Episode 250: Jordan SHOCKS Michael with HUGE News

0:00:12.2 Mike Vacanti: Hello, Jordan.

0:00:12.2 Jordan Syatt: What’s up, Michael?

0:00:13.1 Mike Vacanti: You buying some bitcoin on this dip?

0:00:14.9 Jordan Syatt: I didn’t even know there was a dip.

0:00:16.1 Mike Vacanti: Are you buying, though?

0:00:17.0 Jordan Syatt: Should I buy some bitcoin?

0:00:18.4 Mike Vacanti: I mean, I am.

0:00:19.3 Jordan Syatt: You are?

0:00:19.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, I’m buying. I’m a buyer.

0:00:22.7 Jordan Syatt: Do you have any recommendations outside of buy? Any, like, specifics?

0:00:29.8 Mike Vacanti: I don’t think there’s much more to say.

0:00:32.4 Jordan Syatt: Like, percentage of net worth?

0:00:34.6 Mike Vacanti: For you?

0:00:35.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, for me.

0:00:38.7 Mike Vacanti: I mean, definitely not more than 5% of net worth.

0:00:45.1 Jordan Syatt: Okay.

0:00:45.7 Mike Vacanti: In total crypto holdings.

0:00:47.4 Jordan Syatt: Is that for everybody?

0:00:49.6 Mike Vacanti: No, that’s for you. That’s for you.

0:00:51.1 Jordan Syatt: That’s just for me. Okay.

0:00:52.4 Mike Vacanti: I would actually probably say even less for most people.

0:00:54.8 Jordan Syatt: Okay.

0:00:55.6 Mike Vacanti: People who really like crypto will hate that answer, by the way.

0:00:58.2 Jordan Syatt: They’ll be like, you should be putting 50% into it.

0:01:01.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. I mean, at least more than five, but yeah.

0:01:05.6 Jordan Syatt: What percentage are you putting into it?

0:01:08.4 Mike Vacanti: You’ll never know, Jordan. You’ll never know.

0:01:12.3 Jordan Syatt: One day. One day when you’re like, I retire, you should have put more than 5% in.

[chuckle]

0:01:19.6 Mike Vacanti: No, I think I’m under 10%.

0:01:22.2 Jordan Syatt: Like, in total right now?

0:01:24.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:01:24.3 Jordan Syatt: Even if you buy during this dip, it’ll still be under 10?

0:01:27.8 Mike Vacanti: I mean, I’m not buying a lot.

0:01:30.3 Jordan Syatt: Got it. Okay, cool.

0:01:31.7 Mike Vacanti: It is interesting, though. The equity markets are down slightly recently, last couple weeks, and crypto’s down a ton. But sports cards are absolutely ripping.

0:01:42.0 Jordan Syatt: Oh, are they?

0:01:42.9 Mike Vacanti: Mm-hmm.

0:01:43.5 Jordan Syatt: That’s weird.

0:01:44.4 Mike Vacanti: It is very strange.

0:01:45.6 Jordan Syatt: Are you gonna sell any of your sports cards?

0:01:47.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Yes, some.

0:01:48.8 Jordan Syatt: Is this selling in crypto or fiat?

0:01:51.8 Mike Vacanti: Fiat. Good question.

0:01:53.6 Jordan Syatt: And then you take that and you put it into crypto?

0:01:58.4 Mike Vacanti: I guess you could look at it like that. But no, when I say buy bitcoin, I’m buying a very small amount of bitcoin.

0:02:05.6 Jordan Syatt: Got it. Yeah, I understand.

0:02:07.3 Mike Vacanti: I mean, I think it topped out at 126, and it just hit 87 today. As a holder, just feels like you gotta buy the dip.

0:02:16.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:02:16.9 Mike Vacanti: And you’re a holder.

0:02:17.8 Jordan Syatt: I am. And I haven’t bought any since, what, 2020…

0:02:22.0 Mike Vacanti: 2021, probably?

0:02:23.1 Jordan Syatt: Oh, 2021. It was, yeah, 2021. And I’ve maybe looked at it five times in the last four years.

0:02:30.8 Mike Vacanti: Jordan gave an amazing analogy on the last mentorship Q&A about being afraid of scale weight and being afraid to look at the scale. [chuckle] Like, it’s like being afraid to look at your investment account because you don’t want to see what’s there. You need to be able to look at it. You’re like… But I do that.

0:02:49.0 Jordan Syatt: I don’t like looking at it. Yeah, that’s exactly right.

0:02:51.7 Mike Vacanti: It’s better not to be…

0:02:53.8 Jordan Syatt: Obsessed with it. 

0:02:54.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yeah. Just focus on what you can control. Dollar cost average and don’t worry about short-term fluctuations is a better approach. 

0:03:03.2 Jordan Syatt: Try and more just focus on income and doing everything you can from that perspective. And then, sort of like rather than focusing on the scale, it’s better to focus on just what you’re putting in your mouth…

0:03:14.4 Mike Vacanti: Yes.

0:03:14.9 Jordan Syatt: Right?

0:03:15.3 Mike Vacanti: Yes.

0:03:15.7 Jordan Syatt: Like, rather than focusing on all these different investment strategies, like, how about you just focus on getting more in your bank, wherever your bank is, and have smart strategies. But the most important, as Dave Ramsey always says, is your biggest asset is your income.

0:03:32.4 Mike Vacanti: I agree for the overwhelming majority of people. But then you have a die-with-zero problem with a small minority of people who overwork, over earn, underspend, over save, who to continue the analogy, are the people who are not only focused on what they put in their body and focused on their workouts, they are 5% body fat, 260 pounds pure muscle, train three hours a day and die with $50 million that could have been better… The time spent to earn it could have been better used over the course of a lifetime.

0:04:13.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that makes sense.

0:04:13.6 Mike Vacanti: Or even the money earned could have been better distributed or used over the course of a lifetime. Anyway, that’s not going to happen ’cause I got my free roll.

[chuckle]

0:04:26.4 Jordan Syatt: I don’t think we’re ever going to get there.

0:04:28.0 Mike Vacanti: I guarantee you, that’s you not understanding compounding interest. You’re 100% gonna get there.

0:04:34.8 Jordan Syatt: Dude, I don’t know. My wife is 12 weeks pregnant. Got another one on the way.

0:04:38.5 Mike Vacanti: No way! [laughter] Let’s go! Congratulations.

0:04:43.5 Jordan Syatt: I was waiting for when I could slip that in there.

0:04:46.4 Mike Vacanti: That’s amazing. Let’s go.

0:04:48.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:04:49.5 Mike Vacanti: How’s she doing?

0:04:50.2 Jordan Syatt: Baruch Hashem. She’s good. She’s actually at the doctor right now. Just sent me some more sonos. 157 heartbeat.

0:04:56.9 Mike Vacanti: Let’s go, let’s go.

0:04:58.5 Jordan Syatt: Everything’s good. Another girl.

0:05:00.5 Mike Vacanti: Another girl?

0:05:01.4 Jordan Syatt: Another… [laughter]

0:05:02.5 Mike Vacanti: Wow. Let’s go. Girl dad life. Man…

0:05:05.6 Jordan Syatt: Yes sir.

