You think of emotion, you think you have to suppress it or you have to embrace it. And I think there's a way in which you can experience it internally, but you don't have to express it externally. We think through it, we process it, and then we say and do what we intend to do, not what we are doing in terms of reaction. And I think if you control your emotions, you're very powerful.
If you're controlled by your emotions, you're not as powerful. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to On Purpose, the number one health podcast in the world. Thanks to each and every single one of you who come back every week to listen, learn, and grow.
Now, you know that I'm always out to find interesting people, fascinating stories, people who you may or may not know, but have made really interesting, powerful decisions that we can all learn from. And today's guest is a friend of mine, someone that I bumped into very recently, and we just connected instantly. But at the same time, he's had years of experience as an entrepreneur. I'm speaking about none other than Adam Goldstein, who's the co-founder of LA-based Athletic Propulsion Labs, or APL as they're known.
And he and his twin brother, Ryan, who were former sport collegiate athletes, played both basketball and football at the University of Southern California. And they envisioned creating a company that would provide revolutionary products symbolizing the ultimate intersection, and this is what I love, of luxury and performance. Today, Adam and Ryan are recognized as accomplished inventors with numerous US and foreign patents, including APL's revolutionary load and launch technology. And recently, they were named two of the 100 most intriguing entrepreneurs of 2020 by Goldman Sachs.
Please welcome to the show, my friend and amazing entrepreneur, Adam Goldstein. Adam, thank you for being here, man. Jay, thanks for having me. I'm super excited.
I've been a long-time listener. Obviously, we're friends. But it's funny because your podcast is one of the only ones that I really listen to and where I think where I actively listen. Because I think there's a difference between passively listening to something, actively listening.
And it's so funny that so many of the people, big and smaller, or not smaller, but famous and just more specialized in their avenue, and people that have been important to my personal journey. So I listened to the Robert Greene one. And the first book is in my adult life that I ever put real intention into reading was 48 Laws of Power. And I read it in a moment.
I think one of the key things in my personal story is that I have gotten lucky at key specific moments of my life through a decision that I made. And I was sitting with pneumonia, and I read Robert Greene's 48 Laws of Power. And there wouldn't have been another moment where I would have been, again, at home and had the ability to dive into something at such a deep level. And I think the way he talks about power in the past, people think of it as a negative thing.
But there's definitely positives if you use it to not only help yourself, but help others. And so that was what my takeaway was. And it was, again, this was years ago, but that was what my takeaway was. And so I just started being more active, more intentional in the way I was thinking about things.
And so when I saw that you had him, and then you've had other people that I've definitely taken pieces of their journey and applied it to mine. I love that because you are like the company that you keep. So I think that that was cool for me to see the other day. I'm so grateful, man.
And we've had so many mutual friends over the last few years who've tried to connect us. And last year, it finally happened. It was like Deepika was trying to connect us, and Audrey was trying to connect us. And it finally happened.
We ended up last year at a pumpkin patch. I think it was just before Halloween or something like that. And we just had the best conversation. I walked away going, I need to spend a lot more time with that guy.
So I'm so glad that we're getting to do this, and that we get to mine your mind today, and really get inside there. And I want to start with, actually, I watched your short film with Rolls-Royce. And what stood out for me was when you guys talked about how the journey is what defines greatness and not the destination. Now, that's an idea that we're told and we've heard again and again and again.
But when you said it, not only did I believe it, I also understood that you're applying it. And I'd love to hear how you've been trying to apply that in your journey as you're still growing towards an incredible destination. So I think that one of the key things is that wasn't always my thought, and that wasn't always Ryan and I's thought. So I think it's something that we've learned along the journey.
And I mean, to backtrack a little bit, I think when you're starting anything, especially when you started at the younger age, as Ryan and I did, we started APL when we were in college, you focus a lot on where you want to end up. You don't necessarily always think about enjoying the ride and enjoying the journey to get there. And I think that, again, listening to your podcast and the things and the intentions that you think about, that's been really important to the way that Ryan and I were. So when we started off on our journey, you have these goals, these grand ambitions.
We all do, whether it's your day-to-day life or your personal life or what you're doing in your profession, you have these milestones that you're hoping for, that you're wishing for, that you believe can happen. And a lot of times you don't think about what you're doing day in and day out and appreciating what you're doing day in and day out and how those will get you to where you want to go. And so I think that as Ryan and I started to achieve more, as we really started to go further in this journey, a lot of it was happening really quickly, even though we were years in. And we didn't take it for granted, but we took the achievements, took the successes, not just like financial, but just successes as a business, as a brand and individually.
And we said, we need to use this to get to the next thing. We need to use this to get to the next thing. I think there was a moment in time, probably 2016, where Ryan and I, we had got this big award. We were named Forbes 30 out of 30 is, there's a lot of other things that started going our way.
And one thing we hadn't been great at was celebrating the small daily victories and giving ourselves and our team the momentum to go to the next thing instead of just focusing on moving to the next point. And so I think we had to have that realization where we were doing so many things, we were achieving so much, but we didn't have the internal appreciation for what was happening every single day. It just became so consistent that it became normal. I think that's not positive.
I think you need to appreciate your daily journey. You need to appreciate the people around you, what they're contributing to it. And I think that that was a key change for us. And so at that moment in time, Ryan and I, and again, key people around us, we made a clear decision that we are going to appreciate what we're doing every single day.
We're going to stay inspired by what we want to do in the future. But if you, there is a way to exist mentally in the current plane and in the future plane. And I think there's, there's a delicate balance. And I think for us, we had in the beginning, we didn't have that many victories.
And so you had to constantly put in the work, put in the repetition to get that one. But then one of the other key aspects of my story is compounding. And as you get, as you get one thing, the next thing comes typically quicker than the next one comes quicker, the next one comes quicker. And so for us, we tried to slow down the focus on the ultimate endpoint because you are probably going to get there regardless of what your goals are, you put in the effort, you put in the work and you get lucky, you will end up reaching these points.
But if you're only focused on that one moment in time, it's so finite and you're not appreciating the longer term, which is actually the day-to-day in the journey, it's not going to be a win. It's just going to be another accomplishment or milestone, but it won't feel the same. And I think that when we decided to put happiness before success and a measurement for success and that daily happiness, and I know you can't be happy a hundred percent of the time every single day and the ups and downs do make those other things feel greater. But if you can think every day that I want to appreciate this journey and what I'm doing today will get me to where I'm going tomorrow.
