Abandoning The Status Quo To Build Your Best Self (and Biz) with Abel James

Best-selling author, top 10 App Developer, musician, radio show host, entrepreneur, and veritable health crusader – Abel James

Todays guest is a close friend and incredibly accomplished author, artist and podcaster. He catapulted himself to success when he finally tossed out the corporate suits and leaned into a life of crusading against deceptive marketing practices, misleading corporate propaganda, and powerful special interests. We cover how to ditch the status quo and societies expectations to build your best health, wealth and self.

Resources Mentioned in the Podcast:

• WildDietBook.com
• How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci by Michael J. Gelb

Check out FatBurningMan.com for more info!

Thanks so much for listening!

Transcript: Download

Announcer: Welcome to the Eventual Millionaire podcast - with your host, Jaime Tardy. Real talk and real advice from real millionaires, with a sharp focus on you - the Eventual Millionaire.

Jaime: Welcome to Eventual Millionaire. I'm Jaime Tardy and I'm really excited to have my very good friend Abel James Bascom on the show. I've been waiting forever to have him on. He is coming out with a brand new book tomorrow - April 7th - called "The Wild Diet", you can go to WildDietBook.com. He also has an amazing podcast and website at FatBurningMan.com. Thank you so much for coming on the show today, Abel.

Abel: Jaime, it is such a pleasure to see you right now.

Jaime: You too.

Abel: We're going to have fun.

Jaime: Oh my gosh!

Abel: I know.

Jaime: I'm going to have you tell the story - tell everybody how we met. Because we met a couple of years ago. Do you remember?

Abel: Yeah, going back to the early days with Ryan Lee, I believe it was. He was a good mentor/friend for us, I think, and we just started running into each other, didn't we, after that? It was like life happened and so many of these social circles collided with each other and it was really fun to be in that. It took you from Maine, where we met at this dank little coffee shop once to work on some website together, and me in New Hampshire, where I'm from, all the way down to Austin. It's been so awesome to have the opportunity just to hang out with you in so many different rooms.

Jaime: That's what's so funny - I remember connecting with you and going "Oh my gosh, you're new New Hampshire!" Thinking that that was the coolest thing in the world, because a lot of people in the space that I had met were cool people from New York or from LA and when I heard that you were from New Hampshire I was like "You're one of my friends automatically!" because you get growing up in a small town.

Abel: You understand what it's like to grow up in a one stoplight town.

Jaime: Mine was a blinking stoplight town.

Abel: Good for you!

Jaime: That's all I had. I think that's the thing that's really important - it doesn't matter where you grow up or anything like that, and we were talking about how you got this book deal and how amazing your podcast has been. I know you well but nobody else does - besides the millions of fans that you have - so tell us about what you do online and what your website provides for people.

Abel: The one that people know me by the most, I would say, is Fat Burning Man, which is a triple entendre. I've been blogging about health and lifestyle for a really long time. Out of college I was a consultant with a lot of big Fortune 500 companies so I had this crazy insight into what the people who run these companies are thinking about and it's certainly not you - it's their shareholders and quarterly profits and stuff like that. So while I was maneuvering myself through this crazy world I wanted a way to drip the truth out to people and warn them about what we're up against in the food world and in what it means to be a healthy person these days because, man, the marketers kind of took that one over - and not the good kind. For a while there I was blogging under "Honest Abe's Tips" for a really long time, it was just like Abraham Lincoln peering out from behind a keyboard and it was just my aunt reading it. It was me behind this persona and what I realized when I was trying to optimize my own health was that the first thing I would do when I picked up a book was turn it over and see what they looked like - do they walk the walk, is there that glow in their eyes, is this real or not? Because so much of this stuff is propaganda but the people living it have something to say. I looked at what I was coming to the table with, which is being a career musician for a really long time so I know how to use a microphone, I have a voice that is used to talking into a microphone, which is its own kind of art and skill, and then just a way to get the truth out there that I could do and few other people could do. So there was the good looking guy thing, good voice, whatever - that's very expendable, as you know, especially on the internet, but one thing that I really had from being a musician for so long - I was in an a cappella group in college and I made a habit of making a fool of myself in front of thousands of people and so "no shame" was the thing that I really milked when I did Fat Burning Man because it's really over the top, just me looking like Wolverine in the woods, and I think people get a kick out of that. Steve Kamb is a mutual friend of ours as well and that whole superhero thing is just so fun because it allows you to be this kind of Captain America persona and you know me personally, I'm a little bit darker than that most of the time, but it gives people something to rally around and one thing that I wanted to do was just make this whole health thing positive and easy for people, because that's what I saw the world was missing and it's worked out really well.

