Ed Latimore: How To Make Time Work For You

Key Takeaways

um [Music] what's going on everybody we're uh we're sitting here with ed lattimore and we'll do an intro in a second but we were just chatting pre-recording about some of the geographic differences and where we all are ed you said something interesting i don't want to over recap this but we were just talking about how sometimes it's tough like ed's in pittsburgh right now great great city grace what were you saying man you said uh well what's happened is is especially as i've really come into what i want to do and where and how i am approaching the world and realize what my strengths are especially with the internet and communication and and talking to people it's it's really amazing how many people how many of my peers are located in us in like three or four places and it's like well if i want to go where i'm going to have the conversations i like to have and interact with the people that i i'm already interacting with on a daily basis on the internet but more in depth a relocation is is coming up and i already told her he told the fiance you know when the lease is up we're definitely going to move to some place i've i've narrowed it down to to two places and i don't even know why i have the other place on there i guess it's because i don't want to like make a b-line to austin but i'm i'm curious i really like florida and the only thing i don't like about austin it would probably be like three times bigger if this was the case is it's it's not on water if it was like if it was a coastal city you know we'd be we'd be playing a different tune you know that's hysterical speaking the same exact thing my wife and i have conversations with i lived in fort lauderdale for 10 years and i'm born and raised in philadelphia so philly's not quite on the ocean but it's close enough to where you know quick shot over jersey like every summer i spend weeks and weeks at the shore and uh we moved to nashville a couple years ago and it's it's cool here it's like an up-and-coming city it's a little southern for me i guess like i'm just i move a little bit faster than the people around here but uh but if it were up to me we'd we'd probably go back to florida it's kind of crazy like there's something about florida i don't know what it is maybe it's the salt water or something where it there is that florida man type thing where like it's a real thing believe me some wild [ __ ] goes down in florida but you wanna know what's crazy unhappy by the ocean the thing that i enjoy most or one of the things if we were to like rank the top two i'm i love the weather man i'm a big fan of that humidity and the brain but it's always warm and i know a lot of people don't like that like before i met my fiance she lived in florida and we met because she moved up here for to take a job but like she she's like i don't like that and it's just you know girl hair and stuff like that is the big deal deal gets all frizzy but every time i'm there man i am absolutely in love i'm just like why am i going back oh that's right you know and i have like no i don't say like nothing but i don't have this past december my mom passed and that was like the only person that was that that i like oh i need to be around to help out and do stuff with so i'm like okay well i'm here so so there's a point that i wanted to make about this i'm glad you brought this up because for people listening there's this is something that i realized probably a little later in my career than i would have liked which is the step function difference that comes in your either career or your business when you get around people who are doing the same thing so the way that we had initially started talking about this edit said you know the city is great but i found that like my the people who are on my level business-wise tend to be clustered in these other areas and that took me a long time to realize too man which is weird because i grew up moving all over the place and so you know in my head for a long time it was like well every city is the same you can find cool people in every city and just you know that's true to some extent but then all of a sudden it when you find your thing and you find your place like something clicks that can't be ignored and actually just for people listening paul graham has this great essay on this it's called cities in ambition and we'll link to it in the show notes but his basic yeah his basic thought and i think he was the one who like really encapsulated it well in fact maybe it was after reading his piece that i really that this really started to sink in for me his basic point in that article is like every city yeah they've got mostly the same things but like they've all got cool people they've all got great food whatever but every city's got its thing that it's focused on like the thing that you pursue in order to gain status in that city yes oh man i never thought of it that way but but here i'm like i am a bit of an anomaly and and not i mean sure in a good way there's some cool things that like come with that status wise but it's more like an anomaly the way you look at an alien and you're like what are you and how do i make sense of you the time i've spent in austin for example i just had so many just conversations and it was kind of assumed you know that you're here because you do x y or z because we kind of know who you are already right and that's one of the things that i i benefit from and now it's like why aren't you here you know and i had a buddy and not had i mean he's still one of my great friends i was even the best man in his wedding when we were 21 he and his is now wife they moved to los angeles and i did not understand it i i didn't get it because i i hate l.a every time i go i'm reminded of why i don't like i can't there's nothing about it that like okay so so do i hate it more than like any other city maybe a little but but it's not like it's visceral it's it's like if i have to be like i couldn't imagine living here and i had to live there for for 18 months and that's like where this comes from but when he moved out there i didn't get it but he told me he's like you know the people out here there they moved differently than the people back in pittsburgh and i never understood that until i had my own experience with it and then i got it we're not pursuing even remotely close to the same thing they're they're all involved in everything related to showbiz they got sad cards have been featured on all kinds of stuff on cable and netflix they're doing great but if it would not be my kind of great i would just be like oh what are we going to talk about out there contrast that being in austin every single person i i chat with we all work for ourselves off of the internet we figured out kind of uh this alternative well right now it's close to at least small minority but right now i still look at it as this like alternative perspective on education and meeting people and everything is different big focuses on fitness it's it's