You know, I went broke many, many times, but the downswings are probably the most important part.
And typically with like a breakdown, things are going badly.
That's an opportunity for a breakthrough.
I feel like I can rule the world.
I know I could be what I want to.
I put my all in it like no days off.
On the road, let's travel.
Today we got Daniel Negreanu.
He's here.
I've been watching this guy on TV.
Feels like half my life.
He is a poker player who I think you've had over 50 million interviews in tournament caches, so tournament winnings.
You're known for your ability to read people, for your longevity in the game, for your personality and how you built a brand around the game of poker.
I think you've won something like, is it five, six World Series poker bracelets?
Well, we're at seven, but it should be a lot more if I'm being honest.
And he's humble to boot.
So there he is, Daniel Negreanu.
Listen, people are going to be like, why are you guys having a poker player on a business podcast?
And the reason is, A, I'm selfish.
I played 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 bankroll management, around pot odds and things like this.
All these frameworks that I've used for poker in business, but also 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, 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 getting out of bed to go and work is up to you, but you still have to, you know, make smart decisions, invest and look for plus EV situations.
So Sam, I don't know if you, if you followed poker, like back in the day, there was sort of the famous players.
Yeah, I watched it on TV with Phil Ivey and Daniel.
I've seen Daniel so many times.
And they look like a lot of his like Doyle Brunson.
They look like cowboys.
Right.
And they had these 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 it all.
And that was the sort of persona of like these charismatic, like personality poker players.
And then, if you fast forward now, it's like hoodie on sunglasses, on scrawny 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 gunslinger 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 between, like Bobby Fischer was asked, you know he's like well, who's the greatest chess player of all time right?
And he's like, it's not fair.
You can't make this—like the players in 1905 right, brilliant people.
They didn't have access to the tools that they have now.
So with both—
Or are these kids more – back in my day, people had to figure it out on their own.
Doyle Brunson.
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 and a king against a pair of fours, run out the board and say okay ace, king one.
And he would do it like 100,000 times, right?
Now, obviously, the click of a button, 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 doesn'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 audience's level of understanding, but counting combinations.
I'm just saying because it's very even for most poker players.
They don't understand like combinatrix 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 who doesn't play poker.
Right.
There's four aces and there's four kings.
Right.
So that's 16.
OK, so what you're doing in your head, or what these people are doing, is they're counting.
Not just ace king is one, but 16.
And then using other effects to decide, like, you know, the pot odds, what they have.
Like I said, it's kind of complex and that probably shouldn't go down that far.
It's sort of like why, like I like this idea of like Babe Ruth who shows up hungover and like is smoking a cig right before he goes on to like hit.
And then now it's just like all jackdudes who just hit home runs and like follow like who are technically perfect.
But I'm like I want the guy who ate steak and eggs in the morning and smokes a cig while 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 4 a.m.?
He's like, if I was as talented as John Daly, I wouldn't have to.
Because like, you know, really, because Tiger Woods is getting up at 5 a.m.
Right.
4 a.m. to go golf.
And he sees John Daly at the bar drinking, smoking, whatever.
And they tee off at like nine.
Right.
And, you know, John Daly goes out there and shoot 63.
You know, I agree with you, Sam.
It's kind of romantic, frankly.
Yeah.
Just that old swash swashbuckler who just shows up and and can still, you know.
Was there a moment like that that hooked you?
Because, you know, I think the first poker boom that I was a part of was the Chris Moneymaker thing.
And I remember the final table with him and Sammy Farha.
And Farha's, you know, this kind of experienced player.
Moneymaker was this amateur who...
Kind of like won a mini tournament that got him a ticket to the thing.
It was like Willy Wonka.
He got a golden ticket and then he got in and got all the way there.
And I just vividly remember 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 want to 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 watershed moment in poker, right?
Because it was the first time where some amateur guy named Chris Moneymaker like you, can't make this up.
You know.
He put 40 in on an online site, turned it into 10000 seat sits there and now he's against the grizzled vet Sammy, 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 Rounders.
Yeah, I love Rounders.
Grounders, great movie.
So obviously in that movie Matt Damon is watching a scene between Johnny Chan the master and Eric Seidel.
You know, I go, I used to watch those tapes as a teenager.
And I remember Phil Hellmuth, actually, who's a buddy of mine who I like to needle.
I remember watching him as a young, you know, in his 20s.
You know Johnny Chan had won two years in a row, and then he was heads up with Phil Holmuth and Phil Holmuth won this young kid.
So it was a little bit inspirational for me.
I'm 16.
I'm like, I'm going to be the next bat, you know?
So that was a big moment for me.
I believe that was 1989.
By the way, Sean, let me ask a question really quick.
Have you ever heard Daniel tell the story about Scotty Wynn?
That's the one I was thinking of.
Yeah, I was actually there for that.
That was 1998 when I'd won my first bracelet.
And I was just coming up on the scene.
I was 23 years old, I believe.
And, you know, I was there for the final table.
And Scotty Wynn was that guy.
You know, he's having a Michelob.
That's what he drank.
He's smoking a cigarette, you know.
He's in the hand.
He looks at the guy.
Beautiful mullet.
Beautiful mullet.
Yeah, beautiful mullet.
He's got the black and white, the chains, everything.
And then he just gives him the, you know, baby, you call going to 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, okay?
You're playing for days, 14 hours a day, five days in a row in a smoke-filled room, right?
And this guy, Scotty, he's fighting you.
He's a pro.
And Scotty gives you the out.
He puts this little idea in his head.
If you call, baby, it's going to be all over.
