The Playbook with Colin Jonov
Formerly The Athletic Fortitude Show.... Colin Jonov’s Athletic Fortitude Show has rebranded to The Playbook with Colin Jonov, evolving from a sports-centric podcast to a universal guide for mastering life’s challenges. While retaining its foundation in mindset and performance excellence, the show now expands its scope to empower everyone—athletes, entrepreneurs, professionals, and beyond—to live life to its fullest potential
The Playbook with Colin Jonov
Sahil Bloom - Why The Most Successful People Are Both Delusional And Self-Aware
This conversation with Sahil Bloom, author of The 5 Types of Wealth, reveals the paradox of success lies in the balance between delusional confidence and self-awareness, where one helps you excel at your unique game while the other prevents you from overreaching into areas where you don't belong.
• Success requires both delusional confidence in your specific strengths and self-awareness about your limitations
• Ambition without direction creates misery, while directed ambition fuels meaningful growth
• The journey and struggle toward a goal is more fulfilling than actually achieving the destination
• Slow, steady growth creates more sustainable happiness than sudden spike success
• Building confidence comes from keeping promises to yourself over time, not from external validation
• The most impactful life changes happen when you minimize the gap between awareness and action
• Real fulfillment comes from waking up energized and going to bed exhausted from meaningful effort
• Most asymmetric opportunities in life are invisible until you start walking toward them
• How you earn success matters far more than what you achieve or accumulate
Buy The 5 Types of Wealth here! https://www.the5typesofwealth.com/
There's this interesting paradox in life that I've observed where the most successful people are simultaneously delusional and self-aware. So I think the self-awareness sort of allows you to hone in on what your unique edge is, what your game is, and then the delusion is what allows you to just kind of excel at that game.
Speaker 2:It's a balance between, like that irrational confidence and like the imposter syndrome, like a main B where I don't belong, yeah, and I think one without the other is a disaster.
Speaker 1:I remember having a feeling that summer where I was like I could make a living doing. It was the first time in my life. I was like I can get anyone out. You could like put me. I really believed at that moment. I was like you could put me in a big league stadium. I think I could get guys out.
Speaker 1:As delusional as that sounds, I really believed that that summer, if I put this amount of effort in the output is almost exactly what I expect it to be, like I'm just going to do well if I can work harder. And so when I did that for the first time, it was almost intoxicating. I was like I found this thing where, you know, if I focus on the process and the way that I know how to do and I show up every single day and I put in this effort that I know I'm capable of doing, the outcome is just there. And I carried that over into my first job and into the work and to me that's the most addicting feeling in the world. A gold medal is a wonderful thing, but if you're not enough without it, you're never going to be enough with it. I think that ambition creates a lot of misery in people's lives because ambition without direction is a curse.
Speaker 2:I still train like I'm an athlete. The problem is I just found out I tore my labrum in my shoulder like a month ago Doing what. So it was torn back when I played and then it was partially torn and I was just benching one day and just pop like in the shoulder, like I let it go for about a month but like I couldn't move my arm.
Speaker 1:finally I got it checked and like yeah, you corn labrum is like an athlete's injury, like basically every athlete, like 50 of athletes, have a torn labrum from something and you're just like how symptomatic are you yeah, on the spectrum, and so that's a.
Speaker 2:I'm just rehabbing that right now and still rehabbing the knee. Actually, from two years ago when we first met yeah, it's been two years since we got together at the coffee shop two years yeah, is that crazy. Time flies. You were first starting your book crazy, yeah, but I hear you're quite the jokester over there. I hear you're like the ultimate locker room guy where I'm just saying that's who said that I need to check sources now I, uh, I always considered myself a locker room guy but, uh, I'm glad I will.
Speaker 1:I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing, that it's come across from sources, but I, um, I always tried to have fun in the locker room. I feel like I was always like a little bit of like a storyteller. It probably is like part of what has led me into writing now. Is I always loved sort of like telling stories, embellishing things, like getting guys together, laugh. I always feel like I was able to relate to different types of people too as a result of playing on teams. You probably feel this from football.
Speaker 1:It's like athletes, just one of the things that you learn as an athlete, which is what makes athletes such effective hires and my, in my opinion, is you learn how to get along with 50 different types of people to come together around a shared mission. And when you think about business or life more broadly, that's literally what life is, or business. You have to learn how to get along with a bunch of different types of people to come together around a shared mission. And it's so clear when someone is not an athlete now as an adult like you. Just you see, like they just can't, they can't do that. You're like oh, I disagree with you on politics, we can't be friends. We can't work together on a shared mission. I disagree with you about family values. We can't work together Like it's just. It's this inability to engage with someone and appreciate them. As a human being, if you disagree on one plane of life, that I just I can't relate to, because my experience as an athlete and now as a human is just so different from that.
Speaker 2:So do you think you were more genetically wired to be in that locker room, or being in that locker room kind of helped you develop some of those skills?
Speaker 1:I think it was probably a bit of both. You know, like anything in life, right, it's shades of gray. I definitely come from a family where storytelling was a big part of our family culture. My mom and my grandmother are both extraordinary storytellers, both probably more extroverted than I am. Naturally, at least my mom really thrives on like being, you know, being the one that like brings people together, being the one telling the stories, you know, creating laughter, et cetera. She really thrives on that. My grandmother, my mom's mother, definitely did as well, so I definitely have some of that wiring. Naturally, I also think there's an element where being the jokester, being the person that does that, is like a defense mechanism where you know if you don't feel adequate or talented enough or secure, you sort of use humor to cover that insecurity. There's actually a lot of precedent in history around that, you know, like World War One. I'm a huge history nerd, so pardon my history.
Speaker 1:I'm actually a big history guy too, so I've just been going like deep down a World War One rabbit hole and there's all of these case studies on how the soldiers who were in these extraordinarily grotesque and terrible human conditions right Trench warfare on the Western Front, how often they would use humor to sort of make light of the situation, to get through these challenging times, to like sort of make light on this really insecure human experience. And I do think, even just reflecting on my own time, I would definitely default to an element of of of sort of humor, of joking around, of self-deprecation, doing those things to try to sort of insulate yourself from like the ego death that comes from realizing that you're not that good at the thing.
