Gary Donia (00:05.754)
Okay, we're back. What's up everyone? Everybody excited? So excited. Back again. We have Gianna back. Trifecta. You're welcome. First and then now the 15th. Peter. What's up? We were relented. Like she like begged. She did. I did not beg. She like literally begged us this week. please, oh please my maestros. And then in much the way that Peter functions, what do you say to you? I say, ask Gary. No. Let's discuss. Yeah. I let's discuss. Let's discuss. Isn't that super annoying? It's so.

Everything has to be. Why is it annoying? Well, if there's a simple, but here's the thing, simple is not in your vocabulary. You can't there's no simple simple. Yes or no. Peter, what do you want for lunch? Let's discuss. Correct. Because we have to discuss the pros and cons. And I discussed that to you down the hall. Hold on. What? Gianna's fucking up. What is it? Why is a mic connection lost? I don't know. Hold on. Fucking Gianna.

This is why this is why Gianna

Like you're not in the room. on, go back in there. yeah. Gary is like pale. Well, have like my lights better. why do I hear that?

Jianna Bustamante (01:10.723)
Alright.

Gary Donia (01:13.592)
Are you muted? not. am. No, you're not. How dare you? I'm literally muted. On your phone? I don't have a fucking phone.

Gary Donia (01:23.13)
Well, whose is that? I don't know. I mean, my sound is muted. Hello? I can't hear it now. So it's reverbing back into this. No, think it was her. I put it down. Fucking John. your volume is on. I don't hear an echo. Do you, Peter? No. OK. And do you have like you have good so recording, recording, recording?

Okay, I have to stop this one.

Gary Donia (01:56.354)
No, I'm just gonna let it run and then I'll edit. I'll just edit out the whole beginning. Okay. So I'm my go.

Gary Donia (02:07.801)
Okay. Welcome back. And we're back. So we made a mistake. What's this one? invited Gianna on to the show she already screwed up. Now we're on take two. Yeah. And take one was going really well. Like it was going smashingly. I don't know that we can recreate that. Smashingly. Yeah. Okay. Well, take one is still there. Who talks like that? People from the forties. No, take one is getting edited completely out and you ruined it. I hope you're happy. We also have another guest in studio today. Can't see her. My favorite.

Of all of the people. Of all of the people is in studio. Ava, Ava, come over. Put your face on camera. There she is. So Ava is doing behind the scenes. It needs to be documented for eternity's sake. This is like a little extreme. For eternity's sake? It's a whole podcast studio. Forever. needs to be something that when we...

go on to become the most famous of all the podcasters. thought you were going to say when you guys like eventually, you know, die. Yeah, we're certainly going to die. I can listen to this as like my bedtime story. like, you know, like, you know, when like a band makes it and then they have like the behind this and some for some unknown reason, they videotaped literally from their first rehearsal all the way up until like the moment, you know, like seeing Freddie Mercury. Yeah. And they have all this footage and like, why did they think to record all that? So here we are. We're expecting to be the greatest of all time.

I agree. Sure. And so we're going to have it recorded by Ava and others so that we have the great documentary. We started with the first one was basically like fuzzy around our heads. Like that's our trailer is like sitting in like the closet over there. Speaking to the universe, a documentary on us. A documentary. Like a little docu series. Obviously. Yeah. I mean, there's no other end game here, right?

Ultimately fame which is what Peter really wants at Netflix if you're listening to he's like literally uncomfortable by the conversation Yeah, he's getting ready to have one of these serious Peter conversations with you guys. Let's discuss. I just want let's discuss this I just want you to know that like I'm not really interested in the doc Okay, we must discuss this first shall we move on I guess so I want to talk about jujitsu jujitsu. Yeah, there you go jujitsu. Yeah

Gary Donia (04:23.001)
Is that proper? Is there a more proper way to say that? the most normalized version is Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Brazilian BJJ, as they say. Do you have any idea why I want to talk about this? No idea. As always, I just sit down, you say the topic and then now we roll. Here we go. Is it because you are interested in participating? Oh my God. for sure not. Are you out of your mind? You would get destroyed. No, I did this once and I ended up with like a bloody nose and a sore neck from like a crazy friend of ours who jumped on my back. Yeah. I took care of you.

