Fit Rich Life | Justin David Carl | Episode 520
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Hello, and welcome to choose a fire today. In the show, we have my good friend, Justin and David carl. He is the founder of fit rich life, and he is really a jack of all trades.

And i'm just so interested and intrigued by Justin's transformation that really has been over his entire adult life, both with money and with fittings, and that these principles translate IT actually from one to another. Justin has gone from working in the hollywood nightlife business, throwing the hottest alist parties in hollywood and struggling with addiction and other darkness to finding fire and essentially super charging his entire life. And it's really been a radical transformation.

And I think you're both can enjoy his story and the absolutely incredible action will take ways. And he has this going to be a really good one. And with that, welcome to choose that fine.

Just son IT is so good to see you. This is awesome. We've caught up a couple times of the last couple years.

but it's been a while. Yeah, it's such a pleasure to be on the show. bread. I just have to take a moment to pay on march to choose fy because choice if I really played a massive role in my financial dependence journey.

IT was literally the first financial independence podcast that I started listening to at the end of twenty seventeen, a few months or several months after you had started the show. And I was like, oh my god, like I found a podcast that is teaching me the fundamentals of financial dependence. It's providing the energy and the inspiration to get going on this journey and stay on the journey. And literally every week, part of my like money makeover was making sure I was fully caught up on two of so I just wanted deeply thank you, brad and john athan and everyone behind the choose if I pocket because it's just impacted my life in such a huge and incredible way that like i'm just so deeply and forever grateful for your show so thank you or have me on it's a true honor to be here.

Well, that is that's really something. And you know it's amazing, I think and i'm sure you find this being a podcast or like you just don't know the ripple effect of talking into these microphones and IT really is. It's extraordinary.

I think the reason why I do this is so that people can listen and get up off the couch and take action, right? Like that is the key to everything. And you talked about your money makeover, right? And like, what god you started so you found, choose your eyes somehow. What was the weakening moment.

I guess? Yeah, so kind unfolded over a few months. So at the time I discovered financial independent IT was towards the end of twenty seventeen, and at that time was actually eighty thousand dollars in debt and six years behind on my taxes.

And I really my money and financial situation was a complete dump, their fire. And i've always been a similar to you, a big fan of ten ferrous. And I I was listening to tiffs podcast and he interviewed this guide, mister money mustache, and that was like my first introduction to what financial independence was.

And he just like hit me like a freight train because i'd never heard someone talk about money in the way that he and I didn't do anything with IT at that time. I was like, oh, that was a really interesting podcasts, was really intrigued. And then I kind of like, parked IT in the back of my mind, this mister money mustache guy.

And then fast forward, literally probably four to six months later, I was finally cleaning up my taxes. And I was like, I need some inspiration to, like, clean this up, because I was really scared. I was so deep and dead.

I was so behind in my text, I felt like I could never crawl my way out of this whole. And I was like, i'm a mr. Money must stash to, like, get some inspiration. And the first article I stumbled upon is the faithful one that changed many people's life, the shockingly simple math behind early retirement.

And when I read that article, literally, my mind was blown because I was like, oh my god, if I had understood this in my twenty is like, I be a millionaire or multi millionaire now. Because, like ernie, money has never been a problem for me. It's the management and like investment of the money.

I just like, was a terrible steward of my money so I started raining his article and then I literally went on my podcast player on my phone and I I just was like, financial independence and like, choose if I came up and I was like, oh, there's a show about this and so then I just like started binging the show like crazy. I would spend, like, you know, as many shows as I could get in in a day until I was completely like caught up. And then every week I was like, and anticipating with excitement, like the next episode to come out. And so that's kind of how I discovered IT all. And that was like the beginning of my financial independence journey and what i'd like to call like my fire awakening.

Yeah, there's so much there. I mean, first, just like you shockingly simple math behind early retirement, that was like the lighting board, one of the very few, the handful of like seminal moments for my financial life. There's just something really special about that article and you know how you describe like it's such an interesting way, a terrible steward of my money.

And I think a lot of people can relate to that, right? Like especially like you said, hey, I never had trouble earning money like there are plenty of people with nice six figure plus incomes, certain ly combined incomes, who they don't have much to show for IT, right? And and in your case, you had eighty thousand dollars of dead plus six years bind on taxes like I can as a cpa.

My brain wants to explode but not here to castigate obviously just more to like, okay, actionable because I suspect there are some people listening to this who are actually behind and taxes. And be curious, your definition of that is IT. Hey, I literally didn't file that. Don't things or not pay that? Where were you?

So I was working in the hollywood nightclub business. I was like an independent contractor throwing these parties in hollywood. And like I just stopped finding my taxes and then like one year, I didn't file them because like, here's the deeper back story, my parents often were behind on their taxes.

And so I kind of inherited that same pattern. So one year turned into two years, turned into three years, and then each year I didn't file IT IT got scary and scarier to even approach. And so I just decided to not deal with IT. And instead I would just suppress IT with drug and alcohol. You, I just like, i'm machined my money situation.

I'm ashamed that I stopped out a stanford and didn't finish my childhood dream, because how I got into hollywood nightlife is I decided to take some time off to figure out what I wanted to do after college, because I done some investment banking internships. And I was just like, this is not what I want to do. So I had two quarters to go, and I went to stand from, as I can, when to take IT you're off and just deal with some family stuff and figure things out.