0:05:06.5 Mike Vacanti: You always have things where you’re like, oh, I wanted to surprise you on the pod, but I feel like it’s never actually happened. [laughter] You pulled that one off. Man, that’s awesome.

0:05:16.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, dude. Thank you, pal.

0:05:17.3 Mike Vacanti: Congratulations.

0:05:18.4 Jordan Syatt: Thank you, thank you.

0:05:19.6 Mike Vacanti: I’m glad she’s doing well.

0:05:20.7 Jordan Syatt: B’ezrat Hashem, everything will be good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s been a lot… It’s funny, you know all the wives tales of, like… 

0:05:28.7 Mike Vacanti: What’s B’ezrat hashem?

0:05:30.1 Jordan Syatt: God willing, everything will be okay.

0:05:31.5 Mike Vacanti: Okay. Yeah. You don’t like congratulations until birth.

0:05:34.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. In Hebrew, you always say…

0:05:36.9 Mike Vacanti: You’re trying not to jinx.

0:05:38.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, exactly.

0:05:42.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Amazing.

0:05:42.8 Jordan Syatt: So you know all the wives tales about how it’s like, yeah, if it’s a girl, you’re super nauseous, and if it’s a boy, it’s not as bad nausea. I don’t know, I’ve heard all these different ones. And yeah, it’s been bad nausea again. I think about, like, six weeks, my wife was like, it’s another girl. I know it. It’s another girl. And yeah, it’s been… She’s just 12 weeks right now, so…

0:06:07.6 Mike Vacanti: That’s awesome.

0:06:08.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, man, we’re excited. Very excited.

0:06:10.7 Mike Vacanti: I’m pumped. You know what they say, the higher your T levels, the more daughters [laughter] you procreate. 

0:06:18.6 Jordan Syatt: Which I’m totally fine with. I’m obsessed with my girls. I could have 12 girls, I’ll be the happiest dad in the world.

0:06:26.5 Mike Vacanti: I saw a great reel along the lines of, quit telling girl dads, like, oh, don’t you wish you had a boy? It’s like, no, I actually don’t.

0:06:35.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. It’s… When they say…

0:06:36.4 Mike Vacanti: I don’t wish that. And I did that. I would do…

0:06:39.7 Jordan Syatt: Oh, did you?

0:06:41.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yeah. To my buddies who had a bunch of girls, I’m like, you’re gonna try for a boy? That kind of thing.

0:06:45.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that’s the line. That’s the line there. It’s like, are you gonna keep trying for a boy? It’s like, I’m trying for healthy babies, bro.

0:06:52.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Yeah.

0:06:53.6 Jordan Syatt: As long as I can have a healthy baby.

0:06:55.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:06:56.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:06:57.3 Mike Vacanti: That’s awesome.

0:06:58.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, man. 

0:07:01.3 Mike Vacanti: 12 weeks, so…

0:07:02.8 Jordan Syatt: Late May, early June is projected due date.

0:07:05.6 Mike Vacanti: All right. All right, well, never mind. Ignore my… You know what? Maybe you won’t get to 10…

0:07:10.6 Jordan Syatt: I’m not going to get to…

0:07:11.5 Mike Vacanti: You should just keep working, bro. [laughter] Just keep working.

0:07:16.0 Jordan Syatt: The only situation in which you’d be like, yeah, you know what? Maybe you’re not going to get 10 million in the bank.

[laughter]

0:07:22.1 Mike Vacanti: No, no, it’s not in the bank. It’s net worth.

0:07:24.1 Jordan Syatt: No, it’s in the bank.

0:07:25.3 Mike Vacanti: No, it’s not. No, it’s not. Quit trying to change… I’ll go back to old podcasts if we have to.

0:07:30.6 Jordan Syatt: You said I’m not going to get to 10 million net worth, so either way…

[laughter]

0:07:34.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, you… Yes, that may not happen, which I think is optimal depending on the lifestyle you want to live. Unless you want to be a private jet and, like, that kind of…

0:07:46.7 Jordan Syatt: No, no, no.

0:07:47.8 Mike Vacanti: Which… Look, it’s not a judgment, I’m just…

0:07:50.9 Jordan Syatt: That’s a horror… The work you have to do to get to that is just horrifying.

0:07:55.0 Mike Vacanti: But I’m clarifying. And by the way, I’m never collecting on this free roll, but I’m just clarifying the free roll.

0:07:59.2 Jordan Syatt: You will collect, if it happens.

0:08:00.9 Mike Vacanti: It would not be in the bank because, like, what a dumb… 

0:08:04.8 Jordan Syatt: Collections.

0:08:05.5 Mike Vacanti: What a dumb bet. [chuckle] What a dumb… Because you would never have 10 million in the bank. You’d have it invested, you would have… Like, you’d never have $10 million… FDIC insurance only covers up to 250k anyway.

0:08:18.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:08:18.7 Mike Vacanti: And you’re just never holding that much cash as a percentage… Like, no one is, ever. I mean, Buffett, I get…

0:08:25.8 Jordan Syatt: I included, like, investments and stuff.

0:08:27.3 Mike Vacanti: Okay, cool. Well, that’s net worth.

0:08:29.4 Jordan Syatt: But not a house.

0:08:30.7 Mike Vacanti: That’s house…

0:08:31.8 Jordan Syatt: I don’t count the house towards that.

[chuckle]

0:08:35.9 Mike Vacanti: Just changing the rules as we go. Well, that’s incredible, let’s…

0:08:41.0 Jordan Syatt: Thanks, bro.

0:08:41.5 Mike Vacanti: Let’s go.

0:08:42.0 Jordan Syatt: Thank you. Uncle Mike.

0:08:43.3 Mike Vacanti: I’m pumped. I’m pumped. Another girl. Another girl.

0:08:46.6 Jordan Syatt: How’s sleep training?

0:08:47.5 Mike Vacanti: I don’t even know how to transition off that. I don’t even think we can. We might have to wrap the episode right now. [chuckle] We can’t top that.

0:08:55.7 Jordan Syatt: No, but we could have other good stuff, too. Do you have a list?

0:08:59.1 Mike Vacanti: I got a list, but what’s a list now? Do you know what you’re gonna name her?

0:09:02.7 Jordan Syatt: We have a really good idea. It’s funny, we’ve always known… Once we find out that she’s pregnant, we always know immediately what the boy name is. We always have that name picked out, partly because we’ve had it picked out since the first time she was pregnant. So we had a girl name and a boy name, and then had a girl. And the next time, we picked a new girl name and still had the same boy name. And then this time, we’ve just been ready for the boy because we already picked it in the first pregnancy, and then it’s just… So we have to keep thinking of new ones for girls. So, I think we know. The hard one is the middle name. We’re not sure where we’re going to go with the middle name.

0:09:44.7 Mike Vacanti: Okay, all right. Cool.

0:09:47.1 Jordan Syatt: Do you guys have, like, potential names picked out already or no?

0:09:51.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, we had a bunch of names we liked for baby number one, so yeah. Yeah, thank you. I’m more of a procrastinator, and so I don’t think I’d be locked at 12 weeks. Just I don’t like to… Feels claustrophobic.

0:10:10.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I know some people have the baby and they’re like, I still don’t know.

0:10:13.8 Mike Vacanti: That’s… [chuckle] good for them. That’s a free spirit right there.

