it sugar or is it greasy foods at least lately it would be some some mochi before bed or a little bit of ice cream that stuff I think is kind of easy because I just won't bring it in the house Natalie my girlfriend and I we go out to eat a lot and we go out to a nice restaurant and we'll usually get a steak we eat a pretty neat based diet like that is probably 80% of our diet at this point well right in your neighborhood here there are some fantastic you can restaurants you have Croesus Madre which is unbelievable you got real food daily I mean you know there's a veggie grill that's kind of junk food that's that's not the healthiest but it's vegan plenty of opera plenty of like really nice you know places right around here some of which are in walking distance but the greater issue I would say is is always trying to make the healthy choice the convenient choice so it's good to get rid of you know remove those temptations from arms-length in your house but always making sure that you're kind of one step ahead so that when you are hungry you're not like you know succumb to that unhealthy craving so you could do things like just just get like I don't have a rice cooker or you just have like rice and beans like in your fridge you can make like a chili or like rice and beans with guacamole in hot sauce you know as always ready there and you can that will fill you up right who's got protein it's got carbohydrates it's got some healthy fats with the avocado and you're good to go or keeping things like we're in LA so you know I don't know about you but like I'm driving all the time right so I try to keep healthy snacks in my car almonds dates bananas just real food so that I can snack on them and they're always kind of there so I keep my appetite at bay and I see you have a Vitamix in your kitchen oh my god it's amazing yes unbelievable right so that's your new best friend and my know what your habits and practices are around your Vitamix but I would make sure that you always have tons of healthy produce fruits and and dark leafy greens beets things like that and what I like to do is start my day with a like I just pack so much [ __ ] into that vitamin yeah kale spinach beets are great pre-workout tons of berries you know banana pineapple whatever you have make like a huge blend maybe put a little coconut oil or something like that in there and then you don't have to drink the whole thing like drink a glass go to I don't if you workout in the morning go to the gym or whatever and you can like thermos the rest or keep the rest and sip it throughout the morning and it keeps your energy really high like you feel good like like you know how it is when you have when you make that blend and you drink it in the morning you can almost feel like yourself coming alive like because because it blends it so well it's almost predigested so it's very easily absorbed into your system and you can feel that boost of energy very quickly and so if you're just kind of hitting on that throughout the morning or even in the afternoon it keeps your appetite at bay and it keeps your energy high and that way when you sit down for mealtime you're not like overeating or prone to eat that thing that you know you're not supposed to eat or shouldn't mean I'm trying to make the perfect recipe and simple recipe but it's been challenging I'd focus more on the blending and less on the juicing and I wouldn't get caught up in the perfect recipe like you know there's like seven people living in my house every time I open up the fridge it's like who knows what's gonna be in there you know so it's like I just make do with whatever we happen to have and yeah there's always a way to make something interesting or good and it's not always gonna be the best tasting or like the ultimate you know blend of the day but you know if you're just putting lots of fruits and vegetables in there and rotating it you can get crazy with superfoods and get spirulina and chlorella and like chia seeds and flax seeds and hemp seeds and all those things are great if you have the budget for that but you don't need all that stuff like whose fruits and vegetables blending it up you're getting so much fiber which is what most people are deficient in and you know when we talk about coming to plant a plant base everyone's worried about protein but really nobody's nobody's protein deficient like doctors are not treating patients for a protein deficiency like it's this crazy weird myth where we believe we need like tons and tons of protein and yet most people are walking around fiber deficient because they're not eating enough fruits and vegetables and you're getting a tremendous amount of fiber which is gonna really boost your immune system and your digestion and all of that I've been pretty neurotic lately with the sleep cycle tracking my sleep at night it doesn't look like I get great sleep or at least I just wake up a lot do you think a plant-based diet will help with sleep I mean sleeps a weird thing like I I as I get older or like I've started to struggle a little bit with sleep like I'm not training really hard like III have issues with that myself and I'm always looking for ways of like improving that magnesium in your tea or hot water at night is helpful some people find CBD oil to be helpful with that if you're into that kind of thing is that like marijuana based so it's it's hemp base it's not psychoactive it doesn't have that yeah but it's like a cannabinoid yeah you know tea not having your devices in your bedroom all