And then i'll come back. But then I fell into the world of hollywood knights life, started making really good money, got addicted to the lifestyle, you know, the power, the social power, you know, throw in parties where celebrities were coming in, millionaires and billionaire and athletes. And IT was just so, so seductive.

And then, like, I had this dream of going to stanford and graduating in the night. I just like, as the years went bias, like I never finished that dream. And so instead of going back and dealing with that, I just would consume drugs and alcohol, suppress those emotions. You know, feeling like I had left something really important on done summer to like how that then translated to me maybe my taxes .

on done yeah oh my god. I've got like seven different lines of questioning that I that I want to go down. But let's start with, when I hear you describe IT, it's like the shame spiral, right? It's like one kind of negative thing happened, right? Like I didn't file my taxes that one year.

And then IT turned into two. IT turned into three. Then you were ashamed of the dead. I was ashamed of my money. I stuck my head in the sand.

I then started trying to paper over this with, like you said, drugs and alcohol, like it's that spiral of shame. And I know for a fact that there definitely people listening to that can relate to that like you can keep digging. That's a very plausible alternative based on, like your life, that sliding doors moment, like you could have win a lot of different ways. What do you think I like? Your lowest point was what helped you get out of that shame spiral?

yeah. So i've had this interesting habit in the few different careers that i've been in where I kind of would do an analysis. So when I was in investment banking, I looked to the people that we're like ten to fifteen years ahead of me, asking myself, is that the life that I want? And in investment banking, its crazy hours you make can sing amount of money.

But the people that were ten, twenty years ahead of me, they're overweight. They're like premature ally bolding. They are just so stressed out, they weren't spending meantime with their family.

And so I was like, this is not the live path career I want to go down. There's a million ways to make money. I'll go figure something out. So I did the same thing when I was in the nightly b business. I did IT kind of equality of analysis.

And I looked at the people that were five, ten, fifteen years ahead of me, and I always knew that I wanted to be a great husband and live a life of well being. So even though I was drinking and party, I was still very into, like fitness, you know, working out six, seven days a week, eating chicken, broccoli six days a week and then one cheap day. But basically all the men in the nigh club industry that were married and or have kids, they either got out of the business or they became terrible husbands and fathers because there's just too much temptation.

There's drugs, alcohol, girls, temptation, temptation. I was like, I want to get married one day, like I have to get out of this. So I had that realization like literally probably within the first two years.

And I also reflected on myself. I was like, i'm literally becoming like five to ten percent worse of a person per year. And if I spend this out over twenty years, i'm gonna be a terrible, terrible person.

Yeah, it's going to have negatively pretty quick.

exactly. And so the first step for me, and I was so addicted to the money, the lifestyle, the social power, exeter up, that IT took me a long time. And IT wasn't until really about the seven year that I was like, I need to get out of this before it's too late.

And so the very first step was I stopped smoking marijuana because I was smoking marijuana every single day. And marijuana kept me just comfortable enough not to make a change. And so when I stop smoking marijuana, I fell til like four months of, like suicide depressions.

So basically all that stuff I ve been suppressing for like five, six, seven years started to come up. And carl, you you know, one of the fathers of psychology, he has this great quote where he says, depression is mother nature's s way of resetting the psyche. So I literally feel like that four months of deep depression was like my psyche was literally rebooting, because I had the process all that shame and guilt.

Around my money around leaving stanford unfinished. And so I had to go through that. But then on the other side of that four months, I was like, I need to see if I can go back to stanford and complete that childhood dream because there's such huge power in completion.

You know that one of my firm beliefs is, if you have something that's like left on done, and it's really important, it's really hard to move forward in life until you go and complete that. So I was super scare, but I was like, let me just call stanford and see if I can come back and got on the phone with like, hey, i've been gone for about seven years. I'm thinking of coming back.

Is there any chance I can come back? And I was like, sure they are going to say, no way, it's been way too long. But they're like, yeah, absolutely. We have people that have been gone for a quarter and people that have been gone for twenty years coming back next quarter.

So we love to have you back like you just had to fill out this simple forum and like talk to an emissions person and we can totally make this happen and was just like, oh my god. So i'm not even like in the middle of the pack. I'm not the person who's been gone the longest.

There is like people like fifteen, twenty years coming back. And so I was like OK, I don't know what i'm going na do next like after the hollywood nights b business. But I know that if I go back to stanford and I put myself an environment where i'm round, you know the brightest people that i've ever been around, the people that like, have great hearts up to beautiful things in this world, i'll figured that out. And that process is like how I started to turn my life around.

Yeah, that's really something I love how you first started with, like the intellectual side of IT, right? Like, and I feared that that was the answer you're going going to give me and that was the end of IT. Like, I looked at the other people around me and I didn't want.

Like, which is actually a really wonderful take away, Frankly, in and of itself for a lot of people, right, which is, hey, that's a cool exercise whatever career you're in now maybe look at those people who are five, ten, fifteen years ahead of you and say, is that what I want my life to look like? And if it's distinctly not, and that might be one of those shocking moments where you wake up and say I need an off ramp t for this, right? Like IT was enough to be tomorrow, does enough to be even six months or now, but I need a plan because there is a strong likelihood that's going to be where I end up. So I love that. But then, like he said, while nobody wants to experience four months of depression, like as a general fact, that sounds like that was that emotional reckoning that you really needed to change everything and realized just how deep you had doug, your wife and your money at that point all of my brain .

hundred percent. yeah. And i'll make one kind of powerful connection that I think would be valuable for the audience. So I knew I want to go stanford from about like third or fourth grade, and I would literally asked. So my dad went to stanford, and I was, you know, inspired to go to stanford.