Speaker 2:Do you, do you really believe you weren't that good? Because I looked at some of your stats.
Speaker 1:You had some good years I, I, I made the most of a pretty low talent base. I would say like, like I, I was very good for massachusetts high school baseball very good, unquestionably, um. And then I worked really, really hard, got a scholarship. I probably like snuck into a scholarship, you know, had like one good day when they happened to see me, got a scholarship to go play and then I was the worst player on the team. Like my freshman year I was like I'm so much worse than every other pitcher talent wise.
Speaker 1:But what I've learned, which is a really important lesson for life, is it's hard to lose as a pitcher Like we're talking baseball pitching. It's really hard to lose if you just keep throwing strikes, you know, if you just keep coming at hitters over and over and over again. It's pretty rare that the other team is going to get like four singles in a row. It's just rare. Like the way runs happen, the way you give up a lot of runs or have a high ERA, is typically like you walk a guy, then you hit a guy, uh, then you strike two guys out, but then you give up a home run and like that wouldn't have happened if you hadn't walked or hit the guy. You might give up home runs every now and then, you might give up two doubles in a row, but it's pretty rare because you have not, like, you just have eight really good fielders out in the field and they're extraordinary what they do.
Speaker 1:And my realization, like my sophomore year, was if I can just throw, like you know, fastballs with a little bit of sync and basically just keep throwing strikes over and over again, I won't give up that many runs.
Speaker 1:And there were these guys on the team that were, quite honestly, like 10 times more talented than me, way better stuff, way more electric, you know, but they just didn't throw strikes Like they would get in their own heads, they would dance around the strike zone, they would walk guys, they'd hit guys. I think like my junior year, um, I mean, I might've had like a few walks in 50 innings, I might've hit a couple of guys, but I had like a few walks and I didn't strike anyone out. I had 17 strikeouts or something in 50 innings, like terrible, but I didn't walk anyone. And so it was hard to give up runs, like I had a two ERA going into the playoffs. Then I gave up a grand slam on television that jolted it. But, like it's just, it's hard to bet against the person who just keeps showing up, and that applies to baseball, it applies to football, it applies to literally anything in life.
Speaker 2:Do you think that was a limiting belief that you had when you came in? You're like, oh think that was a limiting belief that you had when you came in.
Speaker 1:You're like oh, these guys are just so much better than me, or do you think that there's truth in these guys were actually more talented? I think it was self-awareness. Yeah, no, I'm pretty honest about where I had limiting beliefs in my life and where it was an honest assessment and a self-awareness. I think that there's this interesting paradox in life that I've observed where the most successful people are simultaneously delusional and self-aware, which doesn't really make sense. You think of those two as almost opposites. You're like delusional means that you just believe you're capable of extraordinary things, even if it makes no sense. You're just like I am delusional. And self-aware means you're like I know what I'm bad at, I know my limits, all of those things.
Speaker 1:I have found that the most hyper successful people are somehow both. You're like you do have this delusional, irrational confidence in certain situations, but then you're also hyper self-aware about the things that are holdbacks. And you know, I think they just play in different arenas. It's sort of like the delusion allows you to really excel at your main thing. You're like I'm just going to be, I'm going to believe that I'm capable of anything, even when I get knocked down in that main thing, I'm going to keep showing up, you're not going to be able to keep me down. The self-awareness prevents you from taking on things that aren't the main thing, and so you avoid the major missteps. You recognize where your edge is, you focus there and you avoid all the places where you could get beat. You know, avoid the places where you're going to die.
Speaker 1:And so for me, just using the baseball example, it was like when I was on the mound and I was in the game, I was delusional, like I genuinely was, just like I'm the best in the world at this. I'm just going to keep throwing strikes. You're not going to get four hits in a row, good luck. And then self-awareness for me was like I'm not that talented at this thing. I don't throw 97. I don't have a wipeout slider, so I need to play my game, which is throwing strikes, which is like a little sink on the fastball, which is just like finesse a little bit around these things. I'm not going to try to play their game, because if I try to do that, everything flattens out and I'm going to get rocked and it's just not going to work well. So I think the self-awareness sort of allows you to hone in on what your unique edge is, what your game is. And then the delusion is what allows you to just kind of excel at that game.
Speaker 2:There's a balance between, like that irrational confidence and like the imposter syndrome, like I may be where I don't belong, yeah, and I think one without the other is a disaster, like delusion without the self awareness.
Speaker 1:You see what happens Like you, you know you. You start thinking because you're smart at one thing, you're smart at all things. You get into new areas that you don't belong in. You get wiped out. You see that in business just as much as in anything else in life.
Speaker 2:Sports is one of those interesting things where I always evaluate, like what is someone's actual potential? Like there's obviously a physical component. The reason I ask that question is so on my podcast he's actually a good friend of mine. I had him a few episodes ago. He could not play high school baseball. Like could not get on the field, was, by all measures, objectively terrible.
Speaker 2:He kept pursuing baseball post high school, went and played like pick up baseball at whatever university he was at and eventually just kept like working, lifting, exercising as he grew and matured. He actually ended up making it to Mets AA baseball. His contract got purchased by the New York Mets and he kept playing. And so I always weigh, like how much can belief in like that work ethic really carry you until, at some point, that physical cap like plays off, like you're captured, done, and you don't talk a lot about your baseball career and I look at, I read your stuff and I look at all the things that you talk about and I like my wonder is did you apply all of this when you were competing? And if you had, do you think you could have played at a higher level? Do you think you could have pushed further? Was that just not a desire of yours.
Speaker 1:It was definitely a desire. I got hurt. There was so my sophomore year at Stanford. I, at the beginning of the year, had one outing where I didn't do that well and I basically got benched for like a month and a half and it created this enormous chip on my shoulder because I thought it was BS that I got benched. I was like a bunch of guys made errors behind me that game. It wasn't really my fault, I was sort of playing the blame game a little bit but I didn't get out of it. But it really like I hadn't pitched really poorly to get benched for a month and a half and I did. And so then I got an opportunity, like in May of that year and I think I like went five innings shut out, you know, punched out seven, like I had one of my best outings and after that I kind of went on a tear for the rest of the season Like I was one of the primary guys out of the bullpen and my stuff just got nasty.
