How long have you been doing it? 10 and a half years. That is insane. Yeah, yeah. Man, you really got on to podcast before anyone else. You know what though? It's kind of like, you know, the cryptocurrency craze right now and everyone's doing it. People who got it in 10 years ago, there's a few of them that made like millions of dollars. But most of them, they bought like one Bitcoin and they're like, eh, whatever. And then they sold it when it went up to $100. Right. So that's kind of where I feel like almost I did it with podcasting, it was like in super early. But then for six years I was like, eh, I'll just record one of these every three weeks and not care. Right, yeah. Had I been running it like a business back then and been more serious about it, it would have looked a lot different. Like if you look at the Rogan show or Nerdist were, they're handing out stickers and stuff. And I remember getting a sticker for Nerdist podcast and I was like, they're making stickers? What are they doing that for? Now of course it's like, oh, okay. Yeah. You slowly build up to this enormous brand. Yeah. And speaking of enormous brands, you tell me about Quest Nutrition Man because I looked online when I was Google stocking you as required before. I mean, I did that before we were friends too, but I'm like, oh, I gotta refresh my memory about this stuff. The brand that you, I had to do math in my head, which I always despise. Yeah, I'm with you there. Because the growth was it was like 57,000% over the first two, was it two or three years? Three years, yeah. And then I was like, oh, that's like 57 times. Wait, no. It's like 570, wait, hold on. It's 570, and then my brain melted because I thought, how do you grow that much at all? I mean, that's like going from, hey, I've got a box of stuff I cooked up into my kitchen to like, hey, we need another warehouse to store all my stuff. That is literally what it was like. And we went from, because this isn't manufacturing. Like it's one thing to scale by 57,000% in software. Yeah, I've got users. I gotta pay Amazon an extra $50 a month, right? I've got a few extra servers, right? Yeah. The last boss it was going from renting a commercial kitchen by the hour to at the end of it, we had just in one of our facilities, 300,000 square feet.  Which is another number that kind of, you can't wrap your head around when you think about it.  You're like, how many of my house fit into 300,000? Right. You could fit multiple football fields in one of our facilities. It was sanity. That's a lot of bars slash food products. Yes, agreed. It really is crazy. And at that scale, little mistakes, and I'll get into this in a little bit, I think too, but little mistakes are millions of dollars slash, hey, we're gonna throw out 400,000 bars that have too much chocolate in them or whatever. But how do you even go from the seed idea? Cause when I was looking up on Facebook a long time ago, you and I have a mutual friend that I grew up with. And I thought, oh, how could you know this guy? Doesn't make sense. I asked him and he goes, oh yeah, I think we did like a movie thing together a few years ago. And I was like, nutrition brand, YouTube channel, online community, movie business. Were you just focused on a lot of different things or were you just kind of like, I guess I wanna do entrepreneur stuff, dot, dot, dot movies, dot, dot, dot nutrition bars. What's it do? No, man, I so wish that I had been like clever about this and that is not at all been my trajectory. So I fell in love with filmmaking when I was about 12 years old and just knew I'm gonna be a filmmaker. You're in a good business for that now. Now, right? Right.  So go to film school, think this is gonna be it. And I'm doing really well in my first couple of years in film school and think I'm just gonna smash this three picture deal when I graduate. But literally believe that. Like I wanna be able to understand, right? So. Get James Cameron on the phone real quick. Exactly. I'm almost graduated. Exactly, that's how it felt. And I thought, oh man, like I'm gonna have it made. I'm doing well here. And then my senior, so four people at USC get selected for a senior thesis film. It is a big deal to get picked. And I ended up getting picked. And so now I'm like, I'm one of the four. Like it's just all happening. It's all coming to fruition. All coming together just like I planned. Right, exactly. And then I crash and burn my senior thesis film. It is so horrific and so embarrassing and literally all but go into depression and just think I now have no idea what I'm supposed to do with my future. And I felt completely lost. And cause now I've graduated. There's no more infrastructure to help me cause I wasn't at all self-directed. So I needed that school. I needed the teachers. I needed the introductions. Like I needed those things to have a certain automatic nature to them. And so once I was all gone and I had sort of burned all those relationships by being untalented, I thought, what do I do now? Like I don't know how to get an agent. I don't even know how to get better. So I don't even know if I can get better. That's scary, right? Yeah, not having an agent fine all in good time but if you have no idea how to improve, that's kind of a scary. There's no, I was gonna say prospect. There's no, bleak. Big time. And that's how it felt. And I remember one time I was in an apartment. I couldn't afford furniture and I'm laying just on the floor. I'm laying on the floor with my face like pressed into the carpet. And I'm like, what am I gonna do with my life? Yeah, I was like, I don't, I never categorized myself as having been depressed at that time, but I was flirting with depression. And so I just felt lost. So I, thankfully, the thing that I ended up getting into is teaching filmmaking. And in teaching filmmaking, I realized to be able to teach, I need to start learning more about this. And they say the fastest way to learn something is to teach it that is so true. So in the process of teaching it, I really start to like feel like, whoa, I'm actually understanding where I went wrong in film school, what I had done wrong. I can now explain it to other people. And so then it became, well, if I can explain it to other people, can I begin to fix it in my own life? And that began the, I didn't have the words at the time because Carol Dweck had not yet written her seminal book mindset, but I began to develop a growth mindset sort of accidentally as a way to escape the depression of feeling like I'm a talentless hack. So I needed a new mindset that was gonna let me feel like I could get good and teaching gave me that little in that thread that then did become me developing my mindset, seeing that, whoa, I was actually able to make these students better that I really did. I wasn't blagging it, as the Brits would say. I really understood why their films, their scripts weren't working. I could actually help them. That gave me the insights into my own stuff. And so I felt like, okay, I can do this. And then these two entrepreneurs saw me give a lecture on the power of media and storytelling to influence behavior. And so they're looking at it from the perspective of influence buying behavior. And so long story short, they're like, hey, we need a copywriter. Why don't you come join us? And they said, you're coming to the world right now with your handout.  You don't control your art. That's always gonna be a frustrating experience. So come get rich. And my house simple, that sounded at the time. Yeah, I was gonna say, didn't you believe them? Yeah, to be honest, I did. I have the magic sauce, just get in my van. They were, that is what I should have heard. But instead I was like, these guys have done it. They're self-made, right? So they're self-made multi-millionaires. They're telling me that they're willing to teach me how to do it. And so sure. And I remember everybody saying, oh, you're crazy, what are you doing? You've got this good job, it's safe. Like you're taking this big risk. These guys could be total shysters. Like you have no idea. It sounds like every internet ad ever. Like I've got a secret formula. Trust me, watch this five-part video series and then enter your email address. Exactly, and yeah, it was absolutely hilarious. But I took them at their word and went to work for them in the beginning. And they said, look, this is a startup. So don't think of yourself as a copywriter. You can have any role that you want in the company. You just have to become the right person for the job. And that means getting so good at that position that we want to put you there. We want to give you the responsibility.  