Stop Taking Yourself So Seriously | Chad Goes Deep

Welcome to the weekend edition of The Daily Stoic. Each weekday, we bring you a meditation inspired by the ancient Stoics, something to help you live up to those four Stoic virtues of courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. And then here on the weekend, we take a deeper dive into those same topics. We interview Stoic philosophers.

We explore at length how these Stoic ideas can be applied to our actual lives and the challenging issues of our time. Here on the weekend, when you have a little bit more space, when things have slowed down, be sure to take some time to think, to go for a walk, to sit with your journal, and most importantly, to prepare for what the week ahead may bring. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another Saturday episode of The Daily Stoic Podcast.

I want to take you back to 2019. I just spent a week in New York putting out Still Miss is the Key. I did book events, did a bunch of media, and then I was flying to Los Angeles to basically do that all again. My youngest son had just been born also, so I've been gone for weeks, and my wife was meeting me there.

It was crazy, not getting a lot of sleep, just a lot going on. But I'm feeling good about the book. I remember I was at the Los Angeles Athletic Club, and that morning, I found out that Still Miss is the Key debuted at number one. That was pretty cool.

And then I went for a swim, and then this is my memory of it. I could have the dates on, but I am almost positive that I don't. And then I had a podcast to record, and they were coming to meet me at my hotel room, which was at the Los Angeles Athletic Club. They were going to record it there.

So these two guys come in, and they set up their stuff, and then I get in my chair, and we start to go. And they are just two of the biggest bros you have ever heard in your life, your biggest California bros. And I just remember going, what is this? Is this real?

Am I being pranked? Is this a test of my stoicism? Should I be really polite? Should I get up and leave?

Is this like a Borat situation? It's like testing my good humor. Am I supposed to play along? I just could not wrap my head around what this was.

It was hilarious. They were very nice. And then that was the end of it. And then later, later, maybe they broke character, or later, somebody told me, no, this is like a bit.

This is what these guys do. And you've probably seen them before. This is like one of their famous clips. All right, counsel, it is 1.15 a.m.

Jeff. What up, counsel? My name is Chad Kroger. First of all, hang on, just a moment.

So you may have a seat, and I'll call you up. Thank you very much. First, I just want to say thank you. Nothing gets me more stoked than six hours of civil service.

I come to you from a land called SoCal, and I also just want to say that I'm honored to be in this newfound land of Delaware. I wasn't aware that the government had inducted the 51st state, but I'm stoked that you joined America. Welcome. Of course they do.

According to our sources, an attempt has been made to suppress the right to party. Not to get too lawyery on you, but this is in direct violation of the Constitution. Our forefathers valued the right to rage without government restriction. So basically, that's what they do.

I don't remember if I vaguely was familiar with that, and if I couldn't tell, like, is this that thing, or is this just, I'm thinking of that thing. But it's this kind of, like, low-key satire of where I grew up. I probably sound like these people to some of you with some of the things that I say. And we became friends, we stayed in touch, I did the podcast again a couple years later, I watched their Netflix special, which was hilarious, and it's from that Netflix special that I learned that Chad is actually from Sacramento.

He went to a high school that I almost went to. And then I listened to him on Pete Holmes' podcast, which was a great episode of this podcast also. But I listened to him on Pete Holmes, and I was like, oh, this guy's, like, obviously I know he's smart because he wouldn't be able to do this comedy if he wasn't. But this guy's actually really deep, ironically, and really thoughtful and really nice.

And so I shot him a note afterwards, and I said, hey, hit me up when you're ever in Austin. I'd love to hang out or have you on the podcast. And he did. He was here for some music festival, which he was performing at.

He's the best. We talked about how he pulls off this comedy, which to me seems like it must require a certain amount of discipline. One of my favorite bits is where he walks up to, like, people who are really in their cars, have, like, classic car shows and stuff, and he just quotes lines from Fast and the Furious as if he made them up. Or another one where he listens to the Fifty Shades of Grey audiobook loudly in his car at gas stations or red lights and just doesn't let on that this is the most absurd thing ever.

And he sort of sits in that discomfort that he creates, again, like a Larry David or a Borat. And there's just something, you know, I couldn't do that. I would bust up, or I'd be overwhelmed with shame. So we actually did talk a little bit about shamelessness, talk about self-consciousness, and does that get in the way of happiness or humor?

Talk about leaning into your weirdness, and then the craft of comedy and a lot more. Chad and JT's podcast, Go Deep, is hilarious. You can check out their YouTube channel. Chad has another YouTube channel called Academy of Chad, where he has a bunch of satirical videos called Chad Philosophy.

Let me play a clip from this video, Find the Lasting Happiness with Epicurus. You ever feel like he's driving for too much, like too much money, too much fame, too much status, and you feel like the stoke is just out of reach? And then one day, you're out surfing, you just got a barrel, you're in between sets, a new tan is coming in, the sun's about to set, and you think, whoa, this is peak stoke. I'm now at one with the universe.

Well, so did Epicurus, who's all about finding froth in the tranquil joys of friendship and the epicness of existence, in his philosophy, the pursuit of simple pleasures. Let's freaking dive in, dude. You can catch him performing stand-up all over the country as well. You can follow him on Instagram, at Chad Goes Deep, on TikTok, at Chad and JT, and on YouTube, at Chad and JT Go Deep.

Not everything in socialism has to be so serious. I think this is really funny. I think you'll like it, and I was really glad you came on the podcast, and I hope you like this episode. I think the first time I met you was one of the weirdest experiences of my life.

Yeah, you guys came to my hotel room, and they told me absolutely nothing. They were like, no, it's these two guys, they have a podcast. They didn't tell me it was like this kind of weird satire joke thing. So I was just like, it was like Borat or something, you know?

You're like, who are these people? And then it was in this uncanny valley between like real and not real. And then you guys went, you sat down, this would have been weird even if it wasn't in character, you just went directly into an ad read. You do like the intros and the ad reads that are separate when they're not there, so they're not saying it.

You guys went directly into an ad read for like a manscaping company. And I'm like, these people are in my room for the next hour, what? Oh man, I forgot we used to do that. We used to do the ad read right with it.

Yeah, you know, that was really early on because we were kind of unsure. We just started having guests. And so it was in a moment where we were trying to just always be in character. So we're like, do we be in character?

Do we ask questions in character? And we first started out, started gaining some traction, all of our meetings and all of our producers. We did them all in character. And it worked for some, but for others, they're like, what are you doing?

And to us, we're like, no, we have to stay in character. Like we had this one guy, and he's like, guys, stop. And then our agent was like, hey, if they tell you to break, you can break. I'm like, okay.

I don't remember what book it was for, but still in Suzuki. Okay, so this was like six or seven years ago. There's a thing that publicists do, which is like, on the one hand, they're trying to get all the big things that move the needle. And then there's just like other things that are just trying to like fill up the list, you know?

And you never know like which one you're going to get. But sometimes they obviously, it's like they have a relationship with someone and they know something. And they're just like, just trying to get, because it makes, I mean, you're like, hey, I do have this book about philosophy. You should talk to Chad and JT.

That's like your perfect audience. So like the fact that they booked it was hilarious. And then they just didn't brief me on it at all. They were like, okay, this is out of your wheelhouse, which is an ordinary interview.

And I'm like, what the fuck is happening? That's so funny. I didn't, man, it's so funny to look back on that. And we probably just left and you're like, what was that?

I would love to, the only reason I haven't gone back to watch it is that it might ruin whatever, like I'm so fond of it, but I'm just remembering it being like, why is my life right now? And are these people like this? Because I grew up in California. So like, it's, I think that's what is so compelling about the characters is that they are in the uncanny valley of like, you don't, if you, I think you have to be pretty dense to be like Borat.