that kind of stuff which is tough cuz I'm tracking it yeah exactly it's so bad though cuz that's like the first thing I'll do when I wake up you're good and you have anxiety because you're like what's my tracker so rely sleeping deep enough wait that's that's not how it's working at cross-purposes it really is literally when I wake up I think like I wonder how my track he's doing and it's been happening for the past two weeks so I'm like this is probably really counterintuitive there's some TV in but no we actually we haven't in a while and like TV is in I think the new thing now wouldn't be TV but just like bringing your laptop in bed and watching Netflix we don't do that and haven't done that for a while which has helped out a lot but we probably will watch like Curb Your Enthusiasm or a show before bed which I would like to get into the habit of having maybe an hour of downtime before where I'm not looking at any screens just like a morning routine I think you have to have some kind of night routine yes prepare you for bed for sure I remember one part in your book where you were training and you you felt like - in order to prepare for this race yet coming up you had to train harder and faster and stronger and your trainer told you to actually do something contradictory which would be to train slower yeah I mean I had been somebody who you know grew up in swimming and you just go hard every set go as hard as you can and then carrying that into being kind of an amateur athlete I have an hour so I'm gonna go out and run and I'll just make the most of the hour I'll run as fast as I can or whatever I whatever piece I can sustain for that hour like the way to get the most out of that time is to push yourself as hard as you can it turns out that's counterproductive especially if you want to you know reach your potential as an endurance athlete so in the context of endurance sports and ultra endurance sports speed really isn't that important what's important is efficiency and as my coach says my coach is two-time Olympic swimmer he's one man he's age group world champion in Ironman this guy like knows what he's talking about he said something very profound to me which is the prize doesn't go to the fastest guy it goes to the guy who slows down the least and I thought about that and I was like that's right and that's also true in life right it's not about how fast you're going it's like the classic rabbit in the hair so what he taught me and what has been really I think key to my success as an athlete is learning how to train your aerobic system so we have two energy burning systems in our in our bodies the aerobic and the anaerobic the anaerobic system is that energy system that your body utilizes for fast bursts and like in the gym when you're bench pressing power strength explosive movements and that energy system runs on glucose on sugar and it's it's a system that basically you can maintain for about 45 minutes before you run out of glucose or you just burn out all together your aerobic system relies on fat and oxygen for fuel it's your go all day engine it's that low intensity level of effort that can propel you throughout the day so proficiency in endurance sports is about building that aerobic engine making it incredible efficient and you do that by doing a lot of low threshold work like running far below that pace that you feel like you should be running right running so that you can carry on a conversation when you're running running at a pace that when you're new to this feels like you're not getting anything out of it and you think you're wasting your time but in doing that you're building mitochondrial density you're building your body's ability to utilize fat for fuel and do it very efficiently and over time let's say you start out and you can't you you you if you get lactate tested you know exactly what these zones are it's called soon - by not exceeding your zone - which for me and running means my heart I can't go over like 135 or 140 when you start out and you don't have any experience with this that's almost like walking you know brisk walk and then your heart rates spiking if you're wearing heart rate monitor you're like this is ridiculous you know I can't go more than like an 11 minute mile without my heart but if you stick to it you know three months later you're doing a 9 minute mile at that heart rate and then a year later you're running an eight minute mile and then before you know it you're running a seven minute mile so so in it and it feels like the same exertion level and you're like that's profound yeah that's all yeah so right and it but the thing is it takes time you know and you have to be patient with it and you have to really adhere to it it's not an overnight success it's not a hack it's the opposite of a hack actually it requires a lot of time investment and a lot of diligence and it's a different kind of discipline like we think of discipline in the context of being an athlete as being that impulse to get you out of bed when you don't want to get out of bed and go the extra mile and to be really focused on like out working your fellow you know whatever athlete but this discipline requires you to hold back which is like contrary to the impulse of the ambitious athlete right who wants to outwork everybody and by doing that you create this amazing foundation that allows you to run efficiently at faster and faster speeds at a very low level of energy output and I think that's what's allowed me to succeed by like believing in that