Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 503 - Ask Yourself "Why" ft. Case Kenny

Episode Date: March 30, 2021

We had an amazing conversation with Case Kenny regarding relationships, being intuitive and asking yourself "Why". Why am I dating? Why do I want to create content? A fun chat with great guest. Here's some background info on our guest: Case Kenny is the Chicago-based writer, podcaster and recording artist behind The New Mindset Journal. Case doesn’t view himself as more enlightened than the average person, but he does have a hunger to be the best person he can. It was that drive and passion for growth that inspired him to start the New Mindset, Who Dis podcast in the summer of 2018. Subscribe to the NEW Power Project Newsletter! ➢ https://bit.ly/2JvmXMb Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Special perks for our listeners below! ➢LMNT Electrolytes: http://drinklmnt.com/powerproject ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $99 ➢Sling Shot: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/ Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz #PowerProject #Podcast #MarkBell

What's going on Power Project crew? This is Josh Settledge aka SettleGate here to introduce you to our next guest Case Kenny. Case Kenny is the Chicago-based writer, podcaster, and recording artist behind the New Mindset Journal. Case often refers to himself as a sorts of dude bro guy because as he says he isn't any more enlightened than the average person, but what he does have is an intense hunger and drive to become the best person he possibly can. It was this drive and passion for growth that inspired him to start the New Mindset Who Dis podcast in the summer of 2018. Almost two years later, in 8 million downloads and honors as an Apple podcast, top 30 podcast, top 100 mental health, iHeartRadio top 10, Deezer's editor's choice, and many more accolades later, Case has made a name for himself as a prominent

podcaster and mindfulness thought leader. On a side note, Case's passion for growth and introspection grew in 2020 with the release of his music and mindfulness DJ collaborations. But that is a different story for a different time, so please enjoy this conversation with Case Kenny. I don't know, you ever feel like you slept a lot and like you got like a really good dose of sleep? I felt that. And you kind of wake up and you're like, oh, like I felt good, but...

I felt that. I didn't feel that this morning. I just feel like shaking it off. Shaking off the sleep? Yeah. Yo, you know what feel like shaking it off, shaking off the sleep. Yeah. Yo, you know, it's so weird. This,

you guys have done this before, but like setting your alarm, right? So my alarm this morning was set for six 15, right? Six 15 AM. But then I woke up at six 14 AM and that happens to me like right, like the minute before my alarm goes off and that happens so much because you're

fucking terrified it's gonna go off yeah but it's just so funny you're like ah here it goes yeah those things are terrifying those are the worst it's just so weird it's not like I'm looking at that shit while I'm asleep it's like

your body just like knows it's 6.14. Get the fuck up. It's amazing when you look at the clock and it's way earlier than you expected. And it's the worst when it's way later. You look at the clock and you're like, it's probably only midnight. And it's like 5.30. You're like, what? Yeah, that is the worst.

It's unfortunate. Oh, my God. You're like, I got to be up it's unfortunate oh my god you're like i gotta be up kind of nowish this sucks but there are times where you'll wake up you know go take a leak or something and it's like dude i've been asleep for like 15 years and you look over it's like oh it's only been like 45 minutes this is sick i love that yeah i don't know where you go for that time warp but holy crap that's That's a good feel, isn't it? Mm-hmm.

I'm going down to San Diego today. Dude. For what? One of my favorite places ever. Just hanging out on the beach. Of course. Mm-hmm. Perfect all the time.

Go hang out at John Cena's place. Just chill. No, I'm kidding. I'm like, really? You could do that, though. I was super close to being born there. Oh, wow. Where were you born, by the way in sacramento uh same here but my parents five ugliest people in the world sacramento right or is that this united states i think it's i think we could but we should probably claim it

i wonder what the others like like first of all where that thing came from but my guess utah what yeah what are the other areas where did that come from, but I guess Utah. What? Yeah. What are the other areas? Where did that come from? What are the other areas? He said that with such disdain. Utah. Yeah, but Utah's like, I don't know.

People are like pretty, like, uh, they get outside quite a bit, you know? Yeah. I would imagine somewhere where you're like, I don't know.

Like there's a lot of skiing and stuff in Utah. Utah is a little bit like Colorado. Oh my God. Okay. So 20 ugliest cities in the united states okay uh this was like this is not current by the way so we might have we may have kind of gotten ourself out of the ditch there but that's 2016 or something probably cape disappointment washington san jose stockton that makes sense. New Jersey.

Memphis, Tennessee. Reno, Nevada. That makes a lot of sense. That does. St. Louis. Cleveland, Ohio. Really? Detroit, Michigan.

Oakland. God. There's a lot of California. Oakland booty. Yeah, that's incorrect. Riverside, California. There's a lot of California. I thought California was like... We just have more people.

We just have more people. Fresno. Wow. to be in bakersfield well bakersfield smells so if bakersfield smells like sacramento wasn't on the list we'll take five high five air five we made it we made it we're no longer one of the ugliest cities in california in the world in the united states did you see uh recalibrated yes did you see um so there was like a uh poll whatever you want to call it like the um sexiest bald men or whatever and then the rock got pissed off because he wasn't on it he wasn't he's like i demand a recount that's a bit of an injustice yeah but he said what in the cinnamon toast fuck i demand a recount and bring that up because did you guys see that cinnamon toast crunch issue drama whatever

you want to call it i did it uh so honestly one of the guys that like got me into like really really loving podcasting jensen carp he had a sick ass podcast back in the day called get up on this so i followed him for ever okay so i watched i watched this whole thing play out from him posting a picture on twitter being like um i don't know what this is i know what this looks like but can you guys explain to me what this is and he tagged cinnamon toast crunch and he's like and for the record i've already had a bowl and so it's getting really really weird but it's just like holy shit this blew up and it was just interesting because like I follow him, seeing it spring out from nothing to holy shit, this is literally everywhere. And it's just so weird watching something go viral in real time.

Interesting. I've never seen that before, but yeah, it's getting really weird. And for The Rock to say that, I was just like, oh my god, The Rock saw it too. We have a viral video going around around here we do what involves the natty professor what did i do there we go it was when he was taking steroids in the bathroom oh okay cool as long as long as it's just that yeah i don't want any controversial it was you scooping up one of our models it has like 400 or something i don't know 500 000 views oh yeah that yeah yeah on instagram or no no tiki talk tiki talk i gotta check it out

it's all you guys the tiktok's popping i think that's on the mb slingshot tiktok yeah yeah yeah at mb slingshot viral they man it's a dangerous app because when you get scrolling you don't want to do it when you get scrolling man they like they figure out scrolling it's true tiktok's algorithm is so good at figuring out what you like and just spitting that to you like just at this fast pace so you're riding dirty exactly yeah exactly it honestly just takes like one like pause on a video and then that's your whole feed what's amazing about stuff like that is uh it kind of reminds me of like the car accident thing like where you can't stop looking at like whatever happened on the freeway yeah tick tock and i've only been on there a tiny bit but like some of it you're like this is so dumb and you're

like this is so dumb oh my god this is so dumb oh my god this is so dumb. And you're like, this is so dumb. Oh, my God, this is so dumb. Oh, my God, this is so dumb. Look how dumb this is. Yeah. And some of it's like dumb slash funny. So you just keep kind of going with it. Or how did this one go viral? This is really stupid. That is annoying.

When I was trying to like learn. But it makes you watch it forever. When I was trying to learn everything, some young kid was like, literally like put less thought into your tech talks and that's what we'll crush. Yes. And sure enough, he,

I can't, I'm not going to remember, but he was doing something stupid in his living room, his parents' living room. He's like million views. I haven't, I wasn't literally doing nothing to that video. He's like,

and then I try and it falls flat. Don't try. Yeah. So just don't try. Yeah. See the hat. I think the back. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There it is. Don't try yeah so yoda just don't try yeah see the hat i think the back yeah yeah there you go it is don't try try not try not well it's interesting because like for a while people were setting up their photos all perfect and moving shit out of the way and like yeah trying to make sure they had a their bed made or whatever and socks weren't on the floor

in the background of the room or whatever and then then tiktok just like kind of just broke all those rules i guess kind of went puriti mochi went the other way what puriti much what does that mean it means pretty much oh hey um do you guys watch the fights yes i missed i didn't get a chance to see him yeah yo what's and gano is fighting yes it was in ghanu and then um steepay woodley woodley oh woodley i did see that yeah and then sugar shane uh shawn o'malley or whatever sarms yeah oh oh my god who won the heavyweight fight in ghanu nice oh my god i don't know what you do that their third third fight i believe so yeah that was their second fight that was my second yeah yeah um oh my god that was insane man like it first off like in gana was super calm and if you've watched his prior fights like he's just waiting to get you with that one hit so he can take you out loads up

the right hand yeah but this time like he hit steep a few times and he was just like just waiting just waiting and a stalker and ghanu is chilling that's scary chilling yeah uh stipe came in at like 230 i think and it was like 265 or something yeah it's like it's like over 30 pounds like oh my god that heavyweight division is fucking ridiculous where i had this poll i showed it to you i had this on my instagram where i was like would you take a clean 100 pound from francis and gano in the face for a million dollars would you guys i just want to know no no because when you said like a clean shot like i'm just standing there like a million dollars take the hit i mean i know you followed up with a couple

other posts and yeah but that's like like do i want to die for a million dollars or get really good brain damage but you know like okay now if you said fight you know like and you know obviously i'm still gonna get my ass kicked but at least i can like i don't know run in try to hug them and then tap out but no absolutely not that's ridiculous and then the results were insane a lot of people would a lot of people would like punch in the face like to me it means like more direct you know it's like straight on uh getting punched to the side wouldn't be as bad because you wouldn't really remember much me here here or no just like punch to the side of the face like you you would just turn it You'd probably just be knocked out.

Punched straight in your grill. I think it would just like... I mean, it could also knock you out, but you'll just get really fucked up too, I think. Or an uppercut. Picture getting an uppercut will change the look of your face. Maybe a jab permanganu, because that's really what put Stipe out anyways.

And he's like falling backwards. Just like heavy-handed man just fucking and then the hammer fist it's like people someone needs to make a freaking uh compilation of ngannou's hammer fists because it's like you have to finish the opponent off until the ref so he just comes over and he just hammers steepay's face into the ground and it's just you just see his body just go like that and it's just well like uh the the o'malley fight same thing right he tried to walk off twice and he's like fuck it all right here we go yes god came down you got to see that mark i wish you could pull it out yeah i don't want to get yeah o'malley like he uh the ref the like the guy was on the on the ground the ref didn call it, so O'Malley walks up hella casually and then just, like, punches his face on the ground to finish him off. Because he had no choice.

Yeah. It's insane. It's weird when the guy's out and his head's, like, already on the mat. There's nowhere for it to go. Yeah, there's nowhere else for it to go. And the guy's, like, out, out. Sometimes they get, like, frozen and they're kind of, like, stuck stuck and their chin is still up and their head's still off the mat and then at least when they get hit their head has somewhere to move but yeah it's it's such a scary thing when

they do lock up and they just like stiffen up and fall back like oh my gosh it's a wild sport how did you guys miss these fights this weekend i mean i such good fights. I mean, I had watched the Sean O'Malley fight. Yeah. And then I watched part of the Tyron Woodley fight. I kind of was back and forth, and then I seen he lost, and I was like, oh, fuck. And then that was it. I didn't really care about the rest. I mean, I cared, but I just, I'd rather go to sleep.

All right. You know, you guys know what's funny about the Tyrone Woodley thing? A friend of mine sent me a DM about this and told me how Woodley has this song called Beat Yo Ass and ever since he came out with that song he hasn't won a fight.

Ain't that a bitch? What is it about the UFC? So, like I mean, I guess it's different What is it about the UFC? I mean, I guess it's different because it's combat sports, but you see someone like Tom Brady that's able to reign supreme. They're able to stay on top. Even the Chiefs, they won the Super Bowl, and they made it back to the Super Bowl.

I know they lost. But in the UFC, it's like nobody could come close to beating Conor McGregor. He ran through everybody and then he loses a couple times in a row uh homegirl that would um arm barzy she was untouchable until she got hit knocked out once and then she couldn't do anything tyron woodley he was like on top for like two years straight yeah man he had a lot of title defenses and then now he's like oh my god and even it's even happened to some of the goats you know it's happened to like anderson silva yeah yeah or just like he couldn't like and he had like weird circumstances like his leg broke and shit like that but like i mean he was the craziest thing anyone's ever seen in the ufc and then he just got beat a couple times. King Velasquez.

GSB has stayed pretty dominant. He's one of the only ones who I haven't seen had a fall. It's crazy. I've never really seen... Again, I know it's fighting, it's combat sports, but even in boxing, people... I guess the fights are different. I don't know.

They're so unstoppable and then all of a sudden it's like I don't know. I just, they're so unstoppable. And then all of a sudden it's like, I don't even know the other guy, like where he came from and he smoked them. Yeah. I think some of the guys are like really professional. Like obviously they're all professional, but like a Randy Couture or George St. Pierre, like they recognize like if you're not, if you're not training, you know, it doesn't matter that you got the belt. Like if you're not really up to par,

then you're just not up to like the people in there, they're all really dangerous. You gotta take everybody very, very seriously. Some of the guys with that wrestling background, they, they keep that training in there and they don't, they don't falter or just fall back onto like whatever they did in the past,

you know? But also once you get knocked out, I out, it's easier to get knocked out. That's what they say. You always hear that. You always hear that. Guys coming back from losses, that it's just very, very hard for them to do. Plus, you got to wonder, all those consecutive hits over time, it's got to mess with your reflexes. It's got to mess with things over time.

Unless you're a fighter that doesn't get hit that often right right bones is doing pretty well see how he oh that that might be the next fight actually in gandu bones yeah and i think that's just that's unfortunate for and i i would like in gandu to win but i feel like bones is just such like in gandu has that one punch man strength, but I feel like Bones is just such a tactician. It's perfect for Bones. It could be, it sounds weird, but like it could be a fight that really makes him, you know, like he's. Isn't that crazy? If Bones was done now, he just, I think he's the greatest of all time. And I think he deserves consideration for that, definitely.