Yeah. Like I rolled you around, turned you into a pretzel and you were safe. She, she destroyed you. It was one day. However, I said to Peter, said, okay, we are going to take this for real. Like we're going to do it for real. Like we're going to get what's like the starting position or whatever. I was on my back. You were in my guard. Yeah. And then it was like ready fist bump. Go. And then you too rolled. So I said to him, I said, I want you to take it for real. Like, like pretend like I'm like we're in a competition. I'm your opponent.

how quickly could you get me in a position where I would literally be like murdered? You know what mean? Like if you wanted to harm me basically, like I wanted to see how quickly he could do it. Because prior to that, we were just doing the for fun sparring. We were like practicing drills and we weren't live rolling or anything like that. Like learning the techniques. So I said, please, I want to see what this would actually feel like. I have never felt less like a man.

He was very helpless. He dominated me so like so quickly. Like he is so powerful. He is so strong. Like I'm a pretty big guy. It's like 220. He's like dense. Like I could. You're kind of doughy. So these are all true statements. However, it's like I'm relatively strong. Yeah, definitely. I'm not like weak. Like I may be doughy.

But I'm not like them. Yeah. And I'm also I weigh like 220 pounds, you know, whatever. My point was is like he within seconds, I was in like a rear, a nearer naked show and literally getting like, like the lights were going out. gave you a one second squeeze and then you tapped and it was over. was literally the worst feeling in my life. So are we talking about jujitsu because we're trying to talk about manhood? No, no, has nothing to do with that. So I've noticed a theme.

Gary Donia (06:43.253)
So I listen, as you know, to many podcasts and I read many books and I'm really interested in founders, leaders and sort of really successful people. And there's a common trend I've noticed amongst many of them. They're jujitsuers. They all freaking do jujitsu. Mark Zuckerberg does jujitsu. He does the head coach of the Boston Celtics really into jujitsu.

I'm blanking on his name right now, but the book or the movie, Searching for Bobby Fischer, Bobby Fischer, the world champion chess player. He went from chess to becoming like a jujitsu world champion. Like after he was done with chess. Is this, name Magnus? No, that's a chess Those are two worlds that are completely opposite to The guy's name is Josh Waskin, Waskin. And it's actually, he wrote a great book. I'm blanking on the name of the book right now, but I read his book. So you wanna know why? So I wanna know why.

So, so the reason I bring this up is because Peter, for those who are listening and don't know us as well, Peter historically has done jujitsu. You've done, you've trained it, you've competed in it for most of your life. You still do it now with your family a little bit. And so I was curious as to like, just from your thoughts and Gianna, your thoughts as to why that particular, because it's not like they're saying, they're just saying whatever karate or taekwondo or some other form.

It's specifically jiu-jitsu amongst many of these really, really successful people. And I'm curious as to why, why like so. jiu-jitsu for context is not, it's not just fighting. Like, so like many martial arts is striking. Jiu-jitsu is a non-striking sport. So it's wrestling with submission. So it's things like arm bars, it's like chokes. It's essentially wrestling. And then if I get you in a position that you think could harm you, you would tap out and you would basically give up and then we would start over and we go again, right?

So the way the way that I experienced it is it's the hardest physical thing I've ever done. And the most strategic all at the same time. So it's a ton of it's a ton of strategy. It's a ton of like cerebral like, I'm trying to do a thing you're trying to counter me and we're going back and forth. That also requires physical strength power. So it requires both a mental and a physical and it's and it's extremely hard like it's very taxing on the body not necessarily the mind as much but it's like a game. So that's why I've always done it.

Gary Donia (09:07.873)
I've just always been attracted to things like that. So like, what have you gotten out of it? as like, so apply it now to like your own, like your life outside of jujitsu. So what are some of the things that you've learned from doing jujitsu that you apply you think like in your everyday life and or to like starting a company, growing a company and a pretty successful one in its early stages? Like what are some of those takeaways, you know, reflecting on it now?

Okay, great. So before that though, to add some context, I think the people that you mentioned, like including myself is we've all done competitions. I mean, most of times when I say Mark Zuckerberg, I say Peter Breyard next. I was just about to say not to compare myself to any of these people. Or Joe Mazula. I wasn't the one that brought this Joe Mazula, Joe Rogan is another one. does he? Joe Rogan? Joe Rogan. Just to put it in the podcasting realm. If we want to be great podcasters, we clearly- A lot of the podcasters.