0:10:17.8 Jordan Syatt: There are some people who, like, they’ll wait a few days of having the baby and then be like… Usually, when the baby’s out, I know your name. When I’m holding you that first time, I know your name.

0:10:26.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. And they’re like… 

0:10:27.7 Jordan Syatt: But some people are just like, well…

0:10:28.2 Mike Vacanti: See? Yeah, you look like a Tom, or, like…

[laughter]

0:10:31.8 Jordan Syatt: But the baby changes so much within the first six months in how they look. It’s hard to be like, yeah, you look like this, ’cause…

0:10:38.9 Mike Vacanti: Right. 

0:10:39.0 Jordan Syatt: Very quickly, you’re not gonna look like that anymore.

0:10:40.9 Mike Vacanti: Yes, yes, yes. Look like, as in, I don’t know, the eyes, the vibe, the…

0:10:46.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah.

0:10:48.1 Mike Vacanti: Not the actual structure of the face. How’s sleep training going, you asked? We ditched sleep training. Sleep training’s over.

0:10:56.3 Jordan Syatt: You’re done with it already?

0:10:57.3 Mike Vacanti: Sleep training’s over. We had [laughter] three really good nights, nights one, two and three where… I mean, there was one kind of rough night in there, but for the most part, even rough just meant she cried softly and, like, kind of whimpered for a little bit longer than would be ideal, but never really cried, cried. Somewhere in, like, the night four to six range… I thought it was night four, my wife thought it was night six. But she’s got a tooth coming in, her first tooth, and we think she was in pain because she started actually crying. And at the first, like, her actual crying, we just ran in there and grabbed her. We’re like, we’re not letting her cry. This is stupid.

0:11:44.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, of course… Yeah.

0:11:44.5 Mike Vacanti: And Grok and Reddit and all these Ferber… Like, people talking about, no, you got to leave the baby. You got to leave the baby. It’s like, absolutely not. Absolutely not happening. [chuckle] And so we’re doing something called camp out where…

0:12:00.4 Jordan Syatt: Is it like a legit strategy?

0:12:03.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah… Yeah, yeah.

0:12:03.6 Jordan Syatt: Or you named it?

0:12:04.9 Mike Vacanti: [chuckle] No, Grok.

0:12:06.1 Jordan Syatt: Oh, Grok named it, okay.

0:12:07.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Which is basically a much softer/takes longer version of teaching the kid to put themselves asleep, but doesn’t involve you just leaving the baby to cry it out. So we’re in the room when she, like, whimpers. You’re not supposed to pick her up, but we, like, touch her and rub her and talk to her and do all this stuff. And… What day are we on? Two or three? I don’t know. This is going much better and…

0:12:37.5 Jordan Syatt: Good.

0:12:38.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Last night… I think today’s actually day three. Last night, we put her down at 7:15. She woke up once at, like, 9:00 and had… We were in there for, like, 10 or 15 minutes, and then she didn’t wake up again till 6:30.

0:12:50.8 Jordan Syatt: That’s amazing. That’s awesome.

0:12:52.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, so I really can’t complain.

0:12:55.3 Jordan Syatt: Dude, Grok is skunked. I’m back on ChatGPT.

0:12:59.0 Mike Vacanti: Your Grok is skunked.

0:13:00.4 Jordan Syatt: I hate Grok.

0:13:00.9 Mike Vacanti: Your Grok is. Jordan’s Grok is… This is the wildest thing I’ve ever heard. And I actually wonder if… I would love a transcript of every conversation you have with Grok, because you’re very direct and, like, if I were in your shoes and the AI overlords were coming, I’d be afraid. [chuckle] I’d be afraid.

0:13:24.0 Jordan Syatt: Why? Because I just say it?

0:13:27.6 Mike Vacanti: Some might call it a little… Look, you talk to… Bless you. Bless you. You talk to Grok like Grok’s a computer and you’re just trying to get an answer. 

0:13:38.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. 

0:13:39.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:13:40.1 Jordan Syatt: What, do you talk to Grok like it could kill you one day?

0:13:44.4 Mike Vacanti: I’m not robophobic, Jordan. I treat Grok with some respect. I’ll throw a thank you in there now and again.

0:13:52.2 Jordan Syatt: I say thank you sometimes. Ooh, I’m gonna sneeze again. I say thank you sometimes.

0:13:56.7 Mike Vacanti: Watching the screen… You sent me, like, 10 screenshots at one point of this conversation where you were trying to get a good quote, and Grok, like, kept giving you stuff, kept giving you stuff, and you kept being like, this isn’t good. This is trash, Grok. This is not a good quote. Give me a better [laughter] quote, Grok. I need something better. I need something more powerful. I need something… And then after, like, the 10th time, Grok quoted you to you.

0:14:19.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it gave me a quote from me.

0:14:19.6 Mike Vacanti: It was like, Napoleon, and then it was like, Alexander the Great. And then, I don’t even…

0:14:26.9 Jordan Syatt: Ralph Waldo Emerson, like, all these incredible thinkers and minds.

0:14:30.9 Mike Vacanti: Yes. And then it was like, Jordan Syatt once said… [laughter] Which was the first…

0:14:36.9 Jordan Syatt: And it was irrelevant. It was an irrelevant quote.

0:14:38.5 Mike Vacanti: Was the first one? I know the second time it was.

0:14:41.6 Jordan Syatt: I’m almost positive…

0:14:42.7 Mike Vacanti: I know the one about pain was… Oh, no, the one about pain was a misquote.

0:14:45.7 Jordan Syatt: The one about pain was something I literally never said.

0:14:48.3 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yeah.

0:14:49.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. So the first time, it quoted me saying something that was irrelevant to the entire discussion. And I was like, number one, why did you use that specific quote? Like, why did you quote that person? And Grok tried to pretend that, like, it didn’t know it was me.

0:15:05.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Yeah.

0:15:05.9 Jordan Syatt: Was like, well, it’s just a really powerful quote. And I was like, did you do it because you know it’s me? And it’s like, no way, brother. [laughter] Like, just a great quote, regardless of who it came from. And then the next time, I was trying… Before I got my tattoo, I was like… I’ve never taken any pain meds before I got it, whether it was my ribs or anything, but I’m like, you know what? I don’t want to have to suffer through it anymore, so, like, I would like to have something. So then I reached out to my buddy Hoist in New York, who his entire body, literally every inch, neck down, aside from the obvious, is covered, just full on… I think it’s like a Japanese-style covered in tattoos. And I was like, hey, what do you do? And he was like, I take painkillers. And so I reached out to my doctor, I was like, hey, could I get this? And they were like, no. And I was like, I just want a couple, just for this session. They’re like, no, we’re not giving you painkillers.

