On Authenticity, Luck, and Designing Life (and Footwear) On Your Own Terms | with Xero Shoes CEO Steven Sashen

About Episode

Steven Sashen is the co-founder and CEO of Xero Shoes. He is a serial entrepreneur who has never had a job he didn’t create, a former professional stand up comic, an award-winning screenwriter, and to top it all off…a masters All-American sprinter (in fact he is one of the fastest men over 60 in the country). If Steven’s bio hasn’t done it already, listening to our conversation for all of 5 seconds will quickly convince you as it did me that Steven is quite possibly the most interesting man in the world.

You’d be hard pressed to find anyone with a more unique list of professional achievements than Steven, but what is even more interesting is the fact that if you were to ask him about the most important mindset required to be successful, his response would be, “There is none” because he attributes 90% of his success to luck, and the remaining 10% to luck as well (yeah, we talk a lot about “The L word”). If you’re interested in stepping beyond your fears and insecurities in an effort to better embrace the inevitable roadblocks and failures that you’ll encounter along your journey, you’ll find Steven’s approaches to life, health, success, and business absolutely fascinating.

Despite today’s conversation having a good deal to do with Steven’s current mission of upending the footwear industry and exposing “Big Shoe” for the perpetuated lie that more is always better (spoiler alert: Minimalist footwear is the way to go), one wonderful side effect of our chat is that Steven is showing us all how we can redefine success, failure, love, and life. I can’t wait for you to listen to this interview, as I have no doubt it will provide you with the tools to move more assuredly towards your own, more authentic version of success, no matter what that looks like to you.

Transcript

Zack Arnold: My guest today is Steven Sashen, who's the founder and CEO of Xero Shoes, and that is Xero with an X. He's a serial entrepreneur who has never had a job that he didn't create, a former professional stand up comic and award winning screenwriter. And to top it all off, he's a masters all American sprinter. And in fact, he's one of the fastest men over 60 in the country. If Steven's bio hasn't done it already, listening to our conversation for all of five seconds today will quickly convince you as it did me that Steven is quite possibly the most interesting man in the world. Not to be confused with the Dos Equis man, of course, now you will be hard pressed to find anybody with a more unique list of professional achievements than Steven. But what is even more interesting is the fact that if you were to ask him about the most important mindset required to be successful, his response would be there isn't one because he attributes 90% of his success to luck, and the remaining 10% of his success is also attributed to luck. Yeah, we're going to talk a lot about the L word today. If you are interested in stepping beyond your fears and your insecurities. In an effort to better embrace the inevitable roadblocks and failures that you are going to encounter along your journey, you're going to find Steven's approach to life, health, success in business absolutely fascinating. Despite today's conversation, having a good deal to do with Steven's current mission of upending the footwear industry and exposing big shoe for the perpetuated lie, the more is always better. And as a spoiler alert, yes, minimalist footwear is absolutely the way to go. One wonderful side effect of our chat is that Steven is also showing us how we can redefine success, failure, love, and even life. I cannot wait for you to listen to this interview, it is one of my favorites ever. And I have no doubt is going to provide you with the tools to move more assuredly towards your own more authentic version of success, no matter what that may look like to you. Alright, without further ado, here's my conversation with the Xero Shoes CEO Steven Sashen. To access the show notes for this episode with all of the bonus links and resources discussed today, as well as to subscribe, leave a review and more simply visit zackarnold.com/episode197. I'm here today with Steven Sashen, who is the co founder and CEO of Xero Shoes. And for those doing your Google search. That is with an X, Xero Shoes. You are a serial entrepreneur who has never had a job that he didn't create. You're a former professional stand up comic and an award winning screenwriter and you're a masters all American sprinter. And in your words, one of the fastest men over 55 in the country, and maybe the fastest 60 plus Jew in the world.

Steven Sashen: You know, I just turned 60 a couple weeks ago. So now one of the fastest 60 plus guys, and

Zack Arnold: I know that's that's a pretty dubious distinction. And the fact that I even the fact that I even read this bio, my first reaction was not to any of that it was your 60 Because I've met you and like Boyd, you have a lot of energy and you've taken care of yourself to get to the point where you're 16 you can still do what you can do and have the vibrancy that you do.

Steven Sashen: You know, I gotta tell you, when I tell people I was 59 they didn't respect react the same way they did when I said I was 16 I was only one day apart. And I will concede I get a kick out of it. It's very entertaining. Not just you know, people say oh my god, you're 60 But there are a handful of things that I still can do that add 60 I'm very happy that I can do those and those do freak people out. And I enjoy that like, you know, standing backflip, Nordic hamstring curls, you know some crazy

Zack Arnold: Yeah, so there's a lot of that stuff we can definitely get into. And I want to set the stage for why in the world. I am having a podcast conversation with the CEO of a shoe company because I'm gonna do that whole one. I don't do that too often.

Steven Sashen: Yeah, I'm very curious about that Zack.

Zack Arnold: Yeah. So the reason that kind of the the moment that I had where I realized you have to be on the podcast, to go back a little bit was in all places in the basement of a theater in North Hollywood. Were you and I had watched Christopher Titus. Do some stand up.

Steven Sashen: Oh, so I'm so glad you added the why we were there because otherwise it sounded very sketchy.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, it was it sounded very nefarious and anything in North Hollywood, and you're like, wait, what's going on, but we were there for a stand up special. And for anybody that listens to the show, they're already connecting the dots, because I just had Christopher Titus on the podcast a little while ago. And kind of the the linchpin that brings all this together is our relationship to Tony Horton. But the point being

Steven Sashen: that way that also makes it sound sketchy. So yes, you can define your relationship with Tony, I can add mine and I've got a funny story about how that happened. But you

Zack Arnold: Sure. Yeah. So the the idea is that this is how we ended up in the same random place. And I knew of you I had already owned a couple of pairs of Xero Shoes based on Tony's recommendation and the fact that I saw you on Shark Tank and had admired the work that you did, but when I met you in person, you started your conversation with a phrase and as soon as you started with this phrase, I'm like, Okay, this guy is on the same wavelength as me and you said, So what's been keeping you busy lately?

Steven Sashen: No, I said busy and, and we're happy.

Zack Arnold: Oh, I liked that. What's been keeping you busy and or happy. And the reason that stuck out is because just about everybody universally starts a conversation with a stranger with what do you do? Right? Yeah. And I teach my students not to do that. And as soon as you answered or asked me the same question, I said, I have a feeling we're on the same wavelength. And we actually talked about that one question and why you asked it for like, 10 minutes?

Steven Sashen: Yeah, well, you know, when people ask me what I do, I don't even answer. I mean, I go a roundabout way to get there. But the what I do part isn't what they give it about. Anyway, the and frankly, I don't really care from that perspective. What's interesting to me, is what we're doing and how I can help somebody. So I'll sort of talk about that. But the what I do when no one understands what I do, anyway.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, so the simple answer is one, you know, the CEO of a shoe company. Okay, great. Well, alright, so what do you do? Well, you know, I'm, you know, former Hollywood Film and Television editor, I've got a podcast. Okay, great. Well, that was cool. So what do you think of the show? What was your favorite show? So fast, right. But as soon as you ask somebody, what's keeping them busy, and I love your addition and are happy, it doesn't mean they have to talk about work.

Steven Sashen: And the reason that I add those in there is, you know, I'm I don't have an agenda, we're just going to be some kind of funny. So there's this whole concept that really took root in the late 70s, early 80s, that has come to fruition in this in this sort of Zeitgeist, that you're supposed to do what you love, and the money will follow. There's literally a book called that exact title, written by Marshall scientists, har. And the thing that's so interesting to me about that is a no one read the book, or I mean, the book did well, but no one really read it, because she didn't suggest that, that if you do what you love, the money will follow from doing what you love. It's just it's important to find things that you do that you love. And it's totally cool. If what you do for income is just there to support the thing you do that you love. And many people don't think that way. But every now and then I meet someone, when I say, you know, what keeps you busy. I know, we're happy, where the busy part is work. And the happy part is something outside of work. And I'm totally cool with that. I mean, I joke when people ask me, you know, what advice I have for a budding entrepreneur, I always say, get a government job with a pension. And because, I mean, if someone I don't know if anyone could have convinced me when I was 20, that there was a government job that had a pension and gave me days off and benefits that would have been satisfying. They may have they could have, I would have had to seen it. But I never saw anything like that. So it never occurred to me to go down that path. But anyway, I just like, you know, I like asking it that way. Because I liked the delineation between work and what you do for fun also,

Zack Arnold: well, how dare you in this American culture separates our lives from our work, what we do is who we are, is it not?

Steven Sashen: You know, I find that one really kind of funny too. So when people ask me things like what I've done, I went, I would go to dinner parties with my wife, and they would ask me that question. And she was standing there, I would say all yours, baby, and I would leave. Because I've done so many things. It's just it's just exhausting to even talk about it and and not really worth it. And and not what they want to know. Anyway. So. But what was even more fun is when I was in retired mode. So my wife and I were able to live off the some investments we had wasn't making a huge amount of money, but enough that we had a 32nd No, no a five second conversation. Do we want to keep working for a living? Or can we live modestly on this? And that was the end of it. And sadly, the the thing we were investing in it, the universe change. But regardless, for nine years, we didn't have an answer to what do you do? And it was awesome. It's like, I have a friend who's a he's a multi billionaire. And when we hang out with new people, and they ask him what he does, he just kind of laughs and looks at me. And then we both laugh. And then he goes, I'm a philanthropist. And then the conversation moves on to something else. So it's really fun to not have an answer for that that has anything to do with what you do for income.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, I agree with all that. And I think it's so important that we start to redefine ourselves with the direction that our culture is going now there has to be a separation between what we do during the day, what fulfills us what keeps us happy, like there has to be a more holistic package than just I am what I do.