So I would literally based every decision from, like, I don't know, forth or fifth grade through twelve grade on whether or not this would help me get into stanford or hinder me. So every major decision, like, do I join this extra curricular activity, or do I do this or that? And I would run through that filter.

And so my senior year, I applied to stanford, and I got on the weight less, but I dining IT in. And then they only let in eight people off the weight list that year. And I think I was like, number sixteen.

So I dinner IT in. So I have been working on the school for like seven years. And I missed IT. I was like, almost but not quite good ough.

So oh my god.

yeah. So that was kind of like my first massive failure and setback and probably kind of put me into a bit of a depression. And you know, after I had been moping around for a couple of weeks trying to figure out what I was gone to do next, my mom came to me and he said, just then you can let this break you, or you can let IT make you in the choices yours.

And that hit me like a lightning ball. And I was like, i'm gonna make this, make me so i'm going to take a gap year. I'm apply again, early decision, and i'm onna try again.

And so I redid my S A T. Got all new letters of recommendation, review, all my essays. I literally poured my heart into my essays to the point I still distinctly remember crying. Why am writing them? Because i'm pouring so much emotion into them about something like things I went through.

And in the end, stanford actually called me, and they Normally just send you a letter, but they called me and they said, hey, Justin, we just want to let you know that your application was one of the best applications we received this year. Welcome to stanford. And I was just like, I start cry, jump in hooton and hollering.

And so for me, that was like, that first hit the connection I making. It's never too late. Like, try again. Like IT doesn't matter if you fail or you dig yourself in a hole, you get to decide, is this experience gonna like, break me, or is onna make me into something even more powerful or inspiring, or you know, the next evolution?

Well, oh my god. yeah. I mean, let's be clear. And what's so interesting is that if you were close enough, and I know you won't say that, so i'll say that for you, if you were close enough that you were even weight listed at sanford IT means you are an extraordinary student, right?

Like anyone who understands the elite coach game knows the acceptance rate at schools of that absolute tran and just have difficult to is to even get on the willa so somebody like that, john, could have very easily said, well, i'm fantastic. Screw these guys, right? Like i'm nearly the Victorian or or thereabout my seat scores through this.

Like I can go just about anywhere. Screw stanford. That would have been a very plausible outcome, Frankly. But then your mom comes in and says, you can let this break you or you can let me make you. The choice is yours. I mean, i'm getting chills just hearing that and then that you redouble your efforts because there's the fixed mindset versus growth.

Coin set IT would be very easy for, again, student x, who was sort enough and did well enough to get weakness at its severing, which means you have a shot to get into any of the elite schools because that once you get to that level, it's essentially a crap suit. But you were at that echelon to then go back and put in all that work like IT would have been easy to just take the fixed mindset. Oh, i'm smart.

I'm going to do whatever I want. Or you can take the growth mindset version. And I mean, that internal itself has so much about you as a person. I can even tell you like, I hope, I hope people both. I understand that just about you generally, but more so about this podcast about action and take away.

So if you ever have something in your brain of I am X, I am smart, I am good at why i'm whatever you have actually limited yourself, because you're not going to do what IT takes to get Better. And I mean, Frankly, doesn't like I put myself in that fixed mindset when I was cira high school, like I thought of myself is really, really smart. And like i'm not sure that I chAllenged myself as much as I could have and I do regret that Frankly. So like I would love for everybody to take away that. Like whenever you find that whenever you come up against like I M X and like you trying to like make yourself feel Better about yourself, that's a point you should wake up and say, oh, there's something here I need to and i'd love to hear your thoughts not know I talk for a minute there, but I love to hear your .

thoughts on growth verses fix yes. So i'm a huge fan of growth mindset by Carol duck pressure. She's party stanford a one night.

So yes, yeah, I got really lucky in that my parents always, they told me I was smart and capable, but they also just instill in me this like idea that no matter what, if I just kept working at IT, I could figure that out, I could overcome IT. So, you know, I always considered myself like smarter than average, but not necessarily the smartest person in the room. But I knew that I was likely the most driven person in the room.

And so that would push me to do whatever IT would take to, you know, perform at the highest level in whatever I was going at. So if that meant studying harder, studying smarter, you know, practicing soccer in between practices, because I and I played soccer growing up, know I did whatever IT takes. And that belief has served me sometimes because when I have failed, it's not like, oh, I guess i'm just not smart of this.

It's like, no, if I put in the effort, if I study, if I apply, if I learn by doing, which is another really important thing to me is like you can read all the books in the world. But until you get out there and do IT, you have to pair both learning with doing, because the doing teaches you new stuff, which then unlocks more than learning. And it's this iteration process where you learn, you do, you learn you do.

And like that feedback loop can then be supercharged by then having like a mentor or a coach, right? So that's like another form of learning. And growth is like having that outside person spur you on, right? And so like, I consider myself so lucky that I had a mom who had the wisdom to say that to me and said, like, oh, it's okay.

You can just go to another school like, they're all the same but he was like, no, just not your dream. Do you still want IT? And I was like, heck, you want IT and cool if I try again, I don't get in, at least I tried. So huge fan of growth mindset. And that's why I think for anybody, no matter where they're at in life, with their fitness, with their money, with their relationship, any aspect of your life, if you're not at the level that you want to be or you've had a major setback, if you approach IT with that growth mindset, like the more effort, the more strategic effort, action learning that you apply to IT. You can overcome just about anything within reason, of course.

