Hustle & Flow - Jack Moses on dropping out of school, hustle culture, spiritual paths, finding flow, and travel as transformation

[02:17] Paul: Without further ado, let's dive in.

[02:20] Jack Moses: Hello. It's very synchronistic to be here with you 3 years later after reading The Pathless Path and hearing about your adventures in Asia and being in a little bit of contact with you. And now it's like comes full circle where I'm sitting here chatting with you. So it's exciting. I'm very grateful to be sitting here.

[02:37] Paul: Awesome. Welcome to Chiang Mai. Welcome to your podcast.

[02:42] Jack Moses: I guess this is my own podcast.

[02:44] Paul: The Jack Moses Podcast, Pathless Path Podcast Remix.

[02:47] Jack Moses: It's a combo for sure. For sure.

[02:50] Paul: Cool.

[02:52] Jack Moses: Yeah, I've been on quite The Pathless Path the past 10 days. I literally, for context for viewers, I just got back to Chiang Mai like an hour ago and I just pulled up to this podcast studio and we just sat down and we're recording. So very raw. But we just went on an adventure around Pai, Chiang Mai, and Phuket, and it's an adventure I went on last year. And these past 3 years have been quite the adventure, but there's been no place that has opened me up like Asia. So now that you've, you've lived in Asia for quite a while, I'm curious, how do you feel it's molded you and shaped you into a different person?

Because I know I feel like a completely different version of myself.

[03:37] Paul: Yeah, I think there's probably 2 layers to that. Like at one level, travel does change you. And I think long-term travel is really transformational. It was for me. I think taking a trip longer than 2 weeks was something I never did until I was 33. And so doing that and really like going slower, trying to do less to accomplish things, you get to spend more time with yourself.

And that sort of reflection I think is powerful. Also just being in uncomfortable situations. I've experienced like so many down things while traveling that challenged me in new ways and forced me to be resilient. And then the second layer of that is I literally ended up marrying someone from Asia. So half of my family is Asian, right? And we have a daughter who is half Asian speaking Chinese.

And so I'm literally integrating into that culture for the past 7 years. And so it's certainly changed me. I think the big thing I write about in The Pathless Path was when I More So Good Work, my second book, actually, when I was in Taiwan, those first couple of months, I, like the scripts in my head about what you should be doing, you're wasting your life, you're giving up so much, you're not earning money, you don't have a plan, all those voices just, they like dulled a little bit. And I was able to just be with myself. I think for the first time I gave myself permission to not like be moving forward on autopilot.

[05:09] Jack Moses: Yeah, the same thing happened to me last summer too. I set off for Thailand and I came to Chiang Mai where we're at now, and I went from here to a meditation retreat, and then I got to Pai, and I was gonna stay for 5 days and then keep going. But I realized like I had never given myself a chance to stop and like actually slow down. And so I stayed there for 2 months and like I, I'd be sitting on a Tuesday at like 2 o'clock in the afternoon, sitting on a hammock, like smoking a joint with some hippies. And I felt for the first time in my life, I was really at peace in that context because I didn't have as much experience as you going into this world, but I was very much on the trajectory to like corporate finance type of guy. And thank God I read your book when I was like 20 and it completely shattered my worldview.

And I was thinking about this on the drive over too, like The ripple effect of that, because by me reading it and applying these lessons and like completely going against the grain, and I have so many friends that have heard my story or like have seen me go this crazy path and they have read The Pathless Path too. So like there's a lot of 20 to 23-year-olds who have really loved that book. And, uh, it's just a beautiful, it's a piece of art. It's really peaceful.

[06:27] Paul: It kind of scares me too. I think I received, um, there's— you're somebody who emailed me. It was like, I dropped out of school after reading your book. And my first reaction when reading that is like, oh shit. Like, oh no. Um, cause I don't really have experience doing that.

Right. I went out into the, the real world, basically the institutional world. And I learned how to navigate that. And that gives me a certain amount of confidence to do things, but you're growing up in a different world. You're how old? 23?

[07:04] Jack Moses: 23.

[07:04] Paul: Yeah. So you're 17 years younger than me, right? When I was 23, you were 6. Yeah. And so the world I graduated into at like 22, 23, I, my first job had a desktop computer. I didn't have a mobile, a cell phone until I was 5 years into my career.

And so it's such a different world that I can't really conceive of what it's like to see more possibilities ahead of you. I suspect I would have been closer to your path, maybe leaving my first job after 2 years rather than 10 years. I don't know if I would have left school. Yeah, I'm curious, like, how do you think about that? Like, well, you're, you're actually back at school now. Yeah.

Why did you go back to school?

[07:55] Jack Moses: So the short answer is I went back more because of football than school. School is kind of just like, I have to do it to play football, but really I wanted to finish out the chapter of playing football and play quarterback, which I didn't do in my first stint in college. I played receiver and I also had a very powerful medicine experience in Peru in October and I saw like what the next 50 years of my life could look like. Like, what's my purpose? What am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to build?

And it gave me this permission to like go be a kid and like play football. Like, it's okay. I'm 23. I can play football. All the things are going to still happen later. I can go play football.

So that was at the root of me going back to school. Being in school though, like I see through, I just think it's so bullshit. Like, I mean that in the way of it's so disconnected from the real world. And I feel fortunate to be in the real world for the past 2, 3 years, like finding out how to make money online, writing online, being an entrepreneur. You have to figure things out on your own. Now with AI and stuff, like kids aren't doing anything.

Like full disclaimer, like I wrote my final paper in like 3 minutes with AI because I'm more interested to write my own stuff, but I think there's a lot of kids out there my age, let's say 20 to 25, even beyond that, they want to go do their own thing. They don't want to work in the 9 to 5 job. They see all these influencers on social media.

[09:25] Paul: Well, like people were saying that when I was in college, right? I want to eventually do my own thing, right? But they don't know where to start. Nobody did it.

[09:35] Jack Moses: I feel like most kids don't know where to start around my age.

[09:38] Paul: Also in the US, the thing, the other thing that happens is the financial rewards to like normal jobs. Like the US labor economy is very good. Like people are always dunking on full-time jobs, but you can make a lot of money by just like working in corporate America.

[09:54] Jack Moses: Yeah. I mean, my friends, so for context, all my friends are like 22, 23. So like just graduated college, first year job. A lot of them are making like $80,000, $90,000, $100,000 a year at like a big Fortune 500 company or a Big Four consulting company. And I hear that sometimes and it's like, ooh, that seems kind of shiny. But then I come to Asia and I'm like, there's no way I'm doing that.

[10:16] Paul: So before you had this psychedelic experience, you saw football as a waste of time?

[10:24] Jack Moses: It was misaligned. I was misaligned. I was playing a position that maybe wasn't aligned and it just felt like my spirit wanted to break free and find the next evolution of myself. Actually, the first reason I quit football when I was 20 was because of another psychedelic experience with mushrooms. And in that journey, I zoomed out and I was like, oh, like my potential as a football player is going to peak at 22. But as a writer, that's what was in my head.

I was like, as a writer, I could write until I'm 70. Like, I could be so much more than what I've thought I was now. I could be anybody. Like, I was looking at Jordan Peterson. I'm like, I could do that. Like someday, eventually, not yet, but like 50-year timeline, sure.

And so that gave me this freedom to quit football in the first place and start writing and traveling. But then like the deeper layer was like, I can still write and do all those things in the big picture, but I can do the thing I love as well now.

[11:22] Paul: What do you think you would tell yourself? This is turning into my interview of you. What do you think you would tell yourself like looking 3 years back? Because I actually don't know what to tell people when they like quit earlier.

[11:35] Jack Moses: When they drop out of school.

