$50M Poker Pro Shares His Best Advice For Founders

i went broke many many times but the down swings are probably the most important part and typically would like a breakdown things are going badly that's an opportunity for a breakthrough i feel like i could rule to world to know i could be what i want to from at all in in like a day off on a road less travel today we got daniel ne he's is here i've been watching this scott on tv feels like half my life he is a poker player who i think you've had over fifty million in tournament caches so turn tournament winning you're known for your ability to read people for your longevity in the game for your personality and how you've built a brand around the game of poker think you've won something like is it five six realtors poker bracelets well we're at seven but it should be a lot more if i'm being honest it it he's humble to boot so area is dan grande listen people are gonna be like why are you guys having a poker player on a business podcast and the reason is hey i'm selfish i play poker my whole life and i wanted to talk to this guy and that's what the podcast is but b there are so many parallels between poker and business whether it's you know thinking about it in terms of investing around bank management around pot odds and things like there's all these frameworks that i've used for poker and business but also the the people side the human side the reading people side and you were one of the best at that so thanks for coming on dude absolutely you're absolutely right with your description too it because there's just so many things about poker poker you know you have to register as a small business anyway right you're just self employed and you know you know getting out of bed to go and work is up to you but you still have to you know make smart cis decisions invest and look for plus e situations so sam don't know if you if you followed poker like back in the day the there was sort of the famous players yeah and i watched it on tv with phil iv and daniel watson and daniel so many times and they look like a lot of his like doyle brunch and they look like cowboys right and they had these per big personalities and it was like superheroes who would come to a table and one guy was just like the stone cold you can't read him another guy was the talker another guy he just was you know had no fear gene in his body he could just risk at all and that that was the sort of persona of like these charismatic like personality per parker players and then if you fast forward now it's like hoodie on sunglasses on sc kid who's doing math and basically like is is is in many ways like it's a it's a numbers game and versus like the way that poker used to have this sort of guns sling mentality daniel is that accurate how i described it pretty much i mean you know the difference between and i think this is true with chess and other games too the difference scene like like bobby fisher was asked you know he's like well who's the greatest chess player all time right and he's like it's not fair you can't make this like the players in nineteen o five right brilliant people they didn't have access to the tools that they have now so with or these kids morph back in my day people had to figure it out on their own doyle b before he had computers he would run simulations by literally getting a deck of cards a piece of paper and a pencil he would take an ace a king against a pair force run out the board and say okay ace king one and he would do it like hundred thousand times right now obviously the click of a button you know you have this data available to you so it was a different type of skill set and you're right a lot of the more modern players are much more deliberate they take a lot more time because they're actually doing for the most part they're doing calculations we didn't used to do it used to be like this i'd look at sam and i'm like yeah sam's full of it he didn't have it i call right that's the equation however now people are doing what's called this might be a little bit above your audiences love understanding but counting nominations i'm just saying because it's very even for most broker players they don't understand like comb matrix okay so for example you think your opponent has ace king how many ace kings are possible right that's a difficult question for somebody doesn't play poker right with there's four aces and there's four kings right so that's sixteen k so what you're doing in your head or what these people are doing is they're counting not just ace king as one but sixteen and then using other effects to decide like you know the pod odds what they have it like i said it's kinda complex and that probably shouldn't go down to it's sort of like why like i like this idea of like babe who shows up hungover and like a smoke a sick right before it goes on to like hit evan now it's just like all jack dudes who just hit home and like fell like who are technically perfect but i'm like i want the guy who ate steak and eggs in the morning and smokes the sale all he's like he's practicing the more updated version of that is absolutely john daly right tiger woods was asked one time like why do you practice so much right like why are you up at four am he's like if i was as talented as john daly i wouldn't have to because like john you know he's really because tiger woods is getting up at five am right four am to go golf and he sees john daly at the bar drinking smoke and whatever and they tee off it like nine right and if john dale goes out there and shoot sixty three you know i i agree with you sam it's kinda romantic frankly yeah just that old sw sw buckle who just shows up and and can still you know was was there a moment like that that hooked to you because you know i i think the first poker boom that i was a part of was the the chris money maker thing and i remember the final table with him and sammy far and far you know this kind of experience player money maker was this amateur who kinda like wanna won a mini tournament that got him a ticket to the thing i was like willy won he got a golden ticket and he got in and got all the way there and i just vividly remembered that was great tv was there a great tv moment or like a poker final table moment that for you you were like this is awesome i wanna be a part of this well yeah i'll answer your question but first you know the moment you talk about that's the sort of a waters moment in poker right because it was the first time where some amateur guy who named chris money maker like you can't make this up you know he put forty dollars in on an online site turned it into ten thousand our seat sits there and now he's against the g vet sammy vet you know far out with the cigarette and the suit and the whole old school vibe you know and he ends up winning so that for me my moment was a little further back i don't know if you're familiar with the movie rounder yeah of got love rounder round is great movie so obviously in that movie matt damon is watching a scene between johnny chan the master and eric s you know i go i used to watch those tapes as a teenager and i remember phil helm me that who's a buddy of mine who i liked the needle i remember watching him as a young you know in his twenties you know he he johnny chan won two years in a row and then he was heads up with phil hamilton phil one this young kid so it was a little bit inspirational for me i'm sixteen i'm like i'm gonna be the next bat you know right that was a big moment for me i believe that was nineteen eighty nine did you by the way sean let me let me ask a question really quick have you ever heard daniel tell the story about scott win that's the one i was thinking of yeah i was actually there for that that was nineteen ninety eight when i won my first bracelet and i was just coming up on the scene i was twenty three years old i believe and you know i was there off the final table and scott win was that guy you know he's having a mic that's what he drank he's smoking a cigarette you know he's in the hand he looks at the guy beautiful mole beautiful the mu he's got the black and white the chains everything you know and then he just gives him the you know baby you call gonna be all over baby that's right and then he drinks his beer and it was amazing psychological warfare i can dig into what happened there so he's up against the guy who's not a professional right highly stressful moment k you're playing for days fourteen hours a day five days in a row in the smoke filled room right and this guy scotty he's fighting you he's a pro and scott gives you the out he says if you puts this little idea and is said if you call baby it's gonna be all over no more pain no more suffering you get to go right so i really believe and kevin mc mcbride ended up saying the comment what he said we call that you know speech play if you will that did it that was what got him to call and scott won you know scott win was the world champion that's exactly shown what conor mac mcgregor did to jose yeah yeah exactly yeah there's a sort of mind game to this whole thing and you're you're famous for reading people and i'm curious you know there's probably some natural element to it but it's a practice skill you've done it a bunch and an entrepreneurship in business there there's a big element of reading people you're doing a deal with somebody you're selling it's really important to understand what's going on in the head of the other person and understand where they're coming from and so i'm curious like if you gonna give us like a mini masterclass class on reading people what what comes to mind what are the what are the big big factors k we're gonna start from when you're born and you're a little baby in your mother's arms right you a little baby can look at their mother and get a sense when mama is happy or sad how do they do that right that's a natural human instinct and ability and we all have that we're all born with that what happens is as we get older we trusted it less and less right have you ever met someone within three seconds there's something i don't like this guy right you have no reason there's not nothing this person did but something there was a clue something about it just felt off right when you're a poker player and you're and you're you were trying to read people you trust your instincts in those spots i used to no joke i did this as a teenager when i started become professional i would go to the mall okay i would sit on a bench i creep i'd wear a sunglasses so peep didn't think i was weirdo and i'd watch people walk by and i get a sense of who is this person were they picked on in high school are they confident are they you know are they you know insecure or are they depressed are they happy you know was this got a football player and i'd make up these stories in my head to try to get an idea so when i sit at a poker table everything you everything from what you're wearing to what you do where you're from that sort of is a puzzle where i'm put profiling i'm you know essentially profiling people which we all have the commit capacity to do and in business of course it's super important right a guy comes and tells you all you know we had