Transcription
What are you trying to do with this company? Like, literally pull people out of the matrix.
So, what? Yes. Wait a minute. That is our stated mission, my friend. We are here to pull people out of the matrix. So, I can, I can walk you through it if you really want to know. It goes like this.
So, um, when I start, I'm not a born entrepreneur, so I'm very, very far from it. And through, minute. Are there born entrepreneurs? Uh, there are people that will tell you that there are only born entrepreneurs. Those people are idiots. Yeah, I would agree with. No, they're not. I know some, amazing people that say that, but I just think that they're very, very catastrophically wrong about this.
Yeah, people love to say [ __ ] like that. To me, it's like saying you're a born mixed martial artist. Now, there might be people that have certain athletic gifts that make it, they get early wins and there's just things that click into place for them in a way that it doesn't for other people, but if you get a grinder or somebody that's really willing to put in the work, then you can get somebody who becomes absolutely extraordinary. So, that certainly has been my life.
So, I grew up being taught to be a good employee, keep my head down, do as little work as possible, and avoid punishment at all costs. That was my life. That's what my parents taught me to be a good employee. And I, obviously, that didn't sit well with me. I wanted to do something more. I had pretty big ambition. I go to film school and I do very well in film school until my final film and then I fall flat on my face, embarrass myself, and realize I'm not a talented filmmaker.
And in that, you notice that you weren't, and why did you think you couldn't get better? So, great question. So, when I started film school, I believed that you either were talented or you weren't, right? There's just some things you either can sing or you can't. You either can draw or you can't. When it comes to art, which I saw film as art, you're either good or you're not. And so, that was how I thought of it.
Now, I thought you could get better at the technical side, so I was going to film school to learn the technical aspects, but I was banking on the fact that I was inherently talented. So, I go and my first year and a half went very well. And I was crushing it, certainly by my own estimation, doing very well, getting the attention of my classmates, and then only four people out of the entire school for your year get to make a senior thesis film. And I was chosen as one of the four. So, it was like, yeah, man, I'm, I just, I have it.
And there were two filmmakers that were really big for me. One was John Woo. Do you remember John Woo? Sure. Actually, great movies. Yeah, like the '80s and '90s just smoking hot. Yeah. Lot of shoot-'em-ups. A lot. And I loved him. And he was famous for he would roll up on set. He wouldn't think about it ahead of time. He just put the camera wherever felt right. And his movies were mind-blowing. People always referred to it as his violence is like a ballet. It's that well orchestrated, that beautiful, that interesting. And so, I thought, okay, well, if I'm naturally talented, then I should be like that.
And then there was Hitchcock who was sort of the plotter. Um, he would spend all of his time like pre-planning the film. Every shot was so orchestrated ahead of time. He said, I get bored on set. And I thought, god, man, like he doesn't sound like natural talent to me. So, I'm over here want to be John Woo. I show up on set acting like I'm John Woo. I don't pre-plan anything. I put the camera where it feels right. And just publicly embarrass myself as I turn this film into a piece of [ __ ]. And at that point, I thought I was, you know, about to graduate, get the three-picture deal. Everything is going to be set. This is going to be amazing. And there I am crash and burn.
Now the other students are circling me like vultures cuz I mean, that's the film industry, man. Like it, it is a zero-sum game or at least it was back then. That's how people saw it. Cuz it wasn't like today where you could, Right. Edit on your [ __ ]. I mean, you're editing like right now. Like that didn't exist. So, it was you had to get access to real resources. So, when I realized, oh my god, I don't have a thesis project to show people to get an agent or whatever, it's done. I'm not a talented filmmaker.
And so, I was so desperate in that I needed something that would free me from feeling like a permanent failure. And that thing that I had was the notion of Alfred Hitchcock. And even though it wasn't sexy, it gave me a window into maybe there's another way. Maybe there is another way that somebody can be an artist and and they just have to learn it. Like think about if somebody draws, right? Some people can rotate an object in their mind. Have you seen on IQ test they make you do that. I can't do that. I literally can't rotate an object in my mind. I don't even understand people that can do it.