But I'm not the judge, you know? The people are. And if the people see him step into the heavy, whoa, are you okay? Yeah, just have to do it upwards because of my back and close my mouth. If people see Bones beat Ngannou, I think that might help solidify some stuff for them. Yeah. Ngannou, he's a different human, man. Like, some people, they're just, like, built to fight, right?

They just have that kind of body. Like, he's six foot four. His reach is just, like, fucking goes past your face from where I am. Everything is fucking long and shit. Well, they were saying with, like,ck lessner like uh joe rogan's description of him is like this is the guy with the longest biggest like sword that would ride up on the biggest baddest looking horse you know back when there was fucking vikings yep yeah and you're like yeah i could see that you're like fuck yeah no no one would mess with that crew right like

you'd just be like we're good take whatever you want yeah take our teepees from us we're good his story's crazy too like he like grew up working in mines in cameroon as a kid like this kid was he was working yeah a man's job as a child so farmer strength he's got that farmer strength and oh it's insane man i'd never ever want to fight it sounds fake yeah it's likeing, shoveling coal or whatever. Yes. Like quite literally you're like, nah, that can't be true.

He can't be that big just from that. So we have a couple minutes before our guest jumps on, but, um, dude, putting coffee or putting element chocolate in my coffee has become such a huge staple, especially on the weekends when I'm getting work done.

Of course. Um, but for me, i do it for the flavor but why is something like this kind of like beneficial why because it's electrolytes yeah but even on a day where i'm not training um for me personally like i look at it like it if you're hydrated and you have adequate electrolytes you're going to be able to perform better like even when you're not training you can still get dehydrated you could still feel kind of run down a lot of my homies use it just so that they could feel a little bit better when they aren't getting work done even if it's not drinking coffee like i have a friend that doesn't drink coffee but he likes electrolytes instead and i can understand that because again you're hydrated everything's firing the way it should

yeah and then also like i've been having um just, whether it be chocolate or just unflavored right before bed. And I've noticed I'm not waking up to pee as much. You know, before it would be like two times a night, three times a night even. Now it's either one or none. I'm not sure, like, if I got to get the timing right or what it may be. Could be the sodium. Yeah, yeah, whatever it is, it's freaking working. And I'm really appreciating it

because right now sleep is a premium little boy still waking up a couple times a night but anyways um yeah so element electrolytes um you guys hear us talk about it often if you want to try it out for yourself you can do so for free right now um they're still offering the free element recharge pack you get get eight samples shipped to you. All you have to do is pay for that $5 shipping. But then after that, if you want to step up, you can get the value bundle,

which is what we get. It's a, you're buying three boxes, any flavors you want, and you're getting a fourth one. Again, any flavor you want for free, you can do so at drink L M N T.com slash power project.

No code needed. Just head there right now and pick yourself up one of those big old value bundles. They have a new flavor coming out too. Oh, damn.

Uh-oh. I don't know if we're supposed to say what it is, so I'm not going to say it, but. You got that Illuminati info. Insider info. It's not from the Illuminati.

Oh, sorry. I thought you guys just have like a newsletter that gets everything. Different organization. Top secret. Top secret. I thought you guys just have like a newsletter that gets everything. Different organization. Top secret. Top secret. I had a cookies and cream legendary Pop-Tart. Oh, man.

You got a box? I do. I do. I'll bring it in. Today? So you got one with you today? You didn't just think about bringing it all to it. Can you go home and get it right now?

No. Come back. I'll get it right now? No. Come back. I'll get them dropped off over here. Nice. Yo. There we go. What's up? What's up, guys?

How's it going today? Things going good? Things are amazing. Awesome. How are you guys? We're doing fantastic. Congratulations on all the success of your podcast. We've heard nothing but good things, so it's great to have you on the We're doing fantastic. Congratulations on all the success of your podcast.

We've heard nothing but good things, so it's great to have you on the show today. Yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah, I'm grateful to be here. Quick question. Do you have pants on currently? I have shorts on. Okay. Ask that question, because on one of his episodes, he was talking about how he doesn't wear pants.

Oh, it's that big dick energy you need to get it on it's like a satellite you don't want to cover it up can't keep that contained gotta breathe yeah exactly how did uh podcasting get started for you and um you know how did you end up kind of forming the type of podcast that you have now yes i i started podcasting in like. I used to host a podcast with a former business partner where we interviewed entrepreneurs. So that's how I got my feet wet in podcasting. But I started this one, my profession, 3 years ago, just as a challenge to myself. Honestly, I just wanted to challenge myself. I had written online for a long time. So I was like, I'm just going to try to talk through my thoughts, something more vulnerable about that, as opposed to just writing and editing.

And I wanted to do it without guests. So I don't ever do guests. It's all me talking, which is like the ultimate proof that you can create something cool. So I just, yeah, three years later, still going. 278 episodes. Nice. What was your first business that you started with? Oh, God. I've had had many many tried and failed businesses um i'm looking at one i used to sell uh motivational

canvases art pieces that was one um tried to start a couple media companies around blogs and publications one around um you know uh courses, classic entrepreneurial venture video courses. Tried pretty much everything. What do you think one of the key components of something that you learned in maybe failing and maybe having some of those things not succeed that has helped lead to some of your success today? I think branding is everything. My business this past year has been insane. Like the numbers that I have are like, I never thought I'd be able to do it in five years,

let alone eight months. And I think it's because I've created a personal brand that like creates emotional triggers with people. I think that's the ultimate thing. You have to find something that irks people in a positive way, something that people can relate to, something that solves a problem. Whereas before, I was just kind of like creating things that I thought were cool, which I think is an important part of entrepreneurship.

But you've got to solve a problem, and it's got to be like an emotional kind of solve. It's got to be something that is universal, that people need help with. And now that's what I do. I sell journals, mindfulness journals, and that, um, seems to have done the trick. On the podcast you did before you said that you were like, we're interviewing a lot of guests and a lot of entrepreneurs. Um, and then how did you have the idea to transition to this type of podcast? Because in this podcast, like looking through like the episode titles and the way

things are put forward, um, I was talking to Mark. I was like, it's like he's talking, not just talking to yourself, but it's like a newer generation of, I guess, more emotionally intelligent, younger individuals. when I talked to a lot of my friends, it's a lot of the things that you talk about, but when I talked to people that are a little bit older, it's like, I, I wouldn't see them vibing with the way these things are put forward. So I'm just curious, like what was,

what was the premise behind it? Yeah. Um, yeah. Well, I appreciate that. Cause I mean, that's exactly it.

Like I'm like kind of anti expert. Um, I would never call myself an expert, which sometimes people like my, my mentors, like you can't, well, like that, you can would never call myself an expert which sometimes people like my my mentor is like you got well like that you can't not call yourself an expert like i'll go i did a appearance on fox the other day and the host introduced me as case kenny dating expert and i just kind of cringed at that i was like oh man i was like i'm not going to correct you live on air but uh i just like i i genuinely think that people nowadays people that consume content of any kind, they don't want to listen to another expert. They want to listen to people with credentials.

Of course, they want to listen to people who have experiences and perspectives. But I think the whole era of guruship and expert this and expert that like it's of course helpful, but people want relatability. that, it's of course helpful, but people want relatability. They want to talk to people who are going through it, have gone through it, and are simply just relaying their perspective as opposed to being lectured on what's right and what's wrong. And I've really leaned into that, and people seem to relate to it much more because it's true. I'm just a guy being a dude. I have no credentials in the sense of being a life coach or being a mindfulness guy or expert or anything like that. I don't have a background in psychology or never studied it in college. But what I do have is life experience. I have eyes and ears. And I think I have a skill that I've been given,

which is the ability to simplify things in life, which I think everyone can use that. And I set out, again, to create the podcast as a that. And, you know, I set out again to create the podcast as a challenge, but also it's like, it's like my therapy. Like I always say, like the podcast is obviously for other people because I've managed to create a business around it, but it's also every time I hop on an episode, it's for me. Like I don't go to therapy, not because I'm against it or anything like that, but just because this is my therapy. I hop in here for 20 minutes, talk on my podcast through my experiences, my problems, whatever. And I come out feeling so much better about it. So like the podcast is for me. It's like this great,

you know, symbiotic ecosystem where I could talk about things that help other people that also help me. And I do it in a no bullshit way. And it helps and it helps people. It's like it's the greatest, greatest thing I could do. And i always say that it's because i've been given a gift um and i think people all the time it's like it's sometimes it's tough to know what gift you've been given in life i think a lot of people think gifts are these overt skills and talents right you're an amazing actor singer athlete whatever i'm not particularly great at anything like that but i I have this ability, I think, to simplify decision-making, minimize overthinking, and just be happier as a result. And then if I can talk and I can help other people, I'm going to continue to do it. So that's always been my objective and it's worked and people listen and it's, you know, I'm grateful for that. I think what you're bringing

up is a really good point is that even a lot of your listeners, a lot of the people that are like, oh man, how does he have the confidence to do some of these things? Even a lot of those people have great stories to share. And if they just got started talking on a microphone, they would probably be shocked at some of the people that would listen to their weight loss journey, their fitness journey, their, you know, financial freedom journey or whatever the hell it is that they're going towards. Right.

Yeah, absolutely. Like I'm like the biggest advocate for anyone to try to create anything that they want. Like everyone does seem to have a podcast nowadays, which is funny to me, but I'm all for that. I'm all for anyone hopping on Instagram and posting a motivational quote too. Like I know people give other people shit a lot for that. They're like, keep Gandhi out of this, Jessica, take your mirror selfie and move too. Like I know people give other people shit a lot for that. They're like, keep Gandhi out of this. Jessica, take your mirror selfie and move on. Like,

I mean, like, I'm all for it. Like, like, like, you know, like,

like a hot girl post. But yeah, I mean, I agree, man. I think everyone has perspective that's helpful. And that's the end of the story. And I think people should tap into that and have the confidence to portray it. I never set out to be a self-help guy. I never set out to be a professional podcaster

either. Truly, truthfully. Again, I started the podcast as a challenge to myself. Right before I started, I was in a three-year-long relationship, hopped out of that, was like, who is Case? I was really into my career at the time in sales, hopped out. I was like, who is Case as a man? Who is Case as a purpose-driven human? I was like, I don't really know because I had been so invested in the relationship and the job. Hopped out. I was like, I'm going to do the podcast, discover these things. And then I was like, holy shit, all these people are listening listening i remember the first month i released a podcast that had 56 000 downloads which um isn't a lot if you're a professional podcaster but is a ton if you're an amateur podcaster for the first time trying it immediately puts you in the top percentile i was like whoa like why why do people care and then it started

well people are really drawn to just the way that i simplify things the relatability the stories i always told to back up my points and whatnot so um yeah, and here we are. So I mean, I've just been following that. Never had an intention to do this professionally. And now I give a lot of dating advice, which I never in a million years thought I would do considering I'm 33, single. It just seems funny to me. So I've just been keep pulling that cord to see where it leads me. What's been the hardest thing to share, like where you've kind of been like, I don't even really feel that comfortable talking about this or you talked about it and then people wanted you to dive in a lot deeper and it maybe was, uh, maybe even too personal almost. Yeah. Well, I don't know. I mean, the thing about the internet is it's the internet, right? So

anything that people see about me is, wow is the man he's confident his photos look great he's this and that on the podcast i choose my words very carefully you know it's polished and um you know i think the assumption there is that i'm this guy who's got everything figured out that i've never stumbled i've never failed i've never been broken up with i've never stumbled. I've never failed. I've never been broken up with. I've never been rejected or whatever. And I think it's mandatory of myself that when I give advice, I tell those stories. And that's always been tough, but it is cathartic. I mean, I tell the story all the time about how my last serious relationship was 27 through 30. We lived together. I came home one day and she just packed up and moved out. And it is what it a, that's a, you know, you know, it is what it is. I can completely heal from that, but that's a tough story to tell considering I'm the guy who's hopping on here talking about

confidence and how, what, knowing what's right for you and what's wrong for you and giving people advice. And then here I'm the guy who comes home one day and is blindsided. Right. So, but I like, that's part of my story. And I need to tell that because that gives a little bit of merit to my perspective. And I've, I've lived through that. I've seen that and here's what it's taught me. So it's always tough because it's like, again, it's, it's this interesting dichotomy of being a guy who's got it all figured out so that people listen to me versus also being this guy who's vulnerable, who has perspectives that are somewhat painful and trying to balance that as a entertainer, influencer, content creator. I don't even know what I'd call myself. So sometimes it's tough, but necessary.

Man, you probably get questions like all the time as far as dating and stuff, since some people refer to you as the dating expert, even though you do not like that. But with that being said, having done this for years, having thought a lot about this, what have you seen in terms of the modern dating sphere that are maybe some things that we deal with now that may have not been actual issues in the past, but you've probably just seen trends that most people don't. Yeah, yeah. And it is funny, again, on the whole dating expert thing. I'm going on Good Morning America in three weeks as their dating expert to talk about my book single is your superpower so i think i'm just gonna have to embrace the title and just move move pat i'm like really stubborn about certain things and like that's just one of them yeah um but again it probably shouldn't be

um yeah i mean i don't know i mean obviously i don't have uh anything to compare to as far as i didn't you know grow up with my parents but I think like the biggest thing is, I mean, you have everyone, every pundit wants to talk about app culture and hookup culture and the age of the internet and how it's created all these problems for millennials and Gen Zers dating in this day and age. And yeah, sure. Okay. Yeah. I think it's dating and app culture is interesting. There's so many options that people tend not to make any decision at all. And people are getting married later and later. And I think that's the evolution of culture in 2020, 2021. I don't think there's anything to say beyond that.