Steven Sashen: Do you have a theme? When you think back of the things that you've done? Is there sort of a theme that encapsulates or encompasses most of the things that and certainly

Zack Arnold: There's this theme that encapsulates everything. Oh, and I spent years digging into this. And what I found is that the theme, whether it's editing and producing television, whether it's writing, whether it's podcasting, whether it's coaching, I found that I get the most joy out of helping people discover what it is that they're capable of. And I'm really good at pushing somebody into their discomfort zone comfortably, comfortably finding discomfort, such that they can discover they are capable of a lot more than they thought they were and in every realm of my life, that's what I'm working towards.

Steven Sashen: And so when you're pushing and you get to that sort of discomfort thing, what do you think is creating the feeling of discomfort for people?

Zack Arnold: I think it's fear of the unknown. It's I've lived my life comfortably. This is what I'm told I'm supposed to do. There's a part of me that knows I should be going this direction instead. But it's scary.

Steven Sashen: I'm going to I'm going to see if I can push you into one of those places that I don't think anyone's afraid of the unknown. And I say that because it's, it's, it's literally impossible, you can't be afraid of something that you have nothing for. I think people get I think people have a specific idea of what this imagined future might be that where there's something else like, this is gonna sound like a funny one for comics, a lot of comics have this idea that they shouldn't go to therapy, because if they get their buys, they won't be funny. Okay? So they avoid looking inside and finding out why they're doing stupid, crazy crap, for example, because it's not a fear of the unknown. It's a specific fear, I won't be funny, and therefore, I won't get paid. People won't like me, I won't be able to impress my friends, whatever the hell it is. So can you I mean, just for the fun of it. If you can think of someone that you work with or even in yourself, is it really a fear of the unknown? Or is it a fear of some not some imagined future? That seems unpleasant?

Zack Arnold: Yeah, you know, that's a really good insight and a good way to look at it. And I guess the way that I would repackage it is perhaps it's partly a matter of fear of losing a specific identity that you're attached to. And let let me give you an example of this in my own life that totally popped up. This is like almost, this is maybe eight or nine years old, but I just had this vivid picture of me having the exact same conversation that you had about comics and therapists. I was I was not about therapy specifically. But I was diagnosed about 15 ish years ago with adult onset add, I was having horrible issues, just kind of managing the basics of my life and dealing with massive anxiety that was leading to depression. I was just a total mess. And I was like, what's going on? I was the valedictorian of my high school class, graduated top 3% University of Michigan. I can't pay my bills and I can't show up to work what's going on, diagnosed with adult onset ADHD, and I started going down the rabbit hole. How is it that I fixed this? I don't understand that I wasn't a kid my entire life dealing with this. It's brand new to me. And one of the suggestions that I got was to do something called Neurofeedback that I've talked about in the past where it's, you know, it's an actual process where it's like playing a video game with your brainwaves to rewire them

Steven Sashen: Hold on something you don't know about me. I was one of the early biofeedback pioneers back in 1975.

Zack Arnold: Why does that not surprise me at all? Not even remotely surprising. Like, yeah, I'm one of the inventors of biofeedback and neurofeedback. Okay, that does not surprise me at all. The point being I asked this exact question when I was sitting down with a Neurofeedback specialist, and I have like an old podcast interview somewhere where I talk about this. And I said the exact same thing I said, But hold on a second, if we fix the Add am I still going to be able to do all of this creative work, like I will just get into the zone for hours and hours. And like, that's who I am. It's what I do with my greatest strength, I can't lose that. So I don't want to do this treatment if I'm gonna lose that. So I for me again, it wasn't fear of the unknown, it was fear of I have an identity, I'm going to lose that identity. If I become something else.

Steven Sashen: This is the thing that I find really, really interesting. First of all, thank you for sharing that one. Secondly, the thing that I find really fascinating is that we that like this idea that we imagine some future with some unpleasantness. And that's the thing we're really afraid of actually had a flashback. My wife and I were engaged for three and a half years. And one morning, I woke up and said, Why didn't happen, we set a date yet. And, and then we spent, like two minutes, each expressing the imagined future that seems potentially unpleasant. And in to say it out loud, it became instantly obvious that it was just completely made up. And at the very least, we had no evidence that that would happen. More interestingly, we certainly had, it was as at least as possible that the exact opposite could be true. And by the end of this five, three to five minute conversation, we set a date. And, and but the the part that I find really intriguing when we is what you said about identity, because when we have any one of these beliefs, about anything that's sort of non tangible, something about the future or something about whatever it does seem to be really linked to our very sense of self. And I would argue that it's probably neurologically similarly held. Because what amazes me is when you confront someone who has some belief, any belief that you then all you have to do is questioning, you don't have to propose some alternative. Just ask them to dive in and you know, ask questions like, when did you first start believing that? What was the thing that you know? Why did you come to believe that? How did you come to believe that just to kind of look at it frame by frame speaking to an editor, and and what invariably happens is at a certain point, they start acting like you're trying to kill them and their children and dig up their grandparents and kill them again, put them I mean, like, it's amazing how we respond in this huge fight or flight manner over just questioning something that we believe some aspects of ourselves and I think that one of the fundamental problems that many people in business have, where any business doesn't matter what you do, is that thing of like if I retire, you know, who am I going to be? And when bout to have an answer to what do you do for a living? What do you do? And, and again, it's just there's this identity thing. And they haven't entertained the the identity of being the guy who says, Whatever happens when I wake up in the morning, or whatever they do, you know, I travel, I hang out, I read books, I try not to make, you know, other people's lives miserable. So I stay at home all day. I mean, whatever you can think of. So anyway, I find the whole identity and belief thing, simultaneously interesting and annoying, because I'm, you know, as a business person confronting it on a daily basis, because we're dealing with people who believe things about footwear, which behind me, that are patently false, that their own experience tells them is false. And yet they believe it and they've made an identity around believing it. And and you can just say to them, they're wrong that you may have noticed, telling people they're wrong doesn't go very well, especially the last couple years.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, so just look at Facebook for a minute or so to see how well that's working out for us.

Steven Sashen: You don't even have to tell them they're wrong. And you can just say that you believe something different than than them. That doesn't work well either. And that says that saying that you believe something different is akin to telling them that they're wrong in their mind. Instead of it used to be we might, you know, my mom was a Democrat, my dad was a Republican, they never voted. Because they knew they just cancel each other out. I mean, they literally on every issue, but they had a 50 plus year marriage, they got along swimmingly. It wasn't a problem in the way that now it's like, Oh, you like blue? I like teal. Yeah, I know. That's a she kind of a shade of blue ish. But as not going to work.

Zack Arnold: Yeah. Doesn't surprise me that within 10 minutes of our conversation, we're existential, and talking about the meaning of life and person and identity and everything else kind of kind of assumed that was the direction we were gonna go. And I'm certainly not going to curb that whatsoever. However, what anybody's talking about what else is right that well, who doesn't, right, which is one of the reasons why within about three minutes, I'm like, Oh, I totally gotta get this guy in the park. What I want to do is give people at least a little bit of context, I'm not going to ask you what you do or what you did. However, I think there's a lot of value to people better understanding a little bit more about your story. Because what I love about it is that you didn't just assign yourself one identity. I'm a stand up. I'm a writer, I'm an entrepreneur, like you've done so many different things. But similar to the question that you asked me, my guess is, there's an underlying theme to all of it. And I think there's a lot of value in being a stand up and a writer that lends to being an entrepreneur. So let's just kind of do that this short version of kind of the story of Steve, the hero's journey of Steve,

Steven Sashen: What I can do the shortest version, I can answer the same question I asked you, the theme for me is getting underneath getting underneath as many layers of things as I can until I find something true. And so comedy is is I mean, even just telling a joke, just like a joke joke. Like, here's, let me think of a recent jokes. Oh, so here's a joke that I wrote not long ago. My doctor says that the fact that I have long hair as a man could indicate that I have some issues with my masculinity. And I said, if I want a psychological advice, I wouldn't ask my gynecologist so the the interesting thing, while there's not a truth underneath that, I'm not saying some specific in that type of that format of a joke is still about the truth. All you're doing is moving the where people thought they were to somewhere else, when they discover where you're really going. And that truth of where we're really going with doctors or gynecologist doesn't match with where they were, that creates a funny response. And, but there's also jokes that are and ways of being funny that are really about telling the truth. In fact, I remember Bill Maher, his first Tonight Show, he did a bunch of political stuff. And then he said one of my all time favorite jokes of anybody, any comic, especially him was, Who am I to try and change the world? I'm no folk singer. You know, and, and there's a lot in there that I really, really enjoyed. So yeah, for me, all the things I've done stand up comedy. I was a street performer before that. starting a software company, investing in different ways doing stock system analysis, teaching meditation, teaching, applied behavioral economics, how you think about money, starting starting Xero Shoes, it's all the underlying thing is always what's true in there, especially if there's something if the layers above that are mythology and lies, which I find just really unacceptable.

Zack Arnold: So then that having been said, What is the truth you're seeking and creating a shoe company?