This is real, right? You know, like there's a whole world that you would have to go in to buy that. Yeah. But like, if you come from California, like this isn't that out of the ordinary.

No, weird, but yeah. I mean, it's very close to who I am. You know, it's my brother. It's sometimes like, that's who you really are in a sense, because like in real life or when I'm not sort of like, you know, playing Chad or whatever, I'm like kind of a little bit guarded and not guarded, but just a little bit more introverted.

But when I'm like, feel like kind of fully like safe with people, that's like when I'm like, and he's like, Chad is who you really are like on the inside. So there's like a Michael Scottness to it, where it's like, what is a person who doesn't feel shame? Which like shame is a constraint on all of us. So imagine if you remove shame or self-consciousness, there's something very freeing, but then also kind of terrifying about that guy.

Totally. Yeah. And I've always admired that those are always my favorite characters in TV, you know, Kramer, Michael Scott. It's like people who go through life who were to you, it just looks like they're, in their minds, they're always winning and they're always kind of crushing it.

And they're not even aware of like what other people are thinking or what other people think of them. And that was, whenever I've watched that, especially watching Seinfeld, it just felt so freeing to watch for me. Yeah. And so I think that's why I kind of gravitated towards playing, you know, a character like that because it's just, that's kind of how I want to be in life.

Did you ever do the Seinfeld reality tour in New York? No, I haven't done that. But it's like led by the actual Kramer. Is it?

Yeah, yeah. It's like that whole thing is real. So remember there's like an arc in later in the season where Kramer does the Peterman reality tour because he's being a little thing. But Kenny Kramer, it was a comic that Jerry and Larry David were friends with or lived down the hall from them or whatever.

He based it on him. And then as the show blew up, he kind of became famous but he didn't participate in it. He started a real bus tour and I went on it when I was in high school or something. And you're like, it's kind of cool behind the scenes but you're also like, there's something sad and weird about it that you're like, oh, it actually wouldn't be fun to be Kramer because in real life, this is what Kramer is doing.

Exactly. He doesn't actually have anything going on. This is his main thing, but it was weird. It's interesting how movies or TV shows can kind of glorify that.

I think a good example is Brad Pitt's character in Once Upon a Time Hollywood, Cliff Booth, because he lives in a trailer, he's single, he's basically a loser. But when you see Brad Pitt playing him, you're like, I want to be that guy. Yeah. And it's interesting how an TV and film is able to do that.

Yeah, it is. You know Michael Schur? So he has this book called How to Be Perfect. It's actually a book, it's very smart, but it's a book about moral philosophy.

And they have this section in it about whether it would be awesome to be Michael Scott or not. It's actually not the greatest person to be because you're like the Dunning-Kruger effect where you're stupid but you're not smart enough to know that you're stupid. And he kind of goes like, maybe a better example is would it be awesome to be Ron Gronkowski? Right.

Because the problem with Michael Scott is his life is objectively very sad. He's, you know, cooking bacon for himself on his foreman grill and no one wants to be with it. Like, it's relatively close to the end of the show. Like, his life sucks.

But like, is there something about this sort of like, oafish but good-natured and mostly hitting green lights on the course? Like, would you rather be that than someone with self-awareness? Yeah. I mean, the kind of golden retriever who's crushing it.

Yes. Yeah, exactly. I mean, that sounds awesome to me. Yeah, Ron Gronkowski seems like a big golden retriever.

Yeah, yeah. A derpy dog. Yeah. Who actually, from what I've read, is actually pretty smart.

Like, he's like, I only live on my, you know, my endorsement money or whatever. Like, it seems like he's playing a bit of a character, actually. Yeah. But like, there's something about self-consciousness, I think, that is probably at odds with happiness.

That's different than self-awareness. Right. But that like, sensitivity to how you're coming off. Well, oftentimes, if we're shooting something and like, we're kind of in character, it is very freeing.

That freeing sense of like, just being totally unaware of how other people are feeling is very, yeah. Kind of like what I was saying earlier, that's kind of why I gravitate towards that because it's like, that's kind of how I want to live. Yeah. I'm the fifth child.

So I think I was always kind of branded as that when I was growing up is like kind of like the baby to everyone. So you're like, I'm the baby. They're like, you're going to win the lottery. You're just lucky.

You know, you just kind of like, you're just kind of cruising through life. And like I studied philosophy in college and you know, like my old brother in finance, you know, they're just all very focused on successful. And I was like, I'm going to study philosophy. They're like, what are you going to do with that?

I'm like, I don't know. Comedy. Steve Martin did it. Like the second you're kind of like seeing yourself as you're doing it, you're out of it.

And there's probably something about being in the character because the character doesn't think about any of that. You don't have to think about any of it. Yeah. Yeah.

I used to, I still do like really enjoy bombing because especially when I started doing that kind of on stage, like I sort of developed a persona on stage. And it's like, sometimes especially early on audiences would just be like, what are you doing? And like to me, that was so satisfying. So I'm like, oh, they think it's real.

And so I kind of found there's like a freeness. Whereas if I'm being more myself, you can kind of hone in. Like, you know, if everyone's laughing, but there's one guy, he's like kind of looking at his phone, he's just like kind of like looking around. You just hone in on that.

And it does kind of like break you from that kind of like performance kind of flow. Well, it must be weird for you because if the audience is in on the joke, like they know who you are, that's much more favorable to you than when you're performing in front of, just like you're just going up in front of a club or if you're like in front of a city council meeting or whatever, like the character kind of thrives on the not receptiveness to it. So in a way like a bad audience is a good audience for you and a good audience is kind of a bad audience. True.

Yeah. Like if people, if people are familiar with me, then they're kind of in on the joke and then the surprise isn't there as much. So you kind of have to work to, you know, whereas if it's an audience that doesn't know who I am, you know, sometimes it can really pop because it's like the surprise is there from the jump. As soon as I walk on stage, they're kind of like something's off.

Yeah. And so, and if they buy into it, they're on board for the whole ride. And so it kind of doesn't really matter about like the, like writing, if I'm just stand up with the writing or punchlines, those matter, but it's, it's more in just my way of being. Yeah.

I think it makes them laugh, which is something I noticed with like Sebastian Maniscalco or anything of this. He like, when I watched him on stage for the first time, the way he walked up made me laugh. And I was like, oh, I want to do that where he had this like Italian kind of like swagger, but it was just so funny to me. And I'm like, man, if you can just like exude like a funny, weird confidence as you walk on stage.

Well, cause he's playing a character. Oh yeah. Like it's him, but if he's closer to like Larry, the cable guy than he is. In the sense of it's like, it's this thing that he's doing.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, that's his persona.

That's where the side of himself that he's honed in on, that's, that's funny. Yeah. I like standup comics who are more like writer comics. Like they're just doing it to me when it feels like they're performing, then it gets more towards like one man show or spoken word.

And it just, it punctures the illusion for me. Like I think to me, a great standup comedy, even though it actually is a highly honed performance that they are just reciting a script for. I like the feeling that they're like, what am I going to talk about next? You know what I mean?

Like that to me, that those are more my favorite. Yeah. Where it's sort of stream of consciousness. It feels like stream of consciousness.

Even though they know exactly the hour they're performing and when they're hitting all the spots, but it feels like they're just saying stuff. Like I don't like Ted talky speakers either, where they're like, they've performed the hand gestures and they like took a class on charisma or something. And where it's all scripted. And you can kind of, yeah.