Yeah whole hardly agreed and I will link up to that book in the shown out. So it's mindset, the new psychology of success by carl dweck. And yeah I mean, I think that would be a good takeaway for I am really for anyone listening but especially parents is don't praise fixed things.

Don't praise oh, you so smart because then that limits that, right? So hey, I think of myself now is smart. I've been told for my entire life i'm smart.

So how do I prove that? I'm smart, I get a so how do I do that? I don't take the hardest st classes. I limit myself. That's how that kind of minds that works as opposed to praising hard work and effort, which is kind of like the system versus goals kind of thing. When you praise the system and the inputs, well, you'll be shocked at the outputs when compounded down the road.

But if you just base IT on, hey, this is my one final goal, well, what are you do when you hit tecle, right? Like even up to the olympic medals. We've talked about this a number of times here on the parks.

Hey, my goal is to win an olympic metal. Okay, well, you did. What to help do you do now you've built your entire life around that goal as opposed to a system of, right, like and just you live and breathe this kind of them yeah.

the reason i'm laughing is because like, what are you do when you hit financial independence, right? For some people, that the ten, fifteen, twenty plus years goal and then they get there and then they're like OK. Now what? And so this is why I think mindset and seeing life as this never ending my journey of learning, healing, growth, transformation and transcendence to the next level in so many different areas of your life, right? And when you approach IT with that like exploration growth mindset, it's like you're on this never ending adventure so you achieve financial independence and it's like, okay, cool.

Like i've accumulated this massive money making machine that can like support me now how am I going to bringing in a positive impact to other people to the world? And you know, I think that's really important for people think about as they are going through the financial dependence journey because I think a lot of people that like overarching goal, they get there and then they're I I don't know what the heck to do with my life and they kind of get stuck in this weird like, okay, what am I doing now? Who am I now that i've achieved this, like now that I no longer have this job or this big goal? And so you whether it's the olympic gold metal or achieve in financial independence, it's like really just embracing the journey of life.

Thanks for listening to choose a vy and for all your support of our mission here, the absolute best way to support choose vy is when you sign up for your next rewards credit card to use our cards page and choose about a come such cards. I keep this page finally updated so we should always be the top resource for you. Thanks for being part of our community and for your support. Yeah, I love that you're brought that up because I would have never thought about IT in that sense.

But it's also an interesting wrinkle where system versus goals when you're talking about five, right, because as you're describing and in kind of like the negative regard with beautifully so that even though it's like you said ten, fifteen and twenty years, it's still is that finite goal if that's IT, if it's just hitting a number on a piece of paper so you could kind of delude yourself into believing is a system because it's a longer period time, but if it's just about reaching that number on a spreading, let's be clear, that's just a goal. And then what do you do that next day? Which is why, like you and I and people like, got to spend so much time trying to think about life, right, in the intersection of how does life play into, hey, we get, if we're lucky, nine decades on this planet, right?

And to wish away any period of IT, even to do something amazing like reach five and then have nothing on the other side like that, seems like the biggest cosmic waste of time and energy that I could imagine like you need to put in the time and the thought of what is life going to look like on the other side. And I think something you said earlier was it's never too late to radical transform, right? And and you talk specifically about your money, your health and your fitness.

And i'd love to kind of take us into that because I suspect that there are many people listening to this believe it's too late for them at listen in one of those three areas. And you speak so beautifully and illustrated about the intersection of these and how a lot of like what you can take from being good at one or getting good, not being good, but getting good at one, can really plan to the other aspects as well. So let's let's move there. Love to here just kind of your overview thoughts of that.

yeah. So i'll back into with a little bit of like story telling about my own journey. So I like to say that up until about thirty one, thirty two, I was kind of fat, kind of fat, so like no one would say is overweight or anything.

But I know I had enough love that the ABS were not showing and I was on those people who tried every diet, tried every workout. You took all the supplemental like you. I was working out seven days a week for two to three hours a day. And I was like, still not achieving the level fitness that I wanted to achieve.

And so as kind of a last ditch effort, as like we'll let me try working with a fitness coach and basically I heard online coach and working with him in six months, I drop thirty pounds of body fat and went from around eighteen percent body fat, like such ten percent in six months. And I was like, what the heck? Like i've been working on this for, like, fifteen plus years.

Like why did I wait so long to work with a fitness coach? So that was like my fitness transformation. You know, i'd always been active in working out, but I didn't IT get to the level that i've been up for the last ten years up until working with a coach.

And I know you guys say IT on the show, but like, you don't know what you don't know until, you know IT, right? And it's like there's just these little pieces in the fitness journey. You know, one of the things I have, like kind of how fitness and money and wealth are related is most people radially underestimate how much they eat.

And they've done studies on this by fifty percent fifty five, zero. We've done tons of like double blind studies on this. People literally underestimate by fifty percent, and people also underestimate how much they are spending.

So this is why most people, like I think the average savings rate in amErica is like five percent. But then there's a huge percentage of people that are in massive debt, myself included, at one point in my life. So we underestimate our spending undered say our eating.

And the two of those have huge impacts on our fitness and our money. So as I discovered financial independence, you know what I started with my fitness is my fitness coach. He had me start to track my nutrition in addition to my workouts.