I think people like to create all kinds of conclusions from that. I think the biggest thing and the reason that I have an audience and the reason that I sell so many books and journals is people don't take time, particularly my compatriots in their 20s and 30s, don't take time to know what they want. And that sounds like a cliche thing, but it really is true. I consider myself in my 20s, I would ask myself the question, why am I dating right now? And I never knew the answer. It's like people don't take the time to ask themselves that they're like well what do you mean why am i dating i'm human i'm supposed to pair off with someone else create a life together leave a legacy like that's the answer and i think yeah of

course that's a like i agree we're wired to do that we're not meant to be alone but that's not a good enough reason so like that's why like i really try to empower people to come up with like a somewhat like selfish why like I am dating in order to do something I am dating in order to find someone who makes me a better person I am dating to find someone who checks my ego I'm dating to find someone who inspires me in this that in the other way like a little bit of self-serving mechanisms as opposed to I'm dating because you know I want to have a family uh that's a great reason but I think you need to go a little deeper. And the reason I say that is then you have this reason that's guiding you when you're

swiping, when you're texting, when you're going through all the bullshit of dating, which is laden with bullshit. You have this reason to fall back on and then you can make decisions from that. Is saying yes to this date going to further this goal? Is saying no, isn't asking this person out going to further this objective? Yes, no, make a decision. I always call it, it's like we operate in the gray of life. We don't know why we're doing what we're doing.

We don't take time to think about it. And no great decision has ever come from operating in the gray. That's just being ambiguous about what you want. And then you have another person who also doesn't know what they want. And you guys are trying to date. It's like, no wonder you're having issues. So it's just a matter of self-awareness. I mean, that's all I ever talk about in the podcast. Mindfulness equals self-awareness. Self-awareness equals asking yourself why as often as you can. So that's the biggest thing. I think nowadays we just don't take time to do that. I think maybe previous

generations, the why was always cemented in their mind for any which reason, again, just a hypothesis. But I just think nowadays with the availability of so many options and date and apps and sliding in the DM and all those great things, it's like we just don't take time to come up with a why. I think sometimes, you know, when people don't have a good understanding of why they're with somebody they just want to be with them because it would be too painful for uh for them to not be together you know which which is like totally understandable but uh it could potentially get you to a new spot like uh like what happened with you it sounds to me like uh that girl that walked out on you sound like she did like the biggest favor for you ever because it probably opened up your life to be able to see better. And who the hell knows,

you know, all the reasons why. And you probably were like, you know, why didn't she love me or why doesn't she care about me still? And it probably was really painful, but it probably super transformative in a lot of ways. Dude, I mean, amen. I mean, I look back at that and I'm like a little not proud of myself because I knew in that circumstance, I didn't know why I was dating her, but I didn't want to start over, to your point. I didn't want to be alone, to your point. So I was just coasting. And she obviously picked up on that. She was intuitive. She knew I wasn't committed. So she did me the biggest favor ever and dumped my ass and was out. And I've grown as a man, as a human, as an entrepreneur, a thousand X as a result of that. So I still check her Instagram every morning. I mean, it's not that big of a deal. I mean, obviously, yeah, she's having a great morning. Yeah, right. Yeah. She had her normal espresso. Everything's going good. Great day. Oh, man. Would you have them have basically the same conversation, you know, asking why, like,

why do you want to talk about fitness or why do you want to talk about this or that? Is that something that you would recommend someone do? Yeah. I mean, I think that's the best question. You sit down and someone's like, I want to, you know, I want to create content about weight loss, whatever. And I don't know where to start. I don't know what to do, whatever.

I would say, well, why do you want to do that? And then hopefully they would be like, well, in my early teens, I struggled with body image. And then I really tapped into weightlifting. And then I really found myself and I really found how much, how powerful I was and the ability I had to lean into discipline and things like that. And that is what has taught me. I'm like, well, fantastic. You've just created the foundation for what might be impactful for other people. You have a story that you've learned and you have the ability to tell that in a way that's maybe entertaining and educational. Boom, there you go. So I think the question of why is going to really unearth both your motivation to do something, which I think is important. I just want to be famous. That is not a good enough

reason. That's going to fall in on itself every time. But if it's genuine and it's coming from a place of, I've learned this and I want to empower other people to learn it because it's helped me so much, there's a reason. That's why I'm willing to give dating advice. Because what is the barometer for giving advice? What gives credit? what gives merit to your words particularly within dating i don't think it's being married i don't think it's having kids that isn't the barometer that you've been a successful dater in my mind the the measure of success in dating is that you're happy and fulfilled as you go along and do it and that's for me it's like i can get broken up with i can be really frustrated in my dating life i can go on bad date after bad date after bad date. And as long as it doesn't hurt me, as long as I'm happy as I do it, as long

as I maintain my sense of self, I think that's it. And I can turn around and give that advice to other people and can help them do the same. That's a reason that I should sit down and share my advice. So it's the same with other people. Like there's no other than like, maybe like investment or like financial portfolios or something like that. Um, or like very specific niches where you need to have certain experiences, like, you know, your measure of the ability to impact other people starts with your perspective, um, of having experiences that empowered you to be happy and fulfilled and confident as you continue to strive towards some finish line. And in dating, it's like, what is the finish line marriage? Probably, right? Finding that life partner. But it's what you learn along the way that can be helpful. So you could, I think

you could relay that to anyone who wants to create impact in life, start creating something, share something. And I think the best advice I would give is just do something different. I mean, you can look at anyone, like creating content online is a dime a dozen. Like what I do isn't particularly unique, but it is a little bit different. Like a guy sharing his feelings, it's a little out there. You look at my Instagram, if you didn't look at the selfies that I take, you'd probably think it was run by a woman. It's very bright and colorful. that I take, you'd probably think it was run by a woman. It's very bright and colorful. And I love that. I lean into that. I'm like, I pick that like masculine, feminine energy very specifically. And I do it for a reason. It's like, I think you don't have to, you know, pigeonhole yourself into just being one person or one vibe or one brand because you've seen it work

well for someone else. You can create your own trajectory experiment with different things i used to make fun of anyone who would post a selfie and now i just i'm posting banger after banger selfie that's where we're at that's great and uh as long as it helps me grow myself and helps other people i'm going to keep doing it so the advice would be the same for anyone else who wants to do the same. Uh, what about, um, your, your process for, you know, creating content,

you know, like from basically like the idea or the inception to, okay, like what's your process of like gathering information or your thoughts to actually like recording? Like, is it going to be like mainly podcast or is it going to be like, you know,

Instagram TV or what's the, yeah. So what's the uh yeah so what's case's uh process yeah yeah super scientific man i sit here and i mean my my honestly my process is is really simple like i get inspired very easily so my phone is filled with notes and screenshots of like things i see online um things that i disagree with i love going through like quote accounts because I just like see quotes and I'm like, that is not accurate. And I'll just screenshot it and be like, I'll give my opinion on it. So I'll give myself a prompt, whatever it is. Like this morning, I released a

podcast on why people come back after a relationship fails, right? Why someone who said they're not ready for you or rejected you or said they're going too fast, six months later, they come back and say they want to try again, right? Where did I get that idea? My own life. But what reminded me of it, I saw a quote the other day that was like, this is why men come back. And it was like all these like cliches. I was like, I'm going to give my opinion on this. So I had my prompt. I sit down in my chair in Chicago. I live right downtown overlooking the river. I throw on a bunch of house music, big EDM house guy, really loud music, not peaceful at all. Like that's not my vibe.

Like I'm not like a Zen guy. I'm like an upbeat 125 beats per minute kind of guy throwing the music. And I just literally word vomit into a document, a really, really outlined, detailed outline. And it just, and it just comes out honestly, like everyone always asks me how i do it and it's like unconscious like i feel like again back to skill sets that's my skill you ask like i'm going to compare myself to a great athlete but that's not my intention you ask any great athlete like how they do what they do they're not going to break it down into the minutiae well first i go left and then i go right and then i torque my arms like there no this is what i do because i this is the the skill i have and i've practiced it for 30 000

hours um so they just do it so that's what i'm at this point again having done 277 episodes hundreds of interviews i've written thousands of blog posts like it's a practice thing like i just get in the zone music plus prompt plus a vulnerable spirit. I sit down and I just vomit it out. I hop on the mic. I record it. And then, yeah, I'll chop it up into different blog posts and quotes and things like that. But that's genuinely the process.

Just inspiration plus the right vibe. I say vibe a lot and people make fun of me, but vibe is important. The right context. Vulnerable a lot and people make fun of me, but vibe is important. The right context, vulnerable heart head. Just go at it. I sincerely appreciate what you just said because you might be thinking or somebody listening might be thinking like, oh, I have to research this exact topic. I have to go to college. I have to get all the textbooks and figure out exactly what to say. And then they end up researching for, you know, a month and they never actually put the content out. Whereas you, you're just like, no, let me just get in front of the computer and let me word vomit all over this word doc. And then let's actually put something into

action and let's put some work in. So thank you for, you know, kind of putting that out there the way you just did, because I know for myself personally, I get stuck in that, you know, scenario a lot. But, you know, being here and then being on this podcast, it's definitely helped. And then hearing, you know, someone like you kind of reiterate it all over again. Just just thank you. Yeah, of course. Yeah, no, it's kind of funny, too, because I've had, you know, a lot of offers to do book deals and I've considered various ones and they're like, all right, cool. So, all right. So, you know, the book's going to come out in 2024. You're going to take two years to write

it. I'm like, I could write that in two months. I don't understand what's the... I'm not a research guy. I'm not writing a thesis. I'm pouring out my... And I get it. It's different for every industry. If I were to write a book on technical financial analysis, I got to do certain elementary discovery. But I'm over here talking about feelings. And I think there's something to be said of just not reaching for perfection. This is a random comment, but I've sold almost 100,000 copies of my book, Single-Edge Superpower, in the past eight months, which is insane. No publisher, nothing. And there's a lot of typos in it.

Like, typos all the time and it's like obviously i want a great product and i'm proud of and i'm proud of the product but there are some typos in it and that's because i wrote it in two months sent it to my printer they printed it and i'm selling it and it's doing amazing um but i mean yeah man i agree with you it's like we shouldn't hold ourselves back seeking perfection or overthinking the rationale behind why we're saying what we're saying. If you've got a thought and it's backed by something valid and you're centered in it, rock and roll with it. And obviously take the time to be proud of the product. But yeah, I think oftentimes we overthink what we're going to

create because we either doubt ourselves or we doubt what people might think. And we just go into this overthinking. I'm big on just gripping it and ripping it and, and, uh, taking the judgment as it might pass. I was curious about your journaling process because, um, when you said your journals, your therapist, I was actually having a conversation with a friend about this the other day. And I told her the same thing. I've been like using my journal for years. I can look back on some shit that I wrote when I was like 22, 21. And it's just like, cool. I can see what you were doing. You know what I mean? But like, I feel like that's a habit. And we've talked about this on episodes recently. That's a habit that has helped me out mentally so damn much. I'm curious,

when did you get into it? And what have you noticed? Like, how's it shaped you? How's it changed you? What kind of benefits have you gotten from that practice? Yeah. Can I ask you what kind of journal you use? Is it just like a blank one or? Well, okay. So I have this journal that's like for work and work stuff, but then the blank journal is just my thoughts.

So I like, I don't have any prompts in it or questions or anything. It's just, what am I thinking? Why am I feeling this way? All that type of shit. I just read all that stuff down. Right on. Cool. Yeah.

So, I mean, for me, it's like I've undergone what I would say is a pretty drastic transformation. You compare who I am, 33, versus who I was, 23, or maybe like let's call it 27, somewhere in there. I was like really closed off. Like everyone would always like if I ever like portrayed any emotion, people were like, whoa, case emotion, like what's going on? So like it's been a complete 180. Like I'm like the feelings guy now, apparently. So like I've undergone this transformation and I always in my 20s, like I was aware of this fact. I was like, I am aware that I find it difficult to communicate how I'm feeling.

I am aware that I'm a bit closed off, not cold, but just closed off the way I was raised, upbringing, my development, whatever, who knows something in my childhood, I learned that it was best to keep my feelings to myself. And then, you know, for me, that evolved to, you know, not taking time to analyze my feelings. I was like, not only am I not going to share it, but I'm just going to, any feeling that I get internally, I'm just going to shove it down, put it under the couch and move on with my day. But as I got older, obviously I started to, and matured and started to develop my own perspectives on life. I realized that that was not healthy. So I was like, I need to get to find a way to get these things out of my head, out of my heart and just look at them. And I was like,

I'm not great at meditating. Like I'm a little bit ADD. So to sit down and be like, clear your mind or focusing on whatever. I was like, I just can't do it. I'm like, Ooh, shiny. I'm just like, it just doesn't work for me. Um, uh, so I was like, I was like, well, I hear this great thing about journaling. So I was like, I went out and bought every journal I can get my hands on, um, for the most part or the way anyone I could find. Uh, I got them. I still got them all over here somewhere. They're like a big inspiration for my journals. And basically what I found is I couldn't find a journal that was like the right mix for me.

They were either what you described, which was blank journals. And it was like, share your thoughts. And that just never worked for me. Like, I just, I'm not good at sitting down and just like sharing. So that was one. The other ones were like a little too intense.

They were like, all right, it's 8am, write down 10 goals for the day, check back in in three hours and we're going to, we're going to measure your process and then come back tonight and tell us what you learned about your day. And it was just like too prompted.

So anyway, too, too prompted, too unprompted. And I wanted a way that was like, that would give me guardrails to get things out of me and write them down. But I also didn't want to be having a handheld the whole time. So I was like, I'm just going to develop my own. So that's what I did.

