Why the System Is Designed to Keep You Sick, Dependent, and Controlled w/ Scott Clary

Summary

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Podcast Summary: The "What is Money?" Show

Episode: Why the System Is Designed to Keep You Sick, Dependent, and Controlled w/ Scott Clary
Host: Robert Breedlove
Guest: Scott Clary
Date: May 15, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this engaging conversation, host Robert Breedlove sits down with writer, podcaster, and entrepreneur Scott Clary to explore the ways our health, cognition, and life choices are subtly (and sometimes overtly) shaped by incentives, technological change, and social conditioning. The discussion unpacks key themes around attention, self-advocacy, agency, and the importance of building a life that genuinely aligns with your values—rather than simply following externally-imposed scripts.

Topics weave between the erosion of attention spans in the digital age, the critical need for personal agency in health decisions, the dangers of polarizing online content, money as a metaphor for other forms of value, and actionable philosophical frameworks for living a fulfilling life.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Impact of Social Media and Tech on Cognition

• Scott warns that social media and AI tools are drastically shortening attention spans and atrophying original thought, particularly among youth.
  • “If a kid grows up with an undeveloped brain just on social media and never researching, never writing... they're going to be much different, and I can't imagine it's healthy.” (00:00, 20:50)
• Robert reflects on his own struggle as a lifelong reader:
  • “Short form content, I feel it competing with my ability to focus on a book. It feels more difficult now than four or five years ago.” (19:22)
• Both agree attention is a precious, eroding resource; reading and writing are critical “cognitive workouts” for lifelong mental fitness.

2. The Dangers of Outsourcing Thinking and Health

• Automated answers and easy dopamine hijack critical thinking and problem-solving.
• Health information is either “outsourced” to a GP (often limited by pharmaceutical incentives) or to social media influencers (whose incentives are often audience growth and polarization).
  • Scott: “You always have to understand incentives, and why people are incentivized to give you advice.” (31:59)
  • “Not all content creators do this. I respect the ones that have a nuanced conversation... but most grow by being polarizing because that's what makes them money.” (35:35)
• Both stress the importance of self-advocacy:
  • You must collect advice, but ultimately “be your own doctor.”
  • “No one else is coming to save you. Ever, ever, ever.” (58:32)

3. Monetary Metaphors & True Wealth

• Scott and Robert riff on money as a metaphor for time, energy, health, relationships, and other currencies of value.
  • “There’s many other currencies in life outside of money... But money is a common language—when you use its metaphors, the message lands harder.” (8:46)
• Both reference philosophical and biblical traditions that encode wisdom about money, value, and action.

4. Quality vs. Quantity in Creative Work

• Both describe how successful creative projects (podcasts, writing) start with personal passion and attention but can become industrialized and hollow if churned out solely to meet “release schedules.”
  • Robert: “Something about the art of it degenerates once the quantity is put above the quality, right?” (06:53)
• Scott notes, “You can do one a month if you put all your creative energy into it, or you can do one a week... but once it feels like a job, the audience can feel it.” (05:36)

5. Attention, Simplicity, and Information Compression

• Scott’s writing succeeds through ultra-compressed, relatable posts—a necessity now that “the average attention span is decreasing so aggressively that written ideas go further than short videos.” (16:49)
• Robert compares reading to watching movies: reading requires more cognitive engagement and imagination.

6. Building a Life of Agency & Self-Advocacy

• Both advocate for “radical responsibility”: don’t outsource your life’s most important decisions, whether it’s investing, health, or immigration.
  • Scott: “No one will ever care about your objectives as much as you.” (54:04)
• Scott shares a story about advising a colleague to take charge of her immigration status: “Why don’t you realize what you want out of life and advocate for yourself?” (57:21)
• Robert: “Every action, every habit, every pattern is literally sculpting who you are tomorrow.” (27:41)

7. Failures, Comfort Zones, and Psychological Ceilings

• Failure is not optional; it is the prerequisite for growth (“mandatory ingredient in a life worth living”—63:14).
• Many hit a comfort-zone “ceiling” set by others and become afraid to risk failure beyond that, even though repeated failure is exactly how they reached their current level.
  • Scott: “The ceiling that you establish for yourself is usually imprinted on you by someone close to you when you’re young.” (63:57)

8. Living a Balanced Life

• Scott identifies five key forms of wealth: financial, physical health, mental health, spirituality, and relationships.
  • “Those who neglect the other four chasing money are always chasing what they lost later, never quite content.” (97:05)
• True success is balanced; seasons of “imbalance” are normal, but they must end before they ossify into permanent neglect.
  • “Seasons need to be a season, right? Seasons end.” (104:19)

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Notable Quotes (w/ Timestamps & Attribution)

• On cognitive decline:
  Scott Clary: "It's great to live longer, but you want to live longer and have your mind and have your body as well." (21:08)

• On attention erosion:
  Scott Clary: “I've noticed that the average attention span of an individual keeps decreasing. It’s easier for someone to consume an idea as text than as a video.” (15:16)

• On agency & incentives:
  Scott Clary: "You gotta take it... I’m a big fan of agency and taking control over your own life. Experts and gatekeepers are useful, but too many outsource their thinking." (52:59)

• On balanced ambition:
  Scott Clary: “There’s five things: money, physical health, mental health, spirituality, and relationships. If you max out these, you’re generally pretty happy. Most people in pursuit of money let the other four drop completely.” (97:05)

• On the danger of later:
  Scott Clary (reading his own quote): “Later is just never with better marketing.” (72:43)

• On action:
  Scott Clary: "The answer for anything you want to improve in life is action." (73:58) Robert Breedlove: “When you do what you fear, fear disappears.” (79:46)

• On comfort zones:
  Scott Clary: “The life you’re living is actually not yours. You've hit a ceiling that was created by someone else... and you realize your whole life you've been playing it safe to achieve a life that isn't even what you wanted.” (00:38, 68:17)

• On competing with yourself:
  Scott Clary: “Something I noticed about people in their 40s who seem at peace: They stopped competing with everyone and started competing with who they were last year.” (113:18)

• On the real currency of time:
  Scott Clary: “Whatever your parents don’t want your money—they want Tuesday. They want the random phone call. The stuff that costs you nothing is the stuff they will remember.” (94:29)

• On boundaries and saying no:
  Scott Clary: “Once you realize the thing about boundaries... yes, it’ll create tension short-term, but long-term you won’t be resentful of everyone around you. Otherwise, you start to hate yourself—or them.” (91:40)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [00:00]–[02:00] — The dangers of social media, AI, and pre-baked ceilings for life
• [20:31]–[24:49] — Discussion on cognitive decline, health-span vs. lifespan, and personal stories about dementia
• [31:27]–[37:00] — Dangers of relying on biased health info (GPs vs. social media influencers)
• [42:05]–[47:44] — Transparency in fitness and the incentives to lie, normalization of substances (anabolics, peptides)
• [57:20]–[60:33] — Radical self-advocacy, real-world examples in immigration, business, and life
• [66:01]–[69:32] — Comfort zones, psychological ceilings, failure as a prerequisite
• [83:28]–[90:04] — Non-negotiables, boundaries, and decision-fatigue
• [94:29]–[101:07] — The real value of relationships, particularly with parents, time as the ultimate currency
• [104:42]–[110:24] — The pitfalls of maximizing money at the expense of other life pillars
• [113:18]–[118:03] — Competing with yourself, the “second mountain” of purpose, and avoiding the hedonic treadmill

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Memorable Moments & Wisdom

• “No one is coming to save you. Ever.” — A recurring mantra that ties together the through-line of self-advocacy in a system designed for dependence.
• The Five Pillars of True Wealth: Money, physical health, mental health, spirituality, relationships
• The caution against “success that isn’t really yours”: Inherit norms, achieve them, but ultimately feel restless—until you risk, fail anew, and claim agency for yourself.
• On “later” as the stealth killer of dreams: Action over information. “Later” is just “never” with better marketing.
• Self-competition > external competition: The healthiest people in midlife are those who race against themselves year after year—not against their neighbors, the internet, or media ideas of “success.”

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Overall Takeaways

• Build your life intentionally, with agency—don’t outsource the most vital parts to the default system.
• Recognize that success is multi-dimensional; money matters, but it’s just one leg of the stool.
• Action is the ultimate differentiator. Get comfortable with discomfort, move, and collect scars, not just information.
• Protect your attention, your time, your relationships—and be vigilant about the hidden incentives and scripts that shape your life.

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Find Scott Clary: Success Story Podcast, @ScottDClary on all platforms
Find Robert Breedlove: @Breedlove22

[End of Summary]

Transcript

[Scott Clary]

That's super scary. That's incredibly scary because there's two things that I just alluded to earlier that are going on right? Obviously, social media is shortening your attention span, but simultaneously outsourcing all of your thinking to AI is also hurting. If a kid grows up with an undeveloped brain just on social media and never researching, never writing, any question they ask, they just get an instant response from ChatGPT, I don't know what that person ends up becoming. I can't imagine it's healthy. It's going to be a much different person than somebody who, I mean, who's 40 years old, grew up reading, writing, researching, doing taxing cognitive tasks. I don't know what happens to that kid. The life you're living is actually not yours. You've hit a ceiling that was created by someone else who had influence over you when you were young. And then you realize, like, this is actually I want much more than this, or not even much more. Sometimes it's, I want different than this. And then you realize that your whole life you've been playing it safe to achieve a life that isn't even what you wanted. And that's when shit hits the fan. That's when you get stressed, depressed. That's when people act out, quit their job. This is when people cheat on their wife after being married to them, and then they sleep with, you know, someone and they realize it's a huge mistake, but they were acting out because they didn't understand that the life that they created for themselves was not even theirs.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Okay, well, we were just talking about so much interesting health stuff offline, and I want to talk more about that, but. Well, I think you're kind of a different guest than I have on the show, and I don't. Maybe not. We have a wide variety of guests, but just the way we went about connecting. I'm a big fan of yours. On Instagram, you post these amazing kind of mindset quotes, and so I thought it would be useful is like, could we just start with, like, you given a quick spiel about who you are, what you do, and then maybe we could talk about some of the health stuff we were talking about.

[Scott Clary]

We can talk about anything and everything and. And thank you for having me on. So my name's Scott Clary. I also have a big podcast where I do a lot of the stuff that you do. I interview incredible people. I've been doing that just over seven years now. So that's called Success Story. I also write, and that's, I think, how you found Me. So I write, you know, these, these small little motivational anecdotes and ideas. I also write a newsletter that goes out to a. A few people. And right now I'm in full blown content creator mode. So I guess that's what I do for a living. The podcast is done very well. Newsletter's done well. I'm working on a book, so that's sort of my nine to five day job. I also run a marketing agency, so that's another thing that I do. But in, you know, my past life, I've. I've built businesses, so my background was always in tech. That's sort of where I came from. I started the podcast when I was building a company that was actually acquired close to the end of COVID I started the podcast really to find a way to future proof myself. I wanted to build a brand around entrepreneurship and mindset and teaching, basically Scott, 10 years earlier, some ideas that could hopefully help him. And that turned into sort of the, the media ecosystem that I've built today. So that's what I do in a nutshell. I podcast, I write, and then I have a marketing agency that actually does that for people, helps them build their own personal brand on the side.

[Patrick Bet-David]

That is super cool. Yeah, I think we're kind of birds of a feather in that way. I don't have the marketing agency component, but yeah, podcast and writing, I don't have to.

[Scott Clary]

It's a lot of work.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah, I try to. You know, as I was telling you, like, we're kind of pulling back from the in person podcast, doing more remote stuff. I'm trying to really focus on having conversations that I want to have. I'm very excited to have. I think that comes out in the quality obviously of, of the conversation. And I agree. You know, it also, I don't like.

[Scott Clary]

Oh, I was gonna say. No, no, you're good. I just. This has been really, really top of mind for me lately and I think you'll appreciate this. So I just got a rant about this for two seconds. I hate when people treat creative like a job.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah, so exactly.

[Scott Clary]

When you just, when you just show up. So when somebody's like, I just got 30 minutes or I have to interview this person because they're the person that I feel like is the perfect person for my podcast. Like, if you don't want to do it, if you don't want to spend the time and record good content and maybe take a break from the work, if you don't want to interview that, like, don't do it, like, don't make creative a job, because then the creative suffers. I. I'm a big believer in that.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Amen, dude. That, and I had to learn it the hard way, I guess, is the podcast started with conversations I was very excited to have, you know, talking to all my favorite nerds and talking to them for a very long form and talking about all my favorite subjects. And then at some point, you know, it became very successful. And I don't know exactly where, but it became like, well, we had a release schedule, right? We had impressions to deliver to sponsors, and I had this whole big production at the house and its lights and its camera and its engine years, and it's editing and it's admin, and before you know it, I'm like, it's just sucking the life out of me. It's like I created this thing from scratch. It I really, like, I appreciate it. It's been amazing. But then it became work, as you were saying, rather than the kind of pure essence of the creative process. And so I'm hoping by pulling back a little bit and, like, specifically only talking to people like you that I really want to talk to and that I'm excited to talk to you, that. That it reinvigorates that creative spirit.