Jaime: How did you find what's missing? I get that question quite a bit from people. Steve, that makes sense, because his site is Nerd Fitness - he's a nerd and it makes a lot of sense - and you're like "no shame", I thought that was an awesome piece. How do you figure that out, though? That's tough for people.

Abel: You need to reinvent yourself every day and be honest with yourself - write it down, "My secret".  One of the things I learned young, because I always wanted that secret thing, that big thing that would make you a genius forever, so I read this one book that was really powerful that talked about Einstein, all the way back to Da Vinci and everyone in between that's awesome and achieved great things, male and female, and what their secret was. The one thing they all had in common was journaling or drawing or sketching, writing down something every day. I think when you do that about yourself, especially a lot of people who are listening to this have their own online personas - everyone does in the days of Facebook, it's not reality, it's like reality TV almost, you only get the best pictures, the craziest adventures or whatever, it's very crafted.

Jaime: You look awesome on Facebook, by the way.

Abel: Everyone looks awesome on Facebook. But it's basically about doing that with yourself, honestly with yourself, often and seeing what you really love doing, what you come to the table with. You've been with me in social situations where people will come and jab at you - and people will jab at you for different reasons that they'll jab at me - so you have to know how the world sees you too. Ever since I was a six year old kid playing clarinet at diners and stuff I've seen everything as kind of a show and so you need to make sure it's a really good one.

Jaime: So how do you journal? What is your specific way that you journal?

Abel: It's the brain dump kind. It's of the brain dump variety. That's really, really helpful because what that turns into a lot of the time is rambling or whatever but you're never afraid. One thing I never get is writers block because there's always something coming out.

Jaime: Good, bad or ugly.

Abel: Some bizarre thought or something that I saw and since it's something that's only for me, really, one of the magical things that happens is you write it down and I hardly ever look back through my notebooks - it's not like this thing that people make fun of and that only little girls do, it doesn't have to be that, it can be something a lot more powerful and so for me I'll smoke a cigar and come out with a strategic plan in my notebook that is all of a sudden in my head after just sitting down for 30-45 minutes with that. So use it as an excuse for yourself to brainstorm, to cope, to practice your art - I know you're an artistic, so just having that outlet is something that will save your life over and over again.

Jaime: It's funny you say that. I read a book called 'Think Like Leonardo Da Vinci', which I adore.

Abel: Great book.

Jaime: And I was looking over there, because my vision board is all drawn. I drew it because that connection between actually doing it and on paper - don't get me wrong, I've done the cutting out and stuff like that, but for me, the connection, I see it and I created it already. Do you know what I mean? It's amazing to be able to see it.

Abel: And you can smell it and feel it.

Jaime: I love paper.

Abel: It makes it real. That's another really cool thing that I've done that cost $75 total, I think, but it's been one of the best decisions of my life - one of the most luxurious things is just getting a really cool notebook, mine is buffalo skin, it can go out in the rain and the paper on the inside is handmade, so it's just this really cool trip every time you pick it up and then I use a really nice pen.

Jaime: I was just looking for a really nice pen the other day. Seriously, I don't have a good enough pen. I adore journals ' I have bought way more than I feel like I could ever fill at this point. I need to journal more so that I can use them more because I love them. I don't know what that is. We were talking about this before - we hang out with a lot of really successful people. You especially - I swear everybody you hang out with I could interview. So have you noticed whether they do the same thing? Are we weird, comparatively, having these journals? Do they do the same thing? What commonalities do you see?

Abel: We have an unfair advantage over a lot of people, I think. A lot of people talk about it. I think the writers do it but that's mostly a survival mechanism. People who have actually written the books with their names on them, which is a whole different thing - but people who have actually written books is a whole different thing. So what are you waiting for' It's not this thing where you all of a sudden grab a computer and write a book into it, most of the time. For most people it's finding all of the scraps that are next to your bed or underneath the couch but hopefully in that notebook that allows you to craft your story. My book that's coming out is called "The Wild Diet" but it's really just stories that encapsulate a cool cookbook and I think the most powerful thing we have is storytelling so work on that every day. It's almost not yours - it's like challenging. When you get a really good story it's this mystical, beautiful thing that you have to craft, so the art of it is something that can always capture in a notebook as long as you don't have a filter. You kind of just have to put it right out there.

Jaime: When I went to your house in Austin, I noticed how creative you are - how you set things up, you give yourself time, you have these rituals and it makes a big difference to how creative you are. You ooze creativity. I get that you're in music and that sort of thing but was it always that way, was it something you tried to cultivate?