How old were you at that time? I would have been 26. Okay, so what time period did we go from like, I'm depressed, my face is pressed into the dirty carpet in this rental to now you've got a new sense of purpose with the startup? It was probably over about three or four years. Okay, because I just want to clarify this stuff. Because a lot of people go, one day it's gonna, and it's like now this one day overnight thing and this shift could take like half a decade. It took a very, very long time. And I mean, I would say that I am very aspirational. So I always feel like the person I'm trying to become is off in the distance. So it's still ongoing, but it was truly, truly, I had my first real epiphany about 10 years in where it was like, okay, that epiphany just changed my life. So, but that took almost a decade. What type of epiphany are we talking about? Where I realized it mattered what I built my self-esteem around and that I had been building my self-esteem around being right and being smart. And that meant I was putting myself in smaller and smaller rooms with smaller and smaller people and the most dangerous thing, that actually made me feel better about myself. And this is where people get lost, like from the outside, oh, like you never want to do that. But it's like, yes you do, because it feels awesome. And so that's how people get in trouble. So even though I was limiting my prospects in life, I truly was feeling better about myself. So you're essentially, yeah, you're kind of going down this narrow path where the better you feel about yourself, it requires you to cut away people who are better at something than you, cut away a learning opportunity, narrow your focus to something that's not gonna go anywhere so that you're the smartest guy in the room or something along those lines. 100%. Oh, that's so dangerous. And I called myself the king of remedial jobs. And I loved that because I was the king of something. Yeah, you're like, I'm the smartest Apple picker here. Yeah, I was selling video games. That was when that phrase occurred to me. I was selling video games in a retail store. Like GameStop type situation? Yeah, it's a company that's still around. It's called GameDude. And I was driving like 45 minutes to the job and then working like anybody in retail, punch in, punch out. Oh man. And calling myself the king of remedial jobs. And I was just, it was a really, it's sad looking back, right? Cause I could be so many years ahead of where I am now, but I learned some really powerful lessons about wasted time and about like life is essentially the skill set that you have and like, that you need to have a learner's mindset and building your self-esteem around being right or being smart is incredibly fragile because you'll inevitably meet people brighter than you. Yeah, it's a, I want to be clear though, if you work at GameDude right now or GameStop, we're not making fun of your job. It's just that that was clearly not a fit for you. Correct. Given the other things that you've done. By the way, if you're working at GameDude, be the best GameDude employee of all time, which was not what I was trying to do. Right, no, it was like not what you were doing. You were just there because you're like, I need a job and you need to be. And I like video games. Yeah. All right, this makes sense. Yeah, and also, I think that it's really common for people who are in jobs like that to think, well, you know, this is only temporary, but then not necessarily be doing anything to get out of that situation. So if you're doing something like that and you realize it's temporary and you actually have a plan to get into a different situation, build yourself up more, then there's absolutely nothing wrong with that type of position. I just want people to know that we're not like, oh, retail, what a loser, right? Because that's not how I feel about that at all. Okay, so you're in, you're in GameDude, or you decided to bounce from GameDude and join these entrepreneurs. Well, so that was before I was teaching, but yes. Right, of course. Okay, so you leave teaching, you're working for the entrepreneurs and at what point do you end up with bright blue shoes that match your house? That, well, that's a whole another story. The honest answer to that is when we were at Quest, we decided to launch an apparel company. Let me back it up, let's back up. Hold the shoes then, the shoe story. I wanna make sure we stay linear at least a little bit here. So you're working with these entrepreneurs, but why nutrition? Because you decided to start this nutrition brand with a bunch of business partners, I assume at the time we're also friends. There's a lot of protein bar companies, man. Why are you jumping into that crowded space with everybody and their brother trying to be the next Quest nutrition now to set the bar? So this was back about six years into my relationship with them and I went through an emotional crisis where I realized I was making more money than I'd ever made. By that point, I'd earned 10% equity in the company, I was making more money than I'd ever made. On paper, I was a multi-millionaire. It was like, but I was so unhappy. What was the company, what did they do? It was a technology company called Awareness Tech and we made security software. So it was like, your employees are emailing things out of the company that's sensitive and they shouldn't be, and so this stops them. They're useful but not sexy. Correct. And certainly not something you identified with as your life's purpose. 100% and the fact that we didn't use it in our own company was a pretty good signal that this wasn't something that was really native to who we were. Right. So I had just like, I had gotten so deeply dissatisfied with chasing money and I had been chasing it really hard for a very long time and realized that I was living the cliche of money camp by happiness. So I went to my wife and I said, look, I can't keep doing this. This is legitimately soul-wrenching. So don't wanna keep doing this. And I said, look, I wanna go quit and let's move to Greece and I'm gonna go back to writing. And we were gonna move to Greece for two reasons. One, we could find somewhere to live more cheaply, not in Athens, obviously. You're gonna live in like some outskirts town and then I'd be able to really get good at Greek. So my wife is Greek. I learned Greek to basically impress her and I really wanted to get like properly fluent. Learning Greek is impressive. Yeah, that's legitimately impressive. It wasn't easy. I'm gonna tell you that. It's a lot of like, Flemish sounds. It, well, yeah. And I'm not even good at making the sound. So let's start with that. I have a horrific accent, but that was, it was gonna be the double whammy. So I go into my business partners and I say, look guys, I can't do this anymore. I am so profoundly unhappy. Here's your equity back. I don't feel like it. Oh, you gave the equity back. Oh, 100%. Oh, man. If I'm not gonna cross the finish line, I don't think I should get anything for this. So here it is, you know, peace out. And they were, they were totally dumbfounded. They didn't see it coming. Yeah, like you're giving us the equity back. And not only that, just we'd been working together for six years by that point. So it was like, what is happening? It came out of left field. I had not mentioned anything. I was a good soldier for the notion of we're gonna do whatever it takes to make this company profitable, build it up and sell it. And originally when they said, hey, come join us, get rich, it was get rich in 18 months. Now, I should have known better. They should have known better. Do you think they knew at the time? No, no, I don't. I think they really believed it. And they had had success before that on that kind of timeline. I mean, this is right around like the dot, it was post.com crash, but it was like, there was still that fever and it was building back up that like to get rich so fast in technology. We're gonna flip this. We're gonna flip it. Exactly. Microsoft is right on the doorstep. Well, they were thinking they had this whole thing like with security agencies. So like governmental agencies. Oh wow. And there were people that were like, oh my God, this is exactly what we need. And it's like- Cause if anything moves fast, it's the government. And that should have been my first step off. So yeah, that, I think they believed it. I certainly believed it. And then that turned into six years of not taking a day off and just like legitimately selling my life for a very long time to get rich. Now, looking back, it was so empowering in terms of what it taught me about entrepreneurship and all of that. And like really put me to the test in terms of how hard am I willing to work to make something come to fruition. But it had begun to not only detract from me emotionally, but from my marriage.  