a great first quarter it was unbelievable yeah we broke records what why you telling me all this right here the way you are so blissful probably because it's bo baloney you know what i mean because because you know you know so you have to like get a sense for and and often what you do with people is when they're lying you wanna like remember what they look like when they're lying and look for that pattern again i'll give you a simple example with poker he was in europe world series europe i played with this guy on day one and he was chewing gum okay well i was watching and there was his hand where he was chewing gum chewing gum then he he bet all his money he was all in he stopped chewing wasn't chewing his gummy i'm like i wanna see his hand he turned it over he was bluff k so i bank that in my memory now on day five five four days later a big spot between me and him at the final table he bets all his chips right he's chewing away i throw the hand away k later he bets all his ships he's not chewing anymore i call he's bluff you know i'm able to to to to knock him out of the tournament so absolutely the we all have that ability i think it's really observation you know noticing and looking for patterns because everyone's unique and different but there are some true there's some tried and true you know examples like people are not looking you in the eye typically like they look away or they look down to the right because they're uncomfortable about you looking at them because they're doing something that they or they're saying something that they shouldn't be saying or they're lying to you can we actually invert that so let's just say that i i think you know you've been involved in owning an investing in handful of companies if i was trying to get to you to invest in my company and i wanted to successfully lie to you what would the checklist be that i would follow i think certainty for sure you know being but again this is the thing the best con artists are also the best liars right so they can they'll fool you right like i'd say an over exuberance of confidence though is problematic like if yours just two like oh my god this is the greatest thing that ended if you actually acknowledge both good and bad right like listen we're good we're in great shape however you know we got we really gotta work on this so sort of admitting some being humble almost like does that show some honesty like wow okay well this guy why would he tell me this bad thing you know if the other part is not true so if you were gonna lie to me about a tell me the truth about b that's doesn't look good for you and now a is far more believable to to so i would be i would be confident but self d deprecating a bit and admitting to flaws what else would i do well there's honesty there i think you know looking the person in the eye you know is a is a big one and i think also like never come off as desperate alright i read a ton i would say almost a book a week and the reason i read so much is because my philosophy towards reading is i wanna see what works for the winners that i love and what strategies they use and then i wanna see what mistakes were did they all make where were the common flaws that they all had and i just wanna avoid that and so hubspot asked me to put together a list of the books that have changed my life so far in two thousand twenty five and i did that so i listed out seven books that made a meaningful difference in my life and i explained what the differences that they had on me or what actions i took because of the book and then also i listed out my very particular ways of reading because i'm pretty strategic about how i read and how i read so much and how i remember what i read and things like that and so i put this together in a very simple guide it's seven books that had a huge impact on my life and you can scan the qr code below if you wanna read it or there's a link you guys know to do there's a link in the description just go ahead and click it and you'll see the guy that i made so it's the seven books that had a massive change in my life this year so far and then also how i'm able to read so much so check it out below what's an example of of not being desperate and also being desperate yeah i'd say okay so you know desperate people they they front load the pitch too much and to ask right like if you really wanna pitch somebody you will play the long game don't even make an ask you know just be like man and i'm working on this really great project it's fantastic that then at the end of it don't even ask for anything don't even say it and well ask him hopefully if you've so if you've pitched it well suddenly he's gonna ask you yeah right now how much better is it when he says like well so are you guys taken money for investments like yeah we are but you know we're round one it's not that we're we're fine like we got money but like you know listen we're always open to listen to people so now you've flipped it on them right right so instead of like you selling him he's like oh man i want in on that right that's like a really solid way to you know get people on board with your vision i think you mentioned that when you were on your come up you would you know you'd go to them mall you sort of practice just your observational skills like like without distraction and actually just observe people try to really like understand how you know how they move how they think you know try to build up a a profile of them what were the other things you did to get good right like you don't just become who you became without doing something that was uncommon if you just did the common set of actions you would have had a common result you you must have done something uncommon to get you an uncommon result what else did you do on your come up that that was very helpful for you yeah on that note of of observation we'll go i don't know if you guys remember a show called heroes many years ago there was a character called si and all these people had like you know you know superhero type talents right and he would go in there and he'd like pull their brain out and he would now have this you know ability himself so when i started out quite young i would play with people and let's see these i'd start to notice the same guys are winning right so i'm like okay this week i'm getting inside sam's head i'm gonna be like i'm gonna i'm gonna sit like him i'm gonna put my chips like him i'm gonna sort of try to become him for this week and understand exactly how he thinks okay now i take all the good i leave the bad now i move on to sean and i'm like okay let's be sean for this week let's really soak in what makes him successful why is he winning right to the idea is to create this super player where i take the best skills from all these different people look at what works and what doesn't and then formulate like you know a game plan that way so really for me who's it was learning from those that are already successful and that's easier to do today than it's ever been like i'm gonna be streaming later today playing for eight hours you can watch me play for eight hours and see my whole cards and hear me explain my thought process right so without even risking any money at the poker table like we used to have to you could just watch and learn that way then you start to think outside the box just from observation so i had a friend a group friend that we have ultimately did start talking poker but early on it wasn't like that early on i was i wasn't gonna go up to me be like hey would you just tell me all your strategies thanks know cool so i the listeners are gonna hate here in this story again because i say ten thousand times but i previously owned a media company that i sold and it and it was wonderful and when i sold the company i sold it via it was during covid i told it be a zoom and so it was a lot of phone calls and it was a lot of zoom you've talked a lot about negotiating and like being able to read someone but it's very physical is there a way that you could teach me how to be better to to read or to understand what someone's thinking via zoom or phone calls like can you hear in someone's voice or just see them on a camera or do you think you have to be in real life yeah well obviously you know you can with zoom but i think frankly let's say for example when it comes to business i think and this this is like this would be my go to i think the best way to get reed on people is when they are relaxed k when are they relaxed so not during a business call not to zoom everyone's buttoned up you know and like ready to talk how about when you guys go for dinner and drinks you know just like hey you know we should go we should go check out this restaurant have some drinks or whatever and then talk about things unrelated to business understand who these people are get a sense of who they are and sort of disarm them i do this in poker all the time right where i'll give you an example of what i do often the idea is i want the person to be relaxed and i'll get more from them so i'll be in a spot where my opponent you know they bet all their chips so it's decision on me instead of looking at them i look at the dealer and i go why did i do this to myself this so this is what i always do and then i see him over there the corner of my eye i see him laughing right he's giggling so that means he's you know he thinks he has the best hand right so i'm looking at the dealer and saying yeah okay what you know i said what if he just has only like ace jack and then i look at his face and he goes hey shit that is and i can beat that so all of a sudden did demeanor but the thing is is he's disarmed because i'm not looking at him right so the analogy there with businesses is you're still at that dinner meeting at those drinks whatever you're doing you're you're in reading mode then that is when you're gonna need the best reads on who this person is and how they think and there'll be especially with a little bit of alcohol they'll be probably a little looser with the lips you know and disarmed and that makes it much easier it's much more difficult when everyone's very very stiff you know to get authentic reads because it's practiced right like if you're taking a pitch from somebody they've probably done this pitch before so they're just sort of like going through the motions and that's not authentic that's not real you need to see the real and usually that happens away from those environments is there a certain body part because you're describing this example of like poker where you say was he got ace jack and you said he stop smiling but it's never that or it doesn't someone like me who doesn't know what i'm looking for it doesn't seem that obvious yeah well there's a myriad of examples the eyes are very very telling often like in poker and i otherwise but the other one too is and i this is why like i said i like to use this as a as a strategy as a smile if you look to ten smiles right now and i showed you ten and five are real and fiber are fake you'd be surprised how good you are telling which ones are fake and which ones are real right like a fake smile is one that's kind of like this a real smile you see more up stuff