So, I thought, well, maybe you could become a great artist just by memorizing every conceivable pose, like a chess player. The great chess grandmasters are the ones that have memorized so many different moves and combinations that it becomes somewhat intuitive for them. So, I thought, okay, that's going to have to be my path. It gave me an escape route. And then going down that path of saying, I just have to learn this stuff. I'm not naturally talented, but I have to learn.
Unfortunately, Carol Dweck had not written her book Mindset at that point. So, it, I didn't have the words growth mindset, fixed mindset, but I began to transition out. So, a fixed mindset is what I had, which you believe your talent and intelligence are fixed traits, they can't be changed. Somebody with a growth mindset realizes that your talent and intelligence are malleable, that you can develop them through disciplined practice. So, I began to adopt sort of the beginnings of that mindset realizing that I'm just a grinder. I have to work and I have to get better.
So, I start teaching film school and in teaching film school, the best way to learn something is to teach it. So, now I'm getting better as a filmmaker just by teaching it to these guys, helping them develop their scripts, helping them shoot their films. And then, um, at that time, these two very successful entrepreneurs came into my class and there were two things as a kid I promised myself, growing up in a morbidly obese family, that one day I would be rich and one day I'd have six-pack abs. And so, here were these, they were yolked. These two yolked bodybuilder guys that were successful entrepreneurs and they said, "Why don't you come work for us and be a copywriter?" And it's a startup company, you can have any role in in the company you want, but you just have to become the right person for that job. And then you can get rich and you can go back and control the art. You can make movies your way.
So, I was like, "Oh my god, like this is too good to be true. I have to go do this." So, I joined them as a copywriter as they were starting this fledgling technology company and just to keep this from getting impossibly long for about 8 and a half years I just chased money. I was just trying to get rich to go back and make movies my way. But in that they were very growth-minded. I began to really develop a growth mindset to believe that I could do anything I set my mind to without limitation. I just had to understand that there was a gap in skillset between where I was and where I wanted to get and I had to be willing to put in the work to get that skill, right?
So, um, I trained exactly one time with the man I, you must know him, Firas Zahabi. Sure. All right, so Firas, by the way, I feel a moral obligation to help him become famous because he is one of the most intriguing minds I've ever come across in my life. Yeah, we were supposed to do a podcast last Thursday UFC in Anaheim, but his fighter got canceled. The, the fight got canceled and so he wound up not coming on. I'm a big fan of his though. That is heartbreaking. As a fighter, trainer as well as a mixed martial artist, very talented guy. Very. And in getting to roll with him in my single moment as a grappler, uh, it was, Did you ever grapple before? No, never. So, you just rolled with him for the first time? Yeah. But he's a black belt. Yeah, but and that's why it was the best thing ever. So, he knew how to not let me get injured. He knew how to move in just the right way, how to show me things. He's so kind and compassionate and patient. I can't imagine like a better intro to grappling. It was unbelievable.
And what it showed me that even just in like the hour that he and I grappled, I went from dude, I, I, I'm so lost even spatially. I can't tell where I am. Like, once you start moving me, I just get lost. And then an hour later, I could, he gave me like these two basic moves to learn how to execute and by the end I could do it. And it was like the exact reminder of what a growth mindset is and how even something that foreign to me with a good teacher, practice, you can get good. I mean, look, it's going to take years and years and years to become even competent in jiu-jitsu, let alone be able to participate at a high level, but it was a great micro reminder of just how powerfully humans can learn.
