← Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Fan Favorite: Tucker Max on Reinventing Yourself in an Unpredictable World
00:53:19
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A
When you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters. But when it's for a hospital system, they matter even more. Grainger gets it and knows there's no time for managing multiple suppliers and no room for shipping delays. That's why Grainger offers millions of products in fast, dependable delivery so you can keep your facility stocked, safe and running smoothly. Call 1-800-GRAINGER, click grainger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done. When you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters, but when it's for a hospital system, they matter even more. Grainger gets it and knows there's no time for managing multiple suppliers and no room for shipping delays. That's why Grainger offers millions of products in fast, dependable delivery so you can keep your facility stocked, safe and running smoothly. Call 1-800-GRAINGER Click grainger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done. You're listening to the Impact Theory podcast, your source of empowering ideas and actionable techniques from the world's highest achievers. Join host Tom Bilyeu, serial entrepreneur and co founder of the billion dollar brand Quest Nutrition, on a journey to unlock your potential and realize your vision of success. Welcome to Impact the Everybody, welcome to Impact Theory. You're here, my friends, because you believe that human potential is nearly limitless. But you know that having potential is not the same as actually doing something with it. So our goal with this show and company is to introduce you to the people and ideas that will help you actually execute on your dreams. Okay, Today's Guest has sold over 3 million copies of his books and is one of only three authors ever to have three books selling simultaneously on the New York Times Nonfiction Bestseller list. He's also the first author to take a book from blog to bestseller, and his website was generating millions of views long before that was a thing. He was nominated to Time magazine's 100 Most Influential list in 2009, unsurprisingly as he appeared on the New York Times Bestseller list for an astonishing six consecutive years. But with titles like I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell and Assholes Finished first, his astonishing success baffled many, but not future New York Times best selling author Ryan Holiday. Working side by side with him, Holiday quickly realized that Today's Guest was a brash and brilliant marketer as well as a raw and authentic author. Holliday would later detail many of the techniques that Today's Guest pioneered in his book, Trust Me, I'm Lying. While he'll tell you that he's just a normal guy who's lucked into much of his success. His resume tells a slightly different story. He graduated college in just three years with the highest possible honors, went to Duke Law School on an academic scholarship, and has even had a movie made about his life. In 2012, however, he announced that he was going to be retiring from the genre of nonfiction he'd helped pioneer called Fratire. He'd evolved as a person and wanted to begin a new journey. That journey saw him embark on psychotherapy and evolve into a devoted family man and dyed in the wool entrepreneur dedicated to using commerce to help other people solve their problems. From that, his wildly successful company, book In a Box was born, which even in its relative infancy has already done eight figures in revenue. So please help me in welcoming the man who turned his drunken exploits into a publishing empire that has now helped hundreds of people become published authors and share their wisdom. The former asshole who's still finishing first, Tucker. Max.
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B
Thank you both.
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A
Thank you so much for coming on the show.
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B
Dude. My life sounds pretty cool when you put it that way. I was sitting over there being like, that's some. I've done some baller stuff that's pretty cool. You never think about it on a day to day basis, I suppose.
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A
Yeah, you don't. When you're interviewing somebody though, you're. When I'm researching them anyway, their whole life collapses down to like this basically 12 hour timeline for me where I get to go on the full journey seeing you because I mean, luckily all this stuff got captured on film. So you see you as a 20 something, being interviewed by the news and people being somewhat antagonistic and you being, you know, quite flippant and very much the, the man of your books. And then watching you go through the evolution, it was really, really fascinating.
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B
I haven't even done that. Dude, you should do it. It's.
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A
It's pretty cool.
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B
I haven't gone back and looked at any of the media, especially like early on. I think probably because the few times I've done that, I'm so mortifyingly embarrassed and I'm like, oh, what are you thinking? Not even like with the attitude. It's like, if you're gonna have that attitude, at least do it right.
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A
As someone on the outside, I'm really glad that your 20s were captured so vividly, but I'm really grateful that mine weren't. So, yeah, it would be pretty tough to look back on that stuff. One of the things I wanted to talk to you about is reinvention like you have in full public view, which I think most people get trapped by, and they're never able to get out. And I remember the first time I met you, which I think the first time we shared the same physical space was at hustlecon. And I had no idea, like, what to expect.
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B
Right.
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A
So it was really. Because I had read, I hope they serve beer in hell. And so that. That's sort of my snapshot. And then fast forward, you know, however many years later, almost a decade later.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And we meet. And so it was really, really interesting that you were so successful at getting out of that Persona and establishing yourself anew. What was that process like?
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B
So? Well, the first thing was everyone. I understand why everyone thinks this. And they say it. They ask me, well, it's funny, you use the word Persona. Most people use the word brand. And what they mean is, how did you change from this Persona or brand to this one? Meaning, like, how did you change the perception of you? Right. I'm not trying to put words in your mouth, but when most people ask this question, that's what they mean.
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A
That's exactly what I mean.