So when I say, like I quit, thank you guys so much. They say, we could do this without you, but we don't want to. Really? That phrase let me connect back to something other than the money, which was the brotherhood. And remembering that these were two guys that I loved and trusted and wanted to be around. I just didn't want to be around the business anymore. And so that was really big. And I think that there's many, many ways they could have responded that I still would have been like, no, thank you. I just can't do this anymore. But that one in particular was like, for them it was also about something other than the money. So I said, look, if I'm gonna come back, then the following things have to be true. We've got to build a business that's based entirely around passion. It's got to be all about value creation. I want to build community. And I didn't have the words for transparency. So I kept saying, I want the business to have my real personality. Like I want to be who I really am. I don't want to be a clever marketer. I want to be me. And I want that to be valuable to the community, to the company. And so they were like, man, we feel exactly the same. So we set a goal that in the next six months we'd hit X revenue and sell the company or we would not hit X revenue and we'd sell it anyway. Oh, really? Wow. Yeah, but just obviously for a lot less. Sure. So six months later we still hadn't hit the revenue and so we decided we're gonna start our next company. So we didn't just like sell the company and then figure it out. Like at that point we began in earnest and we'd been talking about it up to that point but we began in earnest building that next company. So to answer the question you actually asked which is why get into protein bars. So going back to it has to be something that we're passionate about. It's got to be based on value creation. So we founded the company in fairness for three very different reasons. But for me, I'd grown up in a morbidly obese family and wanting to help them, wanting to save my mom and my sister. Were you also overweight or not? I was overweight but not like that. And I had been losing. So to give you a story that'll sort of frame where I was, when I went to college, I took it so seriously and I was working so hard and I was so focused that instead of gaining 15 pounds I lost 35. Wow.  Well back then there was a little bit more. There's a little bit more. And I saw a girl my sophomore year in college that I hadn't seen since high school and she was like, whoa, what happened to you?  And I thought, what? Like that was so like your whole childhood suddenly gets like re-imagined.  I didn't think people could tell. Like I'm getting away with this, nobody even notices. Yeah, so not realizing that I absolutely was not getting away with it. But compared to my family who really struggled profoundly, I didn't struggle like that. And by today's standards, no one would say that I was chubby. But back then, I mean this is 25 years ago, back then sure, so you'll round me to the chubby guy growing up. And then I really put on weight later, so as I started getting older and metabolism changes. Tell me about it. So I ended up putting on about 60 pounds. Now some of it was me trying to get more muscular, but some of it was, I just didn't know what I was doing. So I was just packing on the pounds. And so I got 60 pounds heavier than I am now. And this is still while we're at the technology company, not thinking about nutrition, but we're all talking about nutrition just in terms of what we can do with it in our own lives.  And I'm like, I really want to get lean. But people that set the bigger, more aggressive goals, they're the ones that end up actually attaining them.  I said I want to get six pack abs. Why do you think it is that people who set more audacious goals are more likely to achieve those goals? Is that what you're saying? Well, totally. And it's because it's exciting. And you need a compelling future to use Tony Robbins' words. You need a compelling future to pull you through.  So you've got to have something that like you're amped up about.  Dang. That was like- Aggressive goal. Well, now admittedly, if you look at him in the first movie compared to the last movie, he's like 25 pounds heavier of like pure muscle by, you know, movies three and four. Right, yeah. And it wasn't quite as audacious. Now you have to take all kinds of hormones probably or something. Yeah, possibly. Not saying Hugh Jackman takes anything, just saying some people might need to. Yes. And I certainly did not want to do that. And I've never used exogenous hormones just not because I'm not even opposed to it. And I'm sure at some point in the future I will as a hormone replacement therapy or whatever. But certainly back in my 20s, I didn't want to play with that.  That was I put it up on the fridge. I'm gonna look like this guy and just start dieting, dieting, dieting.  So it was a very exciting time for me. So in that period, I'm thinking about, I want to save my mom and my sister. I've already had this, by the time we found a quest I'd probably done about 45 of the ultimate 60 pounds of loss. Wow. I'm like really, really into nutrition. It seems like such an awesome way to impact people. And so that's why we decided to do it. And there were no protein bars in the market that we would eat. So despite the fact that it was a crowded marketplace, we just knew that there was really an opportunity.  So first of all, everyone told us that we'd never be able to make it in the protein bar market. We actually had a distributor tell us, I need another protein bar. Like I need another hole in the head. And then unlike you, I came in late to the podcast game. And when I first started, a very well-known and well-respected guy that's helped a lot of people like get started on stuff like this. I won't rat him out, because I actually really like him. But he was like, did you too late to the game? Like it's just- Oh, that's so not true. It's not gonna happen. Even now it's not too late. I totally agree. We're in new media. There's, this is infant days of even of the internet, maybe toddler days of the internet. Yeah, of course. I mean, there's, otherwise we wouldn't be inventing new means of distributing media every year.  Somebody's dominating that. DJ Khaled or whatever, dominating that, right? Not too late.  That's almost like a fear thing. Like, I hope you don't enter the space because I'm doing pretty well and you're kind of adjacent to my niche or something like that. That's interesting. The funny thing is he's actually paid to consult on that stuff. He doesn't even have his own. Huh, okay. Yeah, so I mean, it was one of those like, your name goes on a list. Good sir. Yeah.  It's like the Game of Thrones list that Aria has of people she wants to kill. Exactly. I don't plan to stab him in the neck. Maybe not quite like that. But I do love that there are people that give you doubt and I think one of the greatest things, cause I really respect this guy to this day and look, he actually is a great person. He just didn't see it and didn't see how I was going to pull it off, right? And so he kept asking like, but what's your like, what's your thing? Like what differentiates you?  Little extra, yeah, a little extra.  Is that really true? That's what I saw on his little. I want that to be true so badly. That would be amazing. Son, you'll never make it in the drug trade.  And he's like, you just watch.  That's hilarious. Yeah. So, okay, so you are trying to help out your family. You've got that sort of why you've got this other person doubting you with the new media stuff, but quest nutrition, why is this special? There's no protein bars you would eat. I do remember buying protein back in the day and one of the ingredients was cookies. That was literally one of the ingredients in the cookie flavored protein. That's amazing. A lot of the Mickey cookie flavored includes real cookies. Do I want to be eating this every day? I'm not sure. No, you want to. It just won't do good things for you. Right, right, sure. So, you're creating these bars and then suddenly obviously whatever marketing magic you guys had and whatever sort of product distribution business magic you had resulted in your company becoming one of the fastest growing companies in the country. Yeah, so what was really going on there is you had us fed up of doing business the old way saying this is all going to be about value creation. We're now going to deprioritize making huge profits. So that's never going to be how we make a decision. We're going to make, look, we were business savvy. We weren't stupid, but at the same time, if an ingredient was more expensive but better for you, even though that meant that it would be less profitable because you can only charge so much for a protein bar, then we would accept that it was going to be less profitable. And when we started, we really didn't know. Like is this business going to thrive? Is it going to survive? We had no idea. We thought through just being shrewd at business, we could at least survive, but we didn't expect it to grow that rapidly, so. You didn't. So even you were surprised by the amount of growth. The speed 100%. We always thought we would get that big. We just thought it would take a very long time. So what was happening was we were making all the decisions based on what's better for the customer right at a time where social media is taking off. So right at the moment where we say, you know what, the social media thing, it's going to be a game changer. Other people don't see it, but we're going to bet huge on it. Realizing the reason we were going to win at social media was because we were going to give people a reason to talk about us. And that reason was always going to be uplifting, empowering, exciting. We were going to evangelize them at every turn. It was going to be the world's greatest customer service. It was going to be the best product. It was going to be marketing that was all about value add. Instead of trying to sell, we wanted you to get a recipe that like, even though it wasn't like a hard sell, you were stoked that you got a good recipe for healthy food. If you called up and said, hey, I want to lose fat, what should I eat? We'd say chicken breast and broccoli. And when you sell chicken breast or broccoli, but that's a true answer. So we were always encouraging people to eat whole food whenever you can. We understood where we fit in. When you're on the go, when you want something to taste like a cookie, but actually isn't made with real cookies, like we were the thing that you were going to eat. And people were just like, Jesus, this is a different kind of company. So now imagine that we're investing in social media when it's small, the other person's really thinking about it. But the universe is just coming to social media hand over fist. So every new person that came onto social media was just a new person that was aware of us. So all the old brands had a worse product and didn't understand social. And we were social from the jump. And not only just social, but about building community. Right, so the other brands are like, click like on our Facebook page to get notified about stuff. Like new things that we want to sell you.  