up here like that so that that's a you know c simple but like i said everybody's unique the eyes are probably the most telling body language too body language is a big one right are they when they're talking are they stiff are they like this or are they laid back in their chair or they're talking because there's someone's laid back in their chair they're not really afraid of you looking at them they're they're they're they're comfortable you know they're you can sense when someone's comfortable versus not and like i said there's no everyone's unique and individual but body posture your eyes you know smiles a lot of guys are looking at pulse now that's like a new thing so everyone's covering our necks of course with scarves and things like that sean have you have you guys ever heard this story so in nineteen ninety one the the election between i think it was ninety two the election and ninety two it was between george bush senior and it was bill clinton and bill clinton the the reputation repetitions weren't entirely no the reputation eventually are gonna bill clinton is this charismatic young guy and who could like woo people and then george bush senior was known as kind of a up tight not everyday type of guy and there's this famous debate where a lot of theory a lot of like political folks say this is when george bush senior lost to this up and coming guy this young lady in the crowd was asking a question about a very everyday thing like i can't afford to groceries and while she's asking the question george bush senior very subtly he looked at his watch like that boom it's over and then the the analysts go look at now look at bill clinton he grabs the mic he walks closer and he goes what did you say your name was can you tell me about your background what do you do for work man i it's so hard to hear what you're going through i'm so sorry and and look you know a decade later they did this test where what they did was they got rid of the audio of the video and they just showed you the body language of the two people bush and brooklyn clinton and then this other test they oh you could only listen to the audio and what they found was the people who only watched the video and didn't hear the audio could predict exactly what happened to the outcome whereas the people who only listen to the audio that couldn't exactly tell what happened right and so the idea being is that body language and seeing with your eyes communicates significantly more than just audio and it was this amazing story where it was literally just this like you just looked at his watches like that and that was the that was the end of the election that's what a lot of people have folks say you guys ever heard that i remember that too and it makes so much sense it's so it's so on point right because like the difference there is you know like you said bill clinton got personal the body language mattered how often are you talking to somebody like today in our age like people have cell phones right but you're talking to someone and they're just going yeah u yeah right you do you feel like you're being listened to really you know like oh yeah you know you feel like you're being ignored you feel like you're being dismissed versus somebody puts their phone down and looks and he goes u and they you know they give you a head nod or whatever like that like that person is someone you're more likely to wanna engage with or feel respected by right so that like what the d the example you gave is george bush in that moment people see that is that's disrespectful that's the same looking phone what did bill clinton do oh that was very empathetic what do you do where you from you know tell me about your story oh wow like just look at those two different people right just on that alone like it's such a drastic difference right when when you how did you get into poker so what's the origin story for you and i'm curious if it just worked right away or you hit some rock bottoms early on and and it sort of shifted you yeah so i started as a teenager i was a pool player i was playing sn in canada we placed sn and through that you know like you make some friends up there and they say we're gonna go play some poker okay so i don't know what that is i get a six pack of beer with bring my ten dollars that i got lose that real quick drink my beer and i'm watching for the most part after and they're playing these crazy wild games follow the queen you know all these stupid games right but i'm watching and then we started to do that a little more regularly and i thought it was a lock right and then i started to like what's going on here how come the same two three guys just seem to always win and these guys always lose and that's what intrigued me because i've always been very competitive so i actually remember buying a really bad book back then and i was like it was very elementary and i was like okay well but it helped you know because it was something to make me think about the game where as sophisticated way but you took me about a month or two until i started to you know figure things out but through that you know my origin story like i was building up money but i'm a teenager and i'm reckless so you know you're you got money you lose it the good news was i had people around me that starting to see that like okay he's he's good at poker he's good for he's an honorable guy when i would go broke and lose all my money i could borrow money from people whether it was five hundred dollars or a thousand back then and that you know i went broke many many times but that's part of the learning experience i think i think like the the the relation to business is essentially this like if you have like very little to lose like you you have a very small company or whatever you could take shots right because whatever you know you lose you now once you become a big company i remember i spoke at kraft foods once they had me on is a at a corporate event now actually one of the people asked is like what would you do with craft mac and cheese it's been like our staple and i use the poker analogy and i say listen if i had a five hundred dollar bank that's that's i can replicate that like i can get that but once i have two million dollars i can't really risk the whole two million dollars to go back to five hundred because it's too much right so when i was broke i would take shots like this but once i've been established brand if you will once i've got the money i wouldn't mess with it too much because they wanted to change the recipe and the packaging and all that and i said you know listen what if it's working why why why mess with it you know you're risk there's a risk there and i would say that when you're taking risk you take risk when you're on the low end of the tote pole that's exactly when you take them especially in your twenties you know whatever you take risk but once you've established you're you should be less you should be way more risk ave so i play poker for a living but when it comes to investing all that stuff i know nothing about it but i'm very risk ave i have a guy you know morgan stanley guy municipal bonds i don't even know what it is right but it's safe stuff like i don't i don't gamble needlessly at this point because i've already created the dream life that i want so what's the point right there was a guy i in college and i used to i took one class my senior are called getting rich and it was probably i was a prem med kid so this was like i've done all the hard physics biology or whatever this was like my blow off class turned out to be the most valuable class i took my entire college career they invited in this guy from a hedge fund or maybe his venture capital fund so this vc comes in and he he's like okay cool like who here wants to start a business someday and so like i would say like seventy five percent of the kids raise their hand like i like the idea i'd like to own my own business and he goes awesome who here gonna start a business that like you're you're all graduating seniors right so who's gonna start a business this may when you graduate and the seventy five percent of hands dropped and there was like two or three hands left and he goes what just happened he's like that is and he so he started started asking people he goes either you said you wanna start a business what why aren't you doing it now like what what's coming first oh i got great job at you know mckinsey i got this job at at a bank goldman sachs forever i got this internship you know so i'm gonna do that for a few years get some experience and then i'm gonna go do the business thing and he goes he said you guys have it backwards he goes when you're twenty one and twenty two years old and you can live off of a fu ton and you know you have no no mortgage you have no kids and you have no expectations he's like this is the time to just go broke repeatedly he goes you should just try so many businesses during this era don't wait till you're twenty eight to thirty two because that's when it's gonna feel a lot harder and a lot more costly to go start that business because you're gonna have a better salary you're gonna a job you're gonna have a reputation you're not gonna wanna be a beginner in your thirties you should be a beginner in your twenties and literally that shifted the course of my life where i was like oh he's right i should just go i i can afford to go broke several times now similar to poker like when you have a small bank role is when you wanna take the most risk and like you because you can recover and bounce back quickly you don't actually have that much to lose today's episode is brought to you by hubspot being a know at all used to be considered a bad thing but in business knowing it all it's everything because right now businesses are only using about twenty percent of their data unless you have hubspot that's where they take data that's buried in emails and call logs and meeting notes they become insights that i hope you grow your business because when you know more you grow more you see being don't know it all isn't so bad after all visit hubspot dot com to learn more today you said you started when you're in your teens and you started learning the game and you would go broke but then you would borrow some money get back in it what happened from there we're very good people are very good at real as thinking of all the reasons why something's not gonna and something's gonna fail so it's very easy to be like i wanna start this business but i don't know the money it's not good timing into this and it's like when i'm said and everything's good then i'll do it and i remember i did a of course years ago on sort of emotional intelligence and there's thing called d do have right many people think you need to like have everything in order to be something right where the truth is it's like be it right you know do it and you'll have it like just just live like you got like go for it if a little bit more like you said as for me like to so segue into your second question that's kinda what i did i went for it you know i went to vegas and i remember the first time i went to vegas i'd like three thousand dollars twenty four hours later i did not but