648: Ed Latimore - Going From Zero to One, Taking Ownership, Positive Body Language, Strategic Hardship, & Hard Earned Lessons From The Hurt Business

This episode is brought to you by my friends at Insight Global. Insight Global is a staffing and professional services company dedicated to being the light to the world around them. If you need to hire one person, hire a team of people, or transform your business through talent or technical services, Insight Global's team of 30,000 people around the world have the hustle and grit to deliver. Hiring can be tough, but hiring the right person can be magic. Visit InsightGlobal.com slash Learning Leader today to learn more. That's InsightGlobal.com slash Learning Leader. Welcome to the Learning Leader Show! I am your host, Ryan Hawke. Thank you so much for being here. Go to LearningLeader.com for show notes of this and all podcast episodes. Go to LearningLeader.com. Now on to tonight's featured leader, Ed Latimore, who is a professional heavyweight boxer, best-selling author and a veteran of the United States Army National Guard. He earned a degree in physics from Duquesne University. Ed has gained recognition for overcoming personal struggles with addiction and poverty. We recorded this at our 2025 Learning Leader Gross Summit in Scottsdale, Arizona. This was a private event for members of my Learning Leader Circle. If you would like to be part of my next Learning Leader Circle, go to LearningLeaderCircle.com. Some of the topics we covered, how and why you should work to beef up your obituary. I love that term. Why you shouldn't just dabble and the importance of building a disciplined routine. We talk about that and so much more. Ladies and gentlemen, please enjoy my conversation with Ed Latimore. You have lived and lived multiple lives, right? And this idea of a boxer, a physics guy, you're into chess, all this different stuff. And you've got whole other parts of your story that we're going to get to. I'm just curious, if your younger self looked at your current self, what would surprise them the most? You know, not all of that. I don't know, I'm fortunate. But I think the thing that would surprise my younger self the most is the stumbling blocks along the way, particularly the stuff around addiction and alcohol. Because I grew up next to a crack house. My mom had her alcohol issues. Every one of my family had their substance abuse issues. To different degrees, some got involved in the selling side of it, the using side of it. So I had this healthy fear of a lot of this stuff. So that's why I never tried anything harder. But the alcohol stuff, that really would surprise younger me because I know how I am thinking about it now and how I looked at it. And I went through that phase in my life. I'd be like, wow. But on a more positive note, I think the thing that would surprise younger me is how much fun I have being a dad. I didn't know that that was a really fun thing, man. Because my dad wasn't really around, so I didn't really have any model for that or anything to expect from that. But boy, it's exhausting. And there are these fun moments of frustration. That's the best way to describe it, but it's a really good time. Those are the two big things that I think would surprise me, which as I'm saying that, has nothing to do with any of that. You mentioned your sobriety, and we've talked before. You said that it's the hardest fight you've ever had. What finally made it stick? What finally helped you get past that? I mean, I assume it's still a fight. Oh, yeah. Still a fight. 13 years? 13 or 14? I'm starting to lose track, and that's a good thing. What made it so difficult? Ever hear that quote from Anna Karenina about Leah Toy Story? He's like, all happy families are happy for the same reason. All unhappy families are unhappy for different reasons. Wait, I'm not smart enough. What is this quote again? Paraphrase, the Anna Karenina quote, he goes, all happy families are like, all unhappy families are unhappy for their own reasons. And I start with that to say that everyone has kind of their own issue or reason for having a substance problem. And you don't need to know that to kick it. You can figure that out later, which is what happened to me. I just knew things were getting rough, but as I look back really close to N01, the big thing that happened is I started to believe people cared about me. I started to believe what I mattered. I tell the story and then get back to the alcohol thing, but it's key. We had a baby shower for the kid, and all these people showed up, all my friends, and well, mostly my friends, because I'm not really close to my family. And I'm just sitting there like choked up because I've got this issue where I didn't think that my friends were like, they didn't really like me. Like I had to prove myself, and that's what drives a lot of the things I do. I feel like I got to prove myself for affection and respect. Just people like me, but they showed up. They took their Sundays and brought gifts for this human that doesn't even exist yet all because he's my human. So we'll pause there, and I had to tell them, I was like, look, you guys know I have this issue, or maybe you don't. But for me, this means so much, and it overwhelmed me. So back to what helped me get sober. When I went away for basic training in June of 2013, came back after basic training at IIT in December when I tried to party, had a horrible time. And so Friday, December 23rd, I sat there and made this list. I was making this list like, okay, I'm in school now, I'm in the Army now, and there's the uniformed, coded military justice on top of civilian justice. I'm trying to make my pro career matter, and I just started this relationship that's still going on today, right? I don't want to lose any of this. And it hit me that the thing that made it stick all of that together, though, I had spent that six months away building an identity that was completely free of alcohol. It was the first time I did it in my adult life, and I got to see all these people respect me, look up to me like me, and there was no alcohol involved. And I said, okay, I don't need to keep trying to be liked, I can actually be respected. And I think the two things look similar, but they're very different. When people like you, they want to party with you, they want to do things with you. But a lot of times they will make you behave in a way that makes you less respectable. But when people respect you, maybe you don't get all invites to the parties, but you start getting invited back to family events. Because when I talk about my family, I'm talking about my friends. And growing up in high school, they invite me around, and a little less, a little less, and pretty soon it's like, I see the pictures, things are happening, and I'm not there. But it got a lot easier to stick with it when I finally looked and I said, okay, people care if something happens to me, I care if something happens to