But anyway, so yeah, you're basically the same as all those people. So go am I as well. So this is why they all do it. Yeah. So it's just, it's, think that I'm attracted to doing hard things and progressing and there's nothing more progressive than like learning how to defend yourself physically against somebody who doesn't want to let you do that. I think it's also knowing and challenging your limits. It does exactly what it is. It's, it's going above and beyond what you think is possible. It's working really hard.

It's like getting totally out of breath. feel like you're drowning. You have to like wrestle somebody five minutes as hard as you can in a competition format. That is incredibly scary and very, very hard. Like it's not even close to the same thing as training. And it's just one of those things that I think that, I don't know, for me, it's really important to challenge myself, like hard. like if I'm scared, that's, I think that that's a good thing. I'm going to learn and grow from like hard things.

It's It's probably why I don't do it. Now I know why I don't do jujitsu. All that sounded awful. I know. Also, I have a lot of trouble saying jujitsu. It's really hard. What's called BJJ? It's cause of your How about JJ? JJ, what's up? JJ. Yeah, I don't know. I'm just attracted to hard things. I think hard things is when I grow and learn. I also think the more times you say that, it's going be hard for me not to laugh. I'm attracted to hard Yeah, so I'm going to need you.

Gary Donia (11:24.569)
I don't hear myself say that. I know. I'm just going to need you to like tone it down. is for families. we're doing jujitsu, it's not usually... Difficult. It's difficult. difficult. You enjoy doing difficult Difficult things. So it's also every time Gianna's on the show, turns dirty. There's like phallic symbols everywhere. I did nothing. I've been sitting here quietly listening I'm actually disappointed you didn't have any comments because he said it, I let it go a couple of times and I couldn't anyway. I know. All right. So... He also said he's attracted to heart things. Yeah. So I...

So I pulled out essentially six concepts that I think apply here. And I want you to talk, I'll kind of bring them up and then you elaborate upon them. Is what I said, is that what you were, okay. Is that you thought? No, I mean, I just. There was no answer to was no answer. But it does line up with many of the thoughts that I had and researching the people that I mentioned from getting like.

things that they've said in interviews about why they do it. It does line up with that. And then that's where these six concepts also come from. So the first one is the beginner's mind.

Gary Donia (12:34.073)
What about it? That's the concept. Talk a little bit about So the beginner's mind. you know what the beginner's, Gianna, do you know it means when I say like approach something from the beginner's mind? Yeah, you've never done it before. So you need to learn from the basics. Right. So a problem with getting older is that it becomes more more difficult to approach a beginner's mind because you have frame of reference for almost everything that happens. You have life experiences to go off of and pull from. But if you can learn, which I think Jiu-Jitsu, you know, Peter can elaborate upon this, but if you can learn the art.

of approaching almost every challenge or everything that you do from the beginner's mind. Like then you're open to a world of possibilities, not just the thing that you've already done in the past. Right? And I think jujitsu challenges this in a lot of different ways because my guess is, well, one, when you're first learning, you're literally a beginner. But two, I'm guessing no competition or no thing is ever the same.

It's like a snowflake. Everything is very different. It's different every single time. So like you have to be have this like beginner's mindset of like, okay, well, I'm learning. I'm always learning. The most important thing about the beginner's mindset is that it can apply to any new thing that you want to get into. we are all terrible at most things. And so it doesn't matter what it is. If we wanted to get good at it, we just would have to approach it with, well, I suck at this and that's okay. Don't get upset at yourself for not being good. This is now I'm restarting learning how to walk, right? On whatever this topic is.

And so if you have, think that resilience and that ability and that mindset with whatever topic that you want to get into, the world is open to you. You can learn whatever you want. I don't care how talented you are at anything. You can learn it. Right. So I think certainly with jujitsu, but anything that's difficult, the beginner's mindset is integral to learning and growing. Right. If you, if you do not have that, then you cannot learn and grow. Cause you're always like, well, I suck at this. Well, yeah, no shit. Yeah.

That's even like what we do with our clients too, because we have to put our mindset into their mind of, they were a beginner at this. Like, you know, you have someone that's coming in to work out for the first time. You want to make sure that it's beginner friendly. people are not very good at what we do with them. Correct. Exactly. So you want to start them. Like you always say, meet them where they're at. that's a lot of, you know, beginner stuff. And so I think it teaches you to one, remove your ego and to embrace humility.