And if I appreciate it today, I will appreciate it tomorrow. And you make those clear conscious decisions, you will feel much better about your journey and you will feel much better about your destination. But you spend much more time on the journey than you do at the destination. So if you can appreciate the longer part, the part at the end will feel even better.
And I think the only way that we were able to realize that was by not realizing that earlier. And so, but it's like anything, it's you learn as you go. And if you keep an open mind and you can take feedback and you can look at others and see that you're inspired by what they're doing, what they've learned. And then how can I take a little piece of that and apply it to what I'm doing?
And I saw other people that were enjoying simpler things than I was, and I appreciated that. And so I said, there's a way that I need to implement that into my day life as did Ryan and the rest of the team. And I mean, we feel great about what we do. And I think that's the most important thing.
And that's the key to enjoying the journey, which helps you enjoy the destination even more. I think that was such a comprehensive answer because like I said, it's a statement we've heard, it's a statement we've seen, but I really appreciate your interpretation of that and how practical you've made it because I feel the same way. I always say to people like winning the award or getting the title, that 1% of the journey, like that amount of time you spend on stage is like 30 seconds long. And those 30 seconds, it took like three years, 30 years, you know, to get to that three seconds or 30 seconds of time that you spent receiving an award.
And you're spot on, like if you don't feel passionate when you wake up every morning to do what you're doing, can you take me back, Adam? I want to go back. What I love about this conversation is I'm discovering you. I think the world is discovering you.
I know me and my friends are massive fans of APL. I had a ton of your shoes before I even knew you. Not only are they comfortable, they look fantastic. The store at the Grove is one of my favorite stores just generally to walk into, which was where I was first introduced to APL.
But let's go back to your childhood. I'm intrigued by, can you think about a pivotal moment that happened while you were young that has framed who you are today? Was there a particular experience, maybe with a parent, with a friend, anyone in your life, something someone said, something someone did that has created part of who you are today that you feel has been so integral in your life, positive or negative, or healthy or unhealthy? I mean, I think there's a lot of things that's hard to point to one.
I think one thing I realized early on, and I know this isn't applicable to most because they aren't twins, but I'll choose one that's more applicable to other people. But I realized early on, as in my brother, that we had a unique competitive advantage, that there was two of us with almost identical points of view, but with unique characteristics that complement one another. So we realized that really early on. And again, like a lot of times with kids, peer pressure is something that becomes really, really difficult.
And because there's two of us and there's typically one other person, we could not be pressured to move one way. So I think that played a role in terms of building internal character. But I think something that was key to my journey is I've always believed, always, now as an adult, but I think this is because of a kid, was that you can turn a negative situation into a positive if you change your perspective on the negative and try to skew it more positive. And so I guess one real important example is when I was a kid, I didn't do great in school and I was always an incredible athlete, but I did not do the greatest in school.
And it wasn't because I didn't have the intellect, but it's because I wasn't in the right, it wasn't important to me in the situation that I was in. So I was at this one school and I was not doing very well. I was doing great sports, but I wasn't doing very well as a student. And I felt like the environment wasn't the right one for me because it was too small.
I needed to be able to become more of myself. I always had this nagging self-confidence that I knew where if I trust myself and I listen to myself, I can make the most of it. And so middle of my ninth grade year, my parents basically gave me the opportunity to transfer to a school that wasn't as good of a school, but it was more diverse. It had a greater opportunity for educational and athletic success.
And I changed my environment. And again, one thing that's been important to our journey is changing your environment when you believe you need to. And so that gave me the ability to go to school in a different part of the city, in a different environment. And then I was able to learn at a better rate.
I was able to do sports at a much higher level and I believe in myself because it's hard switching schools in the middle of the year, trying to make all new friends and things of that nature. And so I think the key learning point from that is if you get out of your comfort zone and you become comfortable with the uncomfortable, you may discover something in yourself that you never knew you could do or take it to a level that you didn't think was possible. And so for me, that was a really big one. And I think if that doesn't happen, I'm not here today.
And so I think that movement in the middle of my ninth grade year, I was a young man. I'm 14, 15 years old, but that gave me the confidence to try in comfortable situations, make the most of it. And then they may actually end up benefiting you much more than you ever could have thought. So that was, I think I was a kid, something that went a really, really, really long way.
Yeah. That's such a great insight because you almost don't get to reap the rewards of that up until now, like much later on in that moment, you're just like, this is the worst thing that could ever happen to me. Right. And I, and I really do love that you reflected on that moment in that way, because I find that anytime I ask someone that question, rarely do they pick something good that happened.
Right. It's like people never say, oh, when I was 15, I had the best thing, you know, it's always like, well, this went wrong or this changed and this shifted. And I think it's fascinating to hear that in your journey too. Now when you and your brother, and I love, by the way, I love the twins answer.
I love the twins answer. So it doesn't matter that we can't relate. We all want to relate. Like, oh, that's so cool.
Like, you know, that's, that's how I felt when you have this idea for APL and I want to talk about the idea, but what I'm really interested by is also how lots of people start stuff at college or at school and it kind of fizzles out by the time you graduate and then you go on to get a real job and you have real responsibilities and you wear a real suit, right? Like that kind of becomes the journey that most people go on. What I'm fascinated by is when you, when you come up with this idea, what did it take to go from this is cool to this is real? And what was that journey like to tell us about the ideation, but then tell us about how this went from like, this is cool.
Well, we're doing something interesting to this is actually real and this is what we're going to commit time to. So I think, I think one of the important things about Ryan and I is that if somebody tells us we're not able to do something, that's essentially just gasoline to, to what we have to do. So I think Ryan used APL as his business plan in school and he didn't even get top 10. So I don't remember what the grade is.
He still has it, but like he didn't even get top 10. They didn't believe in it. And it's not because they didn't think it was a good idea. It's because they didn't think that we could execute on the vision the way that we did.
And so I think one of the things I used to have as, as a kid and when I was in college, I don't have it anymore because it's more so like a running tally that I keep in my mind is I would have this list of things that we had to do and that I wanted to do. Top thing on my list I never achieved, which is making an MBA, everything else I've done since then. But I think when thinking about the idea and execution, one thing I heard, and again, I think one of the parts of my story that's important is I've heard important things at the right moment in time and I've listened to it. And I heard the easiest way to get where you're going is one step at a time.