0:16:05.0 Mike Vacanti: Which is good, by the way. [laughter] Like, if this was 10 years ago, they definitely would… I mean, maybe they wouldn’t have, but…

0:16:10.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, it was through Merrick. I was like, hey, could I do this? They’re like, no, absolutely not. I was like, okay, thanks. And so I asked Hoist, and he was like, don’t get it off the street. Could be laced with fentanyl. And I wasn’t gonna go off the street and find a random junkie, but he had to say that just in case. And so then I was like, all right, well, what can I take? And Grok was telling me, Ibuprofen, da, da, da, da. And then I go to Grok, and basically one day it tells me, you could take, like, 800mg of Ibuprofen, which is… I never take Ibuprofen, ever. And I was like, that just sounds like a lot. And it was like, yes, totally safe, da da da. I wouldn’t recommend it all the time, but for this one session, should be fine. And then right before I’m about to get the tattoo, I go back and double check in a new thread on Grok. And I was like, hey, is it okay if I take Ibuprofen? And then Grok completely changes what it says. It’s like, no, don’t do it.

0:17:07.1 Jordan Syatt: And it even went so far as to say, for example, even Jordan Syatt has been quoted as saying, don’t take Ibuprofen before you get a tattoo because it’s… Sometimes you have to do the hard thing. And I was shocked. I’m like 20 minutes before I’m about to get this tattoo, and I was like, I have literally never spoken about Ibuprofen publicly and never spoke about what anyone should take before or after… Before getting a tattoo. And Grok was like, yeah, you’re right. I misquoted you on that. Sorry. I was like, what the… I’m done. I just don’t use it anymore.

0:17:42.0 Mike Vacanti: Was it the quote about… What was the quote that it used?

0:17:43.9 Jordan Syatt: Do you want me to pull it up?

0:17:45.4 Mike Vacanti: No, but if you remember. I thought it was about pain, like pushing through pain. And it related something you had said in a random podcast.

0:17:53.5 Jordan Syatt: It was something about, like, doing the harder thing is generally the right thing. Let me…

0:17:59.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, so basically your Grok is quoting you back to you, and is completely skunked.

0:18:04.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Yep.

0:18:06.2 Mike Vacanti: Which is very strange.

[chuckle]

0:18:10.1 Jordan Syatt: Here it is. I said, is it safe to take 800mg Ibuprofen before a tattoo? Because it had literally told me the day before that it was safe. And then it says, no, it’s not safe or recommended to take that. Why it’s a bad idea… And then it says, what tattoo artists say. Most reputable shops explicitly advise against NSAIDs 24 to 48 hours before, which is also not true. I asked numerous tattoo artists and they said it’s fine, including mine. And then it says, search X for Syatt fitness tattoo Ibuprofen or similar fitness pros like Jordan Syatt often echo this due to recovery parallels. That’s basically it, just… I was like, I’ve literally never said that whatsoever. And it was like, haha, fair call out on the quote. My bad, I must have been channeling some rogue stoic vibes and slapped your name on it for flair.

0:18:58.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, your Grok…

0:18:59.0 Jordan Syatt: What is that?

0:19:00.0 Mike Vacanti: Your Grok talks to you weird too.

0:19:03.0 Jordan Syatt: So odd.

0:19:03.8 Mike Vacanti: Like, calls you brother and, like… You got something weird going on. Mine is…

0:19:09.6 Jordan Syatt: “Fair call out on the quote. My bad…

0:19:10.0 Mike Vacanti: Mine is nothing like that.

0:19:11.2 Jordan Syatt: Must have been channeling some rogue, stoic vibes.” What is that language model?

0:19:16.6 Mike Vacanti: I don’t know. Your Grok is skunked.

0:19:20.2 Jordan Syatt: Not a fan.

0:19:21.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Mine gave me the camp out method. Mine’s incredible.

0:19:27.3 Jordan Syatt: Well, I’m jealous. I don’t know if there’s a way I can get it back. I wonder if there’s a way to refresh your Grok.

0:19:34.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, I don’t know.

0:19:35.4 Jordan Syatt: But ChatGPT has been good. I’ve been a fan of it.

0:19:38.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Guy started it as a nonprofit, took tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars from all sorts of people and then converted into not a nonprofit and said that he didn’t actually want to make money from it, but then made himself… Scum. Dude is just scum.

0:19:56.9 Jordan Syatt: I didn’t know any of that.

0:19:58.6 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, you did. I’ve told you about Sam Altman.

0:20:02.8 Jordan Syatt: I didn’t remember any of that.

0:20:05.6 Mike Vacanti: Brother, you’re not gonna believe this.

0:20:07.2 Jordan Syatt: Tell me.

0:20:07.9 Mike Vacanti: What did we talk about last week on the pod here?

0:20:10.6 Jordan Syatt: I have no idea.

0:20:11.8 Mike Vacanti: Long form content.

0:20:13.0 Jordan Syatt: Okay.

0:20:13.6 Mike Vacanti: And specifically, we were talking about different…

0:20:15.6 Jordan Syatt: Podcasts.

0:20:16.7 Mike Vacanti: We were talking about different apps that are primarily text based.

0:20:20.0 Jordan Syatt: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Reddit and… Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:20:22.7 Mike Vacanti: I’m a Redditor.

0:20:23.6 Jordan Syatt: You’re on Reddit now?

0:20:24.6 Mike Vacanti: I’m six days in. I’m a Redditor.

0:20:26.7 Jordan Syatt: Did you just start going on just to play around with it, and now you love it?

0:20:30.8 Mike Vacanti: I love it. It’s [laughter] like autistic Twitter. Here’s what I mean. There’s no rage baiting that I’ve come across. Maybe my Reddit just hasn’t got there yet. Instead of being divisive and overly political and very… Almost like metrics oriented and engagement oriented with the type of content, it’s purely random interesting things oriented. And so the way the homepage is, is… It’s like forum. It’s like 2012. There’s a question, and that question is what that post is about. Or maybe not a question, but the title. And then if you click it, you get in and you see the post and then you see all the responses to the posts, which are kind of filtered by upvotes and down votes. And there’s like a million different subjects and there’s all these sub… People listening to this who have been on Reddit are like, this is ridiculous. It’s almost 2026. [laughter] Mike’s explaining what a subreddit is. But there’s, like, Reddit/caffeine or Reddit/… For every…

0:21:42.5 Jordan Syatt: Fitness, or… Yeah.

0:21:43.5 Mike Vacanti: Yes, for everything. And so whatever you’re interested in, you can find other people who are interested in that thing and they’re talking about it.

0:21:51.7 Mike Vacanti: It’s incredible.

0:21:52.6 Jordan Syatt: Is there anything specific you’ve been looking into? Caffeine?

[chuckle]

0:21:58.6 Mike Vacanti: There were a couple interesting caffeine posts. Then I found a Reddit sub-forum that’s basically there to troll AI bots. So it says just the opposite of what is true, hoping that it gets scraped by AI.

0:22:12.3 Jordan Syatt: Really?

0:22:12.5 Mike Vacanti: And then, like… Yeah, yeah. I mean, Reddit/millennials. There’s everything.

0:22:20.4 Jordan Syatt: It’s probably way better for your brain to be on Reddit than on, like, short form content feeds.

0:22:25.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yeah.

0:22:27.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, dude, I love that. It’s probably going to lead to better clients as well. You have a client who’s just more okay, taking the time to read, sort through different comments…

0:22:37.4 Mike Vacanti: You’re saying for people who are… Yeah.