[11:37] Paul: Yeah, I think like trying to make money on your own is great. But also working with other people is great in the things that will teach you about like working with others and the rewards of that and the challenges of that, right? Because eventually down the road, if you do want to do things with other people, you have to learn to sort of work in the broader context of the world.

[11:58] Jack Moses: Definitely. Yeah. 3 years ago, so I would have been I would've been just returning from Europe the first time I ever backpacked, and I was going back into my junior year of college, and this was right when I was about to start writing online and kind of break free. I don't think I would change anything. I would say like, go for it. Like, fuck it, go for it.

Like, fear nothing.

[12:22] Paul: Have you seen people that, um, have either regretted it or gotten a bit lost. I think, I think that's what I've seen over the years, especially in spiritual communities. There's a certain amount of— you can get untethered from reality in a way that doesn't let you, like, jump back in.

[12:41] Jack Moses: I don't think that's happened to you, but I think it has to an extent, but I still wouldn't change anything. Like, some of the— I've had a fair share of medicine experiences in the past few years that have, like, really expanded my awareness of what is this reality. I wouldn't change it because I'm very grateful of the awareness that I have, but at times it has left me very untethered, like very destabilized. Like in Eastern, um, philosophy and science, they have the chakra system, right? My root chakra, like the grounded stableness, like I have not had it very grounded for the past year or so because I've been so adventurous, so up in the spiritual world. So what I'm learning to do now is kind of integrate it all.

And we just had a mushroom journey on this retreat we produced that, and I did like basically a microdose as a facilitator. And the insight that I had during this journey was like, I feel really good about being very sober for a very long time because I've seen so much and I don't, I don't need to go to those places right now.

[13:46] Paul: Yeah, that's awesome.

[13:47] Jack Moses: Have you had any psychedelic experiences?

[13:50] Paul: Having a newborn. Okay.

[13:53] Jack Moses: That's what I was assuming. Like you had—

[13:55] Paul: No, I have not. I think I've purposely gone out of the way to avoid them. Uh, I think I'm more interested in what does life look like without them? Like I was sort of telling a friend that my life sort of feels psychedelic. I don't know what, where I'm going to be living a year from now. I don't know what I'm going to be doing multiple years from now.

I don't know how I'll make money. I don't have a plan. I don't intend to make a plan. It's like hilarious. It's awe-inspiring. It's delightful.

It's scary. And yeah, I was telling my friend, it was like, this is a fucking trip already.

[14:38] Jack Moses: Is there ever a part of you that's like, should I just like really get stable?

[14:43] Paul: What does that mean?

[14:44] Jack Moses: Like, oh, I should just get a really stable paycheck. I should start this stable business.

[14:49] Paul: That would be destabilizing for me. At this point, stable is having a stable apartment, right? Like we're mo— we have 3 different apartments over the next 4 months in Chiang Mai. Stable, that's actually feels really stable for me. I get in my routine, I know my place, I make the morning coffee. Like one of the rituals I've had for 7 years is I wake up and I make pour-over coffee.

At home, wherever I am. And now I have coffee with my daughter. She has milk, I have coffee. Um, and for some reason that helps me feel really grounded.

[15:29] Jack Moses: I feel the same way.

[15:30] Paul: But I have a very stable marriage. Um, I have very stable friendships. I have very stable writing practices as part of my life. My life's pretty boring and predictable. And so If I had to work a full-time job, it would suddenly make everything unstable because I would be away from the house. I don't know, like, there's no possibility I would take anything but a remote job right now, just with kids.

But if I was like back in person again, I would have to leave the house. I would need to make sure there's childcare. I would shift more into the mode of a worker and that's like, That's my worst case scenario. Like, we're not even close to that. I'll start lowering my net worth before I move in that direction. That would destabilize me psychologically too.

[16:22] Jack Moses: Yeah, definitely.

[16:23] Paul: Right. If the hustle bros are giving me a challenge, they would say I should grind at a full-time job just to challenge myself. Right. Because all points to feel pain. Yeah.

[16:31] Jack Moses: No pain, no gain.

[16:33] Paul: Right. Yeah. And my, my whole orientation is No joy, no go.

[16:40] Jack Moses: I think to a lot of the hustle bros, that would sound like you're like running from hard work or something like that. But like to the person who gets to know you, it seems like, oh, this guy's life, like he's writing all the time, like he's traveling all the time. That is, that is hard for some people to imagine.

[16:59] Paul: Yeah, I would just challenge the hustle bros to work less and 5 to 7 days a week and watch a toddler for 2 of those days during the week, work week.

[17:09] Jack Moses: Yeah.

[17:10] Paul: That's pretty challenging, but it's not painful. Right. It is, there's tension, there's resistance, there's exhaustion. Right. Um, there are puzzles when I'm writing, but it's like, man, at the end of a week, end of a month, it's like, yes, I, like how I'm spending my time.

[17:31] Jack Moses: Yeah, you love what you're doing.

[17:32] Paul: And that feels good. I think there is, there's wisdom in the like hustle culture of like you need to move past challenges in the sense of like the day-to-day. But I think you also need to be checking in at the, at the end and go, was that actually like satisfying to some degree? I think mostly what's happening is people get hijacked by the dopamine intensity of like extrinsic rewards. And I think that setting is just extremely high for some people. I don't think some people can turn it off and they're wired for that, but they're doing laptop work.

Like we're all just doing, we're doing the laptop work, like this whole, like there's, we're not grinding on laptops.

[18:21] Jack Moses: Yeah, it puts it in perspective because being here in Thailand, like I see people that are working at 10 o'clock on a Saturday night building them, like literally building a building outside or like in the sewers. And it's like, wow, like we get to write on our computers for a living. What a blessing.

[18:36] Paul: Yeah, exactly. And that's the thing with like entrepreneurship, especially in the digital, is like most people that are talking like this are not like, their lives are pretty fantastic if you zoom out in history.

[18:49] Jack Moses: Yeah, there's a good meme about this. It's like in the trenches and like it's a guy in Starbucks, like in the corner, this man is laptop.

[18:56] Paul: The thing I, the thing I like to say is there's good hard and there's bad hard, right? Bad hard is you have resistance against something because you know it's going to suck. And at the end of the day, like if you skipped it, it wouldn't have that big of a deal. Right. And so bad hard is like, oh, like I should, teach myself to like become a master marketer, like one of the best in the world. And that would require like taking like hundreds of hours of courses, right?

I have resistance to that. And I think if I went through that at the end, I'd probably just regret it more and have like resentment and like more emotional work to work through. But then there's the man, like, how, how do I like How do I get this paragraph to like flow in the way that like feels core to like what I'm trying to say? And I might sit with that for like 3 days and it like racks my brain, but it's so enjoyable because it sticks with you. You're like taking a long walk and you're like working through sentences and words and like, it's, and like when you crack the puzzle, it's so fun. Right.

And then do that. 3,500 times in the process of writing a book over a year. And like, suddenly you have one of the most enjoyable experiences you've ever had. That's what book writing was like for me. Other people describe writing as like, man, it's such a grind. But like, I lock myself in a room and I don't leave until I have 3 hours of writing done.

And it's like, if that's me, like, I'm just going to go do something else. I don't want to build a life around that kind of thing.

[20:41] Jack Moses: And I think that's felt in your writing in The Pathless Path. Like when I read it, it was a light, easy read. And I feel like you probably were writing it from this light, playful state of not forcing yourself to do it. Whereas like I read $100 Million Offers by Alex Hormozi, and I know he's locking himself in the room for 6 hours every morning with noise-canceling headphones on and no windows. And I can feel that energy in the writing.

[21:07] Paul: Yeah. It's like sell bigger offers.

[21:10] Jack Moses: Yeah, pretty much.