No more pain, no more suffering.
You get to go, right?
So I really believe and Kevin McBride ended up saying the comment, what he said.
We call that speech.
Play, if you will.
That did it.
That was what got him to call, and Scotty won.
Scotty Wynn was the world champion.
That's exactly, Sean, what Conor McGregor did to Jose Aldo.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Yeah, there's a sort of mind game to this whole thing, and 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 entrepreneurship in business, 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 were gonna give us like a mini masterclass on reading people what comes to mind.
What are the big factors?
Okay, we're gonna start from when you're born and you're a little baby in your mother's arms, right?
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 all born with that.
What happens is as we get older, we trust it less and less.
Right.
How have you ever met someone within three seconds?
There's something I don't like this guy.
Right.
You have no reason.
There's 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 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 becoming professional.
I would go to the mall.
I would sit on a bench.
Creepily, I'd wear sunglasses so people didn't think I was a weirdo.
And I'd watch people walk by.
And I'd get a sense of who is this person?
Were they picked on in high school?
Are they confident?
Are they insecure?
Are they depressed?
Are they happy?
Was this guy 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 from what you're wearing to what you do, where you're from that sort of is a puzzle where I'm profiling.
I'm essentially profiling people, which we all have the capacity to do.
And in business, of course, it's super important, right?
A guy comes and tells you, oh, you know, we had a great first quarter.
It was unbelievable.
Yeah, we broke records.
Why are you telling me all this?
Right here, the way you are so blessed for probably because it's 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 want to 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.
It 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 this hand where he was chewing gum, chewing gum, and then he bet all his money.
He was all in.
He stopped chewing.
He wasn't chewing his gum anymore.
So I'm like, I really want to see this hand.
He turned it over.
He was bluffing, okay?
So I banked that in my memory.
Now on day 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.
Later, he bets all his chips.
He's not chewing anymore.
I call.
He's bluffing.
I'm able to knock him out of the tournament.
So absolutely, we all have that ability.
I think it's really observation, noticing and looking for patterns, because everyone's unique and different.
But there are some true – there's some tried and true examples.
People are not looking you in the eye typically.
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 think you know you've been involved in owning and investing in a handful of companies.
If I was trying to get 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.
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 you're just too like, oh my god, this is the greatest thing, da-da-da-da.
If you actually acknowledge both good and bad, right?
Yeah.
So you're like, listen, we're in great shape.
However, you know, we really got to work on this.
So sort of admitting some, being humble almost, like that shows some honesty.
Like wow okay well, this guy, why would he tell me this bad thing?
You know, if the other part's not true.
So if you were going to lie to me about A, tell me the truth about B that doesn't look good for you.
And now A is far more believable.
So I would be confident but self-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 big one.
And I think also like never come off as desperate.
All right.
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 want to see what works for the winners that I love and what strategies they use.
And then I want to see what mistakes did they all make?
What were the common flaws that they all had?
And I just want to avoid that.
And so HubSpot asked me to put together a list of the books that have changed my life so far in 2025.
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 want to read it, or there's a link.
You guys know what to do.
There's a link in the description.
Just go ahead and click it and you'll see the guide 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 not being desperate and also of being desperate?
Yeah, I'd say okay.
So you know desperate people.
They front load the pitch too much and ask right.
Like if you really want to pitch somebody, you will play the long game.
Don't even make an ask.
You know, just be like, man, I'm working on this really great project.
It's fantastic.
Then at the end of it, don't even ask for anything.
Don't even say, well, ask him.
Hopefully, if you've pitched it well, subtly, he's going to ask you.
Now, how much better is it when he says like, well, so you guys taking money for investments?
Like, yeah, we are.
But, you know, we're in round one.
It's not that we're fine.
Like we got money, but like, you know. hey, listen, we're always open to listen to people.
So now you've flipped it on him, 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 get people on board with your vision, I think.
You mentioned that when you were on your come up you'd go to the mall.
You sort of practice just your observational skills, like without distraction, actually just observe people, try to really like understand how they move, how they think, try to build up 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 must have done something uncommon to get you an uncommon result.
What else did you do on your come up that was very helpful for you?
Yeah, on that note of observational, we'll go.
I don't know if you guys remember a show called Heroes many years ago.
There was a character called Siler, and all these people had, like 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 ability himself.
So when I started out quite young, I would play with people and 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 going to be like – I'm going to sit like him.
I'm going to put my chips like him.
I'm going to 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?
So really for me, it was learning from those that are already successful.
And that's easier to do today than it's ever been.
Like I'm going to 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 going to go up to him be like hey, would you just tell me all your strategies.
Thanks, Cool.
So the listeners are going to hate hearing this story again because I say it 10,000 times.
But I previously owned a media company that I sold, and it was wonderful.
And when I sold the company, I sold it via – it was during COVID.
I sold it via 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 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.
I think the best way to get reads on people is when they are relaxed.
OK, 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 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 is 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 hi i Shit.
And I can beat that.
So all of a sudden the demeanor.
But the thing is, is he's disarmed because I'm not looking at him.
Right.
So the analogy there with business is you're still at that dinner meeting, at those drinks, whatever you're doing, 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.
There'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 h jack and you said he stopped smiling?
But it's never that, or it doesn't.
To 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 otherwise.
But the other one too is and this is why, like I said, I like to use this as a strategy is a smile.
If you look to 10 smiles right now and I showed you 10 and five are real and five are fake you'd be surprised how good you are at telling which ones are fake and which ones are real.
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's a, you know, telltale sign.
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?
Are they talking?
Because if someone's laid back in their chair, they're not really afraid of you looking at them.