Abel: I wasn't always rewarded for it by traditional systems, although eventually I was. It's a whole different thing. "My name's Abel and I have an evil older brother, how are you?" But he is a visual artist and one of the most talented ones I've ever known but he is just not someone who you can talk to.

Jaime: I have one of those.

Abel: A lot of people call it the sage, but the thing that comes to you with the great story or with the great tune that just encourages you to play or to write or to do whatever is very delicate. You need to be very protective of your time which is very hard to do these days because everything is bleeping at us all the time and we're rewarded for responding to that and that's a very addictive thing so you kind of need to take yourself out of that every once in a while. You know, but a lot of people don't know this - I've frustrated friends and family many, many times, disappearing for weeks or months to go and live in the woods, literally, or to go on adventures and explore these different countries and be truly present while we're there, not checking phones or responding to something. You get so much more of the richness of life - especially if you're in a field like ours, we need to step outside of it and observe it and write about it or comment on it in shows or whatever, so it's really important to be present while you're there because when you're at Burning Man it's a really cool perspective on America so that's something that I try to live by now because we can but it took a lot of work to get there because I come from a whole different world - Ivy League college, working three jobs at the same time. I understand both sides of it and I like this one a lot better.

Jaime: That's exactly what I want to talk about, because people listening are like "That's great for you, Abel. It's amazing that now you have that freedom and you go off the grid." You're going to Peru soon, you travel constantly, you do amazing things and, like you said before, you haven't recorded anything in 6-8 months. You have that freedom but there are also people going "How did you take the creativity that you had and cultivate being a millionaire too?" Because, like you said, you worked your ass off and I've seen that over and over and over again but when you tell me how amazing it is right now, people are like "Yeah, but tell us how hard it was at the beginning so I don't feel so bad."

Abel: Well you knew me before I was a millionaire and you knew how hard I was hustling and that's the thing that most people don't want to see - when somebody is a nobody, not getting results and still hustling and pushing and trying a hundred things that no one ever heard about that fell flat on their face and that's what it takes, that's what it is, those are the sacrifices that you make, you just have to know when you're making them because you can't do that forever. I guess you can make that choice but it's something about whether you want to have a life too. I've met a lot of people - I've been fortunate enough to meet a lot of people - who have been hustling for so long that they've kind of abandoned everything around them and everybody around them. Being a millionaire isn't worth that much to someone coming up on, I guess, the end of their life - because a lot of times it will happen at the end of careers. Once you can get above all of this ridiculous mess you can peer out and say "This wasn't worth it at all. Look at all of these people down there, what are they doing?" So being caught in that, see it as a cycle and craft it yourself. What I saw in myself then was "Okay, I'm 27, I'm not going to work for anybody else anymore, I've got to grow something," and if you want to make $1 million you need to affect at least one million people - it's easy math. A lot of people hear "$1 million? or whatever but what I wanted to do was create something that could do some good that was bigger than me. If anything, I could be a vehicle to propel it forward - like Fat Burning Man, a lot of people, oddly enough, I started playing music with a bunch of rock stars and we're coming out with an album because I had a Fat Burning Man podcast. That's what hustling is - when you start to do so many things that people don't see or be willing to do those things and then just be open to whatever the heck comes your way. I don't even listen to country music! You don't always choose where the stuff comes from but what an amazing gift and what amazing people I've been introduced to because I was hustling while doing the right thing and without a lot of us knowing it, I don't want to call it an old guard, but the guard that started four years ago, it's kind of its own class or clan or whatever, and you're a really important part of it, Jaime - I think a lot of people in our circles are - but you knew what it was like back then. We're friends because we're all successful now or whatever and have it so easy or whatever but the running joke is that nothing ever changed, really - we're still hustling just as hard as ever, we have just as little time as ever, and like you said, a lot of my friends are millionaires, and the running joke among all of us is that we're all broke all the time, it's just the stakes are higher. It just to be a few hundred bucks a month up or down - like, "Crap, what do I do if I don't have a few hundred bucks? I've got to come up with something." - now it's up or down a few hundred thousand dollars so it's not different, you're not happier, you're not said, you don't feel like you have succeeded more in a lot of cases. If anything, you feel like you're sacrificing too much if it happens for too long but, man, what a beautiful thing. So see the people who are around you because I think it's really that peer group that you come up with. Dave Astbury is another one, who's behind The Bulletproof Diet, and between our two podcasts, we didn't know it but a lot of celebrities listened to it - that's their place to go and get the truth because in traditional media and through their trainers or whatever they've been burned too many times and they are celebrities, being on camera every day, high stakes if you want to look good, so they listen to us but we're not friends because we're successful now or competitors now or whatever we are now - it's because, when everyone else thought that paleo was stupid and thinking about health was really uncool five years ago and we're at the same stupid little conferences, in those rooms trying to get people to care about this - that's why we're friends, because it's real. So for people out there listening, see those people around you who are hustling or in the same stage as you and bring each other up. Jaime, we've never even really worked together but we've helped each other so much, I think, just by being there for each other and that's really important.