[21:11] Paul: Yeah. I think for me, I love connecting with people and then combine that with like, I really care. Like you read my book and blew up your life. And so like, I now like, and you've reached out and you've thanked me and like, I actually feel some sort of, um, uh, commitment to you and many people who have read my work. Like, I really care. Like, I want people— I want to tell people the whole truth of what I'm experiencing such that they can take it and internalize it on their own.

I don't want to share frameworks I haven't used. I don't want to share ideas I don't believe in. I don't want to simplify my ideas in ways that don't make sense. And so When I'm writing, I'm working through that and I'm saying like, how can I explain it? How can I say this in a simple way that is clear, but also true, like true in the sense that I'm not bullshitting myself. I'm really telling you the like full story of what went on.

Right. And that often includes like not feeling good or, or failing, or, I mean, my book is sort of depressing. Right. It's some people have written reviews like this guy, like didn't know what he was doing for like 10 years. Yeah. Right.

[22:37] Jack Moses: But that's inspiring.

[22:39] Paul: That's inspiring to certain people. Right. And that's the great thing about it. Like telling the truth and not just being like, here's how you like start, quit your job and then immediately start your own business. Right. Like, I don't know how to do that because I didn't do it.

All I knew how to do is quit my job and then get more confused and more lost and then just sort of become determined to find my way out of that. And I haven't found my way out of it. I'm just in love with being lost now.

[23:09] Jack Moses: Oh, do you think there is a way out of it?

[23:11] Paul: No, we're all lost. You can't escape work. You can't escape the modern world. You just have to love all of it. Like, and so this is what I was saying at the beginning. I don't have a plan.

I don't know what I'm doing, but I love that. There's, there's adventure in that. There's excitement. Um, and it's also scary. And that full breadth of emotion is like, that's the human experience. A human life is about being sad, being happy, being excited, being energized, being lost, heartbreak, like.

Falling in love. Like, it's the tension between these things, right? And when we try to design our lives around like only success or only achieving, or like, we just narrow the human spirit, human experience.

[24:01] Jack Moses: Interesting. Would you consider yourself a spiritual person?

[24:06] Paul: I think you can't read my books and not think it's somewhat of a spiritual message, right? I just don't use the language. I use a different language. It's my own sort of remix. It's a cop— like, I'm very— I'd say like I'm very woo adjacent.

[24:27] Jack Moses: Woo adjacent.

[24:28] Paul: Um, but yeah, there's, there's so much faith and trusting in the universe and seeing the, the connection to ourselves, the work, something deeper in everything I write about.

[24:42] Jack Moses: Can you define woo adjacent?

[24:45] Paul: Yeah, I think, um, I like hanging out with a group who's doing a retreat in Thailand and is going to do a bunch of psychedelics, but I'm probably just not going to partake.

[24:56] Jack Moses: Yeah. And for context, we only did one mushroom journey and it was a very mild dose, but yeah, I like places like Pai in Thailand.

[25:04] Paul: Right. I like that. And I'm totally comfortable not doing psychedelics while there, but I can learn from people doing them. And yeah, I think as a writer, I, I kind of like to be an observer. I like to talk about my own experience, but also just observe what's working for other people. I'm, I'm so open to like the full range of experiences, right?

Like, work fascinates me because people can relate to work in dozens of different ways. Right. The thing is like the work is painful and grinding and I love it works for some people. Right. It misleads a lot of people. And I, I don't think you should over-glorify this stuff, but like, it's just one recipe, right?

Work is enjoyable. It's delightful. It's not the only way, but it works for me for now. And it may stop working and may evolve. It may change. Working in seasons, working outside with your hands, working in service of others.

Like, there's just so many formulas for relating to the world.

[26:12] Jack Moses: Yeah, it's interesting because when I first read your book, I would not have considered myself to be a spiritual person at all. But I remember like the first chapter, one of the chapters was called Awakening, right? And I thought that was very interesting. And I think indirectly your book led me down a spiritual path of reading more philosophical books. Like you mentioned Alan Watts earlier, and like a lot of the ideas you're saying are like the same as him, like trust the universe, surrender to the unknown, don't cling to anything. I think your gift is like using practical language for these things and not being the woo-woo type of guy.

I feel like maybe that's your, your design, your divine design is like This guy who looks like a very normal American white dude who's worked this corporate job, but then he's found internal freedom and you can tell it to people in a way that makes sense.

[27:06] Paul: Yeah. And that's, that's always been my gift, even at work. I, I loved consulting because I could take really confusing data and explain it incredibly simply. Right. And so when I started working in consulting, I'm working at one of the best firms in the world, and I got immediate recognition and feedback for that. And so I've always known this synthesizing skill was something I was really strong at.

Now, I didn't know, oh, this will help me write books in the future, but it's sort of a skill I've been practicing my whole adult life. And when I'm leaning into that, I'm happy and it works. Right. And so, yeah, I am influenced. I've gone down the Ram Dass rabbit hole, Alan Watts rabbit hole, and they just add to— like, I think the bigger thing is I just read so much. I read that stuff and then I move on to like poetry, be it David Whyte.

Then I read on to like Seth Godin and I'll read like a more like mass market-friendly creativity, right? I'll read Tim Ferriss's stuff. I'll read Rebecca Solnit, like The Field Guide to Getting Lost is this, this like meandering poetic like essays about being lost and it's beautiful. And listening to people like Krista Tippett, who's like sort of a channel to the spiritual world.

[28:37] Jack Moses: Yeah.

[28:38] Paul: And then I'm like remixing it all. Right. And so it's so cool. You went down the Alan Watts rabbit hole after reading my book. There's 220 references in the first book. Uh, my dream was like, oh, I hope people just go like in 10 different directions.

You can go in any direction.

[28:57] Jack Moses: Did you mention Alan Watts in the first book?

[28:59] Paul: Yeah, he's quoted. Really? He's, um, Have Faith, the chapter about faith.

[29:04] Jack Moses: Interesting.

[29:06] Paul: Belief clings, but faith, uh, lets go. Right. And Yeah. Alan Watts, the final page of Good Work is a quote from Alan Watts. Wow. Uh, so the whole page is like one of his long, um, things.

Yeah. His stuff early on was like magical. I was just like walking around. I was walking around Taiwan, listening to his lectures and it was just like, okay, I'm like finally. In it. I've escaped the spacesuit, as Ram Dass says, right?

Spacesuit you. Like we take children, we try to turn them into somebodies, right? Somebody training. And I succeeded. I was really good at becoming a somebody, and now I'm a nobody, and I'm trying to embrace that. And it's delightful and it's hard and you lose yourself, you get caught up in the ego, but I have no interest in that.

[30:12] Jack Moses: Did that happen at all after The Pathless Path? Because I mean, by all metrics, it's like a massive success. Like, and I can usually tell how the world perceives something by like how my dad will talk about somebody. So he'll be like, oh, Paul Millerd, like, why he's super successful author. Right. So I'm curious, like, Did you feel at any time like it all, maybe it went to the ego?

[30:39] Paul: Of course. Right. I think I sold 7,500 books one month and made like 30 to 40 grand. Wow. It feels fantastic.

[30:54] Jack Moses: Yeah.

[30:54] Paul: It feels great. It like hijacks everything in your body. But at the same month that happened, my daughter had just been born. And so the smart thing to do would have been to double down on marketing and like, just go ham, go, go full Hormozy. Yeah. Like blast reels out.

And I just decided to spend the entire year not worried about work or money at all. Because it was sort of a gift from the universe. And I mean, the cool thing was I was able to go on podcasts because of the attention, but this was the second year and like, that's really all I did is respond to requests. I tried being more ambitious and I tried to email really well-known podcasts. I didn't get on any. I got on one, but that was like Lenny's podcast, and I think he was really excited about the ideas and looking for stuff, but he emailed me back like 9 months later.