me. And that self-love, I hate that word. But that's what it is, that self-love. That makes a huge difference in allowing a person to basically not destroy themselves. We talked about ownership and not being a victim earlier today. And if there's anyone who could have chosen to be a victim, you're certainly one of those people who could have made that choice. And you and I have talked about the fact that a judge and a jury does not care about my terrible upbringing if I commit a crime. I use that quote a lot, since you originally said it to me. And I think that is the ultimate example of taking ownership of your life. Can you talk more about this? I mean, this is harsh, but the world doesn't care that you grew up next to a crack house with a mom who suffered from addiction and all these awful things. The world doesn't necessarily care if you're going to go choose to harm other people's lives or commit crimes. You're going to jail, right? That's taking ownership when you could have easily chosen just to be a victim and follow in that path and commit crimes and do terrible things. And I'd love to hear you talk more about that. That accountability, it has to start with recognizing that you have an impact on the world for better or worse. Like I always say, you know, like her goal with raising our children is to make sure that they are a net positive. They make things better. But if they can't do that, at the very least, let's make sure they don't mess anything up. No one wants to give birth to a serial killer, right? That's a net negative. No one wants to give birth to a daughter. That's a net negative. When you start looking at your place in the world and you realize that you are not in a vacuum, everything you do is going to affect someone else for better or worse, then you have to take some responsibility. I don't know where I learned this because I know I didn't learn it at home growing up, but it's always stuck with me this perspective that everything I do is going to affect other people. And so I started to, even from a younger age, even, you know, stumbling around, I go, OK, I can't do that because it will affect someone else negatively. And that, look, that's a really great start. If you do just that, you're probably going to avoid prison. And you take it a step further and you've remembered it. Like, you got one body and you got one life and how people are looking at what you do from afar, they're going to judge you. And they're not just going to judge you. Now we're getting back to that effect on other people. You know, they're going to see how other people interact with you as well and which people decide to interact with you. You don't want people to cast you off or to distance themselves. You're behaving a way that makes you a net positive to your surroundings. People like to be around you. At the very least, they don't feel like they got to clutch their purse. Yeah, yeah. You talk a lot about discipline. You write about discipline and how discipline is kind of like the way out for you has been the way out. How have you become a more disciplined person? What role did that play in helping you get to where you are today? The boxing thing, man. This is where it comes from. And I don't know if we talked about this before, but I tell people a lot. So first we got to go all the way back to high school. I was terrible at math. In fact, I technically didn't graduate from high school. I had no faith in my quantitative abilities. I was smart enough to know then that you can't do anything that is worth wanting to go to school for. Don't bother with it. So I start the boxing thing. I was terrible when I first started boxing. Like legitimately bad. There's an amateur fight. I was fighting this guy who was way more skilled than him and doing it for a long time. And I was at two left feet, no leverage. I was all on punches. I swung a few times and I actually fell over and knocked myself down. They encountered his knock down. And then I took the training seriously. I was always taking the training seriously, but really started to learn, really started to improve. And then I eventually beat that guy and I go on to, I want to stay tighter and then go on to the national gold gloves. And then eventually get another. I didn't win that with tournament, but another national tournament. And so all throughout my amateur career, I'm watching myself get better at something that I was really bad at. And the only reason I got better at it is I took accountability. I made the change when I needed to make the changes. And it was a very disciplined approach. And I watched how that made me like a change in my life. Like, I'm sitting here with you right now, you know, because of what I was able to do when I fought. And then what I was able to do when I decided to go back to school, because remember I was bad at math. I said, okay, if I did this from my body, let me do this from my mind. Okay, let's go right back to the basics all the way back to where I didn't learn, learn how to do fractions correctly, rebuild that foundation, do that. And I said, okay, well, I did this with my body. I did this with an abstract skill math. Can I do this with my writing? Can I do this in every other area of my life? And each time it's not like no one says boxing is fun. It is kind of fun to beat a guy up, like kind of. But that guy is not like, it's not like he's not trying to beat you up back and he's good at it too. And math is, you know, enjoyable, but it's not very enjoyable when you don't know what you're doing and you're like a fish out of water and these problems are hard and you've invested this money already, but you got to figure it out. And all of this comes back around to the key idea here. How you feel about doing something is irrelevant if it is vital to your success. I live by that and it has changed the trajectory of my life. I don't look at things like I do or don't want to do them. I go, is this or is this not necessary? And if the answer is yes, then it's got to be done. And if I don't like it, okay, what am I going to do? Complain? Well, I mean, there's something beautiful about the simplicity of that right there. James Clear was here a few years ago and I told you this, he quoted you. And I've re-quoted that a thousand times. I feel like I think it's about how hard sometimes it is to do the first thing, to get started. The quote is, the heaviest weight at the gym is the front door. I love to hear what you were thinking when you came up with that. It's beautiful. And then what that means to you, that the heaviest weight at the gym is the front door. When I said that, that was back in the 180 character days of Twitter. Yeah. And so what that did, you got to train your short game, your long game, right? I started to think in Twitter. It's actually a useful skill. Well, yeah, like, you know, Twitter is what it is, right? But one of the things that, at least when there was that restriction now, they removed it