[Scott Clary]

I think it will. I think it'll show up in the content. And listen, I mean, there is a point where you do have to ship something. It's very hard to build anything if you're just doing it, you know, once every two months. But you could make the argument that acquired, which is a big, big podcast. They've grown like crazy. I think one mid roll on their show. They just published how much it costs to sponsor this podcast. And for context, people don't know about it. It's two guys that do heavy research on a company they speak for, like three hours on. This company will be like the history of Nvidia. They'll interview employees, whatever. They do one show a month, and their ad slots are sold out for something like the next three years, and they charge $500,000 for one mid roll. And I think a title sponsor is, I don't even know, in the millions. So the point is, you can do one a month if you put all of your creative energy into it, or you can do one a week. You got to figure out how to deliver your best work in a way that actually you enjoy. And I think that resonates with the audience. I think that they feel that and they appreciate it. And then I. I think that's actually how you that's how you grow. I don't know. Like, yeah, volume works, but after a while, like you said, it turns into a job and then the audience can feel it. So the second volume.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yes.

[Scott Clary]

Hurts the quality of the product. Then it's no longer a competitive advantage.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Bingo. Bing. Yeah. Yeah. Something about the art of it degenerates once the quantity is put above the quality, right?

[Scott Clary]

Very much so, yeah.

[Patrick Bet-David]

That was the exact feeling I had. It was like I became a slave to my own release schedule and that was just not. Not doing the podcast any favors. So you, though, are someone I am very excited to talk to. Man. I. Well, actually, I guess we. Maybe we should try to talk a little bit about this health stuff before we dive into, like, work. But I'll just say here, like, I really appreciate the sort of. Well, a couple of things. You have this very simplistic post I'm looking at, right. The 10 Minute Mindset account, which is one of your accounts. You've got a few, including your own personal. But you're just posting these, you know, blurbs basically on Instagram. Motivational blurbs, I guess, is what you might. Might call them. They're brutally simple, very short. You know, it's literally. You can read it in 10 seconds. It's three sentences, four sentences, whatever it is. But it tends to deliver a very profound punch. And, you know, it's remarkable how you do that with almost just every post. And it's like something that's simple but. But moves the needle. Like it actually changes the way you think and want to show up in the world. At least for me it does. Also, one other thing I noticed that. I really appreciate you. You. I don't know if you do this consciously or unconsciously. You invoke a lot of monetary metaphors, you know, like how you spend your time, how you spend your time, where you invest your attention. You know, things like these little subtle monetary metaphors that aren't money necessarily related, but they seem to end up a lot in your stuff. So that was another reason, you know, we talk a lot about money on the show. So that was another reason I wanted

[Scott Clary]

to talk to you because. Because there's many other currencies. There's many other currencies in life outside of money. There's many other. There's many other ways to achieve wealth outside of money.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

And I think that framing it in these. You know, I don't even think I do it consciously. I think I do it because I look for words that have the most impact, and money Means a lot to a lot of people. But there's. So it's a, it's a, it's a common language that they understand why this is or isn't important. But I think that a lot of my content actually, yes, it's about success, you know, in air quotes, making money, entrepreneurship. I mean, I don't do this podcast to make no money. I don't build the business to make no money. I, I interview people that have had, you know, eight, nine figure exits. I've interviewed billionaires. But the goal of my content is to show that you can build this life where you have this, you know, financial success. You, you, you can build a business so that you can afford whatever you want for yourself or your family. But there's a lot more to life than just that. And I think that hopefully my content speaks to not losing those other parts of your life in the process. And if maybe it's through a, a money metaphor or a certain way of framing an idea that I think is important in a way that you hopefully understand because you understand the importance of money and wealth and finance, then maybe that idea lands harder. And I think it does, to be quite honest. I think that's why some of those ideas just hit. Because none of the ideas that I write about or speak about are new. In fact, nothing that we definitely discover on the Internet is new by any means. But it's just about how do you frame it and how do you teach it and how do you communicate it? Which is really the secret.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yes. No, I man agree on all of the above. And then I would maybe even go a step further. Someone could fact check me on this. But I believe it was said to me once that like 25% of the parables Christ uses in the Bible involve money. Like there's something, there's something about the embodied experience of handling money, transacting in money, saving in money, thinking in money, losing money. Like these carry a certain weight. These experiences carry a certain weight that other experiences don't, you know, and it's.

[Scott Clary]

Well, I think it's because for, for better or worse, that's how we, that's how we. That's. Money is our identity for the majority of people. That's how we value our worth. Which is an incorrect way to value your worth, but it is, it is how most people value themselves.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yes.

[Scott Clary]

So it just, it just resonates. And I think that every, I mean, I didn't know that. That's very interesting, but I'm not surprised because money's like the ability to afford a life and to. Because money is. Money is more than just, you know, a scorecard. Which is it, which it is for a lot of people, but it's safety, it's security, it's peace. It's, it's, it's, it's everything. It's, it's, it's health, physical and mental. There's nothing that it really isn't. But at the same time, to equate your entire worth and identity to money is still incorrect, even though it touches basically every part of your life.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yes.

[Scott Clary]

Yes, I love that. I love that idea that 25 of these parables involve money. And 100 of the ideas that I write about are in the Bible and, and they've been echoed by the Old Testament, the New Testament. They've been echoed by Stoics, they've been echoed by Buddhists and, and Hindus and, and every other religion that exists and doesn't exist anymore in the world. All these ideas are. Are. And that's why they hit. Because they're truths. And sometimes people just need to be reminded of. Of a truth because we, you know, I won't go on a rant, but a lot of, A lot of, A lot of the things that aren't working out in our life. I write to hopefully help people think through a solution to a problem that they have. Right? That's really the goal. You know, you want to think about time or relationships or business, and you have a problem in one of these areas in your life. But a lot of the, A lot of the things that are going wrong in our lives, ironically, we already know the things that we have to do to improve that thing. We kind of know how we would have to improve the relationship or make more money or, or invest in our health. Like, we kind of know the thing we have to do. We just don't take action and do it. So hopefully some of the writing, what it's supposed to do at least, is to basically push an idea down your throat and encourage you to take action because you understand how simple the, the actual action is to achieve the end result. And that's what I think good writing does. That's what I think great conversations do. They, they just frame things in a certain way where you're like, yes, you know what? That makes so much sense. Let me just take the action that I already know I had to do because of this idea, and hopefully your life is better on the other side of that. That's, that's what I try and do,

[Patrick Bet-David]

at least, like, you do you do a beautiful job of it. And I, that's essentially what I was trying to say earlier. It's like, it's so such a nice data compressed little format for the idea. It almost has that mythological quality to it, you know, like you read the story.

[Scott Clary]

Very kind.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Well, I mean, I don't, I mean I, Yeah, I don't know. I guess I'm a fan. Like I'm an appreciate, appreciate the art. You know, it's like you see the art, you see this very simplistic thing, but there's a lot behind it. And like you said, and I'm glad too you're also exhibiting the humility, by the way, which is important. People are always like thanking me, like, oh, thank you for your content and your ideas are so important. I'm like, they're none of my ideas. Like literally I have no ideas. It's just I read everything in books and I just tell you guys and that's, that's it. But, and I'm dealing with this right now and trying to write our book. It's like to take those big esoteric, you know, ancient proverbs or whatever, you know. Well, Christ does an amazing job of this with the parables. Like it makes it very accessible. But then like you gotta do that in modern speak to take these big things and distill them down to that boom, 110 second, you know, something that will not escape the attention span filter of a digital native. Right? They could just read it, which is difficult. Which is. It's the art. That's the art. That is the art.

[Scott Clary]

And that's very difficult. Easier said than done. There's also, you know, there's a reason why I, I write a lot. I could also turn those things, whatever you want to call them, call them quotes, tweets, you could turn those into videos. But that I've even noticed that. And the reason why I spend so much time writing is because I've noticed that the average attention span of an individual seems to increase, decrease, like increasingly decrease. Excuse me, like it keeps decreasing. And I've noticed that I used to like, I mean I, I record video all the time and when I would take these same ideas, I could read them verbatim on camera and they don't get the same engagement, they don't get, they don't get the same, I guess, virality as what a quote does. And I, I legitimately think that for a variety of reasons, social media included, as well as outsourcing a lot of our thinking to alarms and AI we are getting dumber and our social and our attention span is getting shorter and shorter. And it's easier for somebody to consume an idea when it is just written in front of you than it is for somebody to consume an IDEA that is 30 to 45 seconds long. Yes, and that's scary, but that's the reality. And at the end of the day, I'm a writer and I'm trying to help people, but I'm also understanding the current state of social media and attention, which is why I write so much in the, in this short form. Because that, that black and white square is more shareable than a 30 to 45 second reel.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

Even if it says the exact same thing, which is super scary. But that's, that's the reality.

[Patrick Bet-David]

No, again, yeah, you're right. It's, it's the. Well, it's more compressed because you can read that thing in, like I said, 5 to 10 seconds. 45 second reel takes you 45 seconds, right?

[Scott Clary]

It is compressed, but it's just scary that people gravitate towards. Gravitate. Do you know what else it is?

[Patrick Bet-David]

It's. What is it like when you, it's kind of like reading a book versus watching the movie. You know, when you read the book, your imagination is more free, I guess, to interpret what the author, the, the world the author is painting for you. But when you watch the movie, it's a little, there's less room for interpretation, I guess.

[Scott Clary]

Now, of course, yeah, there is less, there's less room for thinking. I mean, I'm not a, a psychologist or, or a biologist. I don't have a, you know, a very strong understanding of some of how media impacts your brain. But I would say that reading is more cognitively taxing than watching a movie. And I think that, I think that. I've thought about this a lot. If you want to, if you want to understand how, how your mind has, has shrunk over the past five or 10 years, go try and read a book that you read 10 years ago. Go try and write an article that you would be able to write when you were in university and you'll notice that it's much harder. And I, I think that like reading and writing is a way to sort of maintain your cognition and your, and your ability to think. And I think that not doing it at all is, is really, really bad for people. I think that's really bad for mental health. And I think that that could. Listen, I'm sure that somebody will have a. I'm sure somebody can like you know, fact check me on this. But I can't imagine that not reading and not writing is good for aging. Like you know, your mental health, Alzheimer's, dementia. Like I think doing hard things and forcing ourselves to make our brain work kind of like if you're going to the gym is probably a pretty healthy thing to do, especially as we live longer. But we don't necessarily live our best lives if we're living to a hundred plus. I think that that's where some of these sort of things that we don't really do as much as we used to probably could be beneficial for our long term health and wellness. But in many ways.

[Patrick Bet-David]

No, I, well I agree completely and I, I really make it a point. You know. One of my favorite quotes is by Musashi who said the ways in training and like you are what you repeatedly do, you know. So like if you don't that that's true. No matter what, you can either unconsciously be what you repeatedly do or you can consciously be what you repeatedly do. So if you actually program your days and your weeks and your months and you say hey, I'm going to read an hour a day, I'm going to train, I'm going to physically train an hour a day, I'm going to, you know, whatever the thing is, whatever your goals are, that's how you build yourself. But I've noticed Even as a 40 year old man, right. I should be the old dog that can't learn too many new tricks over here. But my ability, I've been reading a book a week for a long time, like 20 plus years. Like I'm very big into reading, very serious about it. Short form content. I feel it competing with my ability to focus on a book. Like I, it feels more difficult for me to shift gears into that book reading mode now than it did even four or five years ago where I just was less short form content. Consumptive, I guess.

[Scott Clary]

Yeah.

[Patrick Bet-David]

And so if it's, if it's having that effect on a 40 year old man, imagine the effect it's having on the kids, you know, and the young, young people.

[Scott Clary]

I don't even understand what's going to happen to a kid that only consumes short form content.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

Like at least, at least your brain has fully developed and it's still having a negative impact.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yes.

[Scott Clary]

And you're somebody that proactively reads.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Right.

[Scott Clary]

Like that's super scary.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

Right. That's incredibly scary. Because there's two things that I just alluded to earlier that are going on Right. Obviously, social media is shortening your attention span, but simultaneously outsourcing all of your thinking to AI is also, Is also hurting.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yes.