Wow. Yeah, I didn't get on any. I got rejected from all of them. No one had any interest, and I just gave up and didn't pursue it more.

[32:14] Jack Moses: I would be really curious to look at your Human Design because There's a strategy. Do you remember your strategy?

[32:20] Paul: We can look at it.

[32:20] Jack Moses: I'm down, dude. This is where my podcasts have tended to go recently. Astrology, human design.

[32:26] Paul: Human design's like my woo edge.

[32:28] Jack Moses: That's your woo edge? All right, we're gonna push the woo edge. But in my human design, the reason I bring this up is my strategy for navigating life is to respond. It's not initiation. It's what's life putting in my awareness and how can I respond to it based on my emotions and my body. And so for you to be like, I should go email all these people and it doesn't work out.

[32:50] Paul: No, it's not my flow. It's totally against my flow. Well, I mean, we're both friends with Danny Miranda. Danny is one of these people that can flow in the ambitious mode. And so I actually have this practice I told him I do. What would Danny do?

Like, I actually started scheduling an ambitious afternoon because I realized I was making no outward effort toward the world. And my conclusion from that was like, I just shouldn't do it. Like, I, I stopped doing it. I was doing it once a quarter. I was scheduling 4 hours where I try to be ambitious just as a practice to see what it felt like.

[33:31] Jack Moses: And what would you do in those 4 hours?

[33:33] Paul: I made a list of like really impressive influencers and creators and try to connect with them and like send them my book or get them to respond. Yeah. Everyone just ignored me.

[33:42] Jack Moses: Yeah.

[33:42] Paul: Because I think the energy is wrong.

[33:45] Jack Moses: The right people will magnetize to you like Ali Abdaal or whoever.

[33:49] Paul: Yeah. And, um, yeah. And I've connected, um, yeah, Ali Abdaal was a huge supporter of my book. He started reading my newsletter years before I put it out. And so he's just another reader. And so, yeah, it's— hold on, that's my daughter's.

Okay.

[34:13] Jack Moses: Let's see this. And one quick question on the ambition thing is, was writing The Pathless Path and publishing that, was that ambitious?

[34:23] Paul: I was scared to share it boldly. I didn't tell anyone when I was launching it.

[34:28] Jack Moses: Yeah, I know.

[34:31] Paul: This is like, I think this is so fun for me to put a book out and not promote it.

[34:37] Jack Moses: That is.

[34:38] Paul: So fun.

[34:39] Jack Moses: Like, quite freeing because there's no attachment.

[34:43] Paul: There's two things there. One is I'm scared to promote myself. I've actually gotten better at this through The Pathless Path because I realized that I actually do believe in this book. I love it. And you know what helped me is hearing from people like you. And so I have this, like, I have all these things buried in the book.

Like, one of them is that a practice I do, if I'm inspired by something, I reach out and tell the author. I wrote that in The Pathless Path and everyone just says, oh, I loved when you said that, therefore now I'm emailing you. Oh, right. And so once I got the emails from the normal readers telling me this is a life-changing book, it was like, okay, that's awesome. This is connecting with exactly the people I want to connect with. And so I leaned into that more aggressively, right?

[35:33] Jack Moses: Listen to this, listen to this. Your strategy in human design is wait for the invitation.

[35:39] Paul: Yes, exactly.

[35:40] Jack Moses: And this is like, this is why we have the same profile too, 5/1, which we could go into in a second.

[35:46] Paul: Yeah. And this is why I didn't, um, yeah, I really rolled my eyes when I heard about human design. Super, whoa, this is bullshit. But then like, yeah, stuff like this, like I don't know. There's, there's hidden forces of the universe. It is.

[36:03] Jack Moses: It's a combination of like astrology, the I Ching, quantum physics. Like it's a, it's a combination of many things like that somebody channeled into one system.

[36:14] Paul: And so people launch books. There's a whole process. I didn't do any of it. I bookmarked a bunch of stuff about book launch. And, uh, was said I was gonna presale my book and then I would research all the book launch stuff. So upload my PDF of my paperback on Thursday.

And so I'm gonna do like a 3-week pre-launch. Get the email Friday morning or no, Saturday morning, your book is live and it's published. It's for sale. So I go, fuck it, we're live. Yeah. I think the Kindle had— I moved the Kindle presale up for like 3 days.

I decided to give it a couple of days. I tweeted about it, sent it in my newsletter, and we went live with every version on Monday. Wow. And so I only had 69 presales or something.

[37:12] Jack Moses: Wow.

[37:13] Paul: And yeah, I just went with it. I didn't ask for blurbs. I didn't ask anyone to read it before it was live. Literally only me, 2 or 3 beta readers, and my editor had read it. My wife hadn't even read it. And so the entire first year, I didn't ask anyone to share it.

I didn't ask a single person to share anything. It was all just me sharing. I would talk about it a lot. Um, but yeah. I'm always just curious about like, what is the opposite of the strategies? Here's the correct way to do this.

And I had some practice doing this. I launched my podcast in 2017. Back then there was a podcast launch playbook. Everyone did the same strategies. Oh, you do this and you try to get 5 episodes and then you launch it all on the same day and you try to get, you try to maximize the Apple rankings. I'm just like, this stuff is so stupid.

[38:15] Jack Moses: Yeah.

[38:17] Paul: The whole point is I love talking to people and I want to share it with people. So I'm just going to do that. And so I do this with everything I do. And so it's now I can just write about it. It's my thing. The second book, I did a little more of a launch, but I didn't promote it until the book was live.

I just think people should be able to read the book and talk about it. It's way easier for me to lean into that energy because I love the readers.

[38:45] Jack Moses: Yeah, you're not trying to hack anything.

[38:47] Paul: Like, you know, the whole reason people do pre-launches for books is so that bookstores get signals that say, oh, people are buying this book, let's order a bunch, right?

[38:57] Jack Moses: It's the same as like hacking the algorithm, right? Which you're like the exact antithesis of.

[39:03] Paul: The algorithms are fine. They're just one way of elevating stuff.

[39:10] Jack Moses: Yeah. So this Human Design, the invitation, do you feel that there was a point where there was actually an invitation from the universe, let's say, to write the book?

[39:23] Paul: Yeah. Yeah.

[39:24] Jack Moses: How did that come through?

[39:26] Paul: And so, yeah, so background in Human Design, I'm going to post this in my podcast. They're not ready for this. Maybe they're primed for it on yours. Definitely. I have all the Human Design. You basically just put in your birthday.

[39:39] Jack Moses: It's like astrology.

[39:40] Paul: Yeah. Yeah. And then it pumps out this chart and it matched my wife perfectly too. She's a manifestor. Yes.

[39:47] Jack Moses: I think the explanation that's helped me understand it is like the same with the somebody training and the nobody. It's like before we had a name, we were just born at a certain time in the cosmos as a certain pattern of frequency.

[40:00] Paul: And does it matter where you're born?

[40:02] Jack Moses: Yes. Okay, because it matters in relation to all the planets and stars. But before you had a name, you were just a frequency. And astrology, Human Design, Gene Keys, Kabbalah, whatever it is, they just map your inherent frequency beneath like the personality layer, um, which is why it's been so powerful for me. Yeah, I've actually been giving people astrology readings for the past like 6 months. That's how— that's been a money-making vehicle for me.

[40:30] Paul: Yeah. So Invitation was— I had no plans to write a book. Well, I never have any plans to do anything. I have like one plan in my life right now. I have no other plans. What's the plan?

I'm launching a hardcover version of The Pathless Path. Like, I think I showed you, right?

[40:48] Jack Moses: You showed me, but you told me.

[40:50] Paul: Yeah, I'll show you some. I mean, show you later, but it's, it's going to be the most beautiful book You will. That's the goal.