I think sometimes the best products come from your own need. So I did, I developed my own journal, 60 days worth of prompts. And I use my own journal. It's the weirdest thing. I sell my journal, I use my journal. And it's been really, really great for me because it's like what I've discovered about journaling is it's got to be iterative. It's got to be almost annoyingly consistent with the questions you ask yourself, the same question every day. So you can really understand what it is you're trying to hone in on. If you're constantly asking yourself different questions every day, you're going to lose focus. So I design journals that have the same prompts every day, plus two or three unique prompts every day to dive into other aspects of your life. So that's been my journaling

creator process. And then personally, I use it almost every day. Combined with the right music, coffee, I sit down and write my thoughts, answer these prompts, and it just feels really good. Even if I'm not coming up with epiphanies every single day, it is, it is healing to get these things out and onto paper and just look at them. Like when, and I find a lot of times people always ask me, case, like, why don't you sell digital versions of your journal? I'd love to use it on my Kindle or whatever. I'm like, I want to like feel my thoughts. I wish I could feel my thoughts. And like, this is the closest thing I can get to it. Like writing it, feeling it, feeling the pages, feeling the pen. And there's just something about that where it's like, even if you don't come up with these great, you know, ideas or, you know,

discoveries about yourself, you're getting it out of here and onto paper. And it just feels good. You're going through the process of being introspective. And to my point, I never used to be that way. And now I am. And I encourage other people to do it. And the number one question I'm always asking myself is why? Why, if I answer a prompt and the answer is I'm feeling anxious today, well, why? That's a step I never used to take in my life ever. I would never ask myself why.

I'd be like, well, I'm anxious. La-di-da. Like, that's the answer. But now I could break it down. So long answer. la-di-da, like that's the answer. And now I could break it down. So long answer, but it basically came from my past to recognizing that there wasn't a journalist

that I found that could help me designing my own, helping other people and then using my own product, which has been really exciting. And I'm releasing another one later in the year that's almost 800 pages long. That's going to be really cool. I know it sounds like what the heck, but it's going to be dope. You I know it sounds like what the heck, but it's going to be dope.

You mentioned that you didn't study psychology, but a lot of this is perfect for psychology type of work. You're recognizing, you're asking yourself a question, and you're saying why. That's kind of a self-awareness type thing. And then the next step is self-evaluation, where you're like, why do I feel this way? And so I think it's cool that you've stumbled upon a lot of these things just through your own trial and error. What I've learned over the years is that if I'm left with too many options, that I usually just choose the same thing. And a lot of times that's nothing. So having a prompt is really smart. And I like that you came to like, this is really fascinating to me because anyone could just follow the exact same thing that you said,

and they can apply it to any form of business. But you mentioned emotional triggers earlier, that being kind of the core competency of your business. And then you mentioned that you use emotional triggers to prompt you because you'll screenshot something that you take exception to. You're like, no, it's bullshit.

I'm going to comment on that. And you do a screen capture of it. I think that's brilliant. And a lot of people can gain a lot from some of those thoughts that you just said. I have a question about this, though. So your thoughts come in and you kind of mentioned you wanted to like feel your thoughts. I think that sometimes that could be a lot of weight. and like feel your thoughts.

I think that sometimes that could be a lot of weight. Something I personally have worked on a lot is to interpret because we don't always control everything that we, we don't always control every thought that pops into our head, but we're allowed to think about our thoughts. And then once you think about your thoughts and you process them, that's where we end up with our feelings. But you can sort of, of i guess manipulate or control or interpret the things that you think about whatever way you'd like and they don't have to

be hurtful or harmful or do you it sounds to me like you just kind of lean into that if it is hurtful or harmful or annoying yeah i mean you said it right there without saying it it's like it is a choice like you have a choice to how you react to your emotions. And like, this is the biggest thing. Like I talked to so many people and they're like, Case, you're so optimistic. Like, what's the deal? Like, it's got to be fake, right? Like, I'm the annoyingly optimistic guy with my friends. Like, we can get a flat tire in the middle of nowhere. And everyone's like, Oh, my God, this is the worst thing ever. And I'll be like, No, it's all good. We'll be out of here in a little bit. Like people are like, shut up, Case. Like we get it. You're a glass half full. Like it is genuine to me because I realized that when it comes to how you feel, you always have a choice of how you react to those things. And I talked to a lot of people and they're like, they're so down on themselves because they're like, I am anxious. I'm an overthinker. I'm a jealous person. I'm an insecure person, whatever. And I'm like, well, why do you say that?

Why do you label yourself that? And they'll say, well, it's because I feel this way or that way. When I'm in public, I get this anxiety. When I'm home, I feel lost, whatever, feel behind, whatever. I'm like, okay, so those are feelings. Those aren't descriptions of who you are. Those are feelings. And as we all know, feelings are driven by time. They're on a linear line and they're here and here and here and here and they're anything but permanent. trying to be a happier person isn't, is never to control your emotions. It's to control how

you react to your emotions. So to your point, it's like, I very much believe that you should always feel what you need to feel. You should feel its weight always. Like, I think I learned so much in my twenties to my point about whenever I would feel those things, I would immediately try to get rid of it. I've got to fight through this thing. If I'm feeling anxious, I can't feel anxious because I don't want to be an anxious person. So I would just throw it away. And there was never any self-examination in that. And you can't heal from what you don't feel. You can't overcome from what you refuse to feel.

So I'm big on feeling the weight of these things. Journaling is a great output of that. And then from there, you have this amazing human choice to decide what to do with that feeling. You could decide whether it defines you, or you could decide whether it's just a point in time where you're feeling a certain way, and you're going to move past it. And again, it takes a strong person to do that. It's easy for me to sit here and say that, and then someone with depression being like, okay, that's ridiculous. And I empathize with people like that, of course, I'm simply saying that of all the things in life where you don't have a choice, action-oriented outcomes, where it's other people, other variables, where you cannot control the

results, the one thing in life you can always, always, always control, no matter how hard it might be, is how you decide to react to those feelings, what labels you decide to put on yourself from those feelings. And I think you'll quickly learn the power you have to make that decision if you decide to be with those feelings as opposed to sweeping them under the rug immediately. So that's always been my take to any negative feeling. It's like, you got to feel it, feel its weight, and then try to understand why you're feeling that, and then try to choose a more hopeful resolution or outcome or next step or whatever it may be that's going to help you personally overcome it or endure

it, whatever it may be. You can't always overcome something. You can't overcome anxiety in a day, but you can endure it and you can find a more hopeful expectation of yourself. So yeah, it all goes hand to hand. I mean, journaling enables you to do that. And it's funny, you said goes hand to hand. I mean, journaling enables you to do that. And it's funny, you said something a minute ago. It's like, I always say, obviously, I'm not an expert. And

I do a lot of interviews. And I do a lot of interviews with like therapists, like licensed therapists. And I always get nervous because like, oh, shit, maybe they're going to call me out here. Everything I'm saying is bullshit. But it's always refreshing to hear that they're like, hey, it's like, you obviously didn't realize it. But what you just refreshing to hear that they're like, hey, it's like you obviously didn't realize it, but what you just said is rooted in this and this and this and science and science and science. I'm like, that's pretty cool. Not tooting my own horn, but the fact that this is all very intuitive, like and everyone has the ability to do this. We just have to simplify how we approach reacting to ourselves as opposed to trying to fit ourselves in a certain mold, putting a certain

label on us or coming to assumptions about ourselves that really aren't fair to who we are in this point in time. So yeah, I'm very passionate about that idea. And again, all comes down to self-awareness. What do you think about just reinterpreting whether something's negative or not and handling it there rather than like, this really pissed me off so i'm not gonna you know punch a hole in the wall type of thing we do we can control our reaction to it but what if uh what if we just have a reinterpretation of how like something can't make you mad something can't necessarily make you sad like what if we just re-establish that up front like people are going to die there's going to be shit that happens in your life that's going to be girls going to walk out on you like what are some of your thoughts on that part

yeah it's interesting right i mean um maybe for that question it comes down to this idea it's like sometimes we convince ourselves that you know everything happens for a reason like yep i'm going to be angry now i'm going to be heartbroken now i'm going to be xyz, everything happens for a reason. Like, yep, I'm going to be angry now. I'm going to be heartbroken now. I'm going to be X, Y, Z. Now it happens for a reason. I don't have control. Like some people have that mentality. And I've never really jibed with that, this idea that everything happens for a reason. You're just floating in space and you're accepting randomness willy nilly to you every single day. And I get that question a lot case do you believe and uh you know if does everything happen for a reason um and and i think it's really powerful i don't i don't think everything happens for a reason like um philosophically like you know you are preordained to fail here and be

rejected here so that it could serve this larger purpose that was established for you by some greater universal good whatever i don't believe that. But I do think that when things happen, bullshit happens, things that make you instantly angry, rejected, insecure, whatever, in that moment, they very suddenly gain a reason for happening. And that is always purpose. Like anything that happens to you, if you're vulnerable enough to examine it, you'll realize that it's giving you some kind of new, refreshed purpose. Like always. Like I think about being broken up with.

Like in that moment, I was like, this really sucks. Was this really supposed to happen? Well, in the moment that it happened, yeah. Because it gave me this amazing ability to discover myself, my passion, my company, everything. And then I could look at anything, previous jobs that weren't fulfilling. This sucks. I can come to a conclusion, man, I am just going to be a worker,

be at this company and hate my life. It's going to be, you know, funky tie Tuesdays and hanging out with Greg from accounts receivable and hating my life and just like bullshit, right? And, or you could be like, this frustration is giving me purpose. And that purpose is to uh find something that lights my soul on fire that gives me more purpose in my entrepreneurial

career whatever it requires you going deeper for sure but i genuinely believe that you know when something bad happens to you in your life in that instant in that blink of an eye it gains a reason for happening and that reason is in my blink of an eye, it gains a reason for happening. And that reason is, in my mind, is always purpose. You just have to be vulnerable enough to realize that purpose to find something new, to reevaluate yourself, to move cities, to invest in your health, whatever it may be. I think you could always find that. And I think if you're looking for it, you will. And you can choose that over whatever negative emotion you think you're going to fall into so um yeah again and that's a choice as well and it's easy for me to say just do that but you have to train yourself to do that you talk about the 10 000 hour rule i feel like i've

trained myself at least 10 000 hours to train myself to make more positive assumptions and choices about what i assume about myself. And it's worked again. I'm just happier this way. And not like delusionally happy, like, like, like Joker smile, laugh kind of vibes. It's, it's, it's genuine. And I, and I talk a lot about that. So hopefully that answers your question. You know, you mentioned that when you were younger in your early twenties that you would like, you know, you were very also aware that you'd feel certain things, but then you just kind of like, you know what I mean? And you said you kind of made a switch with that. But then, you know, you also just mentioned that like a How is it that you're so intuitive about this now? You don't do any type of studying on the stuff or whatever. From my assumptions, you think about it, you write about it, then you talk about it.

But it's also intuitive. So how is that process for you now if that wasn't how you were in the past? Yeah, it's a good question. I think, honestly, I hate to say it, but it's a choice. I mean, I think we all have these latent abilities that we oftentimes just ignore in favor of other labels. I mean, I think a lot about these topics of how we evolve and transform as humans.

It's not like you wake up one day and you all of a sudden gained a skill overnight. It's that you made a decision to uncover it overnight. And I think a lot about strength, right? I feel like a very strong, centered human now. Did not feel that way in my 20s. And I think a lot of that is the way that you decide to define yourself. I think in my 20s, I would define myself as case, kind of lost, not a lot of confidence, no purpose, overthinker, whatever. And I would literally define myself that way. But I think what I've evolved to do is be like, we all have good traits and bad traits, ugly traits and great traits. And I think we're aware of those. But far too often,

we allow ourselves to be defined by the ugly ones. To my point, in my 20s, if I were to sit down and do a journal exercise, I would probably be like, I'm impatient, I'm jealous, I'm shy, I'm not confident, I'm lost, whatever. was always an opportunity for me to be like, amidst all of those ugly traits, I still have this one great trait. And I think that is the measure of strength. And that's something I've really tapped into all those things I just mentioned. I'm still I still have those things. I'm still very impatient. Sometimes I feel unsure about myself. I have this like interesting ego, shyness complex, like I still feel like I have some things to prove because I feel like maybe previously in my life, I wasn't recognized. I was overlooked. I had a little bit of complex about success and money.

I still have those things. And I would call those ugly traits, insecure traits. But I no longer choose to define myself by them. I choose to define myself by my great traits, which would be my skills, my empathy, my creativity, things that I'm really proud of. And those are the ones that I define myself with. I'm not ignoring the other ones, but it's, I'm refusing to define myself by the ugly ones. I recognize them. I'm working on them. But as far as who I am, I define myself by my great traits. And I encourage other people to do the same, even if it's just one. And even if it's not like an amazing headline worthy Forbes article about you, it's literally just like,

I am a compassionate person. That is a great trait. You're a compassionate person all the while having these ugly traits. And I think that kind of transformation for me, defining myself by my strengths, as opposed to by the things that are kind of holding me back. It's really just given me a sense of like momentum to lean into those things as opposed to allowing the, you know, the humanness weigh me down. Everyone's got bullshit that they need to deal with. No one's perfect ever, ever, ever, ever. And I think the temptation is to allow yourself internally, not on paper necessarily, but internally in your heart, in your head to divine yourself by the things that are holding you back. But I think we all have at least one great trait that we can lean into,

latch onto, allow that to define us in the immediate so that you can get some momentum. I think that's all I've done is just gave myself that push to lean into the better aspects of myself. And it's worked. I mean, it's not like a fake it till you make it type vibe. It's like, I mean, I just genuinely like, if I looked at myself in my 20s, I was not confident. It was like fake confidence. But like now I truly feel confident. And I talk a lot about this. I talk about the power of ego, like the good ego. I'm a big fan of Ryan Holiday. And I've read Ego is the Enemy. And I think that's a great, fantastic read. And I think a lot of times there's two sides to ego. And I think a lot of times people talk about the bad side of the ego. And that, of course, is the ego that makes you think that you're better than other people, that makes you think that you don't need to learn anything

because you know everything and that you're this amazing person. I talk a lot about the power of your good ego. And the good ego says that no matter what happens, you'll be able to handle it. And that's where my confidence has come from. That's where my 180 has come from. It's like, I'm not the best. I'm not the most amazing. I'm not the best looking. I'm not the most talented.