twice, first taking it to 240 and now you can extend your tweets. And then, well, what it's done is it's removed the need for economy of word choice. Compression of ideas is something you're good at, James. Like a lot of the best thinkers are able to compress these long thesis statements into bumper stickers. And to the, the, the, the meat. Exactly. And I think that's a very useful skill. And, you know, the way they, they trained a lot of us coming up in school, this essay has got to be a minimum. They're like, no, there should be a maximum. There should be a limit. And then you got to get that idea in there clearly. So what I'm thinking about is like, okay, well, it's hard, you know, zero to one is the hardest part. What's a cool way to say that? Well, there we go. Okay. And just thinking about that, I just, I'm looking at that Jimmy Sonny because Jimmy's been incredible for helping me in my journey as a now like a few not yet, but at least they done, they sent me my checks as far as I know. The book's going to come out. But Jimmy was really helpful, not just helping me get connected with people and you know, talking to me about different marketing aspects of it. But the one thing I don't know if I've told Jimmy this, when I sat down and write the book, I didn't really know what I was writing. I knew that they paid me to write a book. And if I didn't write that book, they were going to take that money back. That's what I knew. All right. So I said, all right, let's just start writing something. And that's what happened. I just started to write funny story about this kind of a side note. The first book I wrote, or three books, the first book I wrote about 45,000 words. And I remember clearly I said, this isn't what they want. I don't think they want this kind of book. It was pretty much an autobiography with some key moments in my early life up to when I graduated from high school. So I start writing the other book, the next book. That was a set of themes, you know, discipline, motivation dealing with pain, forgiveness, those kind of things, taking different aspects of my life. And then it was time to submit the manuscript. And I looked and I said, I don't know what they really want here. These are two different books. You know what I'll do? I'll combine them. And I did that. And I remember my editors sending me these praise. Like, this is the greatest thing I've ever read. No, you didn't say that, but that's how I heard it. Okay. And I messaged him my age and I'm like, yo, it's no like this all the time. And he's just, you know, or is this true? He goes, no, I never heard him being so happy. This is great. And then Crickets. He got to the second book. And I saw the feedback and I realized that I was like, oh, wow, I wasn't supposed to write that second book, but it's a good thing. I amended that first one because he's like, this is the direction you want to go. But if I had just been sitting there thinking about this the whole time, I wouldn't have anything. I'd have nothing. You got to be willing to correct. I tell my wife all the time, she's involved in the travel industry. And every now and then she'll get a client. And it'll be the weirdest problem. You know, the 10 years going this will just be a new problem. And when you first start something, you run into these problems on an exponential curve. You just keep hitting them and eventually it goes linear. And then it turns logarithmic and you stop bumping into the wall so much. But once you bump into that wall, you know where the new problems are. But you got to bump into the wall a bunch of times. A lot of people don't want to bump into that wall. This where discipline comes in, you got to go, okay, it's going to hurt. It's going to waste time. I'm going to hate my life, but I will learn something. And eventually what I create is going to be really cool. Well, boxers, not a boxer, done it a little bit. And certainly nothing like this have to live and die by routine. There's like wrestlers, boxers, like some of those routine, regimented, kind of work ethic type people. You got to be in such impeccable shape. How have you taken this learning of routine and being regimented and getting after it every day to like everything outside of boxing? First boxing is really boring. It's boring and it's miserable. I don't know. My coach and I were talking about this last week. I've always believed this. He's always believed it, but this was the first time the idea was set out loud. And we said, yes, there's something wrong with every single person who decides to do this for real. There's got to be. Most people run from fights. We try and get into it. But the way you do that is you just make it, you just practice until you can't forget. Like I think in psychology the term is overloading. And they've done some research on this. Like if you were learning a new set of words in a new language and you memorize those words and then you go, I got them and you chill out. And the second person goes, I'm going to learn those 10 words. And then I'm just going to say them all the time over and over and over and over again until they don't sound like, we ever say words so much it doesn't sound like a word anymore. You're like, is this real? Yeah. Okay. Turns out that person in that over learning situation, their retention is going to be far superior to yours. And that's what we got to do in boxing. We practice until we can't forget even if we wanted to. See guys walking around shadow boxing. Part of it's like obsessive and the other part is just rehearsal. And when you realize how well it works, because that's a great place to see how well something works. Either you get it or you'll make a mistake. And you probably won't last to make the mistake more than twice. And in parenthood, that has been a godsend because it feels like Groundhog's Day, man. Like every day, wake up, get a snack, change the diaper, go to the park, nap time, wake up, go to the park, get a dinner, bedtime, read a story, tuck them in, go to sleep, wake up, and then sort of, and then just the same thing. And every now and then I look up and I go, man, why are you guys so tall? Right? It's like, what happened? But I know that kind of monotony can really break a person. You get a tolerance for boredom and we're getting away from that because phones. There's always something novel to look at, right? I'm reading a book now. Real book, pages. And I'm like, wow, this is crazy. There's no flash notifications or anything to pop up. I remember this. It's like the 90s. It's a good time. But my point with saying that is that routine work, systems work, it's the human that gets bored with them. And if you can be bored, you can go really far because a lot of it is just even at the highest levels from what I've seen with my own eyes in boxing. It's just the repetition of really basic things. Like super basic. If you look at, I don't know if anyone here knows any of the guys in the sport, some of these