Designing a Life You Don't Need to Escape with Kevin Dahlstrom

if you put your identity in your career that gets old eventually no matter how successful you are you just stop carrying at some point so much and it's going to have ups and

downs and so I think early in your life Works probably 80% of your identity maybe but unfortunately for a lot of people that never changes if you're deliberate about it what it should

happen is over time you should gain back the freedom to make work less of your identity so if you fast forward to like me today work is probably 10% of my identity it's

still important to me I still love what I do it's part of who I am but honestly the biggest part of my identity probably right now is being a rock climber and that may sound silly to some people and

again I still work I still do interesting challenging projects but it's some mixture of family spirituality your avocation which for me

is rock climbing and then your vocation which is your work welcome to another episode of the car apricorn show today I'm very excited to have Kevin dalstrom

he's been on my list to bring on to the podcast for a really long time and I finally reached out to him because I felt like I got the Reps in where I started to learn how to interview people better learn how to edit the podcast

better and I felt like it's finally a good place where I felt comfortable inviting him and wanted to make sure the interview was solid so thanks Kevin for joining us on the podcast today hey

thanks Michael I'm honored and I enjoy your content as well I think we follow each other on X so yeah excited to chat yeah I pulled up your bio so I'll just

kind of read it quickly which I think will give everyone good context but four-time founder three-time CMO you post a lot about being a Rob climber father and husband and the thing I found

the most I guess fascinating with your story is about how you balance all of those things in your life and I guess when you turned 40 you made some pretty bold moves in your career as well that

completely like I guess pivoted or 180 it which I think was probably took a lot of Courage as well but I guess to start I was reading through some of your

content and I saw this post that about this text you got from your CEO so that' be fun to kind of walk through the the story why what happened and what was the story but the text reads do you still

work here so it's a funny story and it seems to resonate with people so yeah happy to tell it this was back in 2014 for

context this was pre- pandemic remote work really wasn't a thing back then as we know Co changed everything this was my first big CMO or chief marketing

officer gig with a big multi-billion dollar public company I spent most of my career prior to that in smaller startups and growth companies and so I started

with this company and long story short like three months in I get a text from this the CEO saying do you still work here which you're kind of funny kind of

alarming to be honest but I knew exactly what he was talking about because it was a bit of a culture Clash so like I guess I was a remote worker before remote work

was cool I have this very strongly held belief that in knowledge work which is what most of I think the people who who listen to your podcast do where we're

using our our mind and ideas it's not linear work it happens in fits and SP but even today companies sort of adhere

to the old factory work model like the old punch the clock 95 butson seats and I just rejected it I mean I sort of

pretty early in my career bet everything on results so I my thinking was that in any job if I delivered great results

nobody would care where I did it when I did it how I did it so again back to this culture Clash I think the the CEO kind of came from that old school model

and it was just very strange to him that I wasn't in the office all the time so it it stimulated some great discussion because part of my job in coming into that company was to help kind of shift

the culture a little bit and that was a big shift we made and fast forward to today and of course after the pandemic everybody's working remotely in fact this CEO is like the champion of remote

work things have come full circle that that's such a great story we've all had those moments where you feel like you have to be in the office and you feel like you have to show up 5 days a week

but I've been noodling on this idea of like working when it feels good to you which could be any mixture of schedules that doesn't have to adhere to this 95

which came out of as you said like the factory model and for a lot of our work which is creative and I don't know when this podcast is coming out but today I happen to paused on your post which was

about the variety of schedules you can work and it's absolutely right working hard is that's a given like if you want to achieve anything you're going to work hard but hard work can take many many

forms and I totally agree like I I tend to be I'm a creatively wired person and so I work when I'm inspired when I'm not inspired it's frankly a waste of time to

grind any job involves some degree of grind but I think following your inspiration is really important again we're not working in a factory producing widgets are doing repetitive work we're

a lot of us are paid for our ideas and the insights that we can deliver yeah I I totally agree so I invited you on the podcast to talk about topics like this but

specifically around lifestyle design which is how you invest your time energy and resources and I thought it' be fun to talk about your life philosophy and get advice I know you've been a lot of

advice for people in their 20s 30s I'm selfishly asking for advice now that I'm 40 turning 42 this year so selfishly I want to get advice about the 40s but before we get into all that that would

be a really good context if you give like a really quick summary of your background because I think that story really shows like how you had this one path and you completely pivoted to another and yeah from there I think I

thought it'd be fun to talk about lifestyle design cool well first of all I have to say if you had told me you were 28 I would have believed you so good for you man you look awesome for you said 42

turning 42 in August see drink drink lots of water okay that's the secret I'll have to do that uh so I'm 53 I probably look 53 which is real fine um so I only mentioned that to say I've

done a lot so I am going to give you like a very abbreviated version I guess I'll approach it from the standpoint of like what have I done that's interesting or unique and I think I've done two things that are that are kind of unique

in my career number one I'm one of the few people who has kind of bounced back and forth between the corporate world and the entrepreneurial world multiple times as you read in my bio I've I've

founded four companies I've also been a senior executive at the sea level in four companies three of them were public companies so I've got a breadth of

experience and the truth is those worlds aren't as different as you might imagine especially in terms of the way that you approach your work and build your lifestyle and then the second thing I'd say it's kind of a claim to fame within

my little profession which is marketing I'm the only CMO ever to Rebrand three public companies so I'm a brand guy and over many years developed a lot of

expertise in that area and so when I work for bigger companies they hire me to help them refresh the brand and most people think of brand as like a logo and

a name but a brand is really who you are it's everything right it's why you exist the products you deliver to customers and services and of course the way it looks as well so I've been at it for a