Gary Donia (14:50.871)
Yeah, you have to have none. Like everybody's better than you and that's cool. Right. Because I even remember like you when you were doing it competitively before you kind of stopped that part. Like some people would kick kick your ass and you would just be like, what the you know. I most people I was only a blue belt. So like this white, blue, purple, brown, black. So I'm I was kind of still at the beginner phase beginning phase of like, the expertise system. So anybody that I'm going up against that has more experience than me, you know, I'm going to have a disadvantage and that's OK. But that's that's a part of it. That's you have to practice to get better. OK.

Number two, these are the things I think was why it applies to being like a great leader or a founder or just, you know, good for everyday life, right? Two is like pattern recognition. going back to the chess player. So when I read his book, it was basically like he did chess and then he was done with chess because he was a child prodigy and like this whole thing. And he was sort of done with it. He's like, am I doing? You know, but then he very quickly made this, this transition to why I want to do this thing. And it was like, it was chess.

for him, it was still chess. was just physical chess. That's what often people describe jujitsu as. Instead of mental chess. And then he very quickly was able to then recognize the patterns of his opponents. And he went on to be a world champion, which is like a pretty weird transition, right? A guy sitting at a table moving pieces of being a world champion. But it was all based on pattern recognition of the ability. So is this something that you also have noticed in your, is this a big part of jujitsu? Like I've never done jujitsu, right? Do you look for this in your opponents and can you see why this would be valuable for?

It becomes instinctual. So pattern recognition is just like ingraining movements into your mind so that your body automatically does it. Like the first stage of learning is like this, is the move. Your hand goes here. It's repetition. then it goes here and it goes here. And you do that hundreds and hundreds of times until you're no longer thinking about doing that move. You just feel it happen.

And so sure, so that's absolutely pattern recognition. And would say that again, that applies to most things. And yeah, even applying that to being a business owner too, I'm sure you have to recognize patterns. Like, you for example, we're looking at our schedules and we're like, why they look a little, you know, lean this week. It's like, well, it's school vacation. You have to recognize the patterns of the year, recognize, like I said, just patterns in general from owning a business. I think that that's probably.

Gary Donia (17:04.663)
So the pattern recognition physically is one of my strongest suits when it comes to training people. seeing like how people move their bodies. in just like, just knowing what it is with before, like you're not even thinking like, they're doing this one. You just see it happening and you feel it. That's just practice over and over and over again. Yeah. You know, I say, even though don't do Jujitsu, I think pattern recognition mentally is probably my strong, one of my strong suits. I constantly am looking, I actually spoke with Ava about this this morning.

is that one of the things I do all of the time is like, I'm just always my brain works like through patterns. And then I'm always noticing like this, like these things like occurring when they when I notice enough of them together. That's when I get interested and I start to explore them more. Or we talked on a recent episode about the ability to connect dots, right? Like throughout like, you know, so things that might be totally unrelated. I can kind of put those two things together and see how they could be mutually beneficial. even for the mind too. mean, I'll recognize patterns in my behavior and see, okay,

when this, this and this happen, usually I start getting a little anxious. So even just like recognizing, okay, this happens in my everyday life and then doing something about it, it's huge to recognize patterns. It just creates so much more ease in life. Right. And I think you have to kind of just be open to seeing them. A lot of people see things through a very narrow tunnel, like this is this and this is that, but if you're able to kind of see them and accept them, yeah, see, accept and kind of connect them, I think that's really valuable. So, okay, number three, stress training or training under stress.

Right? So the ability to make decisions while under pressure. Is there something that... boy. This, this, he loves this. I know loves this I I just created a moment for him. I know. Peter, know, diamonds are made under pressure. should give... Well, it was nice to Yeah, I mean... I like that, yeah. Right? I like that too. You like diamonds. You jewelry. And I love jewelry. So does that resonate? Whether or not you handle pressure, like understanding that...

moments that are high stress or high pressure moments when you're trying to figure something out. If you fit once you figure it out, then you'll always make make like big leaps in your game or whatever it is that you're working like you're working on. I was just talking about this, like being comfortable is the epitome of mediocrity. Like when you're comfortable and everything is going great. Awesome. You're going great. It's great. Like, but it's mediocre. But there's no growth. Like there's no impetus to grow. So easy to settle into that. It's like so easy to settle into comfort. my God. Yeah.