names are bigger or not, but Terrence Crawford and Naoi Inouye and Alexander Usik. If you look at these guys' practice and now all these guys on YouTube are trying to break these things down and show these crazy, fancy things. But we look at them, people who know. All they do, their footwork is just perfect. And it's perfect, not fancy, but these basic things are perfect. And all I've done is just string together these different aspects of the sport that are boring and basic. And they do them so well that they'll fight unconscious. There's no time to think. So if you can get really comfortable with what it takes to attain that level of muscle memory, then you can do anything. Because that's the only way to get good at anything is just do it a lot. It's like you're unconsciously conscious. You get to the point where it just is automatic. And that's boring. You got to be willing to do that. Peyton Manning was famous. He said, when I don't love taking every rep in practice, I got to stop. I got to stop. So he took every rep, every single rep in practice. And when that day comes, I got to stop. So I'm going to open up in a second. I'm going to ask one more to give you guys time to think. So I want you to feel free. Ed is free for that. I don't even look at you. Sorry about that. I'm just lacing this way in. So one of the things my buddy Brooke Cupps is back there and we talk a lot about body language, right? And having positive body language. And I think boxers have to have this, man, right? You're not going to walk in a ring with bad body language or you're going to get killed, right? And from a leadership perspective, I don't think this is a small detail to be like, ah, yeah, I'll worry about that later. I think it's something to think about all the time. Can you talk me through whether it's intentional or not thinking about your positive body language entering a ring or going for a speaking gig or any time really in your life being a dad, but the importance of having positive body language? Yeah, I wish I could have remembered the research, but I know it exists. That idea that if you smile, you'll feel happy. You don't smile because you're happy. I mean, sometimes you do, right? But you can also work that system reverse. You smile, you feel happy. It's like you puff up your chest and the testosterone flows because you feel like you're stronger. Yeah, so if you can do that with your body, then you have to remember this. We make a big deal. I make a big deal. I hope you guys do too. So I'll say we make a big deal about how we talk to ourselves, right? But what you're saying is accurate. And a lot of people don't put that much energy and that much effort into how they present themselves physically. Not just in body language, but in grooming, but in style. Yeah. Because that is the first way we gather information. We see it. And then you get the feedback. And if you get great feedback, you, it becomes this self-fulfilling loop. You go, okay, these people must like how I look. I must be a cool person. Let me act like a cool person. And then they go, he's acting like a person. We should. He is cool. And then it bumps up. And that's how we take advantage of it. I think that's how we should take advantage of it. As far as like in boxing goes, right? It's weird, man. You got this posturing that's going on and guys are about to fight. There's no reason to post. But we got to do it. It's the show. And it can make a difference. Mike Tyson talked about this all the time. He's got that great monologue where he's like, I'm looking at the God across from me and I'm looking in his eyes to see. I'm waiting for the moment he looks away. And that's when I know I got him. God's losing the fight before the fight even starts because they're scared. And they betrayed their own self and the other guys looking to wait to see what happens. So to take an applause to every other part of life. And that fatherhood thing is really key here too. And I can't act scared because then they think something's wrong. And then I start acting like something's wrong because then I trigger a whole fear cascade. I have to remain calm in the face of a danger. I have to always look for solutions even if this situation seems hopeless because the minute I accept that it's hopeless, I try. I'm not saying there's always going to be a solution, but I have to keep trying. And then remembering that I can't mope around the house because that's bringing me down. I got to move around. You got a lot of yourself. That's pretty much what you got to do. But it's a very useful law because your brain's dumb. It's weird as that sounds. Your brain is stupid. It doesn't really know what's going on. If you're walking around all proud and happy knowing you got a big bill doing, you don't know how you're going to make it, your brain's going to go, man, we must have figured this thing out. Why feel down? Because no matter how bad a situation is, if you let your internal state go to heck, that doesn't help you solve it. Reality's going to be reality. You can't change reality, but you can change how you interact with it, how you perceive it. And if you don't take that seriously, a reality will steamroll you in these bad situations that you could potentially have found a way out of. Or you take something that is just, this is the coolest thing with babies. Anybody with kids knows this. I learned it kind of a hard way, I guess. But like when he was learning how to walk, he falls. Now you got two responses to this. You can freak out and go, oh, is the baby going to die? Or you just look at him and go, hey, was that fun? Or sometimes start laughing. He's looking at you, well, that must be funny. It's like, I'm not going to die of two. It's the same thing with people. And that's what leaders figure out is that when something's going wrong, if I start acting like it's going, everybody starts patting it. If I act like it's calm and cool, it's like that scene in the Titanic when they're sinking and they just keep playing the music. That's crazy, right? But look, if the maestro's like, we're going to play some music, those guys are like, I guess we're going to play some music. Maybe this is not bad. See that? That's so good. Let's open it up. Who's got a question for Ed? What do you think? Yeah, go ahead, Rob. Talk a lot about personal accountability. Who was some major influencers in your life, mentors, and what did they do to impact your mindset? So I didn't have a male that I looked up to until I was 28, 26. I just know the age range because the first person that I really looked up to who really helped me accountable was my coach, my professional coach, when I switched. And he made it very clear. He never told me to stop drinking, but he made it very clear. He disapproved of it. He lived life very clean. Well, he lives, he's still alive. He lives life very cleanly. One time he invites me over to his house for his father's birthday and there's cake. And I know