long time and I've seen just a huge amount of things and and on top of that I have also for many years been a very active private Equity investor in both

real estate and startups I've got I think 55 or so active Investments right now so yeah done a lot that's the two-minute

version and now I remember listening to your podcast now it makes sense of why you interviewed Alex pusy who is I think one of my favorite creative directors in the advertising branding world and I

really love that episode I think he was talking about the different experiences he had through his life and how he experimented with psychedelics to heal some traumatic experiences so I thought that was one of my favorite podcast

episodes I've ever listened to yeah Alex is a rock star he's a friend of mine he lives here in Boulder with me and that was a wild discussion so you're an outlier because most people who listen

to that are like I'm not exactly sure what to think of what I just heard yeah I knew of him because I went to grad school for advertising and branding in the early 2000s when chrisen Porter and

pusy was like their Peak Peak where they're absolutely so I always looked at them as like a huge inspiration for not not just branding but just creativity in general yeah he's one of the best ever

to do it yeah one of the goats for sure I guess throughout that career what point did you decide to Pivot what was like that turning point for you yeah and

you you like sort of labeled it as a pivot I'll be even a little bit more extreme is like I'll call it like a reboot or a blowing up of my life that's probably more accurate so this happened

in 2018 so I was midlife right like my mid to late 40s and for me it was a very a

distinct point in time it was actually an epiphany I was sitting in a board meting I working for this big multi-billion dollar company sea level making seven figures like a made man so

to speak and I was sitting in a boardroom with nine other people who it was the board of directors for the company all by Financial measures

incredibly successful people like the ones that Society really celebrates and I looked around the room and I my thought was there's not a single person here

that I want to emulate even though they had a lot of money they were all unhealthy in fact one had like an an oxygen machine connecting to his nose um I knew that most of them had broken

family relationships a couple of them had even come to me and said Kevin I'm miserable what what are you doing because you seem happy and but it but it

was a real wakeup call for me is that I was my path my career path was not consistent with what I really wanted out of life I felt like I was like playing

the role of some guy and on paper it looked great like check check check check all the boxes that that signify success but I was the least happy I had

ever been so long story short and I'm not shortening shortening it that much because it was dramatic I quit that job moved my family to Boulder Colorado

mainly because uh I'm a rock climber and Boulder is Mecca for rock climbers and I really had no plan for the future but I knew what I didn't want which was I i'

made it to the top of the corporate ladder in many ways it's what people dream of and it's the it's the kind of classic situation where it it was everything that others dream of it

wasn't what I wanted so I started rebuild I rebooted and started rebuilding the life that I wanted yeah what did that life end up looking like

post reboot yeah so I'll to to answer that question I'll use I'll talk about this exercise that I've developed that

that that I developed it because I I needed it for myself and since then I've run I've I've gone through this exercise with dozens of people like everybody

from like college kids all the way up to literally like billionaire business people uh and I call it the ideal end State exercise and it's a very simple exercise but it's incredibly powerful

literally all you do is you get out a notepad or I do it on my phone and you make a bulleted list of if you could have your ideal life what would it look

like and be very specific like my list has like 20 bullet points on it but you you you should be very specific around like what a day looks like like who you're around what you're

doing how you're feeling that sort of thing and then in in in every case every time I've gone through this exercise with someone it really highlights the

inconsistencies between what they say they want and their actions and and often it's like pretty big inconsistencies right so the example

that I like to use is let's say you're a young person and you just bought a fancy car right you bought a Porsche 911 or something

but on your list it doesn't say drive a fancy car that begs the question did are you being honest about what you really want or are your actions not aligning

with what you want because the truth is if if if driving a fancy car isn't on your list but you own one that's probably keeping you from doing the things you really want and it's it's a

very easy trap to fall into because often what happens is we kind of go with the flow like we listen to what society says and often what Society tells us is

not really what we want we just sort of go along with it and so that's that exercise I I highly recommend to anyone it it take you know and do it with your

partner it only takes like an hour and it's it's very eye- opening I've had so many people because I write about this a lot on X and I've had literally like probably a hundred people come back to

me and say wow this was such a powerful exercise yeah I've I've went when I saw you write about it I I did that exercise as well oh cool and it's interesting to

see like what you think you want that lifestyle to look like and what you truly do want yeah and once I started going down the path of like what do I really want some of the stuff is probably somewhat to your list but I

also found it hard there there came a point where kind of got stuck I didn't know what else to add to the list so I was curious from the hundreds of people that you've helped or reached out to what are some unique things you've seen

on other people's list that could be um a good list that other people on well what's more noteworthy Michael is how

consistent our lists are oh yeah we all sort of want the same like when we search our soul Yeah we actually kind of all want the same things and and the biggest the single biggest eye openening thing that happens is people will look

at their list and'll be like well actually most of these things don't don't even require a lot of money so why am I like on this this hamster wheel so I actually I printed out my list because

I thought you might ask about this so as a sample like I'll give you just there's 20 things on my list and by the way your ideal instate does evolve over time that's fine it's a moving Target but you

should you should curate it and over time adjust it as you need to and then as you get older in life like I'm 53 mine doesn't really change that much anymore in fact I've knocked most of these items up up so I'll give you an

example of like five or six items so the top of the list is freedom to live and work anywhere that's that's kind of central to my lifestyle control 80% of my schedule the reason that's 80 and not