Steven Sashen: Um, it wasn't that I was seeking it. What I was actually seeking was a solution to a problem I got back into sprinting. 15 years ago, I was getting injured constantly for the next two years. And a friend of mine suggested that I which was really annoying to me, because I really enjoyed that week long stretch where I wasn't injured before I got injured yet again. One day I'm hobbling through the kitchen. And my wife Lena says to me genuinely curious, she goes, Are you having fun? And I said, Oh my God more than you can imagine. I just hate the fact that I can barely walk. So but just be I mean as identities go the identity of a master sprinter. That's a fun one. I'm all for it. So I just wanted to be better. I wanted to be healthier. I wanted to figured out. And a friend of mine who's a world champion cross country runner, who at that time was, he was 45. He was 55. He suggested I tried taking off my big thick padded motion roll or supporting shoes, run barefoot and see if I learned anything. He wasn't suggesting that I spend all my time barefoot, just use it to see if you learn anything. And the short version is what I learned is that I had instantly is that I had a form problem that I couldn't feel when I was in a thick padded shoe that wouldn't let my foot move naturally. And more importantly, I learned how to correct that form problem. Because basically, when you're barefoot running wrong, hurts and running right feels great. You can spot a barefoot runner from 20 yards, they have a weird look on their face called I can't find words of smiling. They have smiling, I thought it might have been pleasure. Yes, same one. So. So that was you know that there was that that discovery of like, Hmm, maybe the shoes that the shoe guys are recommending to me or not what they thought they were because getting out of them cured my problems. And then I started doing more research. And I discovered that there that first of all, human since the beginning of humans, footwear has been something to protect your foot, something to hold that onto your foot, maybe some insulation depending on where you are. That's it. And that's what footwear was from the beginning of human history till about 1973. And so the modern athletic shoe is the intervention. And there's no evidence, there's literally no evidence that it improves performance or reduces injury. In fact, there's a lot of evidence that it does the opposite, especially creating injury. Quick aside, Nike did a study that they came out with a couple years ago, testing one of their their best selling running shoes motion for all padded are supporting everything shoe, I guess the new shoe they developed. And the way this study was publicized was a new shoe reduces injury by 52%. True. But when you actually read the numbers, the best selling shoe and a 12 week study that they designed, injured over 30% of the people wearing it. The new shoe is only 15%. Now imagine going to a shoe store. And you say I need a good running shoe. Hopefully one that's gonna prevent injuries, you know, maybe run faster and they go, Well, here's one. But by the way, there's a one in three chance you're gonna get injured in the next 12 weeks. It's like, oh, no, no, no. Do you have a better one? Okay, this one's only gonna have a one in seven chance you get injured in the next 12 weeks? Don't you have anything that's going to make me stronger? Or better? Or? Oh, yeah, we don't sell those here. So I had I had a conversation with a C level person, CEO, CFO, CEO C level, at a at a multibillion dollar footwear brand. Who said yeah, this natural movement thing that you're doing Xero Shoes, totally legit. We can't do it. Because it would be admitting that everything we've said for the last 50 years is a lie. So discovering the two things that animate me with what we're doing now. I mean, I didn't plan on starting a shoe company, it was totally a fluke. I after I was barefoot, I wanted to have that barefoot like experience. But I wanted to be able to get into restaurants without arguing about whether it was legal it is by the way, I my wife wanted me to be able to walk into the house without you know, tramping my dirty feet over our off white carpeting. So I made a pair of sandals based on a 10,000 year old design idea. And then people kept asking me to make them for them. So I made, I don't know, 5060 pairs of sandals. And then someone said, if you had a website for this hobby of yours, making sandals, I could put you in a book that I'm writing. And so I rushed home and I pitched this incredible opportunity to my wife who assures me that I'm a complete idiot. And it's a waste of time distraction from other things we were trying to do. Don't do it, and I a good husband. So I told her I wouldn't. And I'm a typical husband. So after she went to bed, I built a website.

And I thought, you know, I said to her look, maybe it'll be a car payment in a couple of months, it was more than a car payment, like on day one. So she being a brilliant finance and operations person who knows that I am not that organization is not my skill set. She came in and goes with the appropriate hand gesture says I'm all in. And I'll take over the business side, you run the product marketing side. And that's how it all began. So there was some other point to that, about not wanting to do it. I don't remember anyway, that's sort of the gist of it. Oh, but again, so the thing that animates me is two things. One, a line of my wife's, which is there's enough shoe companies in the world. There's no reason to start another unless your shoes, you're changing people's lives. And we hear from people all day, every day who are saying that not because we have some magic bullet technology. But because we get out of the way to let the incredible technology called your body do what's natural. And the second thing that motivates me is that I find it morally repugnant that there are these multi multi billion dollar companies who are knowingly hurting people knowingly provide a product that does not do what they say, and making billions and billions and billions of dollars doing it and hurting people and sucking money out of their pocket. Along the way. I find that completely reprehensible not acceptable. So I'm trying to pull the rug out from underneath that, too,

Zack Arnold: I love it. All of these things are things that I can so much relate to and take away take the word shoe out of the equation, right basically, is basically what I'm doing with the podcast and the coaching program and all the resources is that I identified that we as creative professionals are being exploited beyond our beliefs, and the lack of work life balance, the way that we're treated, the way that we're perceived the way that you're having worked in Hollywood, we'll talk more about that, too. Knowing that I'm considered below the line, you're considered above the line. Again, these aren't, these are not bugs in the system. They're features. It's designed to work this way. Right. And I decided, I don't know if I can fix it myself. But I can at least educate people. So they know and have awareness that there's a problem and take it upon themselves, to start optimizing themselves setting these boundaries, setting these guardrails, which then eventually, as more people do, it can change the culture that we work in.

Steven Sashen: Here's a story to reflect that. When I was doing comedy for a living, there was a new club that was opening, I was asked to open the club, there was two other acts opening for me. And we get there and there's no one in the audience. And it's a Saturday night, and there's no one in the audience. And the club owner says what do we do? I said, Well, you can just pay us and we'll leave, or we can get up on stage and talk to no one for you know, however long it is, and then you can pay us and we'll leave it's really up to you. But you paid for us to be here. And you know, we argued back and forth. And then one of the other comments is, why don't you just give me a half and I'll go and as the club owner is reaching in his pocket, pull up the money, I pulled the guy aside and what this club is going to close in four weeks because of you. Like what I said, You just told this guy that we're all dispensable, disposable, replaceable and stupid. And clubs that treat people like that don't last, and four weeks later, it was done. And, and but to your point, I mean, I was stunned, stunned as simultaneously stunned. And I totally understood why this guy did what he did, in part because he just didn't have everything you said, the inner where with all to go, you paid me to be here, I'm here. Pay me. Simple, simple thing. I remember doing commercials, where I was, I was hired to do commercials for an indoor softball field. They were putting these in Chicago, they were from Australia, which is kind of important story I just realized. And the whole idea was for the commercial, they wanted me to do a dive and catch the ball. But they were throwing the ball for like 10 feet away, where your brain doesn't have enough time to calculate the trajectory and get there. And an A, they were saying, Well, I've seen no so and so do this when you just named a $10 million a year professional baseball player who sees the ball coming for five seconds because of their trajectory. And you're asking me to replicate that in a split second. And you're also asked me to do this on concrete instead of brass. So no. And they got all pissy and call my agent and basically threatened to fire me. I said, fine. Anyway, nevermind. So, you know, and I did that a number of times where we've started to love this one. I don't think I told you the story. When I saw I got a degree in screenwriting from Columbia. I won an award for some script that I wrote. And I got a call from William Morris. And don't wait. I don't remember his more associates. It's been a long time. Anyway,

Zack Arnold: they're all the same company nowadays. Anyway, you're right, no matter what agencies.

Steven Sashen: Yeah, that's true. And even if it's not the same agency, it's all the same people. So I go in for my noon meeting. And at 1245. I stood up and left. Like an A, I got a call from my manager freaking out what happened is, well, I was there for 45 minutes waiting, and I have other shit to do. So I left. What do you want to have the meeting? Yeah, I mean, find that me. So they call me back in. Alright, let's do it. Next week. 12 o'clock. I said, Great. I show up at 12 o'clock, 1215. I stood up and left. The coffee back by the third time they had the red carpet out. And what was even more fun was at the end of this whole thing. I turned them down. They didn't have the right guy for me. But it was, there's nothing more fun than standing up for yourself when you know, you're right. It's a blast. You have a superpower when you're right. You don't have to be a dick about it. You can just because you know you're in the right. In fact, you can be really, really calm. It's like, yeah, you booked this for 12 I had a life I gotta go

Zack Arnold: one of the really, there's actually there's a ton of things that I want to dig into. But there's two very specifically that I want to point out. One of which is something I talk about ad nauseam all day, every day on the podcast with the students in my coaching program is the importance of setting boundaries. Number two, the more important one that you're doing that less people think about is you train people how they're allowed to treat you.

Steven Sashen: And, you know, I do want to add this one thing, because there's two ways of setting boundaries is not something I think about very often. But one is reactively. And the other is organically. I'm making up that distinction in real time, but I think you'll know what I mean. One is you know, like, Don't treat me like that. I'm gonna set a for now on if you talk to me, it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, you know, first of all, trying to control someone else's behavior is never a good idea. But the bigger one is, you know, if you're angry if you're if you haven't gotten to the point Ain't where it's like literally, you can say whatever that boundary is, whatever that thing you're requesting. First of all, it's realistic, like, don't ask someone to promise to behave in some way, because none of us can control that 100% of the time. But if you can't make that request, with the same feeling that you would respond to someone, if they asked you the time, if you can't say I was 1215, and I'd like it if you make an appointment at 12, that you actually keep the appointment at 12. Because I've got to schedule things. And my schedule is really tight. Is that going to work for you? I mean, given chance, you know. So that's, so that's the organic way. It's like, it's really, because you are taking care of yourself. You're, it's true, what you're asking for saying, and it's not just you know, that you're being whiny or demanding or being reactive in that way, where where you haven't, you know, kind of worked it out. One of the one of the reasons that I adore my wife is that we have the same fighting style, if you will, we don't have fights very often, like once every three or four years. But when we do the good news is that for both of us, the style is that we separate ourselves, and wait till we're calm enough that we can just sort of talk about what what's going on. We've never said I need you to know how I'm feeling. We've never used the word process. It's really like, Okay, here's what I was thinking, here's what I was feeling as a result, here's how I then behaved as a result of that. And then one of us typically, just because A, and then it's all over.