and I've I've like experienced what it's like to really invest in that the average person let's say you're a runner they go out and they're doing like they do that hour run a 45-minute run and they do it at that brisk pace as fast as they think they can and what they're doing it they think they're getting a good workout in and on some level they are but ultimately they're gonna hit a glass ceiling because when you're doing that you're not going slow enough to build your aerobic engine and you're not going fast enough to build the explosive speed and power of the anaerobic engine you're kind of in the middle it's called the grey zone and so you can reach a certain level of athletic proficiency by staying in the grey zone but ultimately you're never going to progress because you're in that that that no-man's land that really isn't focusing on becoming more adept at either of those two energy systems would you say it makes your runs easier it just it helps to push you a little bit further than you would have been able to do otherwise well now it allows me to like run great distances and and because I've been doing it for so many years now like I can go out and run for hours and hours and it just it's just not that taxing like people are like oh you must be eating all day long with all this training you're doing it's like no actually I like a normal person because what used to you know eight years ago have been it would have required an unbelievable amount of energy for me to go out and run 20 30 miles now I can do that it's like okay that's fine like what else is going on you can like do your emails still when you're doing these big runs that really push you you have to be living in so much pain like what is your relationship with pain yeah I think I have a high pain tolerance I mean I learned that as a swimmer you know learning how to push your body and kind of maintain that and it very much becomes a mental thing because your brain gives out long before the body the body is in pain it's sending signals to the brain stop stop stop but your body can actually go much further and much longer and much harder than we think it can usually it's our brain that shuts it off well before that and I think the longer that I do this the more you become in touch with that there's a there's a endurance athlete named David Goggins he spent on my podcast he's personally inspiring to me and and he said something that's that's always stuck with me which is that when you think you're done and you can't go any further you've actually only tapped into about 40 percent of what you're truly capable of an eye to be fundamentally true but pain is like a muscle you know it's like you can acclimate to it you can you can get used to it and your benchmark for tolerable versus intolerable will shift I see that more in my personal life and how far I'm willing to push myself and how much risk I'm willing to take to to do something like when we were making minimalism I would work 10 to 12 hours a day knowing that this is this is a short stint like this is at my sprint this is my marathon I'm gonna be doing this for three months and I'm gonna bust my ass and I'm gonna sacrifice a lot I'm gonna I'm not gonna go out I'm gonna work weekends but I need to make this happen because if I do half is huge the upside is tremendous like if you really rocked it you knew like that could change your life I did I kind of know I I think what I I think what my mentality was this could really help people like this could change people's lives I don't know if I was thinking five people or ten million people I didn't know what the scale would be I didn't honestly didn't think it would be as big as it was I didn't we didn't think we'd be on Netflix we didn't think anybody would really watch the film we're like oh we'll just share it with our small community of people that really are into minimalism one of the reasons I started the podcast is because a lot of people have a misconception about what went in to making the documentary they think there was 20 people on set and especially when they see catalyst films and spire media bring you this production I'm catalyst like it's just me I'm trying to just share the light that people can go out there and make this stuff everybody has the the opportunity to do it and what I'm trying to do is inspire people to make the meaningful content because it's a lot of stuff out there it's kind of vapid and people weren't really folk hang on the intent behind it why I'm making it is that actually going to make an impact yeah a couple observations on that the first is I love what you said about creating meaningful content and as I'm kind of trying to inch inch my way into this video space that's really my marching orders like you know like does anybody really need to see another vlog like how can i how can I create content that actually is a is is helpful and can last you know over time and has substance to it you know that's harder to do but ultimately like if you're not doing that then what are you doing secondly you said something very interesting which is when you were making the movie that you were really focused on on this idea of how it could help people and I think that that's a beautiful sentiment because service is the ultimate renewable energy source like when you're coming from that place from the heart where you're like I'm really here to try to convey something that I think can be a benefit to other people that's what gets you through the adversity you know that's