100 is I I still think it's important to be on the hook for a few things to be accountable um challenging interesting work done on my terms lots of sunshine and time outside mornings free to read

and write climb several times a week and train toward 5:14 be top 0.1% fit for my age group um Positive Vibes only zero toxic people in my inner circle

and I I'll read a couple things that so so everything I've read so far I'm I'm there like I've achieved these things after many years there's only four of the 20 things on my list that I haven't yet achieved I'm still working on so

number one is something we talked about before we hit the record button today which is travel two to three months a year some with friends some family march to December in the mountains January and

February in a sunny warm place steadily grow my faith and then a small beautifully designed home with an epic view I have a big home now now I want less I want a smaller so you know that

gives you a sense of this list it's it's not rocket science you just kind of list out like sit there and just like have a cup of coffee dream for a little bit about what an ideal life might look like

then write it down and it's a very powerful exercise yeah where are you on the live somewhere else for two to three months out of the year on the precipice

so I've done it during the pandemic when my kids um had freedom location with schooling yeah we bit Winters in Honolulu Hawaii which was just amazing

and now my kids are 17 and 19 years old my uh 17-year-old is gonna be a senior in high school next year when she graduates we're most likely going to

downsize here in Boulder and then spend this winter somewhere else maybe Hawaii maybe somewhere else yeah and I know like I recognize that that's a very privileged thing to

be able to say but the truth is it only happens if you make it a goal and you work toward it like a lot of young people will come to me and they're like I want the life you want you have and

and what they don't see is that look I'm 53 I've been at this for like 30 years yeah so all it takes is 30 years of deliberate hard

work yeah I think there are a couple things that stand out to me one is just the power of writing it down and having it be top of mind I I still do this thing where I write kind of like a

vision of what I want to happen every year yeah and without fail like 80% of those things happen because I review it every single week and just by reading it you're like oh I should probably do this

small step to make sure I keep working towards that you do that for a year or multiple years and and you're like whoa that totally happened yeah what you're talking about is manifesting and yes it

sounds like a woowoo term yeah maybe it is a little bit because I do think there's probably like a a metaphysical aspect to it but you're you know what whatever you believe you're right I say that all the

time and you know your beliefs especially if you write them down and make them real and tangible they tend to inform your actions so in a very real sense like whatever you believe and you

write down drives your actions which drives the result yeah so I'm a I'm a huge believer in that and there is some something special and magical in

particular about writing the the practice of writing really I I think there's nothing else that sharpens your thinking like writing and I always tell people like everyone should have a

writing practice and and guess what you don't have to be a good writer to write you will become a good writer over time probably but you don't need to be a good writer to write things down there's

power in that yeah that's really good advice because I've been writing a lot more and I always felt like I wasn't a good writer but I've been focusing more on like my clarity of how I'm thinking

yeah and now with all the AI tools it's like you can write it out and they will fix your grammar and make it like 10 times better and and the question is like what's a good writer and a good

writer is one who it's the idea it's the story right I it's funny I had a a guy comment on one of my posts this morning that kind of bugged me and I'll tell you

it's very relevant to this he actually like corrected a grammar error in one of my posts and then I went and clicked on his profile and he has 83 followers and

I was like you know the the point of writing especially on X like you don't have to have perfect grammar you don't have I mean you can make misspellings it can be ugly formatting if you have a

great idea it will resonate right some people miss the point on that yes and I think having a good idea and then figuring out the best way to communicate

that I find the combination of those two things is like a really fun creative challenge I love it I I started my I I used to write in my younger days I

restarted my writing practice during remember like the the two week flatten the curve period of Co yeah I start I was bored at home so I started writing

and Publishing a you know my best stuff on X and now it like the best part of my day is my morning routine where I have

my coffee I write I I look forward to it every day that's awesome the other thing you mentioned was like doing things for a long period of time that's also something I've been

thinking about an advice I usually give to people that start off from their career which is you do a bunch of hard things and you do it for a long period of time that that will start compounding I don't know if it's a secret sauce but

it's what I attribute a lot of My Success to is just long periods of compounding whether it's skills or money or manifesting a vision of this life that you want to create so that's the

other thing that kind of stuck out to what you're were saying yeah I mean well compounding I refer to compounding as the closest thing we have to a superpower because is it's hard to grasp

the true power of compounding and exponential growth until you experience it and for those of you listening who don't maybe don't know what compounding means it simply refers to like little

bits of effort done consistently for a long period of time and those things add up not only in a linear way they become exponential and it applies to absolutely

everything in life your work your money your relationships your health everything compounds and what you could do with compounding the reason it's a

superpower is it creates it turns the improbable into the inevitable if you chip away at something long enough it's inevitable that you're going to get there yeah but the key to compounding is

consistency but also having a Clear Vision of what you're trying to achieve and that's where you're you're writing your goals down comes

in one thing I read was your reflection and you turn 50 and kind of tied to this ideal end State you mentioned certain aspects of your life that felt good and

you also highlighted some other areas that didn't feel good can you elaborate on what you meant by that and how that shaped your mindset and your priorities moving forward yeah

so the first thing I'll say since uh you're 42 yes is and like me I mean I I felt I was a young 40 you're a young 40 40 is no big deal at all I will tell you

though that 50 hits different because 50 is the point at which it's sort of hard to make the claim that you're young anymore so it does and and probably you're you are legitimately halfway if

not more through your life and so it does cause you to reflect like I I've reflected since I turned 50 like never before and secondarily it's an

opportunity to make course Corrections right based on what you learn from those Reflections and so that was that post you're referring to was a list of things that like I'm really happy about in my

life because I've done the work it's compounded and then things that I I am not so happy about and I think the the the biggest thing is it's an opportunity to course correct on the things that

you're you're not pleased with that don't feel so good what an example so one of those for me is I just the nature of the way that I am even though people

are surprised because I don't present this way at all but I'm actually a little bit of a loner and a recluse I keep to myself I'm always in my head so the problem the way that manifests is a

problem at home is even when I'm sitting in the same room as my family I'm often not there I'm not fully present and that compounds as well unfortunately what we didn't talk about when we were on the

compounding topic is compounding Cuts both ways right true bad habits also compound and so my kids are 17 and 19 and one of the things I I for sure could

have done better is been more present now the flip side of that is you can make course Corrections so was an

example next month in July I'm going on a a onewe trip to Europe with my 17-year-old daughter just she and I we're going to ride a train across