Now, here's my theory about humans and learning and why I, and just I guess to wrap up my entrepreneurial journey. So, um, decide I, I don't want to chase money anymore. Not going to do that. So, I go into my partners and I say, "Look, I quit. This is about 8 and a half, uh, actually I quit at about the 6-year mark and ended up actually getting out at about 8 and a half years. So, 6 years I say I quit. I can't do this anymore. I'm living the cliché of money can't buy happiness. This is absolutely ridiculous. Um, so, here's your equity back. I don't cross the finish line. I shouldn't get anything for this." What? So, you didn't, you weren't obligated to give that money back. You decided to? Correct. Wow. So, Sounds like a movie. But that to me is, is the right thing to do. Every Old Yeller. Do I get shot at the end of this? I don't know. It sounds like so romanticized. Uh, yeah. So, I think everybody should live by a code, right? Just, Okay. It's, it's what's right for you. And so, I have a code, very strong code that I live by. That was one of the things like, Right. Like these guys have done nothing but create opportunity for me. So, I'm quitting. I'm not going to cross the finish line because I, I feel literally dead inside. I can't keep doing this. Doesn't make sense. I realized the game you're playing is not money. It's not success. It's brain chemistry. So, once you understand the game you're playing is brain chemistry and that if you have 7.4 billion dollars and hate your life and want to commit suicide, what the [ __ ] good is the money? And conversely, if you have no money, but you feel a deep sense of fulfillment, self-pride, and believe in what you're doing, like what do you care that you don't have money? Right. Better brain chemistry. Yeah. Better brain chemistry. 100%. So, So, what did you do? So, they said, "Look, we could do this without you." They were totally caught off guard. They said, "We could do this without you, but we don't want to. So, let's talk about what would it look like for us to work together." And so, by this point, like we've got a deep friendship, you know, I'm not like the new kid on the block anymore. Um, and I said, "Okay, if, if going to work together, it's got to be something entirely predicated on value, not money. I need to be honest, my highest priority in business is not profitability, it's camaraderie. So, that's why when they said we could do this without you, but we don't want to, that was the thing that let me reconnect to the brotherhood that had made it interesting for me in the early days. And so, that felt amazing. And so, I was like, I'll come back if it's all about value, if we're doing something we're passionate about, and if we're asking and answering the question, what would we do every day and love even if we were failing? Cuz the struggle is guaranteed. That's, That's hard to get a bunch of people in a business to agree to that though, isn't it? Uh, well, it wasn't for me because they were already there. So, they were like, it's crazy, we felt the same way for a very long time. Cuz we like, we, and by we, they were so much farther ahead than me at this point. So, they really and gave me the opportunity to learn. Had really built that tech company up. Like, we got a, I think evaluation of 22 million if I'm not mistaken at one point, and we just couldn't get it past. And so, it was like we'd been struggling for years to move the needle more and we just couldn't. So, it wasn't like, oh, I come in and give some amazing Jerry Maguire speech and they're all like, all right, [ __ ] it, us too. It was like finally somebody just said what everybody was already thinking. So, they said, all right, let's give us a timeline of 6 months. If we hit these revenue numbers in 6 months, we'll keep going, but if we miss them, we'll sell. So, we didn't hit them and so, we began the sales process and all in it was about 8 and a half years by the time that was finally sold. And the thing for three very different reasons that we decided to found that was going to be predicated around delivering value to our employees and our customers, that was going to be that thing that we would love doing every day even if we were failing, that allowed me to connect emotionally because um, it ended up being Quest Nutrition. I grew up in a morbidly obese family and I wanted to save my mom and my sister. And it would, it gave me this, um, Mother Teresa has a great quote. She says, "Nobody will act for the many, but people will act for the one." So, finally, I could just think about two people that that and loved and I wanted