Jaime: I was interviewing James Altucher - who I think you know too - and he was talking about how you need to start cultivating your scene, no matter where you are, because that's the scene that will take you up, so you look for people who aren't there yet. My whole thing with Eventual Millionaire is that I have children, I don't want to hustle so much - don't get me wrong, I hustle and ignore them, but can we do both at the same time? Most of the people I chat with, like John Dumas, who's like "I'm going to work 80 hours a week at the beginning and have the success and then I can go six months without having to record anything." So what advice can you give us for cultivating our scene and were there any other pivotal moments in you going from not a millionaire to millionaire that really made a big difference?

Abel: It was putting myself out there and being able to take all of the stabs - because people don't like that. Your friends at the time, your family, certainly your co-workers, your ex-co-workers, everybody on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, whatever, will call you crazy and try to drag you back down if you're trying to stand out and do something different like I was. A lot of people, still, from my past, are like "I don't get what happened there. All of a sudden, three or four years ago, I saw pictures of you with your shirt off and I was like "What is he doing?"" Get used to people not understanding. You need that peer group that does understand. It's funny because every week or so, sometimes once a month or whatever, I'll talk to my friend Pedram who makes documentaries - "Origins" was his most recent one and a lot of our friends and peers are in it, I'm in a lot of his movies and we do stuff together - and he just had this big launch and it went really well and we're operating outside of the traditional media system, we're trying to be a new thing and having tremendous success, or it appears as if we are, and we were both complaining to each other about how hard it is to be a millionaire and be broke even though we're making so much, stupid stuff like that. Having those people who you can talk to, for me, one of the coolest things about playing music with people at such a high level is that those people get it also, from a totally different side, the artist side or the performer side. I'm a performer - that's my strength - so put me in front of a camera or whatever, try to stop me. It's also about finding that thing that you can do where you're too tired even when you're doing, for me, seven hour-long interviews, followed by a night of filming cooking videos is a normal day and with my time in between I'm practicing for recording on an album or something. That's a very hard work day for someone who doesn't like doing that stuff but I love doing that stuff. So find those things that you love. I think we have one of the best jobs ever because what it does is it makes you way better at doing it all the time. What it's making you better at is interacting with people, communicating with people, storytelling and just being willing to be here now and accept anything that's thrown at you and knowing that you're going to be okay. We've talked about this a few times when we've spoken together about that fear - like all of a sudden you're mid-sentence and there's no idea left. Whatever it was is long gone and you just have to smile through it and come out the other end and know that it will always be okay. That's another really cool thing about working with people at such a high level is we're all just people - after a show or something, when a rock star plays, people come up and they're like "Oh, you're a real person!" We all are real people - we have our flaws, we have our ridiculous families, we have our things.

Jaime: Yes we do.

Abel: We need to take naps, we have hard days, so before you take someone and put them on this pedestal, know that they're fighting the same demons as you and it's just a matter of getting that under control every day - because you forget how to do it so every day you need to remind yourself.

Jaime: I have this a little bit in my book, how life is like a video game and it's so funny because, as you were saying, you level up - everyone knows I'm a geek so I'm allowed to talk about video games - as you level up the risks get more, so you still buy things but you buy more expensive things and you lose more things but as you keep going, the longer you play, the better you get.

Abel: Hopefully.

Jaime: Exactly, as long as you keep improving.

Abel: You need rules to operate by. I think that's the trick. It's easy to hustle and make a lot of money doing whatever you want. The problem is, if you don't have rules, that's what burns a lot of people. the people who are still here and doing well after four years that we were in the same rooms as, all hustling together, the ones who didn't have the ethics, I think, the ones who didn't have the moral character that was defined as something from the very beginning are the ones who wound up, even if they did have financial success, they found empty success in life. It's hard enough trying to do the right thing, always being good or whatever, and make it to the top but it's quite a different thing when you're willing to make those sacrifices and are rewarded for them and so I think if you really want to do this, do it right. It means sucking it up when a lot of other people get ahead and I have a lot of secrets about how some people got ahead, who are still ahead, that I would never be able to do myself. I just know that I could never do that, that me coming into this was like that. When I started the Fat Burning Man thing I knew that people would make fun of me, I knew that it would be ridiculous - that was the point. So you need to know what you're up against and stomach it. You won't always like the people who are around you. It will be easy to judge and say that what you're doing is okay and what they're doing is not but it will never get better, you just have to navigate through it and feel compassion for people who might be playing a different game to you, but play a good game. I remember this game way back, it was called Black & White, it was a PC game, and it was so cool because you had these characters and you could either do good things with them and they would turn into these angelic figures of good and being in good health or you could abuse them and get them to abuse others and they would turn into these dark creatures straight out of a Muppet movie, like "The Dark Crystal".