0:22:39.1 Jordan Syatt: For content creators, fitness coaches. Yeah, it’s like, if posting on that type of a platform, becoming more well known on that type of a platform and getting people who are reading what you’re saying, taking the time to read it, read the nuance, I mean, I would imagine that’s far more likely to have better clients who are more interested in what you’re having to say rather than having to be wowed by your editing skills on the app or whatever it is. It’s probably just a better client and experience overall.

0:23:05.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, I agree with that. They’re probably harder on self promotion than you would have thought, when you were talking about posting links to your website to an article you wrote, or put half the article and then link the rest of it.

0:23:20.1 Jordan Syatt: Oh, they don’t like that?

0:23:22.0 Mike Vacanti: That’s the vibe. I haven’t seen really any of it…

0:23:24.2 Jordan Syatt: Got it.

0:23:24.7 Mike Vacanti: So I think the moderators are probably pretty tough…

0:23:27.1 Jordan Syatt: That makes sense.

0:23:28.2 Mike Vacanti: But I think definitely the main takeaway, which is, provide helpful, useful information, insert yourself as a member of the community, help as many people as possible for free, and you’ll become known in those little communities, leads to paid fitness coaching clients and a business as a result.

0:23:48.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. And just in your own bio, have a link to your website and all of that stuff. But then just as you insert yourself and answer questions and help people, provide great context and nuance.

0:23:57.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yes.

0:23:59.2 Jordan Syatt: Rather than spending one to three hours on an Instagram video, spend one to three hours going in and answering as many questions as you can every day.

0:24:08.1 Mike Vacanti: Yep. I think it’s probably an under… Like, given the hype of Instagram and the supply of content, it’s probably like a “White space” where there is some arbitrage there.

0:24:22.5 Jordan Syatt: 100%.

0:24:23.6 Mike Vacanti: You asked me an interesting question on Saturday morning that I thought would make good podcast content.

0:24:30.0 Jordan Syatt: I have no clue what the question was. I didn’t even remember we spoke on Saturday morning.

0:24:34.2 Mike Vacanti: Do you think we’ll ever have that 2015 intensity again? I was pulling into the gym parking lot. You asked me what I was training. I was like, yeah, a little upper body day. Nothing crazy, nothing… Just get the blood pumping a little bit. And then we didn’t actually really talk about this. Do you think we’ll ever have that 2015 intensity again?

0:24:55.7 Jordan Syatt: Not in the same way that it was in 2015. In 2015, I was competitively powerlifting and training by myself, competitive… Like, when I was in college, I had a whole team with me, which was like, super intense. But I didn’t actually start really making a name for myself until later, after college. And I didn’t have a team. I was just by myself in the gym, training outrageously hard and hyping myself up. And I doubt I’ll ever have that level of hype for myself anymore. The only thing that I can think of is I would imagine I’ll have that same level of intensity if my daughters and future children want to get into training, and I’ll be hyped about their training. I doubt that I’ll be as hyped about my own training. And if, let’s say one of them’s like, I want to do a powerlifting competition with you…

0:25:56.6 Jordan Syatt: I’ve always said I wouldn’t really compete unless I could beat my old personal records. And now I’m going back on it, and like, I would compete just to compete with them without the idea of, I need to hit my old personal records. But I would be really hyped for their progress way more than I would be about… If I’m gonna go for a 1RM, it’s probably gonna be like a 90% or maybe 92%. Whereas for them, I’m gonna be like, let’s fucking go. Like, get really hyped about it. And then by the time it’s my turn, I’ll be like, okay, well, I’ll do this. That was heavy enough. [chuckle]

0:26:32.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yeah. So you would be extremely excited for them, but for your own training…

0:26:39.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I would bring the intensity to their training because I know how much it could help them. But I wouldn’t be, like…

0:26:47.3 Mike Vacanti: A father/coach/supporter/…. You’d bring intensity in that way.

0:26:53.3 Jordan Syatt: Yes, correct.

0:26:54.0 Mike Vacanti: Which is almost like the opposite, which is almost like you’re bringing the polar opposite of 2015, because you would be bringing positivity and encouragement to them. Whereas in 2015, and I’m speaking for myself, but I’m also speaking for you, I think, so much of it was anger driven, and like…

0:27:11.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, correct.

0:27:13.5 Mike Vacanti: The polar opposite emotion of what you would be bringing them. Okay, so I guess intensity means position away from the mean, and whether that’s plus a thousand or negative 1,000, we’re looking at… Yeah, yeah. That actually is a… I hadn’t thought of that definition of intensity. Because so much of my training in those days was anger and pain driven, and like, I guess vanity is probably part of it too, vanity/ego, you could throw in, like, actually looking better and just the ego of improving, whether that means lifting heavier, having more muscle, being leaner, being more impressive to other people. I’m nowhere near the levels that I was 10 years ago.

0:28:05.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes sense. It was all anger back then. Anger and ego. So much of how I viewed myself was based on how I thought other people viewed me, based on how strong I was and how heavy I could lift. And now it’s just like, whatever. It’s funny, even now, the most intensity I bring to any of my training is my split training. And dude, I used to go so heavy every single week, multiple times a week, just to the ends of the earth to eke out every last… I would never skip a set, I would… Every max effort set was to, like, the maximum intensity I possibly could. And now with my split training, which is very high intensity, I’ll skip exercises, I’ll be like, I’m not doing that one today. [laughter] 

0:29:06.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You also have so many stressors in your life right now that didn’t exist then.

0:29:11.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s like, I’ve gotta get this workout done. I told my coach, I was… The last two front split workouts, I skipped one of the exercises. I was like, I’m skipping this 10% because of time and 90% because I’m a pussy, which was probably accurate. It was like, I did have to get through the workout, but if I really wanted to, I could have pushed myself to do that exercise. So I was just like, I’m not doing this one, I’m just… I don’t want to feel the pain that this exercise is going to inflict and I don’t want to muster up the intensity that would be needed in order to execute this drill, so I’m just not going to do it.

0:29:50.5 Mike Vacanti: And in 2015, you absolutely would have done that, had this been your training then. Why?

0:29:58.7 Jordan Syatt: Because I probably would have looked at myself as a failure and as weak for not doing what was outlined in the program.

0:30:08.5 Mike Vacanti: More of your identity wrapped up in lifting and executing on lifting then than now?

0:30:15.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Whereas now it’s like, if I don’t do this one, maybe my progress won’t be as fast and maybe… That’s really it. Maybe my progress won’t be as fast. Maybe this workout won’t be as effective as it could have been. But the energy that it’s going to take away from me and subsequently take away from my family later in the day, take away from energy I have to put into work, take away from whatever else I have to do, or even the extra eight minutes that this would have taken to do on both sides, plus the rest periods is just not worth it. Whereas before, it’s like, I don’t care. I’m not going out to dinner with anybody. I was invited to dinner? I’ll skip it. I don’t care. I’m not going to dinner with you. I’m training. That was a huge part of my… I didn’t miss a workout for five years. For five years, I didn’t miss a workout. It was like, I’m not skipping… I won’t miss a workout for anything. Whereas now it’s like, I’ll gladly miss a workout.

0:31:18.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. [laughter] Well, not really.

0:31:21.4 Jordan Syatt: Not… I’ll gladly cut my workout short.