And what we discovered, and I mention this earlier in the podcast, is I would eat perfectly, like, awesome, six days week, dead, seriously, chicken and broccoli for every meal. And then I i'd have this cheat meal, or excuse me, cheap day on sunday. And when I tracked IT, I was eating anywhere between five thousand and ten thousand calories a day.

So no wonder I wasn't getting the apps that I want because I was putting myself in a choric surplus. You have to put yourself in a choric deficit to lose body fat. So each year, that's why I was getting a little bit fatter.

I was trying to out work my diet, but I couldn't. So then pairing this with my financial independence journey, as I discovered to that five mister money mustache, I started tracking my spending and my earning. So like, just like I was tracking my food, I was tracking my expenses and my earning.

And so then I started to realize, wait a minute, if I can get my savings rate up to, like, eighty and ninety percent, I can totally turn my entire life around because it's just like math. Okay, cool. Well, and this is where the growth mindset is in.

I was like, i'm gonna have as much fun and feel as free as possible while going down. This five journey just can make a big game, and i'm gonna like, have a tone of fun. And I had so much fun on my five journey, getting to financial and the panel.

Ts, and so basically, as I started tracking that golden metric of the savings rate, so for me, that was my golden metric, because I knew the higher I got that, the faster I was moving towards financial dependence. And in my fitness, what I learned is, in order to get the body physic the look that I wanted, I had to get my body fat percentage to a certain number. And so my body fat percentage became my golden metric for my fitness journey, and the savings rate became my golden metric for my money journey.

And so I think of them as the inverse of each other. So the hire your savings rate, the more financially jack you're getting. And the lower your body fat, the more physically jack you look.

Within reason, you've got to actually build a muscle, of course, too, but that's a nuance. So as I tracking my expenses, tracking my nutrition, this happened at two different periods. So I did the fit thing around thirty one, thirty two, and then I did the money thing around thirty four, thirty five. And so I literally, in two years, went from eighty thousand dollars in debt to becoming a million aire in two years. And then by year three, as a multi millionaire, because I got my savings rate up to like ninety percent plus and I kept IT there for like two to three years.

Wow, oh my god. So okay, yeah, there's a time there. Clearly you are making a significant income. Obviously no can just turn to A A millionaire from negative dk in in two years. But let's be clear and I don't want I think a lot of times another limiting belief in life is oh, that's easy for them, right?

Like dad d dad and I hate that mindset and I think it's just so destructive in general like, oh, because of this, whatever IT is, you can fill in any blank IT was easier for them. Well, Justin just spent the last forty minutes talking about everything he overcame and the periods of darkness and the addiction. Like just because you're making a lot of money does not mean your life is unicorns are in us, let's be clear.

Now that said, once you get on track, IT is a whole hell of a lot easier, right? Like the neither of us were denied that IT is clearly easier, but very clearly, you were making a lot of money prior to this awakening and you were spending more than all of IT since you were in debt. So I just fear that people hear that and say, oh, this was easy for him and turn off the episode like, that's not the takeaway.

The takeaway is sometimes that awakening is essential. And like you said, the biggest take away is the tracking. And I mean, just and I found this in the last year and change of my own fitness journey. I'm still working my way down in body fat. And i'm not like fanatical about IT, but I am definitely working down to a point where i'll probably touch sub ten percent in the maybe the next three to four months or there about I feel like the tracking is it's not that, that end of itself is like the shangla that's like i'm going to consider myself superfit just because I hit some random number, but it's the tracking and it's for me, it's proving to myself that I can do IT, I think to be perfectly onest like that. There's a big part of that. But I mean, I can collaborate that fifty percent over or there about, like I going to tell you, like my biggest thing was something that was a sensibly health food, or people delude you into believing that help food was peanut, or do I must have eaten a thousand color as a day of peanut butter, just like grazing a spoonful here and there, thinking that I was high protein food and like, you're laughing uncontrollably because you know exactly what i'm time I like he is ably the worst thing for the .

box in terms of process. What do you think I was eating on my g day? I would eat entire like bottles of oman know they had that one that was like, hazel a chocolate. And I would like to eat the whole thing. And that's like three, four thousand .

calories right there.

It's but I want to there's a couple of things I just want to like help pull out for the audience. So in my first last year, two of hollywood nigh life, I wasn't making that much money. But later I start to make somewhere between called one hundred fifty and three hundred thousand.

But I was driving the range rover and eating out every day and living in the fancy condo. So I was like a spending in one hundred and tend to one hundred and thirty percent of the money that I was making. And when I I transitioned, went back to stanford, you know, I ended up actually becoming.

A founding team member of a start up. And I got til like enterprise B2B sal es and you can mak e a l ot of mon ey and ent erprise B2B sales. But in the beginning, I wasn't making that much.

I was making like somewhere between like you know the first two, three years like called seventy five, one hundred fifty kind of depending on the commissions. But I ended up working with some career coaches. And again, it's like you don't know what's possible and you don't know how to get there until like either you luckily figure IT out or someone shows you the way.

So my fitness coach, he showed me like to track your nutrition, follow an actual workout program, hit these macros, get this much protein, take advantage of progressive overload. And he gave me that plan. And at six months I was like, wow, i've never been so jacked in my life.

And then when I was working with these career coaches kind of at the beginning of my five journey, they're like, Justin, in the bay area and enterprise sales, you can make five hundred two million dollars year. And I was like at time, you know, making one hundred hundred fifty rounds, like what like you can and they're like, absolutely like enemy. That's what I made.