Tom doesn't think I should eat sweets when I'm trading, but there's cake and it's in his house. So I have a piece of cake and he loses it. And he's like, what's wrong with you? Like you invited me, it's the cake's here. I was like, I didn't eat any, why'd you eat it? That type of accountability, that's the person who I look up to, the first role model that I really ever had. Because for whatever reason, when I'm looking at somebody in the media, the TV, that just feels like fiction to me. I know it might be manufactured. I can't really see how the sausage is made, so to speak. So I don't fall for it. I've never had an idol or role model that I can't see or touch. And I didn't have my father around or any positive people around growing up. So I didn't have anyone to look up there to. But when I got to that gym, which was different from where I was when I was in amateur, this was the first person. And I said, this guy's living what he's yelling at me about. I'd be one thing if he was, you know, throwing him back and he didn't cake himself. And then, no, he lives it. And so I said, I want to be like this person. So good. Matt? You mentioned the sheer form. If you have a day and you were leaving before the process, what gets you through that vacuum? I want to give you a magic answer. I really do. I'll do the next best thing. I'll tell you what scared me was scared me as being embarrassed. And that's what I used as being afraid. I said, okay, if I lose this fight, we'll just talk about boxing and go bigger. If I lose this fight because I was not prepared to be my fault because I decided that today is the day I'm going to take a day off and I don't want to be embarrassed. So let me get in there and get in the gym. And then once you get in there, you know, after about the first 10 minutes you're in. It's that zero to one. It's the problem. On a much greater scale, I'm not so fear driven anymore. Now it is this sense of responsibility. And that sense develops from having responsibilities for a start. But how does one get responsibility? That process that leads up to it. All of those boring reps, boring reps. And I hope this doesn't sound too circular, but that's what is a hard question. There's no one thing that gets me through. It's just I look at it and I see it's what has to be done. And I want the outcome, but also don't want what happens if I don't succeed. So all of these things come together and it's just in the back of my head. You got to do this. You got to do this. You got to do this. And eventually it gets done or it doesn't. And I'm very confused. Yeah, listen, the theme of our summit is at your best. So what is that your best like and how has that changed over time? So at my best for me for a very long time just meant little things like I don't have to know what day of the week it is. Or I can just go to the grocery store, go on a trip or whatever. I got to have my time. I have a Monday to enjoy my time. It's a good day. And there's no worries. That's what at my best meant for a very long time. Probably when I was released over the last five to seven years minus two and a half. Like the better part of the decade. Now though, very much. So what at my best means is that everyone else, everyone in the house is taken care of. And if I have to lose a little sleep to make that happen or miss out on something, that's what at my best means now. It is very external. It is about the people around me. If everyone else is doing well, then I know that I've done the best I could. I think what would bug me is if someone is disturbed for some reason and it was because of something I didn't do that I should have done. So that's where the big shift has come. It's no longer about how I assess my own time and my own satisfaction. Now it's about the people around me. Oh, go ahead. Yeah, Mark. Why are you so humble? You're so accomplished, but yet you talked about your sobriety and you thought... Nah, man, because I've had my ego dragged through the mud a lot. Few things will humble you like looking like an ass. I just can't. I mean, I'm just trying to think off the top of my head. Really big humbling event was getting knocked out on TV. That'll do it. Because you go and tell all these people to watch you and then you can let yourself get kind of obnoxious about it too and then like that. It's over and it's not the way it... Well, you wanted it to go and you got to remember that that can suck. Being broke after having money and being broke. You know, the up and down and seeing how quickly life can change. Remembering... This is... I think when people say this a lot of times what I'm about to say, I think what they're trying to do is kind of bring you down in a negative way. But remembering where I came from. And interacting with many of those people still. I know that there's no guarantee, right? Just because it's going well now doesn't mean it's always going to go well. I never forget that I just always feel like I'm one step away from anything putting me into a really bad position. One of the reasons I stopped drinking, for example, you know about the law of large numbers, right? You know, there's a chance a thing will happen and the more trials you have, the closer the outcomes look like the theoretical outcomes. So like you flip a coin, you flip it 10 times, you get ahead 7 times, assuming you're not dealing with some shady characters, that coin is not rigged. But you flip it 50 times, it's more like 26 and 24. And then overall you get closer and closer to that one half. So crazy stat, most people who drive under the influence don't get pulled over. It's terrible, it's like 1 in 2800. And unfortunately, you know, I'd driven under the influence when I was drinking and get lucky. Get lucky 4, 5, 6, who knows? A lot of times. And it's like, well how many times can we outrun the law of large numbers? And so I stop. And I tell that story to set up this part where I worked with a guy. Clearly the guy had a problem, but I worked with a guy when I was working at Starbucks. He had 5 DUIs. I'm like, man, the only difference between you and me though is that I was lucky. You are lucky. When you remember it, all it takes is, some people ain't even bad, just wrong plays wrong time. And you got to remember that you're not that different. You may have made some different choices in accountability and that's great, but it doesn't elevate your value relative to other people kind of intrinsically. You know, there's like that human value thing and there's like, oh, how much money do you make? Two different things. But remembering the first one, that is key. I think more people need to remember that the only reason, you know, you're lucky, where were you born, who were your parents. All this stuff comes together and it keeps a perspective that allows me to remember I'm not anyone special pretty much. Yeah, go ahead, Mike. One of the things you talk about often is the concept of sustained excellence. And I think