Jaime: I love that movie!

Abel: So I think real life is actually like that. People start to wear their morals and their ethics on their face, especially after 30.

Jaime: I chat with people and they say "I don't want to be one of those people." I didn't want to be an internet marketer - not even talking about the crazy behind the scenes what they're doing kind of stuff, I don't want to hang out with those people in general anyway, but people have come up to me and said "I don't want to be like that." I don't want to be like that either. You just have to put your foot down - find out what you're comfortable with and don't cross that line. Just don't!

Abel: I think what a lot of people don't understand when they say "I want to be good," is that it means when people who you like ask you to do things that you don't like, or it's in a grey area or whatever, it's those little things where you have to have the courage to say "Sorry, no." It's almost like being a kid and saying no to drugs, except you're older and the stakes are higher and someone's offering you $15,000. But what is that? What does that $15,000 mean? There are a lot of people in this world, especially as you level up and get to higher levels of success, who didn't write their own books, are buying their own books with their own money to make it appear as if they're something when they're not - this is not unusual, this is what we're up against. I'm also used to that as a musician - I've always been an independent musician and that's how the Beatles got big back in the day, is buying a bunch of their own albums so that they would rank on the charts.

Jaime: Really?

Abel: Yes, this happens, and there are good and bad people doing it. I just, for my own rules - no judgement on anyone else because everyone else has their own thing and that's okay, I'm not better or worse, but for my own thing I see that as a snake eating its own tail, that's the wrong kind of mojo and it will eat you up. Could you sleep at night? If you do it enough times, I don't think so. I pass out at 8:30 or 9pm. If you do the right thing you get old like everybody else, the right way.

Jaime: I think that's huge, that you can say you can do it. Because some people are like "Why even bother? If other people are doing this, how can I even compete against that?"

Abel: I see it as a challenge. A lot of people are willing to put out books that they didn't write and stuff like that. You don't need to counter that with some kind of crazy mojo but knowing that some people got really big by advertising on porn sites when no one else in the health field was willing to do that and just learning how to hack all of that and navigate that world, you have to draw the line somewhere, unless you're cool with that. I think it's a matter of what rooms do you want to be in, because if you want to navigate the underworld and make your money out of the underworld, that's what musicians play to. I was introduced to the internet marketing party as their musician, who got to know them as they were wasted, and I was too, playing ridiculous songs on the roof deck of Lance Armstrong's bar. Crazy stuff, especially back then, but it's that outsider's perspective that allows you to see what's going on a lot of the time. It's easy to get wrapped up in all of the nice things, the Lamborghinis and all of the nice people and the social media stats, but how do they do that?

Jaime: I get a lot of people saying that millionaires are greedy. First of all, I think we need a lot more people with integrity to have money, so you should be working your butt off! And the ones that I like to hang out with aren't, so the ones that are skew our thoughts about money completely. It's not about that, it's about, as you were saying, integrity and morals, but it's hard to navigate who has a face and who is real, especially in this online world. Who do I actually want to follow? Because it could all be fake and you don't know.

Abel: You don't, and people are getting better at crafting their own thing. You need to craft your own story but you also need to be a real person. I went up in the ranks because people like me - not just the people who listen but the people in the room, because I'm cool to people and try to be gracious. I can be an asshole sometimes - that comes out as me being introverted and needing to go back to the woods sometimes, enough weird people have come after me that night or something. But it can be good and it's a challenge in and of itself. When enough people see you behave and make the right calls and sacrifice a lot of money in front of them - I walked away from a half million dollar book deal and a lot of people called me crazy.

Jaime: Abel, you're crazy!

Abel: Or even just like you were saying, a lot of people called me crazy for going to Peru before my book comes out or doing a lot of things that we just do in our normal life.

Jaime: Good old crazy Abel. It's fine.

Abel: After a while you're just this eccentric whatever and you can do whatever you want. Tucker Max, a mutual friend of ours, can get away with anything because he's Tucker Max and you have to remember that.

Jaime: Okay, I get that.

Abel: That makes sense, he's being a dick.