Europe and so that's a direct response to some of the things that I feel like I have I give myself a B minus at on being present are there are there things that

you're doing to be a lot more present now um than in your 40s with your family or just in general yeah I mean I

think discipline is the key to everything and a lot of this comes down to discipline because there's so many things that can distract you these days

I mean frankly even X or Twitter as you probably know Michael is a double-edged sword right it's like it's phenomenal it's changed my life I've met some of my now best friends from from Twitter but

also Al like it's not good that I'm always like scrolling on my phone right I I enjoy it and so like I think having the discipline to set the phone down and

to to to be deliberate about being present and again like I hate to keep coming back to this but back to this idea of like stating your goal and manifesting it like that is a stated

goal of mine and it's that's probably my my person like everybody has their own unique personal challenges for me that's probably my biggest personal challenge

is being fully present at home got it what one one question that I wanted to ask you that is a probably personal

challenge that I'm facing in my 40s that I hear from a lot of other people that that are facing a similar challenges like when I kind of view your lifestyle

in the end state that you designed you balance your health in your walk climber you work pretty hard you're writing you have a great family Dynamic and marriage and relationship with your

kids your faith like how do you balance all of that and particularly I mean I think most people they're so focused on I guess that that bucket around work and

being ambitious there yeah and there's this like false dichotomy that you can't have a great life and be successful and ambitious at the same time so for someone that's balance both or all those

buckets like I know you mention it being multi-dimensional but how do you do that yeah that's a question I get all the time because you're right that for a lot

of men in particular that who are our age work kind of dominates their identity and that's very dangerous as I'll talk about in a second but I and

I'm sure you're gonna preaching to the choir here with you but I wholeheartedly reject the idea that you can't have a great career and a great life now that

being said if your if your goal is to be the absolute best at your career um I'm talking about an extreme outlier like

like the best the top five in the world that does require a singular Focus I mean but but but understand Elon mus said something that really hit me hard he's like if you want that kind of

success it's a torture of existence it's not a path to happiness that's not what most people want that's not what I want I want to I want to kick ass at my career want to do really well but I also want to kick ass at a bunch of other

things and so so so my view on I don't even really like the term work life balance because that imp these are things like are in

constant tension I'm more of a mashup guy so like because it really begs the question especially for knowledge workers like us what what is work so

Define work right and so if I'm out rock climbing in the mountains above my home and I have a great idea for a marketing campaign was I working or was I climbing

or or was it both or all the above yes and of course the answer is yeah it's both so I tend to mash all this stuff together now the tradeoff is if you're

GNA work remotely and you're GNA Mash all this stuff up you need to uh be in my opinion for example super responsive right so like the

the always working always playing is kind of a motto I jokingly refer to sometimes it's like yeah I'm always available to family I have a lot of flexibility in my day but you know what

when work demands I'm there in one second you can reach me 247 I don't complain about being texted late at night off hours I'm always in touch and

I think those are the trade-offs you make and to me like some people will I hate it when I hear people say like oh this freaking phone I'm changing my phone dude this phone is your ticket to

freedom should take it to not having your ass sitting in a cubicle somewhere but the trade-off is you got to take it seriously like you have to be responsive and so that's kind of my

Approach I I guess the the the key word is just mash it all together yeah what what does a typical week look like for you I I am a creature of habit so my

weeks generally do look pretty similar and and this is gonna you're gonna probably laugh when I the first thing I say but genuinely like I plan my week

around the weather so the first thing I do is I look at the long range forecast and I pick the days that that are good for climbing we're in summer right now we're at the beginning of summer so

there's a lot of good days for climbing I'll mark out a couple days and I'll look for a climbing partner for those days I'll get that locked in and then everything else kind of fits in around that I mean obviously there are some

commitments whether it's work or family commitments that are immovable and those are what they are but but back to that 8020 thing like that's only 20% of my

schedule 80% I have control over and so I'll I'll fill in my my schedule around that I'm involved in a lot of I'm involved in multiple work projects I

have pretty active investor you mentioned the family stuff all the things tends to tends to fill my days pretty quickly and then I will say I I'm

I'm an early riser I go hard in the mornings and have done like the bulk of my deep work is done by noon and so I tend to slow down through the rest of

the day and then to be honest usually regardless of whether I've gone climbing or whether I've done work or whatever I've done like I'm pretty spent by like dinner yeah after dinner I'll just kind

of chill maybe read a little bit watch some TV my mind's kind of frazzled I'm usually physically pretty tired so that's kind of how my how my days go and

what's nice is a couple things so every day kind of looks the same so I don't really make much differentiation between weekdays weekends and even vacations

like I do a little bit of work every day just because I'm interested intellectual stimulation I I do my writing every day and then what what the the end result and I think this is really the key is

building a life that you don't feel like you want to escape I remember before I made that reboot I would have like my big vacations like circled in red on the calendar like I live for those windows

of time when I could get the heck out of Fort Worth and go somewhere cool and do what I wanted to do and I was like wait a second why don't I just build a life that looks like that every day yeah

that's amazing I guess TI to this what's your philosophy on retirement I think it's an outdated concept it's misguided for most people because most people

don't want to literally retire and do nothing like a life of leisure is a miserable life lots of rich people have learned that

lesson hard way like the the the Paradox is there is no fulfillment without struggle the the As Good As It Gets is being able to choose your struggles and

so again back to this idea what you're not what you're shooting for is not retirement but having a life that you want to sustain forever and I I was fortunate to when I

made that big pivot and kind of rebuilt my life that's what I built and so now I'm there and I W to I want to keep doing if I die I want to come back as me