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B
Right. So my answer is always the same, is that it's not. You can't think of it like perception. Right. I never thought to myself, okay, I'm projecting this now. I want to project something else. But there's this hidden self that's different. One of the reasons I think I was so successful almost in spite of myself early on is because I didn't create a projected front. The guy that I wrote about, the guy that showed up in those interviews, that was flippant, all that, that was really pretty much exactly who I was. Most people. Most people in the public eye, you know this now. You've been in the public eye for long enough. You've met enough famous people where you're on stage with them or you meet them in media and then you go to the green room, and they're like something different. We know a lot of the same people, and a lot of those people, for better or worse, are different in private than they are in public, which is never the case for me. So for me, the change was not about how do I change my Persona. It was how do I change myself? Which is just a totally different thing. And as I grew and changed and developed as a man and matured, it was like I left my, quote, brand behind, but it wasn't leaving a brand behind. It was like, I don't want to drink and hook up and act stupid and party anymore. Like, that was cool in my 20s and early 30s, and I'm done with it, and I want to change. And it was like, I almost couldn't, right? So I had to. That's why I had to, like, publicly retire from writing this stuff. And I had to cut all of that off and move on. Because to answer your question, it wasn't like, how do I change perception? How do I change brand? It was, how do I change my honest, authentic self and then go in a fundamentally different direction? That was hard, dude. That's the process, man. That was like. So the first thing I had to do was I had to accept that this was something I wanted, right? Because, look, it's not obvious that I ever had to change. I was doing pretty well. I was selling a lot of books. I was making money. I was famous enough. I had plenty of girls. I had everything that at 19, if you had told me I was gonna have half of what I had, I would've shit my pants in excitement. I'd be like, are you kidding? This is coming for me. This is amazing. And then I got it, and it was like, it's not that it was bad, because it wasn't. It was fun. And there was a lot of good stuff. Here's the thing. People who go. And I say this being as a person who did it, someone who goes intentionally looking for fame, which I did, they're always. Part of the reason they're doing it is to fill a hole in their soul, some sort of hole, right? And I was definitely as true of me. And then once you get that fame, you realize, as awesome as it may be, it doesn't fill the hole, right? And so then. And everyone famous in any way, shape or form that intentionally went to go get fame, right? Not someone who, like, is doing work on their own, and all of a sudden, you know, like, the world sees them. I'm talking about people who go, you go to Hollywood, you go to New York. I'm going to be famous. Then if you achieve it, then you have to. You have that moment of truth where you realize, I got everything I wanted or more, and I'm still lonely and unhappy or whatever it is you're trying to compensate for. And you got to have that moment of truth and ask yourself, okay, what do I do now? You know, like, do I lie to myself and tell me that this fantasy that I created in my head is everything I wanted when it's not? Or do I start looking for the truth? And so in my case, I lied to myself for A long time, right? And it's easy to man, when you're selling books and people want to interview you and girls come, like, want to hook up with you and they don't even know you. It's like, what is this magical world of celebrity? This is incredible, right? And it's not like I was that famous, but I was like, famous enough where I understood what it was like. But then it's like you go through it enough and you realize, like, oh, wow, this is hollow and empty and it doesn't really mean anything. It's just. It's like the trappings of success. And so it took me about three, four, five years to come to terms with that. That, like the thing that I thought would make my life perfect didn't. And then it culminated with a movie that was made about my first book. And like, seeing that kind of like, not do well, which is so. Dude, think about how crazy this is. This is the most first world, rich white person problem. There was a movie made about my life that didn't do 50 or $100 million at the box office. And it was a crushing blow to me, right? Which at the time was truly crushing. But if you think about that in the span of human history and human suffering, it's like, what the fuck is wrong with you, dude? That's what crushed you. But it did, because that's just the way our brains work. And so it kind of culminated with that. And so then I had to. Really, really.
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A
That becomes like a turning point for you.
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B
Yeah, it really was. In fact, I'll dive in, I'll really tell you. Like, there was actually a very specific moment. I was in a hotel room and it was the day before the movie was launching or the day it launched. And we got like the numbers back and, you know, you know, immediately, right? Like, and we knew that, like, you know, it's gonna do fine. I think it did like a million, 2 million, 3 million at the box office, whatever. And it did really well on dvd. But, like, I was expecting this to be like the next, you know, Wedding Crashers or anything, something like that. And so I was in my hotel room and, dude, it was. I mean, I wept. Like, I cried and like, by myself, like, didn't want anyone around, no girls, nothing. And I wept and I cried and it was like, it was an ego cracking, soul crushing moment for me, as ridiculous as it sounds. It was. And then from there I had to accept, okay, I got all this fame and all this stuff I thought I wanted, and it didn't make me happy. It didn't fill the hole in my soul. And if I really want to get to the sort of the peak of the mountain, I've got to realize I'm on the wrong mountain. Like, I'm on the peak of this mountain. I'm trying to get the peak of this mountain, but they're different mountains. And so I had to go down and up. And so then that. From there, basically, I realized the first thing was I had to look honestly at myself, right? Like, why did the movie fail? Because I had an amazing book. We had an amazing script. This should have worked. And of course, I started doing. What does everyone do, right, when something fails? You blame everybody else. Or at least I did. I blame the director. I. I blame the producers. And listen, they made mistakes. But then at the end of the day, I picked the director, I picked the producers, and I created a lot of issues, and all the material was there for it to do well, and it didn't. And it was my fault. And that was a man, that was a hard turd to swallow, dude. It was bad. Because it's the hardest thing ever, is to realize when you don't succeed, it's because of your own. It's not even like I made a. I gambled on something I lost. This should have worked. It should have. There's no reason it shouldn't have. And I just. It was my own fault. And so then I had to really start down that path of recognizing all the truths in my life that I was ignoring and I was avoiding, and they were painful and awful. And I got pretty far along that path by myself. But then I kind of reached sort of an impasse. And so then I realized I needed someone to help me. And there's a lot of ways to get help. I picked, like, therapy, talk therapy, and there's a lot of different types of talk therapy. I ended up going with psychoanalysis, which is just a very specific type of it. And I spent four years in analysis, going four days a week. You know what they say. Early bird gets the ultimate vacation home. Book early and save over $120 with VRBO because early gets you closer to the action, whether it's waves lapping at
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Select homes only if you work in university maintenance. Grainger considers you An MVP because your playbook ensures your arena ready for tip off. And Grainger is your trusted partner, offering the products you need all in one place, from H VAC and plumbing supplies to lighting and more. And all delivered with plenty of time left on the clock. So your team always gets the win. Call 1-800-GRAINGER visit grainger.com or just stop by Grainger for the ones who get it done. What was motivating that? Was it a positive feeling of, I have the sense that I can get better, or was it like, this hurts so much, I just need something? It was, it was.