one of the traits of that is being fearless, like just seeing all the competitions you've done and being in the military is, how do you continue to grow and how do you remain fearless as you can do through your life? Funny answer here, I think. I know I'm a da. I mean, we're all going to die, right? Some people are in denial of that somewhere, but one day I'm going to die and on top of that, what is going to take 100 years, maybe 150, unless I do something really good or really bad, no one's going to ever remember me. So that means I got to make the most of my time here and not waste it and I value that time. So I have to try at least to do the things that I want to do and to do them to a high and a low level. I'm like, okay, I didn't just dabble here. I picked up a new skill. I met some new people. It's the most interesting man in the world used to say, I beefed up my obituary. Like that kind of thing. So just remembering my mortality is a really powerful driver. It's also why I'm just, procrastination is like just an awful habit in general. And the distractions of, are all around there. So, like if you really just wanted to do nothing, you could just sit and never get out of bed and on your computer between the Netflix and the Hulu and the social media. There's all this stuff that'll just take, take, take, take, take. How are you going to give change from a consumer mindset to a producer mindset? And remember, you only got a finite amount of time to produce that right there. You'll never want for any challenge in the world ever again, if you think that way. You've only got a little bit of time and most people are just going to be consuming and you can figure out a way to produce. Yeah, so Ed, this is kind of following what you're saying just now. We look at the list of things that you've done in the beginning. It's on there. Boxing, physics, now writing, and you're talking about only having a finite amount of time, right? How do you go about making the decision of what the next thing is going to be? Say the hardest thing is to start. It's like, what am I going to start next? Man, I wish when I was a kid that I had got a chance to do stuff because I feel like I'm just playing catch-up now. And that's why I keep doing so many other things. As far as figuring out what I'll take on next, there's the path that is grooved out. And it kind of makes the most sense based on your previous set of skills. And then there is this path and it's a jungle and you got to decide do you really want to go through the jungle. For example, here is a jungle that I'm pretty sure I'm going to not... I'm just going to stop because I keep running the walls. I really wanted to learn Russian for a while. It was really fascinating to me. Got a guy on the gym who speaks Russian. It'd be easy. But Russian is just difficult. And it's difficult without the payoff, the Spanish that I know I can use that I've used it here in Phoenix. And this is in America. I'm never going to use that. But the fiction, that's why I carry this notebook around by the way. Not to take notes while writing, but I was sitting up there before they came and got me. I was just taking notes on the next scene. That makes sense. I wanted to do fiction. I've always wanted to write fiction. I stumbled into this nonfiction world, which is cool, but fiction is interesting to me. And that's what I'm always wanted to do. So that's what I do not. And here's kind of a cool test to try. If you're trying to think about the next thing. Think about what you wanted to do when you were like 10, 12, right when you had agency, but no real responsibilities. What did you do for fun? I wrote stories. Back before computers and before toms, I used to steal rungs of paper. And those, those bonders that were like, it was like this weird kind of fake plastic that you opened up and had the metal. And I was right. Don't think they were any good, but I wanted to try it and we'll see how we can, how we do now. But that is, that's kind of the path to go. You look at what you find interesting. Then you decide how difficult is it? Is it worth trying out? Are you going to get something from it? And then if it checks those boxes, do it. If it only checks that interest box, but that difficulty boxes and worth it, you let that go. And if it doesn't have either one, you move one and you'll find it. This is so much, so much in the world to figure out and do and have fun with. So you talk about the small little boring things and you reference it to the box and what are the small boring things you do to process it and how do we continue to do some practice? So, so what the sobriety thing? I kind of cheated in the first year and a half because I was super busy. I didn't have time to go anywhere. And when I finally went out 15 months in, it was to watch John Jones and the Daniel Comey fight, the first one, anybody who's fans MMA. And it was alcohol on the table and I was like, I just don't want that. It was a weird thought process. I was like, it's weird man, it's here, but not interesting. So I can answer this question how I approached it initially, but now it's part of me. I've got my sobriety date tattooed on my arm, little hashtags for each year. When I first started, I knew that I had to make sobriety a habit the same way I made drinking a habit. In retrospect, I kind of did that automatically by just not drinking, but there's more to it. I learned how at first small steps and then on and on how to actually talk to people and interact with people without alcohol being the pretense. Let's get some drinks. A lot of people are one happy hour away, one missed happy hour away from being lonely and I didn't want to be that guy. I didn't want to be boring either when I was not drinking. So I spent a lot of time consciously trying to meet people during the day, coffee shops, learning to talk, learning to connect, really have a conversation for no other reason. Then I'm not trying to drink. I want to say I like them because some of them I don't talk to anymore, but it really helped. And so to bring all this together and not have like a clear answer. And I don't know how much stock you put into like the Myers-Briggs thing. I'm an ENTJ. One of those things they say about ENTJs rather ENTJs in a room is that like we think out loud and then as we're talking, the idea becomes crystal clear. So it's become crystal clear to me and it draws my wife's question here because he's the opposite. I identified some other positive habit. When you remove something, you got to fill it with something. And so I found a really small, easy one and just stuck with that, stuck with that, stuck with that. And then when that became no issue, you stick with something else. I was never like, I don't want to step foot in the bar, but I also have no reason to be there at this point in my life. But I can go into a bar. There can't be alcohol around. It's no big deal because I started with this small thing of just