Speaker 1:Like I pitched in summer baseball and I remember having a feeling that summer where I was like I could make a living doing it. It was the first time in my life. I was like I can get anyone out. You could like put me. I really believed at that moment. I was like you could put me in a big league stadium. I think I could get guys out. As delusional as that sounds, I really believed that that summer. And then I, at the end of that summer, I had an outing where I felt a pull in the back of my shoulder and didn't think anything of it, sort of was like the summer was ending anyway, whatever.
Speaker 1:Got to, got to school in the fall, started playing and I started feeling it was getting worse and worse. But I was like I got to take stuff and play because I'm like I'm not going to go get checked out, then I'm going to be benched for three months because you know how college sports is. You go to the doctor once like too bad dude. You're like someone took your spot, wally Pip, right, like Lou Gehrig comes in and takes the spot. So I just kept playing. I was taking God knows what you know anti-inflammatories, everything to just play and basically over the course of my junior season I went from, like you know, throwing 92 maybe at the beginning of the year to 84 by the end of the year and it hurt just every day. It was misery, like every morning wake up, pain, really bad. And so by the end of that junior year, when I had actually a great season I actually pitched quite well that year it my like dreams of playing professionally were basically done. I was like I'm not gonna, I'm not throwing hard enough, no one's even gonna take a look at me, and it was a good thing for my life. Frankly, like I think I did have the potential to go and play a few years in the minors and just you know, frankly, like waste several years of my life relative to what I did get to go and do. And that's not to say that people that go and pursue that path go and waste it. I just wasn't that into it that I wanted it to be my life.
Speaker 1:At that point I had sort of started to develop these other interests that I was getting excited about I had never, from the day I got to Stanford and I went to the locker room and I walked into Stanford as, like this is my identity baseball, right, I'm the baseball guy. Coming to the locker room, there's all the lockers there. You're getting your own locker for the first time in your life. We didn't have that in high school and we walk in, I'm looking around for my locker Everyone's got their own locker and there's one shared locker with two names on it and it's me with some walk on scrub Uh, I don't even remember who did, like some, you know, and I'm like that was the moment where I was like, oh, I'm literally the worst player here.
Speaker 1:Like this is, you know, it's not, I'm not the guy anymore. This is how it is. And I think from that moment on I sort of committed to like I better diversify my identity because I'm not the guy. Like I'm not going to stop working towards showing up and being on the field, but I better find other things in my life because I'm not just the guy automatically anymore. Like I was in my small town in Massachusetts and that was important for me, like I needed that humbling experience.
Speaker 2:I'd never really been kicked in the nuts in that way, and so I think that by the time the injury came around and those things happened, I was like I've built up a pretty good portfolio of things, and I believe the story you can fact check me here was you sought her out and was like, hey, I'll even do your mail just to learn from you, right? So like when did that become your priority and like what drew you to that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was my last year at Stanford, so I had a year of eligibility because I got hurt my senior year and so I applied to get into this master's program study public policy, and you need an advisor for that in order to get into the program. And so I was like who do I get as an advisor? I don't know, I might as well shoot for the moon here. Condoleezza Rice is on the faculty and I knew that she had had one or two other athlete advisees. There's a woman, chanae Agwumake, who played in the WNBA. She's an awesome friend of mine who had had her and I was like, hmm, I wonder if I should just cold email her. And so I sent her a cold email and she said swing by and come meet me. And so I went and did that and basically I just said that I was like I just want to learn. I'm not asking anything of you, I don't want a whole ton of your time whatever. I just want to be in the room, sort of.
Speaker 1:And that was a turning point for me, specifically because it put me into a room with people who were competitive in the way that I had been athletically but academically. It put me in the room with people that were so much smarter than me and so much deeper than me in this one area in particular, with foreign affairs and public policy that it just reminded me that that same energy that I had been channeling all those years of my life into athletics, if I put those into academics there was actually an even more direct payoff. And so that was sort of this big aha moment for me in my life that I just realized, like athletics, there's this element of like weird luck. Does your coach play you? Does you throw a play you? Does you throw a perfect pitch? Does the guy still somehow get a hit or does he hit it out of the park? Whatever? There were all these things that were sort of out of your control.
Speaker 1:I suddenly got thrust into this area where I was like if I put this amount of effort in the output is almost exactly what I expect it to be, like I'm just going to do well if I can work harder.
Speaker 1:And so when I did that for the first time, it was almost intoxicating. I was like I found this thing where, you know, if I focus on the process and the way that I know how to do and I show up every single day and I put in this effort that I know I'm capable of doing. The outcome is just there, and I carried that over into my first job and into the work, and to me that's the most addicting feeling in the world, because that is this feeling of agency, where you are capable of taking an action and creating a desired outcome in your life. That is the essence of all progress on your entire journey. If you believe that you are capable of taking an action to create a desired outcome, you can do that in any arena, and so once I started to feel that I just wanted to get more and more of it, it was like a drug addict.
Speaker 2:You speak with this humility. You talk about being in a room with people who are so much smarter than you. I know you had talked in the past about how you never felt enough and that created tension right with you and your sister. And when I analyze, like your life right athletic, clearly smart to get into Stanford you have the high school sweetheart. Where did that come from and what were you waiting for to confirm that you were enough or that you have these skill sets?
Speaker 1:I think that you know we talked earlier about these like self-limiting beliefs. I spent most of my childhood telling myself this story that I wasn't very smart in my household and my family very much measured success on the basis of academic performance. I have an Indian mother and then a Harvard professor father, so you can imagine both sides. I was getting that academic pressure and I have an older sister who is extraordinarily high, achieving academically I think to this day still probably highest GPA in our high school's history Got into every college. She applied to physics major in college. She's amazing. She's amazing, but she was very much doing the things that my family valued and, for whatever reason, I did not feel like I was capable of doing those same things.