a different world in some places and whatever you find is like your thing and you get there you're like okay you know you can be successful anywhere but here it's how you it naturally aligns with your value system looking in the same direction yeah yeah oh i like that tim you're not swimming upstream anymore you know it's something i had to struggle with a lot like i love the city of philadelphia i'm so proud to be from there you know i love like my family my my family's from scotland and my father was the first american in the stoddarts and and so he's from philadelphia and like it shaped me in a lot of ways and and philly's blowing up a little bit too there's a pretty big entrepreneurial community there but something i noticed with northern cities especially is that when you're born there like you stay there and then like you have kids there and then like your friend your kids grow a family there and it's just really communal in that way which has its positives as well i'm not saying that's a bad thing i think ethan and i actually talked about this on a show a couple months ago where when i first got to florida everybody's hustling and there everyone's after something and it's just aligned with me because i've always naturally been so restless and so like what else what else what else i couldn't quite figure out like what that was for most my life you know and then when i got to florida it's like okay i get it like people come here because they want to be somebody else you and i have a lot in common ed and that's why i'm i was thrilled when you said that you would come on the show i'm always drawn to people who force themselves to write and although as ethan and i have been doing this podcast we decided to just be a lot more lackadaisical you know a lot of times marketing podcasts have like specific lessons and they like want to teach you in a real formal way and and ethan and i decided when we're going to do the show like we're just going to hang out do whatever comes to mind right but the one the the one what do you call it like underlying current of the show has always been writing and i think we just naturally are drawn to people that write and i i can tell i don't i don't know how to say this in in a way that doesn't seem kind of like a backhanded compliment by any means i i mean this as a compliment but i could tell that like you had to force yourself to become a better writer like that just came naturally you know you want to hear something funny about this so you can you can go on my blog it dates back to i went back that's how i can tell i'm like damn money's coming and and all right and that's with like cleaning up articles along the way one of the things that that made a big difference i mean just huge is the four years i spent when i finally went back to college and i didn't like major in that range of physics man but you have to you have to write you have to be very good at explaining your ideas clearly because the smallest imprecision changes what you mean a little example it is in colloquial speech we we say you know how fast is something going what's the speed right and in physics we have to be precise we have what do you want to know the the num the magnitude do you just wanna know the magnitude uh how fast or do you want another direction when you add direction it turns into a velocity right uh when we say speed up or slow down i don't even like saying that word i prefer accelerate right that's a that's a very precise okay you know oscillate versus rotate rotate versus revolution these little things that we sometimes just use colloquially that force versus momentum i hate when someone says you know he moved it all that momentum or something like that or he's got a lot of momentum and that's why it's hard to stop i mean sure but the real reason is you know the force he's got two moving you backwards when he hits you but all that that precision that constant writing and then we had you know science writing and then other courses i i became a better writer because there was external pressure correcting me if i like like i really believe i would still be the uh where i was in 2015 uh in terms of my writing ability or we even go 2017 because i'm looking at the first my self-published book right which was i mean it was a good book a lot of people have gotten stuff from it but in terms of editing and word flow and things like that i just i'm embarrassed you know but but it's growth and as long as people got the message they got the message but if i hadn't gone if i hadn't had constant external criticism from professors i don't know uh where my writing would be but i know it wouldn't be where it's at now i'm glad you mentioned the growth thing this is i don't think i've ever talked about this in the podcast but there's like a couple of rules that i try to keep in mind for myself just as a writer by the way i i i feel like we haven't formally done this yet for everybody who doesn't know who ed is former professional fighter best-selling author you also got some courses and stuff online as well so related to related to writing on twitter which by the way did you change the name of it or you have you launched a second one because i saw something that said like the name was there's you put out one course that was like twitter is the new cocaine right or something like that okay it's okay but the very first thing i released when i recognized kind of the stylistic devices that they were that work best on the platform at the time was engagement is the new cocaine okay yep and that was the first and then okay so i wrote that actually to appease a partner mom who i was working with on a second course and i wrote that i said look man it's going to sell we're going to do great partnering with your thing and it it took off i was very surprised uh that's when i knew i had something and then the next course the rhea talks about you know all of the other things of growing on twitter and then with that i realized okay well people have no idea how to get there for how to get started so let me write you know how to get your first 1 000 followers and and the brilliance of the internet i said well let me make sure i can test these ideas i'm pretty confident they're going to work confident enough to where i bet 250 bucks so i put out a tweet and i said hey you guys trying to grow whatever and looking for x number of people i got 52 people in my in my little 250 uh twitter growth course to get your first 1 000 followers and i was like oh learn some stuff and then you know more about writing more about writing so the whole growth engine pack has actually composed the six courses oh awesome okay and as as tim mentioned we're going to dive into some of that in a little bit this idea of like making money online which is where you spend all your time right now you're very much too much entrepreneur yeah all the time but just for anybody who maybe doesn't recognize the name that's who we're talking to right now the man the myth the legend and we're going to be