to do something awesome for them. So, when I got tired, when I was fatigued, rather than thinking about money and a big house and a fast car, I was thinking about [ __ ] saving my mom and my sister. And our idea was if we could make food that people could choose based on taste and it happened to be good for them, we could actually end metabolic disease. So, that was like the driving force and we were [ __ ] excited about it. And we didn't know if it would be a real business. We didn't know like every time we'd explain it to people, we're putting value first and like I, we thought, "God, do we sound like total assholes?" But it was like we really believed in it. And so, it gave us insights into social media. This back in 2009 when nobody was really using it for business and we could see that it's just a megaphone. So, if you actually do deliver that kind of value for people, they're going to talk. And now they have the ability to talk to a global audience within minutes of an interaction with your company. So, if you were really taking care of them, you really delivered a product that was real and you were building community, community, community, then you could really do something. And so, that's how it took off, but it really did I used to joke and say Quest is a company born out of misery. Because it was, it was three guys slogging it out, not really even liking the product that we made. It just served a need in the marketplace. Um, it was security software. We didn't care about it. We didn't use it in our own company. So, it was like, "Oh, God." So, getting into something we were obsessively talking about nutrition anyway. I've lost 60 lb and kept it off. Uh, I went through a pencil head phase. I've added muscle. Like learning about diet to escape the fate of my family has been so important to me. But that was all back at a technology company. So, we were now lever- And one of my partners is a [ __ ] nutritional genius. This dude is unreal. So, leveraging what we were doing and thinking about already just was insanely powerful for us as a business opportunity. And we ended up making more in a single day at Quest than we made annually at the tech company.
Dude, you went from telling me about being a failed movie maker in college to the full journey of Quest Nutrition. Yeah. I don't know if that's good or bad, but there it is. Yeah, it's, um, it's a crazy journey, man. It's weird that you, um, didn't want to go back to filmmaking, though. Like, could you, you realized you [ __ ] up and why you [ __ ] up? Well, so here we all come full circle. So, part of, your new country company is. So, your new company is about making, You want to make films? Like, what do you want to make? Traditional narrative content, yes. So, comic books, books, movies, TV shows, all sorts of, [ __ ]. Don't you think that it's one of those things that like when you were in film school and when you're like trying to come up with a thesis film that this was like a step in a very long journey of figuring out how to make films and that you when you left it, you got to kind of, you're going right back to where you were or has life experience given you more tools to work with and you could sort of apply those to the idea of creative filmmaking? Yeah, exactly that. So, what I'm not trying to do is go back and be a director. What I want to do now is build the studio. So, um, becoming an entrepreneur and training myself in that way has created an obsession with scale for me. So, the thought of myopically making one movie is absolutely terrifying. Like, just the amount of time it would take and your ability to push multiple things forward essentially grinds to a halt.
So, you want to sort of finance other people's ideas and projects? That'll be part of it. Part of it. That'll be part of it. Bringing a team together that can execute at at scale and create, um, a lot of content and in the beginning we're going to have to partner with people. We just don't have enough finances. Like, we have enough to, you know, build the infrastructure and get the creative together, but we're not going to be, you know, financing a hundred plus million dollar film every year. So, um, we'll need to partner with people, but that's essentially what I've spent the last 15 years learning how to do is the business side of things. Um, how to build teams, how to get them pointed in the right direction, how to think through, okay, you've got this grand goal, you want to make a studio bigger than Disney, but like, what are the real, like, what are the things you can do today to actually take a step towards that?