Speaker 1:Part of that was true. I was not as academically oriented. I don't think I was quite as good at, just on the surface, the like work going into something that I didn't think really was important. I've never been good at that. I've always been a little bit rebellious where I'm like why am I being forced to do this thing? It's like my first instinct is like a little bit of independent thinking which, frankly, is not good for school. Like if we think about what's what is the most effective personality for school. It's like the buy the book, just do the thing to get the outcome. That is what really works in school and I've never quite been wired that way and so it didn't come quite as quickly to me in those early days. And so I started that story of I'm not very smart. One thing we know about stories as humans if you tell yourself a story, you will find every single piece of evidence that confirms that story that you already believe and you'll ignore every single piece of evidence that would refute it. So from a young age I started finding evidence that confirmed to me that I was not very smart, whatever it was, and every time my parents would tell me that it was ridiculous, or anyone any evidence, I would just be like, ah, can't hear it right, earmuffs on, bounces off you. And so I think I just sort of like started creating and building this insecurity.
Speaker 1:And unfortunately, when you're a kid, you know you create this insecurity, this internal void. It happens to adults too. You know you just go around looking for like external solutions to that internal problem, and you know that can come around looking for like external solutions to that internal problem, and you know that can come in the form of praise, affection. You want to be the man, right. Like you know, I wanted all the girls to think I was cool. I wanted, you know, to be getting all the offers from different colleges. I wanted you know all of these things.
Speaker 1:And so what happened was like I just started puffing myself up, like I would brag about things, I would lie about things. I look back on it, it's like it's embarrassing to me, right, like I was actually doing really well, but I would still feel this need to puff myself up because I still didn't feel like I was enough. And you know, now, looking back on it, there was an element of just. I just needed to grow up, I needed to get kicked in the nuts a bit, I needed to experience some of the struggle.
Speaker 1:There's this movie, cool Runnings, the old Disney movie like Jamaican bobsled team, and there's this scene in it where the coach says to one of the athletes a gold medal is a wonderful thing, but if you're not enough without it, you're never going to be enough with it. And that quote, it really resonates with me now because what I realize is there was no thing that was going to make me feel like I was enough. It needed to come from the internal and the work and understanding who I was. It wasn't going to come from the scholarship or the accolade or the fancy job or any of those things.
Speaker 2:That's funny. I have a very similar experience. I grew up in like by all measures, was super, like naturally intelligent, right Like I was in advanced learning like, was winning spelling bees as a young child and then when I was in sixth grade I got like a pretty serious concussion, short-term amnesia, and I always used that at a certain point to just be like oh, that made me dumb Right, and I began to have similar limiting beliefs where I was like, ah, you know, I'm getting good grades without trying, like imagine if I did try and I would always use that as a defense mechanism, because anytime I tried something that would be challenging school-wise and I wasn't interested, I just wouldn't do it. And then over time it felt natural to play like the dumb jock right Like yeah, I'm a good athlete, like you know, would use humor as like a defense mechanism and honestly, it probably carried over for like a year or until about a year ago.
Speaker 2:One of my buddies works in an NFL personnel department and I went and visit him for a game and he had like the breakdown of the games and I was reading through it and later in a conversation there was, like you know, 60 some pages of like detailed game plan, right For this opponent. And just like mid conversation, I cite like some random statistic from like page like 34. And he just like gives me this look. And he's like like how did you remember that A recall? And for me it was like the first time where it like clicked for me.
Speaker 2:I was like, if I'm interested in something, I have amazing recall with it and I remember calling my dad after and being like and just like telling him the story. And he's like well, colin, he's like dad after and being like and just like telling him the story. And he's like well, colin, he's like, like you are smart, my dad's like a plastic surgeon. So for me it actually was like this like external thing for someone to like recognize something that I took for granted, where I'm like interested, to be like, okay, like I am actually pretty smart. And then I start reflecting over the things that I've done over the years and sometimes I find it that the people who are really capable are sometimes the people who have the most limiting beliefs. And I don't know if you found that to be the case, obviously, with yourself, but with people you surround yourself with. Maybe that's just unique to you and I.
Speaker 1:I don't know if it's the people who are most capable that have those limiting beliefs, but I do think there's an element of the people who are the most successful have a level of insecurity and paranoia that sort of confounds the external mind. Like when I look at some of my most successful friends, deeply insecure, deeply paranoid about somehow losing it all and it makes no sense. You like look from the outside, looking in, you're like dude, you've done it, you're doing the things. And you know what you realize is that a lot of the insecurity is a positive in some ways in their life. It drives them to go search for more and more and more and keep creating and keep building. And like you have a friend who built like a $200 million startup, sold it, made a bunch of money, was like you retired on the beach for a couple of days and then was like I'm not going to be relevant anymore. I got to, I got to go build another thing. So now he's trying to build another startup and it's like to me I'm looking at like dude, just go do what you want. Why are you getting back into the mess? But you realize insecurity can be a really powerful driver in a lot of ways and if you think evolutionarily kind of makes sense, right, if you ever got complacent or content, you were probably about to get eaten by a lion. Hedonic adaptation has a survival feature to it. You come back down to baseline, you have to keep hunting, and so I think in the modern era we just need to play with that tension.
Speaker 1:Like, I don't think it's a bad thing to feel this sort of natural, continued ambition and progress. It just needs to be channeled into the right things, like I think it is. It can be a positive for your life if you channel that feeling of I need to do more into the right pursuits. Like if I feel like I need to do more and that more is creating an impact on other people or creating something that is in service of others, that can be amazing.
Speaker 1:If it's more and it's me thinking that more money is going to make me cooler to a lot of people, or having a fancier car that's probably going to lead me to misery. But I think that that shift is basically you know, people who are miserable focus on themselves, people who are very happy focus on others, and so if you can channel that feeling of insecurity into oh, I'm actually just going to create more value for other people in the world. Well, that could be a positive. Do you think you can be happy without ambition? Happy without ambition? I think you're probably happier without ambition. I think ambition is actually a negative for happiness for a lot of people.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, I think, uh, I think that ambition creates a lot of misery in people's lives, because ambition without direction is a curse. You know, ambition without direction is this feeling of being lost, like I have all these big dreams and I should be doing all these things. I have all these goals and aspirations and I don't know what to do or how I'm possibly going to get there. And I'm sitting here and it's dark and stormy and I have all these dreams and visions but there's no path to get there. That is the ultimate feeling of lostness, of stuckness, of anxiety, of stress, when you don't have a direction to channel that ambition. When you have a direction to channel ambition, it's amazing. Right, that is the meaningful pursuit, that is the journey, that is the journey, that is the struggle. Um, there's nothing that feels better than the hard-earned win, like working towards and that's the point right like that hard-earned win.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and if you can never experience that hard-earned win, are you missing out, whether it's athletics or life?