Jaime: Yep, there he is again. I think that's the thing that's really important and you won't know until you start doing it. I'm a bit naive with that - I'm from a small town in Maine and at first I trusted everyone. I had a coach who said "You should send this e-mail," and I didn't feel comfortable and they said "Just test it," and I didn't want to send it because, to me, it seemed a little spammy. I sent the e-mail and I felt horrible about it. It wasn't even trying to sell anything but it was an "RE:" so it looked like it was a reply already. I trusted the guy for a while but it's one of those things where I sent the e-mail and I was like "I feel like I'm going to puke. I can never do that again." You learn as you go what does feel right and what doesn't feel right. I don't know how you felt turning down $500,000 but if you had taken it, imagine how you would have felt.

Abel: It's funny because I took it anyway, I just got the deal that I wanted. They came back to me.

Jaime: Exactly!

Abel: That's what you learn - I wasn't afraid of doing that, I was prepared to do that the whole time. I had this backup plan. The reason that I'm a millionaire isn't because I'm like "Look at me, I'm great!" It's because I want to work with really good people and I want to make sure that they're paid well. I have always lived quite meagerly in terms of my living expenses - it's pretty much kale and good meat every once in a while. It's not Lamborghinis or flashy things. Even these vacations that we take, we're going camping pretty much everywhere we go. We're either in an RV or camping somewhere or in some cabin. If you know that you'll be just as happy broke on some pond in New Hampshire or whatever, that's where I started and that's a pretty awesome place to play guitar and hang out with some good people, so you need to just know that this is all like a holographic distraction you can walk away from whenever you want to. There was something really powerful that happened to me when we went to Bali - I went to an ATM and at the time it was funny because I always try to spend as much money as I make on my staff, just getting better people, getting the team to work better, do more things or whatever, because I know where my taxes go, having worked with the federal government for a while, and I could do without that. So I looked at the ATM and, for whatever reason, the money in my account was pretty good at that point - we had just launched some apps and had some success - but it was over a billion in their currency. I walked up to the ATM just to get $200 out or whatever to rent some motor scooters and I looked at it and I was like "Is that a billion? This is all made up!" That's what I decided, is that it's all just a hilarious joke.

Jaime: Numbers on a screen.

Abel: It didn't mean anything. None of this does. So it's all about finding meaning when you wake up every day and having purpose. That's really what I have tried to do the whole time. As a musician, even, there is this old tale of the man at the crossroads - this is where blues kind of came from - the man at the crossroads sells his soul to the devil to be the best guitar player there ever is. What that means is taking the wrong deal. When you feel that, Jaime, that's what other people have felt at certain moments and I think that you do need to cross your own line a few times so that you understand, like a dog that makes a mistake or whatever. In kung fu, in martial arts, your teacher will hit you to make it hurt in the places that you weren't protecting so that you know what it feels like and you protect them.

Jaime: We remember from pain, for sure.

Abel: You learn from that so allow yourself to learn from that. Those are always accidents. This person was probably supposed to be the guru on this one thing and they're super good at it and everyone else is doing it and then you do it and you feel like you want to vomit and you feel like "Oh, that was not the right thing at all."

Jaime: Not at all.

Abel: But we all feel that and we need to.

Jaime: You're right. I crossed that line and I was like "Oh my God, I can't believe it. I'm never doing that again." It's so funny but, again, I was a little na've, going "Well, he knows. I paid him and I trust him and therefore I think that this is important." It was a really good learning experience, to go "I need to hear myself and what feels good to me and what doesn't feel good to me." The thing that I think a lot of people are thinking right now is that it's really easy to say this once you've already had success and you're not worried about money - but I want money, Abel!

Abel: I just had to raid my savings of $100,000 to get through this past year. I can only do that once. It doesn't get better. Richard Branson puts down mortgages on his enormous islands and houses all the time because he's going to space. You just have to get used to that.

Jaime: Elon Musk almost lost every single penny that he had. It's ridiculous.

Abel: All the time. so did Steve Jobs and so did Bill Gates, even Zuckerberg - if you look at these people, good or bad, whatever you think of them, they put it on the line and that's why they're still there. Some of them crossed that ethical line - that's a different thing, then they just become caricatures of themselves, like cartoons some of these people. That's why you need to craft your own superhero.

Jaime: Definitely. How did you do that? Because I see you as full of integrity, eccentric - like "Abel's doing that again? Oh, gosh!" Like you should wear a superhero cape or something like that.

Abel: I need a cape.

Jaime: That's what I'll get you as a wedding present. You and Alison, I'll get you capes with your names on them, it'll be perfect. But how did you start figuring those pieces out along the journey, along the hustle, along everything? Did it come quick? Were you like "I'm just going to be me and let it all hang out." How did you start doing that?