I want to I want to keep doing the things I'm doing right now as long as I can of course the specifics change like the specifics of what I'm working on what challenges I'm tackling what I'm

climbing what my family is up to those all change but my basic life design lifestyle design does not change got it I also read through your 50 lessons

from your 50s and I thought it would be fun to go through a few of them some really stuck out to me and I want to get a little bit more context or a little bit more color or a little bit more

details around it so the first one that I that stood out to me was explore minimalism is not what you think it it is so I was kind of curious like then

what is it yeah so most people when you mention minimalism to to them they think of it as like a a life of sacrifice like

denying yourself of Joy Living Like a monk and that's a huge misunderstanding because it's actually precisely the opposite minimalism is about taking a hard look at your life and removing

things from your life that don't really bring you true joy to make room so that you can gorge on the things that do bring you Joy right and so I I one of my

one of my most viral uh tweets ever was a story I told about when I got when I made like my first Millions I went out and rewarded myself

with the the car that I had always dreamed of since I was a young boy which is a Porsche 911 Turbo convertible bought a brand new paid cash for it that night I got the car home and it's

sitting in my garage and I'm just stressed about it like the car that had represented success to like 15-year-old Kevin was now just like sort of felt

like a burden and what I realized was I've outgrown that like the things that bring me joy aren't really that type it's not material possessions it's not a fancy sports car not a fancy watch and

so I took that car back to the dealer the next day true story and he he said to his credit he shook my hand he said you know what you're the first person who's ever done that and they took the

car back and that was I felt so much better like a burden had been lifted because I think what what you learn I mean we've heard the saying less is more it really is true unfortunately

people tend to learn that late in life but it it really is true and I'll I'll refer back to that ideal endstate exercise that's an exercise you can do that will really help illustrate that

for you I think most people find that the things on their list actually aren't about money we we we fundamentally all want to lead a pretty darn simple

life one thing you mentioned was things that bring you Joy what are is are the things that bring you Joy the same things on your ideal end State list yeah

I mean that's what you sort of build the list around I'll I'll refer specifically like climb several times a week so I discovered rock climbing 25 years ago

and it's actually the primary Catalyst for the life that I've built for that that reboot that I I went through because climbing was something that

taught me it it was something that felt pure to me where this the the score wasn't measured in dollars it was you do it because it it brings you Joy that was

the measure and then the community that I I met community of people I met through climbing who were sort of like-minded really really did change my life and I I I've gone so far now as to

believe that you really can't build a happy fulfilling life if you don't have that outlet if you don't have your version of climbing something that you do purely for the love of

it it's really hard to be happy because the thing is if you put your identity in your career that gets old eventually no matter how successful you

are you just stop caring at some point so much and it's going to have ups and downs and so the great thing is your career I can be having a really crappy day at work but if I have a climbing

date on my calendar tomorrow I'm pretty excited about that and I know it's gonna be a good day how do you view your identity today Beyond just work yeah I

think identity is a sliding scale and to be clear when you're young let's say you're in your 20s your work needs to be a big part of your identity because you got to pay the bills you got to feed your

family you got to try to get ahead in this world I mean money can't buy happiness but it sure does help it makes life a lot easier and so I think early

in your in your life Works probably 80% of your identity maybe but unfortunately for a lot of people that never changes right if you're deliberate about it what

it should happen is over time you should gain back the freedom to make work less of your identity so if you fast forward to like me today work is probably 10% of my identity it's still important to me I

still love what I do it's part of who I am but honestly like the biggest part of my identity probably right now is is being a rock climber and that may sound silly to some people but it's a very

meaningful exercise to me in in so many ways and again like I still work I still do interesting challenging projects but you know it's it's some mixture of

family spirituality your your your advocation which for me is is rock climbing and then your vocation which is your work but I think that's a great it's it's an

astute question because everybody should ask themselves that question especially if you're over 40 is like what percent of my identity is my work and am I okay with that I

never thought of it like that because it it was always 80% or higher or at one point in my 20s it was 100% I think the thing I'm struggling with now is like that percentage has

gone down pretty dramatically it might even be in the 10 or 20% where it's important because I I do want to work on stuff but it's not so important

where it's GNA dominate that that scale anymore well can you imagine being like a 75 year old guy you're hanging out with your friends and you want to talk about like your work or your career like

that would be silly because there more like old people know that there's more important things to do with your time more important things to talk about yeah that would be like being in your four

years 50s and talking about like dating exact like if all your friends are married and you have or or going to a rave or something yeah like we just don't do that anymore yeah something I

want to talk about my 20s but not necessarily my 40s or 50s yeah I think TI of this one thing I've been thinking through as I started thinking about my

identity and designing this ideal end State how do you design your network or your community or like your tribe because before it was everyone I knew

was work related everyone was a Founder everyone was in crypto and it like that was like a natural thing to talk about finally as I got older you realize that okay I'm not really interested in

talking about like how how to develop your company strategy anymore just not a topic I'm interested I'm more interested in all these other things that I find more fascinating like parenting or