Zack Arnold: Because you're both human, you're both gonna make mistakes. Right? Oh, there's

Steven Sashen: no question. You know, I mean, it's really simple. When we both get stressed, overstressed. overtired, she gets micromanaging, and I become a total bitch. I mean, it's very clear. And, and so I mean, this is the job. We've been together for over 20 years, it's always the exact same thing. It just takes us maybe three minutes of yelling till we go. All right, we're doing that thing again. And then we just walk away until we can come back.

Zack Arnold: Right? So I'm going to change the conversation a little bit and go into a different subject that I know that potentially you and I have very different viewpoints on this. Oh, good. Something. Something that I've talked about a lot on this podcast, and anybody that listens regularly knows that I am not a big believer in the L word. I don't believe in luck. And I know that you have a different viewpoint about what luck is, and I would love to talk about how much we both believe luck factors into success.

Steven Sashen: Okay, well, I can't talk about that until you tell me what success means.

Zack Arnold: Alright, so that's another great question. That's something we talk about a lot. And in there, in my mind, there are two kind of different categories of success. There's the external version of success that most everybody is working towards. So in the example of being in that, let's just use the entertainment industry. Yeah, success for you is I sell a screenplay, I get an agent, William Morris, I get a feature or a TV series produced, I end up winning an Oscar and Emmy. Now I'm quote unquote, successful. Right?

Steven Sashen: You're not it doesn't lead to people loving me and I get laid?

Zack Arnold: Well, could it certainly could, those can be side effects, for sure. But I would say,

Steven Sashen: I'm being serious when I say that, because you know, the I sell, and I get a lot of money. I mean, you know, if we keep asking why, if I if someone told me that was their definition of success, I would say why do you want that? Right? Well, why do you want you know, to sell it? Well? I mean, let's just start with that before you make the money. Why do you want to sell it? And whatever they are? So they've come up with, you know, why do you think you need the money? And invariably, it's this comes back to the identity thing, most likely, invariably, all of those imagined futures are some version of I'll be happy when I'll be happy if which is hysterical, because you know, the book, Stumbling on Happiness. I know of it. I haven't read it. But I certainly, there's also a TED talk is from Daniel Gilbert, who's at Harvard. Here's the Reader's Digest version. We're there's actually two aspects, one about what we think will make us happy. And the other is how upset we think will continue to be in the future, if we're upset now. But let's just focus on the happy one first. Most of our thinking, if you really look is some variation of what do I need to do now to be happy in some imagined future, a split second from now a minute from now a year from now, the end of my life, whatever it is, the interesting thing is that we're really bad at it. The more interesting thing is that we're even worse at remembering how bad at it we are. And even more, we think we're special. Because if we imagine, you know, we say, oh, it's having some amount of money. If we met a million people who got that amount of money that we think we need to be happy, and you check carefully, you'd find out they're either no happier than they were before, maybe less happy, and probably no happier than they were than they are compared to you or if they were, that's just how they are compared to you. In other words, the money didn't make a difference. And yet, we still think we're special. We go Yeah, but if I got the money. You know, I know that lottery winners are no happier a year later after they won the lottery, but if I won the lottery, so So that's the basic premise. And so this thing you're saying, it's like this success thing is some version the way you described it, I would keep digging because it's going to, I would imagine it always leads to some version of I'll be happy, whatever that definitely Action is, when fill in the blank when people know who I am, when I walk into a restaurant when I can, you know, show up at a bar and the hot chicks wanted to go with a home with me, when I whatever it is, and even then I still ask, you know, why do you want that intake, really, really dig down to the bottom of it. So that's the soap for the success part. From my perspective, we still haven't landed anywhere. Because all we've landed on is a new set of questions for why you think you want this thing that you think might make you happy.

Zack Arnold: Agreed. And you're it's so funny how much in alignment you are with so much of the things that I talk about with my students when we do talk about this. Yeah. Which is starting with this idea of what do you think the perceived definition of success is externally? What are all the things you're getting? It's interesting, that it's not just the internal version, but it's that everybody's definition of success is different once you dig into it, right. So like, I'll give you an example for me, where I went from going down the same path of Well, I just need to work on a show at this level. And I'm going to be happy Well, now that I'm there. But now the show needs to get more viewers or I need to get paid more, I was on the same trajectory. And the image of success, quote unquote, was I finally won my Oscar and I'm standing on the stage. That was my identity. Going back to what we talked about earlier. It's not just a path, that was the identity. And all that was shaken when I all of a sudden reached a pinnacle wasn't the pinnacle, but a pinnacle I'm like, Alright, so clearly, this strategy doesn't work, because I'm more miserable than I've ever been. And something needs to change. Which is why over the last seven years, I've made this major career transition. And the hardest part of it going back to the beginning of our conversation was eliminating, or accepting that that was no longer my identity. Who am I? If I'm not working towards an Oscar, that was the hardest barrier? It wasn't? How do I pay the bills? Or it was how do I accept the fact that I don't need to win an Oscar anymore. That was really, really hard.

Steven Sashen: In the neighborhood you live in but anyway,

Zack Arnold: Exactly. But if I were to define, if you had asked me to define success, three, four years ago, the definition of success for me and one thing that I don't ask anymore, is what would make you happy, there's a word that I like a lot better, because happy is more fleeting emotion, what would make you fulfilled. And for me, what fulfilled me at the time and the reason I felt the way that I did was I never had any time to spend with my kids, I was consumed by work. And I said, Success for me, is designing a lifestyle that pays the bills that allows me to be home at 3pm When my kids get home from school, so I can help them with their homework. That was success.

Steven Sashen: So I'm going to dig into that one a little bit. The pays the bills part is a really interesting one, because you can live somewhere else. And what it takes to pay the bills is a whole different game. I have friends, including some friends from Hollywood, who have Oscars, who live in Cuenca, Ecuador, and they are living like kings for $1,500 a month. So you know, hold you can that pays the bills thing is really interesting. I one of the things that I've asked a lot of people, and I've talked to a lot of people about is the word enough. I say most people don't know what the word enough means when it comes to their financial life. And until you know that you are so rude. So when my wife and I were We were retired from 2000 to 2009. From some investments that we had done, it was again, just on, you know, just enough money that we knew we didn't have to work for a living, and it was really it. And that seemed like a great gig like not having to work for a living, even if it's living modestly seemed awesome. And in fact, it was. And in that process. In 2006, the world started to change the investments we had were based in some clever real estate strategies. And we saw that anyone who had a pulse could get a mortgage, a conventional mortgage, and we went, Oh, this is gonna crash we got to get out of here. So we started getting out of real estate two years before, even a year before. What's his name, the guy from The Big Short realized there was a problem, we were ahead of that curve. And But in that process, we went okay, now that are the cash flow that we have this allowing us to not work is going to dry up. How much money do we need to never have to work again. And let's figure out what that enough word means. Like if we literally had a suitcase full of money under the bed, and we came up with a number and we alright, that's the number where if we had that we'd never have to work again. If we wanted to, we could. But we didn't have to. We didn't have to make decisions based on money. And we thought that was going to be a fun goal to achieve. We are you know, now literally accidentally, we are going to be past that point, assuming the universe doesn't explode. And you know, we're someone gives us more cash for the company at some point, blah, blah, blah. But if people don't know what the word enough means, it's really easy to stay on that treadmill you were talking about. I had dinner with a friend, my wife and I had dinner with a neighbor actually, who is a best selling romance novelist. And interesting part of the conversation someone said to her at dinner must be wonderful to be able to do what you love and make money. She goes oh no, I hate writing. I'm just really good at it and pays me a lot of money. So we talked about this enough thing, and she made a calligraphy version of the word enough put it on our refrigerator. Two months later, we're having dinner at her house again. She goes guess what, I'm retired. So what happened because I kept the Get about what you said about enough, I figured out the number. And then I realized if I sold this one rental property I have, it's appreciated so much. I'm done. And so she did. And she now when she went back to writing because her fans love her, it's just like a thing to do. It's not a big deal. It's just so anyway, back to the success thing. I think that, that pay the bills is really, really important for people to get clarity about. And very few people can either do that or tolerate that it means that you could be at a dinner party. And and they, again, back to what we were talking about. They imagine that if they talked about how little money they actually probably needed to be enough that people would look down on them. What I can tell you is if you can say I'm doing whatever I want, because I don't have to work for a living. No one's gonna care how much money you have. They're all gonna go. How do I do that? Mm hmm. I mean, not all because some people get really wrapped up in it. You know, when I meet entrepreneurs who just who say, Well, I just love working I go, you got to find a better hobby bed. Because my god, man, you're killing yourself. So alright, yeah. So the you want to say you realize, alright, I want to have enough to pay the bills. I want to stay with my kids. That's success for you. So that is this more intrinsic version is more organic version. So backing up to the luck thing. So and by an FYI, I've got to tell you, I don't use that S word at all. It has, I have no frame of reference for it. I don't care how much money I do or don't have, I don't care. You know how people are seeing me or not seeing me. In fact, to see me things kind of funny. I was walking into our office one day a couple years ago, hot summer day, I mean, bare feet, cargo shorts, Xero Shoes, t shirt that is not as good looking as the one I'm wearing now. My hair was even bigger than it is right now. And I cashed my nice self reflection of myself in the window. And I went, Oh, I'm that guy. I didn't know I was that guy. All right.