I have a bunch of friends who make that that are. And they're like, you have the skills that you have the Christmas, you have the experience. You can do this just and I will show you how will like show you how to negotiate your employee agreement to make sure that you're getting commissions that will be on cap so that you can get to this rate.

And basically, after working with them, I went from like one hundred thousand year, then like making over four hundred thousand year to then making over seven hundred thousand year. Then like my peak year, I made almost nine hundred thousand dollars in a year. And this coincided, those three years coincided with my discovery of financial independence.

So that ranged over that I had, even though is making more and more money, I was like, I didn't analysis, realize that I had spent seven thousand, two hundred dollars on repairs and madness in two years on that range rover. And I was like, true this, and I sold IT, got a prius. And instead of moving into the fancy home, I stayed in the like crappy two bedroom house that I was renting as a student who was returning to finish up at stanford.

So I stayed there for an additional call IT three to five years after discovering financial independence, so that I could keep my cost as low as possible. So i'd optimize my housing, i'd optimize my car expense. And then I also, I decided, like, i'm just not gna eat out anymore for the foreseeable future.

So I literally like dinner go out or pay for a restaurant meal for like two years. And this is when i'm making like people hundreds of thousands of dollars. I was like, no, my highest excitement is my savings rate and investing like a beast.

And so that's why, like I think it's so important to have mentors, coaches, people who can show you what's possible. And like my kind of current thing for myself, this is like my rule is if i've been talking about something, thinking about something or saying i'm going to do something or trying something for like three to six months in, I haven't got traction. The problem is me and that when I need to hire a professional to help me get out of that.

So actually did that with my podcast. I talked about having a podcast for literally probably eight to ten years, and like, i'm a smart person and I can figure out how to do pocket, but there is something holding me back. And I worked with this E F.

T. Coach, which is emotional freedom technique as a type of thomaz therapy, and I hired him to literally just hold me accountable to working through whatever was holding me back from launching my own podcast. And you know, part of E F T.

Is releasing like childhood trauma. And so my parents separated because of money. You know, we are kind of like lower middle come is on the free lunch program.

And basically working with him, I uncovered this subconscious limiting belief that I was completely unaware of. And that subconscious limiting belief, that sounds crazy when I say IT out well, because IT doesn't making a sense. But most subconscious little belief, when you say them out, while they actually don't make any sense at this pointing your life.

But that subconscious belief that I discovered was, if I start a podcast where I talk about my success and I talk about financial independence and, you know, money and stuff, my parents won't love me because I am so much more successful than that, which is like, crazy. Maybe some people have parents too, like, if you become more successful, they won't love you. But like, with that coach, I was like, oh my god, I even know that was there.

So I was scared. There was something inside of me that I was unaware of that was holding me back from actually following through on getting this podcast out in the world. And then basically I went, I had a very like, awesome healing conversation with both my parents and their like.

We want you to, like, share your success with the world. We want you to empower other people on their money journey, on their fitness journey. I go, do IT in remove. E, that limiting belief was like what I had to remove in order to take the next step of my life.

And so the point that i'm making is if you're not getting traction in the certain area of your life and you've been talking about thinking about IT, maybe even taking action but not getting attraction for three to six months, then get help whether it's a coach, a mentor, some sort of outside thing that's gonna ld you accountable to like stepping up and through to the next iteration, the next evolution that's going to empower you to do whatever inner work healing that you need to do to get out of your own way. Like please do that and there is no right or wrong way to do IT. Some people can read a book and have a translation, but like, I know tons of people who read lots of books and they are in the same exact place that they were two.

three, four or five ten years ago. Yes, I mean, that's why I focus so specifically on this podcast on actionable taken right, because I don't want people passively taking this. And we're always in our time, always creating this and you listening to this if you're not taking something away from IT and implementing and in your life, right? And one of the interesting through lines of your story is this hiring coaches.

I think, Frankly, a lot of people in the five community, and I hate painting these broad brushes, but I feel like this is fair, like we're DIY res, right? Like we prior to helps on being DIY res. And I think it's just like a lot of cases, just like the epidemic, penny wise, pound foolish, right?

Like I can figure this out of myself. Like I there's youtube when there's podcast and I can figure out and like that's all well and good yeah I mean, you proud I can. You know let's be clear, you probably can.

But just like you said, maybe three to six months, that's a pretty good back of the envelope of like if you've been talking about something for that long and you actually wanted do IT because you need to be honest with yourself, right? Like there's a lot of ways that we can delude ourselves. But if you genuinely want something and there's just something some little black holding you back, maybe IT is time to start investigating hiring someone. And just like you said, there are coaches of all stripes and sizes and types and costs and whatever, right?

Yes, hundred a person. And that's why I think three to six months is a good rule form because it's like, yeah try to do IT on your own one hundred percent like it's awesome to figure out things on your own. And like many of the people listening to, you have made significant progress on your financial dependence journey.

But what about another part of your life? Maybe that's your relationship, maybe that's your fitness. Maybe that's I don't know, the side hustle that you want to start because you hate your job, but it's powering you to financial independence.

So IT doesn't matter. Like what mean my wife has work with relationship coaches, literally part of our vows. This is how committed we are to transformation is that we're always doing the work individually and collectively. So that means that we are either getting coaching, getting therapy or taking a course or doing some sort of thing that's growing us in the areas that we need to grow, whether that's our relationship, whether that's our mental health, whether that's our physical health. And so just having that commitment to growth, and this is like kind of the part of the theme of this episode, is that growth mindset is committing to the growth journey.