what's gonna allow you to show up for it day after day after day when you're facing obstacles and I found that the more that I'm in that service mindset of like how am i helping people that's what not only keeps me going but keeps me excited and also you know gives me the that extra boost when you're when you're tired and you don't want to do it or you're faced with an obstacle that you don't think you can get over you know and I think it's the secret to success if you can find a way to do something that you're passionate about filmmaking and tie that to service in a meaningful way that's when doors fly open and that's when you know the universe again you know shows up to conspire to support you you can slip up to when like you said it's not a straight line with a lot of this stuff and even now building the podcast and doing certain things you start to get caught up and looking at the metrics and be like okay how many followers do I have and you know how much is my growth over the past three months but and what is that iTunes algorithm and why is it always screwing me yeah exactly and but it doesn't matter like that's not gonna affect you literally if you didn't look at any of the comments you didn't look at any of the your views or you just kept putting stuff out and put a blindfold on I feel like you'd be way better off and you're more likely to make something stick because you don't care about what people are saying you're just you're just trying to help you know I'm competitive I'm an athlete like so all I'll be just as competitive when I'm looking at the metrics of the pie and and I have to rely cono that's not what this is about and it's not necessarily about how many people are listening or trying to get as many people to listen as possible it's about how can I be of maximum service to the people that are already turning in tuning in who are who are already on this wavelength who want to hear from me I have to serve those people and if I'm in that heart space and I'm in that service minded mentality then ultimately that's that's the secret to growing it anyway right when you can like stop looking at all of that and stop being influenced by what other people are doing and like while he's doing that so I should do that like you got to like cut that off and just focus on okay what do I bring nobody is nobody is you there are other people with podcasts that are interviewing people but nobody is used so how can you bring more of you into it and your aesthetic and Sensibility and the issues that you care about most and ultimately you know that that audience will gravitate towards you and your job is to take care of them why did you start your podcast I had become a fan of the medium in training for all these races because when you're out on an 8 hour bike ride you can't listen to music the whole time I was listening to audiobooks and then I started listening to podcasts and I really fell in love with the format and I couldn't understand why everybody wasn't listening to them I was like this is great like there's and at that time you know the herd was pretty thin like there were some great shows but it kind of dropped off like there wasn't a lot of depth right so there were great you know there were shows that exist now they're still big like Joe Rogan was doing his thing and you know a lot of comedy shows very comedy heavy you know NPR tons of stuff but I just got really into it and I was like wow I can program my entire day around all audio / like I don't why am i listening to the radio why am i letting somebody else tell me what I should be listening to I can design my own experience here and I thought it was amazing and I learned so much I'd be out riding my bike and I I'd be you know I'd be feeding my mind at the same time but I also was like the only person that I knew that was listening to them like it's just not that many people were hip to it but my book came out in 2012 and that chopped it was like okay well that happened like what are you gonna do now and and it was this thing where I was kind of like this is gonna be my big moment like I walked away from the law and I realized like okay this book like it it can it can come and go like so most books do it'll be a flash in the pan for a minute and then everyone moves on but if I really like invest myself and and really hustle my butt off like maybe I can use this as a way to change my life so that's why I was like I didn't renew my bar membership I was like I'm going all-in and I did it and I did as much as I could you know in the situation where I was in at that point which is that not many people knew who I was to get it out there and it did okay it wasn't like a New York Times bestseller or anything like that I had a little following but once that that kind of PR moment passed it's like well now what you know and I was like is anybody gonna call like you know like the phone wasn't ringing and I was like and and we were running out of money and it was like a it was a scary moment and ultimately I moved my family to Hawaii for three months and we lived on an organic farm because there's a an entrepreneur there who was trying to create this conscious community and he wanted my advice and and he paid our family to do that which was like the only money and like it was a godsend because like we didn't there was no money coming in but when I was there I also had a lot of free time and I was getting island fever I was feeling I was like I worked so hard to like create a connection with people now I'm