Whereas like Bill Burr, I think Bill Burr's really good at that. Yeah. Where he can, he can rant on stage and it feels like it's all coming from his, and Urge Chappelle, like you see Chappelle, he always feels like it's unbehearsed. Yes.

And it's like. He's like, this is just what I'm feeling. And yeah, he's really good at creating that. Because sometimes I watch his specials.

I'm like, did he just practice this at all? Or is this just how he talks? Yeah. But he must have.

Oh, yeah. No one's booking a theater and paying for a production. To be like, let's hope it's good. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that's like another level of talent where it's... Yeah, I mean, it's all about making it look effortless. Or that you're not trying. Being an effective leader is difficult, right?

You got to keep your ego in check. You got to know how your business works, how the team operates for peak effectiveness. But most leaders are making decisions about their teams based on assumptions and not reality. And that's exactly the problem that today's sponsor, Scribe, was built to fix.

Scribe Optimize passively captures how your team works across approved business apps. And it uses AI to automatically surface workflows, inefficiencies, and improvement opportunities. No interviews, no manual discovery, no extra work for your team. Scribe is trusted by 80,000 plus enterprises, including nearly half of the Fortune 500.

Scribe Optimize follows work across every tool involved. If someone starts something in Salesforce and finishes it in a completely different tool, it tracks it the whole way. And Optimize shows you where your biggest inefficiencies are with AI-powered recommendations on how to fix them. So you're not just identifying problems.

You're getting clear directions on how to improve. The kind of visibility that used to take months now is always on. And Optimize only works on applications your admin improves, so no personal activity is captured, and no one's privacy is at risk. If you want to see what Optimize could look like for your organization, visit scribe.how slash stoic.

S-C-R-I-V-E dot how slash stoic. Maybe you've been hearing the buzz about live shopping lately. I know I have, and it makes sense. Like, people are already on their phones.

They're hanging out. They're looking for stuff to do. So why wouldn't business want to meet people where they're at? If you're hoping for people to find your listing or waiting for them to walk into your store, I know a little bit about that, you're setting yourself up for disappointment.

On Whatnot, you can go live and sell directly to people in real time. They see what you've got. They ask questions, and they buy, and they keep coming back. It was funny because after you guys came, I was like, what the fuck is this?

And then a couple months later, whatever, I saw one of the clips. I saw one of the sort of viral clips, and it was very triggering for me because when I was 20, maybe, I just started at American Apparel. I have told this story before, but I just started at American Apparel. And the company was like a disaster.

So he was just like, there would just be these girls in his life. He's like, I think we should have another store in Toronto. Go figure it out. He would just assign these people with no idea what they were doing, but open the store for a company doing $500 million in sales.

And so he had done this in San Francisco, and he had sent this girl to open the store in the Mission District. And actually, the Mission District had some weird San Francisco law that banned big box retailers, but their definition of a big box retailer was any restaurant or retailer with more than 10 locations. So suddenly, to open the store, they thought they signed a lease on, they put up the coming soon sign. And then it all came to this preaching hall when these community activists were like, no, no, you're a big box retailer.

You can't come gentrify our neighborhood. And it was going to be subjected to a city council meeting with public opinion. And so they were like, Ryan, you have to go. I didn't do this.

Also, I have no training in this whatsoever. Right, right, right. They were like, no, no, you need to go address this city council meeting. And so I go.

They told me I would speak first. I had five minutes. I prepared five minutes of remarks. Well, so many hundreds of people came that I get up there and they're like, actually, you have two minutes.

I don't think I've ever spoken in public before. So somehow I do my remarks. They don't go well. And I'm wearing an American apparel shirt, like a gray shirt.

And you ever read A Man in Fall? No. It's a tumble. I'll give it to you.

But there's a scene between like a lone agent and the main character of the book. And he's like, my goal is to give him saddlebags. And I'm like, what's saddlebags? He's like, I'm going to lay into this dude so much.

He's like, you're going to start to see the saddlebags under his arms. So you can see pictures of this. It was like covered. And I'm just like, so I'm just like, I'm losing.

Anyways, so I do my thing. I go, okay, I did my part. Whatever. That's as bad as it's going to get.

And then they directly have to sit in the front row and then be addressed by the community for the next two hours. Oh, no. Yeah. And these are wackos from San Francisco.

These are community activists from San Francisco objecting to what they think is a big box retailer gentrifying their neighborhood. So yeah, I just sat there and I got yelled at. And you were representing that. Representing for two hours.

And you know, it's like this woman gets up and she's like, I was hoping to open like a vintage sex toy store. Like that was a real thing that she said. And you're like, what? And then this one guy gets up and he goes, and this is why I thought of you guys.

It was like pros. And again, he's like, he gets up as a pro. He's like, I was here to speak in favor of American Apparel, but that's because they paid me. He was doing performance art where he was pretending that he was a paid plant and then was ripping the mask off to show that he was actually against it and that the corporate interest was trying to bribe the community.

And it was just like, I'm like, what has happened? Like this dude is doing it. There's not even television cameras. Like he's just doing this art.

Like for himself. And then there were just all the people like what you guys do. They're just getting up and they're just talking about. Right.

Totally. Like I can't get my television to work. You know, whatever. And so I just sit there for two hours.

One person earnestly spoke in favor and then two hours of no's. And then I just had to go home. When you're sitting there, like, how are you? Because I'll watch the council when I'm berating the council.

The council will kind of just like, kind of, kind of, you know, where you just sort of just, yeah. And I'm like 20 years old. Like I don't know him. And then, yeah.

And it's like, I didn't, it wasn't my idea to open the store. It wasn't my responsibility to open the store. I've worked at this place for like six months. I don't know fucking nothing.

Wow. And I was just like, what is my life right now? I mean, now it's hilarious to me, but I was just in the moment. I was like, what is happening?

Did they give you a script? Did you write it? Like I wrote like a little, I wrote five minutes of remarks. I mean, if I'm like, hey, go up to five minutes tonight.

And then as you walk on stage, they're like, actually two. There's a whole rhythm. Like two is a world of different, difference than five. And so I think I, you know, I barely got through my things, which I've written out.

And even if I delivered like, like some Rudy-esque speech, they would have been like, no, there's nothing I could just, it was a foregone conclusion. We should have just eaten Elise from the beginning. The punchline of the whole thing is like, the mission district is now one of the most gentrified neighborhoods in terms of, so it was totally pointless. And did you guys end up, you ended up opening the store?

No, I don't think so. Oh, no. No, no, I think it's eight, a 10-year lease. Yeah, that's so interesting because I'll watch the council too.

I mean, they'll have people just screaming at them. Every meeting, they'll be like calling for them to be, you know, arrested. And then they're like, all right, next agenda item. So like, they deal with that so much that they're able to just kind of, I think, compartmentalize that.

Yeah, like there must be some briefing you get the day after you get elected. And they're like, okay, let me tell you how a city council meeting goes. These are the 20 people that attend all the meetings. Yeah.

This is what they talk about. You cannot engage in any way. These are the red lines that we enforce. And then, you know, just think about what we're going to have for dinner or whatever.

Like, because there is a kind of a, they're having to be very self-controlled. Yes. I've only seen a couple instances where the council has responded. Usually LA City Council because it gets so heated in there.

Right. You know, if someone from the public is saying racist remarks or something, I've seen them actually engage. Yeah. But other than that, they're very, they're able to just sort of take it in and be like, okay, well, I propose this change to the agenda.

Meanwhile, someone's just called them a terrorist or something. Yeah. So when we go to the council, actually, people, they enjoy it. They're pumped.

Well, because it's totally off topic, but it's not like alarming in any way. And it's like, it's, I don't know, it's like a puppy just ran up or something. Yeah. Exactly.