Abel: Sometimes it's the things that people make fun of you for. I was always Mr. Radio Voice - that was my nickname at the federal government for a while.

Jaime: Was it really?

Abel: I did voiceovers for the department of labor and keynotes and stuff like that. Everyone has that thing, even if you're just crazy on the dancefloor that means you have some physical thing that you can just do. Find a way to be rewarded for that- maybe it's teaching Pilates or yoga, something that you could really do all day. We have a working class in America but it's a lot bigger than most people think it is and the stakes are just higher. There's not that much of a difference between upper middle class and someone who's dirt poor because one might be working one job but they're working 100 hours a week and the other's working three jobs and they're working 100 hours a week but they're both about to lose the places that they're living in. finding your thing and being willing to step out of that whole charade, that rat race, is what you have to do. It's what I did when I was in my 20s - I was fortunate enough to have traditional success, bought a house and it was a great real estate investment and drive a fast car and do all of this stuff but you just realize that it's empty and the American dream is dated or an illusion or something that needs to change. It really does - we need to have a new idea about what it means to be thriving and free because, to me, owning a house and having a card and needing to keep that job, whatever it was, is not freedom when I experienced that a few times in my life. What that necessitates, a lot of the time, to get out of it, is acting both ways in between. Abel Bascom was the guy who dressed up in a suit and gave keynotes and shook hands and went to meetings and was very polite. Then Abel James was the crazy musician and the internet personality who could do whatever and say whatever he wanted because it was a distinct persona, in a way, which is really interesting but as an artist I'm comfortable with that, you're just a performer anyway and a lot of the time the world can't handle one particular side of you at that moment, for whatever reason, or you're not allowed to show it a lot of the time. so I think the secret is being willing to nurture the inner Abel James in all of us - everyone has their own persona, the holistic thing that they want to do on their own terms - and when you go to a conference that you paid for when you couldn't really afford it to be there with a bunch of other people who are in the same boat as you talking about something that you really care about, not because someone else sent you there and you're getting paid to be in those rooms, that's the first time I really felt freedom, was going to those stupid little conferences when we were all broke and talking about the same stuff when the stakes were lower, or at least they appeared to be - they were a lot higher then in so many different ways. You need to figure out who you are, you need to figure out what you want your thing to be and I can't do that for anyone.

Jaime: They'll e-mail you, you'll tell them what their thing is and they'll get going. Isn't that why you're here?

Abel: "Abel, what's my thing?"

Jaime: I think that's the hard thing - it seems so intangible to people. like "Okay, great, I'm going to journal, I'm going to figure out what my weird things are and I'm going to keep pushing forward. How does that work?"  But it's a process that you'll learn as you push forward and push forward. I think business is one of the biggest ways that we can really start to figure out who we are - that's why I like business so much. In corporate, like you said, you're the guy in the suits and I can't picture you like that, Abel, I just can't, because you seem so much like you I can't imagine you being any other personality.

Abel: I was James Bond for a while.

Jaime: You would be an awesome James Bond too, I mean come on! How long did it take you to really find those aspects of yourself?

Abel: Being a little kid, as a musician, you're rewarded for putting on a show. If you're a middle child you're rewarded for not sticking out too much and saying the right thing and being peaceful and calm and bringing that energy. It doesn't matter how old you are, there's the outside world and how you've been trained and influenced by it and it's up to you to choose what you put in your bag of tricks and what you don't. If you're downtrodden, like most people, in this trance, living in this paycheck to paycheck world - remember what it's like to be a kid. This is one way that I navigate - even in my dreams, sometimes, I have conversations with my 8 year old self. What would you have wanted for yourself? What would you want to do every day? What that really means, which I think people don't get, is what does every day look like? So when I wake up in the morning it's basically my martial arts turned into chi gong and meditation and some sort of physical exercise and then going outside with a dog or on a mountain bike - the same stuff that makes me happy now that I need to do every day to maintain my composure and be positive and do cool stuff and feel good and look good, the same stuff that made my 8 year old self happy. So go back to that - when you were still young and full of hope, what did you want? And see if you can do that right now.

Jaime: We all need more of that in general. One of my good friends was like "How do you want to feel today?" and I had never asked myself that question before. "How do you want to feel today?" That's what you're doing - what do I want? What did I want before all of the craziness came and I got all of these responsibilities as an adult? I want to be a millionaire and, oh shoot, that puts so much more pressure on me. That sort of stuff - how can we bring in more of that every single day? I can totally see you living that, which I think is huge. "What's Abel doing again?", "That makes sense, it's Abel and Alison."