But that, I mean, does that explain 57,000% growth? Is that just how, was everyone just talking about quest bars at some point? Literally. Yeah, I feel like I heard about it and everybody I know knew about it, but also I was kind of a nerd in this space. So I just, but 57,000%, even if one person was your customer the first year, you had 50, you know, that's... It gets massive. It's massive. I mean, when you look at the scale, we did hundreds of thousands of dollars our first year. So it wasn't off of a tiny number. It wasn't off of a, you know, we weren't doing 10 million our first year, but it was, I mean, look, in five years alone, we were valued at over a billion dollars just to give you an idea. Like, and that's just math, right? That's math on EBITDA. So it was real and we were making real revenue. We don't report our numbers, but they were big.  So big numbers. Yeah, I won't report it. Privately helped the company. It was a lot of dash. Yeah. Amazing and just absolutely incredible. And really, like, we just were willing to do things other people weren't willing to do. And one of the huge breakthroughs for us, because the product was real, by the way, that is like a really important thing to know. What do you mean a product was real? Metabolically advantageous.  So they were just going crazy talking about it. And being the cool new band, it was like you wanted to tell somebody about it because you were the cool person that knew about the saying that nobody else knew. It was real. We were uplifting, community based, value add marketing. So there was just like, there were no dark corners. It was just this comp, not only is the product good, but like when we encounter these people at a trade show, they're nice to us and they treat us well and their customer service a second to none. And it was just all happening right as people were getting more crazy about fitness and social media was kicking off.  And so we were just doing everything in a different way, always putting the customer first.  What's going on? Dude, it was, A, it was an amazing 14 year run. The truth of- 14 years. I wanna highlight that. Well, not a quest. So it was 14 years from the time I met my partners to the time I left. But that's a, I mean, that's a really long time. Yeah, and seven years at Quest. So it was, it was unbelievable, amazing, transformative, everything for me. We had gotten to the point where we had so much success and I felt like Quest was crushing it and it was gonna continue to crush it without me. And I began to have a vision that was divergent from my partners. So one thing was we wanted, we always wanted Quest to be a platform company. It was part of the reason it was called Quest. It was like whatever your Quest is. And so we started to do, going back to my shoes, we tried to do an apparel brand and the apparel brand failed. And the reason the apparel brand failed is you don't think of like upscale apparel when you think of a protein bar company, right? So, and we, because we were so in our heads and we knew like the mindset that allowed us to build it, like the protein bar was never the thing. It was a food company about empowerment. So for us, it was so natural to do clothing about empowerment, food about empowerment. And for me, I'd always wanted to do a show specifically, that's sort of a lie. I always wanted to do something about mental empowerment. And then over time realizing that a show was the right answer. And ultimately end up doing the show and the show was so amazing. And I had so many cool guests come on the show and we end up, you know, getting in the original iteration hundreds of millions of views. I mean, it's just bonkers. Yeah, I mean, that's how I found out about who you were. And I was like, geez, I hope this person succeeds, but there's a part of me that's like, but not too much because I don't want to feel bad about myself or anything. So, so get good, but not that good. So it's really good whiskey, by the way. I'm glad you like it. It was, it was gonna be an expensive endeavor because even with all the views people were going, what's the guy behind a protein bar company doing a show about the mind? We weren't even talking about the body because I wanted to get away from that. I wanted to expand the brand. I wanted people to understand like, we are more than protein bars, we're even more than food. Like there's a mentality behind all of this that's let us make these very counterintuitive decisions that has led to this kind of success. And because I had the story of, look, I got into this to get rich, you know, 14 years ago and have gone through this total transformation of realizing that really is an empty dream. It's like Jim Carrey said, I hope everybody gets rich and famous so you can see that's not the answer. So it was like, I had gone through that. I realized like viscerally in my soul, I knew that chasing money wasn't the answer. And that once I stopped chasing money, I became fantastically wealthy.  Okay, I had this, the matrix to me, the movie is the perfect metaphor for a limiting- You love the matrix. Wait, if you don't know Tom, he loves the matrix. Love the matrix. And the whole, the matrix changed my life. And because of that is the reason that we're building the studio, but not to get ahead of myself. So I'm starting the show because I really want to show my employees. That's how it started, which is why it was called Inside Quest. I wanted to show the employees Inside Quest that you're gonna hear, I'll bring on all these people that have inspired me, that are successful, that have achieved at the highest level. And you're gonna see, they say the same things I say because they're just universal principles of success. It's not like, oh, this successful guy is saying one radically different thing from this guy, from this guy, from this guy. Like you just don't hear it. Like it's the same things over and over and over. And so that's how it started. And then I thought, well, if we're gonna be doing this, why aren't we broadcasting this? Why aren't we leveraging social? We're a social first company. Like let's really start to broadcast. And so we started doing that and we started gaining a following. And I think fairly it was, I'm now dragging my partners along because it's still a business. It still has to be built, right? Sure. It has an expense structure. Like we're, you know, we've got all this equipment and we're allocating space to the studio and we're really trying to make something of it which does not come for free. Yeah, didn't your partners at some point think I'm over here selling protein bars and Tom's over here farting around on YouTube, what the hell's going on here? For sure. And so it became a question of is this actually moving protein bar units yes or no? And I believe to the core of my being that over a long enough timeline, it'll move units of anything because it's real. But that's a very expensive test to drag two other people through. So it just got to the point where we didn't share the vision. It was going to be very expensive for me to prove it out. It didn't seem fair to drag them along on that. And so we had just had the kind of success where we didn't need to agree to disagree, right? We could just say, hey, this has been an amazing run. I know you guys will continue to kill it. And one of my partners is the nutrition guy anyway. So it was just like a no brainer. So for my life to be complete, I need to address what I consider the dual pandemics of the body and the mind. So I'll always be involved in health and the impact theory we're now developing a new show all around health, which I'm really, really excited about. And then also the mind and what does that look like? And we play a game, or I play a game, I should say as an entrepreneur, no bullshit, what would it take?  The answer is you have to make food that people choose based on taste and it happens to be good for them.  