They're comfortable.
You know, you can sense when someone's comfortable versus not.
And, like I said, there's no, everyone's unique and individual, but body posture eyes, you know, smiles.
A lot of guys are looking at pulse now.
That's like a new thing.
So everyone's covering their necks, of course, with scarves and things like that.
Sean, have you have you guys ever heard this story?
So in 1991.
The election between, I think it was 92.
The election in 92 it was between George Bush Sr and it was Bill Clinton.
And Bill Clinton, their reputations weren't entirely known.
Their reputations eventually are going to be that Bill Clinton is this charismatic young guy who can woo people.
And then George Bush Senior was known as kind of an uptight, not everyday type of guy.
And there's this famous debate where a lot of, 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 groceries.
And while she's asking the question, George Bush Senior.
Boom, it's over.
And then the analysts go, 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, it's so hard to hear what you're going through.
I'm so sorry.
And look 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 Bill Clinton.
And then this other test, 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 listened to the audio, they couldn't exactly tell what happened.
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 watch like that.
And that was the that was the end of the election.
That's what a lot of people have folks say.
Have 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, 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 uh-huh and they you know they give you a head nod or whatever like that like that person is someone you're more likely to want to engage with or feel respected by right so that like what the discrete the uh the example you gave is george bush in that moment people see that as that's disrespectful that's the same as looking at your phone What did Bill Clinton do?
Oh, that was very empathetic.
What do you do?
Where are you from?
You know, tell me about your story.
Wow.
Well, like, just look at those two different people.
Right.
Just on that alone.
Like, it's such a drastic difference.
Right.
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 it sort of shifted you.
Yeah, so I started as a teenager.
I was a pool player.
I was playing snooker.
In Canada, we play snooker.
And through that you know, you make some friends out 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 10 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 wildcard games, follow the queen.
You know, all these stupid games, right?
But I'm watching, and we started to do that a little more regularly.
And I thought it was all luck, 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 more sophisticated way.
But it 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, So you got money.
You lose it.
The good news was I had people around me that started to see that, like, okay, he's good at poker.
He's good for it.
He's an honorable guy.
So when I would go broke and lose all my money, I could borrow money from people, whether it was 500 or 1000 back then.
And that – I went broke many, many times, but that's part of the learning experience, I think.
I think, like, the relation to business is essentially this, like –
If you have like very little to lose, like you have a very small company or whatever, you can take shots right.
Because whatever, you know, you lose.
Now, once you become a big company, I remember I spoke at Kraft Foods once.
They had me on at a corporate event.
And actually, one of the people asked is like, what would you do with Kraft Mac and Cheese?
It's been like our staple.
And I use the poker analogy.
And I said, listen, if I had a $500 bankroll, I can replicate that.
Like I can get that.
But once I have $2 million, right?
I can't really risk the whole $2 million to go back to 500 because it's too much, right?
So when I was broke, I would take shots like this.
But once I have an 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, listen, if it's working, why mess with it?
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 totem pole.
That's exactly when you take them, especially in your 20s, whatever, you take risk.
But once you've established, you should be less –
You should be way more risk averse.
So I play poker for a living.
But when it comes to investing in all that stuff, I know nothing about it.
But I'm very risk averse.
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 was in college and I used to I took one class my senior year called getting rich.
And it was probably I was a premed kid.
So this was like I'd done all the hard physics, biology, 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 it was a venture capital fund.
So this VC comes in and he's like, okay, cool.
Like who here wants to start a business someday?
And so like, I would say like 75% of the kids raised their hand.
Like, hey, I like the idea.
I'd like to own my own business.
And he goes, awesome.
Who here is gonna start a business?
Like you're all graduating seniors, right?
So who's gonna start a business this May when you graduate?
And the 75% of hands dropped and there was like two or three hands left.
And he goes, what just happened?
He's like, that is, and so he started asking people.
He goes, you, you said you wanted to start a business.
Why aren't you doing it now?
Like, what's coming first?
Oh, I got this great job at, you know, McKinsey.
I got this job at a bank, Goldman Sachs, wherever.
I got this internship, you know.
So I'm going to do that for a few years, get some experience, and then I'm going to go do the business thing.
And he goes, he said, you guys have it backwards, right?
He goes when you're 21 and 22 years old and you can live off of a futon and you know you have 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 28 to 32, because that's when it's going to feel a lot harder and a lot more costly to go start that business, because you're going to have a better salary.
You're going to have a job.
You're going to have a reputation.
You're not going to want to be a beginner in your 30s.
You should be a beginner in your 20s.
And literally that shifted the course of my life where I was like, oh, he's right.
I should just go.
I can afford to go broke several times now, similar to poker.
Like when you have a small bankroll is when you want to take the most risk.
And like you, cause you can recover and bounce back quickly.
You don't actually have that much to lose.
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You said you started when you were 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 thinking of all the reasons why something's not going to work and something's going to fail.
So it's very easy to be like, oh, I want to start this business, but I don't have the money.
It's not good timing and do this.
And it's like when I'm set and everything's good, then I'll do it.
And I remember I did a course years ago and sort of emotional intelligence, and there's a thing called be 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 segue into your second question that's kind of what i did.
I went for it.
You know, i went to vegas and i remember the first time i went to vegas i had like three thousand dollars 24 hours later.
I did not.
But I had three more days in Vegas with no money.
Learning experience, got kicked in the nuts, went back home to Toronto, rebuilt, 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 lost my money, you know?
And I went to the bathroom, washed 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 EV.
I was their expected value.
And I remembered every one of their faces with vengeance, right?