Speaker 1:yes, I, I think no doubt. I mean. I think that, like if you were to map out the scientific and anecdotal path to maximum happiness in life, what it would look like is like slow, steady growth over a long period of time. The worst path to happiness is the spike success. Like you know, athletes enormous success in their 20s. Now, all of a sudden, completely irrelevant. No one cares that you were a professional athlete 10 years ago, right, like, even if you were at the pinnacle, very few people care. Like why do these former pro athletes that made all this money and they were so famous start making YouTube vlogs later in life? Like it makes no sense. You're like dude chill, you made so much money, you were so famous, you were the GOAT, but you're doing this like YouTube things because you want to stay relevant. You like you have this fear of no longer being the guy you had all this fame and so you know that is actually a very bad path. It's called the Nova effect. Like this enormous happiness decline that comes after a big spike success.
Speaker 1:Slow, steady, incremental growth is how you achieve real lasting happiness. But you know Growth is how you achieve real lasting happiness. But you know we don't like slow, steady growth. People want like do it faster. Cheat code short path to success. And you know you're shooting yourself in the foot in a lot of ways, because that is the hard earned path. Right, that is the like. I'm going to show up and do the boring things well for a long period of time to go and build my life, and that's not easy for a lot of people.
Speaker 2:What do you think it is about? Because you listen to anyone talk once they're at the pinnacle of success. They always talk about the journey and how that is the most exciting, but nobody ever listens until they're in the thick of it themselves. And then they get to a period where they do achieve the thing and then they realize like the journey of it, the climb of it, was what actually made it better.
Speaker 1:Is that?
Speaker 2:just one of those things that you have to experience on your own. Is that like one of those unteachable lessons?
Speaker 1:Unteachable lessons is a funny thing. I've had debates with friends about this. Chris Williamson and I got into a debate about this a few months back. I don't think there's such a thing as an unteachable lesson.
Speaker 1:I think it's kind of ridiculous. Like I don't know, like you know, I don't. You don't need to go put your finger into an electrical socket to find out that it's a bad thing. I can just tell you that you can. You should be able to learn it. There's a lot of things like this where I should be able to convince you in some way. It just means that I'm not doing a good enough job of convincing you of this fact, but there's too many people who have experienced this to ignore at some point.
Speaker 1:I think it was Jim Carrey that said something to the effect of I hope everyone can achieve wealth and fame and success, just so that they can see that that wasn't really the answer. And look, I mean over and over again, what you find is it's not the destination, it's really the moment before having it. Like go run a marathon. The happiest point in a marathon is not after you've crossed the finish line and you got your medal. It's literally like when you can see the finish line and you're running towards it. There's this euphoria of like I am about to do, it's done, like I'm going to finish this thing. I can feel it, I can taste it, but I'm not quite done yet. I'm still in the struggle. There's something about that moment and I think that entrepreneurs or athletes everyone says this about whatever it is that they built up as this destination. That, like you know, it's not having a billion dollars, it's the making it, it's the being in the trenches with people to get to that thing. It's otherwise you wouldn't go start another one. It's not about getting the billion dollars, it's about how you earned it, that pursuit along the way. There's nothing that feels better than that. And I think if what drives you to go through that experience is thinking that having it is going to change who you are as a person, fine, because you're going to feel it on that journey, but it is just such a dangerous mindset to you know, pursue it with just the end in mind, because it also just leads you to stupid shortcuts.
Speaker 1:Like you know, the the people that think that ten million dollars is going to make them be cool and happy and successful and don't realize that how you earned it really matters. A lot of people think, oh, once I have $10 million, everyone will respect me. All these CEOs will think I'm so cool. How you earned. It is much more important than how much you earned. You're like, if you win the lottery and you win $10 million, how much you earned? You're like, if I give you, if you win the lottery and you win $10 million, the CEOs of a bunch of like amazing companies aren't going to be like, oh, colin's the man, right, he has $10 million.
Speaker 1:No, it's how you earned it. If you built that through some amazing company that you built, that created value for other people. Now they're going to want to talk to you and they're going to find you really interesting. But that is such an important distinction to get through your head is like the way that you actually went about doing the things that you did, the way that you operate, the way that you showed up. That is what earns the respect and admiration that you really seek in life. It's not the having it, it's the pursuit of getting it.
Speaker 2:Now, your mountain certainly wasn't built in a day. I know you started with what 500 followers when you started your kind of social media journey. Followers when you started your kind of social media journey and you know by accounts, like you know people. You know certain people mocked you who were supposed to be supportive of you?
Speaker 1:How did you stick with it? Do you remember your first thread?
Speaker 2:Yeah, of course I always remember your first oh there you go, jokester. What kept you through it when you didn't have support in the beginning and people are like what the heck is this Threadboy stuff? And you're able to really just keep pursuing it and building it to what it is today?
Speaker 1:I really like writing. That helped a lot. When you really like the thing that you're doing. It's cliche to say people are like, well, I would have done this if you didn't pay me a dollar. I didn't get paid a dollar. I didn't know that you can make money off of doing these things, right? I?
Speaker 1:Originally, when I started posting on Twitter, I was like I like writing and I'm really insecure. So I like the fact that there are people that think I'm, you know, impressive for writing these things. Like I'm currently working in a career track where it's going to take a long time before people think I'm impressive for what I do, for work, um, but this is a thing where, like, oh, I have 3000 followers now and they all think I'm awesome and I, like I'm famous. Basically, 3000 followers, right. And so there was an element of like I really liked the underlying action that was required to do the work. Um, and I was getting pats on the back from a lot of people publicly be completely honest with it. Uh, and I never would have done it if I thought that it was like, you know, a path to quit my job. Like that's. That would have been crazy to me. Um, and it's it.