And so when I was in college and when Ryan and I were, and we're thinking through the idea, one of the things, again, back to the journey aspect is you think of where you want to go, but you don't necessarily usually think of the steps you need to take in the interim to get there. And so Ryan was lucky enough that when he was in this program and people were telling us this wasn't a good idea, it's not going to work. We had to think deeper through the idea, deeper through the execution. And I mean, we started as a direct-to-consumer brand in 2010.
So it's like in 2010, people were not going direct-to-consumer, but we didn't have the resources. And I think one of the things that a lot of people think when they're creating something is everybody's paying attention to me. If I fail, everyone's going to see it. But most of the time, everybody else is focused on themselves and they're not really concerned with what you're doing.
So if you focus on yourself, you focus on what you're doing, you try something. If you mess up, there's a way to recover it and there's a way to keep moving forward. If you learn from it, you won't make the same mistake again. And so for us, we spent so much time working on this technology.
We wanted to build a shoe around it. And one thing we did, and I think this is what helped us be successful and go from idea to execution, is again, most people, when they're creating something, they are scared to ask for help typically, and they don't go to the highest level of help. They try to go to the lowest level because they think somebody that's close to me will help me, not somebody at the top somewhere. And so what Ryan and I believe is if we went to the largest people possible and said, we have this amazing idea, it's remarkable, we can execute on this, we will put the work and do it, can you help us?
And they said, yes, we went to a sneaker factory that had no business saying yes to us. but they thought they loved the idea they thought it was unique and so from there we were able to implement what we wanted to do be able to develop things that typically you would not be able to and so i think again like the nugget of our journey because we make shoes and most people aren't gonna make shoes and that's the part that's different is that we believe that if you ask people for help and you're willing to accept their help and you go to somebody that typically you wouldn't think would say yes and you give them the opportunity to help you people inherently want help and so i think when you're thinking about executing something you shouldn't you gotta you have to think big if you can it's easier to work your way down than it is to work your way up and so that was the way that we looked at it and again it's just we had an idea of how we wanted to execute we asked the right questions to people and we didn't have this idea of you have to have a specific mentor we believe that you could have specific mentors for specific things so i need help with production i would ask a production person i need help with logistics i ask a logistics person if i need help with counting or asking a counting person but there's not an end all be all for each thing so that was really what the point of difference for us was we were able to ask help we had amazing people that were around us when in that moment in time and we just had pure determination like we were we were obsessed with taking this idea and executing it and we were going to do whatever it took and since we didn't have any investors we had to do it ourselves and so i think and we weren't scared to fail like that's that's another thing is that there's there's a real difference between fear and danger and and when you start an idea most it's all fear it's not it's not dangerous it's you're scared of it so you just have to conquer that emotion and you can learn most things if you ask questions to the right people adam you're just dropping dropping wisdom everywhere i mean there's so many things in that that i need to now break down so first of all everyone who's listening you need to get your notebook out right now and write stuff that adam is saying down because there are so many things all you're gonna have to listen to this episode twice it's up for you you listen to this episode twice you get a notebook out right now the idea that there's a difference between fear and danger what a great way to clarify how we experience it that is that's just brilliant like i've never heard it been put in that way before and i think that that is such great language to help us realize we react as if we're in danger but actually we're in fear and that's where that's where things start to go wrong so i thought that was brilliant the other thing that you mentioned that i really am resonating with and it was kind of in there and i think it's an underrated part of entrepreneurship is that you were trying and you have of course now but at the time you were trying to create technology like there was an engineering aspect it wasn't just we want to make cool stuff and trendy stuff and fatty stuff it was like no we're actually working on something and i find that one of those underrated things about entrepreneurship is people with deep skill sets and having a skill whether it's innovation technology engineering speaking marketing whatever it may be talk to me a bit about where did you learn about technology when it comes to athletics because that to me is a really different way to look at product creation as opposed to just saying we want to make stuff that looks good so back to i think a unique competitive advantage and since we don't have 10 hours i didn't want to give you the full background but as a kid my dad worked in the footwear industry and he actually helped like one of the key parts to my story is he helped create the la gear lighted shoes and so my brother and i were the first product testers ever for the la gear lighted shoes and he brought them home and he gave them to us and that day we gave him feedback on and we're five years old we gave him feedback on how to try to make the shoes better and obviously it's we're not giving technical feedback at five but we're telling him you should move the lights from the back to the side of the shoe so we can see our lights but the technical aspect of it is from a very very very young age my dad would bring us to the office and would bring us into the technology line reviews would bring us into the innovation area and we would see how to engineer specific footwear product so i think again it wasn't that ryan and i woke up one day and decided that we wanted to engineer a technology that instantly make you jump higher we've been obsessed with footwear specific technology since we were five years old and again when you're talking you asked earlier about key moments in my childhood my dad as a kid showed me what was possible not saying come here and look at this but through ideas and i think like that's the greatest type of inspiration you can get for anybody not just from a parent but from anyone is showing somebody that something is possible through their own ideas and execution so we took an interest to developing footwear technologies from an age of five years old obviously there's a lot of knowledge that needed to come afterwards and took years to get and we weren't eight-year-old whiz kids we were eight-year-old with ideas but as you become older as you become smarter you focus on the things that are important to you and sports and technology and specifically footwear based technologies were things that were always important to us so i think that the learning point about that for entrepreneurs is that everybody regardless of what you do has a predisposition to a specific thing that they care about that they're passionate about they can focus on if you can learn enough information you can figure out how to make something better and that was basically the basis for how we did it is that we believe that we can make a shoe that we're in the technology that would do what we wanted to do we just had to learn the basis behind the fundamentals and that's what we did and that's how we focused on it that's how we learned it and to this day i continue to learn so much not only from our own exploration into footwear but from other people what they teach us and things they bring to the table and i think that i learned at a really really young age i think it's again it's the fact that my dad and the team listened to our idea and i saw it actually come into life and so i think seeing what's possible and knowing that if you're passionate about something you don't have to be a scientist to naturally figure out you just have to be a creative engineer and i think like that's a lot of really successful entrepreneurs it's not that they know something about everything it's that they know a lot about a specific area and for us like that's it's always been our passion we've always loved technology and we've always loved innovation pushing what's possible and i think that regardless of what your avenue is even if you're not creating product if you're creating content if you're creating anything like there's a way to be innovative and there's a way