And I said, I'm going to get you one day.
One of them was a guy named Hawaiian Bill.
You know he'd wear those Hawaiian shirts or whatever and hated him.
You know, at the table because he was playing aggressive.
You know, I was like a bull.
He just knew how to beat me.
And then about a year or two later he sort of became a little bit of a mentor of mine, you know, because I was like oh, this guy knows what he's doing.
You know he's been around the block and I'm going to learn from him instead of, you know, being angry.
And, you know, I just eventually – 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 going anywhere, and this is it.
So –
Good news is I'd wake up in the morning ready to go.
I'm like, all right, today's the day.
Let's turn it around.
One of my favorite scenes from a movie is a poker movie.
It's with Mark Wahlberg where he's talking to John Goodman.
And do you guys know what scene I'm talking about?
Where he basically says like I was up 2 million and I lost all of my money.
And John Goodman's 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 crappy car and you put the rest in savings.
And that's your fortress of solitude.
You can never mess that up.
And then you go and gamble with the rest.
But you never screw that one bit up.
And he tells this amazing story.
Was there a point in your life, 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 solitude.
Things feel good.
How late into life were you or how early into 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'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.
1999, I had a good year.
I won the U.S.
Poker Championship to end the year.
I had like 400, 500,000.
I thought, okay, well, We're set.
We're good.
We're never going to go broke again.
Then in the year 2000, 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, not taking it as serious as I should.
And oh, wow, by the end of the year 2000, the money gone, right?
And I was like – it was a good learning experience.
I'm glad it happened, because I watched many of my peers – who went through this pattern of building up a bankroll, 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.
What's their goal?
They got to go make money, right?
Now they have money, okay?
Well, what's next?
So subconsciously, they self-sabotaged.
They would self-sabotage, lose all the money, so they had a purpose again, you know?
And I remember watching my peers do that, and I said to myself, I'm not going to be that guy.
So I started to take things more seriously in the early 2000s.
And probably by my late 20s, early 30s, I'd say, is when I finally realized that I got it figured out.
I've got enough money.
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 2000, to really just bottom out in a sense.
And then that's a decision point.
Am I going to just keep doing what they do and be 50 or 60?
I mean, i watched a guy no joke, he built up he, you know, i used to play with him in small games where you know, maybe he had a thousand or two thousand.
He's playing the big game where he's got two million dollars right, and then does that mean he, he had two million saved or he was betting that game with two million was on the line, he had two million total, like that's what he would.
You know, that's his, that's.
His bankroll is 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.
And Three days later this guy who had 2 million in front of him, he comes up and he's like hey man, can I get 500?
Because he's back to nothing, right?
So he wants $500.
And I saw that and I was like, wow, man, you had $2 million and you blew all that?
And there's a lot of crazy stories like that.
And I knew I was never going to 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 amount that you saw someone have and it go to zero?
Well, I don't know the guy personally necessarily, but this famous story was Archie Karras, who was the craps player.
A little bit of a cheat and all these kind of things at the Binion's Horseshoe.
He went there and he was winning like a million dollars a day.
He had like $45 million.
He had every $5,000 chip that the Binion's Horseshoe had.
He had them all in his safety deposit box.
He had $45 million.
Lost it all.
And then for a second time, he was able to build up a bankroll to about 17 or 18 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 have a billion dollars.
Why do you care so much about a deal that just made you 20 million?
That's going to do nothing to change your life.
So that sort of obsession of a bigger yacht or matching up with my others.
I have friends that are billionaires and stuff like that.
And, um, One of them actually wrote a book, Bill Perkins, because he does it right.
He wrote a book called Die With Zero, which essentially he talks about how money is just a tool to give you opportunities to have happiness.
And what is happiness?
It's not a bigger yacht.
It's not a watch.
It's not a car.
It's experiences.
So he talks about spend your money.
Think about that.
If you look back in your last 10 years of your life, you bought a watch a while ago.
Did that give you happiness that was long-lasting?
No.
What about the trip you took with your boys when you went on a golfing trip and you went to the south of France?
That's something that's valuable to you now.
You still have those memories and a life that's worthwhile.
So material objects, material things, I think that's where, frankly, the opposite happens.
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 also funny like if you.
It's almost frustrating because it's like I keep going to this well, trying to scoop up some happiness, and there's just none there, right.
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.
Yeah, there's diminishing returns, right?
You're getting diminishing returns.
Yeah, exactly.
It's like you get that – but I don't do kick.
I've never done cocaine.
But the more you do it, you have that little fleeting dopamine hit.
But the more you do it, the more your body becomes accustomed to it.
It doesn't even have that same effect.
Same thing I think with material objects.
You have six cars.
Okay, now, oh, I'm going to buy this seventh car and this eighth car.
What now?
Like it becomes –
Like unimportant.
So what motivates you then?
Because you're, you know, you're playing a game that's literally for money.
It's 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 it?
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 majority of large percentage of successful people became successful doing what they're doing because they love what they're doing right.
If you don't love what you're doing, your chances of being successful are very slim.
So if you just say, I want to be rich and famous.
Okay.
But do you want to do the work?
What do you like to do that gets you there?
And if you're doing something because you think it's going to get you money but you don't enjoy it, You don't have that passion for it.
I always did.
I love 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 jockey and too short to be a basketball player.
Right.
So I didn't have any talent in that regard.
But poker was 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 to play with the best, right?
So the only way to do that was money.
So money wasn't the end goal, right?
Ultimately, you know what money provided me was, And I always ask this whenever I would coach people.
Like, what is... People say, well, what do you want?