You need to hit them at the narrative level. So the only way that humans assimilate truly disruptive information is through narrative. I mean, they've done literal studies on this and... What does that actually mean? So think about mythology. You know Joseph Campbell? I know of Joseph Campbell. So he wrote a book called The Power of Myth and he talks about how humans for all time have been telling the same story over and over and he called it the hero's journey. And he wrote a book about it called The Hero with a Thousand Faces and then he followed up with The Power of Myth and he talked about how sitting at the core of all societies, all of civilization are these narratives that we tell ourselves about ourselves and about our country, about our tribe, whatever. And these narratives are entirely fictional but when you don't recognize them as fiction they carry a ton of weight. And he talked about what happens when you live in a world where nobody believes in the mythology anymore and he said we're actually living through that time right now. And he said there's no shortage of mythology but people don't believe in it so they don't know how to extract the value. So I'm sitting here going first of all The Power of Myth, the book changed my life fundamentally probably more than just about any other book I've ever read. What about The Matrix though? Well, so that as a movie I'll give it that that changed my life from a movie standpoint more than anything but if I'm really honest, if I didn't have the framework of The Power of Myth I wouldn't have known how to read The Matrix. And so looking at why don't people extract the immense amount of value out of all of this amazing mythology that we create but nobody's telling people how to like look at Superman and understand it as an allegory rather than as just a piece of popcorn munchings left. So I thought, okay, I think I have the timing right again on something. I had the timing right at Quest in terms of how to market it. I think I have the timing right now to marry social content with traditional content to show people how to extract real value that will actually change their lives. Just like at Quest, eating the product was changing people's lives and so they were absolutely insane about telling people about it and they felt such a connection to the company we're getting that same thing now at Impact Theory. So I was just at an event, success live and literally I got mobbed and I walk in and it's people, I'm an entrepreneur dude, I walk in and people wanna take photos and literally the organizer of the event had to come and say, guys, we have to break this up because other speakers now literally it's the house doesn't have enough people in it. And that's because people watch the content whether it's you, whether it's me, whether it's any one of the guys that are doing what we do, the people listening to the content are actually being changed by it. And when somebody is changed by your content as you well know, they're so grateful and they just wanna be drawn deeper into that. And so I wanted to leverage the power that we now have by creating this kind of content to give people actionable steps that are already changing their lives to marry it to the way that they're gonna change their belief system. And I don't think their belief system is gonna change as radically in a less emotional environment like a podcast as it will in movies, TV shows, comic books, books, video games. Like if you could make this sort of just default setting that every character that you create, every storyline that you tell is about empowerment so that they literally can escape it. It's just there, it's ever present and the characters that they look up to and the TV shows that they watch, the lead characters are struggling with and then ultimately making decisions that if the person watching the show emulates it will make their life better. And so my whole thesis is built around Disney. And Disney, I mean he founded his studio in the 30s. His model's been staring everyone in the face and nobody's replicated it since the 1930s and it went like this. Disney understood one thing that every studio has ignored for whatever reason. And that was every piece of content that he put out had to be feeding into a brand ethos. So everything is about the magic of childhood about good triumphing over evil. So if I say to you, I'm gonna go see a Sony movie or a Warner Brothers movie, you don't know anything about it. Right, no, I don't have any sort of, oh well if it's a Sony movie it's gonna go this way. But if I say I'm gonna go see a Disney movie. Right, yeah, you're right. You already know something. I've got a preconceived notion of what it's gonna be about and that I can probably bring my kids that I don't have. Yeah. Exactly. Possibly gonna be animated. So our thing is if Disney's the most magical place on earth can we make the most empowering place on earth? And so that's the model and that's why it's gotta be. And that places your living room. As of right now that place is literally my living room. And the funny thing is we actually call this impact house. This is, and we could really derail into what we're trying to turn this into in terms of being a cultural magnet and getting influencers here like yourself. Yeah, so far so good. Right, so I mean it isn't a mistake that you and I have gravitated towards each other. It isn't a mistake that so often the guests that I'm researching for my own show I end up at what you're doing, right? Because you're helping people live a better life. You're helping people get the skills that they need to be more empowered to do something. And I want to get to know people like that. I want to be useful to people like that. And when it happens and it's a real connection, and I would say that you and I have more than just a like, hey, we can be useful. It's like, hey, there's really something here. And the first time that we hung out was literally just that. You came to the house and we just chilled. Yeah, it was awesome. We clicked right away, which is like, I like to think I can click with a lot of people, but I was actually, it wasn't just like, okay, how much longer do I, I was like, wow, I really like this dude. And frankly, the first time I started looking up at your stuff, I was like, okay, another person in a similar space, he'll be gone in three months. Ignore, close the window. Then later on it was like, oh, this. And then I saw a video clip and I thought, oh yeah, I've seen this guy. And then I was like, all right, I'm gonna look up more about this Tom Bill you got.  He's not just like, I wanna write a book so I can be a thought leader so I can quit my day job, which is where I think a lot of people come from. And then I started following what you're doing. And then that's when I was like, I gotta meet up with this dude. So I really do like what you're doing and what you're creating. And you do have a huge vision at some point where I just kind of felt like, wow, you built this. I mean, we're in your part of your living room, filming this right now. And I thought you have dedicated yourself to this if this is something you're building into the place where you live, which I have also done, right? It's not something where it's like, oh, I do this until I get bored of it. I mean, you clearly have a lot of focus and a lot of drive and you've worked through a lot of different projects, including Quest. And then you took your piece of that, which you just as easily could have never worked again and we could be having this conversation on your boat about how you retired at age, whatever, instead of doing something else. Well, that's a, here we go. How about this? Why are you still working? You don't need to do that. Yeah, it's interesting. So when we were able to take some money out of Quest, Lisa and I had a real decision to make. Do we buy an island and retire and never work again? Or do we re-engage? And the honest answer is, man, we didn't even have to think about it if I'm really blunt, because I know the game that you're playing, it isn't success, it's certainly not money. It's brain chemistry. And I want, there's an old Greek philosophical notion of technique that you spend your time gaining a set of skills that become of use to other people and the deepest sense of fulfillment you will ever have is by leveraging the skill set that is so unique to you that you've worked so hard for to help other people. And that is for sure how I'm wired. So the thing that really gets me excited that compelling future that we were talking about earlier for me is about how many people can I help get out of the matrix? And meaning, shuck off the limiting beliefs, see how their potential is nearly unlimited.  And on the other side of that, I really started to get good, really execute at an absurdly high level, but it's all based on belief system and the belief system that you build for yourself that you build, it's a decision, you decide the things that you're gonna believe.  You decide you can learn and get good at something. I don't need people to believe it to be a universal fact, you just decide. And once you decide those things, then you start acting in accordance with that. And when you act in accordance with the belief that you can do anything and you can do it because you can learn it, not because you have some innate talent for it, that you can learn to get good at anything.  