Gary Donia (19:28.209)
And so I guess the point is, like you in order to grow, you must have stress to the system, whatever it may be. So of course that's something if you understand, can lean into it. Even our bones do that. Stress our bones, they get stronger. It applies to everything. And like when somebody is trying to put you into it, like a choke. Yeah, you're trying to end your life. If you're able to still make a strategic decision have to know when it's safe or not. For sure. Like because there are positions in jujitsu that if applied, immediately have to tap out or you're going to get hurt.

But what I'm saying is like in those moments, still being able to strategically make decisions. sure. You can see how that would apply. in those moments. for sure. or business or like again, going back to to Joe Missoula, the coach, like when you're in the playoffs and you have to make decisions on the fly to fly. Just like, you have time to think about it like you're to get choked out or not right now. Right. Or like Mark Zuckerberg making literally like trillion dollar decisions on a regular basis.

like under all of the pressure of the stockholders and the media and whatever and still being able to execute. Yeah, I can relate to that a lot. You can relate to my sacrifice. But you could see how this would apply. You could see why people like that would train Jujitsu in a way to make them better at that. That just a different version. Yeah, you would just be attracted to it. Okay, number four, long term growth. Right. So this like slow linear

Like you mentioned you were only a blue belt. How many years did you train? So I've trained since I was in my early 20s, but consecutively probably like five. Five years. Yeah, you moved up a few belts. So this is like a long... Yeah, to get to a black belt competently for most people, you're looking at 10 plus years. So again, it's like that ability. So if you were to do that, that would be this acceptance of this very long journey. Better every day, like 1 % better or just like constant I'll be a black belt some day.

For sure. He just got to keep working on it. I do not want to be around you when that happens. He's going to be so obnoxious. He's going to bring it in and start wearing No, I won't even tell you. There's like a great episode of The Office where Dwight, I think he gets like a black belt or something and he comes in and he does like a whole ceremony in the office and like the instructor is just like looking at him like, my God. And Dwight's going through like doing his whole like kata like ha, ha.

Gary Donia (21:44.362)
And the guy's like, you don't need to do that. We just need to give you the belt and it's like this whole thing. I just picture that happening when he becomes a black belt. Never. I'm the opposite of that. don't want anybody to recognize me. I wonder if our friend that owns the BJJ gym is a black belt. Yeah, he is. Of course he is. No, I'm talking about the she. Rhonda? Yeah. No, no, she's a brown belt. So she's close. She's close. Higher than you. Way higher than me. Wait, could she kick your...

Yeah. Oh yeah. She's way more skilled than me. Yeah. I I watched her. Yeah. Awesome. We need like, we need a battle. Rhonda, Rhonda, if you're listening, calling you out Rhonda. Okay. But, but long-term growth. So you could see like, this is a long, this is not something you pick up in a weekend and all of a sudden, like you're a black belt. And so again, going back to applying this to, to life and leadership and,

success in general. Everything is long. It's this idea of if you embrace this long term vision and you're willing to put in a little bit of work every day for a long, long period of time, like you can have a lot of success. Yeah, you must take away like the day to day like troubles and just understand that like every day is going to be hard with whatever it is that you're learning. But just know that consistency is everything. It's the most important variable. If you just keep showing up and keep trying, you'll have good days and bad days with the good days.

will become better and better. like in the end, so in my experience, anything that you want to get good at generally requires like if I, if today I suck is day zero, it's about 10 years to be an expert. Like if you keep working diligently 10 years and you are like best in your class, that's about the length of time. And I look at this business the same way I say, where can we be 10 years from now? How can we be the best possible version of us? And it's going to take all the learning along the way that gets us there.

You know, so that monologue that you just gave reminded me of this morning when I was talking to Ava also. she said, I just to call it a monologue because that's like a, that's like a pejorative way to say like the thing you just said. Yeah. It was a monologue. It was you talking. I enjoyed it. It was great. But it just reminded me. She said to me this morning, goes, Peter speaks with wisdom or something like that. And I was like, I was like, wisdom.