i had three more to ace in vegas with no money learning experience got kicked in the nuts went back home to toronto rebuild kept going back so it was a trial and error thing where i went from being the big fish in a small pond in toronto to the top pros you know and i remember a very distinct moment when that happened it was like four in the morning and i was playing seven handed seven people at the table and i i lost my money you know and i went to the bathroom wash my hands you know came out and they're all gone and i realized in that moment i was the sucker they were only playing because of me i was their e i was their expected value and i remembered every one of their faces with vengeance right and said i'm gonna get you one day one of them was a guy named hawaiian bill you know he'd wear those hawaiian insurance or whatever and hated him you know at the table because he was take he was playing aggressive know i was like boy he was just he's knew how to beat me and then about a year or two later he sort became a little bit of a mentor of mine you know because i was like this guy knows what he's doing you he's been around the block and i'm gonna learn from him instead of you know being angry and you know i just eventually i had i had persistence you know i understood that like and i had many walks home from the casino to my motel where i wondered like what am i doing you know i'm not in school i'm not don't own anywhere and this is it so good news is i'd wake up in the morning ready to go really alright today is today let's turn it around there said one of my favorite scenes is from from a movie is a poker movie i it's with mark w where he's talking to john goodman and do you guys know what scene what i'm talking about where he's he basically says like i was up two million and i lost all of my money and john goodman like look every idiot knows that when you're up two million we all know what to do you take one million and you buy a house and then you buy a really car and you put the rest in savings and that's your fortress of sol you can never mess that up and then you go and gamble with the rest but you never screw that one bit up and like tells us amazing story was there a point in your life or at air or rather what point in your life or what age were you were you like okay i have a base i have my fortress of sol things feel good how late into life were you or how early to life were you before you felt some security because it sounds like your line of work it's a lot of ups and downs was there ever like a okay i've i'm at a place of safety the first time it happened i was very wrong so i'll go there and then i'll tell you about when it actually happened nineteen ninety nine had a good year i you know i won the us poker championship ten the year because i'd like you know four hundred five hundred thousand i thought okay well you know we're set you know they're we're good we're never gonna go broke again then in the year two thousand i got complacent i was living the vegas life we're going to strip joints we're going to dinners i go play poker gambling you know not taking as seriously as i should and oh wow by the end of the year two thousand the money gone right and i was like it was good learning because i'm glad it happened because i watched many of my peers who went through this pattern of building up a bank blowing it all and then rebuilding it again and part of that was they didn't have a foundation like actually a reason they didn't have a why right so they wake up in the morning they gotta what's their goal they gotta go make money right now they have money k well what's next so subconsciously they self sabotage they would self sabotage lose all the money so they had a purpose again you know and i remember watching my peers that and i said to myself i'm not gonna be that guy so i started to take things more seriously in the early two thousands and probably by my late twenties early thirties i'd say he's when i finally realized like i got figured it out i've got enough money you know we're for sure not going broke anymore even though we're playing higher stakes i'm much more careful than i was but that was a very important year for me to fail the way that i did in the year two thousand to really just bottom them out in a sense and then that's a decision point am i gonna just keep doing what they do and be fifty or sixty i mean i watched the guy no joe he built up he you know i used to play with him in small games where you know he had a thousand and two thousand he's playing the big game he's got two million dollars right and then i mean he he had two million saved or he was betting that game two million was the line he had two million total like that's what he would you know that's that's his bank rolls two million now he's up there playing the big game he's got a couple ladies with him he's doing blow he's drinking whatever three days later this guy i had two million in front of him he's comes up he's said hey man can i get five hundred because he's back to nothing right so he wants five hundred and i thought all that and i was like wow man you had two million and you blew all that then there's a lot of crazy stories like that and i knew i was never gonna be that guy but it was a real wake up call right guys i looked up to in a sense and i'm like what are you doing man what's the biggest or what's the biggest amount that you saw someone have and it go to zero well nah i don't know the guy personally necessary but this famous story was archie kara it was the craft player a little bit of a cheat and all these kind of things at the bin horseshoe he went there and he's went in like a million dollars a day he like forty five million he had every five thousand dollar chip that the dominion horseshoe had he had him all in his safety deposit box hit forty five million lost it all and then this for a second time he was able to build up a bank to about seventeen or eighteen million and lost it all so this is a degenerate this is a degenerate right like his whole life revolves around this and this is where i i don't relate to people that are billionaires in a lot of ways that still are looking to make money i don't get it like i can't relate to it like you a billion dollars why do you care so much about a deal that just made you twenty million that's going to do nothing to change your life so that's sort of obsession of a bigger yacht or matching up on my others i have friends that are billionaires and stuff like that and one of them actually wrote a book bill perkins because he doesn't right you know he if he wrote a book called die zero right which essentially he talks about how money is just a tool for you know to give you opportunities to have happiness and what is happiness is it's not a bigger yacht it's not a watch it's not a car it's experiences right so he talks about spend your spend your mouth think about that like if you think if you look back like in your last ten years of your life you bought a watch a while ago did did that give you happiness that was long lasting what about the trip you took with your boys when you went on a golfing trip and you went to like the south of france like that's something that's valuable to you now like you still have those memories and you know a life that's worthwhile so material objects material things i think that's where frankly the opposite it happens you'll it'll it'll do the instead of making you happy it'll make you vehemently unhappy if that's the only source of happiness that you find yeah it's it's also funny like if you it's almost frustrating because it's like i keep going to this well just trying to scoop up some happiness and there's just none there right if you if if you keep trying the same strategy and it's not working it's actually not just that you didn't get happiness you actually get frustrated because diminishing returns right you're getting diminishing returns exactly like you get that and you take but i don't do kick i've never done cocaine but the more you do it you know you have that little s dopamine hit but the more you do it the more your body becomes government doesn't even have that same effect same thing i think with material objects you have six cars okay now oh i'm gonna buy a seventh car in this eighth car what now like it's it's becomes like unimportant so what motivates you then because you're you know you're playing a game that's literally for money the chips on the table the goal is to get the chips from the other guy into your little pot and so you know why do you do you've made plenty of money and you know you don't have to keep playing so what is it for you well that's the hook really that's the trick i think the most the majority of or of larger percentage of successful people became successful doing what they're doing because they love what they're doing right most if you don't love what you're doing and you don't your chance of being successful are very slim so if you just say i wanna be rich and famous okay but you wanna do the work you'd like what do you like to do that gets you and if you're doing something because you think it's gonna get you money but you don't enjoy it you you don't have that passion for i always did i love come i love competing i would love to be an athlete but i'm like five nine and like a buck six i'm just there's no i'm too tall to be a jo and too short to be a basketball player right so i didn't have any talent in that regard but poker was a a battle of wits right and i love the game and when i started playing it i wasn't playing for money money was a tool i wanted to play in bigger games i wanted play with the best right so the only way to do that was money so money wasn't the end goal right ultimately un you know what money up provided me was and i always ask this whenever i would coach people like what is people say well what do you what's your dream i wanna make i wanna be rich okay but what's for what to do what like what what are you going to use it for because money itself is just a pile of notes or a number on your screen it doesn't do anything what do you want for and for me it was to provide myself the freedom to be able to do whatever i want you know in my thirties forties and fifties if i wanna travel if i wanna relax i wanna stay home not have to go to a day job and be my own boss so that's what i looked at as far as money goes like the truth is my bank account if it was ten x what it is now my life wouldn't change much at all like right you know maybe i'd have a plane but but bit funny is it a funny how the lime between d legitimacy and loving it like we could be we could describe very similar things like for example i i'm a little bit of a work alcoholic i i i love it but then my wife or someone else be like well well you're just a degenerate like yeah i have a like you know we're calling yeah like there's it's kind of interesting when you describe it in the way that you describe it i'm like cam wings awesome and then when i like think it like oh you know larry the greek or whatever archie the greek he's he's a degenerate but couldn't he describe it as the same way i loved it yeah you know joel b had that famous quote once it