Although someone's weird. It's not like creepy. Like, you know, like, yeah, it's positive trolling. That's what we call it.

Yeah. Positive trolling. Yeah. It's a lot of fun.

Yeah. What is the difference between positive trolling and regular trolling? Where do you draw the line? I think positive trolling is generally the joke is on us.

Yeah. So we are always trying to make fun of ourselves. Negative trolling is, I think, when you come in with the intention of trying to elicit a reaction from them. Right.

And usually attacking someone or being offensive in a way to get a negative reaction from someone. Right. Right. The famous one where he does like the thing during the National Land.

He sings the National Land. He's trying to trample on whatever they hold most sacred. Yeah. You're like just going on this like benign rant around a seemingly nonsense issue.

Exactly. Yeah. Sometimes trying to have like a hidden message underneath. But a lot of times it's just being silly.

Yeah. And just trying to, you know, put the joke. That's our main thing. The joke is always on us.

Right. We always try to, we never really want to be punching down or making fun of someone. Right. And then if someone gives us a negative reaction, that's sort of on them.

Yeah. Like, I remember when we did like a video where we were handing out masks in Huntington Beach in like 2020. And we were just trying to be as naive and innocent as possible because it was during like the lockdown protests. And so we just had a box full of masks and we were handing that in Huntington Beach.

And Huntington Beach is like weirdly conservative, right? Yeah. It's like kind of a, it's like a MAGA like dot in the middle of California. Exactly.

Yeah. Yeah. So we knew what we were doing. Yeah.

It was maybe, actually that was maybe more trolling than deposit trolling, but the naivete that we, it was like, oh, we're just handing a mask and then like allowing people to kind of decide about how they want to react. So if it's negative, that's sort of, it's on them. If that makes sense. I feel like weirdly the stoic thing for you guys is like the one saying character must be difficult, but like the restraint to take the thing you're doing seriously must be tough.

Like when you pull up and you're blasting the audio book of Fifty Shades of Grey, or you're just going up to these dudes who really care about cars and you're just quoting Fast and Furious as if they're real car observations. Yeah. Like it only works if you act like it's not the dumbest thing ever. Yes.

Yeah. Where it's, it's the same comedy. It's like to the character, it's not comedic. To the character, it's, you know, if you're, if you're playing, if you're in comedy, you're playing a character and you're trying to be funny, like Michael Scott, you know, Dave Carell, you know, I think he's playing that where he believes that whatever he's doing is, is right.

And it's like, kind of. That's what makes sense to him. It makes sense to him. It's the self-consciousness thing that you have to conquer, right?

Yeah. You have to be in the thing doing it. Yeah. Even though if you zoomed out, you know that you set, you set up the premise.

So you know the premise is funny. Yeah. And you're doing it to be funny. And yet you have to embody this space, this physical body where you're insisting that it's not funny.

Yes. And that would require, I think, a lot of self-control. Yeah. Kind of.

If someone's laughing, they're laughing at you and there's that temptation to kind of break the tension and laugh with them. Like smile. To match the, you're having to not match the emotion of the person across from you. Yeah.

And your instincts would be like, yeah, smile, break the tension. Let them know that you're joking. Yes. And kind of let them know that you're not.

Yeah. Insane. But then the kind of, I guess the, I guess the craft of it is sort of like, no, go deeper into the, to the opposite of that. Like get more serious, get, get more.

And that's actually a lot of stuff during, when we started a podcast trying to be in because it was like 60 minutes. Yeah. And we're like, and at a certain point you're like, man, like, I just want to let them know. And there is, that is like a discipline, I think, to kind of discipline to that kind of performance.

Yeah. You have to do that when you have kids where it's like, they're telling you something and it's like the dumbest thing ever. Right. And you have to be like, oh yeah, that's like, not just like, oh, you have to listen to, you know, the acting of like listening to boring stories, but more like, I have to take what you think is a grievous wrong very seriously.

Yeah. Even though it's comically absurd. Yeah. You know?

Yeah. Or like, you have to take the fear seriously. You can't, you can't just be like, no, no, no, it's all right. Or like, no, it doesn't matter.

Like you have to, you have to like first engage with it as serious and then sort of talk them out of it or talk them through it. Right. But your instinct is to be like, what? You know?

Like you can't do that. Yeah. Totally. How many kids do you have?

Two. Two. That must be fun. It's a lot.

Yeah. It's a lot. Yeah. They're, they're like maniacs.

How old are they now? Nine and one turned six yesterday. Okay. But yeah, it's also funny.

Like my oldest, he took like an improv class in school or in a club. So then I was like, what happened was like, I made a huge mistake, which is that I was like, I told him the Michael Scott thing from the first season of the office where he's in improv. And in every scene, he like kicks down the door and he goes like, freeze FBI, which he immediately thought was the funniest thing of all time. Yeah.

And then he told the other kids in the class. And so they just like essentially broke the class. Because like on the Michael Scott level, they just immediately, like they understood what Michael Scott understood, which is like, that's the most intense thing you can do. Right.

Right. Even though, you know, and so watching this performance and they're all like trying to do it, you know, it was funny. But then I started showing him other stuff. Like I showed him stuff in the office and then we watched like Saturday Night Live.

And now he just like quotes stuff from, and you're just like, oh, how are we like getting the same, right? We're like enjoying the same jokes. Yeah. That's weird.

Like he really likes like the neighbor got to like George Washington one, like, because like life is absurd and he doesn't understand why it's absurd. Because he's always like, how many is several? Yeah. Like, uh, you know, like, so, so at some level he's getting, he's already sort of picking up on like the fucked upness of like why things are the way that they are in the world, you know?

Yeah. That must be a trip. Like, uh, it's cause you know, seeing them from a baby to when they're actually starting to develop a personality and like understand things. And I'm sure that's kind of like, oh, you'll actually understand.

Well, to understand something enough to see what's funny about it. Right. Is like another level of understanding. And then it kind of sneaks up on you.

Like when that's happening. There's one, it's called King Brothers Toyota on SNL. Oh, it's, it's like, it's a, it's a, it's a Toyota like sales commercial. It's like some local dealership, but a little dealership is having trouble selling the cars because they put in a Raisin Cane's and a Chick-fil-A like near the exit.

And you know, like how the drive-through is back up. Yeah. And so like the whole thing is about how you have to take exit 260, but you, if you get in the right lane, you'll get stuck and you can't get into the, like, and it's like going over. And then like, we were driving yesterday and we passed like a Chick-fil-A that's in this town.

And he was like, hard, hard, not like, you know, and he's like doing the thing. And it's like, this is what I remember doing with my friends as a kid. And now like, you're already, you're like quoting, now we're, now we're quoting stuff back together. So that like really snapped up on me.

Yeah. It's so interesting. What age do you think you can watch Dumb and Dumber? I'm trying to think, I'm trying to like, I'm going back through and like, what are things that, you know, like, and then it's like, sometimes you watch, oh fuck, I forgot, like somebody kills himself in the middle of this or whatever.

And you're like, it's not cursing I don't care about, but it's like some, it's like, oh wait, there's a weird, like, orgy scene or something. You're like, what is this? I'm trying to think, when did I watch Dumb and Dumber? What's funny is I, I think I started watching those movies pretty early.

Yeah. I was watching Seinfeld in like first grade and my teacher was like, I was like, what did you do last night? I'm like, I'll watch the series finale of Seinfeld. And she's like, what?

And like JT, my like comedy partner, he was watching like Heat when he was like five. So for both of you, this is not like an endorsement of doing this early on. It's like, oh, this is why they ended up the way. Exactly.