on this island I felt a million miles away from people and I was starting to get jittery about it I was like I need to do something like I need a creative outlet like the book stone what am i doing now and I was like I'm just gonna maybe I'll start a podcast like I love the medium maybe I could do this and you know I just my son's are musicians so we had mics and we had a soundboard and I watched Pat video tutorial on how to start a podcast and he walked me through the whole thing like if Pat Flynn didn't have that I don't know if you watch those videos but he has like a step-by-step like here's what you do it's easier now than it used to be like there's all this weird stuff that it's like it's this is actually harder to get configured than you would think it should be easier than this had those videos not existed I don't know if I ever would have been able to figure it out on my own but I just did everything that he said and hit record on this first podcast my wife and I and we just started talking and I had a blast and I remember saying in that very first episode like this is not a triathlon podcast I have a vision for what I think would be cool here and to this day it's really kind of it has remained true to that sentiment but I didn't know if I was going to do a second one but it was a thrill to like create something and put it out in the world and there weren't that many people that listened to the first one barely any but enough where I was like let's do it again I think I did we did the second one like a day later you know I was like I'll just do this every day yeah but but it was it was so early on in the podcast world that that iTunes DES shot it right to the top of the health rankings so from day one like I had visibility and then that got people that got me traction you know I think if I was starting it today we have a very different story but I was it I was it's like the one time in my life where I was like at the right doing the right thing at the right moment and I was a little bit ahead of the curve and that allowed me to make a little bit of a land grab and people started to listen and you know stuck in Kauai so I was like who can I talk to you know like who's here and I so I had to do some Skype stuff and it's just a ball I mean oh you know my early episodes are so imperfect and so flawed I can't even imagine going back and listening to them I would cringe but I just kept going you know and it got better and I got I got I got better at listening and better at asking questions and you know as the audience grew it got easier to get interesting people to talk to me and it's really just been this organic you know nonlinear journey that I've been on that has taken me you know on this path that I would have never expected I like how you started how you didn't overthink it you just click record the kids made an amazing opening track though yeah well they're very they're very gifted it's funny cuz that theme song was they did it in like 15 minutes and I was like alright this will be a temp track you know and state it's the same one you saw right it's really good though I was surprised holy [ __ ] there are your very talented musicians they're about to release their first album oh wow that's amazing yeah but yeah we did it in a warehouse with like you know mics that you use for guitar like the wrong there we sit echo I was like the worst building ever heard of records like the ceiling was like 50 feet high yeah concrete floor and you know whatever but it wasn't perfect and you start it and you just keep you kept making them yeah and the lesson there is like you know just just start you don't have to I didn't know what I was doing I didn't know where I think a lot of people hamstrung them hamstrung themselves and paralyzed themselves because they want all the answers before they began they want to know what is the ultimate running shoe that I need before they ever go out and run or what's the GPS watch that I need or what's the camera you know like everyone like you're Casey talking about us all the time like people get so caught up in the cameras like you have a phone like go out and make a video if you want to be a filmmaker like it's never been easier all these tools are you know at our fingertips now but we get scared and so we hide behind the gear or the nut or that the questions as an excuse to not just begin sometimes it paralyzes to make someone I want this episode to be the best episode I've ever made right and like otherwise I'm not releasing it but then I think alright like future Matt he's a thousand episodes in this one it's not that big of a deal just release it move on to the next one release it move on to the next one and the doing of it will tell you what it wants to be you know it's like you can't answer that question of what it is until you begin doing it and it's like a living thing like it will evolve and it will it will tell you where it wants to go you do all your podcasts in person now right mm-hmm what was that a conscious decision to say yeah alright like I'm not doing Skype anymore yeah I mean I did some Skype interviews early on and and some of them are fine and some of them were just dictated by geography and things like that but I realize like in thinking like what am i what am i bringing to this that's different or unique and I realized that like my sweet spot or where where I excel is is really emotionally connecting with my guests and as somebody who you know when I write write a book or or or get interviewed when