to push it to as far as you possibly can yeah i'm so glad you shared that detail because to me that's the part that i love my community really getting close to because when you've been that close to something since you're five years old and you've taken an interest that closeness has turned into a passion and then it's turned into your own cause that's what it takes like that's what it takes like it's that obsession that absorption that you're immersed in this whole world it's not like one day you wake up and you have a random idea to go and create something right and i think often we don't give ourselves the time to get close to something and deeply immersed in it and experience it and we're looking for like i don't know what i'm passionate about i don't know what my purpose is i don't know what i'm excited about but that's because we're trying to hope that it's just going to miraculously appear and i love that idea that actually we'll know this has been a part of our life now when we talk about technology your load and launch technology became the first ban shoe of the nba history right like that is just so like that is i don't know if there's anything cooler than that like to get i don't know if it's better to get into the nba to get banned like to get banned by the nba to me that sounds like the coolest story ever but as a company it can also be difficult i want to hear what was that like to find out like what was that like as an experience because that's not common like i i don't hear stories like that all the time so i think the unique part about that is that so to this day we've never raised a dollar about side capital we own 100 of the business and at that moment in time we had zero dollars and i mean zero zero dollars for marketing and so we looked at it as the nba is the greatest basketball organization in the world it's top tier and when you think about leagues it's top tier and so the dream when you're creating a product for a specific sport is you want it to be at the top tier with the best people and the fact that the nba said that it's too good because it provides aware with undue competitive advantage that sounds really positive when you frame it that way but if you look at it from the other side of the coin saying the best basketball players in the world can't wear your product that sounds negative and so the way that we looked at is that this is a very unique opportunity where we can wholeheartedly embrace it or we can fight it with everything that we have which wasn't much at the time and we said let's embrace this let's turn this negative into a positive let's say banned by the nba the reason is it makes you jump higher and they can't wear it because it's so good and so there's a way to again you change your perspective on something you take negative and make it a positive ends up becoming the best thing that ever happened to us when it happened number one news story in the world number two three and 17 most search turns on google over a million articles written or posted about within 10 days we sold nine months worth of inventory in three days which is important because we're self-financed no outside investors there's three of us in a room that's 60 square feet when we find this out so we basically find out that the world-leading basketball organization isn't allowing our product because it provides aware with an undue competitive advantage so i think at first there's that huge shock like oh man this is insane like what do we do and then instantly we thought we need to lean into this we need to embrace this this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity we can make this negative feel positive and that's exactly what we did and again i think one thing that made it special too is that if we would have fought it i think the nba would have fought us but the fact that we embraced it made them embrace us like even like david strength passed away but he went on a show i think like that night and said like we're looking into the shoes that might even make me dunk and like the way that he said it was it was playful even though this was it was a very serious thing that they weren't allowing people to wear it but i think the fact that we leaned into it and we embraced this thing that could have been negative changed the perspective of it made it positive and it made the people that were essentially saying no we didn't embrace it as well so it ended up being a huge win for all of us i actually think it was the only time obviously it's changed since the nba was the number one trending topic on twitter when there wasn't like a number one trending sports organization on twitter when there wasn't another thing so i think that they saw that there was value in the social equity that came along with it we leaned into a negative made it positive we felt positive about it we reap the benefits because we sold the product and the nba also got the reward from it so i think all in all it was just it was a tremendous experience and it literally laid the groundwork for where we are today and if that doesn't happen again i mean one of the key things i'm sorry if that doesn't happen i don't know where we ended today like we made the most of a negative and turned into a positive that's a true win-win-win and what i find so fascinating about it is that this is kind of like a recurring pattern in your life like your superpower is the ability to transform a negative into a positive and to be able to pivot like that's really a superpower because even today you don't make basketball shoes even that's what you started making like there's just another pivot right there's expansion there's growth like i find that that's sometimes the hardest thing to do and going back to what you said before is the only thing you never got to do was making the nba there's another pivot there as well now and tell me how good were you how serious were you and how close were you well so i mean i was a division one athlete i played basketball usc i think i had a rude awakening when i got to college i wasn't gonna make the nba because a few of my teammates didn't make the nba and i realized that they were much better than i was and that i wasn't gonna be able to get there but i think too one of the points that you were just making and it's important to our journey is that typically when you think of emotions like this turn negatives into positives you think emotion you think you have to suppress it or you have to embrace it i think there's a way in which you can experience it internally but you don't have to express it externally and so i think like what we've done in these negative situations is we think through it we process it and then we say and do what we intend to do not what we are doing in terms of a reaction and i think like for me that's been super important to my journey it's super important for for ryan something that again it became a superpower because if you control your emotions you're very powerful if you're controlled by your emotions you're not as powerful and so i think like that was something that we learned really early on but to your basketball question i wish i would it could have been six or ten and had uh had a different journey in terms of that but everything works out the way that it's supposed to so i would have made the nba i probably wouldn't be on your podcast here today so i'm thankful for the journey that i've had oh yeah no i mean maybe you would we've had some i'm trying to think now who have we had for the nba we've had i just interviewed duane who was amazing we had dennis rodman on a couple of years ago which was just a fascinating conversation obviously thankful to have had the opportunity to sit with kobe bryant um so so maybe i'd maybe maybe it would have been that way too we would have been brought together either way uh but no i really appreciate this message this pattern that's coming out through your whole journey of pivoting of of looking for being able to turn a situation something that looks like a failure or looks like a rejection and being able to turn that into a win and sure it's easy to celebrate that now but you know you can only imagine when the news is the biggest organization in the world that is your target market to help promote and propel this brand is saying you're not allowed and that as a product creator can be really really challenging you know when you think about it's almost like saying you know this company's not going to stop your thing or we're not going to allow you know and so i i love the way that i'm hearing this through your journey how it's constantly shifted i want to hear how do you and your brother make decisions have you created like because when i even met you what i experienced from you is very methodical strategic very thoughtful it's not you know it's not random this isn't just some random luck story and i really appreciate that because i really admire conscious intentional thinkers can you walk me through how you and your brother make decisions when it comes to business and then diving into things like recruitment and leadership any of those areas that you want to dive into and stories you want to share of how have you made good decisions