And i'm all for do IT yourself like DIY, but like if you're not getting that traction, right? Because the thing to me is at the end of your life, if you're like, what if I actually done that thing that I had been talking about and thinking about for decades, would I have been like at the end of my life, so much happier with my life? First is I never really try to do what I wanted and like, therefore, I have some regrets at the end of my life.

Yeah, that's a good way of framing a lot of these these decisions that we make, right? Is like I think you really focus on what's important in life when you actually do that. I mean, that's an interesting exercise that I think a lot of people might be a little scared of, right? Is like that death bed test.

But that can be really powerful, like incredibly, incredibly powerful. And just I wanted to just kind pick back just really quick to the findings. So I want everybody to be clear that we're not talking about like being crazy, hardcore and starving yourself and just worried about numbers like that is not what either of us believe or spouse in any way, shape, form.

I think fitness and certainly body weight can be fraught with peril sometimes. So we are not talking as medical advisers here in any way they performed, but just two guys who have kind of really been on a journey. And I think IT is very fair to say that in my own experience, tracking is everything in three different ways.

So it's tracking my workout because otherwise you just show up and you just do random stuff and it's sub optimal and you just kind of leave before you get a decent work out in. It's tracking my calories and my protein. So that kind of the second leg of the sore and tracking my steps, which is really Frankly, just a proxy for movement.

There's nothing inherent about walking per say. It's just if we're honest with ourselves, I think most people, most americans, if I had to hazards gas, take well, less than four thousand steps a day. I think without going out of your way.

That's kind of like a natural cap for most people just being around the house. And I know IT sounds like a crazy low number, but I mean, I tracked for a while and i'm like I consider myself a really active and fit guy. And without taking concerted walks, I was under definitely under five thousand steps almost every single day.

I mean, just like I kid you not every single day. So there's nothing magical about ten thousand steps per say. You will hear that number thrown around line. But it's directionally accurate for, oh, man, I had to go from my Normal three to five thousand steps a day to ten thousand. That means I had to take up forty five minute walk or two twenty five minute walk, whatever IT is like. I to actually get out and do that, put on my shoes and go take a twenty five minute walk in the morning, in the afternoon like that, a big. And when you do that, day after day, week after week, year after year, good things are .

gonna en hundred percent. So two things, one, what its measure gets managed, empowered and manifested. So i'm a firm believer in, like, if you want to make a transformation in a particular area of your life, track IT, you can't track everything in life.

I mean getting more and more tools. Like I I wear multiple tractors and I track a lot of things. But like you can't track everything in your life, but for the areas of your life that you want to transform, you have to start to track like the golden metrics.

You know, the activities in the results that are gonna move you towards your goals. And this is like circling back to the whole idea of, like, systems. So like, what is the system and what the activities are things that you need to track to achieve that goal and you build that system.

And so with fitness, like everyone here who's on the financial dependence journey without adult, almost every single person who cheese financial dependence, they track their money. Like there are some lucky people win auto, or they just earn so much frequent money and they're like naturally frugal that they don't track. But like I would argue, ninety five percent of people who achieve financial dependence did IT through tracking their expenses in their income, right? And so if you want to move the needle in your fitness, you gotta track something right.

Like brad said, track your nutrition, track your macros, track your workouts. So brag your hundred percent right. I've done, researched on this. The average american takes three to four thousand steps.

Today, three to four thousand, which is like, yeah, you totally know this and so one of my like secret strategies is like I get tend to twenty thousand steps a day and I often average fifteen to twenty thousand. But I do that because i've intentionally set a goal of getting ten, twenty thousand, and and I have built these little systems into my life. So for example, I have an adjustable desk and I have a bike chair.

So I literally take my, track her off my wrist, and I put IT on my ankle, and I track my, and so I can just get an extra y to ten thousand steps. Why i'm work on on emails, work on work, doing whatever. It's just an easy way for me to be significantly more fit than the average person because I built these little systems into my life, including like also going for like you know short walks like throughout the day.

And so I just think, you know, it's so powerful to track things and just pick an area life that you want to prove, figure out what are they like metrics that you should be tracked in. And so for me, like one of my long term goals was that like have that physic that six back and set up. That's why I started tracking my body fat.

So I use a within scale. It's just like at home scale costs like seventy one hundred on amazon depending on if it's on sale or not. And I can give you a body fat reading.

Now the accra y of is different for everybody because you have different physiology. But i've compared IT, i've gone in, got a dex is can, which is very accurate. And for me, a within scale is within one percent of my true body fat according to a dex a.

So for me, I don't really care what the within scale says, as long as i'm trending in the direction that I want to go. And that feedback loop of stepping on the scale each day, seeing what my body fat is, is like, okay, cool. And my trending over ten percent, I need to dial my nutrition back in.

Or am I like trending in the direction that I want to go? So like, cool. Keep doing what you're doing. Keep getting the ten to twenty thousand steps, keep hitting your macros. You're going on good and it's that sist and that keeps me like super fit you around and has for last ten years .

yeah the system right like IT is all about that system. And again, what's cool about this is just they're probably there is crazy people who like, oh, being on that bike, that's not a real step, but that is missing the whole frequent .

point one hundred percent. So ironically increases my neat non exercise activity thermogenesis. So like maybe IT doesn't burn quite as much calories as like physically walking, but if my knee is call IT like thirty fifty percent higher, because I spent ninety minutes peddling, on average, i'm gonna a be significant more fit than other people just because my N E A T neat is so much higher.