You start practicing and studying and getting better and brick after brick, you turn it into something. So the more people that I can get to do that, one, I'll feel fulfilled in the process of doing it. And then two, I wanna live in that world where people are lit on fire and they're doing like, they've created a passion for themselves. They're living in accordance with that and they're building something to make the world a better place. So if we decide, okay, look, I'm gonna learn to do better with this or I can learn to do better with that or build these certain skill sets, what do we do then when confronted with, let's say, evidence to the contrary, right? Like, oh, I'm gonna learn how to build this business and I'm really gonna focus on this and I'm gonna teach my kids different values than I grew up with or move my family to a better neighborhood and things like that, whatever your goal might be. What happens when you start failing here and there? How do you preserve your belief system in the face of that? Because you could just as easily go, we're gonna make protein bars that people are gonna love, it's gonna change lives and then your distributors go, look man, I need another protein bar like I need another hole in my head.  Yeah, I mean, that comes down to how did you build your belief system? Like, did you build it well? So I actually have, I've enumerated my belief system, it's 25 bullet points, which you can download at impact theory.com. You can have the same pages I was like. No, no, 25 bullet points, nice and simple and it is, they are the changes, I can speak. They are the changes. Going to that in the show notes, by the way, because I've talked over the URL, just go to the website, we'll find it. They're the changes that I made in my mind in order to become capable of running a business or building a studio, whatever. And in there is how to address failure. In there is the notion, the success is not guaranteed, the struggle is guaranteed, like I promise it can be hard or I promise that it will be hard, I can't promise that you're gonna win. So make sure you're doing something that you love so that the mere act of striving and trying for it is making you feel more and more alive.  Well, so be it.  Some people will actually say it to my face and other people won't, they just like- Who says it to your face? I won't say it, but if you listen to enough podcasts, there are some fairly large figures that have made mention of not having a lot of faith in what I'm doing, but like I said earlier, the doubt, that is something that can drive you and allow you to push past it as long as you have the belief that you can learn anything, that you can get good. Cause my whole thing is even if I never achieve it, I'm gonna love the process because I believe in what I'm doing, the why of my mission to pull people out of the matrix to help them live a better life. I really believe in that. This is not a non-profit, this is a for-profit company so I've got the everyday puzzle piece of trying to figure out what I can monetize without turning people off, like how we make this really profitable and I enjoy that puzzle, like I enjoy the elements of being an entrepreneur, like they're really interesting to me and when you align things that you find interesting in your passions, then the struggle which is guaranteed is actually enjoyable. So I'm a deeply ambitious human being and I've just learned over time that you can make the demand that you make money doing something that you really, truly believe in. So yeah, to the person that is met with failure after failure after failure, the whole point of having a belief system is to inoculate you from losing enthusiasm during that process. Yeah, it seems very difficult to do because at some point you have to know whether or not your product or service is a good idea but that can be separated from your belief system that what you're doing is gonna benefit you in some way. So maybe your light-up, pant, decoration idea is not the way forward but the belief system doesn't have to take a hit, doesn't have to take a torpedo. Well, because the belief system in that one in particular is gonna tell you if it's not selling, it's not good enough. People don't want it. And you have to face that cold hard truth. And so now it becomes the difference between a path and a goal. My goal is to get people out of the matrix. I think the right path is to build a studio to do it. But if I'm wrong, then I'll pivot but I'm not gonna give up on the goal. The goal is like the most meaningful thing in my life. So I would just find another way to do it. Do your business partners think you're crazy for bouncing from a top name brand company that you spent forever, fricking forever building? You finally get to the top of the mountain. You can finally maybe take a breather and you're like, all right, I'm gonna go start from the bottom just cause I like pain. It's interesting. I don't know if they would say that I'm crazy but it clearly isn't what they want for themselves. How about that? Yeah, like they could be fishing on a yacht right now. They're like, I wonder what Tom's doing right now. Those guys are hardworking as well. So I doubt you're ever gonna find them just fishing off the back of a boat. Like they're engaged people. They wanna build the things. That's my gut. And obviously I'm the wrong person to speak on their behalf. But yeah, I would be very surprised by that. I always find that whenever I meet people who are highly successful, unless they're older and they've just burned out at some point or they're leaving it to the younger generation, there is no such thing as too much or the peak is always a false peak because you just constantly wanna drive. People often even say that about businesses that are nowhere near the size of Quest, like Art of Charm, they're like, man, your show's one of the biggest out there. What's next for you? And I'm like, what are you talking about? I'm only in the first 10 years of a 40 year career. Now it's just starting to get really fun because now I don't have to worry about how I'm gonna pay my mortgage. Now I can actually do things that are riskier because I'm not gonna be homeless if I fail. And people are like, man, you should just chill. You should just get good at golf or something. And I'm just thinking like, maybe in 40 years, not right now. So I understand, I understand the hunger for sure.  I think your real blessing here is that your wife, Lisa, puts up with it. Yeah, well, she's my partner. I mean, we co-founded this thing. So she is a co-conspirator in every way, which makes it easy. So it's not having to convince her, it's just showing her a compelling vision that she's excited enough about to give up her kitchen. So far, so good, right? So far, so good. Tom, is there anything else that I haven't asked you that you wanna make sure you deliver? Oh man, my thing is whatever you think is gonna give that value to the people that listen to you. I really trust you to bring people on that are gonna help them do what they wanna do in their lives. And I certainly don't take that for granted. So I wanna be a tool of service for you. You are, if nothing else, a tool of service. That was quite the pause. Yes. Man, thank you so much. Awesome dude, thanks for having me on.


I moved to expand its hemp business. It's buying Agra Next USA. Agra Next is led by Jeff Whaley, who is the chairman of the U.S. Hemp Association. With us now we have Bruce Linton, the founder, chairman and co-CEO of Canopy Growth. More details on this acquisition. Welcome back to the program, Bruce. Good to be back. So obviously the push into the United States, things are changing down there. What made this attractive at this point?  A couple of months ago there was this thing called the Farm Bill. It passed. It said you can grow hemp and you can process hemp, but it gave room for each state to decide would they govern it versus leaving it to the feds. New York state said they would. Jeff has been very keen pushing a bunch of states, including New York, to step up and say this is what CBD is about versus leaving it a couple years for the, you know, the feds. And so we've been working with Jeff since 2013, I think. And it just made sense now that he get completely on the bus and we try to get a bunch more states to do the right thing. Now CBD obviously is separated from the pack from THC in terms of how we're told of the benefits and the effects on our minds and such. But the fact that the Americans are willing to move on CBD, do you think further down the line, they're just, they're easing their way right to the, to the end game of the federal level? Yeah, I think mostly. So the federal level, when you govern CBD, there's no, don't think of that as the fun party agent. It's the non-psychoactive part. So I think they'll be comfortable with that. And I think it's not going to be federally state by state, whether or not they're comfortable with THC. And so you're going to have a bit of a patchwork, but our processing equipment, the channels we sell through the products, all of the containerization, all that stuff can actually be pretty easily expanded to handle THC, if and when we can sort of step into that. Now, am I right that I read earlier that this was actually