and what is your decision making process so i think again to one of the speaking to the podcast when you had i mean the key to his entire success is his principles and i think that a lot of times when you think back think back on on things that you love the most your most amazing journeys your your best experiences they're usually spontaneous things and the best ability to be spontaneous is when you have a clear and methodical approach to how you make decisions because it gives you a lot of room to be spontaneous because you know you can stay within this realm and so for ryan and i when we think about how we're making decisions we anchor them in clear deliverables that we have to achieve and so i think like a lot of times when people want to make decisions they try to make something for the moment but they don't think of where that's going to lead them and so back to thinking of the entire journey and the destination i think you need to know when you're making this is a key decision it's not like daily which you have a breakfast but like key long-term decisions is you need to know where does this lead you and where do you want it to lead you what's the intention behind making this decision and so i think that for us has been something that's been really really important is that michael burke who's the ceo of the ton he gave me some of the best advice that i ever had and which is you need to think about do you want to do something for the moment or do you want to do something to be dynastic and he took it again he gave advice to us at the right moment in time he heard it this is back in 2016 and ryan and i always wanted to build something dynastic and so if you want to build something dynastic and you want to bring people along for that journey you have to make decisions and have the approach for the long term you can't do it for the immediate and so all of the decisions that we make are based on building essentially this house if you want to build a house you have to have a solid foundation if you don't have a solid foundation it doesn't matter what you put on top of it because it won't last and so the way that we look at is every decision we make is another brick in building this house and so if you have one bad brick you can replace it but if you're constantly laying bad bricks and you're saying oh these are the best ones i can get right now but they may not last for long term you're gonna have to eventually replace it and so the way that ryan and i look at it is make fewer decisions but make better decisions and take more time and there's nothing wrong with saying no like you say no 99 times so that you can say yes 100 the time and that 100 time is worth more than 100x what you did if you would have said yes all of those other times so when we're thinking about decisions it's really keeping that at the heart of it is that where are we trying to go why are we trying to go here how are we going to get there and why should you say yes to this and like if you do that and you stand behind each of your decisions you'll be proud of your decisions and then you will typically make the right ones for yourself you can't be right 100% of the time you shouldn't hold yourself to that standard and it's irrational to do so but if you feel confident in your decisions the intention was right and the people around you feel great about it you will typically make the right decision like one of the things that Ryan and I always try to do is make difficult things as simple as possible which means remove the excess thinking about a really challenging situation should I go here should I do this in large scenarios and take away all the excess from the decision what's at the core of the problem what's at the core of why you want to do this and then evaluate that and be transparent honest with yourself like a lot of times people don't want to be honest with themselves they build up these other things and they take on these external factors and say like I'm doing this for other people and they're not really being transparent with themselves but you inherently know what you should do and you're gonna make some wrong decisions along the road and it's okay to make a wrong decision if the intention was right but you don't want to make intentional wrong decisions and like people do that all the time they don't talk about it and so I think again that's something we discovered early on in making process and decision processes if we feel confident and the intention is right and it's for the long term it's in line with the dynastic approach and the people around us will embrace it and that's the right decision and sometimes it's simply it's much more simple than you think it is and I mean we're complex creatures so we can make any simple idea very complex I've listened to enough of your podcast and other people that are leaders in the space and it's like the whole goal with whether it's meditation or anything else that you're doing is you want to try to simplify the experience because that's when you get most of your clarity and so when you're thinking through the decision making process that's what you try to do is try to make it as clear as possible the easiest way to do so is to make it as simple as possible Adam masterclass in decision making right there I mean that was brilliant I love this because you know it's these things are just thrown around and I can tell that how much grappling you've done with the idea and how you've simplified the idea for yourself and you're so right that the reason why decision making often feels so hard is we're allowing noise in and distractions and then we're not really asking the right questions we're not asking the right people we're looking at it from the wrong direction I loved it something you said that you said that people sometimes make intentionally wrong decisions can you explain and expand on that a little bit more about how we do that I read an amazing book when I was like I think I was like 16 17 years old and I read a book called Predictably Irrational by Dan O'Reilly he's one of my favorite authors and he wrote a book talking about how humans make predictably irrational decisions all the time and I read that book and I was like no way I thought I was smart and then you read that book and you realize wait a minute you're not as smart as you think you are because so many decisions are the way things are presented and what you miss tell me about what you meant when you said we make intentionally wrong decisions and how we end up there because sometimes I think we're not good at making the right decisions because we don't know where we go wrong well so I think a lot of times it's you don't know why you are making the decision so most of the time people can be pressured and again this is back to a peer pressure situation you can be pressured into making a decision and you at your core know that this is not the right decision but you believe that you need to make this decision and so you can every instance you can't make the right decision so that's not what I'm trying to say but there's we can all point to moments in our lives and we've done it where we said yes to something or we do something knowing we should not do it there's so many things that happen because of that and there's so many results of that that compound and become worse and worse and worse because we do these things that we don't truthfully believe in and know that they're not right for us to do and so I think a lot of times think back to your worst decisions for the decision that people make that they're not necessarily proud of or even just the wrong decision they knew what the right one was they intentionally ignored it because they thought somebody might be upset if I say yes or it's usually they're making it for someone else they're not making it for themselves so they don't put themselves at the center of this decision they're putting others there and you can't help other people if you can't help yourself and so I know it's a difficult thing you can't apply to every situation but I learned really I said early on that if I'm in a place of strength and I'm in a place of support I can help you much better than if I'm intentionally just trying to help you and I know I'm going to be at a disadvantage I'm not going to be able to help you I can I can help someone much better from a position of power than I can a position of weakness and that's like using power as a positive not as a negative and so I think that when people are making these intentional wrong decisions a lot of times they're not coming from a bad place they're coming from a place where they think they need to do it to help others but they're not they're not going to be in a position to do it so I think that I identified that relatively early on because I felt that when I felt the best I could help more people and I can make better decisions and again it's a back to like happiness is the core success right if you're happy and you have that energy and you have that charisma you have all the things that uh resonate from you people will gravitate towards you but if you're pushing out negative and it's and people don't feel good about being around you and