talking about you know how to make money and also this concept of writing but what i mentioned a second ago is that i said i'm glad that you brought up that sense of dissatisfaction that comes with looking back at your old writing because there's a couple of rules being a writer that i think people need to embrace if they're ever going to actually do it and i know this because so ed just in case you don't know well of course you don't know me i write for the hustle which is a newsletter company so at this point in my career writing is my daily job i get paid to do that but for a long time that wasn't the case you know i came up originally i was a web developer and then i did some other startup uh type built like building tasks like i've worked in startups of different sizes and stuff like that basically had to accidentally navigate like like a salmon into this career that i've always wanted of being a writer so i can look back on it and i can say that you know even if you want it you're not really guaranteed to get it and there's a lot of things that can get in your way there's a lot of things that got in my way and one was i guess realizing i realize that there's a couple things you need to embrace if you're ever going to actually do it one is this it's a very long preamble for what i hope is going to be a helpful tip if you become a writer you are going to die without having written everything that you want to write and that has to be okay because the alternative is that at some point you're going to run out of stuff to write which is a much bigger problem yeah which is a much bigger problem but you know that can stop people because they go wow um well you know like yeah i'll start that idea but i want to finish this idea first or like you know i can't really start working on my book because i haven't started that other idea of mine and you know there's this grasping at perfection like everything's going to fall into place and you're going to write it all in the perfect order and your career is just going to progress in this like linear direction it's not going to happen it's going to be chaotic and you will die if you're lucky you will die with things unwritten and that got to be okay from day one the second rule is that again if you're lucky if you're successful you will hate most of what you look back at [Laughter] right not all of it every once in a while you write something you look back at it a couple years later you know this actually wasn't that bad you know but the reality is if you're if you're still growing you should be able to look back at your old stuff and and see the flaws in it and i have another question about writing but i want to pause for a second just throw it over to tim was there anything you wanted to ask about i know you you just mentioned that you and and have a lot in common so yeah i mean it seems like every single time we record an episode i always drop some kind of seth godin like um slogan or a little corp that he's taught me and it's like everybody wants to show their good writing and nobody wants to show their bad writing oh it's true man can have one without the other you know and so i i always remind myself that when it's like oh am i ready to hit publish like me and ethan even talked about it a few times because we didn't know what we were doing when we were doing this podcast and uh i remember we had this one episode in particular it was like uh what do you think should we publish that and i'm like yes hit publish and then you move on to the next one and it's like mike rose said he's like keep the cameras rolling yeah so you just have to get comfortable yeah you have to it's really i had one year on the blog i remember this super clearly because it stands out i don't know if my web developer changed the way things are organized but the way things they used to be organized by year and it stood out because i only published four pieces in a whole year that's it i mean that's just not acceptable right and i think about what was going on that year i had a lot you know that was when i was like really deep in the in the physics stuff and still training uh and those are two just mind-draining things but i regret not writing because that's where i had the most probably had a lot not the most but certainly a lot of raw material to pull from because as a writer because of the nature of what writing is uh very rarely if ever really will you be in a position where you have all the time and all the time to do it because you have other responsibilities in life yeah you make it too young and you don't have any money you make it oh well you got a family to worry about hey you still got to make money if if there's like no money so no matter what one of the things that i had to really accept is that if i'm going to seriously create written content if that's going to be like the hill that i want to die on then i have to carve out blocks of time i have to do that otherwise it won't get done because you can always find a reason to not write especially because writing for the most part people think people don't realize you know what what writing has allowed me to do is whatever i want but that's only because it's given me an audience to do whatever i want with i don't remember who said it but but it's the truest thing that i've ever read about kind of what i do online with writing and it's build the distribution first then build whatever you want when when you have a mailing list of 30 000 people with an open rate of 40 percent and 170 twitter followers and and 50 some thousand on ig you can bring you can write what you want i mean not what you want because you'll lose fans but you you have a lot of freedom to go with but that takes a long time you don't just wake up and and get that and it's that time it takes to get an audience uh that that kills a lot of people that makes them go this isn't worth it well if you if you're doing it for the right reasons it's always gonna be worth it but if you're if you're in it to get to get paid you know give up i i talk to guys all the time in the in the um the kind of marketer copywriters face and they're like oh why would you have a blog you know no one reads blog well yeah they do i know that because i see my numbers but like it's not because i'm trying to make an instantaneous dollar from the website that just sets me up to be able to do so i had this huge art not a huge argument but it was a huge debate back when i self-published my first book and i care what other people think is a superpower and people were like why would you put that on amazon you could you could put it on gumroad and charge 50 bucks and i said because on gumroad no one's going to find it organically and my name won't ring bells this is a long-term play and you don't understand it because because you don't you don't i think as a writer you kind of have to think long term because it's just it's not a quick thing but i get it right and that's that's some of the ideas that we we come and develop and bring along with the