Hobbies or you know things like that so there's always this saying that it's really hard to get friends when you're older but I don't I know if that's really true either well that's where by

the way a hobby comes in but before I I dive in further you've probably heard the saying that you're the average of your five closest relationships so it's super important to curate your um Inner

Circle and I'll tell you a story like I still get invited to a bunch of these like Mastermind like these exclusive Mastermind events where we fly somewhere sometimes in like a fancy

private jet we stay at a great place and I I say know to almost all of them now and the reason is because I just don't have the heart for it anymore like I can't sit around and talk about business

stuff for 12 hours a day because it's just again back to Identity it's just not that big a part of my identity and so this idea of

like being very deliberate about building your tribe and again I said that's where like your hobby or for me rock climbing comes in most of my

friends come from that world now and it's because I'm in a stage of life where like if if all I hung out with was my business colleagues what do you think we'd talk about and do like and not that

interesting to me yeah so you mentioned rock climbing a lot and if that's the thing that excites you the most right now what like what are you doing are you

like setting a big challenge where you're trying to mass hit this new goal and you you know go out there with a group of friends and climb together together or what does it actually look

like yeah so it rock climbing represents many things to me performance is probably the smallest piece of it although I do have have big goals in climbing so I often say I came for the

climbing I stayed for the people the community is the best aspect like spending time in nature with people who are of like mind it's incredibly

fulfilling it's like intoxicating um being in these incredible places in the mountains and up on the Rocks having deep conversations and going through hardship

together like literal physical hardship and so there's many elements to it there's there's the social aspect it's a spiritual thing to me I joke with

my wife that the flat irons which are the Rocks above Boulder are my church and she thinks I'm kidding but I'm actually not I'm pretty serious about that like it's a very spiritual

experience to me and then yes I mean gosh the climbing itself the itive climbing is in me in my mind a perfect balance of like mental challenge

physical challenge like you can't just be strong you have to be pretty smart and crafty too it takes both and the result is it makes you incredibly fit which has its own benefits like it's

just all these things wrapped up it's one of those hobbies and surfing is another example that tends to be more of a it's like more a lifestyle than a

sport and and the the it it's a deep pool like the deeper you go the deeper you want to go and it kind of consumes your life and I think in a good way I mean that's like it's a very it's a

great way to transition from sort of being having an identity based on your career to having an identity that's based on something else that's amazing I think because that

ties to one of the viice that you give is find a hobby pursue Mastery you can't have a happy life without a passionate Pursuit that isn't your vocation your work even if you enjoy it isn't enough

for fulfillment so I think you really explained that one and I think I understand now I'm trying to think of what would that hobby be for me I would love for it to intersect something that

would be related to health or exercise well and and yes it people I get the one of the questions I get most frequently because I preach about this a lot is how

do I find that that Hobby and there's no easy answer but what I would say is the the most f filling things may not be the things that are just fun from day

one I'm not talking about fun like do I enjoy climbing yes it's it's fun but it's it's got to be much more than that and my point here is you don't know if

it's your hobby until you've gone a few feet deep into it it's like you go to the like for example I'll use climbing as the example you go to The Climbing Gym once or twice you don't even like you're not even good enough to know if

you like it or not yeah you haven't met people so you have to be willing to do the work a little bit to to invest and that doesn't mean you invest years in something you don't enjoy but you have

to go deep enough to understand if it's something that clicks with you in particular the community my favorite story I got to tell this story so I I have a

friend and he's about my age know like six or eight years ago he went through a nasty nasty divorce he was in a very

very dark place um like really bad and on a whim he sort of rekindled his childhood interest in BMX racing Believe

It or Not There is adult BMX leagues all over the country oh with a bunch of middle-aged people doing BMX stuff and I talked to him like a year later and he's

like Kevin I'm not it's going to sound funny when I say this but getting back into BMX saved my life and he was being like he was like cracking up his voice was cracking when he was he was getting

emotional and because it was the community he met uh a community of people who he just enjoyed spending time with it felt pure he started dating

again and so that's how powerful it can be I guess tied to that I'm curious about how did you get into rock climbing because I always find like the Hobbies I Circle back to are things I enjoyed in my childhood I was kind of curious if

rock climbing was something that you were doing when you were a kid I think that's a very astute comment take cues from your childhood when when you weren't overthinking things so

much so yeah very similar for me like at a I grew up in a small town in Texas so was never exposed to climbing but I was always scrambling up trees and rocks I

was just fascinated with it and fast forward until my in my 20s a buddy of mine invited me to go to a Climbing gym and it clicked from for me

it clicked from day one I loved it and went deep pretty much immediately and it's a it's a I've been rock climbing for 25 years so it's you mentioned something that's really

important earlier which is like the pursuit of Mastery that is really what it's all about and it doesn't really matter what it is but the most fulfilling thing is

achieving Mastery in a given Pursuit and of course it's an elusive Target right you never really get there it's the pursuit that matters yeah

one thing that I was also curious about is how do you think about um giving back or contributing back because speaking of things that bring you Joy or make you

feel good I've read a lot about people saying giving back or donating your time or money is something a lot of people do throughout their lives but a lot of

people do after maybe in their second half of their lives or career so yeah curious of what that looks like for you that fills a bucket oh ABS I mean that

is a critical component for sure and the thing I always say about kindness in general or giving back is it defies the laws of physics one of the only things you can do where when you give energy

you get energy back like it's almost becomes a selfish Endeavor because it feels so good and it's so energizing to help other people and I will tell you