[Scott Clary]

So if a kid grows up with an undeveloped brain just on social media and never researching, never writing, any question they ask, they just get an instant response from ChatGPT. I don't know what that person ends up becoming when they're, you know, 25. I have no idea. I can't imagine it's healthy. It's going to be a much different person than somebody who, I mean, who's 40 years old, grew up reading, writing, researching, doing taxing cognitive tasks. I don't know what happens to that, that kid. That's super scary for me. And then what happens when. And you know, well, this can be a nice little pivot into health and wellness. We keep living longer. Right. But if you live to a hundred, from 80 or 90 to 100, are those healthy years, are you full of life or are, you know, this is. I won't go into too much detail, but more of a personal example. With, with one of my grandparents, there was Alzheimer's and dementia, and it was not an easy last few years. So it's great to live longer, but you want to live longer and, you know, have your mind and have your body as well. And we're, we can talk about everything that, you know, you're, you're figuring out and what I've sort of tried to figure out with my body and in prevention of any of these things happening, like, you know, physical decline. But what about cognitive decline? Like when you're 100 years old? There's, I think there's a lot of people that do have at least some form of Alzheimer's dementia. How do we, how to. Again, like, everything in life, the prevention for that thing starts, you know, immediately. 25, 30, 35, 40 in the foods you eat, the, the hobbies you have. So how do we, how do we prevent living the last 10 years of our life in a really, really difficult place, physically and mentally, but also not just for us, for, like, our family. Have you ever had somebody you've taken care of who has Alzheimer's dementia? It's like, incredibly hard on the family, not just the person, but.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah, no, no, no, I, I appreciate you bringing that up. You know, I don't. My stepdad actually has been taking care of his, his mother the past couple of years, and she's suffering from the Alzheimer's and the dementia. And he's a very strong guy. Doesn't really, like, accept a lot of help. So, you know, doesn't. Well, doesn't seek a lot of help, basically just kind of takes it on himself. But one of the things he said to me, and, you know, he's not a guy that would speak lightly, he said there's some things that are harder than. Than death, like, harder than losing someone. And, you know, like seeing his mother decline cognitively and she was, you know, mistaking him for her husband who's long deceased. You know, all of this stuff. And. Yeah, yeah. Very, very difficult. And so, yeah, there's the point well taken. Right. It's not all about lifespan that it's really about health. Span is what you really want to optimize for.

[Scott Clary]

Yeah.

[Patrick Bet-David]

And I don't think anyone has cracked the code. Maybe there's not even a code to crack. Right. We're all individual. We're all different. We all, you know, have different paths. But the mainstream medical idea of just like, you know, put them in a home and strap them to machines and pump them full of meds and just keep them alive as long as possible. I don't know. You know, maybe that works for some people, but I don't. It seems suboptimal to me.

[Scott Clary]

It's suboptimal and it's, it's. It's like foreign. It's a response to, To a problem that unfortunately, I think for many is. It's too late to solve the problem. But it's like. It's like people just are trying to do their best, Right? They just, you know, they're just trying to do their best with what they got. And what they, what they have is somebody who is. Is deteriorating and not well. And of course, you know, the science is kind of just evolving as we speak. So 40 years ago, they didn't really know what to do in terms of maintaining their cognitive health and, and sometimes even in cases of maintaining their physical health. We can talk about how is, you know, the. Historically, the education on health and wellness has not been. Even today, it's not great for. Historically it was because the government didn't really know what they were doing. And now it's because social media influencers are all sort of skewing health and wellness information. So it's really hard to get good information. And, and even if it was, we're making the assumption that the health and wellness information that could help you live to 100 was available to everybody. But the, the information about mental health and, and cognitive health that's currently being researched now. Like, I mean, there's. What are what are the, what are the supplements that allow you. Because I think that a lot of Alzheimer's dementia, because it's kind of like two things you want to maintain, right? You want to maintain your, your mind and your body. Okay, so fine, you have, you figure out your diet. You, you do. I think the, the, the single biggest predictor of, of, of health span and lifespan is like lifting heavy weights in your VO2 max. So you figured out your heart and your body. Um, but outside of that, what are the, what are the foods you eat or what are the supplements you take to reduce plaque buildup in your mind, which I think is the cause of Alzheimer's dementia, and even, like, what are the activities that you do? Like, I, I think that there's certain activities and sports that are better for your cognition than others. And what are the challenging tasks that force you to sort of maintain your neuroplasticity as you get older? I, I don't think that the average grandparent knows any of this. I mean, the average person doesn't know any of it. Even in the health and wellness space. Like, if you ask like five health influencers, what are the activities and the foods that you're supposed to, to eat and take and do to make sure that you have a healthy mind at, you know, 100 years old? I don't think the average person is that aware of it because the research is kind of like happening as we speak. That's right. So the point is, I don't know what the point is, but the point

[Patrick Bet-David]

is

[Scott Clary]

being aware of this stuff and, and living a long time and being healthy and sort of, if you are young, at least understand that maybe don't just put off your physical and, and mental health for too much longer. Maybe just be aware of the fact that everything that you feel and experience at 100 years old will be the direct result of how you treat yourself now.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Bingo. And if we could invoke the monetary metaphor, right, like it's one long, steady stream of investments. You know, you're making these investment decisions every day. Every action, every habit, every pattern is literally sculpting who you are tomorrow. And if you don't take that seriously, well, then you're going to have a problem at some point. And the other thing I've learned recently and like, and you know, this is newer to me, like, I've been into the biohacking peptides stuff and like, really trying. I've been into fitness for longer, but I really got serious with the biohacking and the peptides. Starting July of last year and also taking anabolics at the same time to like get in this peak physique thing and open sourcing the whole journey. Another thing that's really landed with me, it really dovetails nicely with what you just said. It's like, and maybe this is a social media age phenomenon that there are no experts in the room, right? There is no definitive scientific, like this is like how you must do it, right? There's no one size fits all. Paul Saladino gave me this word bio, individuality, right? That we are all unique in our, you know, not only our ancestral heritage but also our experiences, our genetic mix that we are and blah blah, blah blah, all this uniqueness. And if you at any point abdicate or defer all of that decision making to a doctor or to anyone for that matter, you're not going to get a, you're going to get a suboptimal outcome, right? So like what you have to become, it's the old Hippocratic thing where you have to kind of be your own doctor to some extent.

[Scott Clary]

Now you got to, you got.

[Patrick Bet-David]

That doesn't mean you don't work with these people. I work with multiple of these people and I take all of their feedback and I do my own AI driven research and I read my own book driven research and I try to like come to one point of consilience to decide what's best. But the biggest. Sorry, the point I'm kind of driving at is like the importance of anecdotal experience, man, that you just really have to do the test and see how it works for you. Like how did it feel, what was the result, what were the outcomes? Make sure you measure it and be willing to iterate a lot. Would you rather have one bitcoin today or two bitcoin a few years from now? Bitcoin mining is a tried and true strategy for accumulating bitcoin. Over a two to four year time frame, successful miners have consistently accumulated more bitcoin than they otherwise would. With a traditional dollar cost average strategy. Blockware mining as a service enables you to start mining bitcoin from your laptop. Blockware handles everything from securing the miners to sourcing low cost power to configuring the mining pool. They do it all. Plus, with Blockware's one of a kind mining marketplace, you can buy and sell live bitcoin miners with just a few keystrokes. In this marketplace, buyers get to purchase live machines at vetted facilities, enabling them to mine with zero lead time. And sellers get the Opportunity to liquidate their machines and hosting contracts at will. This means you can mine bitcoin with zero long term commitment and high liquidity on your mining rigs. Blockware will even cover your energy bill for one week per mining rig when you sign up at mining.blockware solutions.com BreedLove Again, that's one free week of Bitcoin mining at mining.blockware solutions.Com BreedLove and on top of this offer, you can also use code breedlove to get $100 off your first mining rig. Blockware solutions.

[Scott Clary]

You know, but that's so scary. The, the thing that's scary. Yes to all of that. The thing that's scary about where most people get their health information from today is either their GP or social media. I would say social media. It skews younger that demograph. Younger demographics going to be getting your information from social media versus maybe you know, an older demographic defers to their gp. But these are, these are not hard and fast rules. But the point is whether or not you defer to your GP or social media, you always have to understand incentives.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yes.

[Scott Clary]

And why people are incentivized to give you advice. So for your gp you may think they are unbiased. Well, not really at all. They are incentivized by drug companies.

[Patrick Bet-David]

That's right.

[Scott Clary]

Or their focused education, which they mean well. But a lot of GPs and GPs are wonderful. Incredible. And this is not to hate on a gp, but if a GP is not studied outside of their main field of focus, then that's the information they're going to give you layered onto that. It's a hyper focused specialty is going to be the incentives that drug companies pay them to push certain products. That's a big issue.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yep.

[Scott Clary]

Just one more thought on that. I also am interested. I don't really understand a lot about it, but I am interested in, in tcm mostly not from my background because my background is very western. My fiance, Gina, she's from like all over the world. I mean she has family in Austria and Russia and Israel and London and she understands a little bit more about tcm, like, like traditional Chinese medicine than I do because growing up I was just part of like a Canadian healthcare system. It's pretty standard. But then I started. So when I first, we first started dating I would always sort of laugh and push back on her TCM and she wanted to go to this doctor and get like alternative suggestions for things that were, you know, whatever she was feeling. And I started to research TCM and then I realized that a lot of the reasons why TCM is not as popular in the west is because the, the studies aren't as big. So the studies don't have as much data as like, for example, a drug study would have. And the reason why they aren't as big is because pharma doesn't sponsor them. So they don't have as much money to fund the studies that could prove or disprove if the data is good. Which is interesting to me because it doesn't mean that alternative medicine is not viable. It just means that there's no money that actually backs it up. And I think that that's, I don't know, I just find that super interesting.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yes.

[Scott Clary]

And it just goes to show there's a lot of alternative ways to treat things outside of what we know and what drug companies sort of tell us to do. But I'm going to add one more idea onto this because I said there's two ways that people get their health advice. The second way is social media. Now the reason why social media is incredibly toxic, it's, it's much worse than what I just described with, you know, doctors being incentivized is because on social media, if you understand marketing and social media, you understand that to grow you have to be. Unfortunately, you don't have to be. But to grow quickly, you got to take a stance, draw a line in the sand and create like an us versus them, like a keto versus blah or a plant based versus blah or a, you know, this kind of workout versus the other kind of workout or a natural versus enhanced or there's always like an us versus them. And if you take a hard stance on this is the only way to do it, then you're going to get tons of engagement from people arguing and debating with you, which end up growing your social account much quicker, which ends up turning into more money for that particular influencer.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Right.

[Scott Clary]

So if you are more polarizing on social media and you take a hard stance and you say this is the only way to do it for everyone, you will grow quicker, you will make more money. So you have to understand where the incentives are coming from for that social media influencer. So they are saying something because they are financially incentivized to have a pretty strong point of view or perspective because a mediocre, you know, balanced perspective, it doesn't pay.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

This is why political content makes people so much money. This is why anything polarizing makes money. So not all content creators do this. I, I actually respect the ones that don't I respect the ones that do have a more balanced, nuanced conversation about health, wellness, diet, etc. Honestly, you, you're one of them. You're very, very, you know, open source. This is what's happening. This is what isn't happening. I don't even know if you consider yourself this influencer, but whatever you, you. But the point is like you, you are very transparent, whereas I, I won't name names, but I see a lot of health and wellness influencers that I can tell what they're doing. Yeah, they're just taking the most extreme view. And this is what, this is who their whole brand becomes because that's what makes them so much money. I guess the, the one, you know, everybody kind of knows and, and gives and hates on would be Liver King. That's like the, the, the go to one that kind of became a meme in the health and wellness space. But there's many people that are a lot less bold but they still adopt a very, they, they really sort of stay in their lane because it, it helps them grow quicker and they aren't as sort of audacious and out there as a Liver King, but in my opinion they're still just as damaging.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah, yeah. No, dude, so much, so many things I want to respond to. But just the, the last thing you're saying there. No, no, like you are completely correct. You know, I don't think it's any mystery to people that the polarizing content gets the engagement. Right. What do they have a term for it? Enragement? Farming. Right.

[Scott Clary]

So like a rage bait.

[Patrick Bet-David]

A rage bait, yeah. So it's like you get the engagement, but it's just people like bickering and

[Scott Clary]

it makes you a lot of money,

[Patrick Bet-David]

but it makes you, gets you attention. And the attention equals money in the digital age. But then the cost of that is kind of obviating all the nuance and all the bio. Individual like all this thing, all the, all the nuance I guess that we were just referring to and I think too, you know, the, the other thing I've observed and this is also related to the incentives. It's like once those people have drawn their line in the sand, you know, and said, oh, I'm the Liver King now and I eat raw meat and I. Whatever he does, lifts logs. Well, he actually was like doing a lot of anabolic steroids and denying it and trying to sell his. I don't, I don't know the whole story actually, but I assume he was selling some Liver King product.

[Scott Clary]

I think you Nailed the most important parts.