What's your dream?
I want to make... I want to be rich.
Okay, but what's for what?
To do what?
Like, 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 it for?
And for me...
It was to provide myself the freedom to be able to do whatever I want in my 30s, 40s, and 50s.
If I want to travel, if I want to relax, if I want to 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.
The truth is my bank account.
If it was 10x what it is now, my life wouldn't change much at all.
Like you know, maybe i'd have a plane, but but isn't it funny?
Isn't it funny how the line between degeneracy and loving it like we could be, we could describing very similar things like, for example i, i'm a little bit of a workaholic i, i love it, but then my wife or someone else would be like well well, you're just a degenerate.
Like yeah, i have.
Like you know, you're a workaholic.
Yeah, like there's um, it's kind of interesting when you describe it in the way that you describe it.
I'm like Gambling is awesome.
And then when I like think of it, I'm 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, Doyle Brunson had that famous quote once.
It was on a TV show where they asked him.
He said, you know, we're all really just degenerate gamblers.
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 and some really cool ones, but they're always looking for action or easy.
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 seeker in that way.
Like people say, oh, you know, you should bungee jump or jump out of a plane.
I'm like, I have zero interest in that zero.
It's just dumb for me because it doesn't do what it does for other people.
Like some 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 thrill, you know, I would, you know, maybe take it on.
But it's I don't 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 and you're like, wow, this guy's better than me?
Yeah, for sure.
Several.
One of them is my good friend who I've been friends with for 30 years.
And he did what I didn't.
I'll tell you, we sort of split in terms of like our focus.
He's the best poker player in the world as far as I'm concerned when you count all the games.
And that's Phil Ivey.
Okay.
So Phil Ivey and I, took different paths.
There was a time where poker started to get popular on TV, you know, and there was 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 grindstone.
I'm going to sit my leather ass in this chair and I'm going to play for 10 hours.
I'm going to make all the money.
And I had that when I was 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, 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 position myself to do quite well that way.
And I did, you know, and he went a different path and, you know, 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.
Cause 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's completely intensely focused on it.
What's his kind of 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 be able to see through the cards what's his superpower.
He was 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 15, 20 minutes in the wrong guys are winning okay.
What does that mean, the wrong guys are winning?
Okay, well, the wrong guys are winning means they're going to play well.
Because sometimes when people are winning, they play well.
And when they're losing, they're going to go off for a big number.
So sometimes he'd go down there and he'd play for 15, 20 minutes see there's nothing here and he'd leave.
He'd go home.
Or other days...
He's there for four days without 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 it's like all sharks.
Right.
So every shark is circling each other and they see one shark is wounded.
Oh, one shark lost his tail.
Oh, we're going to rip this shark apart.
Right.
It's a dog eat dog world in that sense.
And he was the king of that.
And still, you know, still still has that killer side 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 you as my coach.
We're going to spend like three days in a hotel before we go down like preparing.
Um, 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 days spent, because here's the thing.
It's an emotional thing, right?
Yeah.
I mean I would – you can do like a meditative retreat, a yoga retreat, learn to get zen, learn 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?
Can like – we could like set you right with explaining like it's all part of the – there's –
Things you could probably do, but over three days to somebody that's completely new, I would say that you wouldn't be an easy person to help in that regard.
You're just going to have to go through it on your own.
Now, that's different for people that have played the game for years, right?
I can get them to focus on...
The fundamentals of what they're doing, right?
Are you making good decisions?
Okay, let's focus on that.
Okay, let's not become victims to the idea that like, oh man, I'm so unlucky.
That does you no good.
There's no value.
So being input focused, not output focused.
Yeah, focus on the journey, right?
So in poker, 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 have a nine and a four, I'm gonna go all in.
Well, that's a good situation for me, 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 life experience is 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, OK, 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.
OK, so use that.
You know you use that mistake or that breakdown, if you will, to plug a hole.
You know and be better prepared the next time you see it.
Poker is 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 these situations so many times where you go aha.
I made this mistake before, but I'm in the same situation now, or a very similar one.
This time I'm going to do the right thing. what are the most common leaks?
Cause you've coached people and people ask you for advice for years.
What are the most common leaks that like a smart, competent player still has that kills them?
That's really hurting their, their game.
So, 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 99 of poker players, or gamblers in general, is uh, when they're winning you know everything's great, or whatever.
Um, they don't play as long, okay?
They'll be like, all right, I'm gonna take my winnings, I'm gonna leave.
Whereas when they're losing, you know, they're there for days.
I'll give you a perfect example.
My friend Evelyn, who used to well my ex-girlfriend.
We'd go and she'd win, like every day, almost you know.
It's like, how'd you do?
Well, I won 100.
I won 200.
I won 300.
Then I look at like day nine and it says I lost 3700.
OK, so you won nine out of 10 days.
Right.
But what's the difference?
You won 100, 200, 300.
So over those 10 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 a lot of people, just like I'm going to.
I'm going to take my winnings.
That's the opposite of what a Phil Ivey would do, as I was sort of described.
And but when she was losing.
She wasn't there for, 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 3,500.
She was there for 31 hours, right?
So the biggest leak people make is they chase losses in the short run, right?
So like, I have to get even today.
It's not, this game isn't today.
This game doesn't end today.
This game is all year, 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, right?
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 selves.
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 two 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 streaks happen.
So I think about I don't know Sean I forget the phrase, but they call it in basketball where you're like on a streak yeah 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-tune, 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 golf, they have a swing thought, something they're working on.
You know, like i'll get, there'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, just swing.