0:31:22.7 Mike Vacanti: Yes. Yeah, yeah. Because some people might be hearing this and taking it as permission to do less than they’re doing, but 99% of people aren’t doing as much as you are in terms of…

0:31:33.6 Jordan Syatt: Correct, I still train a lot. I still put a lot of intensity into it. It’s relative.

0:31:39.1 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think I know the answer to this, but if you could change that and operate differently over that five-year window, would you?

0:31:48.4 Jordan Syatt: No. It was one of the greatest times of my life.

0:31:52.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. And that’s not just looking at the pass through rose colored glasses. Like, it actually…

0:31:57.5 Jordan Syatt: No, it was amazing.

0:31:58.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Yeah.

0:31:59.6 Jordan Syatt: I go back and I watch those training videos and the joy that I got from that training and the fulfillment that I got and the lessons learned that I took from it, it was incredible. It was… Like, what else would I have done? If I wasn’t putting 100% into that training, I don’t know, yeah, I could have went to dinner…

0:32:29.5 Mike Vacanti: You could have been out clubbing.

0:32:31.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, could have been… That’s what it is, going to bars, all that stuff. It’s like, great. And I’m sure there’s benefit to that, but I think there’s far more benefit to being in the gym and just putting everything into something. And it doesn’t even just have to be the gym. It could be whatever your goal is, like becoming the best musician, becoming the best actor, becoming whatever. But yeah, I wouldn’t give that up for anything. That was an incredible time of life. And that’s the time of life where you’re supposed to be really selfish, where it’s like, I’m 100% focused on me right now. Because if you want to start a family and you’re blessed enough to do that, it very quickly is… It’s not about you anymore at all. Selfishness is far more difficult to come by.

0:33:12.9 Mike Vacanti: Well, not to mention it’s not like you were being selfish and just pursuing impulsive pleasures at that time. These were difficult pursuits that helped you be better in your profession as well.

0:33:27.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. What about your… Do you think that intensity will ever come back for you?

0:33:30.7 Mike Vacanti: No. No. [chuckle] Just not angry like that, and don’t care for the outcome. [chuckle] You know what actually would lead to me training that hard again? Is if I believed having, like, 30 more pounds of muscle on my frame than I have right now would lead to health and longevity benefits. But I actually think it would be detrimental.

0:33:58.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:33:58.5 Mike Vacanti: I could add some muscle, and I don’t know where the optimization is. I could definitely add some and it wouldn’t hurt me in the long run, but it’s a U-shaped curve, like an upside down U, where the more muscle you have, to a degree, longevity improves, but past a certain point, that muscle becomes costly from a health perspective and you actually end up seeing worse health outcomes trying to carry too much muscle. And I’m not saying that your primary goal should be live as long as you can, or optimize health. It doesn’t have to be the case. But that is something that’s important to me and I just right now don’t care that much to be huge. And who knows, maybe there’s another style of training that is very difficult that I could get into at some point, but I don’t know. I don’t think I’m gonna be lifting like I was in 2015 anytime soon.

0:35:00.3 Jordan Syatt: I feel like your favorite type of lifting is the lifting you’ve done. Like, it just brings you so much joy. Not that there couldn’t be another style that you would also really enjoy, but I feel like you love lifting, especially the way that you’ve been lifting.

0:35:18.0 Mike Vacanti: Yes. Yeah. When I say another style of training, I mean like if I got into long distance running for the brain benefits or like the perceived mental health euphoric benefits of distance running. That would be the one thing I could see me go through a phase of. But yes, the routine of the strength training that I do and the… Like, how good it leaves my body feeling. Yeah.

0:35:49.9 Jordan Syatt: Is there another type of training that you’ve been interested to try but you haven’t… Or maybe getting back into boxing, or…

0:35:59.5 Mike Vacanti: It would be additive, and that would be primary. It’d be like max twice a week, maybe once a week, and just to get that Zone 5 heart rate session from super intense, high heart rate activity. Yeah. 

0:36:20.7 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:36:21.7 Mike Vacanti: 2015, it’s like another lifetime.

0:36:24.6 Jordan Syatt: What if there was about to be a war and you had to go to war? Would you think that would be enough to get your intensity and training to go up, or to change the style of your training? Like, you knew you were gonna have to fight.

0:36:36.3 Mike Vacanti: This is like last week. Was it last week? When I was like, people are really struggling out there. They’re struggling with their health, obesity rates are very high. People are spending too much time on their phone. Jordan’s like, I could not agree more. People are struggling. Civil war was not that long ago. [laughter] it’s like, where did you just take this? And now here we’re talking about different styles of training, you’re like, all right, hear me out. There’s a war…

0:37:01.7 Jordan Syatt: It’s just a hypothetical.

0:37:02.9 Mike Vacanti: No, it’s not. 

0:37:03.5 Jordan Syatt: War. 

0:37:04.2 Mike Vacanti: No, it’s not. It’s not a hypothetical to you, though.

0:37:06.8 Jordan Syatt: No.

0:37:07.1 Mike Vacanti: I know you’re presenting it as a hypothetical, but it’s not up here for you.

0:37:12.0 Jordan Syatt: That’s true. I’m condition orange all the time.

0:37:15.5 Mike Vacanti: What? I thought it was yellow. You’re up to orange? 

0:37:17.7 Jordan Syatt: I’ve upped it. I’ve upped it now. Yeah.

0:37:19.3 Mike Vacanti: Your baseline is orange?

0:37:21.2 Jordan Syatt: Baseline’s orange. Obviously, sleep, you have to be white. You can’t…

[chuckle]

0:37:25.3 Mike Vacanti: So you’re never yellow anymore? You’re either white, orange or above?

0:37:29.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:37:29.7 Mike Vacanti: Really?

0:37:30.3 Jordan Syatt: But let’s just say… Hypothetical for you, because for me it’s not a hypothetical. But for you, a hypothetical situation. Trump declares war and every man under 45 is required to enlist within six months. Does your training change?

0:37:57.4 Mike Vacanti: I’m just going to say, sure, yeah, I’m definitely open to my training changing in that situation. Like, I don’t…

0:38:02.9 Jordan Syatt: That’s a really disappointing response. I was hoping for a more hard line answer.

0:38:07.2 Mike Vacanti: I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t give you what you were looking for. [chuckle] My understanding of war in 2026 is that jiu jitsu isn’t going to be that beneficial with Chinese…

0:38:25.3 Jordan Syatt: Correct.

0:38:25.8 Mike Vacanti: Drones gunning me down. If we want to stick with the hypothetical maybe more and we’re doing like revolutionary… And I don’t even really want to be tongue in cheek, because we’re talking about war, which is something that’s very serious and very sad and very, like…

0:38:42.4 Jordan Syatt: You can be tongue in cheek with it. Not everything has…

0:38:44.3 Mike Vacanti: I don’t want to be tongue in cheek about war, but I… Look, if I had to be training for a life and death situation, my style of training would change to maximize my chances of success in that scenario. Yeah. 

0:38:59.5 Jordan Syatt: Okay.

0:38:59.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, you’re absolutely right.

0:39:01.2 Jordan Syatt: Obviously, I think jiu jitsu would make more sense for self defense as opposed to active war, whether it’s civil war or international war. That just doesn’t make sense. There’s very few… The only situation in which I think it would make more sense would be like a special forces operator going in in small teams units and potentially needing it in hand to hand stuff, but not like an all-out war type situation. So let’s say we have all-out war and you’ve got to go to basic training in six months, knowing basic training style, which is a lot of running and calisthenics and trying to be more prepared for that. Would you start… Goggins it? Would you start running every day and doing more chin ups and push ups?