was on a tv show where they asked them and he said you know we're all really just to degenerate gambler we just found something we could beat right yeah so he was you know a lot of the old school guys they gamble on everything you know poker players they didn't just play poker they play you know golf for big money bet on every game bet on everything you know some really famous bets from back in the day some really cool ones but they're always looking for action or e and a lot of it is because it gets their juices flowing but i found like i said for me that's not the be all end all like it doesn't do it for me i'm not really a thrill secret in that way like people say oh you know you should bungee jump or jump out of a plane i'm like zero interested in that zero it's just dumb for me because it doesn't do what it does for other people some of people go oh my god it was a thrill of a lifetime whatever i'm like for me i just look at and go oh you might die so what's the point you know like if i believe that it would give me that through you know i would you know maybe take it on but it's yeah i don't know it doesn't do it for me you mentioned loving the competition who's the best poker player you've ever sat down at the table with has there ever been anybody you sat down you're like wow this these guy's this guy's better than me yeah for sure several one of them is my good friend who i've been friends with for thirty years and he did what i didn't i'll tell you we we sort of split in terms of like our focus he's the best player of poke player in the world as far as i'm concerned when he count all the games and that's phil ivy okay so phil iv and i took different paths there was a time where poker started to get popular on tv you know and there's all these opportunities and this and that phil didn't he was not about that he didn't like that he was nose to the grinds zone i'm gonna sit my leather ass in this chair and i'm gonna play for ten hours gonna make all the money and i had that one when i younger but then i saw these other opportunities to be you know sort of a name in the game and potentially get some money through sponsorships or different business side the business side of poker and i was more well suited to that than he was because i enjoyed it you know i when i was a very young kid i wanted to be an actor so being on camera speaking these types of things that was comfortable for me so i felt like i could was a position myself to do quite well that way and i did you know and he went a different path and you know did did well his way but the difference is once i start doing that my focus is now diverted right he's focused on one thing one thing only just this game of poker right i'm playing poker but i'm also doing this stuff too right so the intensity with which he plays at i can't reach right because i've got other things going on you know what i mean which is fine i don't regret it you know looking back but yeah i think that's part of why you know what made him so successful he was completely consumed by poker and nothing else so he was he's completely intensely focused on it what's his kinda like superpower so like if yours is the ability to sort of like get inside the mind of the other person and read them and try to try to be able to see through the cards what's he what's his super superpower he was a very like he was quiet he was a quiet assassin when he played but he's paying attention to everything he sees everything right so he'll sit in a game for cash and he'll see like fifteen twenty minutes in the wrong guys are winning k what does that mean the wrong guys are winning k well the wrong guys are winning means they're gonna play well because sometimes when people are winning they play well and when they're losing they're gonna go off for a big number so sometimes he'd go down there and he place a fifteen twenty minutes see there's nothing here and he'd leave he'd go home or other days he's there for four days without well you know leaving his chair because he sees that they're vulnerable right often in that environment it's all a bunch of sharks so let's place to all sharks right so every shark is circling each other and then they see one shark is wounded oh one shark glass is tail we're gonna rip this shark apart right it's a doggy dog world in that sense and he was the king of that and still you know still still has that killer sign of intensity yeah i would say it's just his ability to like dial in and have like uber focus if you had to teach me someone who frankly i've never even been to a casino really how to like keep calm under pressure in these high stakes games you and phil i have as by my coach we're gonna spend like three days in a hotel before we go down like preparing not not the actual like math or the cards you know what would you teach me what would be my checklist on how to be calm in a stressful situation yeah well first of all virtually impossible it's okay like in three day span because here's a thing it's an emotional thing right i mean i you know you can do like a medi retreat a yoga retreat learn to get zen you know looking to get centered all these types of things but in three days entering an environment you've never really experienced before dealing with that sort of stress that's a you thing right kin like we could like set you right with you know explaining like it's all part of the you know there's there's things you could probably do but over three days somebody that's completely new i would say that you wouldn't be an easy easy person to help in that regard just gonna have to go through it on your own now that's different for people that have played the game for years right you know i can you know get them to focus on the fundamentals of what they're doing right are you making good decisions okay let's focus on that k let's not become victims to the idea that they're like oh man i'm so unlucky that that does you know good there's no value being input focus not output focus being yeah focus on the journey right so in poker it's it's not like other things where if you make the right decision you make money that's not how poker works i can go all in with a pair of aces right and sam could say i'll i have a nine and a four i'm gonna go all in well that's a good situation for but sometimes i'm gonna lose but did i make a mistake no in the long run i'm gonna be okay so for you or for anybody else i would usually probably ask like what your expert life experience with other things right like so let's say you're somebody who plays the market okay i would maybe make an analogy like okay so sometimes you make good investments and then something completely uncontrollable happens and you know your investment goes to nothing doesn't make your decision bad right your decision was good right so focus on that instead of like woe is me go okay well or alternatively if you lost and it was you you made them you didn't see something you're like oh i missed this you know that was important okay so use that you know you you've used that mistake or that breakdown if you will to plug the hole you know i me better prepare the next time you see it poker like essentially like a big puzzle right where you start out and just make all these mistakes and now you start to like go okay i've got this one figured out and you continually plug leaks or you've seen them these situations so many times when you go aha i made this mistake before but i'm in the same situation now a very similar one just time i'm i'm gonna do the right thing what are the most common leaks because you've coached people and people ask you for advice for years one the most common leaks that like a smart competent player still has that kills them that's really hurting their their like you know they're they're not at that beginner level but they're sort of like you know intermediate and they are a smart person they have enough talent what leaks did they have i'd say a pretty common leak for ninety nine percent of poker players or gambler in general is when they're winning you know everything's great or whatever they don't play as long k they'll be like alright i'm gonna take my winning i'm gonna leave whereas when they're losing you know they're there for for days i'll give you a perfect example my friend evelyn who used to well my ex girlfriend we go and she win like every day almost you know it's like how how'd you do well i want a hundred i won two hundred i won three hundred then i look at like day nine and it says i lost thirty seven hundred k so you won nine out of ten days right but what's the difference you want a hundred two hundred three hundred so over those ten days because of your mental state when you were winning the situation was good and you should be pressing and pushing right that's when you like you know little lot of people just like i'm gonna i'm gonna just take my winning that's the opposite what a phil ivy you would as i was sort of describe and but when she was losing she wasn't there for i because i looked at the length of play the first six days one hour two hour three hour nothing more than a four hour session that one she lost thirty five hundred she was there for thirty one hours right so the biggest league people make is they chase losses in the short run right so like i have to get even today it's not to this game isn't today this game doesn't end today this game is all year all you know all all month all year you have to be able to say okay well you know because the thing is is when you're losing your mental state is going to be affected you know there's very few robotic minds that can play poker without having that affect them to some degree so you're better off playing in situations when your mental state is good you're winning versus when you're bad have you ever read the inner game of tennis daniel no we talked about it on here and what you're describing is exactly that so it's this amazing book i don't play tennis but it's about how to play tennis but it's one of these books where it teaches you about life and the concept of the book is basically that you have two self self one is like the conscious critical mind where you like judge yourself like oh that was a bad hit that was a bad hand self too is like you don't think you feel your body and that when you like listen to your body and you don't judge yourself that's oftentimes when hot streak happen so i think about i don't know sean i forget the phrase but the call it in basketball where you're like oh street yeah hi yeah you're like you can't miss and people always say well don't pull them out like let them just go and that's that moment where you're listening to self too and you're just feeling it and what you described is exactly that golf too like i don't know if you guys golf but like when you golf most people when they go they have a swing thought something they're working on you know like i'll get to like it's always a swing thought but i remember the one time when my swing thought was this my swing thought was nothing from nothing is nothing which means nothing swing would literally go over the ball i'm in my head i'd sing this on nothing from nothing is nothing you know just