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B
That's a great question. It was. It was not self improvement in the sense of like, you know, like, I'm gonna go, like, lift and work out and get in shape. Like, I love doing that, but that provides a pretty immediate reward and it's pretty straightforward. This was much more about unpacking painful trauma. It's not like I was just in misery every day, because I wasn't man. Like, I had money. It's not like the movie failed and I was destitute, right? Like, I had money. Like, I still had friends. I was in shape. I was still young. Like, I'm still young. Like, everything was great objectively in my life. Like, there was, like I said, it was a total rich white person problems. Like, I hadn't. There was nothing to be sad about. So really what it was for me was understanding that, like, I had to go back to why was I looking for fame, right? Like, why. Why was I trying to fill this hole? What made this hole, right? And it goes back to me for a lot of. I had parents who just weren't very good at being parents. Like, they were perfectly nice people. Like, it's not. No one beat me as a kid. No one hit me or anything terrible like that, right? Like, thank God. But I just had parents who were like archetypical iconic baby boomers. They just didn't care about anyone but themselves. Their whole life was about them. And they had a kid, which is fine if you don't have a kid, right? But they had a kid. And so I grew up sort of lonely and ignored, but in like the most western, sort of rich, middle class way, you know, Like, I was never hungry. I had nice stuff. I went to good schools. It was just like, they just weren't good at being parents. They were perfectly fine caretakers and humans. And so I just missed a lot emotionally. And so, you know, I mean, one way to deal with trauma is promiscuity. And I Don't just mean sexual anything. You do anything to an extreme, whether it's gambling, sex, working out, achievement. Like a lot of the entrepreneurs I know, and probably you do, too. I'm convinced the reason that they are so successful is because they are. It's not just they want to succeed. They're just driven beyond belief. And it's because that's their way of sort of filling their hole, the hole in their soul which is at least as productive. Like, that's great. And I picked a path that, you know, a lot of people pick. I drank, hooked up. I didn't really even go that far. I just wrote about it. The only reason people know me about this is just because I wrote about it in a funny way. And then it kind of took off and it led me to success, and then I kind of went a little excess. But if you asked me at 26, I'm like, no, no, no, no. My parents, you know, they were fine. Everything's great. I'm perfectly happy. Are you kidding? Everything's wonderful. It's not true. It wasn't true. And I just never thought about my emotions. I had never really connected with them. I had never really. I just had never really had those conversations with myself or anybody else, really. And so part of therapy was understanding first, recognizing the pain was there, then it was accepting that it actually existed. Right. Which is hard. Like, you think if you recognize it, you accept it. But no, no, no, no. Like, I was in denial for a long, oh, well, I'm not. All the stories like you tell yourself, oh, well. But other people have it worse. They do. Doesn't mean, like, that my stuff doesn't deeply impact me or, you know, it wasn't that bad. It may not have been. It doesn't mean that it's not having an impact on me. All this sort of. That sort of stuff. So I then had to accept all this. Then I had to give myself space to really investigate. Like, okay, like, what am I feeling? Like, so really kind of connecting my thoughts to my emotions, which sounds, like, really basic. And I don't know, I just wasn't there. I think most people aren't. What did that process look like?
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A
This is so useful. And I don't know if you have a sense that this is so unique to you, it'd never be beneficial. But, like, I get this question over and over and over.
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B
No, I'm happy.
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A
How to become aware of what they're going through.
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B
No, I'll talk about it. If you. If you're. Yeah, listen, I'll talk about it. All right. So, I mean, all I can do is tell you what I did, right? Like, I'm not gonna sit up here and, oh, here's the eight ways to do it. And I don't know. I only know my path. So for me, like, that's why I pick psychoanalysis, because it's. It's intense. You're going four days a week for an hour a day, right? So for four years, I did this. And what you're doing when you go is. It's not like. It's not a good analyst. And I had a pretty good analyst is very. It's kind of like the classic image of, like, you know, laying on the sofa and the analyst is kind of behind you. It's like that. It's mainly you're talking and then about what you're thinking, what you're feeling. And then they essentially do their best to present basically, a mirror to you, right? So they ask questions or they point things out. They never, like, say, oh, well, you're doing this wrong. Almost never give advice. They never tell you what's right or wrong. They're definitely not judgmental. It's very accepting. It's very like, they care. It's very caring, but it's also, like, very reflective, Right? Like, it's very much like kind of like the, you know, like, in Return Empire Strikes Back, where like, Luke goes to see Yoda, and then he's like, you know, he has to go in that cave where it's like. He's like, what's in there? He's like, whatever you bring in there is what's in there, right? And he sees Darth Vader and he's, like, freaked out. And it's like, that's what analysis is. It's whatever you bring in.
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A
I love that scene in Star wars because when he cuts Vader's mask off, it reveals himself.