So maybe, maybe I'm like, you should wait. I remember watching Austin Powers when it came out at seven. So is that comparable to Dumb and Dumber? I think Austin Powers is more adult than Dumb and Dumber.

I think if you're nine, I think you're ready. Okay. You grew up in Sacramento, right? I did, yeah.

Where'd you grow up? I was so Carmichael in Eastac. So my dad lived in Eastac, mom lived in Carmichael. Got it.

Yeah. And you were, were you Granite Bay? Well, in high school. I grew up in Fair Oaks.

I was born in Gold River. And then we moved to Fair Oaks and then we moved. My parents didn't want me to go to Bella Vista. Okay.

Where'd you go to high school? You went to Granite Bay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All my friends went to Jesuit.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think my parents had some illusions of me going there and then like didn't do any work to make that happen. So then I just.

Right. You had to go to. He was like, dude, I was testing and stuff. Yeah.

And you had to go to like Sunday school. Yeah, yeah. Which I didn't grow up religious. I was like kind of like, I was, my parents sent me to boarding school.

So, but my dad was actually considering Granite Bay. Yeah. He's like, should I move to Granite Bay? Did you do Granite Bay?

Or. It was like the new, it's like, you know, when like they opened a new high school. It's like the best one. Yeah.

So it was like, they just, I think they just opened it. Yeah. And that's why. Yeah.