crap but it all comes back to the to the main point which is this is this is not a way to make money make money not quick money but it's very sustainable and reliable once you get people who like your stuff and and and now you know for the past four years i've put so much energy into learning seo on page anyhow i have no interest in learning uh behind the scenes i pay god for that but in terms of you know how people think about a website when they come to it and with the intent and how to write to that intent and then you know you gotta have pieces to do that but then if you do enough of those your other pieces where you'd be more honest or you're always being honest but without being so optimized you can just write and then people discover you and it works great i'm glad you mentioned the sort of long time horizon that can be involved in this type of work it's something that i don't think is talked about enough it's certainly something i struggled with when i was outside of the industry because i think i've said this about other things as well it's easy to look at people who are winning and just assume that you know that just happened for them quick and that you're somehow doing something wrong because that's not happening for you i had a great conversation with a friend recently alexis uh grant yes lexie graham okay so alexa's grant she uh she recently founded uh she's founded a bunch of media startups and she just launched another one recently and what's really interesting about the story there is that the company's doing great they're getting all kinds of attention uh featured in the new york times they've got advertisers everything but that was you know more than a year in the making that he took to build that company and that's coming after building several other media companies so he's been in this in this world for a long time when was the first time that you really realized like in your bones that you could make this work as business and how far into your actual journey as a writer was that oh man i know i have two very clear answers of the two very distinct points where i said hmm this is like a thing and three technically but that's just like the first time you make a dollar the first bit of change money i ever made on the internet i wrote a review for for uh scott adams how to how to fail at anything and still win bigly and i put the review up on my site and put the amazon affiliate link and someone clicked on it bought it and i got six cent i said oh that's cool man like i remember that uh not gonna like live on six cent or anything but it was cool to see it was possible but when you when you sell public stuff on amazon if you don't sell more than a hundred dollars worth in a month they just roll it over and if you don't sell more than a hundred dollars the next month they just roll it over and keep rolling over until the end of the year where they got to clear out their coffers and they send it to you whatever you had so i remember it was it was december the last week of december 2016 and we were in paris and we went to paris but we paid for the for the flights when i was fighting and i had money so we were all good the brokest vacation i ever took like you were like nervous like i had a 50 out of 1500 limit on my credit card and it was american express and if you ever been to europe you know american express is like not the credit card over there so so whenever i found a place that would like let me pay oh i'll pay i'll cover and i took care of that but we were walking one day and that i got that notification that like 423 or something to that effect like was put into my account while i was on vacation i was like oh man this is real like you can actually do this that's awesome and i was like okay let's really like try and put the pedal to the middle and i self-published my first book in 2017 and it made some dollars here and there and and it was coming in because the book title combined with who i am what i was studying and me put my presence out there i just kept giving me interviews and after every interview 50 or 100 copies would sell it was cool right and then because you know at this point it was it was a black friday november 2017 and buddy of mine was like hey i have a course that's coming out you want to affiliate for it as is sure i didn't even use my email list i just popped a bunch of tweets off incessantly and i made eight grand that weekend and i said okay hmm like i can actually do this and it was cool because that was the first time i went to portugal we went for uh to bring in christmas in november and i was like great oh and then now and now i've got this article on my site about the wim hof breathing course every day while we were in portugal what p what i made in that article was more than what i spent and i was like this is really cool like i'm like making like this vacation didn't even happen mathematically like it's awesome so the next the next year 2018 i really i put um i put a lot of energy in into it and and had a few really great sales i started to learn and understand affiliate marketing how to you know pushing my own book and my own product and and it was funny man though may 2018 it was like three life-changing events happened all in the same week mind you i was one i was on my way i was making a comeback i was i've been training a whole year i had a fight in new zealand i was gonna go to new zealand and fight this guy with his record but how he fought i was like this is kind of a gift for my first time back it's great went sparring and got hit in the out broken orbital and had to pull out the fight i had a pretty bad concussion dude it was really bad whoa just from a sparring match oh yeah yeah you know what happened man this is just stupid my coach you know this is what happens you should always listen to your coach my coach did not give me permission to go as far as god would spart him anyway because i was trying to build goodwill so we had some sparring because it's hard to get sparring around here that's one of the reasons i stay in shape so i can help guys coming up because i know how hard it is to find heavyweights part in the region that we are in the country and it was the same issues then but i went got crack because i wasn't sharpie and i was a better fighter and i was physically stronger but i i had he had been fighting continuously for 18 months and i had just been back in the gym for like four so it was a mismatch so that was one big thing that happened next big thing that happened i graduated with my degree i went back to school my first day in class i was like 30 or 28 29 somewhere in there and then graduated finally with my degree in physics and here's the doozy in one week two separate sales combined i think i made 29 000 and i was like all right this is real what i understand i understand what to do and not only was it real i i knew how it worked yeah i know yeah yeah and so i said i i get this and now this is going to no now mind you this is not off my writing this is what my writing