0:39:56.2 Mike Vacanti: I don’t know that I… Yes, I would do more running. I would definitely do more running. I don’t know that I would increase the amount of… I have some calisthenics in my strength training. I don’t know that I would increase the… Oh, you mean get better at push ups and pull ups because I’m going to have to do push ups and pull ups in…

0:40:13.8 Jordan Syatt: Yes, correct. 

0:40:14.8 Mike Vacanti: Not because push ups and pull ups are useful for fighting?

0:40:17.1 Jordan Syatt: Yes, correct.

0:40:18.6 Mike Vacanti: Got it.

0:40:19.6 Jordan Syatt: Just so that when you go to basic training, basic training doesn’t suck as bad.

0:40:22.7 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yes, I’m sure I would do that. Yeah. Yes, I would do that. I would. Yeah. Yeah. But it’s a hypothetical and…

0:40:33.6 Jordan Syatt: It’s all a hypothetical, in your mind.

[laughter]

0:40:36.6 Mike Vacanti: Yes, yes. For me. For me. Our worldviews are so different. And this is back to just fear level, which by the way could be… There’s probably a genetic component to it, I would say…

0:40:51.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, for sure.

0:40:52.0 Mike Vacanti: Even an ethnic component to it.

0:40:54.2 Jordan Syatt: Wow.

[laughter]

0:41:02.2 Mike Vacanti: Do you disagree?

0:41:04.5 Jordan Syatt: No, I 100% fully agree. I just didn’t expect that.

0:41:08.8 Mike Vacanti: And rightfully so. That’s where I’m going. I’m not actually trying to take it there, but I’m giving you a little bit of a head nod to, like, justifying some of your fear.

0:41:19.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:41:21.6 Mike Vacanti: But it definitely… A little bit of a head nod, not like… If you were sitting in my house right now with me and you’d be on code orange because at any time anyone could break in and try to kill us all. But my life experience says, 38 and a half years, I’ve never seen anything remotely close to that happening in these neighborhoods. Doesn’t mean it can’t, but I don’t want to spend a disproportionate number of… Percentage of my life thinking and planning for something that has a very low probability of happening. I still want to spend some time thinking and planning and preparing for it because it’s a black swan event. The downside of the low probability event is extremely high. People break in here and want to kill me and my family, that’s a very… It might be very unlikely, but it’s a very bad thing and you don’t want that to happen. I think… Not I think, you spend more time preparing for those types of situations than I do.

0:42:24.9 Jordan Syatt: An unbelievable amount of time preparing. [chuckle] 

0:42:27.9 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Yes, yes, yes.

0:42:31.1 Jordan Syatt: At 1:00 in the morning before I’m going to bed, I’m practicing clearing rooms, and my wife will look at the… ’cause we have cameras in the house and she’ll wake up and she’ll be like, yeah, this camera in the playroom, noticed something at 1:00 in the morning and she’ll look and she’ll see me being in there, practicing clearing the room. She’ll be like, what the fuck are you doing? [chuckle]

0:42:52.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yeah, that’s… [chuckle] 

0:42:57.8 Jordan Syatt: Just, yeah, code orange.

0:42:59.3 Mike Vacanti: Code orange all the time. [chuckle] Yeah, my training would change if my life circumstances changed and I had to train for something other than my own health, that was imminent and…

0:43:12.3 Jordan Syatt: You thought you were going to join the military for a while, when you were younger.

0:43:16.0 Mike Vacanti: It was an idea I floated because I strongly disliked the idea of corporate America and the jobs that would be available to me post college. Kind of like junior/senior year of college, it was something I was kicking around.

0:43:32.7 Jordan Syatt: Oh, at the end of college, not before college?

0:43:35.8 Mike Vacanti: No, no. It was like upon the idea of entering the workforce. And I had a corporate internship and experiencing that for three months and being like, is this what I’m gonna do for the rest of my life? That I was, like, really thinking about… That was when I read Where Men Win Glory, Pat Tillman’s biography, and was super inspired by him and army rangers in general. And yeah, was considering other things because the idea of being a “Suit” was… I couldn’t mentally take it.

0:44:07.7 Jordan Syatt: And then you became a suit.

[chuckle]

0:44:09.6 Mike Vacanti: I was a suit for 23 months, because… I don’t know if this is still a thing, but basically we had it drilled into our heads that if you leave your first job before the two-year mark, you’ll never get another job… 

0:44:24.8 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, you’ll never get hired again.

[laughter]

0:44:26.3 Mike Vacanti: Because it just shows that you bounce around. But on LinkedIn, if you made it to 23 months, then technically it said, September, all the way around the clock September, all the way around to August of the next year. And it would say two years, even though it was only 23 months.

0:44:45.1 Jordan Syatt: That’s so funny.

0:44:46.3 Mike Vacanti: So I made it there thinking, like, all right.

0:44:48.9 Jordan Syatt: I made it. I could get another job now. [laughter]

0:44:51.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yeah. If I ever desperate… But even then, my mindset was that I’m never gonna work a corporate job like this again.

0:44:58.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. Isn’t that funny, the stuff that we were… Like, had drilled into us from that generation?

0:45:02.3 Mike Vacanti: Drilled. Drilled.

0:45:04.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I haven’t even thought about that, but that could make a real stand-up skit. It’s like, just these arbitrary things where it’s like, if you don’t… I remember, I was told that my whole life. If you leave your job early, then you’re never gonna get another job.

0:45:17.9 Mike Vacanti: You’re never gonna get another job, ever.

[chuckle]

0:45:22.3 Jordan Syatt: Granted that’s coming from a generation of people who worked in the same job for, like, 50 years. So I get it. But it is very different times.

0:45:30.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, yeah, it is. But also they worked in that job, but they didn’t have things… Like, now, there’s many reasons that doesn’t still exist. One of them though is that people get forced out of companies because they can hire someone for cheaper, who’s younger. And they don’t want that person from age 50 to 65 to be paying this bloated salary to, which sucks for the individual. But that, like, work 50 years at the same company and then get a gold watch at retirement doesn’t exist anymore.

0:46:08.6 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that’s a big issue with lawyers right now. Older lawyers are losing their jobs because these law firms can hire super green lawyers right out of law school and make them work insane hours and pay them next to nothing. And then so the older ones who would have been a partner or whatever, who are getting four times the salary, like, we’ll let you go and we’ll just have several younger people… Like, paying the combined salary, but actually get way more work done.

0:46:42.3 Mike Vacanti: Interesting.

0:46:43.3 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. You know what? I actually… I was watching something super interesting about the rise of… [chuckle] You’re going to laugh as soon as I say this. The rise of communism or the rise of extreme beliefs on either end, but in this instance, the rise of communism or socialism. And oftentimes, it’s attributed to the class of people who are very, very poor. But that’s actually not the case. Typically, when we look at historical context and what actually led to these rises, it was the working class of people who were highly educated and underpaid. 