my grandfather my mom's dad was a german teacher at bella vista oh really so like yeah but for like 40 years i think there was like no yeah sacramento yeah it's a great place to grow up you thought so you know what i think i went to a boarding school for high school yeah on the east coast yeah and i think i think something about growing up in sacramento is like as opposed to other parts of california like san francisco or if you grew up in la it's kind of i think it i think it grounded me a little bit more just like kind of it was a little bit kind of away from the glamour of hollywood or like san francisco or something where it's you're around more normal people i would say yeah i see i think that was the problem for me is that it was just normal people like right obviously none of my parents friends or my friends parents were writers but i don't think any of them were entrepreneurs i think they all had jobs like all had as normal a boring a job as you can imagine yeah and so if that's what you're meant to do that's very comforting i think it is limiting in terms of like your sense of what's possible right yeah i mean i think i guess i went to i was kind of like went to boarding school their parents were all sorts of incredible things so yeah i was exposed to you know all that kind of stuff yes that's interesting because i to me it's always sort of like having that foundation as i come now and then kind of going into a world that's a little bit more glamorous and kind of but yeah i never really thought about like the nepo baby thing people think it's that they opened doors and i'm sure they did and it's just like if your parents are well off like you're you have more freedom to do things but i think a big portion of it's like your parents showed you that that was a thing you could do that's the job like steph curry growing up in basketball arenas probably contributed as much as the genetics did he was like this is the place you go to work this is how it works this is what you have to do to qualify for this line of work you know what i mean like like i think if either my parents had gone to private schools they would have understood the process for getting your kid into a private school yeah there's legacy admissions but also just like you know how that system works yes and so they didn't they were just like work it's smart can you go here and it's like no there was like a process you had to go through and unless you're a genius and they didn't go through the process so they didn't get like knowing like the rules or the norms of spaces that's i think that's like the real privilege that gets passed on to me that's the thing it's like you understand how the system works right yeah so yeah because i remember when i first moved to hollywood to like pursue acting my dad approached it he's a doctor so he approached it from the academic doctor he's like he's i want you to go j crew get some sweaters yeah yeah get a haircut yes like you're going in for a job interview and then you realize you know very early on it's like oh if you're like quirky you need to be quirky in order to stand out i was so funny because so i so i went to riverside and because i was like i wanted like southern california even though riverside could not be further i might as well just stay in sacramento yeah first off the drive was an hour and a half drive one's a five-hour drive yeah like but i just thought like southern california that's where it's at and then i remember i got like through someone i got like this interview for like an internship at like a record label i told my parents and they're like same thing they're like here's a credit card like go buy a suit and i bought i showed up to an interview at a record label in a suit yeah yeah it's like i lost the job the second i stepped in you know like you would have been like hey go buy these 50 albums and listen to them you know like but to my parents just like your parents not understanding the system they're like you gotta dress up and then you gotta show up and have good answers to the questions it's like no you're actually precluding yourself from having a job by the way you're trying so it's like it's understanding how the logic or the incentives of different systems work that's like the real power yeah and it's so uh so yeah because the first year i was in la i was wearing button-ups and like you know kind of like preppy clothes and people are like what are you like this isn't you and i'm like and then once i like i started doing stand-up and i started teaching surfing as like a day job and i started like you know get tan and kind of blonde streaks in my hair and then people were kind of responding to that yeah oh they're like that's yeah that's why i should be not this kind of like you're acting you've been here before exactly you're acting like no one wants you're acting you're showing that you're a tourist yeah and my dad is always like starting off he's like you know i really think you should try to get a job as a soap opera actor because it's consistent it's a day job he's like he's very focused on it's very he's very he's always thinking about our futures and he's like this is like the most consistent thing you could do this for 40 years and get a steady paycheck you may want to kill yourself he's like general hospital that's that's my dream yeah yeah yeah that's so interesting yeah it did take me a little bit because uh a while to embrace that like you have to embrace your weirdness especially in something like entertainment yeah um you know kind of lean into it we almost moved when my parents were thinking of the grand pay thing they were also like my dad got a job offer in tahoe and so they were thinking and i think about like i think i would have become chad or jt because we had some i had a friend in sacramento and they're around the same time yeah they moved to you know and like i think about what he's doing and how his brother i'm like oh okay this is actually like a huge you probably don't want your kid to grow up in paradise i thought about that too my dad said he had like an offer to work in san diego yeah and he also almost worked in redding but not quite paradise but san diego yeah growing up i'd be like wow yeah well yeah like yeah and he's like i don't like it's cloudy i'm like what but yeah looking back on that you know it does seem like a little bit of a hindrance because you grow up like i feel like that you know it might create a lack of motivation you know where you're just around i don't know maybe two you're around or yes it's something because it's funny you mentioned san diego i used to go like why we live in sacramento and you're like it's close to san francisco close to taco and i'm like so it's it's primary at some point is its proximity to two other better places yeah the parking lot yeah because now they like they retire they live in nice places and uh i'm like why did you live 50 years in a place that sucked for hopefully 30 years in a place that doesn't yeah and so i'm like san diego you could just split the difference yeah but yeah i think there's probably something good to grow up in like a normal regular place like yeah kids who grow up in manhattan i'm like what is your life like oh yeah i want to high school kids yeah yeah yeah it's it's but i like what you're saying too is it's like there's there's that mix of like like having kind of sort of a grounded base that kind of keeps you humble but also being exposed to you know people who actually who really kind of need to know it's possible yes and i think like it wasn't until i went to college actually i just i just got invited i spoke out of college i went to and like so what happened was like i got in a novel and we get a book and it's like a real book like from a real place it's like fewer times bestseller like it was a week and i'm like oh this is a thing that people do like i loved reading but like i have the same relationship to books as i did to movies you know in that like i know they exist but i have zero conception of how they get made and who gets to make them it's like like a rock star like yes there's 20 people who get to do this but it's not a thing that regular people can do and like i met this woman named susan straight um and she's a like a california novelist and it's like oh like you're a regular person and this is your job yeah i got more out of that in the college experience than any classes that i like just the immediate exposure to how a whole field or like a world that i didn't know existed existed yeah which if i stayed in sacramento would not have occurred totally yeah i think i think for me it's being exposed to the kind of people where you know it's possible and for me it's like i knew nothing about hollywood i knew nothing about how the same thing like movies get made like i i wanted to shoot a sketch i didn't understand really the lighting he's like you don't need to stop lighting i was like what yeah like i didn't you know i had like a huge amount of naivete but i think that served me well in the sense that like i was i'd seen people been around people who had kind of you know followed their dreams and so i was like yeah i could do that like there's something like there's this weird confidence like i could totally do that and then when you get in it you kind of i was like you kind of learn everything but i think that that kind of just having that knowing inside your head of like oh i could totally do that and just thrusting yourself into it well that's it so obviously my contention is that ego is generally bad yeah it fucks people up yeah but you do see especially in the arts that ego because it sometimes resembles confidence or because it ignores obvious dangers or worst case scenarios or like logic or appropriateness it sometimes is advantageous so like naivete can be helpful because like you don't know like yeah you you just tried to do something the odds were a trillion to one but then there's also like the ego of like yeah i'm worthy of this you know like yeah like i you should you should give me millions of dollars to do this thing or yeah like i'm totally qualified to do this yeah and like the ego like i know this one author i know him a long time and like i think his superpower is he asks for stuff that he has zero business asking for do you know what i mean like and he never feels uncomfortable about it and i don't i don't think he's like pushing through the discomfort yeah and i don't even know if it's like confidence i think it's just more like he's not even aware that it's a thing that a normal person would be like what yeah i just heard this stat that shocked me given that i uh hear from the sales staff of my publisher quite a bit the status sales teams spend about 50 percent of their time on admin work instead of selling relationship building closing deals which means they're not selling right and that's where today's sponsor comes in pipe drive it's a simple intelligent crm tool for small and medium businesses pipe drive was built from the ground up to strip away that manual work that's stuff that's wasting your time taking your sales team away from doing the thing you pay them to do which is sell stuff they've got smart automations to handle repetitive tasks and you can even customize these automations to fit your unique sales process plus i've got ai features that will analyze your pipeline flag stalled deals surface what needs attention and tell your team what to do next without them having to go look for it switch to a crm built by sales people for sales people and join over the 100 000 companies already using pipe drive and right now when you use our link you'll get a 30 day free trial no credit card or payment needed just head over to pipedrive.com to get started that's pipedrive.com to be up and running in minutes when you're a productive person when you've got a lot on your plate you don't have time to be groggy or unfocused just because you had a couple of drinks the night before cheers restore after alcohol aid helps you have better mornings after drinking you take it after your last drink or before bed and then it works while you sleep their claim is that you will feel 50 better or your money back a lot of people think that dehydration is why you feel bad in the morning but the real reason is what happens in your brain and liver while you sleep when alcohol leaves your system your brain goes into rebound mode and that's what makes you feel bad and the dhm in cheers works while you sleep to smooth out that rebound and at the same time the alcohol converts into a toxic byproduct that your liver has to clear out and the cysteine in cheers helps speed that up cheers is backed by doctors phd's and over a thousand verified clinicians take cheers restore after your last drink or before you go to bed and wake up feeling at least 50 better or your money back for a limited time our listeners are getting 20 off their entire order at cheers health.com slash stoic i like an ego's enemy you know always be a student i always try to remember that just having that mindset of like learning from people and always trying to get better and working on the craft but yeah i think there's kind of a mix of like that always being a student like that that humility and that having that mindset but also yeah just this you call it ego or something of just like it's kind of like oh yeah you're gonna go to the head of a network and be like you should give me a show yeah and it's like you can't do that but sometimes it works for that there's some people that it works for totally and you're just like is that what i'm supposed to be doing yeah or is that also that person's