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B
Yeah, it is.
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It's a cool moment.
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B
So for me, what my analysis was very much about, like, I was just in denial for a long time about, like. It's not that I denied that my parents were, like, I intellectually understood. I saw them clearly for who they were. I didn't connect to the emotion of it. Right. Like, I refused to accept that I was scared or lonely or sad. I mean, even intellectually I would, but emotionally, I wouldn't connect with that. Right. The difference between me now and me, let's say, 10 years ago in this realm is, is that now the emotions don't go away. So anyone who Tells you that they have a way for you to control your emotions or get rid of your emotions is either lying to themselves or lying to you and trying to sell you something. So it's not that any of this shit goes away. It's that now I recognize it. I recognize the feeling. I accept that it's there. And I can not let it overwhelm me or let it control me without understanding. For most people, the only way you can get past this stuff is to bring it out, let it have its voice, accept it, and then, you know, like, see, okay, like, I know. I think I'm skipping ahead a little on your questions, but this ties directly into something in my life now that I'm a father, right? I have a three year old son, Bishop, and this happened like four months ago. I'll never forget it. So something. Bishop knocked over a glass or something, whatever. He spilled something. He's three. And I kind of like, you know, I was having a bad day and I was in a bad mood. I kind of snapped him, like, Bishop, what are you. Why did you do that? What are you doing? Be careful. Like really almost exactly like that tenor, right? And like, it didn't even occur to me that I was snapping or being mean or whatever. I was just like talking, you know, you react, whatever, reacting. But I looked at his face, and that kid's face, man, it looked like I had stabbed him in the chest with a knife. Like he was crestfallen, like broken. I remember looking right at him in a flash, understanding I had done to him what my dad did to me. And at that moment, I had a choice to make about the type of man and the type of father I was gonna be. Like, either I could rational, well, you know, like he deserved it, or he needs to toughen up. Or I could rationalize this, or I could accept that I had hurt this kid, my son, and I had done it unintentionally, intentionally. It doesn't matter. I had done it and that I had to accept it and then deal with it, right? Deal with the fact that I had done this. And of course, thank God I went through therapy, right? Because I was able to see it in the moment and understand in the moment what I had done and accept it and then deal with it. And dealing with it is actually pretty easy if you'll accept that, right? But it was really painful. It's still painful to think about the fact that I did. Like, I did it. There's no way to undo this. But, you know, I picked him up. I Said, oh, buddy, come here. Are you sad? And he's like, yeah. I'm like, okay, why are you sad? And he's like, I don't know. I'm like, are you sad because Daddy yelled at you? He's like, yeah. I'm like, okay, well, daddies make mistakes, too. Daddy shouldn't yell, should he? No. Well, Daddy makes mistakes. And what do we do when we make mistakes? We say we're sorry and we clean it up. Like, okay, well, Daddy's saying sorry to you, okay? Because Daddy shouldn't yell. Daddy made a mistake, and Daddy's sorry. So let's give me a hug and now clean it up, right? And like, I don't know, like, that was to me, like, if there's a happy ending, that's a happy ending, right? That's what therapy taught me.
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A
And if you had to boil down so that particular thing, to me, from the outside, it sounds like ownership is. Is the key there.
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B
Ownership of yourself and your emotions and a desire to seek and to feel the painful truth. Not just intellectually recognize truth in therapy is about connecting with the emotions you are running from and feeling them no matter how painful or awful they are, because almost certainly they're awful and painful to you, otherwise you wouldn't run from them. Like, you're not running from happiness, right? It's not like, oh, remember that great memory? No, no, put that away. Hide that. No, no, no. That's not the problem. It's the painful stuff, you know?
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A
Yes, I totally get that. The fascinating thing to me is in my own life, the thing that has become the most powerful thing for me isn't. Isn't maybe internalizing or connecting to my emotions, maybe that wasn't the problem that I had. And it's kind of interesting seeing you from the outside, because there have been times in my life where I almost wish that I was a little less connected to my emotions. I see now, though, that also leads to somewhere not very effective. But the thing for me that was really powerful was learning to take responsibility for everything that I did. And that that was where my entire life changed. And the most intentionally provocative, but the most unintentionally controversial thing I've ever said is around the notion of taking ownership and how people really get riled up. Now, maybe I pushed it too far, but I used to. One of the first blog articles I wrote was about if I got hit by a drunk driver, I would blame myself, and people just went fucking ballistic.
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B
Well, I can see why. With that title, I can see why
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A
so the take home message is I could have made different decisions that would have had a different outcome. So it doesn't mean that I wasn't victimized. But being a victim moving forward is a choice that I have to make. And I wrote it. Understand, I wrote it from a place of like, I'm giving you the best gift I know how to give you. In fact, one of the questions I was trying to formulate in my head is like, if you were going to take the gestalt of psychotherapy and hand it to Bishop and like one, just one key thing to take away, like, what would that be? And I do want the answer to that question. And so writing that article is me saying the single most important thing I've learned in my life is that if you get hit by a drunk driver, as unfair as it is cosmically, as much as it isn't your fault, from anyone else's perspective, the gift I'm gonna give you is if you're willing to say, I could have made a different choice and gotten a different outcome, everything in your life will change. And it's very hard because then you
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B
take ownership of everything that happens going forward. I get it and I get your point. I can see how someone misinterpret that. But the point is rock solid and amazing. Yes. Own everything in your life that you have control over. You don't have control over a drunk driver, but you have control over everything that happens after that. Yeah. Fuck yeah. Oh, hell yeah. Yeah. Like, for me it was. Yeah. Like, I've never had problems taking ownership over my life. I've had problems, I think, and this might be a different version of taking ownership over your life. I've had problems recognizing painful, unpleasant truths, which I think is just actually, if you think about it, it's a subset of taking ownership over your life. You know, like the movie thing's a great example. It took me six months to a year to fully accept Clear as Day. It was my fault. It's not like this is like some sophisticated multi level thing where, like I had to unpack this mystery. It was clear everyone involved with the movie could be like, oh, dude, you totally fucked this up. But it took me a year, about a year to fully, emotionally own that.