Speaker 1:There's an important realization there which is, like the most asymmetric, interesting paths in life you cannot plan for because they're inherently invisible to you. Where you currently stand, like if you would ask me to write down 100, you know 100 potential realities for where I would have been five years in the future, in 2020, I would have written down 100 things. Not a single one of them would have been me sitting here talking to you as an author and doing the things that I've done over the last five years, because it didn't exist. I hadn't written yet, I hadn't done any of that stuff. It never would have crossed my mind that that would have been a path, but I started to walk that way and I started following my energy and things happened. It was an interesting, asymmetric opportunity that opened up. It was invisible until I walked enough that it became visible. So I don't know.
Speaker 1:I mean, I think there are always going to be people that have something to say whether you're doing your main thing or whether you're doing the thing they want you to do. Someone's going to be talking shit. I just know that. Right, like they're going to talk shit If you follow the traditional path. They're going to talk shit if you follow your path.
Speaker 1:So you might as well do the one that you actually want to do, and I'm certainly glad I did, because a lot of those people that you know talk trash then wanted to like come to my book launch events or you know now like want job advice on thing, whatever it is. And it's sort of funny to me now. But yeah, there's a lot of crabs in a bucket mentality unfortunately out there. Most people don't actually want you to be successful. They want you to be successful up to the point where you're more successful than them and then they want to claw you back down. And learning that, seeing it in people's behavior and quickly eliminating those people from your life is a way to just move yourself forward.
Speaker 2:How did you build the confidence to transition fully to what you're doing? Because the credence you have. You legitimately left a job right, as you called yourself the nobody P guy, but you had a job that 50 and 60 year olds would die for and you were what 30? You can correct me on the facts there. But then you had built the confidence to completely shift in transition into more or less some of the things that you're doing now. Where did you build the equity and confidence in yourself to make that transition? What were the metrics where you're like, okay, I can fully make this transition and do it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, I left a seven figure job. I was making a million dollars and I would you know the certainty of making a lot of money was very high, just from a expected value standpoint Very, very high. The fund was doing well, great group of people that I really love and still really love and spend a lot of time with accumulation of a ton of tiny little bits of evidence that created that confidence. Again, this goes back to an athlete. You know mindset that you don't just one day wake up with a whole bunch of confidence. You build that confidence by keeping promises to yourself over a long period of time, that you're the type of person that shows up and does these things. And I didn't realize it, but for a year, from May 2020, when I wrote my first thing, to May of 2021, when I quit my job I had written every single day and published things, and every single one of those actions whether it led to a whole bunch of followers or whether it didn't all of those things were sort of tiny little deposits into this evidence bank that you know I could go and build something, that I was capable of doing something else, and what I had, what had happened along that journey was that I had noticed little business opportunities all of a sudden starting to pop up, like you know, startups that wanted me to come and potentially invest because I had a platform I could talk about. That company founders of startups that wanted to know how they could build, you know, their storytelling engine at their company. Or for startups that wanted to know how they could build their storytelling engine at their company or for themselves that wanted to pay me to help them do that. And so all of these little things that started appearing without me looking for them were like, oh okay, that's a thing, that's a real business, there's something I could do there. And it was much more that it was like this engineered serendipity sort of. I was like putting myself out there.
Speaker 1:All these things started coming and that created a level of confidence where, candidly, my wife needed to say it to me where I was like I'm just going to go get another job that looks like my job. We're going to move to the East Coast, I'm going to do that. And she said can't you just do this thing you've been doing on the weekends? Like can't you just do that full time? Like couldn't you make a bunch of money if you did it full time and I had never thought of it and it was like this aha moment I realized oh yeah, there's all this stuff. Oh yeah, I am like pretty good at this.
Speaker 2:All these people are, and so it was sort of a combination of like an internal realization. And then you referenced it earlier with your friend, like this one person that you trust, giving you the permission, almost like different paths you're going to take path A, path B. Path A was the job, path B is the entrepreneurship route. And he just like reframed it back to you and was like, well, path A sounds like you can make a lot of money, but it's boring and you don't like it. Path B is, you think, something you have that's scalable, you're really good at it, you really enjoy it. It sounds like you know, plan B is a no brainer and like you, just like, ah, like that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 2:I experienced something recently as well. I had an interview with Eric Jorgensen and I was just talking about like myself and like a criticism I have of myself is, like you know, being a generalist or like a Jack of all trades, and I was like sometimes I wonder if I just like specialized in one thing, like would I be good at it? And he just had this simple reframe in one thing. Like would I be good at it and he just had this simple reframe, and it was just like it clicked for me. I was like being a jack of all trades or journalist is actually a really unique skill set to have, and it was just a simple reframe that someone presents in front of you that just makes it click. What is it about the reframes that can just make something click for you, as opposed to just like deep diving and overextending, trying to figure something out when it's just right in front of?
Speaker 1:you. Sometimes you just need to see, see the lay of the land from a different view, a different perspective, right, like, perspective shifts um, create a lot of value. You know, if you walk one way to work every single day and then you take an opposite route or a different route, you're going to experience an entirely different reality and, um, there's a real benefit from doing that. Sometimes you know, zoom out, zoom in, go around, take the long way, all of those things Again, it like expands your view or your perspective on something where you are normally so zoomed in that you are blind to all of these other realities that are around you.
Speaker 1:And having people in your life that can help you do that is really effective. Being able to do that yourself is the next level of it, where you can just force yourself to do that on an ongoing basis. So now I try to be more intentional about doing that, but it is. You know what, if I viewed this differently? Like where you know, where am I? You know where am I? Kind of just like default, assuming something that is not actually true.
Speaker 2:I think one thing that I really appreciate is everything that you discuss. You come from like a place of experience, having done the thing. You rarely, or I've never really seen something where you speak on something where you haven't experienced or something that you haven't learned from. When you see people starting out in like the advice whatever you want to call it giving business, how can they establish a credibility to where they can actually build something in something that they're passionate about?