achilles heel yeah yeah i think there's probably more cases where it totally doesn't work and then there's like there's a few unicorns where they're like it just works out for them yeah they just walk through raindrops like every day and a half they never hear no yeah the right person at the right time they're just like they just get stuff they have no business getting that other people had to work very hard to like earn there's just a kind of like a yeah it's like what they say like may you have the confidence of an average white man you know just just like the world is my oyster yeah it's like okay yeah do you think there's do you think there's something to that mindset where like it just in the way you come off to people or something where it just creates scenarios where things tend to work out i think you're not looking very closely or you're not very informed yeah like you're not savvy ego and confidence look very similar right like mania can look like charisma yeah but if you so if you've never been around someone like oh this is what a crazy person does yeah you're like i'm pumped around this you don't realize like it's going to crash at some point yeah and i think especially if you're not confident that the confidence of egotistical or narcissistic i mean like you look at the first couple people that i worked for i was clearly searching for something you know like some daddy issues stuff yeah um and it's funny because i look at my sister so it's like clearly something in the upbringing we're like we want to work most people see that kind of awesome on the other way we're like i love it here yeah this is normal yeah but uh yeah i think there's a lack of awareness if it works for you until it doesn't work for you and then you then you tweet something you're like what you know what do you mean totally on a long enough timeline it becomes a disadvantage that's why i think you can confidently go like ego's the enemy but it clearly i mean there's obviously an extraordinary amount of very successful very egotistical people yeah i think it's two things one like the myth of was it grossest where it's like you can't you gotta wait till the end to judge a person happy um but i also think unless you're really really studying them closely you're not seeing all the ways that they actually could have been more successful right so it's like maybe yeah that person's ego makes them shameless enough to ask for stuff that they have no business doing but by the same token they tend not to do the work to then earn the thing because they think they're like yeah you know what i mean like the confidence it seems like confidence to be like give me the shot games on the line yeah but like actually a great athlete is like they know they have to do the work to earn that you know yeah and if you're just like no no give it to me but you don't have the goods yeah they're gonna lose said game when it's on the line yeah i think that's yeah it's it's the the confidence to want to get the opportunity to do to put yourself in that position even when i was starting out i was like you know there's these things called bringer shows for stand-up have you heard of that like basically you get stage time if you bring five friends if you bring the audience you get stage time so early on i did like an open mic and i like there's a yeah we can give you stage we can give you stage time at the comedy store i'm like amazing yeah and i just bring five friends so immediately i was like i'm already on stage at the comedy store this is crazy and then i just quickly you know uh we're out on my friends i'm like they're like dude we're not coming to any more shows i'm like oh and like it was this thing where i had like a naivete or to be like no i can be on stage at the comedy store but then quickly learning like oh no it takes what it really takes is two to three of them tonight every night for 10 years you need a certain amount of shamelessness to get up and do the thing when you're bad which you invariably are at the beginning yeah but you also need like this humility and maybe even the self-loathing yeah to like think that you're bad yes you do the work to get good yeah sometimes people will have just the confidence of the chutzpah to be like i can fucking do this yeah and then they get there and they so live in their own bubble that they're just bad but they're not feeling the shame of being bad and then doing the work to get good so you're you just that's how you stay shitty for a long period of time and you see that a lot yeah like the people who will get off stage and they're man i crushed yeah like no you didn't yeah if you walk off feeling like you crushed it's like the best in the world don't feel that way so that you feel that way that so that's where he goes because it's it's making you stay as you are it's probably more pleasant to not feel shitty yeah but the shitty is like um ira glass talks about this he's like there's a taste talent gap yeah when you start and you have good taste which is you know what is funny or you know what's beautiful or you know what's good writing but like you can't do it but the desire to bridge that gap is like the propulsive force that makes you good but if you're just like maybe you have good taste but then you're also biased when it comes to yourself or you're delusional when it comes to yourself that's a problem because now you're just not you're just like confidently being shitty like just because you believe you can do something you're not gonna be able to do it but just because you believe you can do something is not even close to sufficient to being able to do it yeah it's always having this kind of this mindset of like no there's always room for improvement yeah like you're never perfect always a student that's one of my favorite things is just because like you know you'll see like bill burgh go off stage at the comedy store and he to me i'm like he just crushed yeah but to him he's like oh that one bit like i'm not getting it right there's that criticism there's like self-criticism of like no i need to improve this to really kind of it's always perfecting it it's kind of never reaching that destination i think well dr drew did a study many years ago of he as guests would come in the love line he gave them like this narcissistic personality test because like it's interesting like you'd think you'd be able to study narcissism but most really successful narcissists are obviously inaccessible to like clinical research most studies are done on like college students for class credit you know yeah so he was able to give his narcissistic narcissistic personality test to like all the guests so like a range of celebrities and musicians and then also like reality tv stars and whatever and what i remember from the study is that they found that yeah like most celebrities are at some level of narcissism but it's this interesting question of like are narcissists attracted to celebrity or does celebrity make you narcissistic narcissistic it's probably a little close but one of the things they found was that the more technical the thing you did was the less narcissistic you were so like drummers might be very famous they're a huge band but what they do is really fucking hard yeah and it's like a craft that you love so it's like inherently humbling and it's inherently about like solving this like puzzle you know versus like someone who was on the real world road rules challenge is like attractive in good shape made a good like pitch video yeah and then it's maybe like dramatic so like they they're both famous but one is getting their ass kicked by the craft of the thing and the other one is mostly just thinking about like how can i get more on tv yeah it's like the craft itself humbles you and keeps you in check yeah and uh yeah that makes a lot of sense i think to just be an actor and then become famous obviously acting is a craft but it's not a craft you get as many reps in as other things because it involves other people right but stand-up is like a thing you're going and doing every night and it's whether you're doing it for a thousand people or 10 people it's fucking hard and you get humbled by the audience if you're not improving if you're not constantly putting your 8 game forward the audience will humble you i feel like for actors if you're making your living as an actor most of the time you're not acting yes you're not getting that many reps yeah you're you're acting you know maybe six months out of the year and a lot of times just hurry up and wait you're sitting on set so like how many movies is even a great director gonna do in their life yeah five you know and a lot so a lot of times you're not doing the thing but you are if you have succeeded you're being the person you're being the noun versus the verb right you're walking around you're on panels you're talking to classes you know you're negotiating contracts but you're not like fuck how do you get a shot right yeah you know it's more people asking you like how do you come up with that yeah how do you come up with that shot you're like oh yeah i feel lucky because like my first book came out did well and then i wrote this but the stoic stuff that was much more gradual and then i know people who like their first book are just like crushed now you're the person instead of like trying to be the person you know i spend a lot of time a lot more time writing than being the writer if you if your first thing described now you're the guy yeah the person who did the thing and i think can be destabilizing and disorienting when you first started writing about stoicism like was there like a light bulb moment for you or well actually dr drew introduced me to stoicism really you didn't know the story oh no no it's ridiculous i was writing for the college newspaper and i got this call one day no i think they put like a slip in my my mailbox at the paper anyways trojan condoms was sponsoring like a conference of college journalists they're like you want to go and i was like yeah you know uh and so i went and he was the speaker and afterwards i used to listen to love in my room every night and i was like hey you seem really smart like what books would you like tell a kid like me to read and he was reading the stoics really that's how i got introduced to it wow um so i read the stoics first like i was 20 and it sort of blew my mind i was like this is what i want to do and i want to write about i had a blog like i started a blog the day i graduated from high school so which i just realized is 20 years from like tomorrow oh cool you know like so i've been doing this i've been doing this for 20 years now yeah yeah but that's what i wanted to write about and then i had this marketing career and i knew i wanted to write about that but i understood at some level that no one was gonna let a 20 year old write about ancient philosophy right so that's why i worked for robert green but i knew i had to do other books first and then i could write about what i wanted to if i have a little bit of heat then people are willing to take a shot on something crazy yeah you worked for what did you do for robert green i was his research assistant oh you were okay for math for 50th law and mastery and then a little bit on some of the books yeah he's awesome so i was maybe like 23 or 24 and i wrote this article about stoicism and um this publisher found it and they were like we'd like you to do a book about this and i was like robert i have a book deal what do you think and he's like no i was like what do you mean he's like he was like really blunt he was nice but he was like you have to say no to this right he was like it's too early you're not qualified to write this book you'll be a better writer later and i'm very glad i listened to him but like you think you're ready and you're probably not ready it's something like when you start if you get laughs a lot of times it can be just the joke structure or whatever and but as you keep doing it you know there's a difference in laughs and it's and it's you know when i was like 24 i'm like i'm gonna talk about partying in college because like you know you don't realize at the time that how much life experience informs like your relatability and like how much you can connect to an audience like no like most audiences they don't hear from like a 23 year old who just got out of college yeah and like you think these people are screwing you over by not giving you shots yeah you know like just let me do i can do i'm ready and they're like no wait you think you're being like i remember on my first book so i hired a publicist for trust in mind i remember it was twenty thousand dollars i had to pay twenty thousand dollars and they were like here's what you do you make a list the campaign we agreed to is i picked twenty thousand dollars and i picked twenty outlets that i wanted to be on the daily show you know cna like pick all the things right yeah and like that's what i was paying there's obviously no guarantees and they got zero of the things right like not one of the things yeah i have subsequently checked i have subsequently gotten almost all the things on that like over the next 15 years i did get all of those outlets but i thought like you know they were not doing a good job or like these gatekeepers are like fucking me over yeah and like if i had gotten any of those 20 things the first time i feel like maybe my whole career would have turned out differently like in a negative sense because i thought i was ready and i wasn't even close to being ready yeah there's a story actually in my wisdom book about this like samurai master and a student comes to him and he