I do Skype interviews with people you know it's like I don't know who this person is and I forget about it five minutes later and for me like the podcast journey for me is like I'm interviewing people that that I want in my life like these are people that like I want to know and and for me the emotional connection is paramount it's more important than the information being conveyed and I need to be with that person and there's something about locking eyes and sitting across from somebody and engaging with them for 90 minutes to two hours to three hours at times where that's an experience that that person is not going to forget you know and it means something you know it's this long-form conversation is a lost art form and it's just not something that we do in our daily lives like I had a this my friend Mishka she Bali was over at my house yesterday we he's been on my podcast like six times he's like my body and our friendship he's like I think we spent more time podcasting than than just being friends outside of podcasting but and that sounds weird but at the same time it's like well if we just hung out and went out to eat would we have had a conversation of this quality and depth that's one thing I wouldn't yeah and that's one thing I've been wanting to do is just to sit my parents down and have a conversation with them and like record that and just one-on-one to because I'm like when's the last time we just sat down and I asked them questions about their life and about their childhood I want to do that with all my family and friends like not to post it not for anybody else but have I say austerity yeah for my kids I thought about that very same thing and there's something about the formality of it like if there's a mic in front of them and they feel like they have to answer the question yeah yeah yeah yeah that's great there's something to about the constraint you're creating a constraint on yourself you are limiting you're limiting yourself in some way because you could interview anybody if you were doing it remotely if you were just doing it through Skype you could probably have a thousand episodes at this point if it was that way but that constraint it it creates it makes your podcast what it is mm-hmm and it makes you get a little bit more inventive about what you bring to the table force like when you're making a documentary or a narrative film and you have a limited budget you can look at that as a hindrance but ultimately the that constraint provides you with it's like the limitations push your creative boundaries right so you have to be creative in order to make it work and that's where some you allow for the magic to come in what kind of prep do you put into your interviews I had a learning curve with that like I like to be very prepared but I also think one thing that I've learned is you can be too prepared if you've read every article and you've read every book you're probably going to be fuelled with a lot of great questions and you're gonna sound really smart to the listener because they'll know that you'll be you'll be it's like I read you know I when you said this like you don't be like wow that guy's prepared yeah but I found that when you're too prepared and you already know the answer to every question that you're gonna ask because they've answered it somewhere else that it creates a little bit of a staleness in the conversation it's like oh here's the part where he's gonna say this you know as opposed to purposely not doing as much research as you could so that you can be surprised because I think when you're surprised there's a level of engagement when you're listening and you're like oh wow really like let's explore that and then you're you it keeps the energy and the intrigue and the interest level higher so I try to read the books of the guests that I have on that have books sometimes that means skimming them or listening to most of it on audiobook whatever I can't you know I can't read every single book I read a couple articles and then I spend time jotting out not necessarily questions but like topic headings or areas that I want to explore and then you know have a little notebook just like you and I put it out in front of me and I never got it hmm you know it feels weird to break eye contact a limit but also also I think it's good to like put all of that in your consciousness and then forget it and then just show up and be present and I think if you've done the homework and you can be present and you're listening then you're not gonna struggle for what the next question is gonna be or where to take the conversation I'm still like a neurotic person where I I have to be over prepared for something and I think that's one of those things that I can get better at is just letting go and letting go of expectations of what something is gonna be and just I remember when we met which was at Josh and Ryan's event I think it was in San Francisco you said something about the way that people interview and it's like okay great cool awesome next question and it's as always next question next question and it has their list of questions and they're not paying attention they're not present and they're not listening they're just intent on getting through their list of questions and as soon as they feel like the person's answered that they're like awesome and the next one it's like that's not a conversation and that's a very one-sided non dynamic way of interacting with somebody do you think are a lot of people talk about our attention span and