Gary Donia (24:01.05)
Yeah, she speaks. Didn't you say wisdom? Yes. was like, I'll take it. Let's go. Then I was forced to like, give you a compliment in return. was like, God damn it. I gotta say a thing. It was awful. I think you speak with more wisdom. Thank you, Gianna. Wow. What a bitch. Yeah. What an asshole. What just prompted that? I like it. He needed a compliment. You can tell he was a little down. Yeah, I was. Yeah, that was my way of telling Ava like, Hey, what the hell? Like you should.

told me I have wisdom, but whatever. You're staring at me. Okay. Number five. You were like, he speaks with more wisdom. That's what that was. You're like, I think that I'm on team Who has more wisdom? or God. I mean, she just said it. I did. She literally I just wanted to give her another chance. Yeah. just to double down? Yeah. Well, think about it. Gary has like five more years of life experience than you do. is that what that is? That's what that is? Yeah. It's true. Think of all the things I've taught you, There's like...

There's like one button click away from from payroll. Wow, that's a threat. That's threat. Did you hear that? That's not cool. It's like the nuclear codes. Yeah, Not cool. OK. Oh, hold on a second. Shall we move forward? Do you like this? Tracy going to be late like like typical. OK. What time do think you should get out of here? We're almost done. Yeah, we are. Number five.

Gary Donia (25:27.353)
I just need to be able to cut it.

Okay, so number five, learning through failure. How many jujitsu matches do you think you lost? I love it so much. Only one. You only lost once? Yeah. Wow. This is backfiring on us. Yeah, that's actually great. So the matches are only once, in practice, it's probably a lot. of times. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

if I've let her. Come on. I have to be honest. there is an element of this where he's just physically superior. I know. No matter how good the technique is, he's just stronger. So the reality is, is I have lost and failed thousands of times in practice in jiu-jitsu. And that's the vast majority of jiu-jitsu is practice with your friends who are there to keep you safe. And you get to lose safely. You don't get hurt.

Competitions where it's very different, very scary. People don't give a shit about you. They're a of crazy people. They're trying to like take your arm from you. And I think that's also what makes a good and successful business owner is that they're surrounding themselves with people that they could fail to. Because it's only going to help them grow. You don't surround themselves with people that they think that they're going to dominate completely. Right. We have to have people here that are basically running this place together.

and we all are failing upwards. Meaning we're all making decisions all of the time that who has the best idea, who thinks that this is the best way to go great, it's you, great. Let's move forward. If it's wrong, awesome, we retool and do it again. But if you don't have those people around you that help you with that, then it's only you making decisions all of the time, which you can't always know the right answer. in the end, you must have people around you that you trust.

Gary Donia (27:13.763)
with those decisions for sure I agree with that. Yeah, I think it's pretty, it's a selfish thought too if you think that you should be the, not you, I'm just saying in general, that if you're the sole person making the decisions. There does have to be one person that like says, okay, this is the way to go. Correct. But like all of the people, like it's really important that we all have a say in how this works. So going back to like big companies, like important companies, like not ours. Not ours, yeah. Yeah.

Definitely. But like some of the biggest companies, so for instance, I was listening to a podcast this morning and they're talking about Apple history, the 50 year history of Apple. And they're talking about the Apple headset. What about it? Exactly. Okay. Right. This is a many, many, many like billion dollar investment that didn't go like super well. Oh, right. The headset, Apple car. Mm The heads. I tried to make a car. Oh, the goggles. Yeah.

So they exist, but they're not like one of their, the Apple, that's right. When I said it, guys were like what? car. Failure. 10 billion dollars. But Apple does not view either one of those things as like I'm sure they learned an insane amount. Cause they have like on the car, think they have something like 5,000 patents.

Right? And they learned so much about so many different things that they now apply to like all of their other products and like future products. So for them, even though was a $10 billion quote unquote failure, it $10 billion R &D inside of their world. It was like one of the greatest things they've ever done. Same thing with like the headset. And I go back to the guy who invented Slack that came from a failed video game. The same guy invented Flickr, which was like one of the first uploadable camera pictures.

also a failed video game. So he attempted to make two video games, both video games failed, but out of it came Flickr, which he sold for like billions of dollars. And then he, then he minted Slack out of it because they used it to talk to each other. And then he sold that for billions of dollars. So his two video games, and he still says, I want to make a successful video game. I'm just not really good at it for whatever reason. goes, but I'm going to keep failing at making video games because it keeps making me billions of dollars because I sell the other thing. There's always something you can take from the failure.