Speaker 1:I think you need to live an interesting life in the real world and then you can talk about those things in the online world or wherever it is that you're sharing. I think it's very hard to be in the advice giving business or self-improvement or self-help or whatever the space is, if you're not actually doing interesting things, like if you're just reading about things in a book. There's only so much that you can do. Right, you're synthesizing stuff. You can do a really good job. There's some people that I actually read their stuff that I really like, because what they're incredible at is sort of curating interesting things from stuff that I probably wouldn't go read all the source material. They do a good job of curating it, but that's going to be a tough business long term doing that. There's probably a few people that have managed to do that and carve out a business around it, but it's pretty rare. You have to be really exceptional and you generally will run out of things to do that around. You really have to live and then share the things that you're learning along that journey. That's what my Twitter bio says like exploring my curiosity, sharing what I learned along the way. I don't know everything. I don't know even very much, and I'm perfectly open with that, because that's what makes me good at what I do. It's that I am learning new things, reading new things, having conversations with cool people. I'm getting access to more and more people as my prominence has grown and that enables me to bring other people along for that journey, struggle with things in real time, share those struggles, and I think that that should be the focus for anyone that wants to. You know it's kind of weird to say like you want to do this for a living, but I think if, if, um, you know, you're trying to go and build a platform or a presence around improving other people's lives, you need to go and live an interesting life in your own way in some way. Go and live an interesting life in your own way, in some way.
Speaker 1:You know, I think the biggest mistake people make when they get into trying to share and create content and write is that they're doing it to try to be famous or they're doing it to try to have followers. I honestly never once have been like oh, I'm trying to have a million followers here, I'm trying to have this many subscribers. My focus has always been creating things that I would find valuable if I were reading them, creating videos that I would find valuable. If I watched them, they could get zero views, they could get a million views, it could get shared, but as long as I'm grounded in, hey, this actually would be valuable if you engage with this.
Speaker 1:I've put things out that got no traction, that I was like I would. If that is a super valuable thing and if someone sees that they're going to find it really valuable, even if no one did because the algorithm didn't like it, that's okay with me. I think the second anytime I've strayed into like trying to hack things or little games or whatever, it always backfires and I just feel it's soulless and so I think it's very hard to play that game for long periods of time, like really fake it. I think that the path it has to be grounded in this, like it's an act of service. You're trying to create value. Either. Maybe it's your younger self that would benefit from these things, maybe it's your older self, maybe it's you know, someone that you realize out in the world is on the other end of this thing.
Speaker 2:We talked about ambition earlier. Is that the ambition that keeps you doing more? Pushing for more? Is the impact of serving others, or is it something else that drives your directed ambition?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I want to feel like the things that I'm putting out into the world are creating a real ripple and creating impact in other people's lives. I get a ton of energy from feeling like the things I'm sharing are impacting other people in a positive way, causing them to live slightly differently, and that is really what keeps me doing it. I love seeing things grow and the scale of that reach and impact continue to grow. I love that we live in a world where these things are more scalable than they were in prior generations. I think that's amazing and, frankly, like I've sort of done things the slow, long, boring way, like I haven't had one thing that blew me up and made me all of a sudden famous. Like it has been that path that I said earlier of like slow, steady, incremental growth and improvements. We're continuing to get better at it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there will be periods where it accelerates versus decelerates.
Speaker 1:There's certain moments, like the book coming out, where prominence grows a lot all at once, but really it's been just like a steady, methodical showing up, creating things other people find valuable, and I'm really proud of that.
Speaker 1:And so you know when I think of like my ultimate sort of zoom out view of like what I'm trying to do. A huge part of it is I want to. I want my son to be proud of what his dad does, and a big part of that to me is that I have to do things the right way and I have to be proud of the way that I make money and the way that I support my family. You know, if I was like scamming people on a bunch of masterminds or courses or whatever, like all the ways that there are these big way richer than me creators and people out there, and I'm sure I could make a lot more money doing those things but I wouldn't be able to walk in and tell my son that, like, I'm really proud of that, here's how dad makes money, here's what I do, um, and I am really proud of what I'm doing now, and so I want to continue down that path. I want him to really see that and take the lessons from that.
Speaker 2:How do you pick your new challenges? You've run marathons, you've created businesses, you've written a book. How do you seek out and find your next challenge? I like pain.
Speaker 1:Uh, yeah, yeah, I, I mean books are pain, man, books are. I'm writing another book now. I signed the second book deal shortly after the first one came out. Um, books are like running a marathon or like I haven't done this, but like having a baby, um, where you know you finish one and you're like there's no way I'm ever doing that again. And the masochistic side of me was like I'm going to do another one of those Kind of had this idea. It was roughly formed. I was like, ah, ok, I guess we're going to get into it again.
Speaker 1:And now I'm feeling it where I'm like it's not, like I can't figure out the structure and you're like you're just in the meat, in the weeds of it again, and it's years. So I do love it goes back to the meaningful struggle. It's like the meaningful um. You know I really optimize for two things in life I want to wake up energized and go to bed exhausted, like. Waking up energized means I'm excited for the things I'm going to do and the people that I'm going to do it with. And going to bed exhausted means that I gave my all to those things and to those people during the course of the day. If I feel that on a daily basis waking up energized, going to bed exhausted to me that is a life well lived, that is the recipe for a good life. So I'm really chasing that on a daily basis.
Speaker 2:What is going to be your objective measures of success for that second book I think it's, morgan Housel talks about no book will ever be better than the first book. Like the Psychology of Money, I think was his first book, and he talks about no book will ever be better than the first book. Like the Psychology of Money, I think was his first book, and he talks about every book he's written since has not done as well.
Speaker 1:How do you measure the success of your book? I want to be proud of the thing that I put out into the world. I talk to Morgan a lot. He's great, he's a friend. Yeah, I mean he's coming at it from the perspective of the fact that his first book was a unicorn success like 10 million plus copies sold. Point zero, zero, zero. One percent of books get to that level of success. So it is very hard to imagine that he's able to do that kind of success again, even just statistically, probabilistically, not everyone's first book is that successful. So I think he has a skewed perspective on it to some extent. So I think he has a skewed perspective on it to some extent.