But I'm not afraid of putting things out there and leaning into the things that I'm proud of because whatever happens, happens. And I let that ego drive me. I did an episode once where i i called it um confidence like kanye or something like that and like people really like that but it's like i think everyone should have a little swag to them like a little like screaming confidence not because they're better than everyone or annoying but just they can handle what comes next and i think that starts with redefining how how you define strength as as coming from your good traits and then just leaning into it and almost making them hyperbole in your life because it really does open some

interesting doors as far as how you define yourself. Yeah, I think things like confidence are things that are, they come from all the same places everything else comes from. And a lot of things you're mentioning today, like I just have this firm belief that everything that we need is within us. That's how you've been able to kind of sit down and reevaluate yourself to come up with a lot better answers. And when it comes to, you know, something like confidence, you make it up. You need to make up stuff for yourself to do so that while you're doing it, you start to feel like you can handle doing more things because you're like, well, I set out to do that thing.

I just fucking did it. That's proof that I can do it. And I've heard you talk about this on other podcasts, like just cleaning up and just throwing out some like soda cans or beer cans or whatever it is that is in your apartment or house or whatever. Picking up your socks, like just little stuff. You don't have to be, you know, crazy diligent. You don't have to be the neatest person in the world, but just, you know, putting things back, you know, where you got them from, or some people like to even leave things better off than they were when they first got there. You know, so a little, little cleaning, little tidying up, things like that, where you

tell yourself that you're going to do something and then you actually follow through and do it. Can you expand on that a little bit more? Yeah. Yeah. It's such a little thing, right? I mean, so yeah, I think confidence comes from being proud of yourself. And how do you get to be proud of yourself? Well, you're proud of yourself when you say you're going to do something and then you do it. And it doesn't, you know, it's not like you need to be like, I'm going to cure cancer and then you cure cancer. It's I'm going to do the dishes and then you do the dishes. going to cure cancer and then you cure cancer it's i'm going to do the dishes and then you do the dishes little things like that really do add up because i think we we we overthink we doubt ourselves a lot because we sit and we stew in every single thought that we've had and we're

very aware of all the things that we know we should do all the things we say we will do and then we're acutely aware of the fact that we haven't done them and that kind of eats at us we're like we start to feel like an imposter, a hypocrite, like we're leaving potential on the table, all those things. And that's fair. I think we should be motivated by the thing, the bullshit that we say and do. But I think little things like that, cleaning up, doing the dishes, doing your laundry, working out when you don't want to, like those are little things that you should be proud of and it adds up it really does like enhance your psyche um and then like on on the realm of like um confidence and being proud of yourself and all these things like i talk i always give like silly little analogies and um i grew up in in virginia and i don't know if it's a virginia thing but like used to go to like

fairs and like carnivals a lot when i was little or something so you'd always get get like tickets or coupons or whatever. And then you get them enough through playing games, you can redeem them for a prize or whatever. Right. And I always think about the same thing when it comes to like a confidence or disappointment or awkwardness. I've done episodes on this. I call them awkward points that the more you could push yourself to be awkward, every time you get a point. Eventually, you cash those points in for confidence because you realize that awkwardness is nothing. It's literally just a temporary feeling. The more that you can embrace that, you get all these tickets.

You literally cash them in for the learning that confidence comes from the moments where you throw judgment to the wind and you do whatever because you're not scared of what result might come. Confidence. Same with like disappointment, like disappointing other people. I talk a lot about this, that I really think it's essential to disappoint other people in life. I think, you know, what do the kids say? Like, show me the receipts or whatever. Like, show me the proof. Like, show me the proof in life that you're growing. It's a tough question, right? You show them your bank account. You could show them. I don't know. How do you measure your confidence?

How do you measure self-growth? It's tough. But I think the number one way to prove that you're growing in life is tell me about a couple of times you disappointed people. And not disappointed people in the sense that you told them you were available for dinner on Friday and then no showed or like bullshit like that. I'm talking about people who expected one thing of you, expected you to be a certain way. And then you said, no, I'm going to be this way. Someone who expected you to be on their level, but you decided that you were a level above them or on a completely different plane. And I call those disappointment points, like receipts. Like, I think it's very essential that you disappoint some people at

some point in your life, not in a savage way, not an I'm better than you way, but in a simple way that's indicative that your expectations for yourself have evolved alongside of your age and your transition in life and what greater proof you have of you respecting your growth than disappointing some people, than saying yes, than saying no when they expect yes, or even yes when they expect no, whatever. Those are the receipts that you need in life. And it's painful, and it's awkward, and you could feel like you're throwing away good opportunities. But I genuinely think that those are the moments that you're going to be proud of looking back. That's proof that you're embracing who you know you're

capable of becoming, what you need to do to're embracing who you know you're capable of becoming, what you need to do to get to who you want to become, and so on and so forth. So, you know, sometimes that helps people. It's like transactional almost, like awkward, awkward point, disappointment, disappointment point, but it's serving a greater good.

So I like to think of things in those terms sometimes. Did you ever used to be a people pleaser or nah? Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah, because I didn't really have confidence. So I got it in the form of, you know, validating myself through saying yes. Okay. Um, I was also curious about, Oh, I wanted to kind of reiterate something that you said earlier that I think was like super strong. You said it kind of quick and you went into the point, but it's like when you think something about yourself or you can make a choice, like your choice about being intuitive. I thought that was awesome because like I used to tell myself or I used to think I wasn't a creative individual. And I used to think I was really rigid because of like what certain people would say about me and what I would think about myself. So I was like almost took pride in my rigidity about certain things. But at a certain point, it's like, I kind of dropped that and it, it wasn't purposeful choice. I just started having to do more creative things at a certain point.

So I was like, okay, fuck it. I got to be creative. And I was just like, eh, this rigid thing. Like, I don't necessarily like that idea about myself. So I just kind of switched it and it was like a switch. Right. So I think a lot switched it and it was like a switch, right? So I think a lot of people, they have this self-talk and we talk a lot about like what you tell yourself and what you talk to yourself about on this podcast. Um, and if you can change yourself, talk about yourself, like maybe it's not going to be immediate, but you'll slowly be able to transform into a very different type of individual or even change aspects about your personality that you think you think are weaknesses or that you don't really like. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, self-talk is everything.

I think everyone has different preferences for self-talk. Like for me, I, it's weird. I re I react well to like motivating self-talk, like, come on case, don't be a little bitch. Like, let's do this. Like, that's just me. and i know not everyone responds well to that so like i encourage people to to evaluate and decide what's best for them i mean it's like i i think a lot of time it's like i likened it to if you're dating someone and you're you're thinking about your relationship with them and what you want to do the question i always encourage people to ask is how does that person make you feel? Is your interaction with that person bringing out your best qualities or your worst qualities? It's a great question, right? Park that there. But then you ask yourself that same question about how your internal dialogue makes you react. Is the way that

you talk to yourself bringing out your best qualities or your worst qualities? Likely your worst qualities, right? Is the way you talk to yourself making you more anxious or less anxious? Probably more anxious. So I don't have a blueprint for how to solve that. Of course, it's going to be a choice and it's going to be disciplined and it's going to come from a place of vulnerable self-awareness. But I think, again, to the way that we started our conversation, we don't take the time to evaluate that in the first place.

That, oh, shit, I'm making things way worse for myself because i'm continuing to bring out my worst qualities in the way that i talk to myself um and it's not a helpful thing for me to be like just be kind to yourself love yourself like that's not helpful but there is truth in that like sometimes you literally just need to continue to tell yourself that and then do it and do it and do it. To your point, sometimes you just need to create. You just need to tell yourself what to do because you know it's what you should do. And then you need to sit your ass down and do it. That's why it's like this idea of self-love.

Everyone loves to talk about self-love. It's like, yeah, but self-love, sometimes you got to get real with yourself and you got to get tough with yourself. And you look yourself in the mirror and rally yourself up. And, you know, it's not all tenderness and grace. Sometimes it needs to be a little bit dirty, a little bit violent, a little bit aggressive. And then sometimes that's how you find yourself. You can't coddle yourself all day.

You know, I think you should be extremely compassionate and vulnerable with yourself. But sometimes you need to kickstart that. Sometimes you need an aggressive catalyst to do that. And everyone's different. And it's so funny. It's talking to you guys. It's like most of my audience is women. And most of the podcast interviews I do are with women. So I'm like, not that I don't like to make generalizations about men and women and men respond to this and women respond to this. I don't want to make those generalizations, but it's always interesting talking with women and kind of their expectations for how they talk to themselves versus a guy who sometimes it's like, you just need to slap yourself and move on.

So it's just an interesting anecdote. I hear you kind of over and over again, kind of mentioning something very similar each time. And it's this idea of like, just correcting errors, you know, like what you pointed out in the very beginning about the, the triggers of emotion, and then how you were like, let me figure out ways of solving this problem. And then you identified some of the errors that people have in that. And then you looked at some quotes that were online that you disagreed with. And it just seems like, kind of time and time again, that you keep ending up in the same spot of, you know, this error identification and error correction and creativity comes from that as well. And so when somebody says, when someone says, I can't be creative, it's very simple of showing them examples of them finding errors with, with certain things.

I mean, you could show someone a picture and say, you know, there's those tests of like, do you see anything missing from this photo? You know, there's three soda cans in one, there's two in another or whatever. And people can very easily identify errors. They can identify, uh, you know, what's, what's wrong in a particular situation. And once you, maybe you don't always come up with the best idea, you know, right away, but you come up with an idea, which that's a form of creativity. And then you work on getting a better, getting a better idea. And it takes a lot of practice. And then over time you build that confidence and then you feel like a creative person.

And the next thing you know, you think you're full of amazing ideas. And every idea that you say you think is going to be fucking awesome. And then you tell some friends and you're all pumped up about it. And they're like, eh. That's kind of how you get that one. No, I think every idea I have is great. Yeah, that's how it happens, right? But yeah, I mean, so I love that and I think it's so true. And again, I feel like I always repeat myself, but again, I think it's helpful. I mean, everything you just referenced is questioning, questioning what you know, questioning yourself. And I have this little soundbite that I always

talk about because to me, it's been like life changing. And it's the following. It's that in life, there's no right way to live life. But there is a wrong way. And the wrong way is to think that there's a right way. It's cheesy. It's cliche. It is what it is. But I live by that because I used to think that there was a right way, that someone who was creative, they had the blueprint for creativity and I needed to figure out what it was. That happy couple over there had the blueprint for romance and I needed to figure out what it was. That dude over there who's been single for three years and is popping bottles at the club and is confident, I need to figure out his blueprint for being single. Right way, right way, right way. And that is just not a healthy mindset. For one,

it puts you in a corner and really limits your creativity. But two, it also makes you constantly think that you're falling behind, that you don't have the right way, that they're successful. They have the right way. They're the happy people and I need to follow them. And it really is debilitating in the sense that it makes you overthink and it makes you doubt yourself. And I used to, if I, five years ago, if I was like, I'm going to make a living from sharing my feelings on the internet, podcast, Instagram, journaling, I would have laughed at myself.

I was like, first of all, there's no market for that. Second of all, no one cares. Third of all, Casey, you don't have the personality, the charisma to do it. Be gone. I would have laughed at that because there's a right way to be a professional podcaster. There's a right way to be an author. You need to get a publishing house deal and you need to do this, that, and the other. And I've torn down that wall completely.

I have a one-person team. I've sold millions of dollars of a silly journal I invented in my living room in Chicago. Millions of people listen to the podcast. Again, this sounds very boastful. I'm just adding anecdotes. But i've proven this to be so wrong and then i look at like the way that i used to think to be single when i uh 29 i've been single from 29 to 33 i used to think that being single meant you got to go to the club you got to do this that and the other when i spent so much money getting bottles at the clubs here in chicago and it was fun still like going to the club i suppose but i used to think that that was the right way to be single because i saw the confident guys do that that's the way to be

single that's the way that you show that you're confident and you're the man and whatever that's the right way and then same when i was in relationships in my 20s well yeah this is the way you're supposed to be in a relationship this is what you're supposed to do and i just realized that that's not true all of these things are truths that you discover about yourself. I mean, to your we're constantly borrowing truths from other people, other people's assumptions, other people's expectation of how to date, who to date, why to date. And I think a lot of them are valid, of course. But I think a lot of them aren't true for you. Like I always give the silly example of some people are like, if he doesn't call me his woman crush Wednesday, then that means he doesn't love me. Not validated.

And another woman's going to be like, that's the silliest thing I've ever heard, Becky. What are you talking about? And like, that just shows the, like the, the, the difference between expectation and your truth. And you've got to discover those for yourself, both in dating. Why are you dating? What do you want? How do you want to be treated? What is the expectation for how your relationship journey should progress versus someone else? And same in business and life and confidence and like any, any area in life that you could think of, you've really got to push yourself to discover that for yourself. And to your point, it starts with questioning what you know, or the assumptions that you hold to be true. Man, uh, in terms of like other people's expectations, like,

you know, within, uh, I guess this is probably everybody's expectations, like, you know, within, uh, I guess this is probably everybody, but within like, um, my culture, like, you know, you should be married by a certain point, like, you know, 24, 23, maybe all that type of stuff. Um, and if, if I was following the expectations of certain people in my life, right. I'd be married to an individual that I would not be a, to an individual that would be horrible. I know a lot of people who've put themselves in those situations because they were doing things based off of the expectations of their parents, their aunts, their uncles, family, etc. And that's a very tough place for some people to be. But what I was curious is, did you ever have a timeline for yourself?

Because I remember when I was 18, I was like what I was curious is like, did you ever have a timeline for yourself? Cause I remember when I was like 18, I was like, all right, 18, start dating, figure out somebody two years, pop a ring on that few, three, three, four years after that pop a kid out another year after that pop a kid out. Like I had this, I had this detailed idea of where I thought everything was going to go. And I forgot where it was when I was just like, nah, this is stupid. But did you ever have that type of timeline for yourself? And then also, when did you, I don't know if your parents had expectations for you or whatever, but when did you kind of stop caring about those types of expectations?