that we have such a short attention span now it's all about the 140 characters do you think that we're starting to get tired of that and sick of the sound bytes people just want to hear a real conversation in context yeah I think that's a big reason why podcasting has exploded it's so refreshing because it's the polar opposite of the tweet right like what you're gonna talk to this guy for a couple hours like that is that flies in the face of all other forms of media from news local and national news to sitcoms or whatever kind of content that you're consuming everything has gotten shorter and shorter and shorter and I think the podcast represents a pendulum swing backwards to something that's real that is that has depth and emotion and I think there's something in our in our spirit that yearns for that it's like story telling is as old as as as man right and podcasting is a way of storytelling in a way that allows it to breathe you know and I think there's also this yearning for authenticity right and in you know you put these conversations up like they're imperfect they're not edited they're not drilled down to sound bites and if you spend a couple hours with somebody it's intimate and that person is ultimately gonna reveal who they are there's something real about it there's something honest about it that I think is also quite refreshing and I think that's why people are connecting with the media when we talk to Juliette short for minimalism she talked about that word authenticity and it's funny because brands and advertising companies they have hijacked that term and they try to they want their brand of their company to feel authentic I think it is rare to find real authenticity but when you find it you you know that it's there and you can't fake it in the long run you can fake it in a 30 second advertisement by in a two-hour conversation I don't think you can fake authenticity yeah the word has definitely been co-opted and commodified and I understand why because people realize like oh that is important and that's what people respond to but the immediate the the minute that you can modify it it's no longer what it is like I feel like we need a new word now it's like it's like a bad word to say authentic but true authenticity like transcends that and and there is a difference and I think people are getting wiser and wiser and more more discerning when it comes to [ __ ] you know what I mean like what young person watches an advertisement you know it's like we our radar is so highly attuned to what's real and fake and what's honest that the attempt to manufacture authenticity and some kind of branding message it's just isn't going to fly especially with young people there they see right through that like you know when it's real mm-hmm somebody might look you and say you've gotten to a point where you can just to sit back and relax but you're still put in some long hours you're posting videos close to midnight how do you find that the balance between the podcast the running and the training and the eating and all this it's it's hard you know I I would say that that on a day to day basis I'm not a balanced person you know on a six month to six month basis I am very balanced like I make sure that all the important areas of my life are well attended to but I worked my ass off man and you know the podcast is a lot of work if you want to do it if you want to create if you want to create something special that's not ephemeral you know you have to you know this so somebody who's attentive to design and aesthetics and detail like it's not easy right it requires a tremendous amount of my attention in time and I have people now that are helping me but it's still ultimately it's me it's my voice like I write I try to write a really nice blog post that goes and goes with it each episode and I want to design the page so it looks just so and all that stuff requires a tremendous amount of attention I travel all the time I'm doing public speaking I'm also trying to train I'm a dad too for kids like I'm juggling a lot of different things and you know trying to step into the video stuff now is like when I'm supposed to be writing books and like you know it's like it's a lot you know and I know how to work hard like I don't think I'm the most talented person out there but but but I know how to like I do have a high pain tolerance and I do know how to work hard and and I'm not afraid to you know but I think also a lot of that drive is informed by the fact that like I didn't figure out what I wanted to do with my life until I was in my mid-40s you know and I'm 51 now how long am I gonna be able to do that like I got a I got a make you know I got a you know I got to make hay now so I'm highly motivated to make sure that I'm maximizing the opportunities that I'm blessed you know have come across my radar these days but I also you know I also have to take care of myself it's like the adage like there's so much wellness in my life I'm getting sick you know yeah you know I have to be careful because I have to be an ambassador and a living example of these ideas that i'm that i that i espouse i find the hardest thing to do is when you're pressing towards a deadline and making sure that all those things are in check because there's sometimes I have to push everything else to the side to focus on this one thing say for a month or two months like this is all I can focus on because once I get into something I'm not gonna be satisfied until it's finished and until I'm done I'm not a