Michael that's where Twitter or X has been huge for me it is that's the reason the primary reason I

put so many hours into writing for X is the feedback I get if it can help one person or a few people and it turns out that once you've got a decent following

you have the ability to impact tens of thousands of people's lives and it scales very well and so I actually think of that as my most

important form of giving back I mean I can give money or whatever but that doesn't scale I can go help build a a home my bare hands that doesn't scale I

I think the most powerful way to give back is to find a way to do something at scale and so that's why by the

way I have a a boundary on what I publish on Twitter you'll never see me P publish something negative basically that's my general rule it's always going to be positive something that can

hopefully help somebody you know so and you again it almost feels like a selfish Endeavor because it feels so darn good when you when you publish something that hits a hits a

cord and you get sometimes I'll do a post and I'm not kidding you I'll get 50 DMS uh of people saying it's it's intoxicating like it's like a selfish

feeling almost but it is it feels really good I mean to be help people I noticed the same thing and that's also I started

to write a lot more I've discovered writing probably in the past year and taking a lot more seriously and writing in a way that I kind I call it like

unsolicited advice that can help can help people I found that to be like extremely like you said intoxicating well it's interesting like

I think you everybody the value is in Niche thinking right and I'll use you as an example like you

publish a lot about something I'm not even sure I fully agree with you on which is this idea of the calm business yeah and I understand your point and I

agree with almost all of it but but I'll tell you the value is that's the whole point right you've got a perspective that's not exactly the same as mine but it's one of the few tweets that I'll actually pause and I'll think about it

for five minutes I'm like do I agree with this or not and it really doesn't matter if I do or I don't you've already achieved your objective right but everybody got a unique point of view

like that right yeah and I've also learned how to write for X too so there there's a little bit of that yeah which is go going a little on the on the far ends but yeah like being a little bit

provocative yeah little yeah if you write write it in a way that isn't a little provocative people might just skip it so you have to add a little sauce to it just to I have a funny story

for you on that note yeah I I became friends through Twitter with I won't say their name but it's someone who has over a million followers on X and they looked

at my content this was several years ago they looked at my content and they said Kevin you're you you write your content as if you're trying to like lose followers like and they gave me a bunch

of tips for what to do and I I ignored most of them because the flip side of that what I've learned is you get the audience you deserve and like my my

content isn't engagement bait and so I don't ever have like viral tweets or anything it's a brickby brick strategy but you stay at it long enough it becomes more valuable I like I wouldn't

trade my my my audience with anyone's and so I'd say like in general if you want to use a platform like Twitter to

to kind of help people go with what like really talk about the things that you're passionate about and that you uniquely know and the rest will take care of itself it'll become a self- selecting

mechanism yeah and as someone that reads your content I mean every time you write it I always definitely pause and read it so your strategy totally works Switching

gears I want to talk a little bit about health um physical and mental so there's two two things that and we go through each one maybe starting with the mental health because this could be a tie into what you're saying about limiting

negativity so number 40 to limit bad habits including unhealthy thought pattern s we all have them practice avoidance and find substitutes I was really curious about this because one

thing I've been really focused on is to reframe and rewire how I think but I'm kind of curious about how you actually um do that and what does practice

avoidance and find substitutes mean yeah this is a heavy subject because it's something we all struggle with yeah but we all have those certain thought

patterns that when they get true they tend to spiral it's like a virus right and it becomes a really unhealthy cycle and look there's there's whole there's a

massive industry devoted to helping people figure this out which is like therapy and there's even pharmaceutical approaches the only for me personally

the only thing that I found is like nip it in the bud like have clear boundaries with yourself on I'm just not going to go there and and it is a a form of

avoidance and generally people view avoidance as like a negative tactic I don't I disagree I think there's a lot to be said for not opening certain boxes

process it set it aside and then don't open it again and don't go down that path that you'll start spiraling and it's it's easy to say very hard to do but it applies to everything

like it applies to like the way you eat the way you think the way you work you have to have boundaries and stick to them yeah that's really good

advice so simple I was I was expecting this like very long like Psychotherapy type answer but I

guess creating a boundary not just with other people but for yourself I think is the big takeaway for me on that one yeah and I think it's the the world of therapy which we could we could do a

whole hour on talk therapy and it's under it's under intense scrutiny and debate right now there's a lot of debate about whether it's actually a net positive or a net negative the whole field of of talk therapy and I'm not trying to paint everything with one

brush I know there's a lot of people who find immense help with talk therapy but talk therapy would say that you kind of like I always when I've done therapy in the past I always ended up

feeling like I was ripping off the Band-Aid over and over and over RI maybe ripping out the stitches is a better way to put it over and over and over and I think it's important to process things

things like I'm a processor I I'm constantly processing but at some point you've got to move on at some point you've got to set it aside and you cannot let that thing Define you like I

I had a relatively rough upbringing for example and there are aspects of that that if I let if I go down that path and think

about it too much it drives me nuts but I've processed it for decades and I've learned that okay I'm I'm okay putting it in a box and setting it aside and moving on

man I never thought of it like that I do go see a therapist and I have been since since I turned 40 and I think you're right that there there comes a certain

point where you're okay with it you've learned from it and just revisiting over and over I I do feel like it's it could be a good time to put in a box move on

and like rewrite your own narrative moving forward versus being held back by what happened in the past 100% I mean using an marriage as an analogy like how well does it go for you if you keep

bringing up things from the past oh not well at all so that's the way life is like sometimes you just have to move on and adults do that right and I think like a

lot of the problems we see in society today this is actually kind of a big something I can go on a rant on but is like we got to grow up like there are

things that adults do adults do the hard things and children sort of follow their whims and their and let their emotional state dictate their behavior that's not

how adults behave yeah and then talking through physical health I guess they're kind of related but one was around avoiding mainstream medicine except as a last res Resort and the other one which

was if you're over 40 get a good functional longevity medicine doctor yeah andies are great I was like what are endes and start tracking your hormones I was curious about how you

have restored your hormone levels and you mentioned that could change your life I've been kind of working on it but outside of exercising you health and taking some supplements I was curious about how you worked on yours sure so