[40:58] Jack Moses: I have like a vision in my mind of what it might be. You said it's like 4 covers or it's like a pamphlet almost?

[41:04] Paul: No, it's just going to be, it's like a cloth-bound illustrated cover inspired by like Japanese design.

[41:13] Jack Moses: Beautiful.

[41:14] Paul: Yeah, this is going to be a slipcase. It's just going to be really nice. So my plan is to launch that. I'll probably send the book to people, but mostly just because somebody is helping me and I can't just launch. If it was— if I had complete control, I would just launch. But I'm still probably just not going to make that much noise around it.

I'm just going to see what kind of reactions it ignites in the world and then lean into that. So the book, I'm in Mexico, living in Puerto Escondido, 2020. End of 2020, uh, COVID has shut down the world and across the world, there are these existential crises with work happening broadly, but like my writing's getting like 5 times the attention it did versus the beginning of 2020. And so I have these open curiosity conversations with people every week, Wednesday, my entire calendar is open, 8:00 AM to 4 PM or whatever. Or no, more like 10 AM to 4 PM.

[42:20] Jack Moses: Hormones would be in shambles.

[42:22] Paul: Yeah. Free. You don't have to pay to talk to me. You still can if you join my community. I have open calendar every Wednesday again because I thought it'd be fun to do again. Yeah.

Yeah. What's that? Intro where like people charge insane amounts of money.

[42:36] Jack Moses: Yeah.

[42:37] Paul: I saw some entrepreneurs like $2,000 for like a 15-minute call.

[42:41] Jack Moses: Yeah.

[42:41] Paul: Insane. I would never charge that. But yeah, the end of the year, 3 people within a week were like, you should write a book. I basically had this like growing web of ideas that were starting to morph together. And I realized people weren't going to spend the time to go through 75 newsletter posts, essays, tweets, all of it. So I basically just opened a Word doc, spent like an entire morning dumping stuff in there, walk outside to my friend Johnny.

I detail this story in Good Work. So Good Work is more of an exploration of like, how do I approach work? Walk out to him and was like, I think I'm writing a book.

[43:31] Jack Moses: I think.

[43:33] Paul: Yeah. He goes, he's Definitely. You should. That's great. Do it. Right.

And Johnny is somebody that came into my life through a random invitation as well. And so everything just sort of just keeps connecting and coming back. And the biggest thing I'm trying to find in my life right now is like, how do I get back to that sense of flow such that the invitations will come up? Because I think you can get out of the flow. Um, but yeah, Johnny was the person that introduced me to the phrase, The Pathless Path. He walked up to me after a conference and handed me the book The Three Marriages by David Whyte and said, you need to read this.

And I did. And that's where I found the phrase The Pathless Path. I ended up following him to Asia in Bali and then ended up following him again in Mexico when he was like, hey, we have an empty room. Do you want to come? Yes. Yeah.

[44:27] Jack Moses: The invitation.

[44:28] Paul: Yeah. Yeah.

[44:29] Jack Moses: That's an interesting one. Like the more you're aligned with your nature and the flow, the more the right invitations will come in and you'll be perceptive enough to receive them? How do you, how do you stay in that flow and how do you notice when you come out of it?

[44:44] Paul: It's, yeah, I think I did get disconnected over the past couple of years. I think one thing I'm realizing is I was spending a lot of time helping take care of my daughter, especially as my wife was really working on her book after I launched my second one. Um, and so my work was always just like these random 4-hour blocks where I'm just either catching up on stuff or like trying to write. And the key is to not be in the trying mode. Right. And so I really realized I need space to just like, I don't know, do this in an afternoon.

Like I need more space where I can spend a whole day wasted, wasted, right? Wasting my day going for a long walk. Or reading books or just like even scrolling the internet. I don't self-coerce myself and label that as bad. It's just what I'm doing. Yeah.

[45:44] Jack Moses: When you have space, like we're opening ourselves to synchronicity essentially, rather than like rigidly controlling everything with the mind. Like, are you familiar with David Hawkins' map of consciousness? I'm sure you've seen it a bunch on the internet, but like above 500 is love and that's nonlinear reality. So that's where all the synchronicities happen. So you see the tweet, you get the text, you do a podcast. But like, below that, that's what the world's run on is like rational planning.

[46:11] Paul: Right.

[46:11] Jack Moses: And it's very hard to tap into love and synchronicity and nonlinear reality when we're in a, when we're living in our Google Calendar, essentially.

[46:20] Paul: Yeah. And so early in my path, I had this sense that, okay, you start making, you make like $100 from a thing. Um, the tendency is to then try to turn that into a $1,000 thing or a $10,000 thing. The problem is you may plateau in your openness, the sense of possibilities, the next thing you're supposed to be learning, right? And so I had this sense that like, I shouldn't actually try to maximize anything unless I'm getting powerful signals from the world that it's aligned with what I care about and what the world wants. And so I just kept quitting most things early in my path, like little courses I've tried, uh, experiments I tried, getting my writing published and yeah, I just didn't want to try to maximize things.

I wanted to do things that felt easier to sustain and writing early on, I was like, I could do this for 50 years. This is great. This is so fun. Yes. And so eventually I just decided, okay, I'm going to protect the writing and just do that with most of my time and not worry about making money from it.

[47:31] Jack Moses: Yeah, it's the— something else from the Human Design's coming up. The 5/1 is your profile, and that's mine too, which is interesting. So the 5/1, we go investigate things like down to the depths by ourselves, and then we bring them back out and provide solutions to people. The 5 is the, I think, the investigator. The 1 is the communicator. Um, so it's been the same for me.

Like, I'll go down a rabbit hole of Vedic astrology, and then I build a project around that. I'm like, I don't know if I want to continue doing this every day. But how can I create bigger containers that all of these things can fit under? That's what I feel like I'm in right now of like building bigger communities or building, writing broader books that a lot of these more narrow ideas can fit under.

[48:15] Paul: Yeah. When you're going after a goal, that is your path, right? And you're doing tactics to get to the goal, right? I'm more interested in What are the other million possibilities out there? Right. And so right now, um, I've been on my path for 8 years.

I have no idea where I'll end up 10 years from now or what I'm going to be working on or what I'll be doing to make money. But I know for sure if I like get tight, focus narrow, double down, I'm probably going to end up slightly unhappy 10 years from now. Right. So I need to remain that keep that looseness. Writing for me is sort of a meta vehicle of exploration and a path to do many different things. Right.

So I am doing the books right now. I want to keep writing books, but what does an AI sort of book project look like 5 years from now? I don't know. But that's why I'm like playing with AI, seeing what I can do with it. Right. That's why I keep talking to people.

That's why I travel to different places. That's why I I do all these things because I don't know, I want to keep learning. Yeah.

[49:34] Jack Moses: Do you find like with other people that are around your age that they will project things onto you often?

[49:42] Paul: Oh yeah, of course.

[49:43] Jack Moses: Shoulds, essentially?

[49:45] Paul: Yeah. Yeah. I wrote an essay about this. Your insecurity is not mine. Don't you think you should own a house with a kid? Don't you think you should be worrying about school?

Don't you worry about retirement? They're just telling me what they're afraid of. Right. The great thing about my life is I can react to the challenges in my life. They're not just vague, ambiguous things that aren't happening yet. Right.

That's the fear people project. Oh, if I didn't have a job, it would be terrifying. It'd be so scary.

[50:20] Jack Moses: Mm-hmm.

[50:20] Paul: Um, but I'm actually in that life, so I can just react to that.

[50:23] Jack Moses: Mm-hmm.

[50:24] Paul: Right. Two things. I can take action, be more strategic financially. Mm-hmm. And two, I can sit with the actual emotion and experience it and not be afraid of the emotion. Mm-hmm.