But I literally just don't have a concept for what that word means. There's, you know, when I was an all American gymnast, people were congratulating me when I had that last routine that made me an All American. And I just remember thinking, I don't understand why you're congratulating me, my coach, and I realized it was possible to achieve this. We figured out a plan to get there. We executed on the plan. It worked. There was nothing to it. It was not emotional. It was not personal. It was just the side effect of a bunch of things. But backing up to your luck. The luckiest part about it is that my coach was my gym teacher who happened to be a like five time were three time world and five time national tumbling champion, and one of the greatest coaches of anything, especially gymnastics, ever in the world. That guy was my gym teacher. So had I had I lived one block over, that wouldn't happen. So there's that weird combination, and he sees it as many in similar ways. At one point years later, we're still friends, actually. And I said, Jesus 50 years after the fact, I said, How many people did you ever teach this one particular move to? He was? Nobody said one out because you were the one who could do it. So for him the luck was, I was the guy who would do that thing that he allowed me to then do. And so anyway, so. Alright, so we've deconstructed success and blah, blah, blah, back to the lot to.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, the reason I brought up luck, is that I do think that luck exists. When people say all success, there is no like, I do think that luck exists. And I'll give you an example. Oh, I am. I agree, I am extremely lucky that I was born a white male to a family that had money in the United States of America. Nobody is very lucky that that happened. I had nothing to do with that. I didn't create that I didn't manifest it man that I get lucky that I was born that way. Right. But I feel that a lot is another example would be that if you're doing everything you possibly can to stay safe and you start walking across the street in a busy city and you get hit by a bus pop, what do you be locked? Right? If you're looking at your phone, you didn't have bad luck, you had something to do with that happening. But if it just happens, it happens. So there's that kind of luck that of course, I believe in. But I feel that so many people use luck as an excuse for why other people have the success quote unquote, success that they don't, oh, well, you just got lucky. I couldn't I could never make that happen. Because you got lucky. And I'm an unlucky person going back to this idea of identity. And I believe luck for a very large part is when hard work intersects with opportunity. Okay, and if the opportunity came and you hadn't done the hard work, then luck doesn't happen.

Steven Sashen: So okay, so I liked the way you did that second part, because I think the second part is the true part that what you said was luck intersecting. How do you say the first way,

Zack Arnold: Luck is the intersection of when your hard work meets opportunity.

Steven Sashen: Okay, so, so let me start with this. i It's fascinating Hearing you say that the way you hear about luck is people saying, Oh, that guy was lucky. I would argue not for you. I would contend that often that's a fine and valid and truthful way of perceiving what happened for somebody. To use it as a complaint about how they got it and you didn't. You're just a whiny bitch. So

Zack Arnold: I like the term excuse over complaint using it as an excuse.

Steven Sashen: Yeah, well, it's both. I mean, it's the complaints, excuse, but you know, but really, it's just being whiny. Because who cares? I mean, so what that person got lucky look, again, I just stand up for a living, I can tell you, I have a bunch of friends who got really lucky, they were in the right room at the right time with the right person, and, and got breaks well, before they were talented enough to deserve them, who cares. And I have friends who are really, really good, who just never made it, because, you know, whatever. And, and I could, I could make a good case for the luck component in there. But I don't care. I mean, it's like, you know, at best when, when I talked to my comedy friends, and we we bemoaned someone who is doing very, very well, getting lots of gigs. It's making a lot of money, who we really find. We find it mysterious, because we've never found them funny. You know, we're just being old whiny bitches. So and it's an entertaining thing to do every now and then. But personally, the how don't want to describe this. Yeah, luck is a totally, totally, totally real thing. My line. And I think I might have told you this. When people ask me how to lane and I, we got where we are. I actually quote this perfect. I'm telling you, the late director Milosz foreman. So when I was at Columbia, he was one of my teachers. And someone asked me a question of like, big public thing. They Oh, how do you make a good movie? And he says, Well, you know, making good movies. Simple is 90% casting, as the other 10% is, is also casting. And, and being at Columbia, where there was a lot of people who he had cast in things who were coming in and out. That was true for him. Like when I met Brad Dourif. Brad was Billy be a bit from Cuckoo's Nest. Brown mean, Brad was these things that he gets cast that that is Brad, in many, many ways. I mean, I met so many people that we love cast like they are that person, it's just a mild tweak of their personality to get there at best. So for business, I often say our business how we what we've achieved is 90% luck, and the other 10% is also luck. And there's a separate 100% where 90% is working your ass off. And the other 10% is hopefully being smart enough to know how to put out the fires that started overnight, despite the fact that nothing changed since yesterday. So for me, the luckiest thing was one day. Tell the story this way. One day, when my then fiance and I were gonna go and find a place to have a wedding. We were invited, or I don't know how it happened. A bunch of people got together for brunch bunch of people that I know. And somebody brought someone who I didn't know, it's just a woman named Lena Phoenix. And afterwards, this brunch. My then fiance was very upset and said you should be getting married December like that. And I said, Don't be ridiculous. And I'm thinking oh my god, you're totally right. And, and then Lena avoided me like the plague or the plague if it had herpes, and COVID. And, and monkey pox, that's the thing is you're and, and then for whatever reason, again, total luck. She was flipping through the channels on her TV, which she never really watched TV. But then in the place that she was living with a friend of mine. They had a TV and she's flipping through. And I had a television show it was on. It was like Car Talk. But for computers. So accidentally, she sees my show. A week later, she has a computer problem. And she didn't know who to call, she felt horrible calling this guy she's been ghosting and avoiding. But she didn't know what to do. So she called me and I'm thinking yes, my chance. It was not my chance. But that's what I was thinking. And so she comes over, I fix her computer, she buys me dinner to say thanks, and afterwards decides to be my friend, then we're friends for three years, despite everything I was doing to try to convince her to, you know, be more than that. Which by the way, I was doing horribly, obnoxious, ridiculous things, and she never got with the program. And so then one day, she kind of got with the program, when I confessed to all the embarrassing, horrible things that I was doing to try to make her like me enough to be more than a friend when I had because I had the idea that we'd be a good couple, which is a silly version of what we talked about before imagining a happy future. Because she and I'd never been a couple. So I have no idea how we'd be in a relationship. And if you asked my exes, I didn't do a couple very well, from their perspective, because I wouldn't like agree with things like how they thought they were broken. I wouldn't agree with that. And their identity was about being broken. And the fact that I wasn't agreeing, real problem. And then Elaine, at the same time was going over every reason she could think of that she shouldn't be with me. And then she said I got to the end of the list and suddenly it hit me everything I've ever looked for in a relationship I could have with you. And then she leans over and kisses me. So actually, here's the end of the story or the middle of the end of the story. I then said it's a good thing you did that. She says Why is it I would have been weird if I shouldn't marry me before he'd ever kissed me.

She says, Why didn't you? So? That's a good question. It never occurred to me that that would be a thing to do. She's okay. And then two hours later, I'm dropping her off to the airport for her to go home. And it's like, this sentence is pounding through the top of my brain. And so I say, so will you marry me? And she goes, I don't know, Elena, what she does? Well, you're talking about the future. I'm about to get on an airplane. For all I know, it's gonna crash thinking Oh, my God, I totally asked the right one. So. So the luckiest thing is that somehow Lena showed up in my life. And somehow through all these completely unlikely scenarios, we've been a couple for the last 24 years or so. And that's luck. Number one. Luck. Number two. Among the many, many things I could list in there is one day friend of ours is walking his dog. Not a big deal, except normally his wife does. Just so happens. There's another guy in that same situation. His wife normally walks the dog. He's walking the dog. The dogs knew each other. So the dog started hanging out, the guy started talking, our friend says to this guy, what do you do? He says, I'm the Head of Global Product Design at crocs. My friend says, Oh, my friend, Steven Elena had a shoe company. We didn't have a shoe company, we were selling a do it yourself sandal making kit, we were selling sheets of rubber, some cord and instructions on how to make a 10,000 year old sandal design. He gives Dennis gives our friend his phone number. I sat on it for months thinking why would this guy want to talk to me? Eventually, I called him. We got together for lunch, I thought it was gonna be half an hour, four hours later, we're having a great time. And I said, I'd love to, you know, find someone like you. But 30 years younger, who's still getting his feet wet. To work for the company is what about me, I said, you were gonna pay 300 grand at your last job. And he has given I'm retired now. Okay, you're hired. So the fact that you know that and it was also because he had tried our sandals and said these things changed my life. And my wife as well. So the, the luck component is, you know, the meeting there, you know, say falling in your head baby, that you're catching when somebody else baby and it fell out of the window, the meeting preparation and all the rest of meet that thing. Even there, you know so much of why he was saying let's do it. We were selling a do it yourself sandal making kit for 20 bucks. We were not really in the footwear biz. Why he thought this was a really good idea is beyond any amount of preparation, the only thing I had, that I really could contribute at that time was being willing to go, let's go for it and figure it out from here. And, and I guess I mean, I'll end this long rant on that one. When people ask me, you know, like, what kind of mindset you need to achieve whatever I go, there is none. Everyone I know who is quote successful, especially in the entertainment business, I don't know anyone who isn't anxious, nervous, worried, thinking they have impostor syndrome, and whatever it is, no one is like, you know, happy the way you imagined. I go the only the you don't even need an attitude. All you need is to go and do good work. Like maybe, I mean, what the hell what?

Zack Arnold: Well, let me challenge you on this, then when you're, you have this this imposter syndrome about like, who am I to think, right? But at the time, the thoughts were, who am I to think I can even reach out to this person and I'm just making homemade sandals.

Steven Sashen: And it wasn't impostor syndrome, because it wasn't like I had achieved something. And I didn't feel like I deserved it. It's like, it just didn't make sense to me. That somebody because I wasn't really thinking of myself as being in the footwear business. I was I was selling it wacky, barefoot running sandal kit. So it just didn't make sense to me.

Zack Arnold: All right. So then let me let me challenge that part of it, perhaps. And you can speak to this more because I know this is a big part of owning a business entrepreneurship, venture capital, raising money, perhaps it wasn't so much him looking at the idea and saying, Oh, my God, like putting something on the bottom of a barefoot, that's genius. It was more seeing the potential in the person that had the idea and being able to execute that idea.