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A
Was there a voice in your head that was like, look, motherfucker, you know this was you.
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B
No, no, I don't think so. Because that's one of the downsides of being. And this is gonna sound like a ridiculous, humble brag. It kind of is. But one of the downsides of being smart is that it's really easy to rationalize, you know, And I'm really good at rationalizing, so I'm really good at creating narratives that really are true in a way, but they hide an underlying truth. My analysts would always say I would be, you know, 20 minutes down the path of this amazing story that was essentially rationalizing or justifying something. And she would look at me and she would say, the best defenses are true. What I would be saying, I could tell you a story right now that is factually correct about the movie that would place all the blame off of me, but the underlying truth is that it's my fault. So, yeah, I think there are different ways of saying the same thing. I would totally, 100% agree. That was the last step. I'd always done a good job owning my life in terms of taking action. I think I'd done a very poor job owning responsibility, emotional responsibility, especially for the way I made other people feel. A lot of times I did a terrible job at that. And I don't think it was that I didn't care. It was that I was so disconnected from my own emotions. It was like, how the hell am I gonna feel hers or his or yours? Like, it doesn't even occur to you that that's a thing? Like, why would that yelling bother you? It doesn't bother me. It's like, well, dude, not everyone's like you. It took me a long time to really internalize that on an emotional level. Yeah.
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A
God, I hope people see this interview in the context of how brash and successful, by the way, you were early in your career and how different you feel now. Like the interviews that you did or the books that you wrote, which were all nonfiction, by the way. Oh, yeah, of course. So it is really, really fascinating. And especially for me because this is over such a collapsed time period. It's like, I really got to go in that massive swing in this really finite period of time. It's been really, really interesting. All right, I do want to get the answer to the question. If you had to wrap up your big takeaway from psychotherapy for Bishop, what's that breakthrough you hope you never need psychotherapy for?
- [31:11]
B
Yeah, so, right. If he needs psychotherapy, then I failed as a dad. Right. I mean, he's going to experience traumas in his life, but I'm just hoping they're not in the core family. The takeaway of psychotherapy is the exact same takeaway of Buddhism. They just are 180 degree diametrically opposed ways to get at the same truth. And the truth is. The truth is that you are going to suffer. But the way to deal with suffering is accepting that suffering and then recognizing that it is suffering, accepting it and then letting it sort of have its say, then moving on from that. Right? So to really condense that, I would say. What I would tell him. This is what I try to do with him and my daughter, Vaughn, is we help them connect what they're thinking to how they're feeling. Right? Because I think so many people disconnect those things. And that's why, like, the example I gave you with Bishop, like, you know, three or three years old, they feel, but they don't know how to articulate their feelings. So I spend a lot of time with him, helping him understand what he feels, you know, not telling him what he feels. Like, I'll give you a great example. Every kid falls down, they hurt themselves, right? And I learned this sort of indirectly in analysis. Early on, my wife would be like, oh, you're okay. You're okay. Because her instinct is like, you know, motherly, wants the pain to go away. I said, no, no, stop doing that. Don't do that. Because what you're doing is you're actually confusing him. You're negating his feelings because he fell down, he skinned his knee, he hurts. And you saying you're okay is a very confusing thing, because, like I'm saying to my wife, you're the center of his universe. You're his mom. So the better thing to say is, hey, how are you okay? And then let him tell you, no, I'm not okay, or, yes, I am okay. Right? That's a great example of something I learned in analysis is just understanding what am I feeling and then connecting it to what I'm thinking. I almost think of it like, two different parts of my brain, the feeling part and the thinking part. Because actually, literally, there's three different parts. Right. But you really, literally do have, like, two different parts of your brain, and it's not quite biologically, neurologically accurate to say thinking is only in one part and feeling is only in another. But roughly, you're close enough, dude. I'll give you a good example coming in here. I was actually a little bit nervous for this interview. The weird thing is because I've seen a bunch of your episodes, and you get great stuff out of people like Simon's. Simon Sinek's good friend of mine and his has been viewed a couple hundred million times. Right, Right, exactly. So I'm showing up like, man, I can't screw the pooch on this. I gotta really show up and do a good job. But it didn't freak me out because, like, I recognized standing right there 20 minutes ago. I recognized, okay, Like, I got chills. It's not cold in here. I'm a little bit nervous. No big deal. I've done this before. I can talk about this stuff. I just. I recognize the anxiety. I accepted it. And then actually, another technique I use, I reframe it, is like, okay, I'm gonna reframe it as excitement and energy, and I'm gonna use it to really dig deep and do, like, a great interview. But, like, yeah, like, that's. That's what I would tell him to take away. And that's what I try to teach him, is thinking is awesome, but emotions are kind of what drive you, and you've gotta connect those to really kind of have a happy, successful life.