Um, have you explored Joe Hudson's stuff? Mm-hmm. Um, his whole idea is he has this idea of the golden algorithm. There's an emotion we don't want to feel, right? Let's say, for example, going back to college, you might feel ashamed, right? Because, oh, I was talking about dropping out and doing my own thing.

And so you might take action to avoid that and basically never go back to college, right? And live this whole life that's in rejection of this thing. The better path is just to say, Oh, I am somewhat ashamed and I'm going to fully feel that. Right. And the other side of that is basically just living a more integrated life, more true, more aligned.

[51:24] Jack Moses: Yeah. It's interesting.

[51:26] Paul: I don't know if that's true for you. Yeah.

[51:28] Jack Moses: I didn't feel shame about it.

[51:29] Paul: Um, probably had some weird emotions.

[51:33] Jack Moses: Honestly, it was a lot of excitement. There was actually fear. There was more so fear.

[51:38] Paul: College.

[51:39] Jack Moses: College has been like the kind of the, in the back burner, but football is at the forefront and there's been fear around football. Like I haven't played quarterback in 6 years and now I'm going to be starting in a game against other 11 dudes that are trying to tackle me. What the fuck? Like that's kind of, that's brought up some fear, but with college, the number one emotion that I felt is constraint. And yeah, it, it makes me so excited to think about 2026 and like going on The Pathless Path again, essentially going on an adventure again, because it's all in my Human Design. It's all in my astrology.

Like, I'm built for freedom. I'm built to be a freedom seeker and explorer and adventurer. And going back to college, it's like ingrained in me deeper how misaligned the normal system is with my spirit and my DNA.

[52:32] Paul: Yeah, I think the key to this is just make sure you date and marry somebody that's freedom-aligned.

[52:37] Jack Moses: Yes, that's for sure it.

[52:39] Paul: Because yeah, my, my wife, um, is on a very Pathless Path as well. And we just both agree that if we had full-time jobs and we knew exactly what our life would look like 5 to 10 years from now, we'd probably be a bit depressed. And so, um, it's so much easier when you're like that with someone else and building a life because Um, yeah, it actually leads to a level of stability. We have stable dreams, right? So that's the way to think about it. Stable dreams, um, somewhat chaotic life, but it doesn't feel chaotic because we're so deeply aligned with what we care about.

Like for us, like pursuing our creative dreams is so important. And so if we had to give that up, it would Oh man, that, that would be hard.

[53:36] Jack Moses: Yeah. Before you met her, did you make some type of like internal decision of like, I'm ready, or this is what I'm looking for?

[53:45] Paul: I was done.

[53:47] Jack Moses: You were done?

[53:47] Paul: I was gonna be single forever.

[53:49] Jack Moses: Really?

[53:49] Paul: Yeah.

[53:51] Jack Moses: Tell me more.

[53:52] Paul: I just didn't think there was a person that would accept me. Wow. Um, too, too bold, don't care enough about work. Yeah, it was all these projections. Yeah. Oh, a woman is gonna want me to have a stable job and have a big house and have a lot of money for things.

Right? Yeah. And then meeting Angie just broke every model, but I was that for her too. She had declared, I'm giving up. I'm trying to find— we had both like given up. Have we really given up?

No, because we swiped right on Tinder and met up. But like, yeah, we had sort of mourned the loss that maybe we're going to meet someone.

[54:40] Jack Moses: Wow. Wow.

[54:43] Paul: And then we met each other within a few months of those declarations.

[54:47] Jack Moses: So interesting.

[54:50] Paul: But we— but it fits us perfectly. Because we had both let go of our attachment to needing the other. Both of us spent so much time dating, so much. We so desperately wanted that union, and it's great. Like, marriage is awesome, but like, we wanted it so bad that like, we— that was our goal, right? That's the trying mode.

The trying mode doesn't work for me, right? As soon as I let go, went to Taiwan without a plan, couldn't speak the language, wasn't making any money, didn't have a plan to make any money. I fell in love with writing and fell in love with a woman within 4 weeks. And so, like, I'm not the most woo person, but like, once that happens to you, you're not going to like overly plan your life.

[55:41] Jack Moses: Right. Right. There's, there's more magic than can be put into a plan. Yeah, in this universe.

[55:47] Paul: Exactly. Wow.

[55:49] Jack Moses: It's inspirational. Um, I've been in this interesting spot where at times I'm like, I'm ready to find this partner. And then other times I'm like, I'm not ready. Like I have, I have to finish school, all this stuff.

[56:02] Paul: Probably going to be hard at your age. I think you're more mature than most people your age, though. I think your generation is more mature than mine. There's some like, we spend most of our 20s binge drinking. And avoiding our emotions.

[56:15] Jack Moses: It's still there. I'd say the majority, it's still there, but there are a lot of conscious people that are— I met a girl yesterday actually in Pai who was 20. She just turned 20 and she was so wise. Like you would've thought she's 28. So there are those people out there, but it is hard though.

[56:32] Paul: I mean, the person I was at 23 and 33 was so radically different. Whereas the person I was at 33 and 40 is not that different in terms of alignment, um, in a way that could match with someone.

[56:49] Jack Moses: Interesting. Yeah, I think it's about me owning the identity shift. Like, I haven't read the David Whyte book, um, like, essentially The Identity Shift around yet, but I feel like I'm in this, like, chrysalis period, this metamorphosis, where I went on my Pathless Path for 2, 3 years. Now I came back to football and college in Illinois and, like, living that life. And now this, it's like fully closing that chapter, integrating that part of myself and stepping into the next chapter. And then if it's in God's plan, the partner will appear.

[57:24] Paul: Yeah. How are you thinking about money? I think like, I mean, you need money.

[57:30] Jack Moses: Yes.

[57:30] Paul: Um, I assume you don't have much.

[57:33] Jack Moses: I've made a lot of money in the past 3 years, a lot relative to me.

[57:36] Paul: Right.

[57:37] Jack Moses: Um, I've also spent a lot of money traveling and being very free. I've made money in like so many various ways, which has been really great.

[57:47] Paul: That is such confidence. Yeah. That for me was, everyone's like, oh, you have a fancy company. But like, honestly, making like $3 online was such more confidence than making $100 grand for a company.

[57:59] Jack Moses: Because you're doing it yourself. You're building this.

[58:01] Paul: It's terrifying. Yeah.

[58:03] Jack Moses: I mean, there's been times where like, I've launched a cohort around creator economy and performance stuff and made like a pretty good chunk in a month, like $40K in a month. I've also had months where I haven't made any money intentionally when I'm backpacked. Like after that, which has been interesting, I've sold tarot card readings, I've sold astrology readings. So like I've been able to do a lot. Now I feel like, cuz I'm going home for 5 months and I'm actually moving back in with my parents for 5 months, finishing school. And I'm actually going to lock in a little bit.

I've had this tendency to go to extremes. Like, I can go really hard monk mode, bro, like productivity, bro. And I can go like full hippie spiritual living in Asia. So I feel like I'm—

[58:47] Paul: But I think that balance is nice. Like, living seasonally is totally underrated.

[58:52] Jack Moses: Yes. And I think I'm meant to build things. I think I'm meant to build things. I have a lot of ideas about projects, things that are crystallizing with the community. With a book. There's so many books that are there.

I just need time. Like I even might in January 2026, I might become a DJ and live in Pai. Like that's another thing.

[59:13] Paul: So that, that, that stuff I think is often the most underrated when you're younger.

[59:19] Jack Moses: And I forget about the retreats too.

[59:21] Paul: Like, and you just don't know where that will lead. Right.

[59:25] Jack Moses: I think they all merge like together. So Another esoteric thing I'm interested in is—

[59:30] Paul: I learned how to DJ 3 years ago too. Really?