talking, trying to talk, which is like people hate that small talk thing. I love small talk. It's a good talk. Yeah, go ahead. I've seen many of the boxing matches. This may be a stupid question, but all of the stuff. When boxers come in, we spoke about the display a lot of body language and all of that. But in majority of the bouts, you see when boxes walk in, they have the cape down and they're not looking at anybody. Both the boxers are not actually looking at anybody. Is it the show for the audience or is there body language? Is there a language which is communicating between the two boxers? So like there's two things going on at the same time and you got to like fight them. On the one hand, you don't want to think about anything else but this fight coming up. Some guys come out and they really relax or whatever. And sometimes they're like dabbing people up. But for the most part, you're trying to like stay locked in and not be distracted. And then there's the other part where you're like, really don't want to think about this going badly. And there's a possibility it could go badly. So you don't want to think about that either. So you got this thing you don't want to think about what you got to think about and you don't want to focus on anyone else. But that's the only like it's just a cacophony. And you can't make out anything individually. You just see everything. What's trying to happen here is you're really just trying to create this space. And in this space, nothing else matters because boxing is really weird. If anyone's ever boxed, you'll know what I'm talking about. What am I supposed to say? But if you haven't tried to imagine this, no one is doing anything else but looking just at you. That's it. You are almost naked. And there's a chance you're going to get embarrassed, right? All of this is going on. It's like I wrote about this once just just to myself and I was going to use it somewhere. But like there are like five fundamental fears. I don't think I'll get them all. It's like self mutilation or not self. It's like mutilation, restraint, invasion. Like something gets in you. Loss of autonomy. I'm almost there. But boxing brings up like every fear, all the ones. And not the match itself, but like as you're leading up to the anticipation of this thing, that you can't run away. Something, you're restrained. I mean, like that's the part that just even now when I think about it, just they put you in these gloves. And they got to put the gloves on before the fight goes. That's obvious. What you don't know, what a lot of people don't know is that once they did the official comms checks, make sure there's a good tape, you're in. Like you can't take that tape off. If you got to go to the bathroom, right? That's it. Funny story, a guy trained with him, he had to go to the bathroom once the gloves on. So, you know, coach had to help him out. So, you got all these things going on and you don't want to give him that fear. You don't even want to give it energy, but it's just, it's loud. It's loud and you can't ignore it. So the best thing you're trying to do is just turn everything into a blur. It's like, look over here. I know all these people are about to stare at this spot. Kind of deal with it and block it out. Maybe it helps. Some guys, it doesn't. But you see, you know, when guys are just zone in, all it takes is when we get in there, a lot of guys have said this, I agree with you too. You want to get hit. Not so hard that the fight's over, but just enough to know, okay, I'm in a fight. This is not paper. I'm not going to crumble. Let's go. And now that brings you real front and center. But up until that point, all you've got, you got this long, they just like, they draw it out. I'm watching a fight and I hate how long the opening stuff is drawn out. So I know what it's like. And I know what it's like in there too. It's like, why can we just start the fight? Okay. No problem. Oh yeah. Go ahead, Mirta. You briefly touched on it that you grew up next to a crack house, substance abuse issues. Like you are the person you are today and you've learned the lessons that, you know, from that upbringing partially. And it's made you into this super centered person that you are today. You mentioned you have children. How do you find the balance of like, trying to teach your children the same valuable lessons that you've learned from all those horrible experiences while obviously they live a very different life than what you did? How do you teach them those things in a much more safe and secure upbringing? So, you familiar with survivor's bias? The idea is like, okay, you know, we look at the people who succeed as an example of the process and everything that led up to it being successful. So in this context, one might look at me and go, well, you know what you need to do? You need to move out of the suburbs and drop yourself right down next to a crack house and drop yourself a pet crackhead while you're at it. Okay? Well, a lot of people forget. Most people who grow up in my environment, they are not anything close. And while I know guys, when I was doing research for my book, I just wanted to look stuff up to it. You know, I started going down memory lane and looking up some names. And I'd seen a bunch of guys in prison for different things. So my challenge is not so much because the research, even if the research wasn't clear on this, I've seen it with my own eyes, but the research is clear on this too. The research is very clear. That environment messes you up pretty bad. And I'm going to deal with a lot of things too. My challenge is not how to teach them the lessons from that life. I don't want them to know anything about that because love is a lot better. The challenge for me is how do I get him to know that exists and to know what those people are like and to develop a sympathy and an empathy for them without him getting too close to it, you know? I want him to know the stove is hot, but I don't want him to touch it. Problem is, as a good friend of mine said, when you play in the mud with white gloves, the mud never gets a gloveier. So I thought about this and talked to my wife about it. Probably going to take him to the boxing gym. You know why? The boxing gym is great because it's this weird microcosm where the drug dealers and the cops are training and nobody is on this. Nobody comes in trying to bring the business. It's like a second John Wake at the Continental. That's what it's like. We don't conduct business here, right? Continental. You get to see that. Now, boxing is great for this because it's this hard, painful thing, but it's conducted with respect because it has to be. Otherwise, it devolves into a street fight and those don't have rules. Those don't have dignity. Those don't have respect. So what I'm doing with my son is introducing him to boxing. If he wants to compete, I'm not going to encourage or discourage, but I will probably have an argument and see what happens. But