- [34:49]
A
I love that. That's a pretty damn good takeaway. I wanna go back to something you said. You said, I'm on this mountain. I'm at the peak of this mountain. And I had that. I'm actually on the peak of the wrong mountain. And so I had to go down before I could go back up. What was that process like? And then how did you recognize that you wanted something new? And what were you telling yourself as you knew, I'm gonna have to go down first?
- [35:11]
B
Yeah, it sucked, dude. It sucked because you work so hard and you think this is the mountain you're trying to climb, and you climb it, man. Like, I climbed the mountain, right? Like, I was there. And then I kind of looked around and I realized I wasn't happy. I didn't really have what I wanted. I had what I thought I wanted to be happy, right? I had, like, I'd set the X on the map, and I got there, and I actually did better than I thought I needed to be. To have everything right. Everything I wanted, I did even better. Like, I would have been happy, you know, selling half a million books, right? And having one year on the bestseller list. And I went way past that. And so, like, it ties into what you mentioned earlier. The one thing that I think I do better than most people, if I had to attribute my success to one thing other than hard work, which is you can't succeed without hard work. That's just table stakes. But one thing I think I do better than most people, even successful people, is I'm always willing to face the truth once I know it. Like, I'll Fight it for a long time, right? I'm really good at rationalizing it, but once the truth is, like, that's why the movie failing was such a turning point in my life. Because you can't argue that away, right? And so, like, that was the thing, that was the thing that made me realize I'm at the top of this mountain. And it sucks, right? Because if it didn't suck, if I was at the top of a mountain I wanted to be at the top of, then the movie failing would suck. But it wouldn't cry, crush me, it wouldn't break me. Like that really, that cracked my grandiosity in a real way, dude. Like, I really, I felt like I was gonna die. I mean, which it seems ridiculous, but anyone who's really ever gone through a serious, like, emotional, like, painful thing, you know what I'm talking about? And I really, totally, subjectively, emotionally felt like I was gonna die. And that was the thing that woke me up was like, okay, like I, like, at least that started the path to understanding I'm on the wrong mountain, alright? So then how did I go down? So that's when I finished my other books and I retired at the end of the last book, right? And that was a very intentional thing. Like, that was kind of a symbolic. I'm a big fan of ritual. And like, I used to think weddings and all those things were so stupid. And then I got older, I'm like, okay, maybe the way we do weddings is stupid, but I get why you have rituals and why you do public things. And what, like, they are very impactful, right?
- [37:43]
A
Why? I believe that more than you know. But I want to know why you say that.
- [37:47]
B
Because rituals done right, I think, integrate thinking, feeling and accountability in a public way and they commit you to something that you want. You stand up in front of everyone and say, this is what I want or who I am or what I'm committing to. Then it integrates all parts of yourself and your community and lines you up in a direction. And that happened for me. Like, that's why I retired from frat tire. Because part of it was because I just, I'd outgrown it, man. Like, I just didn't, you know, I was 35, 36 when I did that. And it's like I didn't, you know, I hardly drank anymore. Like, I didn't go out and eat. Like, going to a bar at 35 is like, ugh, kill me, right? 25 is the greatest thing ever. 35, like, it was the worst. And so retiring Was like a way for me to step off the stage and to find something else. So that was a ceremony that was very important for me.
- [38:43]
A
Really fast before we move off. That was part of the reason that you wanted to do that. Because the way you built your Persona, everything that you wrote, your book was literally titled Assholes Finish first Self Identified Asshole. Around the movie there were pe. You incited a riot on yourself. So there were plenty of people that wanted to see you burn at the stake that had to cross your mind as you're like, I'm gonna retire. And I open this vacuum for people to like pounce on me and say, fucking, finally it's about time this guy shut up. Like that kind of thing. Did you worry about that?
- [39:19]
B
Not consciously, maybe unconsciously, dude. I don't know. I grew up very independent, right? Like, they unintentionally taught me at a young age how to be self reliant. Like I was cooking my own meals at 10. I mean, like, I'm never worried about losing everything or whatever. I know I can start again. I know I can handle myself. And also I've just never worried that much what other people think, you know, Like, I didn't have a tight circle of people who loved me and cared about me and nurtured me, who also taught me to be very, very conscious of their opinions. Right? I grew up like kind of on my own. And so like, it never occurred to me to worry about what these people think who aren't in my life and don't impact my life. I mean, if they like me, okay, that's cool. Like, I like that. If they don't like me, man, well, fuck them. Like, it doesn't, doesn't impact me, you know? And so that was really one of the reasons why I was able to write what I wrote. God knows I was not the first person to get drunk and throw up on myself and fall down, right? I was the first dude to write about it in an honest way under my own name. And I think the reason why is because I didn't care about embarrassing anyone because I had no one to embarrass, right? It didn't bother me what people thought. And there was no one around me that like, I was going to shame by doing that.
- [40:44]
A
And is that part of what then made the gave you the ability to go down without too much overwhelming pressure?