Or not necessarily stop caring about it, but stop putting as much weight behind its importance? Yeah. Man, I feel like when I was 18, 20 i was a child i was an absolute child like is i definitely feel like i was a late bloomer just an anecdote there um yeah i mean i think in my 20s i always had expectations for myself i remember being super bummed that this random ego-driven thing i was like oh shit i'm not, I can't be Forbes 30 under 30 anymore because I'm 30 now. Like, and I was like, I need to be like, this is my measure of success. Like on the success, financial success, entrepreneurial success route. I'm like, that's going to be the measure of it. Something there. Um, so yeah, I always had, you know, vague expectations for

myself like that. And then, um, my parents have never been the pressure type at all, but like, I understand people there very, very, very much. The pressure is unreal, more so for women, particularly within dating and relationships. But it's unreal for everyone. I always used to have those expectations. But I think about dating specifically. I think about people who bemoan the fact that they're still single when they're 25 or even 35 or even 45 or whatever it

might be and they start to make these um like well for one i'm proud of the people for not making rash decisions of you know committing to someone just to have that relationship but i always like i always consider things on like a linear line and you're here and you're feeling these things you're feeling this pressure you're feeling lost or like you're a disappointment because you're not filling these expectations that either you set for yourself, society set for you or your parents set for you. And then I try to fast forward 10 years and look back. And particularly when it comes to like dating and relationships, I find it very unlikely that you would ever look back and say, I regret being single in my 20s or in my 30s.

I think it's much more likely that you'll say, I regret being in that toxic relationship for too long in my 20s. I regret staying with that person for too long in my 20s. You're going to regret the things that you decided to do out of pressure versus the natural state of who you should be at that moment, which might be single. And I talk to anyone. I talk to my grandparents. I talk to older generations. And I ask them, what do you regret in your 20s or 30s? No one ever says single. I regret being single for too long.

I've never heard anyone say that. I think in the moment, it's very easy to be like, I'm lonely. I'm lonely. I'm lonely. I'm lonely. I'm falling behind. Everyone else has a partner. I should have a partner.

My parents had kids by this time. I'm not even dating anyone. Very easy in the moment to say that. But to me, it's really liberating. It's like your spirit removes from your body. You transform 10 years later and you look back and you're like, am I going to regret being single? I think a sense of vulnerability, you're going to be like, no, man, I'd regret being with the wrong person. I'd regret proposing to this woman because I'm feeling pressure and then being with her and then hating my life. Like those are things you're going to regret.

So time, of course, is the great time and health are the greatest assets you ever have. But there's a lot of time. And I think sometimes we don't recognize that. And we should make every moment last. Of course, we shouldn't kick the can down the road. But if you're making yourself miserable and you're constantly reinforcing this narrative that you're falling behind, particularly in regards to the committed relationship, I think it's a helpful exercise just to remind yourself that you're not going to regret being single. For one, I mean, you're going

to be married. Let's say you get married when you're 35, something like that. You're going to hopefully, ideally be married for the rest of your life. It's a long time to be married. You're never going to be single again. So now's an amazing opportunity to be selfish and do all the great single things you could think of. But it's just a helpful exercise to get you out of this guardrailed expectation zone and put you in a zone where you're a little bit more forgiving and understanding of yourself to understanding regret. Regret's a powerful motivator. Like that's my biggest motivator. I want to minimize regret in my life. And I look at being single. I'm 33, single. People, myself, expectations. I'm like, I'm incapable of regretting this. Yeah, I want to find someone, but I'm not going to make the wrong decision to do that. And that's because I do this exercise of going forward to look back. So that's just kind of how I rationalize that. Why is being single a superpower?

Yeah. So, I mean, I think it's, for one, it's all the cliches you could think of. Being single is an amazing time to get to know yourself, to travel, to invest in hobbies and yourself and your health and your wealth and all those great things. So that stands the test of time and I'll live and die on that statement. I have grown so much uh as a as a man as a creator as an entrepreneur just by having time literally being single you've got all the time in the world you can do whatever you want you can be selfish and not feel bad about it when you're in a relationship you can't like you shouldn't you have responsibilities and you need to you can't you, you know, hoard all that energy. So for one, I think that in effect is a superpower, 100%. But two, I mean, to everything that we've been talking about, it's when you're single

that you discover what's true for you, right? All these things we've been talking about, what's true for you? What do you want a partner? Why are you dating? Who are you? What is your purpose? Why are you doing the things you're doing? Your truth's not other people's truths. Your truths, not other people's borrowed truths.

And you decide those when you're single. Being in a relationship is fantastic and it gives you all kinds of complimentary growth. You can grow very powerfully with a partner. I grew a lot when I was with women that I dated in my 20s, but it's very different from growth when you're alone. And that's when you truly decide what you want, what's right for you and so on and so forth. Your truth's not their truth. So I can't think of a better word to describe a temporary state in your life other than superpower. Superpower in the sense that you could do whatever you want, invest in whatever you want, grow however you want, and most importantly, decide what you stand for, what is true to you. And a lot of times, I mean, frankly, that's something that people don't take the time to do.

I mean, I never want to bemoan other people, but there's a lot of people living that don't really have values that they created. They're just like, oh, I'll take a little of that and take a little of that. And you said that, okay, that's my MO now. take a little of that. And you said that, okay, that's my MO now. It's like the most powerful, impactful people that I know in life, people that are truly living passions or people that are changing the world. These are people who took time to discover these things for themselves. They didn't just read a book and were like, oh, that sounds good. I'm just going to borrow that or look on the internet and be like, oh, that person looks really happy. I'm going to be like that person. It's like they went out and did it themselves and they threw to the curb any stigma around being single, around they're falling behind or there's something wrong with them. They're like, hell no, there's nothing wrong with me. I'm going to prove that.

So yeah, it's a mindset, it's a lifestyle and it's a temporary phase in your life. But in my mind, one of the most powerful and transformative opportunities you have. Are there some exes from your past that are like, Case, big dick energy? Like, seriously, bro? It's a little bit of a stretch. Yeah, I mean, yeah. I'm telling you, the woman that I used to date, I'm very different now.

So, I mean, I've never really been like friends with your exes kind of vibe. I mean, I'd be interested if they ever listen to my podcast, what they think. different now so i mean i'm not i've never really been like friends with your exes kind of vibe i mean i'd be interested if they ever listen to my podcast what they think like they do you know they do yeah they're screen capturing big dick energy and sending it to each other yeah they're on the group chat for sure what is big dick energy about uh yeah i mean i did an episode a long time ago about it it's so funny i like often forget about what i talk about um i think oh yeah well okay i think it's two things for one um i've been saying for a long time that you know there's always this vibe that i used to have when i like

proverbially walk into a room used to walk into a room and hope that everyone likes me right cliche to say but then the transformation to big dick energy is now you walk into a room. I used to walk into a room and hope that everyone likes me, right? Cliche to say. But then the transformation to big dick energy is now you walk in a room and wonder if you're going to like them. It's a simple role reversal of being okay in your own skin. Oh, are they going to like me?

They need to like me versus am I going to like them? What do they have to offer? Not in like a selfish, they need to prove their worth to me. But it's like, you don't always have to be proving things to other people. Take a step back and see what, you know, vibes with you.

So that's half of it. And then I think the other half is what I was referencing earlier, like the power of your good ego. Like that is what gives you big dick energy that, you know, we all have those friends who like, we're willing to do anything, do anything you know be awkward make fun of themselves go up to anyone at a bar or whatever like they're like sometimes people expect me to be like big dick energy is a compassion compassionate radiance of your inner true self i'm like no sometimes big dick energy is just willing to be awkward and it's willing to be rejected like that's all it is

it's just funny i always like i'm in the self-help world. I'm like, I don't understand some of the things people talk. People talk about like your frequencies and your chakras and things like that. And I respect that. And it's very real. Of course, I just don't understand it sometimes. So yeah, I think all it is, is it's a combination of flipping the script on proving and validating yourself to someone else versus flipping it and expecting in the reverse order, combined with the power of your healthy ego, which simply says that no matter what, no matter what I

do, what I say, as long as it's coming from a place of respect and intention, I can handle whatever comes next. And I'm cool with that because I'm going to get an awkward point. I'm going to get a disappointment point. And now we know what those go towards, and it's going to be fantastic. And as a result, I'm cool. I'm confident. You know, I know, I know what I have to offer or I'm, I'm cool with continuing to discover what I have to offer and that's always going to serve me well. So some kind of combination of those two definitions there. It's not a, not great to like compare ourselves to other people, but like, who are people that you kind of look up to where you're like, I really like the way this dude's doing things. I really like the way some of these people are kind of living their lives. You have some people like that, that you emulate

that are other writers or, uh, other people that are maybe in your space that are inspirational to you. Yeah. Yeah, of course. People often think I'm a bit of a hypocrite because I really don't listen to podcasts. I really try to stay away from like self-help writing. And I do that for a couple reasons. Again, I'm very stubborn about some things. But for one, it's like, I never want to be an influencer. For one, I hate that word, but I never want to be an influencer quotes there, who is just borrowing other people's ideas and regurgitating them as my own. I'm sure I do that. It's impossible to have completely original ideas, but I genuinely want to have original lines of thinking that come from my own experience. And I feel a lot of the times really leaning into other people's content subconsciously prevents that. But with that being said, I mean, I'm very inspired by, you know, a lot of the top podcasters i'm also like inspired by like parallel uh industries like not necessarily the you know publishing like i'm very into music production like and i like um it's so like one of my idols in music is armin van buren big dj number one dj in the world um i used

to idolize this guy like i listen to every music. I'd go to every concert in Chicago. I'd fly to go to every concert that he put on. This guy was so amazing. He would create this emotion with his music. He was so charismatic, so creative, such a nice guy. And then when I had started to get my success on my podcast, I had him on my podcast. I met him here in person and we hung out for two hours. And he took out his phone and was like, hey, do you mind if I take a selfie with you? And it was just like this transformative thing. I was like, this is insane. and their creative skill set and doing it in a bit of a different way. So, but then I'm also like very inspired by the randomness of the internet.

I spend a lot of time on Reddit. Like there's so many like dope, regular people sharing amazing perspectives in a way that they never expect millions of people to read it. They're just sharing it. And like, that's the realness that I love in life. Not people who are professional life coaches, no disrespect to them. Not people who are professional public speakers or motivational speakers or anything like that. It's just regular people who have regular perspectives, but that are super helpful for other people.

in life is to remind people that they're never alone in whatever they're going through. Sounds like a very noble goal, I suppose, but it really is true. And we don't oftentimes take the time to realize that. You hop on something like Reddit, you realize that anything that you're going through, someone's gone through it. Someone's going through it. Someone will go through it. And it's just powerful. And I like those kinds of people who are willing to share that and share how they overcome it, uh, over are overcoming it, will overcome it, have overcome it. Like that is the kind of stuff that inspires me. Um, I was curious, like, you know, you kinda, you kinda alluded to it a little bit, spent a lot of time on some Reddit. Um, what does your consumption of like,

yes, content and stuff look like? Cause you know, a lot of people watch a lot of YouTube videos, watch a lot of Netflix shows, et cetera, right? But what does your general consumption of stuff look like? Because obviously you're very productive with what you do. You've been very successful with what you do. So we had an episode where we talked about guarding your inputs, right? Guarding things that you pay attention to. Because, I mean, inevitably, like if you're paying attention to a lot of negative things, things that make you feel bad, it's going to affect your mood. It's going to affect your decision making, et cetera.

So for you, what does that kind of look like? Yeah, I was real quick on the Reddit note. I was thinking about there's a sub. So Reddit's divided into subreddits, right? Based on topic. There's a subreddit called Roast Me where you post a picture of yourself and they just rip you apart, right? That's the internet. So anonymous, cruel.

So like a year ago, I was like, I want to prove that I have thick skin. I want to prove that anyone could say what they want about me and I'll be fine. So I did it. You take a selfie, you write roast me on a piece of paper, and then people just try to annihilate you. And I did it and people were super mean. It was really funny. I'm thinking about doing it again because now i got

a lot more following and i i think it would be pretty funny but uh i don't know i just that was like it's like a masochistic exercise but like it was it was pretty pretty funny to me um but i learned a lot through that but that was that was reddit um to answer your question uh i spent a lot of time on youtube like uh everything right now i'm really into watching um like high school baseball prospects random random so random absolutely random and it sounds weird i just like i'm really inspired by random things on the internet people doing cool things at an early age at an old age whatever um so i i don't know it's just like to me it's just like uh really relaxing to just like

watch a video on YouTube and then just keep watching the suggested videos until I'm down a rabbit hole and we're on the other side. So I spent a lot of time on Reddit. I really don't watch a whole lot of TV. I mean, I'll watch whatever the popular Netflix show is. But otherwise, I mean, like my MO is very music driven. Like I don't think I've ever done anything creatively worth sharing without music, without the right music. And again, for me, it's like house music, not necessarily like banger house music always, but just like the right house music, progressive house music, maybe some trance, something like that.

But that always just puts me in the right headspace. It puts me in the right headspace it puts me in the creative headspace 100 percent um so uh i do i do that uh a lot but yeah i mean that that's it i mean i do spend a lot of time creating very i feel like i'm always creating something and um now that i'm bigger gratefully it's like there's a bit of pressure to create so it's kind of a different vibe now yeah particularly coming out with a podcast twice a week. How do I always come up with topics? And so I'm always the lens through which I'm looking at TV or Netflix or YouTube. It's like, I'm looking for inspiration. So it's a very different attitude, very lean forward. I want to be inspired, inspire me, inspire me versus before just kind of watching for entertainment. It's a different vibe for sure, but I enjoy it.