a cash transaction? Yeah, it's, it's a bit of a rare bird in the business, isn't it? Well, you know, we, we have a bit of cash now. And so we do like to do cash transactions, especially with parties. You know, we literally, Jeff has been around our shop since there was maybe one grow room, and it was just an early thing. And so we really know who we're dealing with here. And so it's not a huge cash transaction, but it's also some, How big was it? We haven't announced it, but you think of it as a small company with a lot of cloud, whose, you know, leader has been kind of the key voice on him for better part of a decade. And so when he came over, you know, using cash and making sure that we have him on 100% alignment with us was kind of the key thing. Now, when I think about a lot of the discussions I had last year about expanding Canadian, the marijuana business, and there was a lot of talk about Europe, Europe, Europe, all the opportunity in Europe. Has the Farm Bill changed the game then that you want to shift your focus and maybe take your eye off of Europe? I'd say add. It's not really shift. The Farm Bill allows you to get into the US before we could. But Europe is busy, right? I don't mind if you wanted to have another whole segment on what's going on between Poland, the Czech Republic, Germany, and England. All of those are federally governed jurisdictions, all growing at different rates, all places were active. And so I kind of hope, you know, maybe everybody else takes a right off of Europe because it's a great market, but the US is pretty close and pretty tantalizing, so you got to do both. Now, in terms of the Canadian market, how it's been unfolding, you know, it was only last fall. We're into the spring now. We're going to get into the edibles space in full force this year. The budget actually spoke about the edibles, the excise tax. Are you happy with what you saw in the budget on this space? Yeah, it would have been appropriate to manage to get rid of the tax on medical patients, but I think you're going to see that as we get some of these trials completed. They'll have to drop it. But as far as restructuring the tax on the oils and per milligram makes a lot of sense. Yeah, because the excise tax, I believe it goes for the, it's sort of measured in THC content and we're in the budget lockup and I sort of laugh when I was looking through something else. So one of my colleagues wrote and said, basically the higher you get, the more you pay. That seems to be the structure right now. You know, it's not too different to alcohol, is it? So I think it's a more logical model. And you know, at the end of the day, if I was on your show last year at this time, you're still asking, do you think the feds are going to pass anything to allow this to start, right? We were in debating, is the Senate going to be effective? Now here we are, not too long after it's gone live, we're talking about this full spectrum of new products coming out and a much more progressive tax scheme. So it feels like Canada's getting it right. The rest of the world's watching and we're pretty happy with where we sit. Now in this province, I know there's been different rollouts in terms of how people can access cannabis, legal, recreational cannabis, but the stores have lagged in the province of Ontario. That's going to change very quickly. How do you feel about how the government's been handling that in the initial role? It's not going to be a lot of actual bricks and mortar stores. You know, but it makes a lot of sense that the government runs the warehouse. So when I sell wholesale, I move it to the government warehouse. When they sell it out to retail, that's when the provincial stakeholders, you and me, see them make their profit. So why not let the private sector deploy those points of sale? And 25 in a short order will be quite good. I think you'll see they'll get to several hundred quite quickly. And what we found is provinces that have stores have better educated staff. They interact with people and they make the right decisions. And so it's actually just a great everything platform, education, sales, repeat customers. So I think this summer in Ontario might be a bit more interesting than probably last. Do you think the stigma is coming down? I mean, it's one thing to legalize marijuana, legalize the product, but I'm in my late 40s now. And for my entire life, it was the no-go zone. And I don't know if people my age are all that comfortable still with the idea that they would just probably carry it down the street. Yeah, well, there's a lot to unpack there, right? You look a lot younger. Okay, thank you. But no, the stigma is there. And the stigma will keep wearing off, because right now what we're talking about, we see in the news all the time is about where can you smoke it? When we start talking about where can you pour it? That'll be a different discussion. What, you know, is it better with a big block of a cube of ice or a small one? Those start to change the what's it smell like. And so I think there's the formats change, the stigmas change. But, you know, frankly, for canopy, if I woke up tomorrow and there was no bias, no stigma, no friction, I'd be terrified because what we live on is being early and pushing. And whenever you interface with something that's new, you get stigma, you get bias, you get pushback. And so when we're back a year from now, we're talking about the types of beverages and which venues are going to now quit having liquor maybe, or add this as an alternate to just liquor as a restaurant or bar. And that'll be just another wave. So you want to be early, you want to be the contrarian pushing back against the social norms? How do you continue to grow canopy? What's the strategy going forward? Organic or acquisitions? Mainly organic. Really, when you look at Canada, we don't have anything to buy. Nothing left to buy. So we can always hear about consolidation in this space. You should change the word a little bit. Disintegration. Because what's going to happen is if there's too much production the way they're producing, it isn't consistent with what we've learned. So we'll buy inventory. Now when you look at the rest of the world, there are some good things in the US, interesting players. There are some great properties and platforms in Europe. But there's no real production assets that we would seek in Europe. It's more like, how do we make a bigger medical play? And so I think you'll see a lot of organic and a few more focused acquisitions. We're in the past, we've done so many because of its small pieces to make a big company. Anything looking so attractive right now? You might pull the trigger in the coming weeks? I'd probably go to jail if I answer that truthfully. But no, when we look at the opportunity, we have cash in the bank, which gives us a really strong and winning balance sheet.  And so it's a nice spot to be in, but we don't take it for granted. We try to work hard and keep looking at, how do we keep doubling everything all the time? All right, Bruce, it's a pleasure to have you. Thanks for joining us. Thank you. Bruce Linds, the founder, chairman and co-CEO of Canopy Growth.


U.S. wants China of a red line in Ukraine war. The United States is warning China against material and security assistance to Russia in Moscow's war on Ukraine, laying out Washington's red line ahead of U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken's visit to Beijing early next month. U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for China Michael Chase spoke to Song Yan Chao, Deputy Director of China's Office for International Military Cooperation of Central Military Commission, according to a U.S. official who spoke to FOA on condition of anonymity. This week's military-to-military talks come as the U.S. is monitoring closely any decisions by the People's Republic of China in response to Russian requests for security assistance. The U.S. official took note of reports about multiple visits to China by Russian transport aircraft. I don't have a new assessment to offer. State Department spokesperson Ned Price told when asked if it is still Washington's assessment that Beijing is not providing security assistance to Russia. If we see the PRC taking action to systematically assist Russia evade sanctions, of course there will be costs, said Price. Two-hour talks came after China turned down a U.S. offer for military-de-confliction talks between U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Chinese Defense Minister Wei Fenghe earlier this month. During a press conference at the State Department after the U.S.-Japan two-plus-two talks last week, Austin said he has asked his Chinese counterpart to meet the U.S. halfway and keep open lines of communication to avoid miscalculation. Wei is retiring in March. Li Shangfu, a new member of the Chinese Communist Party's Central Military Commission, is widely seen as the PRC's next Minister of National Defense. Li was sanctioned by the U.S. government in 2018 due to Chinese purchases of advanced Russian fighters and missile systems, but the U.S. sanctions would not prevent Li from holding official meetings with American officials, according to a State Department official.