- [40:51]
B
Yeah, it was like, well, let's be honest, money helps. Like, I'd sold a lot of books and it was like, okay, I have a chunk of money. Like, you know, maybe I'm not. I don't. I don't have your house yet, you know, but, like, I don't have a jet yet. But, like, I don't have to work anymore, so I don't have to answer anybody. And even if I did, I could always. There's a lot of ways to make money. I could make more money. So it was like, well, why do I care? Like, it doesn't matter to me. Like, I've done what I had to do. I've said what I had to say about Fratire at that point in my life. And I climbed that mountain and I thought that was the peak. And then I got to that. There's a great Buddhist saying, when you reach the top of the mountain, there'll be another mountain, right? And, like, I didn't think that. And then I did it, and I realized, okay, great. And so it was like, all right. And then I retired. Coming down the mountain was not hard, right? It's really easy to lose momentum. Like, it's really easy to kind of step off the stage because there's always 100 people waiting to replace you. So that was not hard at all. Going down was easy. Climbing the next mountain was really hard because that required therapy. That required me to really be honest with myself, about myself, to discover hard things, find hard truths to. And it required me to shed a lot of the things that had made me successful in the last mountain, right? Like being the rambunctious, devil may care, flippant asshole. Works great if you're going to be that character, right? Or if you're going to live. And I wasn't even a character. It was who I was. But if you're going to essentially occupy that niche, but when you're climbing a different mountain, then you've gotta let those patterns go. And because it wasn't a brand, it wasn't a Persona, it was who I was. I had to really kinda relearn in a lot of ways how to be successful and how to successfully deal with people. Cause if everyone knows, oh, that's that guy. That's that guy who wrote Beer in Hell, then they give you a wide berth. Like, you can be an asshole, and people actually think it's funny. Like, it's like, oh, yeah, that's Tucker Max. He's supposed to, you know, throw up on the table or whatever, right? But when you're like, an angel investor or an entrepreneur or at a business meeting, like, that shit doesn't fly like professionals. You can't deal with that. Right. And like a serious successful adults, like they might. Even people who like, might have thought my books were funny and liked them a lot. There's just like a certain level of maturity that they expect, which is totally reasonable. And most of the time I was perfectly fine. There were just a lot of things that I had to either shed or learn going up them either about the world or about myself. It was tough, dude. It was hard. You know what the hardest part? The hardest part is? I think there's this expectation that once you're successful at one thing, you just get to be automatically successful at everything else. Right. And that's just not the truth. A good friend of mine, actually my editor, told me this great saying. He said, tucker, all success gets you is the conditional opportunity to prove yourself again. And at first when he told me that, I was like, fuck you. That's bullshit. Like I'm already successful. People should just accept my genius because I'm who I am. And of course that's nonsense. Right. It took me a while to relearn that, but then it became very clear. I've got to re earn every day. Especially in the new arena. I've got to re earn success.
- [44:21]
A
That is something I understand completely. Having exited Quest and I think everybody looking at me like I was out of my mind and knowing, I mean, we talked as a team about this, is re earning your stripes, you know, and if you know the J.J. watt quote, which I'm sure is him quoting somebody else, but success isn't owned, it's leased. And rent is due every day.
- [44:39]
B
Every day.
- [44:40]
A
Right. I just, I love that beyond measure. Do you meet that with excitement? Do you meet that with trepidation? Like, how do you think about.
- [44:48]
B
It's definitely excitement. It's not. It's actually both, man. I think those are two sides of the same coin. So I am blessed enough, I've worked hard enough and made enough money that I get to pick what I want to do. Right. Not everyone has that ability, although I think more people have that ability than they realize. But so I wouldn't be doing the company that I'm in the business of in if I didn't like it. If I didn't wake up excited to go do this, I would not do it.
- [45:18]
A
Talk to me about your willingness to fire yourself as a CEO.
- [45:22]
B
Yeah, that's 100%. Because of therapy. That's another one. A hundred percent. In fact, one of our clients was this guy, J.T. mcCormick. He was the president of a hundred million dollar software company. Just like another Software company in Austin. And he had come on when they were 2 million as a sales guy and had become president in six months and scaled the company, turned them huge, like 100 people, whatever. And this is after he'd already run. He'd had a long history in sort of scaling businesses and doing all kinds of cool stuff. And I kept going to him for advice, like, dude, what do I do with this? And he's like, oh man, you guys are dicked up. You gotta do this and this and this, right? And he kept giving me all this amazing advice. And so I started inviting him to our executive meetings, asked him to be an advisor, and eventually he's like, look, man, no offense, I don't think you can handle this. And I'm like, I know I can't. That's why I keep coming to you for advice. And he's like, why don't you just hire me? I'm like, dude, you made last year in salary, probably about what we made in top line revenue. You can't afford you, dude, don't be ridiculous. I'm like, when we get to 10 million, we'll hire you. He's like, no, no, no, you're not gonna make it to 10 million doing what you're doing now. He's like, you actually need me now. And I'm like, yeah, but we can't afford. He's like, let's talk. So turns out his company hadn't given him any equity and he was kind of looking for his next thing. And he loved our process. And I sat down with him, painted sort of our long term picture about what our vision was, and he was totally on board. And he's like, I'll come on as president. You can stay CEO, I'll take over ops, whatever. You can be you, you can be the face of the company, all this sort of stuff.
- [47:06]
A
Stuff.
- [47:06]
B
And I was like, no, no, no, no, that's bullshit. Like, if you come on, you need to be the CEO. I will step aside. Because like, everything you're going to be doing pretty much are CEO tasks. And so if you are president, I'm CEO, then it's like, it's bullshit. I'm just a figurehead. I'm like, I'm really good at certain things. Clearly, I'll stay in the company. I'll go run marketing. I'll, I'll go, you know, run product. And you run the company, you scale the company. And it was hard for me at first to like kind of accept that, but when I say hard, it was like A couple days. Right.
- [47:44]
A
And what was that process? Because that is exactly what I want to understand. Yeah. The number of people that can do that from an ego standpoint is vanishingly slow.