[59:32] Jack Moses: I didn't know that. Maybe we can go back to back or something.

[59:36] Paul: Yeah. But you're gonna, you're like the, you're like the case study of like what my life would've looked like if I blew it up earlier.

[59:44] Jack Moses: Yeah, maybe, maybe. I mean, we're, we're quite similar. But something that's interesting is in numerology, numerology gets very interesting. But my life path is a 5, which is the adventure seeker, freedom seeker, explorer. And I feel I'm finally stepping into that. Like this retreat that I just ran felt like the most aligned work I had ever done in my life.

Like bringing people to Thailand to go on an adventure and step out of their comfort zones and like just really giving them permission to have so much fun. I think that is— that feels very aligned in terms of work.

[01:00:20] Paul: That's awesome. Yeah, I've, I've thought about hosting retreats too, but I think I'm, I have some blocks there. I think I'm scared.

[01:00:27] Jack Moses: Maybe we ask the audience, because I'm to respond, you're waiting for the invitation. Would you guys like to do a writing retreat?

[01:00:33] Paul: I've already gotten requests. I already have the invitations.

[01:00:36] Jack Moses: Okay. Um, you just need somebody to set it up.

[01:00:39] Paul: They will happen eventually.

[01:00:41] Jack Moses: Yeah.

[01:00:42] Paul: I want to ask you one more question. How you went, you kind of got hustle pilled. Early on.

[01:00:47] Jack Moses: For sure.

[01:00:48] Paul: Yeah. But you also pivoted out of it quickly. I think Danny Miranda is another one who sort of shifted away from that too, in a healthy way. I think, um, sort of the productivity hustle mode, I think it's a useful phase.

[01:01:05] Jack Moses: Yes.

[01:01:05] Paul: Um, but how do you think about that now? Like, I think the most interesting people can shift into that mode to build. Yes. Like when, when I'm at the finish line of a book, it's like I'm locked in.

[01:01:19] Jack Moses: Yes.

[01:01:20] Paul: But in the sense that the book has absorbed my brain. Yeah.

[01:01:23] Jack Moses: You're not trying to do anything else.

[01:01:24] Paul: I just like, I want to work on it every hour. But I think the interesting thing is like, I love to see people that could like do that mode, but then like take the foot off the gas, like 30% and just like let the serendipity happen.

[01:01:40] Jack Moses: Yes.

[01:01:41] Paul: Because I think there's actually this hidden— this is going to get woo. I think there's this hidden— there's this hidden magic floating in the world that if you just lean back a little and stop punishing people with your nonstop productivity, that like magic will seep in.

[01:01:58] Jack Moses: Yes.

[01:01:58] Paul: But it may not show up until like year 3. And so if you soak up all the energy from the universe in like a 1-month launch, you're going to get exhausted and you totally undermine the opportunity for like serendipity and magic to flow into your life and work.

[01:02:15] Jack Moses: Yes.

[01:02:16] Paul: What do you think?

[01:02:16] Jack Moses: Yeah, I mean, it's really resonant. And the truth is that maybe we develop a—

[01:02:21] Paul: maybe this is a book that comes out of it, a new hustle, hustle culture for the magical aligned.

[01:02:28] Jack Moses: I mean, this is like something I'm quite passionate about and I thought of a lot. I think for me, the shift from like performance, productivity, hustle bro to more spiritual bro, you could call, um, it was finding my feminine energy within myself because I had fallen into the Paul Moses, David Goggins, Jocko Willink, like just work harder, grind, grind.

[01:02:52] Paul: Yeah, I mean, they're literally on— they're probably supplementing with testosterone, mostly. Like, so it is like, they're also hyper— they're so masculine, and that probably works for them, right?

[01:03:03] Jack Moses: And we need those people in the world. Like, they're so important. But for me—

[01:03:06] Paul: Well, at least Jaco served in the military.

[01:03:09] Jack Moses: Yeah.

[01:03:09] Paul: Right? It's a useful role. Like, what are these other guys doing? Maybe they should join the military.

[01:03:14] Jack Moses: Maybe, maybe. But for me, like—

[01:03:16] Paul: All hustle bros need to sign up for military service.

[01:03:19] Jack Moses: Maybe. That would be a good test. But I was so overextended into my masculine, like working a 12-hour day all the time for a launch, that my feminine was being repressed. And the energy would leak out into like escaping, like vices, like ice cream, weed, porn, vaping, all those addictions, because I wasn't allowing myself to be in the feminine.

[01:03:43] Paul: Well, you probably weren't attracting women either.

[01:03:45] Jack Moses: No, I wasn't even— I didn't even want to.

[01:03:47] Paul: They don't care about your MRR.

[01:03:49] Jack Moses: No, they don't give a fuck. But then when I went to Asia last summer, the— it was like my spirit knew that I needed this because I had been so masculine for the first 5 months of the year. I'm like, I need to break free, basically. And I— the test became, can I allow myself to do nothing? And in there, I found my feminine side, like just laying around all day, like, um, reading, um, going to ecstatic dances, going to parties and learning to dance, and like doing self-therapy through dancing and finding my feminine. And now I notice like I can shift between masculine building focus and feminine flow.

And when I'm really balanced and integrated, I don't seek to escape into any vices. Yeah, I think that's why so many men like— why, why does a man who works really hard need to have a beer at night? It's like he wants to feel that feminine freedom.

[01:04:40] Paul: This is right. Yeah, I like that. What happened after I moved to Asia? I quit drinking.

[01:04:46] Jack Moses: Yeah, you're right. Because you're allowing yourself to be.

[01:04:48] Paul: But it fell out of my life. I sort of didn't notice. It just like fell out. Whereas like when I was in New York, It was like, oh, I drank again. I should stop drinking.

[01:04:59] Jack Moses: Yes.

[01:04:59] Paul: And then you just drink. Like, man, I drank so much in my 20s. I think that's one of my biggest regrets, but the drinking wasn't the problem. It was the inability to face my insecurities and anxieties and what I really wanted. Yeah. Imagine if I said, okay, you have to work in the corporate world for the next 10 years.

[01:05:20] Jack Moses: I'd be shivering. Look at my body.

[01:05:22] Paul: I'd probably have to start drinking. Maybe.

[01:05:24] Jack Moses: And I felt that in college. Like, I've, I've, uh, for the first 5 or 6 months of this year being in college, I was like, there's no way I can do my creative projects, all the things I'm doing online and play football and go to class and do homework if I'm not using nicotine or hitting a vape. That's how it's felt.

[01:05:45] Paul: Nicotine does seem like the Gen Z booze.

[01:05:48] Jack Moses: We always, I mean, we started at 14, 15, but I didn't ever—

[01:05:52] Paul: It seems less downsides, at least for doing the gum.

[01:05:56] Jack Moses: But I think the trap, it's, it's dopamine.

[01:06:00] Paul: Yeah. That's what I'm thinking. Like the nervous system, long-term.

[01:06:03] Jack Moses: I've realized this has happened twice. I have a tendency to do this. I've built a life that's dependent on stimulants. And if I take away the nicotine and the caffeine, if I can't keep up with what I'm doing, okay, something's out of alignment there.

[01:06:17] Paul: Well, this is also like, it's, it's beyond like masculine, feminine, it's Western, Eastern, the Western culture is left brain, right? And Eastern culture has, especially in the cities, has done that too, especially in East Asia, but like in the US, coffee, right? But in the East Asia, tea, tea is a little lighter, a little calmer, matcha, a little more extended, right? Um, coffee shops don't open at 5:00 AM. Right. Right.

Good luck getting a coffee in Asia at 8 AM.

[01:06:52] Jack Moses: Yeah.

[01:06:52] Paul: Coffee shops open at 11 in Taiwan because why would you drink coffee in the morning?