[Patrick Bet-David]

And you. He now becomes Typ, cast, if you will, as the Liver King. Right. Like, it's his Persona that he's now assigned himself or drawn for himself in the world. And now he has to double and triple down and keep doing that. He has to, like, keep going down that channel. Otherwise, you know, he's. He's a hypocrite or whatever in the eyes of the public. And so a less extreme example, and I also won't name names, but like, a guy I know sort of built his personal health and wellness brand. I don't want to get too specific, but basically he was saying, I do these things, you know, like, I do these TRT and these peptides, but I don't do anything else. And this is how greater shape I'm in in my mid-40s. And then like, the truth of the matter is like, oh, he's also doing this other over here. And then, you know, he's years into it and he's saying, oh, well, now I want to come out and, you know, just share it all. And his, you know, I had like, insider knowledge on this is people are like, no, you can't do that. Like, you know, you've built this whole audience of like, people saying, you know, following you, thinking you just do this and you get this result. If you now tell them, hey, you're doing different things to get this result, then you're gonna blow your whole brand, basically, that you've built.

[Scott Clary]

So trap you built for yourself.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's like, I, you know, what. What is like be. What is the. The more like, be careful the walls you build for yourself don't become a prison kind of thing. And I, you know, one more thing on the incentives, I guess, is like the other, like these fitness influencers. 99 times out of 100 so far, in my experience, like, the guys that are really, like, really bragging about their natural status, they're like, oh, I am 6 foot 2 and 200 pounds and 10 body fat, and I'm all time lifetime natural. It's like the guy's beating the table about how natural they are. 99 times out of 100 that I've seen, they're all selling a fitness program. All of them. Right. So what is.

[Scott Clary]

And. And they're 99 times out of 10 or whatever. 99 times out of 100. They're also not natural.

[Patrick Bet-David]

They're not natural. Yeah. And why? Because they have an incentive to look really good.

[Scott Clary]

Yeah.

[Patrick Bet-David]

And tell you it's all natural to sell you their program. Right. They're financially dependent on getting you to believe you can look like them by just running their program, not doing anything, quote unquote unnatural. And so that is like kind of the financial motivation, I think, creating so much of the fitness influencer online. And now for me, this is what I said is like, look, I'm not selling any fitness training programs. I'm just a guy that's been working out for a long time. I built my brand, if you will. I always hesitated to even use the term brand, but like, I was just talking about money, like, how does money work? And so like sharing what I consider to be the truth about the monetary system. And so I just try to carry that same principle over to fitness and be like, oh, there's a lot of guys in here lying about what they take. Let me just share what I take. You know, I don't have anything to sell you. I don't sell testosterone. I do have an affiliate deal with a peptide company which I've disclosed. And I'm like, open about it and I'm like, you know, you don't have to get peptides there. You can get them to your doctor or whatever. But my incentive, I guess because I don't have that direct financial incentive to like, look really good and sell you a program, I'll just come out and say, hey, I do all this and here's how you look like this. And so you just gotta watch it, man. You just gotta watch what people's.

[Scott Clary]

That's super refreshing, by the way. I'm pretty sure that's why. So we were talking about this tweet thread that you put together about, you know, everything you do and what you take. And, and I think that's why that thing went, you know, viral. I think it's because honesty is so rare in the health and. Well, honesty on social media is rare across the board, but in health and wellness, I think it's exceptionally rare.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

Which is sad, I think, the de facto on social media, because think about health and wellness. When I say health and wellness, I'm talking about the guys that look like they could step on stage or be on the COVID of GQ or. It's not even like the average bro at your gym. It's. It's celebrities that lie about what they take to press for a movie.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yes.

[Scott Clary]

Health and wellness, for some reason has just been full of lies for so long. And then social media was just pouring fuel on the fire. I don't actually know. I don't quite understand why health and wellness has always been full of lies. It's like Arnold was very candid about all the, the peds he took and then all of a sudden they got banned and then everyone. It wasn't just banned. It's like people got, I don't know, this, this shame around using. Yeah, there was a shame, which is strange to me because now retitru tied. You can't legally get prescribed retatrue tide, but everybody's talking about taking retitrutide, so I don't really understand why people were shamed and embarrassed about taking testosterone or, I mean, a variety of other things you could take that were banned, that were totally legal when Arnold started bodybuilding. And then now peptides, like there's very few that you can actually get prescribed from your doctor, but people are taking everything under the sun. They're so proud of it. So I didn't really get that. But maybe it's like a healthy cultural normalization of, of substances that can make you better or not make you better, but make you healthier. I have no idea. But that's interesting. Yeah, I just thought about that.

[Patrick Bet-David]

So. No, no, I. I also had that question in my mind. I was like, why? That's why. Part of the motivation for me to do it was like, I'm just gonna. It was so mind blowing to me. Like, all I have to do is go do this stuff and then just say what I did. And that's revolutionary. Not, not that I'm the only guy in the world, by the way. There's, you know, first of all, there's a lot of fitness guys and bodybuilders that are like, also doing the radical disclosure thing. Like, here's my whole cycle and all that. So I'm not some kind of. I don't claim to be the innovator on this at all, but when I would, when I was sounding out the idea with people, they're like, oh my God, that would do so well. And like, I literally didn't think, I didn't. There's no originality here. Like you're just doing a thing and saying what you did, basically. But I had that question. I was like, why are all the, especially the old older school health and fitness guys, let's say, not ever disclosing what they do. And the. I did a fitness photo shoot when I hit my peak physique with this guy, Jason Ellis, and he gave me a very intelligent answer. And it of course, follow the money, find the truth. He's like, look, these guys all came up in an era, you know, it's like all magazines, there was no social media. It's like their. All.

[Scott Clary]

Their whole.

[Patrick Bet-David]

All of their revenue was sponsor deals, you know, creatine, protein, whatever, whatever. Because these things were so demonized, you know, from all the sports scandals, you know, yeah. Maguire, Bonds, like all the baseball guys, you know, a million different sports scandals about stories. They were, like, basically publicly demonized. If these guys came out and said, hey, I'm taking testosterone, I'm taking this, I'm taking that, they would literally get blackballed. Right. It was like all of their revenue would just go to zero, basically, in the space. So they had to. They were incentivized to.

[Scott Clary]

They had to say it was creatine, which is also good, but just not going to make you. Exactly, exactly 250 pounds and. And 4% body fat.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

[Scott Clary]

That's funny. But that makes sense.

[Patrick Bet-David]

And then. And then I, you know, just one other. Like, this is just sort of thinking out loud, but I think that. Well, we've already said social media, where, you know, the technologies we use influence the way we are. Right. And change and the way we evolve, the way we think. We already mentioned how it's affecting, like, our ability to focus on books and all these things. I think there is this other Instagram effect, if you want to call it that, where it's like people see other people looking really good in really good shape and, you know, people being people. We, we're. Well, we. Are we competitive. We're competitive, but we also desire to have nice things. Right. Chief among those things, something money can't really buy. Although I guess the peptides and the anabolic certainly help, is, you know, a fit body. And so people are seeing you. You've closed the social proximity of people online, and so you can see other people that are super fit. And then there's more of a motivation, I guess, for people to go and try peptides and try these other things, try these exotic approaches to fitness to try and get on that level, if that makes sense. So I don't know. That's like just me speculating, but I think that's.

[Scott Clary]

I think that's a fair assumption. I. I also think that. Yes, I think that because sometimes people trust the government a little bit too much. I mean, there's a lot of bad anabolics, for sure, that are really not healthy.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

But there's a lot of, for example, testosterone, which is a controlled substance, which is incredibly good for the. Like, I I would much rather look at the, look at the average health of a 50 year old man in the US which is arguably much worse than other parts of the world or at least the western world. It's much healthier to go to the gym and to take testosterone and to lose weight than it is to eat like and be morbidly obese or even slightly obese, never go to the gym, have, you know, depression, horrible sleep, low sex drive, like these. This is not a great way to live your life. So yes, that's, that's a controlled substance that could probably really benefit a lot of people's lives, men in particular. But there's a lot of for sure steroids that were not ever meant for humans or, or they were meant for people in very specific conditions. So they had cancer or hiv, aids and they were meant to reduce muscle wasting and sometimes these are abused. Now I think what's interesting is the government labels a lot of these things as illegal, good and bad. But what the government hasn't actually done is it hasn't, it hasn't turned peptides into a controlled substance yet. So psychologically people feel that it's not as bad.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Right.

[Scott Clary]

Even though the average person taking retatrutide has no idea what it is or isn't doing to their body as how do they just look good. So for some reason like the government label on a lot of these things is the permission or lack thereof to do them. Which I think is again taking us back to well, what if you do your own research as to how these things impact your body? Yeah, that's the answer. Not what the government labels or doesn't label. Because the government has incentives too. Right now what is it? What's the pharma company that's trying to take to court how many amino acid chains retatrutide has? And it's like, well if we calculate it as so many. Do you know this story or no, I don't know. But okay, so something like if it's 39, if the, if it's like 39amino acids. Oh it can, somebody will understand what I'm trying to say. Or not classified as a certain thing. Yeah, but they're saying, well if we count it differently, it's going to be 40 or 41 and then we can like control the IP so no one else can create it in a compounding lab. So now the law about the legality is based on somebody lawyers arguing fake math. Yes, basically. Yeah. Well, and whether or not they can control who can create red, a true Tide for the next whatever, 15 years or however long.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

The statute of limitations is on, on, on IP of a certain sequence of amino acids. So all the, all the point is, is like just do your own research and understand what these things do for you as opposed to just listening to your GP or just taking what the government says at face value.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Amen to that. And in a way, although it's never been noisier there, it's also never been easier to do your own research. I mean.

[Scott Clary]

Correct.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Easier. I don't know. There's a lot more out there. You got to sift through some noise to find the signal.

[Scott Clary]

Of course you can at least get information. And if you, you know, again, you don't just take the first research paper and well, this is, this is the answer. But it's all bingo.

[Patrick Bet-David]

And you know, where you begin to. Is you said this earlier, right. We have a number of quotes about this. No man is better than his incentives. You know, no man can be trusted to talk anything other than his own book. Never trust the barber that tells you you need a haircut. You know, the, the hammer that looks at every problem as if it's a nail. Right. That you have to start really with the incentives. And I've, I've noticed this, you know, so for instance, and I won't name names but like they're. Well, so in the US you can get peptides one of two ways. You can get them prescription or you can get research peptides.

[Scott Clary]

Yeah.

[Patrick Bet-David]

The prescription peptides tend to cost about 7 to 10x more.

[Scott Clary]

Yeah.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Than the research peptides. Now in my own anecdotal experience, these compounds were identical. In third party testing they were identical. So like you're, you're literally paying for the exact same thing. And by the way, don't take this as gospel. This is just for me. So I went through that process anecdotally and third party testing and I'm like, well, why would I, I'm not going to pay 7-10x more just because the FDA put a stamp on it. Like that's, that's silly. Right?

[Scott Clary]

That's what the, the drug company is, is saying that it's worth. But you can also just test it yourself. But then you're making the assumption that people that. Okay, so you, you deal with money in crypto. So what's the issue with crypto? It's that people have to protect their own assets as opposed to relying on a bank to protect their assets. There's no FDIC insurance. Yeah. On, on your, on Your wallet, right?

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

So you lose money, you lose crypto, you lose bitcoin, it's gone.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

Same with, same with. If you buy from a third party that's not mandated to get. If you buy from a peptide source, it's not mandated to have a third party test. And there's no government stamp of approval. Well, you should probably go find a third party to make sure that what you're buying is actually what's in the thing.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Bingo.

[Scott Clary]

So you got to take it. You gotta, like, listen, I'm a big fan of, of agency and taking control over your own life and using experts, if you need experts or gatekeepers or whatever. The thing is that they are useful, but too many people outsource their thinking.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yes.

[Scott Clary]

To these individuals completely.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yes, yes, yes. So that's kind of. I mean, pretty much what I was driving at is like, you know, rather than trust any individual who's always going to be biased to their own book or their own incentives.

[Scott Clary]

Yeah.

[Patrick Bet-David]

I like to try and get advice from across the spectrum. Right. Let me talk to the guy that does this, the prescription. Let me talk to the guy that does the research. Let me talk to the guy that does it to himself. Let me talk to the guy that does it for clients, you know, whatever the spectrum is, and then poll the audience, gather all of that, and then do your own research and then let anecdotal experience lead. I really, and I'm not saying that's the final formula, but for me, up until this point, that's what's been most useful.