I would literally go over the ball and in my head I'd sing this song.
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 funny.
You're describing this.
You're this author saying the exact same thing.
That's so fascinating to me.
Yes.
And it's true in poker, too.
You're like you're like you see a move and you're like, oh, I don't know.
But do I need to take this risk?
I mean, I don't know.
It seems kind of crazy.
It might work.
It might not.
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 couldn't win.
But when he was just a little buzzed If you're just a little drunk they said he was the best player in the world right.
Why would that be?
Because with poker, alcohol can lower your inhibition a little bit.
So you're just going to go trust your instinct.
And whenever I've done that, I feel like it's almost like a superpower, because it allows you to sort of get past the fear and the rationalization for why you shouldn't take this risk.
And that's all going against what your instincts are saying is going to work, right?
Yeah.
So having that little bit of, but learning to create that and trust that without alcohol is the ideal goal.
And that's what we all strive for.
And I've actually gotten a lot better at that just naturally, just by just saying okay listen, if you think this is probably right, forget about all these other reasons.
Just do it, man.
Just do it.
I'm writing this book right now 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 drunks.
These guys are all drunks and they would wake up and they had this discipline part, which is wake up and immediately start writing.
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 writing, we do the whiskey part, or you know we, we start drinking.
And um, And there's another analogy to this which is actually kind of an interesting thing, about napping.
And so 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-censor.
So we all have this sort of editor in our head, like in a game of tennis, like the guy, the ump, sitting on the tower.
We all have that sort of ump who's calling balls in and out.
And when you say something, you censor.
If you're doing a golf swing, you start to think, you start to censor what you're doing.
And if you can get that censor to just shut up and trust yourself, you actually do a lot better.
And so they did this thing in the Paris Sleep Study.
They gave people a very complicated pattern, like a math pattern, like a number pattern.
And, you know, let's say 10% of people solved it right away.
Great.
You guys are done.
Congratulations.
Here's some chocolate.
You guys are out.
Um, the rest of the people, they basically let them work at it for something like an hour and they were all like stuck.
They're like, I can't see this pattern.
I don't know what the hell it is.
So they split the group into two rooms.
They're like, Hey, we're going to take a quick break, you know, a sort of 20, 30 minute break.
You guys go over here and hang out in the waiting room, do whatever you want.
And um, they took the other group, the other half, and they put them in a.
In a, they said Hey, we'd like you to go ahead and take a nap.
So you're going to lay down in a calm environment.
You're going to take a nap.
They took a nap for about 25, 26 minutes.
And then when they woke up, they all went back in the room.
And the group that had napped basically had a three times higher rate of just solving the problem right when they got in.
And there's a state that there's all these great.
You know, Edison used to nap and Einstein used to nap and all these guys used to nap.
And they would famously nap with like a spoon in their hand because they didn't want 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 asleep, you drop the spoon.
It would clang and then you'd wake up.
And they would use that state, which is called a hypogonic state, where you actually are way more creative and 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, my first thought was that, just like obviously sleep in general for poker is the most important thing.
It's like if our mind is a computer, it's the time where it shuts down and it reboots and downloads all the information so that you're ready to do it the next day.
They had them do this test morning, night, and then sleep, and then next morning.
The results the next morning were always better than the previous night or whatever.
I didn't know that napping could do that or this flow state or this state idea, but that sounds cool because I'm a big fan of naps.
I used to go to Europe and play the jet lag thing.
Sometimes I'd be at the table with my head down and I'd keep a hand out.
Then I could feel the dealer throw the card in my finger and I had to wake up.
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You mentioned 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 2013.
My manager Brian, who's 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 to myself, okay, well, I trust him, right?
So he thinks it might have some value.
I'll say, oh, I'll go.
You know, what's the word?
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.
Um, 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 of days but because I had faith in Brian, I'm like all right, I'm gonna stick with it.
It was, it's transformational in so many ways.
And really, like you know some of the key tenants 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, 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.
The word responsible when you break it down is essentially response able.
So the difference between those that succeed and those that fail often are how they respond to things.
And there's one story I remember that they told.
And it's true, actually.
There were two mothers. that had the same thing happen to them.
They had their child killed in a car accident.
Horrifying experience, right?
The first mother was grieving, obviously.
She, you know, expected.
She, you know, she drank.
She had other children.
She had a husband and you know she stayed in that depression six months a year later and lost her family right.
Which is sad.
And you can look at that and you would empathize.
Well, yeah, of course, right?
The other mother had the exact same thing happen to her.
She grieved, took her time and then she started an organization called Mothers Against Drunk Driving.
So she said, okay, I'm going to take this.
I'm going to respond to this in a way where I'm going to help other people.
So the event was the same.
It was a neutral event.
The event 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?
Because you're going to have bad luck sometimes, good luck.
How you respond to it is going to be the difference between you being successful and you being a failure.
One of my biggest things that I've learned from Sean is for years I thought well, I'm very good at that.
I know that I am responsible for my own outcomes.
I believe that fully.
And one day I think I was in a bad mood and he was like, well, why are you in the bad mood?
And I said, this person did this and it 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, and that's when it like clicked.
And frankly, it's still really hard, but it was like this being, having that internal locus 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 rent free in your brain.
Like you have all these like phrases where it's like.
The one that stuck with me, I went to, so I went to a Tony Robbins thing.
It's very similar.
Like, I kind of intuitively knew, hey, like I'm a learner.
I'm a curious guy.
I always want to improve.
Why would I not invest in this?
Then I get there and he's like, all right, everybody stand up.
I want to hear you.
And I'm like, oh, God, I'm here just for the learning part.