Good morning and welcome to day nine of the no spend. Doyle is eating right there and so am I. Just made my breakfast and I decided to go with kind of the same thing. Sorry guys. Peanut butter toast and flax. I got my hot tea and I've got a couple pear halves because there was like three pear halves left in the jar and I figured I'm gonna eat those darn things up, right? I do have to say I'm like halfway done unloading the dishwasher. I have to say I do dishes like basically almost every day now which is kind of amazing because before I would maybe do maybe run the dishwasher like once or twice a week because I just wasn't here to make you know breakfast lunch and dinner so it's kind of amazing. I'm glad I stocked up on dishwasher tabs before the no spend. Anyways so this morning I am gonna get two editing. I filmed two Q and A's yesterday so in one of them I answered all the Instagram questions and the second one I'm answering all of the Facebook questions and I think I'm gonna put up the Facebook one or sorry the Instagram one today because that one's a little bit longer if I remember and then the Facebook one I'll probably put up on Saturday and I'm very excited about Saturday because at the end of that video I've got questions for you guys that I think you might like so let me know. Let me know. So you guys will end up seeing it tomorrow because I'm gonna post this Friday evening so you know I think you guys can handle like a day of suspense right? But my goal today is to get them both edited and then hopefully I can get the Facebook Q and A scheduled for Saturday morning so then you don't have to wait too long okay? That's my goal of the day plus I need to do some job searching and applying online today so basically it's like a big computer day for Emily. That's kind of what's happening here and Doyle by the way Doyle took me on like the longest walk ever.  I could tell that he had to do like the poo poo too so we went and did that as well well not we. I came along for the ride but he did it so thankfully I always have a extra poo bag in my pocket um of like every single jacket and like all my purses and everything like can totally tell I'm a dog mom because of that but anyway I'm gonna grab a napkin real quick I'm gonna get started on editing and um you guys will probably be seeing that Q and A before this video so that's kind of the plan for the day but I'll keep checking in and seeing how things are going another big plan of the day. Remove all that junk. That is another plan of the day or figure out kind of like what I want to do with certain things. My seasonal surprise box giveaway is happening on Saturday at 5 p.m. is when it closes so feel free to go back a few videos and watch that if you want to see how to enter. It's no shock that like that box was not my favorite but that's the whole point of like a surprise box like I enjoy looking through it and maybe getting some products that I would not have normally purchased for myself but I think with the things that I'm not going to use and love I might do a destash on so I'll put that up maybe today maybe Saturday I'm not sure but obviously there's a giveaway and a whole box is going to somebody so this is like obviously from my personal box that I know that I won't use and love you know obviously everyone that watched the video saw what was in there so if you didn't like it obviously you didn't enter for the giveaway and I've had a lot of comments like a lot of comments on the video and most of them are like having the same sentiments I had with the variety of products that I just didn't understand the vision and it just like wasn't my favorite box but I've had other boxes that I've like absolutely loved like basically everything so I don't know I mean every every box is a little bit different so I've had a lot of questions too of like am I going to get the next box probably like this doesn't deter me from getting more seasonal surprise boxes if anything I think that Aaron Kondren and the team are going to hear what people are saying to say you know you either absolutely love it or you're just like no thanks so I think that they'll probably come together and figure out some other you know things to put in boxes that are maybe more exclusive or that you know appeal a little bit more or something I mean I don't know but I think Aaron Kondren and the team is really good at like hearing feedback so I am hopeful that next season's box will be better and um I'll hopefully still do a giveaway if I have enough um Aaron Kondren credit so that's the idea so anyway I'm gonna get eating here and edit some videos and I will see you guys in a little while hello um I just wanted to check in and say that I just edited both of my q and a's and oh my gosh I talk way too much y'all I'm on to editing my third video which is um a video I had to re-film because the audio was kind of all messed up I filmed that yesterday but I'm gonna get that edited for now and then um this is that like more secret release thing that's happening on Tuesday this upcoming Tuesday morning so if you guys are watching these videos in order and you're seeing this on Friday evening Tuesday morning there is going to be a new release on my channel and it's gonna be associated with something or really fun for you guys so anyway I am just getting that started it's 23 minutes and 34 seconds of footage so that's gonna be fun however both of my q and a's were probably like the first one I think was like 47 minutes long and the second one I think had like 30 minutes of footage but I got them like I got them down you guys they got them down so like my instagram one that's going up right now is 29 minutes better than 40 something you know um and then my facebook q and a is 19 minutes so yeah there's still long but you know what you guys have to be the question so I'm gonna answer your dying questions that's what's happening here I am gonna be yeah that's that's the kind of stuff I have to listen to when I edit it's really irritating so anyways um I'm gonna get to editing some more I just wanted to check in say hi I'm on my second cup of tea it's delicious it's so good and I gotta say I really like these mugs like I could care less if it had like the name tea on it or like you know the text tea but I like how big they are because I feel like you know I get it I get a sizable amount of liquid yummies let's go let's go find hey buddy he was laying his head down then I he heard me coming and he put his head up it's like you've been awake this whole time but you have not no you have not been awake you have not I know it I just I just know these things about you sir and he likes to lay on not just the soft sofa but all the soft blankets and he likes to burrow himself in there he likes to hide his snout too so he can like you know if that thing is open yep he likes to stick his snout in there so he's a funny guy you're a funny guy yeah everybody likes you you're so popular mr. Doyle you're such a popular boy anyway okay um yeah because this vlog is gonna be like kind of boring today you guys just because I get nothing interesting going on besides applying for jobs and editing and uploading and all that good stuff so it's like a at-home fde vlog today but um I'm gonna be doing something fun tomorrow though I'm gonna be going to a friend's house and also I'm gonna do some returns out in maple grove I'm gonna go see Jackson and Heidi and possibly if the other kids are there I'll see them too so yeah it's gonna be a good time and I think we might have a little pizza party thing um with Jackson so yeah I'm excited about it but I promise tomorrow will be more exciting and hopefully today I don't spend any money unless a bill comes which could be the case you never know but just wanted to give you guys a little update and say hi and um I will just check in with you all in a little while when it is lunchtime I'll see you in a little bit okay it's finally lunchtime I have a dog following me he's just all sass today he's all sass every day though but whatever anyway um I am going to make some lunch and I have now edited three videos I've got my last one finally saving and rendering and doing all those things um on my computer but that's the one that's going up on Tuesday so at least that is done and then I'll just have to get it scheduled on to YouTube's but yeah so I think for lunch today because I was trying to figure out dinner too because you know like it's a rocking Friday night over at the FDE house so I think for dinner I want to like do something in here I don't know what but I like want to do something in here because I've got these like lobster mac and cheese I've got lasagna I've got this like teriyaki salmon burger um I found some glazed chicken I've got some like Trader Joe's chicken like I want to clean out some of this I got some edamame and I don't know I got lots of good stuff in here I think I'm gonna eat out of the freezer for dinner tonight but I don't know what I'm gonna make yet but we'll find out we'll find out you'll find out in just a few minutes but I think what I'm gonna make is I'm just gonna take some pasta and marinara sauce and then that's it just eat a little bit of pasta tied me over um it's cheap it's easy I have it on hand and I'll have a coke which by the way I need a little caffeination right now there's my buns a dragon but yeah and then after lunch I am going to apply for like just a ton of jobs that's exactly what's going to happen today so anyway that is the plan Doyle is being weird um as per use he's just like mom you're not paying attention to me mom you're not paying attention to me pay attention to me yes yes I know buddy I know it's so hard being a Doyle dog let me tell you not me tell you anyways well I am going to jet I am going to make my foods eat my stuff and then I'll check in either like midday or like right around dinner time or something like that to show you what I'm eating and all of that but yeah I have a lot of good stuff in the freezer because like I would find these things that the grocery store I'm like oh that looks really good and like I'd never make it so now is the time to make it you know what I mean but now I have to ponder what I want for dinner after I have a little bit of pasta for lunch so I will check in with you guys when I'm ready for dinner or a little bit before you never know well good evening my friends um it is dinner time so I am currently cooking the things I figured to show you what I'm going to eat today this is out of the freezer it is the sea queen wild caught teriyaki salmon burger they're pretty small they're not huge I'm not going to eat them like with a bun or anything so I'm going to eat two of these for dinner tonight and there came four in a box so I'm actually gonna get them all done and um have the other two like a different day but they'll be you know like good to go so it says to geez when you pan fry them to basically put them on for four minutes on each side and then you're good to go I am also gonna be making up these green beans that are like in a steamer bag but um I'm gonna wait until the very end for that so anyways that's what I'm gonna have for dinner I'm gonna have some water as well but I'm gonna end out the vlog here because my battery light is flashing and it's almost time to turn the little salmon burger over as well so I'm gonna have this and have a rock and Friday night hopefully I can get this footage up for you guys tonight and um I will be back with more adventures tomorrow I am venturing out into the lands tomorrow I will show you Doyle one last time he moved a little bit and anyway that's gonna be it for me thank you guys so much for watching I will see you guys in the next video bye guys