So, has your, like desire to do things changed? Like, your, your desire is not to create a film anymore. Your desire is now to create business. Your, your desire is to create, in some sort of a large organization. Yeah, sort of. So, in, in reality, my real desire is I want to pull people out of the matrix. So, that's, that's what you said before. That's what I was trying to work my way back to. Like, the most sincere thing. So, the matrix to me is a set of limiting beliefs that the vast majority of people have that stop them from achieving what they could achieve in life if they only understood that humans are the ultimate adaptation machine and that we are the only animal you can put into any environment and we will be able to survive and thrive. So, we can do that through, Give me an example where we, you don't think we can. Well, we don't, we don't survive and thrive in horrifying climates. Like, you bring people to Antarctica, they survive. They certainly don't thrive and you got to get out of there. People, right? So, they do and you can, we can go in and build a research facility. So, some of the adaptation is mental. There's no indigenous people living in Antarctica. Like, what do you mean indigenous people? Like, Circle is what I was thinking. I apologize. So, um, there's two kinds of adaptation. So, you know that woman that swam the Bering Strait? Mhm. Okay, so she sleeps, uh, with her windows open in a cold climate. I forget where she lived. Um, basically, what she's doing by constant cold exposure is, um, changing her adipose tissue to brown fat. So, now it's more thermogenic and she can actually do something that she wasn't able to do. And if you're really going to let me get crazy, like looking at what Wim Hof has done with his ability to regulate internal temperature is, is pretty crazy. And then just what they're discovering with DNA from at one point it was considered to be just junk DNA and now they're realizing there's actually epigenetic responders, essentially. So, are there limits? Yeah, probably, but just as like looking at the way that we only have what, 20,000 genes and an onion has like 40,000 genes. So, what is it that makes us more complex, if you will give me that we are complex? Um, and it seems to be the what they originally thought was junk DNA, which is your genes will turn on or off, express themselves in different amounts based on your environment and your diet and, um, even some just like how you're thinking, your microbiome, like all that stuff then regulates how your genes are expressed. And we have a much wider ability to adapt to climates. Um, if you're not going to let me go as extreme, but we have the widest ability, would you agree with that? Sure. Okay. So, of all the species we have the widest flexibility. Um, so it's that ability to adapt that I think is, is one of our greatest strengths. I don't remember why I started down my path of adaptation. Um, but the fact that humans can adapt in whatever direction they want, I began adapting myself, um, through mindset and that really showed me how far I was able to come mentally from where I started. So, as I saw what a huge impact it had on my life both emotionally and financially, um, becoming a somebody who's entrepreneurial-minded, taking extreme ownership for my life, um, assuming that everything is my fault, that I can always do something, I can change something, I can get a different result, I can learn a new skill, whatever the, the case may be, but that I can turn myself into what I need to be in order to execute at anything. So, that changed me so much and then I've worked in the inner city so much and seen what happens when somebody really has limiting beliefs and how much that holds them back. Um, so I big brothered for a kid in college, ended up turning into like a eight-year relationship, um, and so I saw him go through a lot and I remember so he grew up in, in first South Central and then moved to Compton and I remember taking him to see movies in Beverly Hills just cuz I wanted him to see beauty. Like the way in which his worldview had been constructed was so bizarre and limiting. Um, there's that song by, Oh, God, I'm going to forget his name, but he says they don't want to see you win. Kodak Black? Kodak Black? I've no idea who that is. All right. So, anyway, it's a song by a guy named Kodak Black, and he talks about how they don't want to see you winning. And that was his mentality. Like, nobody wants to see me get out of the ghetto, right? Not my own mother, nobody. So, that was his frame of reference was just, "Yeah, well, it just wasn't meant for me because of where I grew up." Encountered those kids I was telling you about. Dad shot to death, sister shot to death. Like, just crazy life. And their perspective was very, very limited. They had no sense of how they're going to make something come true. So, I want to help people develop an empowering mindset. Disney understood something, which is why I use them as our foil, which is every piece of content that they make feeds into a brand ethos. So, if I say I'm going to go see a Sony movie or a Warner Brothers movie or a Paramount movie, you, you know nothing about it. But if I say I'm going to go see a Disney movie, you already know something. So, we have to have the discipline to make sure that everything that we're creating feeds into that.