Abel: It gives you an awesome perspective because you come back and there's no difference between watching Star Trek: The Next Generation and looking at Google Glass, the tricorders that people are walking around with. We have so much promise now and it takes stepping outside of that once in a while to realize how good we have it. so don't be a slave to all of this - you, anyone who's listening to this, you don't need anything, you don't need a team, you don't need an A&R department, you don't need to go through any gatekeeper - you can do this, you can do exactly what we're doing. Start your own thing and then profit from it and support your family and a great team by doing whatever that thing is. More than ever, starting right now, anyone can do it - it's awesome.

Jaime: We're so lucky we live in the world we do. We've gone so long and we haven't even talked about your book at all. We didn't talk about health. At the beginning we said maybe we should talk about how what you eat really affects how efficient you are in your business and he was like "Yeah but let's get into cooler stuff. I talk about this all the time." So if anyone wants to hear about that, Abel is on a lot of other interviews, you can listen to how it affects you.

Abel: I have a whole show about that too - 150 hour-long episodes of me just talking purely about that stuff.

Jaime: Perfect, then I will tell everybody to listen to Fat Burning Man if they want that stuff. I think that stuff is really important too but I love that we got into this stuff instead because you don't have a chance to talk about this stuff in general.

Abel: No, you're the best.

Jaime: I'm going to wrap up with the last question. I usually tell it to my guests before to give them a heads-up but Abel was like "I got this. You don't need to give me a heads-up." So what's one action listeners can take this week to help move them forward towards their goal of $1 million?

Abel: It will go back to what I said earlier in the interview about having that notebook. Everyone has something to write with and something to write on but just have that little thing and then think of something that you need to do that makes you a better person that takes two minutes, say, that you can start doing tomorrow. It could be a little bit of yoga, jump rope, going for a walk, writing a nice note to your husband or your kids or something that you wouldn't normally do but you know your grandmother would tell you to do if she could. Think of something that takes two minutes every day and start doing it every day and eventually that will build into this whole ritual and that's one of the most important things that I've talked about in many different places. That's what's really powerful about my day, is it starts with this really sacred ritual that contains a lot of the things that it takes to thrive as a writer, as an artist, as a performer. So start small - two minutes- and build it into however long you can.

Jaime: I love that so much and I highly, highly recommend it. I actually send all of my new clients journals. I think that journaling is so important. Everyone things "Oh, it's a diary, like a 12 year old girl," but millionaire after millionaire after millionaire actually does this.

Abel: Eventually it turns into a half million dollar book deal.

Jaime: Done! Totally worth it. You can do it too. Either way, even if you don't get a $500,000 book deal, you will become a better person from journaling more, for sure.

Abel: You will - and a better writer.

Jaime: Totally - and find out who you are. It's funny how many aspects it can improve in your entire life. It makes a huge difference. My personal assistant is downstairs making a racket, by the way.

Abel: That's awesome.

Jaime: Cooking paleo food right now.

Abel: Right one!

Jaime: A segue to your book - can you tell us where we can find your book? I highly recommend picking it up, of course, but tell us where we can get it online.

Abel: It's quite simple. It's called "The Wild Diet" and it's WildDietBook.com. If you go there, we're giving away a lot of cool stuff. We just gave away a drone, GoPros, cooking gear, adventure gear, survival stuff - it's fun. So go to WildDietBook.com and join in and Fat Burning Man is a pretty easy way to find me if you forget what the title of my book is.

Jaime: Perfect. Everybody go and grab that right now. Even if he wants to send me one, I don't care, I want to support Abel, you are awesome. You guys should support him too. He's doing amazing stuff and connecting the world around stories with this stuff and I don't think we have enough of that in the health industry. Instead we have before and after pictures and nothing about what they did to actually do it.

Abel: Totally. "Take my pill!"

Jaime: Exactly - ta da! Or "The Biggest Loser", they're hurting people. It's one of those things that I think is really important to get out there, the real stuff. That's why I'm so glad you do what you do. Thank you so much for coming on the show today, Abel.

Abel: This was one of the most fun interviews I've done in a really long time.

Jaime: That's the point, right? Awesome. Have an amazing day. Have an awesome time in Peru and hopefully we'll catch up soon.

Abel: Thank you and thanks for listening, everyone.

Announcer: Thanks for listening. You can find out more great information like this on EventualMillionaire.com.

Tags: Abel James, Business Growth, Business Scaling, corporate propaganda, Health and Wellness, marketing practices, millionaire interview, Motivation, Personal Value, Self-Esteem, Work Life Balance

Categories: All, Business, Business Model, Entrepreneurship, Millionaire Interviews

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