I don't need to dance.
Right.
And then like five minutes in, I had a choice, a fork in the road.
It's like you're either going to play full out here.
You're going to like do the experience or you're going to have to the experience and get half the results.
I was like, whatever.
Let me do this.
Nobody here knows me.
I could just let me dance.
And then, of course, you know, 45 minutes in, I'm dancing.
I'm like, this is amazing.
This is so 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 the story of when he was on his trip with his, like, platinum.
And they're like –
You've you've bought all the upsells.
You're at the like you're paying him a quarter million dollars a year to go on vacation with him.
And he was with them in India.
And he meets this guy in a mountain, some guru 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 me.
I'm Tony Robbins.
You know, suffering isn't exactly how people describe me typically, right?
And the guy was like, well, I can see.
Like you know, you got upset because 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, no, I wasn't upset.
I just... He starts to be defensive.
And then he calms down.
He's like, what are you... Like, 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 forgetting one thing on the schedule and you lost it.
That was so cheap.
It took him nothing to take your happiness away.
And so this idea of like your mood is essentially you want the Louis Vuitton of moods.
You want it 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 going to take that deal.
Why would I ever why would ever trade my good mood for that small that small thing?
No, I actually love that.
That's really good.
Cause I think we, we all strive to be like, you know, be above that, but we're human, right?
Like I get annoyed by the dumbest things.
I'm going to use that today.
Cause I, like I said, I do streams where sometimes I'm sitting there 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 going to gravitate toward the negative comment, the one who calls me a bald idiot or whatever.
So I 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 kind of 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, 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 armchair quarterbacks saying, oh what an idiot just gave all his money away.
It was terrible.
You're, you're the worst.
And I see that and I want to, oh, really?
Yeah.
Sam65934, come here and say that to my face.
How about that?
I would bust you.
I'd take all your money.
And I sometimes do that.
But it's silly, like you said, because why am I allowing this?
Well, sometimes it feels good.
Like I trick myself into thinking it feels good.
And the reality is it doesn't feel good because I'm refreshing the page.
I'm like, let me see the reply.
Let me see it. no i can't go out to dinner yet this guy on facebook said 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 fester 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 that was okay and then i could like very quickly after i can go okay that was stupid but i got it off my chest you know what i mean like i see the river card come and i lose i'm like what the hell is going on here how did i lose this whatever and i can laugh at how unhinged i was behaving is but it's not going to be you know it's not but it's now not something that i'm just going okay everything's fine sure right it's better than i think there's some value in 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 um what was the name of it start with a k something theory which states that like if you write something down if you if you have a problem and you just take the kidlin's law was basically like um like a problem well-defined, like if you write down a problem, you've already half solved it.
If you actually can write it down accurately, what is the problem?
You are already halfway to a solution at that point.
Danny, I want to 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 here, so you go ahead and you do it and you kind of have this like moment of enlightenment that really only happened because you were actually immersed in it.
You actually did a thing, versus just listening to like an idea and you know 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's a lot of similarities and sounds like in what you were doing.
But as far as one specific one, I think... sort of the root of that whole victim responsible idea.
The concept is that I remember, you know, there was a girl when I was.
She was young and she was partying or 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 the victim.
You know, about how she did this.
She did this, she was bad and all these types of things.
So one of the exercises we did was we tell the story. as a victim, okay?
Now you must retell the exact same story where you're 100% responsible for everything that happened.
Whoa, right?
So now I have to retell it.
And all of a sudden, well, she did tell me this.
She did say this.
And all of a sudden, I'm freed.
I'm freed of this victim story that's been a label to me.
It's like, woe is me, poor me.
I'm like no, the signs were there, the choices were not.
You know, the choices were there and i'll say this after i did this course in 2013, this woman who i was in love with in 2010 11 okay, she came back to las vegas in 2000.
I even bought her a ring back then.
I never gave her in 2010 11, and i kept, i kept it in my safe.
For some reason.
She came back to vegas in 2019 and we're married now six years.
Yeah, We were married.
She's yeah.
So but a lot of that came from me sort of reevaluating 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 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, you know, you stuck with it.
That's pretty impressive.
Yeah.
You're doing coaching calls.
You're doing all, you actually learn how to coach other people.
And, you know, you sort of was speaking to this about writing down stuff.
Cause that's part of it.
You know, the idea behind journaling 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 ask is like say you came to me for coaching, 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, this and this.
And then I just look at you and go, There you go.
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.
That sort 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 helping.
You see what's possible so that you get there.
I like that a lot.
When you, one of the things about poker is handling downswings.
And I think that's not just a thing about poker.
That's a 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, 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 in a while we'd make enough money to keep us coming back to Vegas.
But most of the time I would say we didn't do well.
And I just remember him – the psychology of losing money is so – it gets you to act so strange.
So one thing you were talking about was like you chase the loss.
I remember going back up to the room.
He's going to the ATM machine.
It's like, bro, don't do it.
But he wants to do it.
And then he would lose money, and then he would try to get the pit boss to like comp him a breakfast or the room to like 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.
I remember he thought we were asleep.
He just goes, five iPhones.
You lost five iPhones.
He's hating himself in the mirror.
And I just remember thinking like man.
We focus so much time me and him, we used to focus so much time 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 going to be downswings.
And we handled them so poorly that our strategies went out the window.
And so I'm curious, Daniel, like what is the strategy of handling adversity or these downswings?
What do you tell yourself and what do you think is applicable to people outside of the world of poker?
Yeah.
The downswings 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 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 introspective.
You have to go, okay, what is really happening here?
