Money and Muscles

It's me, Scott Smith, kind of rolling through the week. I'm on the deck in North Carolina. I'm not. Can I bring you in on a secret here? I'm a little fired up because you know what I did last week?

I should not even say this. I'm not even going to say it. We got a little time today. This lesson I'm going to teach today is a little bit different. But last week, I decided that I was going to go see my mom in Virginia.

I was going to take the 4th of July holiday and about the 1st or the 2nd of July, things got slow. Everybody went on vacation. I said, I'm going to go see my mom. So I canceled all my calls, every single one of them had nothing to do.

And y'all on vacation anyway, y'all don't care. And I said, joy, are we going to go see my mom? And she said, well, I have to babysit twice. And then Evan, the little one-year-old, she's babysitting his birthday's on Saturday.

We got to be back for that in time. And I'm, I'm looking at everything else. I said, so maybe I just go by myself. And then she's like, well, you can, if you want to, but I really would like to see them too.

What am I going to do now? Right. So most years, the first half of the year to me is warm up. It's practice. Basically I get to the end of June. I say, what the hell was I doing the first six months?

And what the hell am I going to do for the second, six months? And this year it was kind of a, I won't even tell you what happened. You'll, you'll figure this out here in the next month or two. You may be figuring some of it out now.

It was a, a quantum change. A bit of an awakening in some ways. And it came down to me saying, I'm not going to go to see my mom in Virginia, which is kind of scary because she's 94. I called my mom and I said, Mom, I think I'm going to come see you.

And she said, why? I just saw your wife. Your kids were just here too. I saw you three months ago. Why do you need to come back? I said, because she might die tomorrow.

She goes, don't say that. I'm living to be 100. Real conversation. I'm telling you. So you know what I did? I stayed home. And I said, my wife said, well, you want to do a staycation?

We'll go down to Disney World. I said, Disney in July? Everybody else is here. No, I said, well, let's do something else. Let's do a staycation. Let's spend a couple of days and go do some fun.

I said, I'd rather stay home and write a book. That's all I'll say. Other than 25,000 words, the spine established, the beginning, the middle, the end, the promise delivered.

It's a hot mess right now. It'll be done. Give me a chance. Seven days. That's all I'll say. I'm going to stop. But my friend, Croy, getting ready to run across Death Valley.

Worked together, got him a sponsor. He worked with my inner circle. And I'll say it here on the podcast. I'm just kind of proud of it because we worked our ass off to get him to this, to Death Valley.

He's not there yet. He's actually in Vancouver right now. He's preparing with his sponsor that he's going to head down to Vegas for a couple of weeks, acclimate to the weather, and then off he goes on August 5th. He'll be heading across Death Valley.

Starting in Badwater, 250 feet below sea level and running 110 miles across the desert toward California. He'll get to the Lone Pine area, the portal, and he'll begin to climb Mount Whitney, which peaks out at almost 15,000 feet. He'll do it all by himself, towing a wagon, no help from anybody, completely unassisting a solo crossing, trying to break a record of 48 hours as a 55-year-old, nearly impossible.

To do that. So as we work through this thing, he's getting shaky right now. He's a little scared. He told me that he's a little scared. And so I was going to do the documentary for him and I, and I, and I backed out.

I did. I felt bad about that. I was kind of part of my thing in June. I said, I ain't gonna do this. I got stuff to do myself. But the truth is he needed to do it himself.

He needed to step up into it. He needed to go for it. He needed to figure out how to make this happen. Because one of the things he was doing is this incredible goal.

If you talk about motivation like we did yesterday, one of the quantum changes you can make is putting your sights on something that's virtually impossible to do.

Something that takes so much out of you, you almost think you can't do it. It scares you. And he was scared yesterday. He doesn't know if he's going to be able to do it.

His body's acting up. He's pulling 75-mile days right now getting ready for this thing. His body is saying, what the hell are you doing? But I asked him, I said, why are you doing this?

He said, I'm doing it. I'm going to be famous. Now, he would say those words and he means those words. But that's not really what he's doing it for. The famous is just kind of the thing, right?

He wants to be relevant. Listen, if you want to be relevant and you want to get people's attention, running across Death Valley and breaking a record, we'll do it. It will. If you do something that most people say, are you streaming it?

Because I ain't going out there. It's going to make you relevant, right? I didn't go out there. I'm backing out. Some other people were stupid enough to go out there, but I hear they got a really good air conditioned van built for the desert.

That's, that's, yeah, that's my kind of thinking. But one of the greatest ways to get motivated is to do just that. Is to set a goal with a wall at the end of it.

It doesn't matter whether you make it or not. It doesn't matter if you achieve your goal. It makes no difference whatsoever. The very minute that you set it and step into it, there's a lot stopping you.

I think we'll talk about that, you know, tomorrow. Maybe we'll talk about stopping you. Kind of on my mind this week, right? Because even if I'm a motivated guy, I get up and I go, I do stuff.

But a lot stops me too. Usually what stops me is what will hell will you think? I'll be honest with you. I'll be completely honest. I get tired of it sometimes.

I'm tired of thinking what you're going to think. I'm going to think what I'm going to think and do it. Get welcome to the new Scott. Not that time, Scott.