[Scott Clary]

I think it's a very healthy formula. I think, I think if more people defaulted to that way of thinking, I think across the board they'd be living healthier, more fulfilled lives. We're talking about health and wellness, but I mean, like, how many companies teach how to invest? Yeah, right. Yeah, like, you gotta, you gotta learn this yourself. Actually, one of my, one of my, one of my best bosses. When I was growing up, I worked for a company. It was, it was a smaller company. They were doing about 10 million in revenue. And he obviously didn't have the money to do like pension plans and, and RRSP or 401k contributions, like a lot of big companies have. He would have lunch and learns where he would teach his staff how to invest, which I thought was like the, the most useful thing an entrepreneur, business owner could ever teach somebody. Of course, because how many companies do you work for and you have no idea how to invest your money or build wealth? And I think that that's that's the answer. It's like, okay, so how do you figure out how to navigate life on your own? Like, what's, and if more people, if more people adopted that perspective, I think they'd just be happier, healthier, richer, whatever the metric is that you're trying to go after, you'd figure it out faster than just hoping that somebody's going to answer all your questions for you and like, you know, give you the answer, give you the outcome. Because most, I mean, nobody ever gives you the outcome you want. Nobody will ever care about your goals, your objectives, your life as much as you.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yes, yes. No, no. It's well said. It's well said. And yeah, I don't know. And I think it becomes something that carries over into other domains of your life, right? Once you start taking radical responsibility for one thing, your health or your wealth or whatever it is, and you see that it works, you're like, oh, why don't I do that here? Why don't I do that there? And then before you know it, like, you're semi put together.

[Scott Clary]

Adult self advocacy. I literally just had a call with, I'm trying to, I'm trying to find somebody to, to help me with, with some pr because I don't, I don't do enough of it. I should do more of it actually for myself. Like, and I was talking to some, some woman and she, she has a visa. She's based in the US and how her visa works, it's not a great visa. It's, it's like, it's a visa that, it keeps expiring, you keep having to renew it. And I'm like, well, why don't you, why don't you figure out how to get to a green card? Even though it's difficult, there's a, there's a path. There's a path for it. It, you know, it can be a pain in the ass sometimes. But if you're gonna move your life down here, especially if I'm going to work with you, I don't want somebody who's like, gonna, like, there's a chance you're just gonna leave and then I have to find somebody new. Like, I'm giving you this advice so, like, you can stay down here permanently because I, I like you. I like what you're talking about. Like, stop, like dabbling in this move, like, get the right visa, work down here permanently, whatever. And, and she was like, well, my lawyer got me the tn, but never really, never really told me how to get my green card. I'M like, well, what did you ask the lawyer? And the lawyer said, well, she said, I asked the lawyer to get me a tn. I'm like, so the lawyer did exactly what you asked the lawyer to. But why don't you. Why don't you realize what you want out of life and advocate for yourself?

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

And. And. And force them to do more. Like, be like, okay, so I got my first visa. I can spend six months or whatever. I can't remember the amount of time I can spend so much time in the US on this kind of visa. But the ultimate goal for me is to be green card, citizen, resident, whatever the goal is. Like, what's the playbook to get there? So you have to tell people what you want. And then you got to. And if that lawyer can't do it, then go interview five more immigration lawyers and see what they can do for you. I just. So it's interesting and it's strange to me because that is how I have always operated. I've always been very much an advocate for myself and my goals. And if somebody can't help me with achieving what I want to achieve, I'll find 20 other people and I'll talk to all of them and I'll figure it out in health and life and business and everything. But the thought of people not advocating for themselves and just thinking that life's going to work out for themselves is. That concept does not compute for me. Like, it does not make sense to me. If I want to end up in the US I'll figure out a way to. I mean, I did it. I'm Canadian. I'm down here now. Got the green card. But if you want to figure out the business. Business is not going to manifest itself. Your health is not going to manifest itself. You got to figure it out. Like, figure it the out. Like. Like, get your together and advocate for yourself.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

And everything. This is the most important idea. Because no one else is. No one's coming to save you. Ever, ever, ever. No one's coming to save you.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Amen to that, man. And it's. Yeah, self advocacy, self sovereignty. I mean, they all kind of have similar flavor for whatever reason. This quote came up as you were saying that. I'll paraphrase it. I don't know. It's something like, you know, a millionaire sees a problem and says, I'm gonna go solve that. And a billionaire sees a problem and says, I'm gonna go hire somebody to solve that. And so that's also a good.

[Scott Clary]

That's also a good Way to just finding.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah. Like, and it's easier said than done. Of course there's all these difficulties in finding the right people and you have to invest time and energy to sort through them and have the 20 conversations. And there's that. It's a never ending struggle. But man, the juice is definitely worth a squeeze.

[Scott Clary]

Right.

[Patrick Bet-David]

When you do.

[Scott Clary]

I don't even think enough people have the millionaire mindset problems themselves.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah, yeah.

[Scott Clary]

Like, like level two is go higher. Good people. Surround yourself with good people. You're the average of the five people. You know all these cliche. Very, very true. Delegate, hire good talent. 100. But I don't even think enough people are like, this is what I want in life. I'm gonna go after it. A lot of people drift. I know a lot of people just drift and hope that something happens that's good. I. That to me is so anxiety inducing.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

Maybe it's because I'm a control freak. I don't know. Like, if I want something in life, I am going to be the architect of that reality.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yes.

[Scott Clary]

I am going to do the thing required. And I think that that's a. I mean there's an. A writer, author, Jay Yang, and he wrote a book called you can just do things.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

And it's just a very simple idea.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

But you can just do things.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

Like you can do whatever the you want.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

If you want to start a business, you want to quit your job, you want to ask that girl out, you want to lose 10 pounds, you want to pick up from your country and move halfway across the world, you can just do things.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yes.

[Scott Clary]

I mean, you know this. You, you've built a whole life on just doing that you want to do and figuring it out.

[Patrick Bet-David]

One of my highest health priorities is keeping my brain in top shape. To take care of my brain power, I do many things such as striving to read, write, exercise and meditate daily. One of the latest tools in my brainpower toolkit is Mind Lab Pro. Mindlab Pro is a nootropic supplement that is scientifically proven to enhance your brain power. When I take Minelab Pro, my mind feels like it has a better grip on the world. My thinking is more lucid and the articulation of my speech is radically improved. Mindlab Pro has been tested in rigorous double blind, placebo controlled human trials and has been proven to enhance brain power for users in every age group. Mindlab Pro is an advanced formulation of 11 nootropic ingredients and is backed by research from over 1400 human trials conducted over the past 32 years. So if you're looking to enhance your brainpower, Mindlab Pro is an excellent solution. Go to mindlabpro.com breedlove to start enhancing your brain power today. Again, that's mindlabpro.com breedlove yeah, you know, I don't. Everyone's different, I guess, but at some point along the way, I heard it's like the philosophy of, it's all, you're either winning or learning. Basically.

[Scott Clary]

Yes.

[Patrick Bet-David]

You know, like, as long as you frame it that way. Every failure, quote, unquote. Failure. No, that's a learning opportunity. Right. So, okay, you aimed at something, you shot at it, you missed. Okay, let's. What went wrong? Let's learn how we went wrong. Let's assimilate that into my mental model and action pattern for next time. And if. And it somehow, like, keeps you simultaneously optimistic and humble and open to learning and like success oriented. Right. Like, oh, well, I'm never losing. I'm never just drifting. I'm actually like, I choose a goal, I aim at it. If I hit it, great. If I miss, I learn and I take aim again. And just. Yeah. I don't know. The willingness to embrace failure. Look like a fool, all these things, you know, they. Like what? I guess it's like a paradox, right, that like, failure is the key ingredient to success. Something like that.

[Scott Clary]

Failure. It is a paradox, but it's the truth. Failure is mandatory. Failure is the prerequisite.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

You, you literally cannot have a life that in my opinion, is, Is worth living without failure.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

Like, I think it's required. But people experience this on a micro level because they've been dumped. So they learn what they want in a partner and they go find somebody who is a better match. They get fired. So they learn some new. Or they realize that they're not as good at something as they thought they were, so they find a better job opportunity. So I just don't understand why people stop. I don't understand why people understand that this is. Maybe they don't understand that this is how they got to where they are through failure. Because at some point they stop wanting to fail because it's scary and terrifying. Even though their entire life was built on repeat failures which led them to the successes that they currently have.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yes.

[Scott Clary]

I think that what ends up happening is the ceiling that they've sort of established for themselves is probably because that's. This is a. I don't want to go too off topic, but I, I genuine, like, I genuinely believe that the ceiling that you establish for yourself is usually sort of imprinted on you from a young age, from your parents, your peers, like your. Your just your environment. So whatever. Whatever life that you think is. Is sort of an acceptable life is something that is imparted on you by someone close to you, who loves you, says, hey, you should be a doctor. You should be a dentist, or, this is the job that I had, or this is the. The house that we afforded, or this is the type of person that I'm married to. Like, this is the norm. And that imprints on you, and that is your norm. It's not actually your norm. It's someone else's norm that was imprinted on you. Now, after you hit that norm, then I think it's very scary to go above and beyond it. So then you start calculating, is there a chance I can fail? Even though on the way to achieving that norm, you've had to take risks, you've had to take chances. You failed many, many, many times to hit the norm, to hit the subconscious ceiling that you think is an acceptable life. Now, beyond that, it's not normal to you. It's not comfortable to you. So then you start actually becoming worried about failure, which is interesting, because failure is what got you to where you are at that point. And I believe that if you started to understand that failure is what got you to that point, and that failure beyond that point will only lead to more success, more whatever you want, then I think it starts to become a little bit easier for you to sort of break out of that ceiling that. That psychological ceiling that you set for yourself. But I think that most people, they hit what they think is comfortable. This is like comfort zone. This is literally what I'm describing. They hit a comfort zone, and then they reframe the relationship with failure, because now they've hit something that is not comfortable.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Sure, sure.

[Scott Clary]

Which is. Which is silly when you think about it, because if they just took another step and had another failure and then took another step and another failure, all of a sudden you've broken outside your comfort zone, and now you can achieve whatever you want to achieve.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

But because you've reframed your. Your relationship with failure, all of a sudden it becomes scary.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah. No, no, you. Yeah. It's like you inherit it through imitation from your parents or whoever. And then. Yeah, if you're not lucky, but if you succeed, then you hit that, you fulfill that.

[Scott Clary]

Yeah.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Well, what I want to say is

[Scott Clary]

it's another chance after that, which is actually why you should. Yeah. Go ahead.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Sorry, sorry. I was just going to say, like, you think that's the goal, right? You fulfill the thing, but it's really, once you get there, it's a self limiting belief, right. Like you've just filled the container.

[Scott Clary]

Limiting belief.

[Patrick Bet-David]

There's this, there's this quote by Schopenhauer. He says, every man takes the limits of his field of vision for the limits of the world. And that one I carry with me a lot. It's like, well, as you just said, right, like you can fulfill what you thought was possible, but know that there's always another step. You can always take another step.

[Scott Clary]

And, and it's fine to not have to go after that next step. Like that's okay.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

I just think that more people have to understand if the life they're living is theirs or their parents or their guidance counselors or whatever the influence is, because I think what how this manifests in real life is, is a midlife crisis. The life you're living is actually not yours. You've hit a ceiling that was created by someone else who had influence over you when you were young. And then you realize, like, this is actually I want much more than this, or not even much more. Sometimes it's, I want different than this. And then you realize that your whole life you've been, you've been playing it safe to achieve a life that isn't even what you wanted. And that's when hits the fan. That's when you get stressed, depressed. That's when people act out, quit their job and, and start a business, even though they should have been a little bit more safe about how they transition out of their work. This is when people cheat on their wife after being married to them, and then they sleep with, you know, someone and they realize it's a huge mistake, but they were acting out because they didn't understand that the life that they created for themselves was not even theirs.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yes, that's.

[Scott Clary]

That's the sad part.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yes, yes.

[Scott Clary]

I. Anyways, no, it's so good.

[Patrick Bet-David]

I, I feel like they're the. It's like the principle of cost aversion, you know?

[Scott Clary]

Yes.

[Patrick Bet-David]

People hit some level of success. I've heard guys, I've heard rich guys say this, right. I'm in the stay rich business, not the get rich business. And okay, sure, there's some degree of truth to that, right? Like you want, you don't want to just bet everything on every startup, you know, like you, okay, maybe when you're super broke, that might work, but when you're super rich and you're a billionaire. You don't want to bet all your net worth on every startup.

[Scott Clary]

Right.

[Patrick Bet-David]

That's not a recipe to have longevity. But I guess the, what I wanted to drive at was like there is a cost even to that. When you, when you think you're in the stay rich business and you're playing it super conservative. There's a cost, right? There's a cost, you know, and it might be you're living the life that you don't want to live. It might be, you know, it could be any number of things.

[Scott Clary]

So I don't think there's such thing as, as maintain, like maintenance. I think maintenance is right. Anything is incorrect. You're either growing or, or you're shrinking or you're, you know, and you usually

[Patrick Bet-David]

both at the same time.

[Scott Clary]

Exactly. You maintain the same health level over time. You are, you are generally getting less healthy, your body's breaking down. You maintain the same amount of money in a checking account. You know this 10 years later, it's not worth the same amount because of inflation. Any maintenance is, is really just depreciation over. Oh, it's like you're lying to yourself. So the goal is not to, the goal is not to always be in, you know, hyper growth mode or needing to do so, so so much more. But I'm a believer that you should be growing across all areas of your life until the day that you die.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yes.