- [47:52]
B
The only reason I could do that is because of therapy, man. Is because what happened on the movie. Because I know the last time I tried to keep control of everything, I ruined it. And I went through therapy, and I kind of addressed that stuff in me. You know what it came down to, Tom? It came down to, did I actually care about our mission and our team, or did I care more about myself? Because if I cared about the mission on the team, clear as day, JT should be CEO. And if I cared more about myself, then I should say CEO. And once I framed it that way, then it was. It was a painful decision, but it was easy.
- [48:27]
A
I love that. All right, before I ask my last question. Where can these guys find you online? Learn more about bookinabox.
- [48:34]
B
Yeah, so bookinabox.com, pretty simple. Me, I have a site called TuckerMax. Me. Well, I actually wrote a whole article about why I stepped aside. And then my email is tuckerookinabox. That's probably the best place to start, I think.
- [48:51]
A
Awesome. All right. What is the impact that you want to have on the world?
- [48:56]
B
I gotta give two answers because one is gonna seem trite and probably won't be fulfilling for the audience, but it's the God's honest truth answer. And then the second one is also true, but is like, the second thing I would say, but is something I think the audience will take more from. So the impact I most want to have on the world, God's honest truth is I feel like I will be a success at life if my children. I have two now, Bishop and Vaughn. And if they look back after I'm gone, and they are. They miss me and they love me, and they are proud to be my kid. And they feel like I. My wife and I gave them everything they needed to succeed at life or to set them up, because they're gonna have to fight their own battles, but we set them up the best possible way. I feel like that's the impact that's most important to me. If I'm a hero to my kid, a true, honest hero to my kids, that's the impact that matters the most to me by far now in terms of impacting the world outside of my children, the company I'm working on now, from the outside, it's like, oh, yeah, we help people write books, right? Okay. Pretty simple. But I think it's a lot more than that. One of the great tragedies of human history, I feel like, is when Caesar got mad at Cleopatra and burned the library of Alexandria, which at the time held basically all of the world's knowledge. Like, the Egyptians were obsessive. They were obsessive scribes about like copying essentially what everyone else knew. And at the time, it was said that the library of Alexandria had at least one copy of all recorded knowledge and it burned. And so, like a huge swath of wisdom was lost. And I feel like now, even though we have so much technology and so much sort of ability to record knowledge, I think almost everything that's recorded is essentially garbage, nonsense that no one will care about in even a week, much less a lifetime. But I feel like there's so many smart people who know so much who don't record their knowledge. They don't. Not because they're bad, not because they're trying to hide it, not because anything, but because it's hard to really turn your knowledge into. And it doesn't have to just be a book, but to take your knowledge out of your head and put it into a form that you can share with others that they can utilize in their life, right? And I just feel like I have the ability and my team and my tribe at Book in a Box, we have the ability to unlock the world's wisdom, right? To get it out of people's heads and to get it into not just book. Books are what we're doing now, but we plan to expand to a lot of different verticals. But essentially we want to create a community that can take people who know things that are valuable to others, like know how to do things right? Or how to anything that's valuable, put it into recordable, shareable forms and share it with the world. People who aren't good. Like, you've got the resources and the ability. You're good at media, so you can get your wisdom out of your own head. But how many people, maybe not as much as you, but know like the equivalent in their niche, but either don't have the time or the money or the desire to go to all this effort, right? Why should their knowledge die with them? God knows, man. What I wouldn't give to know at 18 what I know now or at 25 what I know now, right? What would you pay when you started Quest to have a book of what you know now? Just about like that business, right? It would be priceless. So that's the impact that we are trying to have as a Company is we're trying to unlock the world's wisdom.
- [52:57]
A
I love that man. Thank you so much for coming on the show. It was absolutely incredible, guys. This is somebody who I'm telling you, is the most amazing example of the extremities of human transformation that I've ever seen in my life. Do yourself a favor, go look at where he started, read some of the early books, and then watch this interview again. It is unimaginable the lengths to which you can reinvent yourself, change yourself, if you're willing to do the hard work, to look inside yourself, to do what he says and really connect what you're thinking to what you're feeling. And most importantly, know what mountain you're actually trying to summit and make sure that you have a plan to get there and to have the internal fortitude, the sense of self, to be able to go down that hill first. And I know this is where a lot of people get lost. You get that first level of success, and you've still got the ego in the way, and you're not able to allow yourself to descend before you go back up the other side. You don't have the humility to recognize that what stands between where you are and where you want to go is a really hard to acquire set of skills. That's going to require a lot of work internally and externally to get that. We didn't even get to talk about his background in mma, and I'm guessing that's where the bruises come from and what he's learned on the mat. And one thing that I came across in the research that I just thought was really incredible is he says that he feels a sense of gratitude to everyone that he grapples with because they give him a chance to show where he's really at. And I love that. And I think in life, in business, in your family and everything that you do owe the people that show up to really let you show yourself where you're at and to be who you are at that moment and then are going to be on that journey with you as you change and push and grow. I think it's absolutely incredible. And honestly, honestly, in all the people that I've interviewed, this guy sums that up the best and is one of the most profound transformations I've ever seen and doesn't bullshit. He says, look, I enjoyed who I was then. So this isn't that. It's not me running away from something. It's me really evolving as a human being, reassessing what I want, doing the work looking inward and becoming something new. And I think that is absolutely incredible. So I hope you guys take as much away from this as I did. It was really incredible. And. And if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Thank you.
- [55:16]
B
Dude.
- [55:17]
A
Amazing.
- [55:21]
B
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- [55:23]
A
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