[01:06:58] Jack Moses: That's so interesting. Why would you drink it in the morning?

[01:07:01] Paul: They don't. No one does. Wow. Yeah. And there's no like rush. And yeah, I think there's just such, there's such balance by living in different parts of the world.

That is, these are my psycho technologies. My psycho technologies are like long walks or writing a book, um, or living in different countries for extended periods. Like those are psychoactive for me.

[01:07:29] Jack Moses: Definitely.

[01:07:30] Paul: Like I, I just passed a motorcycle driving test. I had to take a written test and then a practical driving test. The whole instructions were in Thai. I'm just standing there like, I have no idea. And then she comes up to me, uh, you foreigner? Yeah, she's so— no instruction, just follow.

And so I just pull in, we're going through a course. I just follow. Passed, got a driver's license in Thailand.

[01:07:59] Jack Moses: Wow. It seems like things seem to just flow and work out here.

[01:08:04] Paul: Yeah. I mean, I had to go into trying mode and studying for the test. It's like 550 questions, but yeah. Yeah. Bizarrely, we went to Koh Samui, which is an island in Thailand, for this, for 5 weeks before we came here. We're stressed all the time.

We're not eating our people. We're, um, like we had our daughter in a short-term daycare. She's struggling. She's not eating. We get to Chiang Mai. Uh, big, the big thing was my wife's father, uh, come and stay with us, help with our daughter.

Day 1, I go to the coworking center. I meet the owner who I had met a year ago in the US. He introduced me to someone who's sort of become a mentor. I start making friends instantly. Random people text me that they're coming to Chiang Mai. You're coming here.

Like I start meeting people. Like my wife starts making really great girlfriends instantly. We're having more time for our work, connecting with like everything just flows. And so immediately, we were like, okay, we're staying. And we just commit. Now we're like, this is probably going to be our home base, but that may change.

We'll probably spend time in Taiwan as well. But yeah, like when life's happening and it fits, it's so awesome, especially when you have a kid. Like we really were struggling in the US. Things were not— it didn't feel right for us. For the first time, In over 2 years, it finally feels right. And I'm so excited for what's going to emerge here.

[01:09:42] Jack Moses: Yeah. What was the decision or the moment where you're like, we have to leave Austin?

[01:09:50] Paul: It's, I think, the second year of having a kid. It was very clear we moved— we stayed downtown. There's no kids downtown. If we wanted to thrive, we knew we'd have to move to the suburbs. And so we said, well, if we're going to move to the suburbs of Austin, we don't even have family here. Let's just move to Asia.

Also, we had been in the US for over 3 years and it was time to like live in Angie's side of the world, be closer to her family. And so, yeah, we, we basically just committed to trying things this whole year. We're just going to experiment with living in different ways, but yeah, we're excited for that book.

[01:10:31] Jack Moses: I can already see it.

[01:10:32] Paul: Everyone wants me to write The Pathless Parent because it works so well.

[01:10:36] Jack Moses: Yes.

[01:10:37] Paul: Um, I don't know, parenting's so humbling. Like, I also only have a sample size of one, so I just like don't have tons of confidence in what I'm doing. Yeah. But yeah.

[01:10:49] Jack Moses: I could see a book called like Experiments in a Living or something.

[01:10:53] Paul: This was the working title of my book. Really? I have a book. In progress called— I'm going to call it Creator's Field Guide, I think.

[01:11:00] Jack Moses: Creator's Field Guide.

[01:11:01] Paul: But yeah, interesting. Experiments in Living kind of got forked into Good Work.

[01:11:06] Jack Moses: Yeah.

[01:11:07] Paul: A money book and The Creator's Field Guide.

[01:11:11] Jack Moses: Interesting.

[01:11:12] Paul: Yeah. I think starting next year, I'm just going to keep publishing smaller books, but I need to get the system working.

[01:11:19] Jack Moses: I would love to know more about that process because By the time I go back to the US in 12 days, I want to have a first draft of a book done.

[01:11:30] Paul: I can't help you with that.

[01:11:31] Jack Moses: Well, not, not about that, but publishing it or like publishing, self-publishing, like, because for somebody who's never done it, like, how hard is that process?

[01:11:41] Paul: Not hard.

[01:11:41] Jack Moses: It's not hard.

[01:11:42] Paul: Take your file, format it, put it in like a program that formats it, export the file, upload, publish.

[01:11:49] Jack Moses: Publish where? Like Amazon?

[01:11:51] Paul: KDP, Amazon. Yeah.

[01:11:53] Jack Moses: Okay.

[01:11:53] Paul: It's very straightforward. I have a whole guide on my site. It's not worth talking about.

[01:11:57] Jack Moses: I agree. The reason I'm even bringing it up though, is I think that a big resistance for people of like, whether it's publishing a book or publishing a podcast, it's like, it seems so overwhelming.

[01:12:07] Paul: If you want to print, stock, and warehouse your books, very complicated.

[01:12:10] Jack Moses: Okay.

[01:12:11] Paul: It gets very complicated fast. But if you can print on demand, um, IngramSpark KDP will cover like The majority of like the audience who will buy your book globally.

[01:12:22] Jack Moses: So the principle is—

[01:12:23] Paul: It prints in warehouses around the world and ships to people.

[01:12:27] Jack Moses: Okay, cool.

[01:12:27] Paul: Very simple.

[01:12:29] Jack Moses: Cool.

[01:12:29] Paul: It's just a PDF file.

[01:12:30] Jack Moses: I think that's valuable for people to hear because there's this whole stigma of like, how do you publish a book? You need to go get a publisher, you need a contract.

[01:12:38] Paul: It's like, it's fake. It's all just lore just to keep people from publishing. Because I mean, this is the creative industries. They're all built around keeping people out. Mm-hmm.

[01:12:48] Jack Moses: Right.

[01:12:48] Paul: We have democratized the tools of creativity. There are no rules. You can publish a book. Doesn't mean anyone's going to read it or it will ever sell, but you can do it. Mm-hmm. Um, yeah.

And I hope more people do it. I think your generation is going to be great for this because my generation still played the game and had to climb the ladder.

[01:13:09] Jack Moses: Mm-hmm. The majority of us are, we think we have to, but more people are awakening that we don't.

[01:13:16] Paul: Yeah. Um, yeah, I want more people to write books.

[01:13:20] Jack Moses: Yeah. I think it's going to, they're going to start popping out.

[01:13:22] Paul: I think it's a spiritual path in and of itself.

[01:13:25] Jack Moses: Of course.

[01:13:27] Paul: It changes you. You will change, especially personal and, uh, memoir type writing. It will change you. Cool.

[01:13:35] Jack Moses: I'm so excited. I'm really grateful for you and your work and this conversation and the impact your ideas have had on my life. I would not— it's so wild. Like, I would not be here in Chiang Mai talking to you if it was not for the book that you wrote.

[01:13:50] Paul: So I might be in Chiang Mai, but I wouldn't be in this room. No, no, I appreciate you too. I think I'm so inspired by people like you taking different paths early in their life. I think it takes a lot more courage than what I did. I worked for like the best companies in the world and I went to MIT and like had like Solid savings. Um, maybe a little bit of delusion too, but dude, that, but like, yeah, I have delusion too.

Like what the hell was I doing writing, making $30 grand a year for 5 years? What was I doing? Like I look back and I wanted kids. Like what was my plan? Like it's insane, but I'm grateful to my delusional past self.

[01:14:30] Jack Moses: Definitely me too.

[01:14:31] Paul: So yeah, dream big, dream big.

[01:14:34] Jack Moses: Thank you. Awesome.

[01:14:36] Paul: Sweet. Cool.

[01:14:38] Jack Moses: Thank you guys for watching.