I'll try to keep this pretty brief because you you mentioned a very we could do a whole podcast on health but but our medical system is absolutely

incredible for acute injury and illness for example if you break your femur in half our system is incredible at putting you back together

as incredible as our system is at acute medicine it's equally terrible at Chronic medicine so anything that's not obvious basically so autoimmune is

becoming an epidemic right now people who have these like post viral fatigue syndromes like you're seeing a lot of absolutely has no answer for that and so

how do you react to that well the way you react to that is you take your health into your own hands like the Cavalry isn't coming to save you you have to take responsibility for your own health nobody cares about it as much as

you do and it turns out there's this whole world of things you can do to improve your health and the basics haven't changed in a hundred years or as long as humans have been around like

foundational things like diet and exercise there's like very Cutting Edge what I would call alternative type therapies depending on what your issues is new ones are popping up all the time

there's this whole world and and it's on you especially as you get older you the one of the reasons you have to gain control of your time Michael is so that you can invest more of your time into health I was just talking with my

wife about this yesterday if most people saw how much time my wife and I put into our health they would think we were crazy but the truth is you have to shift your focus to

that as you get older if you want to continue to perform now hormones you specifically mentioned

hormones there is a physiologic truth that as you get older a lot of your key hormone levels decline right and you're at an age 42 where you're probably not

quite there but you're on the precipice I'm at an age where it's in full effect right and so I mean the studies the numbers are clear this isn't an opinion like you look at testosterone levels and

a bunch of other important hormones they kind of fall off a cliff like mid 40s to early 50s on top of that in the last 50 years and I'm going to talk specifically about testosterone which is the one one

that most men are interested in um for even for young people testosterone levels have been cut in half over the past 50 years and there's a lot of theories about why that might be the

case but there's a lot of 30-year-old men today walking around with a testosterone level that would have been normal for an 80y old man 50 years ago so it is an epidemic and I think we're

seeing massive impact on society from that and so here's the way I put it is if you're let's say you're past 45 you

have two choices choice one is just be okay with a slow decline in performance there's no shame in that people get old we lose a step it's going to happen at

some point option two is do something about it and one of the things I've always been pretty big in Nutrition Fitness but I noticed when I got over 45

I've I do blood work every six months and I noticed there was one hormone that was dropping precipitate ly and it was my testosterone and I was having symptoms like lower libido fatigue brain

fog not serious but like annoying is what I would call it and so I tried everything under the sun to raise my testosterone level naturally some things actually do

raise the number but you don't see clinical benefit and I've heard this from many people anecdotally I eventually tried testosterone replacement therapy and it it changed my life it's not an overstatement but not

in the way most people when they hear testosterone they think of steroids and bodybuilders and that's not at all what it is like when you do trt or testosterone replacement therapy you're

all you're doing is taking low doses to restore um your testosterone level to a physiologic dose or a physiologic level

for let's say a 35y old man so for me that means like I try to keep my level I find I feel best when my level hovers around 900 there's other measures you want to look at too but I'll keep think

is really simple and the benefits you see people think of testosterone is like you're going to get jacked I actually got less jacked I I was always pretty fit testosterone causes you to put on bulk which for me as a climber you're

going to be a little bulkier you're going to be heavier causes you to retain a little bit of water but the benefits were life-changing were number one

energy all day energy number two mental Clarity remember that movie Limitless where he takes that pill it's almost like that we're like it's almost I mean can sound weird but like when I'm around

other guys who are about my age sometimes it's like makes me sad because I can just see that I'm processing faster really is quite amazing and of course your libido goes through the roof which my wife would probably rather not

be the case I have guys reach out to me all the time about this and we all want to avoid being on on some sort of injectable medicine it's the only

pharmaceutical thing I do period like I take no other medications but but the harsh reality is is you're either going to do it at some point or you're going to accept a slow decline in performance

the guys who would claim otherwise they're either like genetic outliers in a massive way or they're lying that

simple well now that quote makes a lot of sense and that's one area that I did have on my to-do list but now it keeps getting

deprioritized but I should bump it back up the list yeah I always say like hormones in particular if you're under 40 I think I'd be very very cautious and

probably wouldn't do it unless it was a a clear-cut case and by the way I talk to guys all the time like I talked to one guy in DMS if I remember correctly

he was like 32 and his T level was like 150 which is like almost what a woman would have and so when when that's serious it

can literally transform your life most guys are sort of on the bubble and there's you can do all the all the like eat a good diet take some some supplements do a few things and you can

sustain it like I did until your late 40s early 50s yeah that's definitely something I'm gonna look into next but I I wanted to end on this quote and I think this quote really summarizes this

entire conversation which is an entrepreneur's mind an athletes body and an artist's soul and I think the way you designed your life and how you

integrated all those things together I I definitely feel like it's a combination of all three of those things well thank you I love that that statement and I'd say for guys out there this gets back to

that issue of identity an entrepreneur's mind is not enough it will not sustain you you want to have a great body meaning that your

body's your only vessel for experiencing life so why wouldn't you want it to be a Ferrari uh and then the artist soul don't don't don't sleep on the spiritual aspects of

Life most people discover that way too late cool thanks again Kevin I really appreciate it I think this is gonna be a great episode so thanks again for your time this was fun thanks Michael