I guess to the crux, it is to introduce hardship strategically and with awareness because the analogy I use, if I give you a weight, this like 2x times your max, you're not going to be able to move that weight. Nothing will happen. No matter how hard you push, it's not going to go anywhere. Not only that, but you might hurt yourself trying to move it. But if I step it up incrementally, okay, you're going to get stronger. You're going to be able to eventually deal with the other stuff. I think a lot of things we call trauma are a lot like that, that people get hurt really early and really intensely and they can't recover from it. Not that these things are ever good, but it's a lot different if I pick a guy out the crowd and go smack him up a few times and call him names. He's going to be mad at me. He'll recover if I do that to a five-year-old a few times. But what the heck happened? And now that they're too young to grasp and I don't want to never have to deal with that. All that together, put a bow on it, is I'm introducing hardship strategically and with love as opposed to I'm just going to throw you to the wolves and hope you come back with a cape. To close, man. Talk about beefing up your obituary. It's a great one. What do you want your obituary to say? Oh, man. You know what? I just hope that on my way out, because when I'm gone, I'm gone. I hope on my way out, I hope my kid remembers that I was like a present happy dude because I don't have no real memories of my dad. I have trouble remembering what he looks like. My mom don't really have pleasant memories. My wife, when I met her dad, already passed, I have figured out over the years that her and her mom and hers, they don't have a good relationship with their mom. For all intents and purposes, he's got no grandparents. As I get older, I don't want that. Okay, hey. I kind of, I don't mind my parents. I ain't got to like us, but I don't want to kind of excuse this. I want to talk with a phone kind of deal. But as far as when I die, man, it'll be cool. No one's going to read it. No one's going to know. I mean, maybe I'll invent something cool or do something really, really cool, but not really worried. When I'm gone, I'm gone and it's going to take a generation or two before it won't matter. I know that's not a cool answer, man. It's real. But like, I think a lot about that. Like, I'm 40, right? I'm about halfway done here. Hopefully not halfway done. I think I want to live to 120, but that's just me. You're third. But I think about the time I got left, but once it's up, it's up. I guess I'd like to write a best selling fiction book. Oh, there you go. And yeah, maybe one day I'll get back around to Russian, but it is just a miserable. It's hard. My high school was unique. I got to take Japanese and I took it for four years. And then when my first try at college, before I failed out, I took it for another year or so. And I was really like, I was that dude, man, what do they call him? Otaku's. I loved the Japanese culture. I thought it was really cool. And then it hit me one day. This is a very difficult language and only one country speaks it and a lot of them speak English. And on top of that, that's a long flight. I probably don't go. So I lost interest in Japanese. Russian is a little like that, except I don't want to get thrown in for just being an American. I don't know if that is what will happen. I know some fighters that have gone over there had no problems whatsoever. I just hope, man, people remember that I tried to help. Well, the book that everybody here is going to get is called Hard Lessons from the Hurt Business. And I know how I already worked on it. And I'm just really grateful that you decided to come here. By the way, Ed was also going to stay with us, come to dinner. He'll be with us tomorrow. So he's going to be a regular attendee. He wanted to be a attendee the whole time. And I said, let's make it like a little bit of a surprise. I want to tell you guys a story. This is cool. So first he invites me and I said, great. And then I'm like, man, this is really cool. You invited me. Do you want me to do a presentation? He goes, yeah. So I'm putting together the presentation. I get an email. Hey, hey, I got this idea. I got this idea. We had James Clear do this thing last year. You want to come and do that? I said, do I ever? Because this is a lot easier than creating. No, it worked out, dude. It did work out. Yeah. Yeah. But he'll be with us the whole time. You're all going to get his book. I'd like you to like order it on Amazon in addition to getting it for me. That stuff matters. It should be a best seller. I know it's not like, I mean, it kind of matters, I guess. I want to support Ed and his work for all that he gives to us and gives us so many people like super inspiring dude. Like just amazingly inspiring to me and so many men. You inspire me, man. Yeah, I appreciate it. Give it up for Ed Latimore. Awesome. It is the end of the podcast club. Thank you for being a member of the end of the podcast club. If you are, send me a note. Ryan at learningleader.com. Let me know what you learned from this great conversation with Ed Latimore. A few takeaways from my notes. How you feel about doing something is irrelevant if it is vital to your success. You might have to bump into a wall a bunch of times. A lot of people don't want to do that. If you're willing to do the hard things, you'll be a better person for it. That is the difference between great and good. And then the heaviest way to the gym is the front door. You got to get started. Lace up the shoes. Once you get moving, the momentum will carry you a bit, but you got to get started. Start the thing. Whatever it is that you're hesitating to do, just get started. Start before you are ready and figure it out as you go. And then what do you want your obituary to say? He said, I didn't just dabble here. I love it. I think the biggest difference between people who leave a positive dent in the world and those who don't is the willingness to fully commit everything you have to something. To put your whole heart and soul into it. And then Wintour once said that people respond well to those that are sure of what they want, what people hate most is indecision. So don't just dabble with things, make a decision and commit everything you have to it. Once again, I would say thank you so much for continuing to spread the message and telling a friend or two, hey, you should listen to this episode of the Learning Leader Show with Ed Latimore. I think it will help you become a more effective leader because you continue to do that. And you also go to Spotify and Apple Podcast. You subscribe to the show. You rate it. Hopefully five stars and you leave a thoughtful review by doing all of that. You are continually giving me the opportunity to do what I love on a daily basis. And for that, I will forever be grateful. Thank you so, so much. Talking to you. Can't wait. Thank you.