Steven Sashen: Yeah. And that's the part where I'm going to still come back to luck. Because as you said, is your intro to luck. I just happen to be born with whatever the hell this is. And so I have no control over that part. In fact, from having done stand up for for over a decade, I have very little control over what comes out of my face when it's in my brain. So So you know, some people are okay with that. Some people are, don't like it. Because I'll just kind of say whatever it anybody. But in fact, to your point, we seven months in Well, before we met Dennis, we had met some other guys totally randomly complete luck, who've been in footwear for 35 years. And they met with us and said, We believe in what you're doing natural movement is the most important thing. And we believe in you guys. And whatever that means. And you know, they said we'd start this business with you. But we've been in footwear so long. We're not stupid enough to try to start a shoe company. And Lena and I went yeah, well, we know we're hyper optimistic and naive, but that's the only way anything ever happened. So away we go. So, yes, a part of it is that for whatever reason, we connected and that worked, and I would argue that's lucky as well. Well, so I am not going to really argue your point, I totally get what you're saying. I'm just saying, from my perspective, I literally, from my perspective, I literally can't think of anything at all, ever, for which I'm responsible. I know that sounds crazy. But I mean, if I drill down and get as granular as I can, if I'm shooting at 500 frames a second, and I'm looking at this frame by frame, at best, I could say the instigation of something was a thought that popped into my mind. It popped into my mind, I did not make it happen. It came out of my mouth. I, in theory, I could have edited. Except that seems arbitrary to me as well, I didn't. There's times where it seems that I do. But that was the thought to edit it that popped into my mind as well. I noticed that night, I'll get an image that pops into my mind as some kind of food. And I watched myself in amazement, as I'm almost implies, it's I find it almost impossible to not go get that food. And I literally find that process, stunning and confusing. Like I am the victim of this random image that popped into my head to go get some grapes. All right, away we go. So so if I'm not going to be quite so neurologically metaphysical about it, then yeah, I can see where I can where you can say I'm, I'm the thing that got injected into the equation. But personally, I can't go there. Because to me, the very existence of myself and everything that I do is as much luck moment to moment as everything else.

Zack Arnold: So I have no problem by the way, going into the neurologically metaphysical actually enjoy that space. And what I find so interesting about this, and this is not a matter of my view of luck is right, your view of luck is wrong. I love that the diverging viewpoints where there's so many similarities, and we're looking at it from different perspectives.

Steven Sashen: Yeah, I don't even think they're diverging. I think it's just that I'm, you know, I'm injecting, let's say, I'm injecting myself into the equation in a different place than you are.

Zack Arnold: And I think that's what's so interesting is that you acknowledge the fact I have the good idea. And I implement the good idea, but you don't take credit for it, because you don't think you control it. And I'm curious where that comes from?

Steven Sashen: Oh, no, it's even more, I don't even know if it's a good idea. So a thing that I say often when people are pitching me as a business person, as a marketing person, people were pitching me on something that they say is gonna improve our business. And I say, Look, I have a lot of opinions. I've been doing this a long time, I've been an internet marketer for over 30 years. I have lots and lots and lots of opinions. But because I've been an internet marketer for over 30 years, I just don't get one anymore. I just want to see the data, I want to find out how quickly and cheaply Can I discover if one of us has our heads up our assets, if I had the wrong idea, or if you can't execute, I just want to find that out as fast and cheap as I can. Because I can't control the upside. But I can control how much risk I'm willing to accept how much money I'm willing to spend to find out if it works or not. So does that change the question that you're asking?

Zack Arnold: Not necessarily, because what I'm really into this actually brings up a whole new thread that I would love to dive into just about this idea. And to kind of finish your sentence, you can tell me if I'm putting words in your mouth. But in order to do those things, to get the data as quickly as possible, you have to be willing to fail and fail quickly, which to me is a huge part of both entrepreneurship, being creative, you just have to be willing to fail and fail fast.

Steven Sashen: It's, I would argue that that I got really, really good at that from doing stand up. Because you're doing stand up, either the job works or it doesn't. And you can, you know, have an opinion about whether it works or not, you can work it out, you can try to make it work. You can try different audiences, you can do all these different things. But at a certain point, you got crap. I love that concept. And either I can't make it work, or it's really just not funny. So there's the thing that, that especially new comics do when they do a joke and it doesn't get a laugh. They'll you know, make the appropriate motion with their hand going over their head. And it's like, and those of us who've been doing it longer we go, no, no, it's more like this, you know, your hand hits you in the forehead and then falls down. It's like, they got it. It just wasn't funny. And so and it takes years to get better at knowing when it's them versus when it's you. And it's almost always you. Fun tangent you'll enjoy. One night, a couple of us went to see Bill Hicks was in town in New York. And he was doing two shows one night, somewhere in the village, I can't remember where. And so a bunch of us went. And so the first show just destroyed, completely destroyed. And between shows he's hanging out with us because the second show is about to start because watch this. And he does the exact same material. And by the 20 minute mark, the audience left because they were screaming at him. They were so mad at him. Exact same material. He just did it with a slightly different attitude. And he didn't care that they all left. Now it's just fun for him to do it. And all of us were just in amazement, a that he could do that. That he was willing to do that. But just the phenomenon of it. Same jokes. Same really the same audience, but he just pissed them off instead of getting them on his side. Deliberately super, super fun. So there's a thing that happens with comics. And I'm sure with other with actors as well, in fact, I've been watching a bunch of shows lately with people who have been acting for now like, you know, 3040 years. And they're not necessarily, they're certainly not stars, there are people who are possibly famous. But you can tell they're just in a different phase of their life. And this happens with comics, where at a certain point, you just stop caring. You don't try to make it happen. You just do the job, you do the work, and it does what it does. And that makes you better. Because you're more relaxed, you're more open to possibilities, you're more willing to try things. It just makes everything better. I remember at Dangerfield one night, the the show that had happened for me, where for some reason, like on the second or third show that I don't care, I'm just tired and whatever. I did the exact same act that I did two hours before, 100 times better, because I just wasn't trying to make people laugh. People ask me now, I've been living in Colorado for almost 30 years. They said you go to comedy clubs, I say no, I'm allergic to the stench of desperation. So So what the hell was the point of all that? What was we were

Zack Arnold: We were talking about that the idea of failure. And one thing that I want to add to this also, is that, like using this example of what Bill Burr did, in my mind, what he was doing was collecting data. This is Bill what, I'm sorry, Bill Hicks. What what version of my attitude produces this result, he collected data so he can get even better at that.

Steven Sashen: He knew that was what was so fun about it. He knew what he was doing. And I mean, that was just a blast, like going up. You know, we've all bombed we've all had that happen. And you handle it however you handle it. I had one show. This was getting filmed for national television. And they filmed me a catch rising star on a Saturday night killed. They filmed me at a little weird club in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania the next night, couldn't buy laugh. And, and that was fascinating. did not make me happy. What happens with stand up? You know, you, you just get over the waves being so high and low. It's like, sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. And when it doesn't, it's like yeah, high school. You know, you're gonna get over it. It's gonna take a piece of chocolate, a slice of pizza, a drink of something, you know, your boyfriend or girlfriend doing something. I mean, but you know, it'll be fine. Everyone goes through it. So yeah, the the practice of setting yourself up for possible failure. And then having actual failure. I mean, my God, one night, third show Saturday Night Club on Long Island, supposed to close this show. And I do whatever my opening bit was, gets nothing. I do the next bit gets a little bit. As a just as a hunch I do the bit that I normally close with, like, you know, the standing Oh bit, it gets nothing. I just look around and I look at the audience. Oh, well, that's the funniest thing I do. Goodnight. And I just walk off the stage. And the club owner is on the floor laughing because I mean, he's seen it happen to everybody, there's nothing you can do about it. So like, Alright, I'm just not going to put anyone through the misery of it. But we'll get out of here and have a drink. And it was a hoot. So yeah, that the practice of that, of being willing to let the data tell you what's true. It's not personal. You know, if you're like, as a business person, I'm just trying to achieve the goal of making things work. If I'm attached to how it happens, then I'm dead in the water.

Zack Arnold: And I agree with all of that. But let me ask you this follow up question whether I'm a budding entrepreneur building a company doing a startup, I'm a creative professional writer, stand up comedian, whatever it is, how do you? How do you separate yourself from the failure? How do you go from well, just the data, and that's what happened versus I'm a bad comedian. I'm a bad writer, I shouldn't be a business person. How do you separate those two?

Steven Sashen: Well, you know, that question is a variation of how do I know when to pull the plug and do something else?

Zack Arnold: Which is also a very complicated question to answer.

Steven Sashen: Yeah. There is no good answer, because any answer to that is, again, about trying to imagine some future and assuming that what you're imagining is accurate, which we know it isn't. I don't know, you know, there's a, there was a very, very financially successful stock trader, who was asked, How did you become so rich? And his answer was, I sold too soon. And he was really despondent. So he didn't get the maximum amount of profit. And he was That's all he could see was I sold too soon. And so I have a friend who is in this situation. Now he quit a corporate a very high paying corporate job to become a day trader, and he's made good money as a day trader, but after a year of doing this, he's going, it's just not fun. I'm not having a good time. And so he's gonna go back into the corporate world, sometimes, and now it's not like that was a decision that he or a realization that he had on day one, and on day two, he's changing gears. It's a process that he's still going back and forth, and back and forth, and back and forth. There's no shortcut to that. There's no simple answer. It's just one day, it's going to be clear. And if you're lucky, it'll be you know, before you've lost certain opportunities, and there's still opportunities available. Look, my previous one of my previous companies, I invented the industry standard word processing software for film and television writers script where I had the opportunity to sell it, that opportunity fell apart, when it turned out, the buyer was a lying embezzler. And I didn't bail quickly enough. Now, this is a this is here's the interesting joke, I didn't fail quickly enough. And I spent a bunch of money trying to resurrect things and spent a lot of money trying to resurrect things. If I had just cut bait sooner, you know, I would have been financially fine, no big deal, move on to the next thing, etc. The irony is in the intervening time, the Academy has called me and said, If you can resurrect this thing and get some market share, we want to give you a technical achievement Oscar. So I'm trying to do that until it becomes obvious that that's a stupid idea. And hopefully now I know what a stupid idea looks like more than I did then. So there are so many questions that are unanswerable. And how do I know when it's time to pull the plug is very high on the list?