Anyway, sometimes you set this. Did I really say that on the podcast? Yeah, I did. So when you set a big goal, a big-ass goal, an over-the-top goal, I don't know what it is.

What does Benjamin Hardy call it these days? I don't know. Scale yourself. Set the frame. Is that the frame? Is that what that is? Raise your floor and set the frame.

He doesn't talk like that. He actually talks a lot less like that. Raise the floor. Ah, it's got to be nice. When you set a goal, like running across Death Valley, the first thing you think to yourself is, this is stupid.

And the second thing is, I'm so excited. I can't wait to try. And everybody else says, I'm glad you're doing it. And it's stupid. But man, it changes you from the inside out from the minute you set the goal.

And if you accomplish the goal, your life has changed. And you know it too. You see it all the time. You see overnight sensations that get there. The lady Wilson comes to mind and set the goal of what she does.

She's a love wrangler. That's what they call the writing team. If you haven't heard Laney's story, check it out. It's pretty amazing. And look where she is now.

Now people are tired of her. Tired of her. Laney. So the goal went after. Michael Jackson. He didn't really set the goal. He was a craftsman more than anything.

He was kind of given the goal at five years old, wasn't he? But still, he went at it. There's no other choice. That's what you're going to build. It's like Death Valley.

Him running across Death Valley. He's going to go do it, right? Or he's not. He told me just last night. He said... He said, I'm going to have to die on the course.

So I'm going to finish this. I said, I don't know if I'm going to make the record, but I'm going to have to die. I said, do you have a paramedic? He said, yeah, just hired him.

I said, well, you probably won't die, but you won't get the record. I've been doing a lot of cardio lately. I know it's not Death Valley, but what got me to do the cardio was the fact that I thought that very possibly I was going to be producing his video documentary, something I did in the past life. And I would have to go out in Death Valley.

And I would have to cross 110 miles of desert and climb a mountain on top of it. And some of the time, maybe a lot of the time, carry a camera. I got muscle all over my body, right?

But I decided to do some cardio. Because cardio was going to get me. Not just normal cardio. The stair mill. Yeah, that's where the stairs rotate. And they just keep coming and coming and coming.

You're like 50 floors already? I've been doing that. And the other reason I'm doing it, my wife asked me, she said, why are you actually doing this? I said, well, actually, the truth is in the gym, the view of the girls is so much better from the cardio deck.

It just really is. And we live in Daytona Beach. It's the home of Hawaiian Tropic. I'm not going to lie. But that's not really why I'm there. But it is a nice benefit.

It kind of keeps me there, right? That's the motivation to stay on the treadmill. When you get tired of the music, when Andrew Huberman wears you out and you don't understand what he says, when you can't listen to another motivational thing, sometimes you just watch the girls. Just go say it.

And I got some muscles, but muscles are pretty good when you're functional. I'm a really strong guy. I can bench press a lot. For my age, I'm extraordinarily strong.

Very functional. But that is not the best currency a guy can own, muscles. You got to be able to see the muscles, right? So my motivation is, you know, it's multifold here.

One of them is to get on that climb mill thing. Until you see my muscles. Gives you more value, more currency. My muscles are worth more money, aren't they?

If you can see your muscles, they're worth more. Sometimes it's like, oh, I work so hard to get my muscles. You got to ask yourself sometime if it works so hard to get my muscles. Was that your choice?

Yeah. Okay. How'd you get paid? I don't know, man. It's just a grind. I just go every single day. No, you got paid in muscles. Come on. And I can think of so many other places you can get paid if you work out every single day.

Like those girls you see from the cardio deck. I'm just saying, listen, I'm a straight heterosexual over 60 male. I can say a few things. It's true. I'm not lying.

Where was I? Oh, this is a motivation show, right? I think so. It's evolving. What can I say? Do you know what Elon Musk said about muscles? This will motivate you.

If you give a girl a choice between a guy with muscles and a guy with six cars and a beach house, You know which one she's going to choose. You guys already know the answer. God, come on.

That's not the case. That's not what life is all about. That's not how it's going to work. Yeah, right. Stop being nice. Start being honest. I'm serious.

I'm serious. You look at some May-December romances and you know it's true. You watch TV one night and see the couples and the age gap. And you can tell it ain't the muscles.

It's not the fat attracting him, is it? Six cars at the beach house and a few other things, too. You want some motivation? What if you had six cars at the beach house, a whole lot of other stuff, and muscles on top of that, and you didn't have cardio so people could see it?

Motivation is a crazy thing. My friend Croy has it. He's going to cross it. Well, actually, I don't know. Positive guy, I believe he will. He's second guessing himself, but I believe that's natural at this point.

He's doing something very scary and it's possible to do. It's really hard. I don't like to do impossible things because they're impossible. The only time I do impossible things is when I don't know they're impossible.

You too. But he did get me to set a goal. My goal is to do one hour on the climb mill at level 12. If you know it, you know that's not a small goal. That's a kill yourself goal.

And I want to do it. Be capable of doing it at the same time Croy finishes the run across Death Valley. That's my motivation. That's solid and strong.

And then go in the sauna and spend another hour and see if I survive it. Okay, I'm done for today. See you tomorrow.