let the body do it because when you're over technical over analyzing and all that kind of stuff it can actually be a detriment and that's not funny you're describing this you're this off say the exact same thing that's so fascinating to me yes and it's drew and poker two like you're like you see a move and you're like oh i don't know but i i need to take this risk i mean i don't know it seems kinda crazy it might work what might not i mean instead of just being like and frankly and this is a secret weapon that i don't use too often but it really helps is alcohol okay i'm not i'm not i'm not saying you should drink and play but there was a guy named bill smith many years ago they said when he was sober he was the easiest weakest player in the game when he was drunk he was just a sloppy mess he could win but when he was a little buzz just a little drunk they said he was the best player in the world frank why would that be because with poker alcohol can lower your inhibition a little bit so you're just all trust wrench again what i know when whenever i've done that i feel like it's almost like a superpower because it allows you to sort of get past the the fear and the for why you shouldn't take this risk and that's all going against what your instincts are saying is gonna work right so having that little bit of but enabled learning to to create that and trust that without alcohol is the ideal goal and that's what we all strive for and i've bet i've actually gotten a lot better at that just naturally just by just saying okay listen if you think this is probably right you know forget about all these other reasons it's not just do it man just do it i'm writing this book right now on on creativity and getting into creative flow and in the research i'm looking at i mean in writers and authors it's amazing these guys are drunk these guys are all drunk and they would wake up and they had this disciplined part which is wake up and immediately start riding but they're like yeah our best work was also when we added this other habit where we wake up and right before we start riding we do the whiskey part or you know we we start drinking and and there's another analogy to this which is actually kind of an interesting thing about napping and so there's this there's this famous study that was called the paris sleep study and it's similar like you get in a state of mind where your inhibition is lower and you're basically you don't self sensor so we all have this sort of editor in her head like in a game of tennis like the guy the pump sitting on the the tower we all have that sort of who's calling balls in and out and when you say something is sensor if you're if you're doing a golf swing you start to think you start to censor what you're what you're doing and if you can get that sensors just shut up and trust yourself you actually do a lot better and so they did this thing in the pair sleep say they gave people a very complicated pattern like a math pattern like a number pattern and you know let's say ten percent of people solved it right away great you guys are done congratulations here's some chocolate you guys are out the rest of the people they basically let them work at it for something like an hour and they were all like stuck there like i can't see this pattern i don't know what the hell it is so they split the group into two rooms so like hey we're gonna take a quick break you know sort of twenty thirty minute break you guys go over here and hang out in the waiting room do whatever you want and they take the other group the other half and they put them in a in they said hey we'd like you to go ahead and take a nap so you're gonna lay down in a common environment you're gonna take a nap they took a nap for about twenty eighty five twenty six minutes and then when they woke up they all went back in the room and the group that had nap basically had the a three times higher rate of just solving the problem right when they got in and there's a state that and they there's all these great in you know edison used to nap and einstein used to nap and all these guys used to nap and they would they would famously nap with like a spoon in their hand because they didn't wanna to sleep for a long time they wanted to get into that state where you just start to fall asleep and then when you fall you drop the spoon it would clan and then you'd wake up and they would use that state which is called a hypo state where you actually are way more creative when you're you're in a you can get into a flow much more easily than if you were just in your normal pattern that's super fascinating yeah that's wow i mean i i'm i was my first thought was that just like obviously sleep in general for poker is the most important thing it's like it's the it's if our mind is a computer it's the time we're it shuts down and it reboots and you know you downloads all the information so that you're ready to do it the next day i remember hearing that with some they did similar things where they they did some tests with people where they had them you know do this test morning night and then sleep and then next morning and you know next and that the the the results the next morning were always better than you know the previous night or whatever so i don't i mean i didn't know that napping could do that or this flow state or the state idea but that sounds cool because i like i'm a big fan of naps you know we go to europe and play you know the jet lagged thing sometimes i'd be at the table with my like a head down and i keep a hand out and you know that i could feel the dealer throw the car to my finger and it it's toy cup this is for the folks out there who have a business that does at least three million dollars a year in revenue because around this point that's when you're able to look up after being heads down for years building your company and you realize two things one you've done something great but you're still a long way from your final destination and two you look around and he realize i am all alone i've out run my peers which means you're now making ten million dollar decisions alone by yourself and that is when mediocrity can creep in my company hampton we solve this problem by getting a room of vetted peers of other entrepreneurs who are gonna hold you accountable call you out on your nonsense and help show you the way because the fact is is that there's only a tiny number of people in your town who know what you're going through and who have been there and they're hard to find the biggest risk is not failing you have a company in it's working you're gonna be fine but the biggest risk is waking up ten years from now and saying shit i barely grew in business and in life and for people like you who are ambitious wasted potential and regret is what we want to help you to avoid we have made so many of these groups and we have a thousand plus members and i know this stuff actually works it can change your life the change mind and i know it will change yours so check it out join hampton dot com you you mentioned it at the beginning you said i went to a course or a seminar about emotional intelligence and that's not what i expected you to say that sounds like you know i don't know i thought you would talk about poker and math and stats and all that stuff that's pretty fascinating why did you go and what did you get out of that yeah it was in vegas i did it in two thousand thirteen my manager brian who's a like just a you know super healthy perfect wife three great kids like lawyer guy you know all buttoned up he did it right and we're playing golf and he said you know you should try this thing and i thought it's myself okay well i trust him right so he thinks it might have some value i'll say i'll go you know what's the world i'm always looking to learn and do different things it was nothing like i expected it to be this was no business seminar if you will this was a deep dive into what makes you tick where you decided certain things about yourself you know what works about you what doesn't work about you and it was a life changing experience in a lot of ways for me right i hated it in the first couple days but because i had faith and brian i'm like alright i'm a stick with it it was it's transformational in so many ways and really like you know some of the key tenets of what i learned there was just the difference between being a victim to circumstance and responsible completely for everything and everything you've ever and for where you are and all the decisions you make right you're not responsible for the weather you're not responsible for a car crash you know that then but you're responsible for your response to it right and the word responsible when you break it down is essentially response able so the difference between those that succeed and those that fail often or how they respond to things and there's one story i remember that they told and true actually there were two mothers that had the same thing happened to them they had their child killed in a car accident horrifying experience right the first mother was grieving obviously you know affected she you know she drank she had other children she has husband been and you know she stayed in that depression six months a year later and lost her family right which is sad and you can you can look at that and you and empathize will we have of course right the other mother had the exact same thing happened to her she grieve took her time and then she started an organization called mueller's against trump driving so she said okay i'm gonna you know what i'm gonna take this i'm gonna respond to this in a way where i'm gonna help other people right so the event was the same right it was a neutral event the event was you know happened to both people but the response to the event led these lives in a very different trajectory because of how they were responding to it so learning that with poker is incredibly important right you're gonna have bad luck sometimes good luck how you respond to it is gonna be the difference between you being successful and you being a failure one of my biggest things that i've learned from sean is i i for years i thought well i'm very good at that i know that i am responsible for my own outcome so i i believe that fully and one day i think i was in a bad mood and he was like why are you in the bad mood and i said this person did this at pissed me off he's like well so you're you're not responsible for your mood what's going on like this person just the and and i and it that's when it like clicked and it and frankly it's so really hard but it was like the this being having the internal lo of control isn't just for like making money or starting a business it's also for how do i feel on the inside and that was the biggest thing sean what do you say like you have some like different version of someone living and rent free in your brain like i you have all these like phrases where it's like the the one that stuck with me i went so i went to tony robbins thing is very similar like i i kind of intuitively new hey like i'm a learner i'm i'm was curious guy why i always want to improve why would i not invest in this then i get there and he's