0:47:28.8 Jordan Syatt: It was the people who felt like they deserved to be getting paid more because they had put in so much time and effort into their education, but then they’re not getting compensated well for it, and this doesn’t feel fair. And so I did find that very interesting, because oftentimes the narrative is, oh yeah, it was driven through people who were very, very poor. It’s actually not… It’s not driven by the people who are very poor, it’s more driven by the lower middle class, highly educated people who felt like they should have been getting paid more.

0:48:01.5 Mike Vacanti: Kind of like the early 20s, Gen Z, New York City…

0:48:07.4 Jordan Syatt: Yes.

0:48:07.8 Mike Vacanti: Have $200,000 in debt from their…

0:48:09.6 Jordan Syatt: Can’t afford… Yes.

0:48:09.9 Mike Vacanti: Liberal Arts degree, and have this terrible job options. And then a mayor comes along who says he’s going to give you free X, Y, Z, and you’re like, this is the guy.

0:48:20.4 Jordan Syatt: Yes. Correct… That’s exactly right.

0:48:22.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah.

0:48:22.9 Jordan Syatt: That’s exactly right.

0:48:24.4 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Interesting. Where was this… Was it a documentary?

0:48:28.7 Jordan Syatt: It was part of a documentary, yeah.

0:48:31.2 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Nice.

0:48:32.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. I thought it was a unique insight that is not one that’s commonly discussed.

0:48:36.6 Mike Vacanti: That’s interesting. Why do you think it’s those individuals and not people who are extremely poor?

0:48:44.7 Jordan Syatt: So I don’t know if it’s not that people who are extremely poor don’t participate in it, but they’re not the ones leading it. They’re not, like, the leaders of the revolution, if you will. And oftentimes, they’ll be the ones… The leaders of the revolution are the ones who often are more educated, do have more resources, and they’re the ones who are pushing it and then convincing others, often those who are significantly worse off, being like, it’s going to be better for all of us. And they point to the rich, like, they’re the problem. They’re the reason why you don’t have this. And so it’s easier to rally everybody up. But if we’re looking at who actually started these revolutions and who actually… It wasn’t the people with no resources, it was the people with education and resources, but not as much as they felt they should have had.

0:49:29.8 Mike Vacanti: I wonder if those individuals are just in a better position to lead some kind of revolution.

0:49:35.2 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, for sure.

0:49:36.6 Mike Vacanti: Have more skill, have more intellect, perhaps. Have more…

0:49:41.4 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. More education, more intellect, more resources, more contacts. Absolutely.

0:49:47.0 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Those tarantulas, as Nietzsche put.

[chuckle]

0:49:52.0 Jordan Syatt: Yes.

0:49:53.4 Mike Vacanti: Who’s rich? Whoever has more than me. That guy.

0:49:56.5 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that’s exactly right.

0:50:01.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. My switch from X to Reddit, because I literally don’t think I’ve been on X in a week now…

0:50:05.7 Jordan Syatt: That’s amazing.

0:50:06.5 Mike Vacanti: I’m not seeing anything political and I feel great.

0:50:11.9 Jordan Syatt: Yeah, that’s the way to live.

0:50:13.5 Mike Vacanti: Yeah, I think so. I really think that if… Because the argument, wow, then you’re just privileged and you don’t have to be informed. It’s like, look, if something’s really happening, I’m going to get a text from a buddy, my family’s going to bring it up at Thanksgiving, or Sunday watching football. Big events are going to come up in conversation. It’s going to come across other feeds of mine if it’s important enough to know. Otherwise, it’s just like rage bait and this news cycle that is onto a new subject every 48 hours.

0:50:53.6 Jordan Syatt: A lot of the times when people say you’re privileged that you don’t need to be informed, I’ll always ask them like, okay, can you tell me a time when you saw something that really infuriated you or upset you or felt like was a huge story that you really needed to be informed on, that then led you to take practical steps that actually led to you being better off as a result of it? And no one is able to give a good response. The only time that I’ve seen… The one instance that a handful of people are like, well, when COVID happened, I was able to go get paper towels or whatever it is. It’s like, okay, first, that was everywhere. You didn’t have to be on social media to see that. [chuckle] that was everywhere. It was non-stop beratement on mainstream news, on social media…

0:51:47.4 Mike Vacanti: Newspapers.

0:51:48.4 Jordan Syatt: And just people were talking about it. People were talking about it for…

0:51:50.7 Mike Vacanti: Every text conversation. Yeah. Yeah.

0:51:51.7 Jordan Syatt: Exactly. “Did you get this? ” “Did you get this? ” Da, da, da. So that was the literal only situation where people have been like, I was able to take these practical steps. I was like, okay, if that’s the only one, then that’s not the best argument in your favor.

0:52:06.5 Mike Vacanti: Right. Yes, 100%. Not to mention, weren’t the shortages driven by the panic of people buying too much?

0:52:13.7 Jordan Syatt: Yes. [chuckle] yes.

0:52:15.2 Mike Vacanti: And so, did it… I didn’t stock up on toilet paper, but I also didn’t run… The supply chains didn’t fold to that degree, at least in… 

0:52:23.2 Jordan Syatt: Correct.

0:52:23.1 Mike Vacanti: I was in New York City, I don’t remember across the country.

0:52:25.3 Jordan Syatt: The only thing that I saw really crazy is I went to the grocery store early on and all of the meat shelves were… All the eggs…

0:52:32.0 Mike Vacanti: At SUNAC, right?

0:52:32.0 Jordan Syatt: Yeah. All the meat, all the eggs, all the milk, all the bread, gone. There was nothing. I was like, what the fuck is that? It was a wild sight to see.

0:52:43.8 Mike Vacanti: Yeah. Yeah. Man, that was a crazy time. But yes, I’m fully with you on the… It not being detrimental to your life to not be scrolling constantly in the name of being informed so that you can take action against whatever.

0:53:09.1 Jordan Syatt: Yeah.

0:53:10.6 Mike Vacanti: Well, brother, we have a sale in the fitness business mentorship. It is a Black Friday sale. Black Friday is in three days from when this episode goes live. Tell them about the sale, Jordan.

0:53:22.0 Jordan Syatt: Oh, it’s a sale. It’s the greatest sale. Everyone says it’s the biggest sale. If you don’t join, I’m not gonna say you’re stupid, but everyone else will say you’re stupid. [chuckle] Listen. Apply. Link is in the description if you want to build an online fitness business that gives you the opportunity to be a great coach, to help people improve their lives, to actually have a positive impact on society and the world and also better support your family and your loved ones. I’m obviously biased, but I don’t think there’s a better option out there in the mentorship world, in the guru world, in the business world. I just don’t think it exists, and I’ve seen basically all of them. So if you want to apply, link is in the show notes. We’d love to get your application, see if you’re a good fit. Fair warning, if you use, you want to be a high ticket coach in your application, you will be denied. But if you want to help people and also build a successful business, then odds are we’ll be a good fit.

0:54:23.7 Mike Vacanti: $500 off the initiation fee. Apply today. I would not wait, because the sale is ending very soon. So get that application in and have a wonderful Thanksgiving if you’re in America. And the rest of the world, have a great week. We’ll be back next week. See you soon.

0:54:41.0 Jordan Syatt: Stay code orange. See ya.

[laughter]