It's like I always have purpose in any moment. Like it's really cool to me. Like I'm living my purpose. I can go out for drinks with my guys and like, oh shit, dude, that was really well said. I'm going to write that down. I might want to talk about that. Like it's not distracting from anything, but it's just very purpose driven. So like I feel like I'm always living that purpose, which to me feels really good. Cause whereas before I felt like I was

kind of adrift and didn't really have, um, uh, like a North star or just anything to do or create. And now it's like, I always have my ears up for something to kind of put in my heart and then come up with my, my own take on it. Being someone that is in the self-help space uh what's a major concern of yours that you might be seeing from uh some of the people that are looking for help oh yeah i don't i don't i feel like i haven't made up my mind yet there um like i feel like i like i get emails and dms all the time people asking me for me to be like their their coach whatever like i'll pay you whatever every month i just i need guidance and i just like i don't know i'm just not i'm not there yet with thinking that i that that would be right for

someone to pay me money to help them i just feel like the incentives aren't necessarily aligned there like the second you start doing something for money it's just it just changes things so like that's my biggest concern for myself. I'm sure there are life coaches out there who do it right for the right reasons and have really figured out the model. I just don't have the perspective to say that. I think other than that, I think sometimes the self-help industry can be a bit too savage. In quotes, they're like, if you can't tell, I'm very passionate about this. And sometimes I'm like, you deserve better. And that's all you need to know. And everything should guide that. But there's also a lot of self-help that kind of pits people against each

other, that it's other people against them. It's the world against them and that you need to stay strong and the world's going to try to beat you up and you need to stay strong. And yeah, of course, I mean, what the buddha's saying is life is suffering or whatever and i think that's true but i that shouldn't be the hallmark for your transformation is you against the world randomness against you luck against you um i'm like there was this quote that i went off on the other day that was like the quote was from first person view that was like, I only match energy. What's given to me, I give back.

And I just hate that because like you're in that case, it's like you're asking for permission to be your best, most compassionate self. You're waiting. Someone needs to be kind to you for you to be kind back to them. I just don't like that. And I see that kind of mentality a lot. And for me, it's like, I would rather be the kindest, helpful loudest quirkiest weirdest dude in the room and if it's not returned to me then okay then I leave and I'm out but to flip it the other way and be like I only give the energy

that's given to me and that's because I'm respecting my boundaries I just I don't like that and I see a lot of that in self-helpness and I respect everyone's opinion who writes that. I find a lot of younger people tend to write that. I can't believe I'm saying that now. I used to be, not that I'm old, but I used to be the young guy saying that kind of stuff. I feel like my parents, but I see that a lot. And I just, I don't like the whole pitting people against each other. I'm all about assuming positive intent. I'm all about saying everyone is a good person who is acting in a flawed way. They're trying to help themselves. They don't mean necessarily negative intent for you.

They're not necessarily trying to hurt you. And I think there's just something more hopeful and optimistic about life to have that filter on as opposed to everyone's out to get you. Everyone's going to hurt you and so on and so forth. I don't think it's a naive attitude. I think definitely life can rock you and people, there are some very bad people out there and there's people who do have poor intentions for you.

But I just, I never liked the vibe where it's like you against them, you need to, you know, that, that kind of vibe. And I just see people gravitate towards that because it's easier. People like to,

you know, contextualize them as the good person that other people are the bad people. And you're kind of at battle with them. And, uh, I don't know. I just don't really like that. So I like a more, more compassionate view of, of life and love and kind of everything in between. Were the sales of, uh, some of the things that you sell, were they positively impacted by, uh, some of the like government shutdowns and things that happened surrounding coronavirus? Maybe because, just to speculate, maybe because people's mental health was maybe compromised because just didn't have access to doing the same things we normally do? Yeah.

I mean, one million percent. I mean, if I'm being honest, things have been going really well the last three years, but it was this past year where things blew up. I mean, my podcast listenership about six X and I was always doing well before that. So like we're almost at like a million monthly listens right now, which is pretty crazy for an independent podcast. And then, yeah, I mean, I've sold so many journals during COVID for that reason. I mean, I think people are looking for more intentional ways to practice positive mental health and habits. So I mean, I've it's always weird to say that, you know, COVID has been kind, but I'm very grateful for that opportunity. And like, I've just had more free time during COVID not doing much to like really invest in

creating things that are that are good for people. So like, I've got a bunch more things I've that are almost done that I'm going to release. And I think the, the market has presented itself. People are looking for these things and, um, you know,

um, the feedback has been great. So yeah, it's been, it's been a, been a weird time, but, um,

hopefully, you know, I'm on the receiving end of it and I can put it back out there for a good reason. That's interesting. Has that been something that you've spoke about uh openly you know to your to to your fans i really don't i used i used to think that i would be that guy who would be like i've sold this amount and this amount like i typically don't do that um for a couple of different reasons i

mean like i do need to figure out what I want to do because it's like, I don't want to alienate my listeners ever. Cause like, again, I'm a regular guy. We're approaching territory where it's like, again, like I'm doing something pretty crazy.

Like, like I'm a one man business. That's like approaching a very, very large, like eight figure number. Like it's, it's craziness. And like, I, but that's not who i am like my measure

is impact and i know that's a cheesy noble thing to say but it's all enabled by by my listeners and and i don't ever want to put myself on another playing field or another level or anything like that um so i'm i'm figuring out what that what that means for me but it's just all been super fast to be honest with you um this past year uh so i'm just kind of riding that wave and learning i mean i've learned so much this past year i'm not an entrepreneur by heart i was never that kid who was like selling lemonade or anything so i've kind of been flying by the seat of my pants trying to figure this out are you able to share that success with anybody else yeah i do so i have a advisor um who i i tend to obviously he helps but i mean i i confide in my friends like it's healthy to share your wins and you should celebrate your wins of course and i

tell my friends that um and it and it's because they support me and they want that for me i just i never want to be that guy who shares his success in order to be more successful i mean that's like like anyone who sells like shitty video courses on Instagram, that's what they do. They flex their success in order to get you to buy their book so that they can become successful. And that's not what I want because I'm not selling success.

I'm selling fulfillment and simplicity of decision-making. But I'm big on the fact that if you're good at something, you should find a way to make money from it. And it's, there's nothing wrong with being financially motivated. I think money's fantastic. It enables you to do a lot. Um, I love watches. I collect watches.

Those aren't cheap. And I'm never shy about that. I never want to, I was never that, and I've worked in sales for a long time. Um, did quite well there. I've never want to be that guy. Um, I was, I've never been that guy who was like, I don't really need money to live the life I want. I'm like, yeah, the life that I want involves a lot of money. That's fantastic. But it's because it serves this purpose and that purpose, not necessarily so I could have all these things. But yeah, it's a balance. I'm

still figuring that out, to be honest. So you just said impact and fulfillment. So I'm sure that has a ton to do with the success on the podcast. But, you know, as a producer on this podcast, I want to try to obtain more downloads. What have you seen has made like the biggest impact as far as growth? You know, is it because you said you do blog posts, you do Instagram and that sort of thing. Is there something that, you know, I should be focusing more on as far as getting our reach to be a little bit bigger? Yeah. So I think a lot about this. And I've tried a lot of different things. And like I said, I've been podcasting since 2014. I had a podcast called The Hustle

Sold Separately. My former business partner, Matt, still runs it. Great podcast. But in my days, I'm sure he's done well now we struggled to grow it and then even in the early days of new mindset who dis granted i did have that initial success but then it kind of plateaued i was always at like i don't know 200 000 monthly downloads which again is a lot and very grateful to even be able to do that but what really changed and what has 5x those numbers is hooking into this idea of emotional triggers. Like, the biggest thing you could do is you help solve a very tangible problem for people, of course. But it's got to be a universal problem so that more people listen.

And for me, that was dating. Like, I never did any dating episodes up until episode 70. Actually, episode 69. Because I'm a child. I waited 69 episodes to do an episode on dating. That's great. And I did. And that's when things started to blow up

because what more universal trigger emotional, inherently emotional problem that people have than in their dating life. And knowing my audience, which is majority women, like hearing a male perspective, a down to earth dude in his 30s in Chicago, it's just brandable. And that's what they want to hear. So I've really leaned into that and listened really well to what type of content would do well. It's just something more specific and emotional about talking about being ghosted versus doing an episode on how to be happy.

Right. The big difference there and honestly you talk about headlines and clickbait like it's still very much alive in podcasting especially once you're on the like the apple charts like people look at the headlines like for me i did an episode called confessions of a fuckboy the hundreds of thousands of downloads on that because wow what a what a what a title i'm gonna listen to it and then i of course backed it up with what i think is great content. But it's triggering.

Like, what more triggering thing is there in life than being ghosted, rejected, overlooked, frustrating dating stories? Because it's a universal want. It's a universal need. And there's universal frustrations associated with it. So the solution, obviously, isn't everyone talk about dating. But I think there's always more emotional triggers that you can lean into as opposed to how to find purpose, how to be happy, how to practice this or that. It's like,

those are the solutions to what problem. Identify the problem, lean in on that, talk about that, create content around that. And then, I mean, podcasting is really tough. I can't imagine a tougher vertical to break out of. It's like the Spotify, Apple podcasts, they really don't do anyone any favors as far as being discovered. It's not like Instagram, you can get, you know, you could trend or on Twitter, get retweeted or anything like that. It's so, so difficult. So you've got to create your own distribution. So for me, I have a very large email list. I've got a decent size social following, things like that. I do a ton of interviews. One of the biggest things that blew me up is I went on a podcast called Girls Gotta Eat, which is one of the top women's podcasts. That one absolutely blew up my podcast. So yeah, it's about being scrappy, to be honest. The right content, emotional triggers, plus being scrappy and consistent. The right content, emotional triggers, plus being scrappy, inconsistent.

277 episodes over three years, never missed a single episode amidst all kinds of things happening in my life. Something to be said about that. And yeah. Oh, and I would say the last thing is asking people to share the podcast. I mean, it's amazing how many people don't do that necessarily. Podcast hosts don't ask people to share it or they'll be like, hey, don't forget to share, like, subscribe, review, buy, like all these different things

and people forget what to do. The only thing I do is I say, hey, just share the podcast, DM it to a friend, text it to a friend, bingo. And that's how people discover me all the time. I get DMs. Hey, I got your podcast. Your friend shared it with me

because I was going through a breakup, emotional trigger, breakup. I did a podcast on breakups. So, so things like that. I have a lot of thoughts on the topic. Um, so you, you, you're an artist, you put music out there. Um, if you can tell people a little bit more about that and what to expect, but I wanted to ask you really quick, what is it about Chicago DJs? Um, i go way back to like someone like bad boy bill so like i discovered him and then from there you know jj flores steve smooth and then eventually like freddie legrand and you know put your hands up for detroit that was my jam but anyway uh so

uh what can people expect from your music yeah yeah man it's the the midwest house music movement over here. Always crushing it. Yeah. I mean, I definitely wouldn't consider myself like a talented musician or artist. I've just always been really creative and I have a passion for music. So I've released my own album and a couple of tracks that I've worked with some other producers. But my big thing is combining mindfulness with music, mindfulness with upbeat house music, mindfulness with any genre of EDM. I release these things called music and mindfulness mixes, guided meditation set to house music. And everyone's like, huh?

That doesn't make sense because meditation is meant to be this downplayed silent thing. But there are some of my most downloaded episodes. I've done them with some big names in dance music, Sam Feld, Griffin. I'm working on one with Alesso, Armin, Kygo, as well in the future. And it's just, it's basically my podcast set on a musical journey

that gets gradually more upbeat. And it's basically meditation that you do while you work out while you walk while you run while you're moving kinetic meditation set to this music and um to me it's just really cool that i can combine these two elements that i'm passionate about mindfulness with music um i'd love to create my own and really learn music production it's just a challenge time-wise so what i've been doing a lot is teaming up with DJs and producers, guys who really are popular for one, because the branding works and we bring in each other's listeners and it's

great. But two, it's just, it's just really cool to learn from these guys. I mean, like I've always been, I go to every, every concert I can go to.

I've always been that douchebag at Lollapalooza in Chicago with my shirt off at the, at the house music tent, just, just vibing out. So've always been that douchebag at Lollapalooza in Chicago with my shirt off at the house music tent, just vibing out. So I just love that kind of music. It always makes me feel super vulnerable, which is a weird thing to say. Like who gets vulnerable to dubstep? Like what?

But it just like opens me up. I just feel like free or whatever, free to express myself, but free just to like be honest with myself and that's why i always create content to the right music um and then i've always been that kind of guy that i can't just like something i have to try it myself so that's how i kind of got into music and then i started releasing these music and mindfulness mixes and they've done really well and now i've got access to some some large names in the industry, and it's been really cool.

And I can't wait for things to hopefully return to normality soon and do some in-person events and live DJing and things like that. How long have you been kind of focused on your health? Because you're pretty jacked. Thanks, Matt. It means a lot coming from you guys. Well, I'd say probably like the last five years like focusing on it i mean i am a classic ectomorph i'm like six two i was six two like 140 for a long time not yeah yeah super skinny so like now i'm six two around 200 um filled out and i'd owe that to one, going through puberty in my 20s and two, just working out a lot and eating a lot. And I don't know, I gain a lot of confidence from it. I mean, I don't think it's ever misplaced to derive confidence from your body.

I don't think that's I never really like when people are like, that's not real confidence. I think you can derive a lot of confidence from loving your body and being confident in it. But I also just like getting stronger. I always remember I played lacrosse in high school, just being like so weak in the weight room. And I just always wasn't necessarily like self-conscious. I was just like, why am I not stronger? Like why am I not getting stronger? And really just investing in myself and my technique and nutrition and things like that coming out of that. And it's just fun. It's just fun to progress and get stronger and then see results physically. But also, I mean, it's just a sense of pride to go and set a goal

against something and do better. And I like it. And I go in there, I listen to house music, broken record and lift weights and take mirror selfies. And it's fun. Awesome being with you today. And we appreciate the work that you're putting out there. Where can people find it? Where can people pick up your book and the journals that you sell? Yeah, I appreciate you guys having me on. This is honestly a great chat.