the audience what if they built me and what it allows me to do i understand there's a there's a an interplay i have to be genuine with everything i offer otherwise i lose that audience because they came for one thing they didn't come to me because i'm selling stuff i'm like i use this check it out i won't like endorse anything that i've never used okay so i have to be careful and it's like and i've walked that line very well i think and and to avoid having to walk that line that's why i started making my own stuff and it turns out i have a knack for explaining things and principles and complex ideas one of these things you know kind of a side note i had figured it out during the year 2017 because i took on tutoring to pay the bills and i absolutely like tutoring was the first job i did that i didn't have to do like like there was a point where i did it because i had to do it but after everything was you know i tutored for almost two years after i had that you know after i was making five figures a month but with no problem because i loved it and it was like in person i had to drive and be out late but it was cool because i was teaching kids math and physics problems with math and physics and that was the thing that i had problems with and had to struggle and get back to but the the point of me telling that story is i think one of my gifts that i've been able to harness so well on the internet is taking complex ideas and making them very digestible and and really you know i enjoyed that to the point where it's i'm so fortunate that i was born when i was born because now we have the internet because i was born 30 years earlier i'd be slaving as a school teacher which i probably wouldn't feel like it'd be slaving because i wouldn't know any better but now i get to do it on the internet yeah it's a huge uh opportunity and just to sort of highlight the point uh for people too thanks for sharing that by the way those are great stories if i heard correctly though you're talking like 2016 17 18 this is like four five six years into when or at post when you launch the blog oh absolutely yeah so just for people listening i mean i think one of the things to really take away from this is what you said earlier this is it can be really sustainable uh but it's not necessarily gonna be a quick win and if you're okay with that great because you're built for this and like keep going yeah and then you know here's the cool thing right uh what what did i do so 2012 is is when it started because i remember i was at basic training and i had a friend i i listed in in january 4th 2013 went off to basic in june uh 2013 but i had a friend i was hand writing the blog post and sending them off in letters so she could upload them to my site so so i know the vlog's been around at least that long okay but so i'm making money doing the military when i drill i had a job at a bank i fought you know until i started making real money fighting or at least grilling up money where i didn't have to do anything else i did that and so i had all these little jobs in between while i'm building up the blog and writing but however you do it that the point is you got to do something because you are not gonna make any money initially you're not gonna rank for any keywords no one's gonna care what you have to say you gotta come in and establish and build up that credibility i i enjoy this topic i was laughing i heard a phrase recently i can't remember i think it was actually on on sam's podcast uh you got me to listen to an episode ethan i haven't listened to one of sam's podcast in a while but i didn't listen to the whole thing i was on a walk with my kid i remember in the intro that they do he was saying like why does everybody hate short money where um oh get real quick schemes yeah yeah he's like i love get rich quick schemes like why would i want to get rich long scheme like if i can get rich quick then i'm all for it and i was thinking about that right i was like meditating on that for a little because i've always embraced this sort of like grind it out grind it out it's it's been a big part of my personality i think the reason why i've been drawn to endurance training is because i always hear so funny too because you were just talking about cardio ed on twitter and i i always had this philosophy that like my muscles might not be that big but i know if some [ __ ] goes down like i will outlast everybody and it's just been a mentality of mine that i've i've embraced and i've been how do i say this it's it's been delightful for me to see so many examples firsthand that that's not just some kind of slogan that people say because they need like a stool to stand on like it really is some kind of weird law of the universe where like entropy continuously kicks in over and over and over again no matter what you do and so it's that process of like keeping the hedges trimmed because everything will get screwed up over a long enough time if you don't continuously modify it and continuously modified it it felt good to know that like those things that i've been saying about myself over the last 12 years as i've been in this journey like actually have proven to be true and i can look back and see the people 10 years ago it's like all like they made it it happened so quick for them like damn and then i'm not trying to put anybody down but like i see those examples of of people that like i used to be jealous of and where the differences were just like consistency and a little bit of grit for sure but but mostly like just long-term thinking because long-term thinking is long-term results and that's really what i want for my life yeah here's the the fundamental problem with trying to get something fast uh and particular things that are meant to endure our last yeah is that the faster it's built the more you have that like like everything there's a trade-off with everything right if you if you gain speed you likely have to sacrifice structure or durability or even functionality because something's got to go to get speed but if you take those points from speed and you put them into i don't know structure well it's going to take longer but it's going to last a lot longer you see this in the buildings in europe which just blow my mind there are buildings that are that are like because because they were built they weren't i mean maybe they were thinking bill to last but even if they weren't they didn't have the ability to build things quickly so things don't collapse right you look at the cars compared to now versus that even just 30 30 or 40 years ago it's astounding like these cars that mean there's some they last well 10 maybe 12 years um or whenever it reaches a certain mileage point but there's still so much stuff that has to go into it meanwhile you know your old car they they're still around assuming all that you know keep the rest off but it will still work and move and all things when the quicker you get them you typically have to give something up nothing is free you know and once you accept that then