Let me dive deep.
Is there...
Is what I'm doing working?
Is there anything I can do better?
What strategies can I adjust?
What strategies can I change?
And those usually come from breakdowns, whether it's in poker, downstreams, or life, right?
Like when you're in a downswing in your life with whatever else.
That's an opportunity for a breakthrough.
You either say, okay, this is the point where I'm at.
Am I going to accept where I'm at?
You know, and just woe is me.
Or is now the time to reinvent myself, to try a new angle, 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, 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 able until they hit rock bottom.
Because what's rock bottom?
Rock bottom is the decision point.
This is it, right?
I'm either gonna die here like this or, you know, some change has to happen.
There's a quote from JK Rowling about this.
Have you guys ever heard her talk about rock bottom?
No.
JK Rowling who wrote Harry Potter and 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 typewriter 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 concapulates 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, that painful experience of, you know, losing someone that I loved.
And I was at a low point.
So I went out and I said, OK, 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 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 the 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 them more quickly when I'm being an idiot or a jerk or arrogant or whatever.
I notice 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 in the matrix, but I but I thought that was, like you know, a nude 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.
A little like two or two word shift.
Right.
Like I got to go.
I have to go pick up my kids.
I get to go pick up my kids from school right now on this bike.
And we're going to spend time.
This is amazing.
You know, me five years ago.
What killed for this?
And now it's a now it's a have to.
What's going on here?
And so you get curious about those things.
So I totally I totally agree with that.
And, you know.
I think we came onto this podcast thinking like hey, there's going to be some poker lessons, you know, as in like oh, we can learn about, you know, poker and the art of bluffing and reading and all of that.
But, you know, this turned into a podcast about the mind, right?
Right.
Can I ask you about your content diet?
What do you read and listen to on a daily or weekly basis?
Because I find your attitude interesting, interesting and i want to like, i want to 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 such 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 So.
Do your best is the most important one, because the idea behind it is those three things you're going to fail at sometimes.
Right.
But as long as you're doing your best, you're in a good place.
If I was here at 9.04, 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 9.04 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 going to happen.
You're going to be five minutes late, right?
What does a responsive person do?
Listen, I acknowledge I'm late.
I'm very sorry about that.
No excuses.
Don't tell me about your kid and the hairdryer.
I'm committed to, in the future, making sure that I'm on time.
That you can respect, right?
But somebody who's just always 15, 20 minutes late and thinks it's no big deal.
They're disrespecting 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 the judge, the jury and the executioner.
So, you know, I can always let myself off the hook.
Like I have a food coach, so I'm trying to get in great shape.
And 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 1045 and she says like, hey, like how did yesterday go?
We have to talk through.
It's food therapy basically for 10 minutes a day. every morning.
And in that there's all, there's all these little things where it's like I tell her Hey, I'm going to do this.
I'm deciding I'm going to do this.
I'm gonna have this at this time.
And then tonight I'm not going to late night snack or anything.
I'm going to get to bed on time next day.
You know, I did see the thing.
There was all these crackers out and I didn't even actually think about it.
But like, I was actually kind of hungry.
It is all these compromises.
And she was just like the amount of energy.
She like, let me kind of realize, like man, it's not about the crackers or the chips that you're having.
Sure, that's not going to kill you.
Just chips are not going to kill you.
But being the guy who breaks his word to himself all the time, like that actually will kill you.
You will let yourself down and not even trust yourself because you don't believe what you say.
And that has been like – ironically like one of 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.
I do do better with this because I become a type of person who –
I trust myself that if I say something, that's what it's going to be.
And that I won't renegotiate and relitigate these things myself.
And the problem is I'm a very persuasive person.
So I can persuade myself back into anything.
But I don't want to use that, you know, use that skill against myself.
We have a bunch of guests on the pod.
Sean and I aren't particularly big investors or anything, but we love having investors on.
We haven't had them on, but the most famous example of 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 to for showing that you have mastery over your own emotions and you're a master in emotional intelligence.
And so it's really cool to hear your perspective on these things, because I'm not going to play poker, but you've said 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'm a big believer in sort 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 my life.
That's kind of how I look at other successful people, too.
We didn't get to talk about this, but I do.
And the research just came up and I was like, that was really cool of him.
So it'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've talked about, you said something like, you know, I get really curious.
I want to learn from them.
I want them to coach me as much as I'm coaching them.
And I thought, man, that's a great attitude.
I see that in so many in basketball that happens.
It's sort of always criticizing the younger generation and just saying, like you know, they don't get it.
They've ruined the game.
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.
I remember where it really happened, when I was like 22, 23 and I was really grinding and I'm working hard and I'm playing with some big names, you know, like established guys.
And I could see they were scoffing at some of the stuff I was doing.
And in my, under my breath, I'm like, buddy, I'm already better than you by a lot.
You know, you've got that cocky young energy.
And I reminded myself in that moment, never be the guy.
Who's the older guy who looks at the young and the different things they're doing and scoff and go hey, look at these dummies.
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 30 years and I become really powerful as a player.
But it requires humility.
Because, let's say, you were in the top in 2004 and you think you still are today.
Just because you rest on your laurels.
No, the day you stop learning is the day everyone else starts to surpass you because they're going to continue to learn.
And you're stuck here.
New ideas, new solvers, new approaches.
They're always going to advance.
And if you don't advance with them, you get worse, by definition, because everyone else is getting better.
That's awesome.
Daniel, thanks for coming on, man.
We really appreciate it.
You got it, guys.
It was fun.
All right.
We appreciate you.
That's it.
That's the pod.