Zack Arnold: Well, one thing that I don't even know if it answers the same question, but it's kind of piggybacks on the the general theme that we have somehow found throughout the course of this conversation. This is why I don't have questions. Because if I had had a list of questions, this conversation would have been 10% as good. But I want to go back to this idea of happiness versus fulfillment. And I want to use the example of your corporate to day trader to I don't know for sure what makes the most sense, right? Or let's use the the example of getting a technical achievement Oscar? Yeah. If I were to win an Oscar, or an Emmy or whatever, in that moment, is that going to make me happy? Of course, that's going to make me happy, however, that happiness doesn't lead to fulfillment. And I think perhaps what this friend of yours that you mentioned found is that, yeah, I was making money in the corporate world, and maybe I can try the day trading thing. And maybe, you know, he makes a certain amount of money on a certain trade or whatnot, that can create happiness in the moment. But it sounds like what he's really saying is the world of living in corporate America, the lunches the process, the people I'm with, that's a more fulfilling way to use my time.

Steven Sashen: No. What he's saying is that what he's doing as a day trader is less satisfying for the life that he wants to live.

Zack Arnold: How is that different than fulfilling

Steven Sashen: because what he's doing what the big decision because he was not happy in the corporate world, he the benefits were significant, made a lot of money, you know, had vacations didn't have to work more than 95 and afforded weekends etc. allowed him to have his life. So right now, he's he really is, on the one hand, weighing bad options, and looking for the one that's less bad. At the same time, he's also reframing that first one, and suddenly going, you know, now that I've been out of the corporate world, and done the thing that I thought I was gonna love, because He did, he was trading before. It's not like he just stopped and immediately started trading, he'd been trading successfully, in his spare time, and analyzing markets was his favorite thing to do. But now that it's his life, it's like, it ain't the same. And we all know this from lots of people in Hollywood have that same experience. Like now I'm making a living as a fill in the blank, top line bar or above, you have top or bottom a buffalo? It's above the line. Yep, thank you, I was getting them both in my head, you know, suddenly, like the work is fulfilling the getting the work, and the dealing with the people that you have to deal with, and the et cetera, et cetera. It's like the the business of it is not what you imagined. And it's not fulfilling those rare moments where you get the right people in the right room at the right time for the right project. Dreamy, and intermittent reinforcement is powerfully addictive. But so he's at the point where he's reframing the corporate thing to be, you know, what the benefits that I got, were really worth the bullet part. A friend who was a corporate lawyer had the same thing. He was really sick of what he was doing, and then suddenly realized, he was getting paid a lot of money for a job that allowed him to spend time with his family, and to do the hobbies that he had. And then suddenly, he just stopped. He's like, Oh, it's okay. I was just bitching, because I had some idea about the way it should be. And I wasn't acknowledging slash appreciating what I'm having. Now. Is that fulfilling? I don't know. It's not something I've pondered. Because I don't know why it just that I haven't I haven't even thought about landing somewhere about what to do next.

Zack Arnold: Let me add on to it then. And it's so weird that we're having this in depth conversation about this random person that nobody knows. But you But obviously, we're expanding this into more generalities. But could you say that perhaps the work itself wasn't fulfilling? We're talking about the corporate work, not the day trading? The work itself? Isn't that fulfilling, but it's helping to facilitate a more overall fulfilling life?

Steven Sashen: Correct. Correct. And he hadn't really, and he hadn't appreciated that when he was just in the corporate world imagining how great again, this imagined future where he'll be happy doing this thing that he imagines will make him Heavy and and then he actually got to experience it and what oh crap. You know, people ask me why I got out of showbiz. And one of the reasons is that I was especially doing comedy. But I was doing other things, too. I was just not enjoying having my career decisions of mine made by people whom I didn't respect. Or who wouldn't treat me with a certain amount of, they wouldn't treat me like an adult. You know, like, hey, if the gig starts at seven, but you want me there at six, just to make sure I'm there on time, don't mean, don't tell me that it starts at five because then I'll get there at four. And I got to do and then they wouldn't hire me again. Because I just said, can you just treat me like an adult? Or were one of my favorites called a guy get rebooked for a gig? Well, you didn't do so well, in less than a year. It's like, oh, no, you're remembering wrong. I actually was the middle act. And I and the headliner couldn't follow me. And I know that because I use the tape of that show, as my audition tape. So and then he goes, Oh, yeah, I'm still looking at Bucky again. And I just was not interested in dealing with that kind of bad thinking. And that kind of, you know, arbitrariness, so and when, when an opportunity presented itself, to do something where it wasn't where that just wasn't a lifestyle that I enjoyed. I love the work. I love my friends. There's nothing better than hanging out with a roomful of comics. But the but it wasn't conducive to a life that I could see was going to be continued to be enjoyable,

Zack Arnold: Right. And one of the things that I have found, and I kind of simultaneously discovered this myself, and as I'm sure you've has happened to you before, as well, you discover something and then you realize somebody else also discovered the same thing and has written three books about it. You just didn't know they wrote three books about it. Right? So no ideas original. And we all this collective conscious. Oh, yeah. But what what I've really found for myself, and again, I've discovered that somebody has written about it wildly, and that writer is Mark Manson. But it's not the idea that as you become more successful, or you make more money, or you build more prestige, whatever it is, it's not that your life has less problems is that the problems in your life change different in their different? Yeah, for me, I'm living a fulfilling life. If I am solving problems that I enjoy solving my day is nothing but problems from the time I wake up to the time that I go to sleep, man, do I love solving these problems? It is so much fun to solve these problems. That to me is a fulfilling use of my time, which is why I choose to do what I'm doing where there's a lot of unknowns and fear of the future and building a business, you never know what's going to happen. Next, I know exactly what my life looks like, for 30 years. If I'm going to be in film and television editor because I'm very good at it. I know I can reliably pay my bills, and I can make more money and work on more prestigious projects. I know where I'll be when I'm 60. And that terrifies me, because it's not a fulfilling use of my time. Because I'm helping somebody else to achieve their own vision. That's what I do as a storyteller. You have a vision, I'm gonna help you achieve it. But now as an entrepreneur, I get to achieve my own vision. And it's scarier, but the time is more fulfilling to me.

Steven Sashen: I totally, totally get that. I think the simplest thing I can say in response is I just haven't pondered it from that angle. Or if I have I certainly haven't in last X number of years when I've been you know, nose to the grindstone balls to the wall with Xero Shoes, and haven't had time to really ponder that. I mean, the closest thing the what you said that made me think of is a line ago, anyone who says money can't buy happiness hasn't driven my car.

Zack Arnold: I love it all these one liners are great.

Steven Sashen: And my car I got a supercharged Subaru BRZ, it doesn't come supercharged, I did that. And it's, it's not a very expensive car. It's very pretty. And it's super fun to drive. And, you know, they're they're simple things that I find really pleasant. I really enjoy driving that car, I don't enjoy driving by people who go go below the speed limit. That's, that ain't fun. And I've and I've made a whole practice out of not getting more upset than is necessary about that. And part of it is, you know, paintball, not really, but the fulfillment thing. It's an interesting thing, there are parts of what I'm doing that I find very satisfying. There are parts that I find very frustrating and unpleasant, because they're requiring me to use parts of my brain or for certain amounts, or for certain certain amounts of time, or certain about certain things that are not my favorite thing to do. And I'm and the companies is growing so quickly, that I don't have the luxury of only doing the parts that I really like, in part because, like I mentioned, I've been an internet marketer for a long time I do this stuff really, really well. Finding someone else who can do it well. And I found someone, it's still going to take six months to get that person up to speed. And so, so we're in this, you know, it's been this perpetual transition because we've just been growing so quickly for the last nine years. And and that part is not satisfying in many, many ways. But the reason for what we're doing is so important that I don't care and And I don't make a big deal out of it. I mean, I'm kind of whining about it. Now, I don't think there's something wrong, that this is what I'm experiencing. I don't add a derivative layer of, you know, self flagellating or thinking that it should be, or I'll be happy when it's just like, right now, you know, this is a week where, until tomorrow night, I will go home at the end of every day, mentally exhausted, in a way that I don't find enjoyable. But, but it's not a big deal that's just, you know, comes with a program at the moment. So be it. And my wife and I have done something for the first time in our lives. That's a hell of an opening line, we got a dog. And so when I get home, and the dog is wagging his tail so hard that he can barely stand, then everything's fine for the next 20 minutes anyway, so now, why didn't anyone tell me that? I mean, they could have told me that before. I mean, having this dog he was 33 pounds, having this dog fall asleep and putting him on my chest while we're lying on the couch? Why didn't anyone tell me that's the greatest thing in the world?

Zack Arnold: So I have one final question that could either be a two minute answer or a four hour answer, we're going to find out. There's a very, very common piece of advice that has been floating around probably since the beginning of modern mankind, but very much recently, definitely. Yeah. So I'm, we already know that it's on, but it's floated around specifically in the world of entrepreneurship, and very much for people that are creative. You just need to follow your passion. Why?