[Scott Clary]

I don't like maintenance. I think that you should always be trying to do more because even by trying to do more you're really just probably going to be maintaining a baseline. Like you should be trying to exercise your brain, taking on tasks, having hobbies, doing part time work until you die so that you, you maintain your cognitive health. You should be working out, you should be going for walks, you should be doing something physical until the day that you die to maintain your physical health. I believe you should also be actively trying to build new relationships, new friends, improve the ones that you already have. I think there's a, some benefit to increasing your spiritual health over your entire lifetime. I think that there's not a single part of your life that you should just try and maintain because maintain is a slow death. So I truly believe that you should always be trying to do something more or something different across all areas. I don't believe in retirement, ever. Complete retirement. I, I'll give you an example. My mom's retired. She's currently learning. My mom and my dad are both retired. My dad currently started doing, acting like Part time acting for fun. In his retirement he's like taking on like these side roles and just like very fun work. But like fun work. My mom's learning how to use AI and different LLMs to put together like a family website using Manus and Claude Co. Like yes, they're not working. They don't have to work. But they're definitely not just sitting around watching TV all day.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

So I think that it's very important to just constantly be evolving in everything. And I think that, that, I mean bringing back to health, I think that's how you're going to be your healthiest self until the day that you die. But also probably be the happiest and the most fulfilled.

[Patrick Bet-David]

So true. So true. I want to read some of your, your quotes now if that's okay.

[Scott Clary]

Let's do it.

[Patrick Bet-David]

And again. Yeah, we'll put all the links in the show notes to your different accounts. I'm looking at the 10 minute mindset right now just because I'm like the words focus guy and that's where what's the words page? So I'll just read one of these and then we could riff.

[Scott Clary]

Let's go.

[Patrick Bet-David]

You wrote that the most expensive word in your vocabulary is later. Later. I'll start later. I'll call later. I'll say the thing most people's entire life strategy is later. Later is just never with better marketing. Which is like almost everything you were just saying just.

[Scott Clary]

Yeah.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Crystallized.

[Scott Clary]

This is such an important idea for me. I think that where that idea came from is because most people with whatever they need to do in their life, they need to have the conversation, take the first step towards building the thing. Go to the gym. After five years off. Most people know what they have to do to improve the situation that's bugging them. But most people keep putting it off in perpetuity. And there's this, I mean even Mel Robbins speaks about this to a degree. There's this gap between knowing and doing. Call it like the, the knowing doing gap. And I think that if you just shorten the amount of time between knowing and doing, you'll find a way to figure it out. I think an example Mel Robbins speaks about is if you want to go to the gym, you know, walk out the door in three seconds and just start heading to the gym. And then you'll go to the gym. But if you put it off for five minutes, I don't remember the exact rule she has. But if you put up for five minutes or even 20 seconds or whatever the Time frame is there's a higher likelihood that you won't go do the thing. So I think that the answer for everything is action.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yes.

[Scott Clary]

The answer for anything you want to prove in life is just action. And more often than not, especially in, you know, today's information age, where we have access to all the strategies, all the tactics, all the ideas. If you want to go figure out how to eat well, if you want to go figure out how to go raise money, if you want to go figure out how to, you know, I don't know, get a new job, you can Google all that stuff. You can chat GPT, you can listen to podcasts and books, and you can. You can figure out the. The tactics all day. But the X factor in, in happiness, in completion, in a good life is action is doing. So stop saying later. Take action immediately and figure it out on the way, because that's how everybody operates. That's how everybody who you look up to, that's how everybody who's successful operates. They know what they have to do and they just go do it. Like, it's not. It's never, ever that complicated. It doesn't mean that it's not hard work, but it's not complicated work. So this is why saying later is. Is a lie. It is truly a lie. You can do anything you need to do right now. A more practical example, this is a little bit wild to me, but it'll illustrate the point. So I've built the podcast in my friend group. I'm like the podcast guy. I've probably had like 50 or 60 people. Not even just friends, like people at conferences who be, hey, how do you start a podcast? And I should probably. I should probably like, sell this at some point. But I. I have like, a document with all of my sops and like, all the strategies and how I prep for guests and how I find guests and all the different tools and the tech that I use. And I have it in. In a. In a drive and a Google Drive. And if you wanted to, by the way, I can send it to you if it helps. But. And anybody who wants and. And is listening to this can definitely use it because I've given this to about 50, 60 people. And out of the 60 people that have taken this and opened it, two people have started podcasts. And I've been giving this out for the past, like, five years.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

So. And. And then. And some of them are friends. And I'll be like, why didn't you start a podcast? Like, you asked me for it? You've been. You keep bugging me about this every time you go out. You ask me ideas about podcasting and I've basically told you everything that I've done and the answer is, well, I'll just do it later, or some version of that, which is a lie. It means that you either don't want it. Actually, that's really what it means. It means you don't really want it.

[Patrick Bet-David]

That's right.

[Scott Clary]

Even if you say you want it and you think you want it for some reason, it's not a priority for you.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

So if you want something, stop lying to yourself about it and just do it now. Immediately. You want to start a podcast? Record your first episode tonight?

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

You want a job? Go apply to. Go. Go apply to 50 jobs tonight that are, are a little bit better than what you have right now. You want to go to the gym? Go tonight. Like, I mean like literally get off. Stop listening to this. You don't need to listen to the rest of this. Go. Go to the gym right now. It's just the answer to everything is action. And people will say, well, I'm scared or I'm nervous. I'm also a believer that the answer to imposter syndrome and anxiety is action is reps.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yes.

[Scott Clary]

When I. When I so public speaking is the biggest fear in the world outside of dying. I think that some people would rather die than speak on stage. I also am not anymore. But when I first started speaking, I was nervous as hell in the first. I've said this story a few times. HubSpot, the company has been a big sponsor of the show for years now. So they host a big conference called Inbound in Boston every year. And about, you know, 10 to 15,000 people show up to this thing. And because they're sponsoring the podcast, they asked me to speak on stage. Stage. And this was the first time, this was years ago. This is the first time I ever spoke on stage. And I was obviously nervous because everybody who's being asked for the first time to speak on stage at a massive conference, that is super nerve wracking. And did it went okay. There was like a sweat shaped imprint of my body on the chair after I got up, but it was fine. I survived and it went well. But in my mind I just thought I never want to experience that amount of fear again. So what's the answer? Well, there's two answers. Never speak again or speak a lot more.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

And yeah, I live by my principles. All these little thoughts are all of my principles. These are all Things that I've learned myself. So as opposed to saying, I'm gonna practice later, I'm gonna like that week, when I got back from Boston, I went on eventbrite. I scraped every single event that was happening in South Florida, got all the email addresses, and then ran an email. I just sent it emails to about 200 different event organizers, big and small, saying, hey, if you'll have me, I don't want any money. I just want to speak for 10 minutes in front of your audience. So I just. And I spoke everywhere and anywhere I could. And now I don't have these nerves and this fear when I jump on stage anymore. So this is the, the quote that you, that you, that you, that you just said. It's, it's two ideas. So it's not just about saying later, but it's about taking action. But the reason why people don't take action is usually fear. So then I'm telling you that the antidote to fear is ironically, more action. This is how I got comfortable speaking on stage. This is how I became a better podcaster. This is how I, you know, write better content. It's just doing more of the thing. And I think that, honestly, like, if people just stop saying later and just took the first horribly messy, painful first step, now they go into the gym for the first time, they produce the first podcast episode, they go on stage for the first time, it's all gonna suck. That's a requirement. But then keep doing it for the next five years and you'll figure it out.

[Patrick Bet-David]

It is that simple. Not that easy, but is that simple. Honestly, I love. Yeah, the. What's the saying? When you do what you fear, fear disappears.

[Scott Clary]

Yes. I think you've got a lot of micro. You should also be writing some, Some fire. Some fire.

[Patrick Bet-David]

I, I, you know, I will try. I will try, but none of these are mine. Again, these are things I've just picked up along the way, you know, and I just have a good semantic memory for them. But you said something there, too. It's like the X factor is just the execution, basically. And, like, it is that simple, guys. Like, don't over complicate it. Sure. We have a saying in Tennessee, you know, like, you do a lot of woodworking. Measure twice, cut once, like, okay, great, do your prep, do your thinking. You know, do your pros and cons or SWOT analysis, whatever you want to do.

[Scott Clary]

Yeah.

[Patrick Bet-David]

But don't live in analysis paralysis. Get to the do stuff, because that's really where the learning actually occurs. Now it's not to say that prep wasn't valuable. I'm not saying that. But the most of the learning, I think it's like 80, 20 rule. 80% of what you need to know is going to come through the doing.

[Scott Clary]

And also like the first version of anything you do is going to suck.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

Always. That's okay. That's. That's a requirement. That's the first version of. I think I was just listening to the Brian Chesky speak about Airbnb. I think they launched. He said they launched three times because the first two launches were just abysmal. So even smart, smart guys starting startups, they. They measure twice, cut once, and it still sucks. And they do it two more times after that.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

And also what actually ends up. What ends up happening is when you do something enough times, you start to develop pattern recognition for that thing.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Bingo.

[Scott Clary]

Which is what. Start to realize what good actually looks like. Because you can never truly understand what good looks like just through research.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

You have to understand what good looks like for yourself, which is. That is very important. What does good look like for yourself? What does good look like for your work at routine? What does good look like for your job? What does good look like for your podcast or for you? Because you can always read and prepare. But maybe when you start your podcast, you don't enjoy this format of podcasting, or you like a certain style of interview, or you want to do debate style, or you want to do solo style. You will never know what you like based on research. You just got to figure it out through doing. You never know what diet works for you, what food do you eat, what workout regime gives you the most based on your schedule. Are you working out in the morning or at night? What certain kinds of food give you energy, certain kinds of food keep you kind of sluggish, and there's like brain fog. You got to figure out what works for you across the board. And I think that that's where research will never be able to tell you that. It'll just give you all the ideas that you can then, you know, pressure test and play with.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah. At best, they're entry points into action. You know the ideas and that's all good and useful. Again, but like, you know, well, here's another one for you. You can't learn to swim by reading about water. You know, you gotta get in that water. You gotta do this.

[Scott Clary]

One of my favorites.

[Patrick Bet-David]

And, you know, it's all, you know, the philosophy of Reps, which I fully subscribe to as well. I also, the Public speaking thing. Identical journey, not identical. I didn't solicit all the guys and go do the thing, but I, like, was very scared of it, and so I started accepting all the gigs I could until I got more comfortable.

[Scott Clary]

However you do it. However you do it.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

Yeah.

[Patrick Bet-David]

All right. I want to read another quote here. Something. This is what you wrote. This something I noticed about people who never seem stressed. They made the decision once what to eat, when to exercise, what to say no to. They're not disciplined. They just stopped. Re deciding the same thing every day. Re deciding is what is exhausting. You love that.

[Scott Clary]

I think that the most successful people that I know, and this idea has radically improved my life is. Is understanding your boundaries, your non negotiables. And those become. Those become who you are. Those become a part of your identity. I. I mean, yes, people will say that. Well, I want to choose, you know, something for different for dinner this. This weekend. Yeah. I mean, there's. There's times when you can live your life.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

But I know the food that I eat. I know the schedule that I keep. I know when I go to the gym. I kind of know the clothes that I like to buy and wear. I know the people that I like to hang around with. And that's again, 80, 20 rule. And that makes my life very simple and very predictable. And I think that a predictable life, because it's two. Two ideas can be true at the same time. You have to have a predictable life so that you can take these big, bold, audacious swings once in a while. Yes, yes, but I reserve. I reserve all of my energy for these big, bold, audacious swings. I'll give you a more tangible example. Most of my life is waking up, going to the gym, podcasting, writing, jumping on mandatory schedule calls with my team. That's like 90 of my life. But then next week, I'm taking a flight to Franklin, Tennessee to go interview Dave Ramsey. So that's interesting, but that's not the average. But I'm going to put a lot of effort, energy into that thing. But the only reason why I put effort and energy into that thing is because this week is exactly how this week should go, and last week is exactly how the last week should go. So I get all of my stuff done and all the. And I don't. I'm not jumping on calls that are distracting me from work. I'm not doing anything. I get, you know, this is sort of to protect myself from shiny object syndrome. I'm not starting 10 new projects. I'm doing what works and I'm putting energy and effort into that one thing, which is my business. And then once in a while, I can take a big shot, go on a little bit of a podcast tour, go speak at a big event, whatever it is. But that's not the majority of my time. The majority of my time is focus. And you can only truly focus by setting the boundaries across all areas of your life. I think that it's actually Naval Ravikant who speaks about to be. This is a misquote, but I'll paraphrase. To be truly happy, you have to be comfortable saying no to most things.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah, yeah.