like everybody you stand up i wanna hear you and i'm like oh god i'm here just for the learning part i don't need the dance right and then like five minutes in i had a choice a fork their it's like you're either gonna play fall full out here you're gonna like do the experience or you're gonna have to do the experience and get half the it's like whatever let me do this nobody here knows me i could just where let me dance and then of course you know forty five minutes in i'm dancing i'm like this is a amazing this is no good and he says this thing in his talk he's like and he's like i'm fucking tony robbins and he's like he tells a story of when he was on his trip with his like platinum and they are like you've you bought all the upsell you're at the like you're paying him at quarter million dollars here to go on vacation with them him and he was with them in india and he meets this guy in a mountain some groove guy or whatever and the guy said like you know tony so like how much are you suffering nowadays he's like sorry i don't know if you know i'm tony robbins you know suffering isn't exactly how people describe me typically right and the guy was like i can see like you you know you got upset because the the guy didn't know the schedule and then that and then you got upset about this like these were small things he's like well i wasn't upset i just he starts to be defensive and then he calms down he's like he's like what are you like what's the what's the observation you have here he goes basically he's like how cheap is your happiness because all it took was this guy for forgetting one thing on the schedule and you lost it that was so cheap he it he it took him nothing to take your happiness away and so this idea of like your mood is essentially that you want the louis ton of moods you wanted to be so premium like for somebody to affect your mood to take your mood away from you it should come with a very very high price and so i started to reframe like when something would happen i'm like that's too cheap i don't i'm not gonna take that deal why would i ever and why whatever ever trade my good mood for that small that that small thing no i actually love that that's really good because i think we we all strive to be like you know be above that but we're human right like i get the annoyed by the dumbest things i'm gonna use that today because i just like i said i do streams where sometimes to the brain and you get comments i get thousands of comments like while i'm streaming and you know the brain i've already known this but like we naturally gonna gravitate toward the negative comment the one who calls me a bald idiot or whatever so i mean so instead of like i've learned this a long time ago but like allowing that to affect you and to sort of you know divert the stream it's like kinda like what they're wanting to do but i've learned to just like sort of respond to positive reinforcement and good stuff and ignore it but when does let's say for example i play a hand and i lose and i'm already frustrated by the fact that i lost the hand but i'm comfortable with how i played it and then you read a bunch of arm cure quarterback saying oh what an idiot just gave all his money away that it was terrible you're you're the worst and i see that and i wanna oh really sam six five nine three four come here and say that to my face how about that i would bust you i'd take all your money dude and i i to do that but it's silly like you said because why am i allowing this well it feels good like i tricked myself to thinking it feels good and and reality is it doesn't feel good because i like check refreshing the page i'm like let me see the reply let me see no i can't go the dinner yet this guy to facebook says something i gotta wait for his reply i will say this though i am a big fan of venting like in the sense that like rather than hold stuff in you know and let it bubble and let it faster i laugh at myself sometimes when i act like an idiot i'm like i get mad about something dumb and i'm like okay okay and then i can leak very quickly after okay that was stupid but i got it off my chest you know what i mean like i see the river card comment i i'm like the hell is going on here how i lose this whatever and i can laugh at how un hinge i was behaving is but it's not gonna be you know it's not it's now not something that i'm going okay everything's fine sure right yeah better than there's some value and sometimes just letting it out like sean you you had that thing in in the in the five tweet tuesday the other day where it was was the name of it start with a case something theory which states that like if you write something down if you if you have a problem and you it kill law was basically like like a problem well defined like if you write down a problem you've already half solved it right like if you actually can write it down inaccurate accurately what is the problem you are already halfway to a solution at that point danny i wanna ask you about this one thing from that seminar because when i was thinking about the tony robbins experience they'll tell you something but it's usually like an exercise you do there's some like thing you do that you wouldn't have wanted to do but now you're sitting in the room and you signed up to be there and you paid the money and now you're so you go ahead and you do it and you kinda have this like moment of alignment that really only happened because you were actually immersed you actually did a thing versus just listening to like an idea and you know it intellectually but you didn't get to actually feel it did they do anything was there an exercise that stood out to you there's tons so yeah the one that i did is called choice center and there are plenty of people there's a lot of crossover between anthony robbins himself and people that have done both and there you know there's a lot of similarities and sounds like and you know what you were doing but as far as you know one specific one i think sort of the root of that whole victim responsible idea the concept is that i remember you know there there's a girl when i wish she was young and she was partying and whatever and we you know we were together i was i loved her or whatever but like we broke up okay and i had a story about how i was victim you know about how she did this she did this she's was bad and all these types of things so one of the exercises we did was we tell the story as a victim k now you must tell the exact same story or you're one hundred percent responsible for everything that happened whoa right so now i have to tell it and of sudden well she did tell me this she did say this and all of a sudden you're i'm freed i'm freed of this victim story that's been a label to me is like woe was me poor me i'm like no died there the signs were there the choices were not you know the choices there and i'll say this after i did this course in two thousand thirteen this woman who i was in love with in two thousand ten eleven okay she came back to las vegas in two thousand even bought a ring back that i never gave her in two thousand ten eleven and i kept i kept it in my safe for some reason she came back to vegas in two thousand nineteen and we're married now six years yeah we're married she's yeah so but a lot of that came from me sort of re evaluating the story that i had told myself right so you know that was probably one of the more impactful ones and it's like it's a long price it's like a hundred day process this course you know you go one weekend and you know it's pretty intense another weekend and and you know that's pretty impressive yeah you're doing coaching calls you're doing all you actually learn at a coach other people you know you started was speaking to this about writing down stuff because that's part of it you know the idea behind journal as well but one of the things you you know on that note like sometimes when i would coach other people you find that like one of the questions you asked is like say you came to me for c for coaching on something and i said well how would you coach yourself on this right so then as you do that and you're like well i would probably tell myself this this this and then you i just looking and go there you right you already know the answer right you know it's just like but a good coach what they do is they help ask good questions to sorta of help you know get you to a place where you may i don't think a good coach is one that tells you what to do a good coach is to set you up where you see you tell me you know i'm i'm helping you see what's possible so that you get there i like that a lot what when you one of the things about poker is handling down swings and i think that's not just a thing about poker that's a i thing about life now in poker it's just very immediate and it's very quantified i lost this much money just now my buddy back in college when i used to gamble a lot my me and my buddy dan we would go to vegas and we would go lose a bunch of money and we you know every once a while i would make enough money to keep us coming back to vegas but most of the time i would say we we didn't do well and i just remember him the psychology of losing money is so it gets you to act so strange one thing you were talking about was like you chase the loss you know i remember going back up to the room he's going to the atm it's like the bro don't do it but he wants to do it and then then he would lose money and then he would try to get the pit boss to like comp a breakfast or the room to like just salvage some dignity out of it or he would come back to the room and he would use all the toiletries and wear the robe as if he was getting the value back out of what he just lost and he would look in the mirror in the hotel remember he thought we were asleep he just goes five iphones you lost five iphones he's just hating himself in the mirror and and i just remember thinking like man we focus so much time me and him we used to focus someone on on the strategy of how to win and what actually we needed to be spending time on is the psychology of how to lose because there were always gonna be down swings and we handled them so poorly that our strategies went out the window and so i'm curious that daniel you're like what is the strategy of handling adversely are these down swings what do you tell yourself and what what do you think is applicable to to people outside of the world of of poker the down swings are probably the most important part of like how you deal with them is the most important part of becoming a professional poker player and for me i learned over the years you call them a breakdown right and typically with like a breakdown things are going badly that's an opportunity for a breakthrough when things are going fine right you're probably not really d delving that much into your strategy you're like okay things are good you know but when things are going badly and things are going wrong it requires you to be more intros you have to go okay what is really happening here let me dive deep is there is what i'm doing working you know is my is there anything i can do better what strategies can i adjust what strategies can chase and those usually