you can decide what's more important sometimes it is important to get there first and then once you're there you can but you're aware of that the problem is when you're not aware of what you're giving up and what you're gonna have to go and make up for when you when you don't do anything it's like uh guys that try to cheat the game and use steroids for example now i have nothing for against them i just look at fundamentally what they do yeah your body is i've seen so many guys in the fight game have a bicep tear tear like where it comes off and i'm like how's this happen and i look like oh i know what you used to do your body was like ah we're not built for this you didn't you didn't take the time to structure us correctly and so you're you're hurting it's so interesting ed and i get i think a lot and so like i can overthink these things sometimes but i i like lessons that are fundamental in nature where they're they're like universal right and you i didn't know that you have a degree in physics i never went to school but i've i've been into physics my entire life it's actually kind of like a form of spirituality for me it's like a way where i i found like my higher power you know and physics is what made me believe in god 100 percent totally yeah i love what uh elon musk said it's like it's the actual only laws everything else just the suggestions and like what else is there and what else is god other than that you know and so if if you think about things fundamentally there's no such thing as something for nothing and like when you talked about speed right like i don't know random silly example is the first one that comes to mind but cheetahs are really really really fast and they're only really really really fast for a very very short amount of time and that's just the sacrifice that they make right but there's like other things that can just endure and that just i mean spiders for instance like weird example right but how long spider's been around for like a couple million years you know and it's just because they their metabolisms are designed to sit and wait and build something with like the absolute most precision and perfection that can possibly be built and then that's it and so i i love seeing these just laws everywhere i look where whereas it's just fundamentally true whether we're talking about writing or business or get rich quick schemes or grinding it out for 30 years like there's no such thing as something for nothing and you just have to accept that and play that game yeah that's that's the one of the things that i think is a sign of maturity is the fundamental realization that you can have anything you just can't have everything everything i know i love that one and and when you get that then you go hmm what is important what matters to me you know and it's really painful for people to give up on i won't even say give up on a dream because it's because it's not even that intense but to cut off a possibility even if they didn't know even if there was no chance they were going to go like you ever hoard stuff like i'm going to use it one day no you're not like you know you're not but that's how we're built psychologically we want to make sure we have all the options and the reality is you don't have body options every everything takes an investment of time at least like you're going to eventually run out of well you you want to live like we're all going to die one day and those kind of realizations it makes you it makes you so much better at looking at them specifically or micro applauded you know when you see how their macro plot like i know that uh one day this is this is it it's going to end and before i get to that point i'm not going to look like this i'm not going to move like this i'm not going to even think like this really so i'm going to deteriorate over time so what i have to do is use my current tom wisely invest and put together put in place systems and make investments that will pay off and take care of me later okay if i can take that idea and see how that applies to a general uh existence because i think that rule blasts everyone but i can look at how it starts to work specifically i can go okay i can take this time and i can try i i i found this with writing i can put a lot of time into the article and generally speaking i mean unless i'm like dead off and it's just not right like a dud i do all the seo research i craft the the wording right i link it on my site correctly i put time on promoting it make sure the research is back the points are made eloquently and clear this takes a lot of work to put together a quality piece of content but if i do it right that quality piece of content just you know this is why i love affiliate marketing because if you have a good thing that you have really used and got a lot of and you take the time to discuss it and make sure people get it then your the article you put together about or the video now with youtube because youtube is basically a search a video search engine that's how i look at it it's like you will get paid off it repeatedly and people find out find you and trust you you will last but if you just you know this is this is uh you want to compare like twitter versus uh writing on a website a lot of people love twitter because it's fast it's it's so like and people have made entire careers calling themselves writers because all they do is tweet but they don't realize man like i know because i researched this stuff because it's really important for me to know your tweet only has a half-life of what it's 18 to 24 minutes on average on average we're not talking stuff that goes viral so that's 18 to 24 minutes your wisdom is out there why not take some of that and cultivate it into a solid long-form post that people will be able to find and read repeatedly over and over and not only that the cool thing about a website compared to social media is that the way the algorithm works on a website time works for you instead of against you and it's one of those things when tom when you understand tommy see out into place with your work in the trade-offs after making your allocation of it you make better decisions that are going to set you up better for long term i love that point you just made there too i think it wraps everything up yeah perfectly that whole concept of time working for you and i was thinking about this the other day somebody asked on twitter uh he first he asked like what's the worst part of getting older and a whole bunch of people jumped in with you know their opinions on that and then a couple minutes later he asked what's the best part of getting older and i was thinking about it i think that's what it is it's that realization there's a certain point this is happening for me and i and it's been my favorite part of getting older so i hope this is something that happens for everyone where you've just been around long enough to realize that that short-term mindset it is useful when you're young in fact i think it's crucial when you're young to have like a go