[Scott Clary]

And this is where this idea comes from. Yeah, it's. It's knowing exactly what you are and who you are and what you do and saying no to almost everything else. I think that this is an increasingly important idea in the age of distraction, where we get new ideas and new and we are newly influenced almost every single day, several times a day. I think that what this idea, where this idea really stemmed from, was really me thinking about, okay, which business should I try and build? Which sort of things should I focus on? My energy and my time and my money. And the answer is, it doesn't matter. You just have to pick one. So if I want to build a podcast, if I put a hundred percent of my energy and time and money into podcasting over 10 years, it'll be a successful podcast. If I wanted to build a marketing agency, if I wanted to go become a C suite level executive at a company, if you put 100% of your energy into that thing, it will eventually work out. Again, not hard work, not, not complicated work, a lot of hard work. But I think that what happens to too many people is they are making too many different decisions on a day to day about what they want to work on, which projects they want to take on, which business they want to start, the people that they're jumping on calls, they're going for coffees, their life is absolute chaos and they have 10 different things going on and all these new decisions that are draining their energy. They have no focus and nothing actually gets done. Bingo. So this is why this idea is very important.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Bingo. I mean, the Steve Jobs and turtleneck thing kept popping up for me where he's like, you can take it to the extreme. Extreme. Right. Where he's like, I'm not even choosing what shirt to wear. Like, I just wake up and bam. But again, it's 8020, right? And I think we're, we're flirting with this kind of Archimedean idea, you know, what did he say? Something like, give me a fulcrum and a lever long enough and I'll move the world. Right. You need the fixed structure, old point. To have more dynamism, you know, to have more freedom, movement, creativity, whatever you want to call it. And you know, that's kind of how you want to build your life. Right. Like 80% structure, I guess, 20% freedom and flow and creativity. And then on vacation you invert that, you know, you go like 80% freedom and flow and 20% structure.

[Scott Clary]

And most people are the inverse. I think that most people's lives are, are truly chaotic and reactive.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Reactive and not purposeful. Agreed. And that's dangerous because then you're just, you're drifting as you said earlier.

[Scott Clary]

You drift and time goes by so quickly. Yeah, I, I see like I've been in Miami now about six years, and I see people that I met like my first week here and, and forget. Forget people that I met in Miami. People that are high school friends and university friends, and they're always trying to do something new. They're always trying to do something new. And you go and look at what have they accomplished, and they're kind of in the exact same spot six years later or 15 years later.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

And that to me is. And people have different goals. Not everybody wants to build a business, that's fine. But if you do, this idea applies to you. Another. I mean, let's reframe it. If you don't want to build a business and you want to have kids and you want to raise a family and you, and you keep switching jobs and you keep going on vacations and you're not saving up money. If you're always changing your life and shifting and you aren't true to your own North Star and your own goals, I think people forget how fast life flies.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

So I'm just saying that. Honor your goals. And the way to do that is to make less decisions and to be distracted less and to, and to pursue the thing that you said is important

[Patrick Bet-David]

to you and to say no a lot. As you said with naval right, you got to say no a lot.

[Scott Clary]

To protect, say no a lot. Yeah, you got to say no a lot. Make less decisions. Let just have, just have your, your, your hard and fast rules about life and don't let anybody compromise those.

[Patrick Bet-David]

So there's a very special place called the Farm at okefenokee. That's a 1,000 acre regenerative farm community about 45 minutes northwest of Jacksonville, Florida. The farm is a completely off grid community. It has total food, water and energy independence. Everything on the farm is 100% organic and it even features wild boar and bear hunting. The farm at Okefenokee is right next to the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge where you can do camping and canoeing tours. So if you're like me and you're interested in the self sovereign lifestyle, then you can get your own lot on the farm at Okefenokee. If you tell them that I sent you. Once you get a lot, you can build one of three custom cabin options. So if you value freedom, self sovereignty and living in touch with nature, then join me and my family. We have lot number 21 and we're going to be building a cabin there starting at December 2025. To learn more about the farm at okefenokee, go to okifarm.com and make sure to tell them that I sent you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Easier said than done. Again, I mean, I, I honestly struggle.

[Scott Clary]

None of these things are. None of these things are.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah. The saying no is difficult, especially when you. Well, especially when those requests come from people you love or care about and you're like, oh, of course you want to help them do a thing, but you're like, well, but I also have to stay true to the, the structure here. So there's always that tension. Like, don't you know?

[Scott Clary]

Yeah. Life, life is full of tension. Yeah, I mean that's, that's fair. I think that though, once you realize this is the thing about boundaries. Once you. Because this whole quote about decision making is really about setting boundaries. When you set boundaries, it'll create tension in the short term, but it will create healthier relationships in the long term because you won't be full of resent. You won't be full. You won't be resentful. Excuse me? You won't resent the life that you're living because if you compromise on your boundaries, you are constantly focused on things that are not important to you.

[Patrick Bet-David]

That's right.

[Scott Clary]

You will be resentful of all the people around you.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

And that's. And, and you can hide it for a while, but you cannot hide it forever. So either you will start to hate yourself or you'll start to hate the people around you if you don't honor what's actually important to you.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah, it's well said. And I, I think it also compromises your confidence. I've related this idea of like being able to confide in yourself Basically doing what you say you're going to do.

[Scott Clary]

Promises to yourself. Yeah, yeah.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Like I say I'm gonna do a thing, I better do it. Otherwise I can't trust myself. And if I can't trust myself, then I'm not gonna show up confidently. So confiding in oneself and being confident, these are. I mean, these are, These are the stakes, right? These are the stakes. They're not. It's not small, small potatoes we're talking about here. It's like, well, do you want to lead a life where you can be competent and confident and show up and take care of people? Well, then you got to draw these hard boundaries.

[Scott Clary]

By the way, on. On the other side of boundaries and focus and less decisions is a better version of you.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yes.

[Scott Clary]

That can, that can properly take care of people that actually need you.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yes.

[Scott Clary]

Like if. If you can't even get your own life together, how can you possibly take care of anyone else when your life is chaotic? So it's short term tension for ultimately a long term, much better outcome.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yes.

[Scott Clary]

I just need people to be focused for a. Be a little bit more selfish. Be a little bit more focused in the short term and then again, other side of that. Then you built the business or you achieve the career, or you got the, the goal or the milestone, whatever the thing is that you want, and then you're happy, you're at peace, and then you can now help everybody else.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah, no, no, it's well said. Okay, You. I don't think you have a ton of time left, so I want to read some more of these. This one's awesome.

[Scott Clary]

Listen, you can come. You can, you can come. Well, you're leaving Miami soon. When you're back, we can. We can record some more stuff.

[Patrick Bet-David]

No, no, I would love that. Well, and remotely, I would. Yeah, definitely would love.

[Scott Clary]

Anytime.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Get more of these. This one's great. So there's another money one. I guess. I like the money ones because whatever your parents don't want your money, they want Tuesday. They want the random phone call. They want you to ask how their doctor's appointment went. The stuff that cost you nothing is the stuff they. They will remember. Man, that one hits hard, dude. Especially, you know, for people that have lost their parents. I lost my mom a couple years ago, and, you know, there's a time where she would leave me a bunch of voicemails and I'm like, oh, my mom's so annoying, you know? And now I'm like, I wish almost more than anything I would get an annoying voicemail. From my mom, you know, and it just, it's again, you're just, you're this little tiny quote. This can. I can plant the seed with someone to be more engaged with, with, with their parents. And the thing, you know, people and relationships and the things of value in their life in a way that they might be taking for granted. I think we're probably all guilty of taking our parents for granted at some point.

[Scott Clary]

We do. I think that. I think there's two ideas that are really important for people to understand. How many more times they'll see their parents. Because if you look at. If you look at how many years they have left on this earth and you think about, well, okay, we don't even live in the same city anymore. How many more Christmases or Thanksgivings are we actually going to see each other? And if you, if you actually do the math, the amount of times you're going to see your parents before they die is. Is quite small. Yeah, you can, you. You can start to really understand how important it is to make the most and, or even make more times to see them. Now, obviously, if you're living in the same city, on the same street, it's a little bit different. But if you start to move away, which a lot of us do, and we start to have our own lives, I mean, what if I think about my parents and say the average person, the average doesn't really live past 85. 80. 85, maybe. Maybe 90. Unfortunate, because I think my family, my grandparents were a little bit older than that. But if we go by the averages, then you have 10 visits with them. If you see them once a year.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Crazy.

[Scott Clary]

Like, that's startling. Incredible, Incredibly incredible in such a. In such a horrific way. I'm. I think that most people don't really think about that, and they don't really do the math. One more thing that's important to me, and you will. You will understand this because you. You speak a lot about money, and you speak a lot about. You speak a lot about finance. And, you know, my podcast is. Is called Success Story. And the reason why I called it that is to show not everybody who's come on my show has made a lot of money. What is a lot? Some people have, you know, some people are worth a couple millions. People are worth a billion. But the point is they've all made a fair amount of money. And success is never about the money. I always ask people, like, what does success mean to you? And it's never about the money. It's always about something. Else, it's about freedom, it's about time with their kids. It's about health. Well, like, there's something else that is true success. And I think that too many people just focus on money. I always like to think after I've interviewed these people, what I found is that there's sort of five things that is true success. There's like sort of five buckets to life. So there's, yes, money, financial success, but then there's health, physical health, mental health, spirituality, and relationships. And these are sort of the five things that if you max out these things and you focus on these things, you're generally a pretty happy person. I think that most people in pursuit of money let the other four things drop completely, for sure. So for sure, especially just focus on money. You get it. You've. You've seen these people, you know these people. And there's two versions of guests that I have on the show. People that have just focused on money and let the other four buckets drop, or people that have made money, but they made sure to maintain the other parts of their life, not always at a hundred percent across the board. While they were in build mode when they were 20, maybe they didn't have the spirituality component dialed in, or maybe they were not going to the gym. But the point is, they never let anything drop to zero. And by the way, when I say spirituality, that could be mindfulness meditation, journaling, something to allow yourself to be alone with your own thoughts. I think that's a very important. Or it could be traditional religion, whatever it is you subscribe to. But the point is, these are the things that truly create happiness and health. And in my opinion, true success. And the two versions of the people that I sit across and that I interview, they've all made money, but some of them have forgotten the other four buckets. Some of them have maintained the other four buckets. And the people that have forgotten the other four buckets, they always feel like they're chasing after something. So they had the exit, and now they're maniacally chasing after their health. Or now they're trying to, you know, date as many people as possible. Or now they had this, like, come to Jesus moment, quite literally, and they went from entrepreneur to speaking about nothing except God. It seems like they're always chasing after something. They're trying to make up for all the lost years. And some are successful, many are not. So all I can say is, after studying some of the most successful people on planet Earth, don't let those other parts of your Life disappear. And don't neglect them in pursuit of money because I see the, the people that are chasing those other buckets after they've made their money.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

And they're not happy, they're not content, and sometimes it's a little bit too late.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

So that's my recommendation. And that's why, you know, you asked about parents. Yes. That's one way to tell this story. Because it is important to understand what parents actually care about, but it's also just not about the parents. It's also about what you should care about. Parents know what's best for us. That's why they don't care about the money. Sometimes we don't know what's best for us. Anyways, those are a couple ideas that hopefully that had a big impact on me.

[Patrick Bet-David]

That's wonderful. And you know, as you said at the top of the show, you know, there's a lot of different currencies. And so what are, what are we saying here in this course? Like, your parents want your time, you know, they don't want your money. Right. Like this time is that ultimate scarce currency that we're always spending, investing, you know, all the time. All the time. You know, you can't even, can't even talk without invoking time.

[Scott Clary]

Yeah, exactly. And then, so pay attention to what. That's why I'm saying, listen to your parents, spend more time with your parents. Listen to your parents more. And, and maybe focus on. It's good to be ambitious, but maybe focus on a couple other things at the same time.

[Patrick Bet-David]

That's right. That's right. And it is. I just want to acknowledge the difficulty of it. Well, I mean, maybe other people are better at this. I tend to be kind of like, I can, I guess you could pejoratively say I'm like a one trick pony. You know, I can do like one thing at a time. You know, I'm not great at juggling a bunch of different things at the same time. So it is genuinely difficult. But I try to make up.

[Scott Clary]

I can tell you do it because you have a business, you have a, you have a healthy relationship with your wife, you go to the gym, you read. That could be, that could be your, your mental health. That could be a component of spirituality too. Like you, you do all the things. Even if you're telling me you're not good at it, you're living it.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Well, I appreciate you saying that. I would, you know, not all the glitters is gold, as I say, you know, there's a lot of you know, this difficulty. I guess what I was gonna say is, like, my sort of adaptation for me is I try to just go really hard on one thing for a period of time.

[Scott Clary]

Yes.