goes like i'd like to become a master how long will it take and he says like it'll take 10 years and he goes no no i'm very serious i'll pay extra like i'll work really hard how long will it take and he goes 15 years and he goes no no you don't understand i don't have that much time i want to speed the process up what do i have to do and he goes okay it'll take 20 years right and like you think you think you want it to happen sooner or faster and you almost certainly don't and if you've got the opportunities not only you're not getting screwed over by not getting the opportunities early you're probably being given a gift yeah we kind of experienced that with um we got a show on netflix yeah and it was great the whole experience was great and but to me it was like actually i was listening to ego's enemy a lot during because i'm like i was like gotta keep the ego in check like don't become like dude and you know it kind of like it was like the dream especially growing up it's like if you're a comedian like getting a tv show you're like that's the career maker and to me i was like when this comes out i'll you know i'll be career you're a made man i mean exactly and the whole experience is awesome and we're really proud of how it came out it came out and next day it was you know you're kind of like nothing happened where's the parade yeah exactly yeah and i'm saying i was miserable for like two weeks where i was like and uh my fiance was kind of like what's your deal you just expect everything to be easy from that point and then but it kind of humbled me in a sense to where i was like i was like oh i just i need to get back to that open mic mentality of just getting back to the craft and yeah and just putting the work in every day like there's there's never gonna be a moment where you're kind of just on easy street because you think for someone you're like if they would just put this on the home page yeah it would blow up yeah and then everyone will and you think that you think that's what you want yeah i remember once i read this thing from uh one of the founders of google where they're saying like early on they knew that the algorithm was getting better every day right and so that actually understanding that made them not feel anxious or slighted when they weren't getting press right because they were like every day later the press comes the better it will convert because the thing is better yeah again i'm like i'm thinking hey i need to be like this is my first book it's about this thing why am i not on the daily show why am i not getting this thing and it's like first off i would have almost certainly been an underwhelming guest because i'm 25 years old i never like i think for my first television appearance i'm gonna go into the fucking lion's den of like one of the funny you know like who am i to think i'm gonna pull this off right and then also let's say i had then however many hundreds of thousands of people are watching some percentage of them are gonna buy that book and you know what they're gonna think this is an okay first book right like i'm much happier that it happened 10 years later and i had gotten 10 years better at the thing obviously this is contingent on you not quitting or you know like balancing out like you have to have that sort of stick to it and this but yeah the idea like to know like no i'm getting better every day so actually like i don't need the attention right now i'm just gonna keep doing the thing it's probably a better when people go isn't humility like a disadvantage no that's actually it's actually kind of a confidence because you're like i'm not going anywhere i'm getting better i'm just gonna do this fucking thing and like yeah if you're like you get a show on that book you're like i made it i'm amazing that's like as good as you're gonna get yeah but if you're like i'm doing stand-up tomorrow yeah then you're gonna be that one one rep better plus a tv show exactly yeah and it's it's you think like uh i remember i was like oh i'm sure you know after this show comes out we're gonna be playing theaters yeah and you know i'm so glad it didn't turn out because like we didn't really tour before that so it you know gave us the opportunity to tour which is amazing you know but you know it's clubs and it's and you go from like stand-up in la to where you're doing like 10 minutes sets and you realize really early on that like holding an audience for 30 to 40 minutes is something entirely different and giving people a show is something entirely different than doing 10 minutes at the improv i'm so grateful that humble being away to where it's like it's like oh now i understand how to put on a show yeah now i understand what i want to do if i go on the road if i'm playing to a crowd of people i know what i want to give them i i now have the skills yeah to you know give them something to where they leave feeling satisfied yeah and if everything you'll see that too with people like early on it's like the industry is very hot on them they're like you you're the next chapelle like it kind of ruins their trajectory totally no i think um one of the blessings and curses of social media is that it can just it can skip all that and so if you don't have the goods yeah you're not going to develop it it's like if you decide to get into sports because you're really tall yeah or you're just really strong or like you're not going to develop the technique you want to be you want to be genetically gifted but not so much so that you're used to posting yeah right and so yeah you notice like i notice it's like with people who like they have a big podcast and then like they'll sell a book or like a tv show but it's like it's not a podcast or easy it's just that you didn't start as a writer yeah and so you just think that because you succeeded over here that transfers over here and it's like no this is a totally different medium it's actually a much more demanding medium because you're doing all the work yeah and so i'll notice it's like oh you have the goods to carry on an hour conversation we're gonna three hour conversation yeah but you can't do a book and i take 20 hours to read like that's so much like yeah that's it you just realize like people were blessed by the algorithm but they're also cursed by the algorithm because they're not developing like the all-around skills required to succeed in different mediums yeah and you see it too like and people nowadays are i just keep saying like billburn and bargesi but like they they were you know in their 30s they were in comedy is interesting because it's one of the few that you actually do get like music it's like sure but culture also favors you when you're young so there's something raw and authentic about it and then there's an exploration it's like sports whereas like comedy oftentimes the biggest comic in the world does have 10 20 30 years of experience because it's not as it's not photogenic but there's something not like where we were more generous with who we allow to succeed in the medium yeah and that's so it's a really good example like no no fucking do your act get really good at it that's how you succeed not like these tricks and whatever i'm being a little bit dismissive social media too where it's like you also see people who are like i see this where like there's people who know more about philosophy or know more about like the technical stuff or maybe they're better writers and then and then they think like the social media stuff is easy right it's like i don't think you actually understand how hard it is to take a complex philosophical lesson and make it accessible to millions of people because most people not only aren't interested they're anti-interested like it's not like they were dying like people are like oh he's a popularizer or something that's like people weren't dying for me to do this right you know what i mean like they had stereotypes preconceived notions of whether or not like there's a headwind yeah and so yeah it's like that that's where you go to the problem like the minus touch is a cautionary tale like if you think you have the golden touch you're gonna fuck shit up because you're not gonna do the work to be careful about the other thing totally and it's um there's also conversative social media there's people who come along and be like i know the tricks of the algorithm here's like how you know here's how you hook the audience and so and then some people who are trying to like make it big on social media they'll create kind of trash content because they're like oh this will get views but they're garbage views garbage views they might get the views but there's no substance to like whatever following that creates the word there's no actual relationship because there's nothing there yeah you're not creating like if you're trying to create fans you're not creating true fandom because it's just uh yeah so i think it's having that realization that in every there's no there's no you know free parking or you know like the viral uh city council meeting stuff yeah probably does the best yeah but like who goes and sees that person yeah in a theater because it's not a city council meeting exactly so you have to you're like would i rather have the city council thing do 10 million views yeah or this like funny sketch or bit that i came up with to 100 000 views one is much smaller but probably much actually better for you yeah because the goal isn't just to have a large number of numbers yeah next year account it's to have fans yeah i learned that too it's like virality does not translate to you know uh a career in the sense of like it's like yeah you need to yeah creating a relationship with the fans or like getting that like people go to see certain comics because they love their stand-up yeah and so it's not like just by being popular a lot of times too sometimes people will become popular and then they'll get people to come out yeah but they don't the goods and then they just ruin that yeah and it's yeah it's like um so it's it's understanding that there's you got to work hard at everything yes and um were there any other notable figures in culture kind of talking about philosophy in the way that you were that's a good question i don't know i mean this was definitely i started writing in 2000 i first i mean started writing about stoicism in like 2007 and 8 so like well before you know social media and well before influencers yeah i wasn't really the model that came later like in the 80s there were some authors that did books about like machiavelli or books about gangas con or the art of war that popularized them like to wall street right and i read about that i was like oh that's interesting they were able to like take this thing and make it popular people who were trying to use it in a different sphere and obviously i knew robert green and robert's sort of a model for that too so i had some sense that you could take something that was esoteric or impractical and make it accessible to people so i had that and then i think people always think there's some plan you know um they're like you know like how'd you know it's like i was actually writing my marketing books and then i wrote about like the order didn't exactly happen the way people thought it did right i was at a day job so it kind of like none of really matters you know but then you you add it wasn't like i was like okay i'm gonna do this and then this and then this and then here it's more like i'm doing this thing that i really like and then i'm looking at other people it's like oh like here's here's instagram like people post quotes let's do that and i was like we noticed like for instance we would post like the quotes and then i'd be like i have a new book out and then they'd be like who were you yeah it's like oh they're following the account for the quotes but i don know that that's i'm doing it and so part of the videos and other stuff came from like needing to make the connection between stoicism and me that sort of translator popularized or other right yeah it's kind of make these individual decisions as you go and then later people like well this was obviously the plan right no i was just going from cool thing to cool thing yeah let's go yeah um i remember when i first read it because when you first came on our podcast the book was still this is the key and so i read it and why did you guys even have it did you know who i was or just if you like thought it was a funny pitch you know uh jt's girlfriend at the time yeah my co-host we got an email i think from your publicist and uh his girlfriend at the time was like oh i love his books you just have him on yeah yeah and um but then i like i i read the book and i studied philosophy and i love it and so it's just like what i love to read about most and i think the way you were able to deliver it in like a way that's just you know sometimes you read these philosophy books they're so dense you're like you're probably reading like niche i'm like what is going on yeah exactly it's like it takes like so long to get through a page and understand what you're reading like is this actually good or is someone just telling me that it's good right i don't know yeah i even read that meditations during covid and uh even that you know you really gotta take your time and um so it was such a cool thing you know stumbling upon your work likewise yeah thanks yeah yeah it was a great meeting of the minds yeah you want to go check out some books yeah thanks so much for listening if you could rate this podcast and leave a review on itunes that would mean so much to us and would really help the show we appreciate it i'll see you next episode