out hustle get results fast mindset because that's what helps set you apart as like a useful person that older more experienced people are going to want to have around right they're going to those are the people who are going to teach you the ropes but you get to a certain point where your energy just isn't a match anymore for the younger people coming up and you got to have a different advantage it can't just be about like i can't work 18 hours a day anymore i used to be able to work until 2 o'clock in the morning go to bed wake up at 6 00 and do it man i just go to sleep and i would i would laugh at people who said that that you lose that over time i just i it affects me differently now than i ever used to before and so what i've been focusing on is like okay well what's the next advantage and it's what you said it's time like how can you make time work for you instead of against you and yeah i think that's probably going to be the title of this episode but for sure such a great point ed i think it comes down to that and i think there's one other thing that's related to what we've been talking about here which i think people will be familiar with even though they may not have thought of it through this lens there's often times you see people who are successful for a long period of time i mean tim ferriss comes to mind as one another guy neville medora who i just listened to a great interview with him on sam's podcast the other day he's been doing the copywriting course for like 15 years and i think a lot of the videos are still the same as they were 15 years ago or at least that's what it sounds like so like these people have long term sustained success what makes them tick a lot of times you'll look at them and you'll say why are they still doing stuff right like they've made their money why how much more money do you need why do you gotta why is tim putting out another book he should just be on a beach and here's the reason the reason is this because in order to get to the point where you have that like large sustained success i think you almost by definition need to get to a point where the action of like putting in the time creating the content sharing the idea the action is more satisfying to you than the idea of the outcome oh man this reminds me of a of an argument i once had i had to explain to someone they were like they were criticizing someone to be like oh she's already in shape what does she need to go to the gym for i'm like no no you don't understand no they're come to to get in shape your mind has to be to a point where you just do these things in their part of your life and you do it over time but getting in shape is the best way to see the end and pretty long success because you can't just like wake up one day and decide okay today i'm gonna make sure i eat slightly under the deficit it's gonna be all whole foods and lift and then you wake up tomorrow and you have a six-pack right it doesn't work that way you gotta put in time and effort without seeing any results often and then one day you see they're there there so the person who's in shape and like really in shape they continue to go because now at this point you could get away with a little bit of like maintenance and slack off but no for them it's not a it's not part of their life it's not even about looking good anymore like they're not chasing that outcome yeah they're not yeah exactly they're not chasing the outcome anymore they're it's because doing the thing is the only thing that makes them happy now and that's kind of like the ironic twist behind all this stuff business fitness it's like in order to actually for it to work you like you said you have to become the person who is satisfied by doing the work and i don't think i realize that took me a while to realize that myself and so now i try to i try to remember that because like when i was young i was just like gosh i want to make money right i want to make the money so that i can go on a beach and not have to do jack [ __ ] and surprise surprise that hasn't like that hasn't made me millions you know what i think about now is uh did i do the thing did i show up and do the thing today whether that's recording a podcast or like for me it's specifically trying to teach on twitter i gotta love writing writing is what i'm so happy and lucky to be able to do it for a job the twitter ecosystem a little bit of work for me so i try to sit down and specifically do that once a day and i can tell people who are listening to this this is still kind of a new journey for me but so far there does come a point when there is a dissatisfaction that comes if you didn't sit down even if you don't want to do it for the day like you don't feel like doing it it just nags at you that you didn't and yep yep i think that goes for fitness it goes for business it goes for all these things you cultivate that mindset of doing the thing yeah once you have it you know nothing can can stop you you're just it's a different kind of contentment and enjoyment you actually look at people chasing the cheese and you're like don't you understand that if you just went and put the work in to build a garden you would or not build a garden but milk your own cows and learn that you could you could actually have all the cheese you want but you're chasing it it's like chasing short-term you know money you see this all like thousands very very big interesting hustle culture or on twitter i was just having this talk with my my tech director who like you know doubles as my my marketing guy or part of marketing guy and and sometimes my therapist and he's like there's a place in time he said you know there was a place and time for your bias towards action that's the that was how he caught it instead of i said i'm impulsive he goes no you had a bias towards action and that helped you get to where you're at now but now you don't need to do that and you can focus more on the quality you don't have to worry about putting out so much you know someone who does this really great is dave perrell i just finished his writing class write a passage and he talks about how he wants the way he uses twitter he wants to make sure that when you go and look at his feed everything that you see is powerful is insightful is usual and that when i heard that you know first of all this was another guy in austin right when i heard that i was like wow man what a great way to think about creating content because you're not chasing the short let me get followers let me get followers you're like let me build sustainable stuff and i was like and then i felt bad i was like man maybe i think i've fallen away from from what got me the kind of where i was that or how that works and i said i you know when you see people who do it you respect it and you want to emulate it because you know it's what's what makes them successful that's a great point and maybe we'll rap on this because i know we want to be respectful your time but there's you just touched on something i gotta i gotta double click on real