[Patrick Bet-David]

And then you can kind of like automate that one thing, you know? So for reading, I went really hard when I was young and now it just became like a unconscious habit. And so other things, like, you know, now it's like, it's. It's largely relationships spirituality that I'm trying to learn to nurture more relationships being an area that I've struggled because I'm a little more introverted. I think I might even have like, Asperger's syndrome, slightly like the high functioning autism, which I'm learning about through my relation with my wife. So that's all useful stuff, but I just wanted to acknowledge the difficulties. Like, it's one thing to hear us say it. I don't want people to get the impression, like, oh, these guys, it's so easy for them. It's not for me. It's like, no, no, no, we. I won't speak for you, but I struggle every day. Struggle all the time. It's not.

[Scott Clary]

I do too.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And another thing to just, like, this is an important. Because this, this, what I just said was an important idea. But also seasons of your life can exist.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

You can have seasons of imbalance.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yes.

[Scott Clary]

But I think it's important to know when that season is starting and ending.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yes.

[Scott Clary]

I. I just mentioned that there's two guys or two types of people that sit across from me. Excuse me. And one version is somebody that has balance and has made sure to maintain these areas of their life outside of just money. And the other one is somebody who didn't. The thing is that they both had seasons of their life that were imbalanced. Just one person's season never ended.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Bingo. A season needs to be a season, right? Seasons end. Yeah, I. Yes. All of that is so spot on. I guess the one area of my life where that I'm very happy. Well, you know this. You live in Miami. Right. We see so many filthy rich dudes down here.

[Scott Clary]

Yeah, that's true.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Right. There's a lot of plenty of rich dudes in Miami, but man, the guys, you can almost feel the guys that just went all in on the money at the expense of the other four pillars you described. Right?

[Scott Clary]

Yeah.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Forget the relationships, forget the mental, forget the physical, forget the spiritual. I'm all in on the financial. And as a man, I understand the temptation in a way. It's like, well, money can solve a lot of your problems. It can help you help other people. It, you know, makes you feel useful, productive, all the things. But you must be careful not to just do that, you know, that, that five legged stool or whatever metaphor we want to use, it needs all the legs. And trust me, you know, specifically to young men like you might think money's going to solve all your problems. But no, it's not. It's like, who is the person you become along the way to acquire that money? Like, what did you do to acquire that money? And did you maintain these other aspects of your life? That is what will determine your satisfaction in life. Not just the money.

[Scott Clary]

Money solves, money solves, you know, money problems. But there's a lot of, there's a lot of things that, that are not solved by, by just, just money can solve a lot, but not everything. You know, people will say even it can solve relationship problems, it can solve, it can solve health problems. I mean, I guess to a degree, I'll tell you. I mean the, the guys that just focus on money. I've, I've, I've, I have some friends. I, I try and keep friends that have healthy balances, but I have some friends that are just, just money and it's good to a point. I mean, I have a good friend who sold his company for, you know, quite a bit and divorced, you know, doesn't. I guess he thought it would be fun to, to, to be single with a lot of money in Miami, which I guess for a period of time it can be. But now he can't date because he doesn't know how to judge if somebody actually cares about him or just wants to date him because of his money. And now it just creates this very lonely existence because you don't want to hook up. I mean you, if you live a couple years in Miami and you do nothing but hook up, most normal guys after a period of time are going to be like, well, I'd like a little bit more of a relationship, of course. A little bit.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

Like something that lasts more than 24 hours.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

But if you have a lot of money, then it becomes very difficult to find that, that real person that you could have found when you were 25, 30, when you both had nothing. And is that person with you because they care about you or because they care about the money? And so I'm sure that a lot of people, these are first world problems for sure. A lot of people would love to have these problems.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Sure.

[Scott Clary]

And deal with this stuff But I'm just saying that regardless of whether or not, you know, you're just laughing at me saying, I wish I was single, Miami, you know, with hundreds of millions of dollars and be able to do whatever you want. Forget that. I also know that Mark Randolph, who's a co founder of Netflix, dedicated every Tuesday night to going on date night with his wife. And they still have a beautiful relationship.

[Patrick Bet-David]

There you go.

[Scott Clary]

And he carved out a time for them. And I would look at a Mark Randolph versus an unnamed friend and say that I would much rather have a beautiful relationship with somebody who I loved, who I've shared a lot of my life with over a period of time. And Mark Randolph, I can guarantee you, is not broke. So the point is, there's two versions of, of, of people after who are both highly ambitious. Just one of them didn't let part of their life depreciate and, and, and didn't let the other buckets go. And I think that that's the person that I would look up to and that's the person who I'd rather be when I'm, you know, old and gray.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Spot on. And again, to reinforce your point, had he invested in those other pillars, you know, it's more likely that he wouldn't have thought being single in Miami with hundreds of millions of dollars is a good idea. Right. Like, had you actually invested in his, with his wife or his relationships, his spirituality, mental health, etc, you probably wouldn't come to that conclusion. Had you invested.

[Scott Clary]

You're probably right.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah. And yeah. You know, and then you could also go to the data. Right. Like, men that are happily married are more successful on like every dimension.

[Scott Clary]

Yeah.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Now, not to say that's again, not easy. You know, there's a chance.

[Scott Clary]

Nothing in life is easy.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Nothing's difficult.

[Scott Clary]

Like it's not, it's not easy to, I mean, it's not objectively hard. I want to be careful what I say so Gina doesn't punch me. It's not easy to have a long relationship. You got to put work towards it.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Oh, it's the hardest.

[Scott Clary]

Got to put work towards it.

[Patrick Bet-David]

It's the hardest thing. Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

And it's not like it's a, it's a pain or a burden. Like I actually. We spend too much time together because we enjoy our, each other's company so much, which is also, in my opinion, like a really good life hack. Like find a, find a best friend and then marry them. But yeah, you always put work towards it. Like you got to put work towards date night. And shutting off from work or spending time together and. And. And still dating and still loving each other, like, you know, the first week. And that's always work. It's. It's. It's something that you want to put effort and energy towards. I just rather put more work towards her than me being single and putting work towards random people that don't care about me, you know, every single weekend. That, to me, is not work that compounds. But work into one person definitely compounds sense.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Back to the monetary metaphors. Invest in the marriage. You don't just squander your, you know, spend on the. The Miami dating scene. And it's so true, man.

[Scott Clary]

Which can be a massive. In terms of money metaphor.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah. In every conceivable way. I want to respect your time here. Do you have time for me to read another here?

[Scott Clary]

Yeah, go for it. Okay.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Okay. You wrote had a mentor tell me at 25, stop collecting information and start collecting scars. Took me a decade to understand it. The scar teaches you something the book never could, because the scar has stakes. One of the mantras we recite often on this show is that pain is information. You know, it's like, it is the thing that motivates you to put yourself in a new formation. You know, you touch the hot stove and you recoil. And so obviously this is saying there's kind of a difference, somewhat difference between information and scars. But, like, the point sort of stands. It's like it is that. I mean, we said it earlier, right? It's like analyze and plan for 20, then spend 80 doing the thing. Get the scars.

[Scott Clary]

Do it. You'll get the scars. You'll get the failures. You'll get kicked in the teeth. It'll suck. It's all a prerequisite. It's all a requirement. Like, you need to have the scars to do anything. Great. This is what I was talking about before. You already have scars that have gotten you to where you are today. So whatever is you want to accomplish will be on the other side of more scars. Understand that and do it anyways. It's impossible to avoid.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah, yeah.

[Scott Clary]

That's why. I mean, just do. Just do more. Just start. Just do. This is why Nike. Nike's great. Just do it.

[Patrick Bet-David]

I was just gonna say that. I was just gonna say that. Yeah, Nikea, like, means victory, right? Something like that. And this whole idea of, like, literally just get to the do step. Almost. Like, even if you crazy, we always say think before you act. And there is some truth to that. But I think you're almost better served if you just get to that, if you have to pick one, it's like, get to the act step, because you're gonna get well.

[Scott Clary]

By the way, anybody who's listening to this podcast thinks way too much.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Exactly. Right?

[Scott Clary]

If you are this deep into a podcast, I know exactly who you are. And you've thought for weeks and months, and you've watched every podcast and read every single book, and you've consumed so much content, and all you've done is think, like, maybe my message would be different for a different person.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Yeah.

[Scott Clary]

If you're listening to this, I know you are thinking way too hard. Just do it. You already know enough.

[Patrick Bet-David]

That great way to know your audience there. Yeah. If we were pitching this to, like, I don't know, some criminals were trying to rehabilitate or something, maybe we'd tell them to think more. But yeah, not this for the nerds on here. Yeah, you probably need to over index on the action rather than the, okay, last one and I will let you go, I promise. You wrote something I noticed about people in their 40s who seem at peace. They stopped competing with everyone and started competing with who they were last year. Smaller scoreboard, better game. As someone who's. Yeah. Like, crazily competitive, and I don't think there's anything wrong with competition. Like, it's. It's good, it's healthy. You know, it's built into the word excellence. Right. Pushing one another to excel. But there's a lot of truth to. I guess you get to know yourself and you know what, you get to know the world a little better, and you get to know how you can add value to the world, and that's really what you need to be competing on. It's like, how do I double down, triple down on my adding of value to the world? That seems to be much more useful than, you know, how do I get the. More. The bigger yacht than the guy next door or. Or the hotter girl or whatever?

[Scott Clary]

I think that there's a couple ideas here. The first one is, yes, keeping up with the Joneses and comparing yourself to people on Instagram is a bad way to model your life. A lot of what we were speaking about is figuring out what matters to you and pursuing that. I think that's the most important idea. People that are a little bit more mature understand that they don't have to compete at games they don't even want to play. Now, the second idea is this concept of two mountains. So there's two mountains in life. The first mountain is achievement is getting after the money is building, the business is. You're. You're building, building, building, building. And after you achieve everything that you wanted to achieve and make sure that you don't move the goalpost too much. But after you achieve, you know, financial freedom, you can take care of everyone around you. You can work on what you want when you want. That's sort of the peak of the first mountain, the second mountain. You can only see the base of the second mountain after you've reached the peak of the first mountain and the second mountain, realizes that all that stuff that you went after is actually not even that important in the first place. So then you start to realize, what do I actually want? What's meaningful to me? How do I give more value or make more impact on the world? And what a lot of people should do after they've made their money, gone after these goals and hit them, is to start to remove and to focus your energy on what actually lights you up and makes you fulfilled. I think that. I think that too many people don't spend the right time, energy, or focus, so they never actually climb the first mountain. But then if they do climb it, they stay on that first mountain until the day they die, which I think is also an unhealthy way to live. And it's a quick way to make yourself very unhappy. So it's almost like addition through subtraction in the second, second half of your life on that second mountain. That's how you become truly happy, fulfilled. And ultimately, I think for a lot of people, that looks like giving back in some way. But that would be my recommendation. And I think that, you know, if you're young and you're listening to this, set a goal, go after it with an audacious amount of action. Bet on yourself, but also know your number. Also understand what your life, what you want your life to be. And then when you hit it, don't keep moving goal posts, don't keep comparing. That's your time in life to start to reduce and to minimize and to take things out of your life that don't serve you anymore. You've hit it. Good job. Congratulations. You've. You've listened to all the advice we've given you and you've made your, your million dollars per year or whatever it is that's important to you. Maybe it's more than that, maybe it's less than that, but don't keep, don't, don't keep living on this, you know, this hedonic treadmill of, of increasingly bigger goals and Bigger dopamine rushes. And it's just a very unhealthy and unhappy way to live. And you'll never win that game because there's no end to it.

[Patrick Bet-David]

100%. 100%. Well, I knew this would be a lot of fun to talk to you.

[Scott Clary]

Fun, this, a lot of fun. Do it again.

[Patrick Bet-David]

I, I, yeah, you're a master of your craft. I really appreciate the succinct way you crush all these big lessons into few words. So thank you for that.

[Scott Clary]

Thank you, thank you for finding my content and thank you for bringing me on. I appreciate you a lot.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Of course, of course. Where can people find you on the Internet?

[Scott Clary]

So if you like podcasts like this, mine's called Success Story. So a lot of the conversations that we have, it's not just about success. It's about unpacking how the people that have built some of the companies and, and some of the brands and, and whatnot that, you know, navigate life and sort of the lessons that they've learned on their way to get to where they are today. And then if you want to follow me on social, it's at Scott D Clary and you can find all the writings, all the newsletters, they're all linked on, on social. So all the channels are at Scott Declaring or the Success Story podcast.

[Patrick Bet-David]

Awesome. We'll link to all that in the notes. Scott, thanks so much, man.

[Scott Clary]

Thank you, dude. Thank you. And, and I appreciate you bringing me on. And honestly, I know you said, I know you said you're winding down the podcast compared to what it used to be, but you're very good at this. So like, don't wind it down too much is all I'm saying. This is really good. Thank you.

[Patrick Bet-David]

I really appreciate that. Thank you. And yeah, I hope, well, to focus more on, as we talked about it, the quality over the quantity. Right. And I'm hoping that reversion will make it more enjoyable for me and everyone else. So that's the plan.

[Scott Clary]

I think it will. Awesome, dude.

[Patrick Bet-David]

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