Speaker 1:My impression with the first book was the same as it's going to be with the second book, which is I want to feel very proud of the thing I'm putting into the world, because if it's not a success, I just spent years on something that failed and I want to feel proud of it, no matter what, to the point of, like you know, you put out a piece of content even if no one reads it.
Speaker 1:Like I want to feel proud of the thing, and if it is a success, you're going to be talking about it for 10 years after the fact because everyone's going to ask you about it. So I want to feel proud of it and I want to feel like I left it all on the field when it comes to launching it, putting it out into the world. I did both of and with the second book I just want to do those two things and those are both within my control. That's not to say that it will sell an amazing amount or that it'll do great, but those are both within my control and I can focus there. And so, again, athlete mentality, right Like you, focus on what you can control, that you know, this internal locus of control, that mindset of agency. I can do both of those things. It's going to be a lot of work and it's going to be probably miserable at times, but it's very rewarding when you can go and do that.
Speaker 2:You mentioned your book and there's two stories that really resonate well with me. Both happen to just be I believe they were both in the social wealth aspect of it and the first one is you talk about your grandmother, who thrived in like relationships and that's what you know, kept her alive and she died in, you know, her 90s. Last night or yesterday, I should say. You know, I got a call from my mother that my grandmother's not doing well, so I had a chance to go see her before. You know, I flew out and you know my mom tends to exaggerate, but in this moment, like she wasn't exaggerating, like I would be very surprised if in a week my grandmother's still around and my sister and I, like in a way as a defense mechanism, joke about it that for the last 10 years we can't believe she's still alive because she hasn't been in physical health, she's broken a bunch of bones, doesn't really move around. But I come back in.
Speaker 2:When I first read your book it just hit me like a firestorm that the relationship is what keeps people alive. And she thrived on relationships because we were always around. She was at every game, even when she couldn't move. We had her there on a wheelchair. She came to every party. She never missed a vacation, she was at everything. But the last year or two, as my sister and I and our families have grown and we've become busy and more you know in our own relationships with our own families, you could slowly see her begin to, you know, and she's 93, but like it felt like 20 years in two years where she went from alert with all of us to then, you know, coming to, to passing away and I'm sorry to hear that.
Speaker 2:Nah, it's, it's, we've come to peace with it. You know, um, but that relationship and that's like it. It just the story just ties so hard because it it's true, like when you, when I read that I was like that is like my grandmother and it was awesome. And then the second one was the story of um eric and a Aubrey Newton, where the rare form of blood cancer and it just makes me want to pick up my phone and just like call my wife and it makes me want to orient and social wealth was where I actually scored the highest.
Speaker 2:And it's still like everything I want to do is to like, be with my family more and, to, you know, make my daughters and future son proud of me and make my wife, you know, proud of me and be there, present with them. There's a theme in your book where there's a lot of near death experiences or death experiences that fundamentally shift people's perspective. It doesn't feel like you need to have a near death experience for you to be able to learn, and that kind of goes back to that unteachable lessons. Where do you think you gained your wisdom to be able to see these things and be like I don't need to experience death to be able to change the way I live my life.
Speaker 1:So when someone experiences a death in their family or a near-death experience themselves, you can think of it as this light from the other side. People often talk about that. In near-death experiences you feel like you're in a tunnel and there's light at the end of the tunnel. There's this light that shines back onto your path. You're alive, this light from the other side that you've seen, this wisdom, this insight, this blinding lesson Most people get. That light shines back on their path. They kind of nod their head and then they go back living the same damn way they were before. You're like, oh yeah, my family is so important. And then you're just like back, doing your normal thing that you were doing, ignoring your family. You know, not compartmentalizing, not vocalizing appreciation. You just go back to living the same way.
Speaker 1:That is because awareness is really perishable. You might know that something is important, but if you don't know it at the testing point, the moment where it really matters in your life to be able to act differently, act on that awareness. It's useless. Awareness is useless without action. You need to have a razor thin gap between awareness and action in your life. That is how you improve your life. It is by knowing the thing and then acting on that thing that you know right away. That comes down to constantly bringing that awareness from the back of your mind to the front, that light that needs to be constantly shining on your path, because humans are really good at being like yeah, I saw it, okay, I know that thing, and then you go back. You go back, the awareness disappears and you just continue living the same way. It's like you know someone survives a plane crash or something like that. They're like oh, I'm going to live a totally changed way, whatever, maybe for a month they. And then the month goes by and all of a sudden they're back in the same patterns because the awareness went away. We need to create triggers all around us where we bring that awareness to the front of our minds, and I do a good job of that now.
Speaker 1:I wouldn't say I'm perfect by any means, but I catch myself much more because I've drilled it into my brain so much how important these things are.
Speaker 1:So if I have my phone out in front of my son and I'm sitting there and I'm doing things on it during the time when I should be playing with him, I'll catch myself in those moments now, which I didn't used to do, and that is a huge life improvement, because it's not about being perfect, it's about just getting slightly better off of whatever your baseline was, and that comes from creating that awareness, placing it around you with photos, with little cards that say it on it, whatever it might be for you to recognize it. Phone background is a big one for people because you take out your phone, that's when you're eliminating the presence from the people that you're around. You see your background to your phone and it says something that's like hey, idiot, your people are in front of you. Whatever that is, create that awareness, bring it top of mind so that it's there at the testing point. That is how your life actually changes, from these experiences.
Speaker 2:Well, hey, man, I appreciate you coming on. I know I've been, you know, working to get you on here for a while and means a lot. We were able to, you know, set some time and make it happen. So thank you for coming on. You know what's next for you, you know, I know you just said you're working on a book, but where can people find you? Where can they see what you're looking for or what you're working on?
Speaker 1:You can find my, my first book, uh, at, uh, you know, anywhere, anywhere books are sold Amazon, the five types of wealth. Um, you can find me on any of the platforms and uh, my newsletter at my website. But um would love to hear from people. Send me an email, send me a message. I love meeting new people and excited to see where this takes you.
Speaker 2:I appreciate that, man and you know. Thank you guys for tuning in. You know, tune in next time. Check us out at athleticfortitudecom. Download the pod, subscribe to our YouTube channel. Five stars only, baby. Appreciate you, See you, Appreciate you.