Gary Donia (29:20.331)
in his case to sell or to make into a different business. And in like Apple and other people's case to turn into a bigger, product. But like same thing for all of us, right? Like every failure, there's a learning that took place. And so when you fail in jujitsu against me, say you were going against me, you would learn, okay, like when he moves his right hand a little bit, he like just moves that a little, but then he moves, he does this other thing. The next time I'll do something different. And so you know exactly, you start to learn my tells or like whatever, right? So.

And then the last one is just this idea of deep focus. Like the ability to have like total presence. If you were to lose your, like say, say like you're in the middle of like a real match, like the ones where people are trying to hurt you. If you were to divert your eyes for a second to maybe the mat next to you, there's another competition. You can't be anywhere else. Yeah, exactly. So this idea of being totally present is like a skill you can learn from that, which you can see how that skill would be so...

Transferable. Yeah, so transferable to life. That's really hard thing to do, is to be totally present in any given moment. But if you can do that, you get a lot done. You're going get so much done. It's like that one concept that you were telling me about, bird by bird. Yeah, bird by bird. One bird at a time. This is why I'm so wise. This is why you're more wise. This is where the wisdom just like ooze. I don't even know what doing. It oozes out of you.

I don't even know. Enough self-adulation. What is by Bird? Bird by Bird. It's like a book by Anne Lamott. It's called Bird by Bird. Most of my ideas are not my own. I just remember a lot of stuff and then I tell you about it. It's concept of essentially you can literally only do one thing at a time to just do the thing. So when people have, like for instance, when my son would have six tests in a week and they're worried about like the six tests, I'm like, you can only like study one for one really at a time.

Yeah, so just go bird by bird, like just like the first one is the one you have to focus on. Tackle one before you go to the next. Tackle the first thing and then do the next. And in the book that it came from a similar thing, like she talked about her brother had a bird project to do on like 10 birds or whatever. And he was totally freaking out. The dad came in and just said, what's going on? Freaking out. I got these 10 birds due tomorrow. And he's like, just go bird by bird. You can't do the 10th bird before you do the first bird.

Gary Donia (31:37.56)
So just go bird by bird and it will get done. And it's the same idea. They'd be totally present for the one For the one bird at a time. on to the next. thing here. We do that a lot with like, what is the biggest constraint? Let's tackle that. Let's focus on that. Get it right until and then move on. Yeah. So if you're trying to do many things at once or in the case of jujitsu, if you're trying to...

focus on the other Matt, why there's a person in front of you that wants to kill you. That's not going to be great. And in the world of like big business or Celtics or like whatever, you could imagine if Joe Missoula is thinking about something that's going on. next game. The next game or even something going on at home, right? And he's not present in the moment, then he's going to make a lot of that. And then his players are going to feel that too. Correct. So those are six. That's what I pulled away from when I was like thinking about like, OK, what can I get out of like someone who doesn't do jujitsu, who just like

studies people who do jujitsu. This is what I hear them talking about. you want to start? Do you want to start? No, I don't. Why do you want to get me to do Why not? Why do you say no to everything? Shut your mouth. Why do you say no everything? brings up like a different question. Is there a way to get these things without doing jujitsu? Because I don't want to do jujitsu. You can just like go to a coffee shop. Jujitsu is just a metaphor for all of the above. That's all it is. So pick something that kind of gets all of those things. A great way to get all of that. Right. But like, so for people who are listening to this, who don't want to do jujitsu, raise your hands.

So it's do hard things. So yeah, so the takeaway is like what's one hard thing you can do today. And then from that thing, you're going to have like the beginner's mind, you probably haven't done it before. You're going to have the you you start to recognize patterns as you start to learn more about that. You're going to have like learning through stress, you're going to have long term growth, because it's going to take you a while to become good at it. And you're going to learn through a lot of failure. And then lastly, you know, if you want to be good at it, you're going to have to focus on

So like those six things can apply to anything that you view as something that's difficult. Like all the people that ran the Boston Marathon on Monday. Correct. They got all of that. They got all of that doing that. Right. If you can take anything away from this, do hard things for your own personal growth and development. Do hard things consistently. Yeah. Like not just to make dirty jokes, but literally do difficult things. Very good. Thank you. right. Lovely conversation. Thank you both. Thank you, Ava, for being here. right. Bye, guys. Bye.

Gary Donia (33:51.406)
Do not shut anything up.