intentionally making bad decisions you should not go around somebody like that and so I think that um a lot of times it doesn't come from a place of negativity or or something that's bad it comes from that you're trying to help somebody and you're intentionally making the wrong decision and you end up hurting everybody instead of helping them so I think that again it's not being selfish it's taking care of yourself so that you can help others and I think like again when you think of intention you think of like purpose if you do it from a positive place and you do it from a place where you think you can help yourself you can help others you're gonna make the right decisions and I think that that's you have to avoid those intentional bad decisions that intentional wrong decisions because they don't lead to too much for anybody they just end up hurting it great answer man if someone right now is listening and they want to start a business side hustle really build something what's the first three things they should be thinking about if someone's listening right now going Adam's advice is great I have an idea I want to get started what's the first three things they should do well I think it depends on what the type of business is but I think the first thing you need to do is identify how you're going to start it and so I think you need to know like you've got the best idea in the world but ideas don't matter much if you don't have execution behind it so I think you need to figure out how are you going to execute it two I think you need to figure out what you don't know in terms of where you want to go and who you can ask to help you get there and then three you need to understand that it's going to be longer harder and more expensive than you think it will be but it will also be more rewarding so you have to have that same type of energy as you go through it I think there's clear specific things that apply to different businesses I don't think there's generalizations more so the idea but starting anything the easiest way to do it is one step at a time and you will become better every day even if it doesn't feel like it but repetition needs to progress and so I think that that's really really important when you're starting something and again like you have to believe in yourself because belief is different than hope hoping for things won't get you very far but belief in things will get you very very far so I think that that's those are key underlying principles to those three things but starting I think it's the easiest way to get to where you want to go for sure for sure can you Adam I want to shift from like your mind and your ideas and the way you think to how you live can you take us through a day in the life of Adam like how does it start how does it end what does it look like what's been your routine and more recently what are some things that you've changed over time that have actually created momentum and acceleration so it's funny because my schedule is completely different than I'm sure yours and most in general and I think this again becoming comfortable with who you are this was was the process and I didn't have the ability early on in the journey I do have much more of an ability of it now and I go to sleep at nearly 4am every day and I wake up closer to 11am so I think a lot of times I think of entrepreneurs and people in my position they think you're up at 5 or 6am you're beating the sun but I'm the exact opposite and I found that my greatest point of inspiration and joy is typically during the night time when there's less activity because I can focus on where we want to go what we want to do and also on myself and back to inherently known who I was and my brother as well we've known since we were 15 or 16 that the night schedule worked better for us but we didn't have an ability to implement it because we're in high school we're in college and then we're starting a business you have to be on other people's more traditional I guess like calendar schedule and so as we got to higher levels we were able to continually shift it and obviously we have people on our team that supplement the early mornings and whatnot we work the late nights but I really embraced what my natural predisposition was for my schedules and I knew that I would be better if I could operate on this schedule and it's just like morning people love to be up in the morning I love to just push it as far as I can late into the night and I think there's nothing wrong with it and a lot of times it doesn't get glorified because it's a difficult schedule it doesn't work for everybody it's not essentially normal but for me it's been the absolute best thing and being able to build my schedule the way that I want I believe is the ultimate luxury because again if you can control your time and not necessarily what happens throughout your time but control how you allocate your time most people would rather have 10 minutes of you at 100% than 3 hours of you at 20% even though you spend more time you can't give them all of you and so one of the things that I identified as I was building my schedule this way and really leading into it is I can give people 100% of my effort when I'm on a schedule that aligns with when I want to go to sleep and when I want to wake up and also when I want to work out if I can anchor those specific things I can give everybody much more of myself in a shorter period of time and again like I've heard you speak about it before and you said it beautifully and it's true like most of the people in your life Jay they would prefer for you to have be with them for 10 minutes give them 100% of Jay it's an amazing experience and for you to be sitting in the room on your phone dozing off and not giving them the energy that not only they deserve but that you deserve to give them and so I think that that's something that I identified through how I built my schedule now I mean I work out every single day and I think that's for me it's a really important thing because discipline has been something that has been pivotal to our journey too and I believe that with discipline if you anchor yourself through specific things it gives you more freedom it's discipline is something that opens you up and gives you more opportunities for us to be spontaneous more freedom is because you have clear pillars clear anchors it's like if you're playing a video game you get to the checkpoint you can be more brave in your action because you know you can always go back to the checkpoint so like that's the way I live my day-to-day life I try to have specific windows where I'll do calls but then I leave everything else essentially open because I love the chaos in a positive way and I love the spontaneity in a positive way and I think that for me at least this is the way I found my schedule if it's too back to back to back to back and scheduled out there's no real opportunity for the spontaneous excitement which I think that we all need to have in one way or another and I don't think that it's the same for everybody but I think that you have to leave yourself the ability to discover something or discover a relationship you didn't think was going to happen or a partnership you didn't think was going to happen or a friendship or things of that nature and I think that being able to anchor myself knowing I'm doing these few things at these few times leaving this window open so that I can try things and again like the greatest opportunities I've ever had have come from taking a chance on something and then anchoring it in the way that I live my life through my schedule and so again it's something that I've had to work towards it it wasn't like that on day one it's as you get further than the journey you hone it in more you have more opportunity to try things and you have more control I think like again one of the key things for me in terms of success is control over schedule and control over time you don't get to you don't know how much time you have but if you can control how you allocate that time that's truthfully the greatest luxury and that's something that I think is pivotal success and I think again when we're thinking about our team and specifically in the headquarters everybody has different schedules because everybody works differently and I've seen how positive it's been for Ryan and I and so we try to translate that to the team as well. I love how different your schedule is to mine because it still represents the same thing to both of us so yeah you still have discipline you still have focus you still prioritize around when you can be creative it's based on self-awareness and what good for you and right for you so the values that we're choosing our schedule on is the same like there's a very similar value set and it just looks different and that's actually the beauty of life like that and I think that's where we go wrong where we go you know in a few years people are gonna be saying oh yeah I need to do what Adam's doing I need to sleep at 4am and you know and it's like well that's not really gonna work or people can be looking at it oh yeah I need to wake up like you know like I need to go to sleep when Jay doesn't wake and it's like well that's