come from breakdowns whether it's in poker band downstream or life right like when you're in a downs in in your life of whatever else that's an opportunity for a breakthrough you either say okay this is the point where i'm at am i gonna accept where i'm at you know and just woe is me or is now the time to reinvent myself to try a new you know a new angle or or or try to do things differently to get myself to a better place and often you know people call it rock bottom right so if you're a you know an addict or something you know that's getting by people look at that and say well this person's not gonna be open until they hit rock bottom because what's rock bottom rock bog is the decision point this is it right i mean they're gonna die here like this or you know some change has to happen there's a a quote from jk k rowling about this don't have you guys ever heard that her talk about rock bottom no is jk rowling who wrote harry potter and you know billionaire author right so she said this thing about when she was i think she had been rejected and so she said i was set free because my greatest fear had already been realized i was still alive i still had a daughter i adored and i had an old type rider and a big idea and so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which i rebuilt my life that's beautiful that's so well said and yeah essentially calculate what we're sort of talking about where i think like the most impactful stages of your life and like for me too even with the like going to that course right it required me to be in a place where i had that lost love that breakup up that painful experience of you know losing someone that i loved and i was at a at a low point so i went out and i said okay well let's do something and then boom completely shifted my relationship with that event and then eventually became the man that could look past you know our differences back then and realized realize like i'm responsible for this relationship working and now we're happily married you know and i and i constantly think of those things like it was one of those courses i don't know if it's similar for you with tony robbins thing but i still use in practice a lot of the things that i learned there on a daily basis like i'm not perfect by any stretch i still have my bad times but i i recognize recognized them more quickly when i'm being an idiot or a jerk or arrogant or whatever i noticed it faster you know and i'm able to shift out of it it's like i remember thinking afterwards i was like dude i feel like neo and the matrix but i but i thought that was like you know new matrix he's seeing everybody else but it's actually just seeing yourself it's like you see oh i'm just acting this way because of this thing oh i'm saying these words instead of saying i have to go do this i get to go do this right little shifts right little like two or two words schiff right like i gotta go i have to go pick up my kids now i get to go pick up my kids from school right now on this bike and we're gonna spend time to like this is amazing you know me five years ago what killed for this and now it's a now it's a have to i what what's going on here and so you get curious about those things so i totally i i totally agree with that and you know i think we came on to this podcast thinking like hey there's gonna be some poker lessons you know and isn't like we can learn about you know poker and the the art of bluff and reading and all that but you know this turned into a a a podcast about the mind right right can i ask you about your content diet what do you read and listen to on a on a daily or weekly basis because i find your attitude interesting and i wanna like i wanna be inspired by the same things that inspire you well i'll tell you i mean nothing recently but one of the books that i loved it was such a simple book it's by don miguel ruiz it's four it's called the four agreements yeah i've heard a lot of people talk about it it's an easy read you'll read it in five seconds it's four basic principles number one be impeccable with your word to yourself and others number two you know don't take anything personal and number three don't make assumptions and number four do your best don't do your best as the most important one because the idea behind it is those three things you're gonna fail at sometimes right but as long as you're doing your best you're in a good place and the one being impeccable with your word dad i take so seriously not just for others and for myself to the point where if i said to you guys i'm gonna be here at nine am if i was here at nine zero four i'd feel like it's a broken agreement that i did not keep my word right many people go through life and like they just show up at nine zero four and it's like hey what's up guys don't acknowledge the fact that we had an agreement you failed on this agreement and you didn't even say anything listen sometimes it's gonna happen you're gonna be five minutes late right what does a response person do listen i acknowledge them i'm late very sorry about that no excuses don't tell me about your kid and the hair dryer i'll i'm committed to in the future making sure that i'm on time you know that's you in respect right but somebody who just always fifteen twenty minutes late and thinks it's no big deal they're disrespect your time and i don't trust their word when they say to me i'll be there at nine i'm terrible at that not just the timing thing but the keeping your word to yourself i'm pretty good actually about keeping my word to other people but keep my word to myself it's like well i'm i'm the judge the jury and the execution say you know i can always let myself off the hook like i i have a i have a food coach so i'm trying to get in great shape it you know obviously i had a personal trainer but most of getting in great shape is controlling you know what you eat and so she calls me every day at you know ten forty five and she says like like how did yesterday go we have to talk through its it's food therapy basically for ten minutes a day every morning and in that there's all those all these little things where it's like i tell hey i'm gonna do this i know i'm deciding i'm gonna do this i'm gonna have this at this time and then tonight i'm not gonna late night snack or anything i'm gonna get to bed on time next day you know i did see the thing but there was all these at crackers out and like i didn't even actually think about it but like i was actually kinda hungry and is all these compromises and she was just like the amount of energy you're especially like let me kind of realize like men it's not about the crackers of the chips that you're having sure that's just not gonna kill you this chips not gonna kill you but being the guy who breaks his word to himself all the time like that actually will kill you yeah you you you will you will like let yourself down and not even trust yourself because you don't believe what you say and that has been like like ironically like one are the things that i've struggled the most at and like i'm trying to overcome this year and if i do that it's like wow then i do learn to play the piano better and i do do better with my companies and i do better with this because i become a type person who i trust myself that if i say something that's what it's gonna be and that i won't renegotiate and lit these things myself and the problem is i'm very persuasive a person i can persuade myself back into anything but i don't wanna use that you know use that that skill against myself we have a a bunch of guests on the pod like sean and i aren't particularly like big big investors or anything but we love having investors on like you know the we haven't had a mom but most famous example this is warren buffett and how he really can teach you about life via investing and it's very evident that you are in that same category where it's not necessarily the poker thing that is the interesting part about you poker is just your vehicle for showing that you have mastery over your own emotions in your own and you you're you're a master in emotional intelligence and so it's really cool to hear your perspective on these things because i'm not gonna play poker but you've said of many many things that will change my life just in a non poker field well i appreciate you saying that and like i said i a big believer instead of what you're saying is like looking at successful people listening to how they got there there's value in there this isn't me telling you this is what you need to do with your life i'm sharing what's worked for me right and if you hear some of those things and you think oh you know what that would be something that we've you know something beneficial for from my life that's kinda how i look at other successful people too but we we didn't get to talk about this but it i i do want and the research came up and i was like that was really cool of him so there's a compliment to you which is you were talking about the young players and you're like i never wanted to be that guy who was the old head criticizing the way all the young players are playing now and how the how it's ruined the game and blah blah blah and you you've talked about i you said something like you know i get really curious i wanna learn from them want them to coach me as much as i'm coaching them and i thought man that's a great attitude i i see that in so basketball that happens it's sort of always criticizing the younger generation and just saying like they you know they don't get it they ruined the game that it's all changed it's not the same anymore and i thought that was a pretty cool attitude you had and i wanted to give you a compliment on that it i remember where it really happened when i was like twenty two twenty three and i was really grinding and i'm working hard and i'm playing with some big names you know like some established guys and i could see they were sc at some of the stuff i was doing and in my under my breath i'm like buddy i'm already better than you my a lot you know you got that cocky young energy and i remind you myself in that moment never be the guy who's you know the older guy who the young and the different things are doing in sc and go look at these dummy so every three to four years i'll update my own software my mental software by learning the things that they're learning now i combine that with the wisdom that i have of thirty years and i become really powerful as a player but the it requires humility because let's say you're in the top in two thousand four and you think you still are today just because each rest on your lawyers know the day you stop learning is the day everyone else starts to surpass you because they're gonna continue to learn you're stuck here new new ideas new solve new approaches they're always gonna advance and if you don't advance with them you get worse by by definition because everyone else is getting better that's awesome daniel thanks for coming on man really appreciate it you got a guy's who's fun alright we appreciate you that's it that's a pod i feel like i could rule world i know i could be what i want to put at all in in like a day's off on a road travel never looking back