Steven Sashen: Well, look, if your passion is doing underwater basket weaving, well, you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna

Zack Arnold: Hold on a second. Let's use the example of underwater basket weaving, because that's my example. And I use that all the time. That's crazy. I always use that as my example. Well, how is that possible?

Steven Sashen: We're now finding out we were separated at birth.

Zack Arnold: That's insane. Because I use that example all the time. Like, listen, if you want to be a basket weaver, this system still works. i That's crazy. But anyway, go ahead. I didn't mean to interrupt. But that was too crazy to not mention.

Steven Sashen: So I love it. So there's two answers to this question. But it goes back to something that you brought up earlier is like, you know, why are you doing? What do you think, quote, success is, if you're totally happy, getting underwater weaving baskets, and you don't care, if you have enough money to get food tomorrow, or assuming that you aren't living? Well, if you're underwater, you can probably just grab a fish, and you're fine. So if you literally are finding that things that you need for this fulfillment thing that you're talking about, are not being met and have no way of being met. As far as you can tell, as far as you can tell, then, then I don't care. If you're passionate about underwater basket weaving, there's no guarantee that doing something you're passionate about, will generate the other things that you want in your life, to be content or feel fulfilled. And unfortunately, there's always going to be some example that someone's going to hold out as the proof that maybe it can work. And again, there's so many places to go with this. You may find it's not we think, you know, what I'm thinking to remember is Zamfir the master of the pan flute. Yes. So you know, he became mind blowingly successful by putting out pan flute CDs and selling them on TV. And ironically, it ruined him because he says, when I go to do concerts, I'm trying to share traditional pan flute, and all they want to hear me do is the pan flute version of you know, Broadway tunes, he was miserable. So, but you know, you're gonna look at Zamfir and go, Oh, I love the pan flute. I can be some fear. Guess what, you can't be Zamfir people say let's look at Bill Gates, or let's look at Steve Jobs. So let's look at Richard Branson is examples of entrepreneurs, guess how many Steve Jobs Bill Gates and Richard Branson's there are one of each. No one has ever gone to a workshop with any of those guys, and ended up being the next one of those guys. And if they did, they've done something completely different. Back when I was actually coaching people on some business things. I remember teaching people everything I knew about internet marketing. And each one of them think that five people, each one took out one piece of what I did, and did that really well and made a bunch of money doing it. And they will tell you that what the other four did doesn't work. Didn't work for them worked for one of those other four people. So this again, the the follow your passion is just a variation of do what you love, and the money will follow. Which again, no one actually read, which is yeah, do what you love. But then it's a is it a Sufi thing? trust everyone retire candle to the post. You know, it's not a one or the other thing. It's a false dichotomy. To think that, that you can only do this thing that you're passionate about and everything else will be fine. Do what you love, and you know, tire candle will post. But that idea and to do what you love and the money will follow has just caused more stress for more people, because they think that the math is do the thing you love and you'll make money doing the thing you love and you'll be happy doing the thing you love and you won't have to deal with a book that goes along with doing what you love successfully. Yeah, so it's a it's a tricky one. Again, I gotta tell you, like I hate when people say use the phrase I'm passionate about it. It just sounds a little twee. It just sounds, you know, it's a little self aggrandizing patting yourself on the back kind of like, whatever. If you're if you love doing something, if you find it really enjoyable, the word passionate has has taken a certain flavor. There's just a little saccharin. You know, I have people talk to me about what I'm doing, and they say you're passionate about it's like, no, no, I have reasons that I'm compelled to do, the things that I do. And the parts that I really like and parts that I don't like, it's not a passionate, it's not a concept that I judge anything against.

I don't have a passionate yardstick. It's just not, I don't give it any mind. It's not part of my lexicon. So if there's something that you really love, awesome, knock yourself out. And if your life is falling apart as a result, you might want to find a way to do what you this thing that you love, and get your act together. People who say to me what happens if it all goes wrong, and I got I'm gonna get a job at Quiznos. They got what I got, or I'll go to Baja California just gonna get fish they want to go, my my fallback plan is being completely broke. I mean, I'm cool with being completely live on the street broke. Because I know what I would do, then I would ask people I was when I was gonna sound weird. When I was living in New York City, I got a paper cut on my eyeball one day, long story, not important. And what I found was that I was patched up, they put patches on both my eyes, because if I moved my eyes, it would hurt very bad. And being blind in New York. It was the most exquisite experience of my life, because I couldn't get two steps out of my front door before someone offered to help me. And when I wasn't in that situation, when I wasn't blind, I then realized that if I had needed something, I could ask for help. I could literally, you call it begging, if you want, I could walk up to a stranger and say, I'm hungry. Can you help me? And if they said, No, I would just ask somebody else. I don't care. And sometimes one person said yes. They said, Actually, one person said something really funny. They said, why don't you go to the instead of asking me, why don't you go to that restaurant? That's where they make the food. So I go to that restaurant, it was a burger place. I was a vegan. I said, I'm hungry. Can you help me? And the guy looks at me, and just looks at me and keeps looking at me. And I'm thinking he hasn't answered yes or no yet. So I'm gonna wait till he gives me an answer. And then kind of shakes his head and goes, Ah, sit down over there. I'll give you something. So I sit down and he comes back with a double bacon cheeseburger. I hadn't eaten meat in like 20 years, I was crying as I ate it. Because I was so grateful. The taste was not to my liking. The guy just gave me nourishment. Because I asked and he was kind enough to say, yes, that's my fallback plan. So what do I got to lose nothing?

Zack Arnold: Well, other than your identity, which kind of brings us back full circle to the very beginning of the conversation, which is why it's easy for you, is because you're not attached to a certain identity.

Steven Sashen: I love the idea that I would go to my 50th high school reunion and somebody would say, you know, so what are you doing with your life? And I would go Quiznos. Oh, you will like some franchises. No, no, I'm making the sandwiches. Just let it hang there.

Zack Arnold: Yeah, you want to you want to talk about a level of confidence that few of us will ever understand. That's, that's pretty awesome. So this, this would be the point in the show where I would discuss and do a little bit of promotion for you and talk about my passion for Xero Shoes. But I'm not going to do that. Because I don't want to have passion for Xero Shoes, because that's not a yardstick by which you can measure the world. So instead, I want to talk about my excitement with Xero Shoes, like and make it so you don't have to plug yourself and I want to tell a very, very quick story. And then be very respectful of your time. Because I know how important that time is. And you said this is how long you get me present. Then I got other to do so I totally get that. But I spent several years evangelizing the toe shoes, the Barefoot Vibram Five Fingers, and the philosophy of them very similar to yours, which is minimal issue that allows you to use the technology of the human body to realign yourself and strengthen all those muscles that are weakened and not have all the cushioning all of it was great, except for they look effing stupid. And every time I'd walk into the office, people are like, Oh, that's kind of ridiculous that you were and then I give him the whole speech about why like whatever. Yeah, that's great. I'm never gonna do that. You solves my problem, which is that I have exactly the same technology that's allowing me to essentially feel like I'm barefoot. But these shoes look awesome. And the other thing that I love about them so much that even Vibram never figured out is the granular level of functionality between the different models. So it was either had regular shoes before or I had the Vibrams now I have six pairs of Xero all of which are different based on the functionality based on like I've got a pair that the sandals that are about as minimal as it gets. I've got a pair of very minimal shoes, the HF SS that I use for like Ninja training and stuff where I don't need a lot of cushion. I've got the zelens if I'm saying that correctly. I've got the zelens are my new favorites actually bought two of those one of which for training, and one of which just because they the all black ones, they look like dress shoes, but I'm still barefoot, except when I used to go in any kind of dressy situation and like the FiveFingers shoes it's like Who is this guy? Right now? nobody even cares. Like, oh, there's some nice shoes. Where'd you get them? Oh, they're barefoot shoes there. What's that? It's the whole conversation. So I just I wanted to sing your praises and just let anybody know that's listening, that these are legit. This is not a gimmick. This is a very, very high quality product. The by the way, even though are minimal. I've run 10 mile tough waters in Spartan Races in rocks and water and everything else, they still hold up and they're indestructible.

Steven Sashen: Well, everything's destructible. But I get your point. And I appreciate it. Thank you. I mean, that's what again, that's what gets us going. That's what keeps us moving. We just had a product meeting this morning, the stuff we're planning for next fall, spring, next fall, next spring is spectacular, I couldn't be more excited. And it's stories like yours, again, that keep everybody in this company, of which there are now 70 People coming back every morning to help more people have that experience. And as I like to say live life feet first.

Zack Arnold: Well, I appreciate so much all the insights that you shared with us today, I really feel like we've kind of sort of warmed up. And we really haven't gotten to the heart of the conversation. And we can do this for another three hours. But I know how important your time and your calendar are to you. And I want to respect the fact that we are at the end of our conversation, but cannot thank you enough for anybody that's interested in learning more just about you your journey or specifically and obviously your shoes, how do they do that?

Steven Sashen: Other than stalking me, I would recommend not doing that and instead go to Xero Shoes X E R O shoes.com Or if your spellcheck or AutoCorrect puts z in the beginning and that's okay. It'll still get to us, or smart the redirect that it's a redirect long story about that. Then otherwise, you find us on social we're at Xero Shoes or slash Xero Shoes wherever you happen to add or slash.

Zack Arnold: And as somebody that's done internet marketing for a while, it's clear that you know how to do social media because your social media is actually entertaining and informative and educational. And it doesn't feel like I'm just being spit out with a bunch of products and I need to buy them.

Steven Sashen: Well. That's very kind I will pass it on to the team that I have that I'm working with to do that. And we're always trying to make that better too. So but much of this has been a complete pleasure. And yeah, if you know if you want to do V two, you know where to find me.

Zack Arnold: All right. Well, then we'll we'll talk about that offline. But thank you so much for your time today and that maybe there will be a version two in the future.

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