not really what we're saying what we're saying is if you're self-aware and you create discipline and rhythm in your life and space for spontaneity then you gotta figure out what works for you and where it works for you and so I love hearing how different our schedules are because it just proves that there are multiple ways that it can look even though there's a depth of why they're created that way and in addition to that what I really appreciate you were talking about is I think we think of discipline as ease of either back to back and we think of laziness or spontaneity as completely free and what you've actually said is what discipline is is that you've created a discipline where you can be what I've been thinking about a lot lately is you can be effective and efficient and efficiency is often seen as discipline but efficiency means you do a lot of stuff but effectiveness means you do important stuff and I think that's what I'm seeing is missing in so many of our lives is that we try to be efficient we do the laundry do the dishes we spoke to the team we check this off check this off check this off but then you're like well I haven't had any creative inspiration they haven't been effective and so I'm really glad that you actually explained discipline to be the meeting of efficiency and effectiveness together I mean I think you said it in an efficient and effective way the way that you just like illustrated what I was trying to get across but it's true like I think a lot of times people think of discipline as something that lacks freedom but discipline is the thread and the opportunity that gives you freedom and so I think and again as you become more efficient you can become more effective it's hard to be effective if you're not efficient and so I think again you said it in an amazing way you took a complex thing and you digested it but it's been really paramount and I think it's something that is the way that my life has gone and again like I think that we have the same theories you and I in terms of what we want to accomplish from our day-to-day lives we do it at a different time I'm working out at midnight you're doing things early in the morning but it's we're looking to get the same type of result and I think again when you're talking about being self-aware that is the absolute most important thing if you tried if I tried to work your schedule it wouldn't do the same thing for me if you tried to do mine it wouldn't work but I think the fact that we've both been transparent honest with ourselves and self-aware what makes us show up as best as we possibly can and then that makes us better for other people and so I think for us like that's that's an incredible way to phrase it yeah and I respect and appreciate that in you so much because I think there is a noise I mean I get different noise so my noise is hey Jay why don't you hang out late like why don't you come to this right and then your noise is well if you're an entrepreneur who's disciplined shouldn't you be waking up earlier you know and it's just really interesting how like no matter what you do there there's gonna be someone who disagrees with it and that's why it has and that's why I respect what you just shared so I'm so happy to hear that you have this I had no idea that that was your schedule now I know when to spend time with you and you know and I really like that because I really hope that everyone who's listening you're feeling more confidence that you're not doing it wrong if you're doing what's right for you but notice that Adam and I are still basing on values of discipline of focus of creativity it's not that Adam's not saying I do whatever I want whenever I want and there's nothing there's no structure he still even has a sleep you still have a sleep routine it sounds like when you're like 4am to 11am right there's still a routine and so that's what I find really healthy Adam this has been so powerful because what I love about the way you talk about entrepreneurship is that it's strategic and intentional but then there's the spontaneity and creativity and I'm so excited to see you see what you continue to build it's you know you're 12 years in and I cannot wait to see you just continue to crush I mean you're already crushing it but for the business to continue to grow and grow and grow I wanted to ask you before we come to the final five around creativity and innovation and you spoke about spontaneity they're meeting someone random like bumping into an idea I love that so much what has been your secret to creativity and innovation where have you continued to find that that discipline and that connection so I think one of our I guess one of our I don't know the secrets is the right word but again back to my brother like the fact that there's two of us and that we're able to go through life together and have similar experiences I mean my brother like to be fully transparent is more creative than I am and like when we're thinking of color stories and whatnot Ryan's always building these beautiful color stories Cody who's our design director is amazing Jake is our content director he's incredible Sam who has social she's she's amazing as well just the whole team i could go on and on but one of the things that i discovered and this actually came from my mom so uh and you wouldn't know it based on what my life has become but until i was like 25 year old i'm 34 now so no maybe even older this is like 2013 until but let's use 25 i hardly have ever left the country i left the country one time twice actually i went to mexico one time i went to london one time and it's like each one was for two days and then when i'm 25 my mom basically said like you guys need to do more and see more things you need to discover more things because we're so laser focused on what we're going to do so a lot of the things that i reflected on today with you jay is things i've learned more specifically over the last six or seven years in terms of like the spontaneity the freedom i've always had a discipline it was almost a level that was too high and so my mom had said you need to they were going to hong kong and she was for this wedding she said you need to come like it's an old family friend you have to come to this wedding and i had no intention of of traveling overseas long story short i end up right now i end up going it's the most incredible trip um just like going outside of the country seeing something completely different changing our perspective and when we're there we get inspired by this bridge and this bridge that never i've never seen pictures of it anything we get inspired by this bridge we end up creating a shoe based on this we end up going to another another country years later inspired by that and so i think that travel allowed us to change our point of view change our perspective when you're thinking of creativity a lot of times there's things in your day-to-day life that when you're thinking about repetition you don't pay attention to it because it comes in almost a second nature it's reoccurring but when you go to a new place everything is new you have to pay attention to your surroundings because it's uncomfortable not necessarily in a positive way you get all of the stimulation through your senses you're seeing things you're meeting people and so when i when my mom pushed me out of my comfort zone then it completely changed the way that i was viewing the world and it made it so that i was much more open to receiving what the world had and just pushing what i wanted to do or what the intention was and so i think like that made it so um it's kind of like i don't know if you remember on the old cell phone signals when you make a call going out like arrow pushing like this when someone sending you a message it's going both ways and so that's kind of what that calibration did to how we discover creativity and now like one of the greatest things that inspires me is movement whether it's moving in cars moving on foot movement in the air and so i think like movement in general changing your surroundings not necessarily going to another country or another state but even going anywhere just discovering i think the opportunity for for movement that's really where like the creativity came for us and then again i think that if you can take an idea lean into it and see like and speak to why this makes you feel different you'll find inspiration in it and i think that for us like we have an incredible team that finds inspiration in different places and we're able to talk about it and the greatest thing you can do is be a great communicator because if you can articulate what your vision is and whether that's through verbal whether it's through art whether it's through anything people will understand and people will feel it not everybody will but some people will and i think like that's one of the things that's gone really really far for us that we've been able to take these uh inspirational things like our streamline shoe which is my favorite one is inspired by japanese souffle pancakes from when ryan and i were in tokyo and like ryan obsessed with them but we took that and we made it into a shoe and so it's like you never know where the