I appreciate you guys giving me the opportunity to talk about what I'm passionate about. So thank you for that. Yeah, no, it's newmindsethoodist.com. So you can pick up any journal. The podcast is also called New Mindset Who Dis. And then I'm on Instagram, case.kenny. If you want some banger selfies and some cool quotes written on coffee cups or Chicago skylines, that's what I have to offer. Where did that come from? The coffee cups? Mm-hmm.

Yeah, well, it's one of those things. It's like everyone posts inspirational quotes on Instagram. And I was like, well, I want to too. So how am I going to do it in a way that breaks out? And digital quotes, no one cares anymore. It's just not real life, right? No one wants to look at a digital quote on Instagram. I was like, what is something that everyone touches or feels or sees every day?

And I was like, coffee is one of those things. I drink a ton of coffee. I mean, I've even got cups right here. So I was like, I'm just gonna start writing them on cups. And I did. And I do. And they get shared a lot. And people really like them. And it forces me to, I can't tell, I do talk a lot. And I have a lot of thoughts. it forces me to take, you know, a big thought and condense it into one sentence. And I think that again, is the essence of simplifying thoughts and feelings, putting them in one sentence. And, um, yeah, so it's, it's been fun. I'm that guy. I'm the coffee cup guy. I get stopped a lot in Chicago. Cause it's like, my aesthetic is always the same. I wear vans and ripped jeans and usually like a kid's extra small t-shirt.

And then I'm walking around with a coffee cup and that's like, that's my vibe. I'm always walking around Chicago trying to find cool places to take photos of them. Any ideas surrounding, you know, maybe getting that, getting those quotes like written on those little slider things that keep your hands from getting too hot? Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah'm i'm working on some stuff like that there we go awesome it's an idea that i've had for a while i just need to get around to doing it yeah like the coffee sleeves or whatever absolutely have a great rest of your day thank you thank you thanks a lot thank you guys appreciate it yeah thanks cool hey good stuff huh that was cool i really really really really really really really really like

that part where he was like um you know like his intuition was a choice like i i really agree with that i think that that's a big thing if you if you say certain things about yourself just because maybe your parents have said it or i don't know you've thought something of yourself about yourself for a long time and you continue to say that you'll continue to believe it but once you make a switch you can change you can change that aspect of yourself it might not even be real it might just be something you say because it's a belief system you have but you can change that shit real quick i think people don't realize how much negative self-talk they have and they because they because they don't even categorize it as negative because what they're saying like they

don't even know that what they're saying is, is not helpful to them. And, uh, just claiming that you're not creative or something. It's just not, it's all understandable. It's understandable to, to, uh, say stuff in conversation with somebody like, oh man, I had a real hard time this morning. I didn't have my cup of coffee or like, it's, yeah, you know, that's just the way humans talk. We try to get you engaged somehow.

We try to, you know, have someone have a little empathy or sympathy for you. And so we speak that way, but to say it out loud is, I think is something that we should all work on. Yeah. There's,

I'm not saying that you're going to be a robot and you're never going to say any of these things, but I think it's something to be worked on. Even with like, sometimes I'll hear someone say, man, I got a crazy stressful week coming up. And it's like, really? Like, you know how to predict the future, you know? Like, you didn't go through the week, you know? You didn't get there yet.

And there could be a lot of things that are coming up. But again, we can make a decision on how we want to reframe that. I've heard you talk about this before, and this is nothing new either, but I've heard people talk about being nervous. Nervousness could be like, man, i'm actually really hyped for this this is going to be this is going to be a really cool experience uh and i think scary doesn't have to be doesn't have to necessarily be negative you know you can kind of think like this is kind of scary this like dot you know going out jumping out of a plane could be scary, but like, why do people do it? They do it because it's scary. You know, you kind of, you want that exhilaration. So, um,

I really liked a lot of the stuff that he was, uh, he was saying today. And it was just cool how he was, uh, I kind of wrote this down cause it was like, he was saying a lot of stuff that spoke to a lot of things I've been thinking, but, um, it just made things pop up in my head, like problem solving through like problem making. You know, like he he's kind of like and he's also reverse engineering it the other way around to like he's identifying a problem and then he's coming up with like a solution. And then sometimes he's even just saying like, you know, screen capturing something and then commenting on it. I thought it was all, you thought it was all really good content.

And I think he could assist anyone to create content off of the stuff he said on today's podcast. Absolutely. The disappointment thing was a pretty big deal. It was huge. I loved that. And it's actually something that I'm already planning on sending my daughter. She has the biggest heart, and she doesn't want to disappoint anybody. She doesn't, you know, she just wants everyone to be super happy. You know, she's, you know, like he said, um, uh, people pleaser, but like, yeah, like, yeah. Disappoint

some people, like get in some shit. And then, um, the awkward points too. Like, I think that's super important about, um, you know, kind of getting. Cashing them in. Yeah, yeah. Like, yeah, just adding that into your bank because it'll pay off later. I think that's so important for a lot of young people because nobody wants to start because they don't want to fail. And then here it's like, no, like you should actually not strive, but like you should be okay with failing because that just means you're going to get better. You're going to progress. You're going to progress. You're going to grow. It's just, I,

yeah, there's, there's so many awesome nuggets in this conversation today. Let me ask you guys something on that disappointment note. I was just thinking about it a little bit. I mean, I guess it's, it's,

it's, what would you say? Would you say that it's disappointing individuals expectations specifically, or is it just like if somebody doesn't expect you to be able to do something or like oh whatever right and you do it maybe it disappointed them but it's also just like rising above the expectations that other people have right is that the same thing or are we necessarily talking at some points really just disappointing people do you guys get what i'm saying here I feel like it's just a different way of saying that a very, the same thing.

It's, it's a, it's a different way of saying to be better than what somebody expects of you. Right. Or, or you, I'm just wondering. It's, it's hard to, uh, like, I think what he was talking about could be made, you could look at it so many different ways. Yeah. So I think, you know, one way to look at it is like disappoint people so they actually understand who you really are like you know you you're you might make you might

make some choices on doing something and then the person might kind of get the idea of like oh that's just like what they want to do more often than whatever it was that you were looking for them to do yeah one of his coffee cup shots had a, said this on it. I was checking it out. He said, well, this kind of vibes with that a little bit. You can't force someone to see, you can't force someone to see that you're a blessing. Sometimes you just have to let them miss out. So like,

I mean, that one's like, it's a little bit different. You're not asking to, you're not asking too much. You're just asking the wrong person. And then the other one was sometimes you got to let people, Oh,

here it is. Sometimes you got to let people do what they want to do. So you can see they'd rather do so you can see what they'd rather do. And so I think like that might be something like in the area of disappointment, like you're, you're allowing someone else to just kind of make up their mind. You're not forcing them to like hang with you.

You're forcing them to let them make their own decision. It might disappoint you to see that they'd rather do something else yeah you know so i thought that could be interpreted uh many different ways but i think also just falls in line with failure you're going to mess up sometimes uh expectations are a weird thing because you you know we shouldn't have too many expectations it It's an easier way to monitor like your feelings being pulled all over the place. But we get excited about stuff and we're like looking forward to shit and then it doesn't happen.

You're like, fuck, it's disappointing. Yeah. The way I kind of interpreted, interpreted it, it was like, um,

if I say like, Hey Mark, by the end of this month, we're going to have have 500 you know new subscribers to the newsletter like i'm gonna do it like i'm gonna crush it and then he asked me and i'm like oh shit i got like 50 um i'm gonna feel like i disappointed him he's not in actuality he's probably not gonna care but the next time i go around to do something or to get those like extra subscribers, I'm going to remember this feeling and I'm going to step up big time and also kind of like control expectations the next time around. But I feel like I'm learning from that feeling of disappointment or disappointing someone else is a very motivating thing.

And you start to maybe meet each other halfway over a period of time. Right, yeah. And it's like, okay, well, now I kind of get that this is about what I should expect. And it's like less hurtful because you're not so far off, right? Yeah, yeah. That's kind of what I was thinking is kind of going back to young people not wanting to disappoint or whatever. It's like, no, if you do a little bit by you'll you'll kind of thrive off of that weird like pit in your stomach when you're like i fucked up but again it's like no

that's now my fuel that girl walking out on him that must have been very disappointing for him but then it allowed a lot of growth to happen that ends up being yeah so i think from both sides you know like somebody disappoints you or you disappoint somebody, there's probably opportunities for growth. I like what you said because that's a good way to look at it is, yeah, maybe you can recognize that and say, I could do a better job. Yeah. I think sometimes with disappointment, though, is that you don't even know you're doing it. So that can be tough. Someone's got to bring it to your attention.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, then that's not fun, I guess. But again, it's just another opportunity to learn. Ultimately, I think he kept kind of talking about a lot of these things that just fall into a category of understanding. There's people that know stuff, and they can regurgitate a lot of facts. And they could say, this i know this this and this but then when you start to ask more questions deep you go two three questions deep a lot of

times people don't have a good and i have a good enough base uh to really have a good true understanding of what it is that they're talking about yeah that's true yeah i dug this conversation way more than i thought i was yeah got gotten the feels a little bit yeah that was cool i like how he was just so open about his banger selfies that's so cool confidence but they also weren't really selfies though yeah well maybe he had his self-timer on i didn't want to i didn't want to call him out but like these are like real photos hired somebody no no i could set up your your thing self-timer get on the couch is that still a selfie though I didn't want to call him out, but these are like real photos. You hired somebody. No, no, no. You set up your thing, self-timer, get on the couch.

Is that still a selfie, though? I thought selfie had to be phone in hand. In the mirror. In the mirror. Or, yeah, mirror. You're right. That's a selfie. That's a selfie portrait.

People don't even really do selfies anymore, like real selfies. Like a real selfie is blind when you can't see it. That's a real selfie. It's that shit. That's, in my opinion. That's a real selfie. It's that shit. That's, in my opinion, that's a real selfie. That's that next level. That is the OG selfie. That is grabbing the old Polaroid and pointing it at yourself and hoping that you...

Yeah. Yeah. You got like half your face super close up of just like your nose or something. Damn it. That was $2.50 for a missed selfie. Fuck. But now you can go 0.5, but then your arm looks all long. That's so cool.

Yeah, that is a pretty cool thing. That's a sick... Possibilities of what you can make look longer. Mm-hmm. Let's see who's going to go get a new iPhone. I'm ordering that today. I think... Matt needs it.

I think you can do it on the older phones, too. You can? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, I've tried How old is this thing? Well I have a 10X Or 10S sorry

Oh my god it has a cord on it It's plugged into the wall Doesn't have it on there? I don't think it does I'm totally fine with my phone But when I see some of those pictures, I was blown away. Oh, not on reverse mode, only on forward.

Only on forward mode. Oh, there's just that, huh? Yep, yep. Just rub it in. Yeah, it doesn't go... Wait, is that on regular photo? Is that a portrait, or...? This is on regular photo. God damn it. Yeah. How old is that? 2000? Is that 10? Yeah, this is the XS Max. Ah, okay ah okay yeah i'm living like

a peasant over here my bad man yeah i don't even have the max and i oh yeah yeah i legit yeah i don't really care like about like new features and stuff but when i say that now no when i seen that so mark had sent some pictures for something i don't remember what it was but he was like oh you like that check this out and he sends just like a, you know, the wide angle selfie. And I'm just like, oh my God, the detail. Like it would be such a pain in the balls to get that with an SLR or just like whatever it may be. And he just did it with his phone in seconds.

I'm like, damn it. These phones are getting crazy. Yeah. That's, that's wild. Damn. We got to upgrade your phone, bro. What are people going to think? That I'm poor.

You represent our company. You're out there wearing our stuff all the time. Yeah. I can hide behind my big camera and be like, no, I don't mess with the phone. I got to use my actual camera. But you, we got to step up. Hey, guys, if you're gonna take some action off this episode go buy yourself a journal or maybe get cases journal it's probably

pretty dope from like all his prompts and stuff it'd probably be a good idea yeah i like sounded great it sounded awesome i like what he said about like some of them are too like just like the empty one or whatever he said the plain ones and then the other ones are like whoa like there are some like don't you have that habit journal yeah it's like but that's one for like work right yeah well like yeah it's it's it's rough because stephanie got it got it for me for christmas and i was really pumped about it but then like when i dove into it i'm like oh i i it's about like making a schedule and how much work you want me to do like i gotta clear my schedule in order to write my schedule down and it just i was like you know it was it was tough and like it was like real thick like bulky

so like i couldn't carry it with i mean i i could carry it with me but then it became a thing you know like i had to make room for it i'm sorry i can't like i can't do this too big of a commitment and then half those things i can never write in them because I write all over the place like a fucking madman. That's the other thing. It would ask you like, you know, whatever the questions are and it'd give you like three lines. And I'm like, well, I need at least, you know, two lines to make sure I get the letters straight. How does he write that shit on the coffee cups? That looks impossible.

Yeah. Maybe he prints them out. You know how hard that would be to write on a fucking coffee cup well it's a it's a paper one i know but still no but like got pretty good handwriting and trying to trying to design the uh the the whiskey bottle over there yeah now imagine it like smaller and round rounded and then he writes a paragraph on them shits so he's gonna sell the fuck out of those little sleeves. Sleeves. Yeah.

That dude is good at branding though. You like when you, when you see like how he branded his IgE and all that stuff, that, that was very well thought out. Very well thought out. Take us on out of here, Andrew.

After I burp. Oh yeah. My bad. Oh, wow. I'm okay. Okay. Thank you everybody for checking out today's episode.

If you guys dug it, make sure you do slap a like. And if you're not subscribed, please do so. And hit the bell notification so you guys can find out when we go live. And that is, someone's talking really loud. Yeah. I don't know what that's all about. A lot of stuff always going on down at Slingshot Headquarters. Please make sure you follow the podcast at MarkBell'sPowerProject

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