And like, you know, as a fitness coach, all the people I know who are superfit, they just move so much more than Normal people like they literally all get like ten to twenty thousand steps, like without a doubt, they just do stuff. They live a lifestyle of fitness, right? And so I think just like you live a lifestyle financial finance, you can also live a lifestyle of fitness.

And the two can go together beautifully because like as we've talked throughout, to show the principles translate so easily like if you mastered your money or you're on an incredible upward journey of getting to financial and depends, just take the same principles of tracking your expenses, tracking your income, targeting a good savings, right? And they start tracking your nutrition, tracking your workouts, tracking your body fat. And like, i'm so passionate about this stuff, like I have a free forty day workout program.

So like if you're not actually following a workout program, like you need to follow an actual workout program or you're gonna look exactly same or worse like a year from now, so you can go to fit rich life coaching dot com slash workout to get that. And then the other thing, because that was such a huge critical part of my money journey, was tracking my savings rate. So I have a free savings rate money tracker that you can download at fit rich life coaching dot com slash tracker. And like, if you need some systems bone to free systems, you can implement to start a radical, transform your fitness and your wealth yeah .

just and that's awesome. And we will definitely put those two links in our shown notes. So if anybody wants, obviously it's twenty. I listen so avidly of podcasting as and as as you certain do, and I realized that a lot of people don't check the showut or don't even realize they can find them in their podcast player.

They don't have to like go to our website like yeah that's an easy way to do IT but like it's just on your pocket player. So like whenever you hear somebody talk like the showers, like IT actually really does help because you don't enough to remember her that you are all you can just click on the link so that just my podcasting public service announcement of the day. But that kind of feels like a really good spot to end this. But i'd love to hear, do you have any final thoughts, any way to encapsulate this one .

hundred percent, to kind of illustrate the theme of this podcast episode, which is really been about this like growth mindset? I have these three principles for continuous growth, and it's just something I keep in my mind. And if you reflect on kind of the journey that i've shared with you will be like all this makes so much sense.

And if you just listen to IT and think about IT, you're like, oh, of course in some these you know but the first principle is you are the average of the five to ten, twenty people you spend the most time and energy with. And these people you can spend time with them, like me, umbrella or connecting right now, like virtually you don't have to be in persons with them. But do you interact with them now through social media, through phone calls, through dms eta? So that's principal one.

The second principle is your product of your environment. So this includes where you spend your time physically, you know, your workplace, where you live offline communities as well as online communities. So this is why, like, in order to transform my life in create growth, I got out of hollywood and I went back to stanford.

And that like was a radical transformation. But like, you don't have to like leave a city. You could literally like change jobs.

You could join across fit, jim, like you could literally just change your environment in so many different ways. So you are a productive. Your environment is the second principal and the third principal as you are, what you consume.

And this includes not only food, but as well as information, social media, podcast, books, television, movies, music, eeta. So if you take those three principles, you are the average called the five people who spend the most time and energy with. You are a product of your environment, and you are what you consume. And you optimize those for growth. You can help but go through an exponential growth in your own life.

That is the perfect way to leave this. Susan, I absolutely love IT. Like you said, you have those two resources will link that up in the shown that people can find you both through fit rich life coaching 点 com and also you have fit rich life 点 com where people can find your podcast the newsletter， the podcast is great. It's just no surprise called fit rich life and yeah anywhere else you want to send people is that that pretty surprising?

Most active on instagram so at just in David carl on instagram but really like i'm on all the socials, it's just in David carl everywhere, twitter, x threads, eta. So yeah thank you so much bread for having me on the show like truly this show has been a fundamental piece of my five awakening and five journey. So it's truly been an honor to be here with you today.

Yeah, it's amazing. And thanks for obviously you being part of our community. I know you are.

Extremely struggle in the truth of I samford such by area group. And yeah, that is what this is all about, right? It's about us listening.

It's about us taking this. It's about us taking action and being part of the community. So a big thank you.

Thank you for listening to today show and for being part of the choose by community if you haven't already the best ways to get involved. Our first subscribe to the podcast. You're listening to this on a podcast player and just hit subscribe and then subscribed to my weekly newsletter.

I actually sit down every monday and write this by hand, and I send IT out tuesday morning. So I just head over to choose A I I M such subscribe and really, really easy to get on the the newsletter list right there. And I would greatly appreciate it's the best way to get in touch with me.

You can actually just hit reply to any of those emails and IT comes directly to my inbox. So that's the way that I keep a pulse of the community and how we keep this the ultimate crowd source, personal, financial. And finally, if you're looking to you join an in real life community, we have choose of local groups in three hundred plus cities all around the world.

So we had to choose a ea construal local. And you'll find a list of all of those cities in twenty plus countries all across the world. And if you're just getting started with fine or you have a family member or friend who you think would be interested too easy with choice of I, episode one hundred is kind of our welcome to the five community.

And even though it's a couple years old at this point, its still stands up and it's a really greatest starting point to get an understanding of what is financial independence, what are we doing here? Why are we looking to live a more intentional life where we save money and use IT as a springboard to live a Better life? And then choice of, I created a financial independence, one of one course that, entirely free, just had to choose A I, A com, such F, I one zero one. And again, thanks for us.