inspiration is going to come from but if you allow yourself to receive it you can get it and i think like that's something that a lot of people don't think that they can be able to put it out there and push it but a lot of times just receiving what's around you will give you a lot of inspiration into what you should do i am so glad i asked you that question i was about to not ask you that question but i'm so happy and even though you're giving of course which is wonderful to hear the credit to your team and your brother for being you know creative ones but the fact that you've been able to observe that and see that that's where it's come from and the example from your mother too i love that adam you've just this has been phenomenal and i hope this is the first of many i mean i want you to i want you to come back on the show regularly and give us updates as things continue to grow for you and apl and your brother and uh as i said massive fan supporter uh getting to hang out with you at a pumpkin patch was was the weirdest place though i ever told me and you would meet each other but it was we had a great time because we just had a we just had a personal growth self-development like you know complete connection there but adam these are your final five you know the drill it's rapid fire i do one word to one sentence maximum you've you've heard everyone so you should have had enough practice by now uh but adam goldson these are your final five you ready i'm excited awesome all right so the first question is what is the best advice you've ever received i have to mix two because i i think it's important the first is and they could go together first is when i was a kid my dad would say if you touch it you can catch it it was about sports but i think it's applicable to life which is if something's within your grasp you can get close enough you can make it yours and it is possible so you have if it's in your site you can make it yours the next thing that aligns with that is larry ellison again i heard this at the right moment in time said the larger the apparent risk the fewer people that will try to go there and so that's basically is is if it seems scary it seems risky but you have a deep down belief fewer people will try to do it so you actually have a competitive advantage i heard that when ryan and i were thinking about starting epl so that kind of was all i needed to hear and that it pushed us over the edge you know i love those answers so much because you know i think about the things in my life as well they're just lines that i live my life by and it's exactly what you're saying like it's not like you knew those people it's not like you had like a 10-hour conversation with them it's just you heard someone say something that what you said earlier so one of Einstein's lines is if you can't explain something simply you don't understand it well enough and that is what i live my life by i'm like if i i can read as many books as i want but if i can't explain that idea with simplicity then what's the point and that's kind of what i built my life around and then there's another beautiful thought by martin luther king which is the people who love peace need to learn to organize themselves as well as those who love war and i love that because that's kind of where i get my you know i want to be empathetic compassionate loving kind but i want to accelerate in the most strategic focus driven way because you can't just be this fluffy woo woo kind of vibe because that doesn't make change and so i those two and those are not two that i have been familiar with those thoughts and i'm that one about risk i mean that's gonna stay with me for a long time so i really appreciate you sharing that with me and i hope everyone's listening can realize that you don't need to meet someone you don't need to you don't even need to interview them if that you know you can literally see a one line it could change your life so uh love those answers beautiful answers all right adam second question uh what's the worst advice you've ever heard or received it was actually around the time when i heard uh what larry ellison said about risk and it was um when we were in school and ryan was in the business program and somebody had told me don't even try it and the idea was like you can't possibly do this because you don't know how to do it but i think that if you try something and you fail you tried it you'll learn for the next part of the journey but if you never try it then you automatically fail and so i think like that thing and again i know it's not as much of a nugget as the other ones but don't even try it i think so many of us hear that throughout our lives and it gets conditioned to us so i think flip that just try it like but don't even try it is the worst piece of advice i've ever heard question number three top five rappers of all time because i know that we didn't get into this but i know that i love rap music and hip-hop music too i grew up and i know that's a big part of your life so let's hear your top five nipsey hustle rick ross jay-z young jay-z and ti nice good great list great list we literally just interviewed lauren london earlier today uh who's a dear friend of mine and she was you know married to nipsey so i mean it's like not to not to get off topic but like a lot of nipsey's thoughts on entrepreneurship and i had a few great conversations with him when he was alive but like the way that he looked at it was and we used to talk about it was so similar to the way that we thought about apl like in terms of building something independently from the ground up like i i and i spoke at harvard in the harvard business school and one of the things that we talked about this was right before nipsey passed away was he did this interview and talked about taking stairs not the elevator and that's been paramount to our journey so i think like i'm gonna say i was a fan of this when i was in college because i went to usc from south central so like we were hearing it when we were in the locker room and everything like that but just what nipsey did what his thought process is in entrepreneurship and just like building the people around you if you build within your community you can help so many other people and if you start local you can take it much further and just like not only was incredibly talented but like he was just like such a he was a leader and he's a thought-provoking person and he lived what he said and so i think like again like he was he was super super super inspirational in addition to being an incredible rapper i love that man thank you for adding that note that's you know that's that's beautiful insight i'm really glad again i asked that question because it led to uh led to an even deeper deeper takeaway all right question before how would you define your current purpose in life i think it's maximizing each day and staying focused on the future so i think it's being able to enjoy the present but it's still being excited about the future like that's really really important to me i think that's what gives you energy to keep going forward is just enjoying today but being excited about the future all right adam and fifth and final question what is something that you used to value but you no longer value probably nostalgia i mean i think that um i get so excited about what i'm doing today where we're going in the future and i think i've done amazing things and we've done incredible things but a lot of times we live in the past and we don't and that keeps us from enjoying the present and so i think that i can appreciate the past but i definitely uh but i definitely love the present and i'm excited about the future and i think that that shift of perspective um has been something that's really been important to my dream also just like my happiness in person that is such a good answer we've never had that before and i and i love that answer because i can agree with you more i you know i always saw individuals who lived as if their best years had already gone and that's such a hard way to live because life is longer than you think it is and so that is a beautiful answer everyone make sure you follow adam across social media so you can connect make sure you follow apl across social media and i want you to make sure that you tag me and adam and apl and any insights that you gained from this episode there are tons like i said i hope you're making notes second of all go listen to it again if you weren't making notes third thing recognize that adam is a true modern entrepreneur like it's highly strategic it's highly focused there's creativity there's spontaneity there are so many lessons to learn uh from this incredible human and adam i've had so much fun today i've learned so much from you i think there have been moments in this interview where you've said things that are going to stay with me for a very very long time and i personally am going to make sure that i apply them in my life so i want to thank you for those gifts and i cannot wait to continue our friendship to continue to see you succeed and win and continue to build and i'm excited to be a part of the journey man thank you so much and pass it on and i'll see you next time