And what would that thing you're feeding into be? Like, escaping the matrix? Everything you're going to do is going to be motivational in some sort of a way or informational? Inspiring? It's got to be entertainment first and foremost, but I'll give you examples of movies I wish we'd created wholesale. Um, I wish Impact Theory had made The Matrix. It's the perfect movie, in my opinion. I wish we'd made Star Wars. The whole religion of the Jedi is wildly empowering, and I think, Do you know how ridiculous it is to say that you wish you made the two greatest movies of all time? Of course you do. Right? But I'm saying from an ideological standpoint, Wow. Actually, I don't wish we'd made Avatar. So, um, Honestly, I haven't looked at it closely enough to know if it falls into that, but I don't remember it having it that's more of like a, a nature theme and taking care of the earth theme, whereas I'm looking for empowerment themes. So, yeah. Empowerment themes and what, what like in terms of fiction, all of it is going to be documentaries? Like, what are you going to try to do? So, mostly, uh, as of right now, entirely fiction. Um, and the idea behind that is the way that humans assimilate truly disruptive information is through narrative. If you've read Joseph Campbell's The Power of Myth, he talks a lot about that in The Hero's Journey. And so, wanting to leverage that, and, and it's not an accident that I was so impacted by The Power of Myth. And then Joseph Campbell is the one that worked with George Lucas on creating Star Wars, making sure that real hardcore mythologies at the core of it. Um, so I just think that's how we build our belief system. It's how we build our ideology. It's how we pass it on to other people. Um, and I'm a big believer don't try to change behavior, try to leverage it. So, people are already reading books, reading comic books, so on and so forth.
It's a weird, uh, motivation to not just make things that are entertaining, but to make things that are entertaining that you think are going to be inspiring, but then to use Star Wars and The Matrix as examples. Like, do you think those movies really pulled people out of anything or just entertained people? Cuz I'd be much more inclined to think the latter. Sure. So, here's how I look at it. I'm a filtering mechanism. I can't save everybody. Not everybody cares. So, some people are going to respond, some are. The Matrix changed my life in a deep and fundamental way. So, I know it, Did? Yeah, 100%. How? So, at the time when I had the fixed mindset, literally right out of college, I'm in the depths of I'm not a talented filmmaker, and now what the hell do I do? Um, I went to a Comic-Con literally across the street from USC, and they were handing out tickets to go see The Matrix at Warner Brothers Studios. And I was very excited, took the ticket, went that night, went in. Do you remember the movie well? Uh, absolutely. All right. So, when Agent Smith goes, "No, officer, your men are already dead." And then they cut to up there, Trinity jumps, camera goes slow motion and spins around her. The entire audience, myself included, yelled. Cuz it was just unlike anything we'd ever seen in a movie. It was such a rad experience. And so, that primed me for what ends up being the perfect metaphor for limiting beliefs. And, um, you know Michael Strahan? Mhm. All right. So, Michael Strahan, um, said the same thing. He was like, "The year that he got the award for most sacks in a single season was was because of The Matrix." So, literally, his own words. He came on, um, Impact Theory, interviewed him, asked him that question, he said, "Without a doubt, that movie is the reason that I got the record." Cuz he said, "Up until that moment, I see Morpheus and Neo training, and Morpheus says, 'Do you really think that, um, I'm faster than you because of my muscles? You really think this is air you're breathing?'" And Strahan realized, "Holy [ __ ], I have a belief that I can only get one sack per game. But why can't I get two? Why can't I get three?" And he said, "Because of that, he would get a sack and then go, 'No, I can get another one.'" And he said, "I realized in that moment that once I got a sack in a game, I would back off because I just believed that was like the most anyone could do in a game." So, and it had a similar impact on me. It made me realize I needed to figure out what my, what is The Matrix, right? Cuz I don't actually think we're in a simulation. So, what is The Matrix? Belief system. What is my version of jacking in? Reading. What is my kung fu? Business. Like, those were all the things that began to stack. It wasn't there while I'm sitting in the movie theater, but those were the things that it were in my mind, and I just kept thinking about it, thinking about it, thinking about it. And I think in movies. So, when I give examples a lot of times, I give examples from movies because they have that impact. Now, the reason that I don't think something like this would work, and the reason that I think so many people have not responded the way that I've responded is nobody is allowing people to take it seriously. So, social media, I think, is going to change that.