quick for people which is that respect that comes uh from seeing somebody who's doing the work so for anybody listening to this i know like i'm kind of lucky because i work for a publication right so that gives you an automatic excuse to talk to people who otherwise would have no business talk or like i'd have no business talking to if you don't have that one way you can kind of get in touch with the people that you look up to or respect in the field i don't remember who talked about it this way first but i've always loved this analogy is to switch your focus from the gallery to the studio and what they mean by that is like a lot of these people who are out there creating they're toiling behind the scenes to put something together that is great like they're going to the gym so to speak right and then every once in a while there's the prize fight where they're publishing or they're putting a book out or whatever it is that's the thing that everybody sees and it's really hard to try to get in touch with them there because they're in audience mode like i'm talking to the world i'm fielding questions they're just kind of pitching stuff back if you really want to get in touch with these people like what you said is so key you first thing you got to do is you got to be putting the work in consistently so that when they look at your stuff they're like okay this person's serious it's worth my time to invest in like talking to them and the second thing is to shift that focus away from their gallery away from where they're displaying things to the world and towards their studio where are they where are they working like if in the case of writers where do writers hang out when they're not publishing so to speak basically the way to do this try and figure out what what do they care about that's not that they're publishing you know i'm laughing because this is you know you got to filter information through your own pieces of experience and that helps you it retain it and remember it and use it and the first thing i thought of is like you'll see these posts online like where are all the good men at like well they're not where you're looking because you're looking yeah you're you're you you see them when they're with their their significant others right so that's part of where they're at well perhaps perhaps you become the person that ends up being where these guys hang out before they're with someone so you can snag one up and that's a whole different like that's an entirely different change or not entirely even change but it's a whole different way of thinking about the problem that is like i always say humans are bad at the future they're just not good at and there's like real there's like research on this we're really bad at thinking about what will happen at a distant time from us a different event but this is one of those things when you make that shift to go okay i know they're they they've got to be working to put some out and i'm not going to see them or they're not even going to want to interact with me really when they're there let me think about uh how to interact with them later how to get behind the scenes and now that that changes your whole thought process because then you realize well now you gotta pay for the cost of admission anybody look well going to the gym is cheap but if you want to know a fighter you got to be a fighter and that means you got to do what fighters do anybody you know what you got a bunch of followers and ever that's amazing how many pitches i get from people this is not which i was making this up but to write emails remember are you kidding do you know what i like i like writing don't take that away from me but proof of that if they had you know if you want to really interact with me and do some work in business okay you got to be a writer and this kind of comes back we were saying at the very beginning about being where the people are who are doing what you do if you want the most opportunities you have to think like that how can i how can i be part of the club you know you how can i run the race i don't want to just show up at the finish line because that's where everybody's trying to trying to assign the runner right the winner you want to be with him you know what he's training in the gym and really after you get the secrets the insights the game that was perfect man perfect yeah we're gonna like uh that's the line right there you wanna be you wanna know fighters you gotta be a fighter and i just i'm so glad you wrapped it up with that frame because for anybody who's listening to this i don't think i did a good job with this but it's like if you're wondering how to make this happen you you touched on it perfectly you go do the thing that they're doing and do it consistently if you want to know an author you probably want to know them because there's some party that aspires to be an author go do that work and and and have something to show for it and then they're going to approach you as a more of a more of a peer if you can bring that portfolio how you get in the club man like like that's how you get in the club you you got to do the thing and they're like okay you look like you belong because you know you know you speak the language you understand the customs and the and the rules all right come on in and now your life is better i love that i'm gonna be thinking about that all day i'm about to go to muay thai training too and i'm just thinking about how you recognize that thing about yourself which you see in other people you know and just this concept of like getting into the club letting time work for you as opposed to the other way around and there's there's just no shortcuts to do that and so it's it's it sounds like trite a little bit to say out loud but really internalize it and like and measure it against your own experiences where it's like oh yeah that's how that happened for me i think it's much different so ed i sincerely appreciate your time it's been great hanging out with you on the twitter sphere it's been great just getting to know you going back and forth i i hope we can meet up one day i know that you and i have a lot in common with uh our just beliefs and our history and the things we've been through so right down to nashville too man so i didn't mean i was not right down in nashville that's that was not our job when i made it but but yeah for sure man where uh where can people check you out if they want to uh find more yeah oh i'm at latimer everywhere man i'm at latimo on twitter a lot of my instagram my website is edlattermore.com so just just type it in on your favorite platform youtube channel that lattimore uh so and the newsletter is uh stoic street mark street smarts right stone street arts come on in outsmarts hi everyone thank you so much for listening like the show leave us a comment it's the best thing you can do to support the show we don't have any ads we just want to provide value and make sure that you guys are digging what we're up to thank you so much for talking next week [Music]