multitasker I'm somebody who likes to go all-in on something so I hear you completely man and and I used to feel like like guilty about that like but I've changed my perspective on that like that's I think that's a gift you know and I don't think we should feel bad about that like there's a guy called Brad Stolberg I talked who writes for outside and he wrote a book called peak performance and we've had long conversations about this and he's he said I'm paraphrasing but he says something like look the times in my life where I feel most alive are the times when I'm fully invested in something that I care about you know and and and the passerby would say well that's you're out of balance like whether you're training for an ultra marathon or you're writing a book or you're editing a documentary where you just have to go into the cave and immerse yourself in a world our culture sort of tells us well that's you're out of you're out of whack with that you gotta you know you gotta bring it back but it's like if that's your thing man like let it fly like go for it you know that pendulum will have to swing back but it's okay to be out of balance when it's something that you're passionate about as long as you know there's not you know people aren't getting sacrificed in the cross hairs of that so I've learned to like really embrace that like that's you know people will say to me you're just you you you're channeling these alcoholic tendencies and you're running or into these other things and I think it's in all fairness like I can't dismiss that I'm like yeah there's probably some truth to that so should I beat myself up about that or is that okay like I used to feel like maybe I am maybe do maybe I do have an alcoholic relationship with this or that but these things are making my life better and there helping other people I'm like no man this is like what I'm here to do I'm gonna feel good about it alright I do bring up the rock and every podcast because I don't know if you saw I have the rock oh right over your shoulder right there original photo with the turtleneck yeah so getting the rock on my podcast is my big goal it's my stretch goal it's like my dream right somebody that's that's really inspiring to me in terms of a ground up story he's somebody who's just built it from nothing if you were to give me advice on how I could get the rock on my podcast what would you say well let's just call him and ask him we could call him yeah I don't have his phone number that's the kind of thing where you put the you you put that intention out into the world and you let people know obviously you bring public about it and and the way that something like that will happen will be in a way that you can't predict or imagine it's not gonna happen because you call his agent and his agent and eBooks it like it's never gonna happen that way it's gonna happen because you know somebody who who knows somebody who's just cousin or you'll bump into him at the right time or somebody will know somebody and that's how that's how it will eventually come to be all right let's get into quick questions rich where do you go when you're feeling doubt what I'm feeling doubt the best thing for me to do is to go for a run or go for a swim you know when I allow my unconscious mind to take center stage and I can just be present out on the trail at dawn or in the water and I can free-associate that's when I'm able to be my most creative and problem-solve without trying to problem-solve and that usually allows me to approach things that I have doubt around or confusion around with a greater sense of clarity throughout all these years what one skill have you leveraged in a way you think other people haven't resilience what is the simplest advice that's the most important to follow trust yourself follow your heart if you could only put three ingredients into your Vitamix blender what would they be an amazing combination is kale and pineapple really you wouldn't think that it would be good it's actually delicious so you could just do those two alone would be great if you're gonna add a third maybe add some hemp seeds or chia seeds about two more questions what one thing should my audience read Launcher listened to before they go to bed or before they go to bed yeah tonight there's a book called autobiography of a yogi' by Paramahansa Yogananda I've read like eight times and it just blew my mind and has changed my life and will expand expand your consciousness and your horizons for what you imagine is possible and last question where should people connect with you online pretty easy to find on the internet I'm at rich roll on Twitter and Instagram is youtube-dot-com forward-slash patrol but mostly ritual podcast on itunes or wherever you listen to podcast cool man thanks for doing this Thank You Man a pleasure thanks for listening to the ground up show if you like this podcast there's something you can do right now to help head on over to iTunes and leave a quick review I print out every single one and I put them up on my mood board above my bed okay that's not true but I still notice and appreciate every one for more on the ground up show including behind the scenes videos check out ground up show calm thanks for listening

Channel: Matt D'Avella

Views: 95,442

Keywords: ground up, podcast, filmmaking, rich roll, finding ultra, vegan, fitness, rich roll podcast, minimalism, documentary, matt davella

Id: tS-QYN_5-T8

Length: 74min 57sec (4497 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 08 2017