Venture Step

Dalton Anderson (00:00.822)
Welcome to Vichess Step Podcast, where discuss entrepreneurship, energy trends, and the occasional book review. In this episode, we are going to be discussing David Goggins book, You Can't Hurt Me. And I think everyone's been in this point in their lives, either in high school, college, professional career, where they have limits put on themselves, either mentally, by society, or by their environment.

where just because people around you haven't been able to do the same things that you want to do, or the people that are in authoritative positions in your life, don't think that you're capable of doing the things you want to do, you put yourself in a box. And I've done that too, where for a good part of my life, I had always wanted to code.

And I was interested in coding since middle school and I had always asked about it in school and the response was always like, hey, this is more for kids that are able to focus and that pay attention and that don't need so much care and attention. They're more independent.

And that's what I was told in middle school and then high school. It's like, like this program isn't for jocks. This is for kids who are serious about their studies and.

that stuck with me for a while and I'd always been interested about coding. And then one day when I was working on this fitness company thing in college, which didn't turn out that well, but it was a wonderful experience. I had to do some coding and then I had to take a class and learn how to do the things I needed to do because I couldn't afford to pay somebody. And it wasn't that hard and it was really cool and it was everything I wanted it to be. And I was like, wow.

Dalton Anderson (02:12.034)
Why did I not start in middle school? Just because someone told me that I couldn't. So it's a good example where I didn't put limits on myself in my own mind, but later on I'd realize, I had a mental block there. And this book that David wrote is about removing your mental blocks and achieving your full potential.

His methodology is a little bit different than other people you'd read about. If you haven't heard about David Goggins, he's all about callusing the mind and his level of intensity and discipline on doing the extreme is extreme in itself. And originally it all started when he was

overweight and a cockroach or a rodent exterminator. And he was going place to place, worked the night shift and just floating through life. And that can happen if you're not attentive, you can go day to day through your job or through school and you're there, you're participating, but you're not actively participating. You are involved, but you aren't

leading your own destiny.

And these things can easily happen if you don't stay on task and you're not laser focused on what you want. And maybe you don't know what you want, which is fine as well. But all of that is easier to understand and discover and achieve if you have hope, grit and discipline. And David Goggins story inspires a lot of people because I would describe it as a

Dalton Anderson (04:09.036)
Zero to Hero, where he was an uneducated man. And when I say uneducated, like he didn't know how to read. He wasn't able to write very well. He had a whole bunch of issues with school because he had a lot of stuff going on in his childhood and basically didn't get to go to school as much because his father forced him to work.

and was consistently beating his mother and him and his brother and was beating him so bad that consistently he wasn't able to go to school because he would have bruises all over his body.

Basically he was mangled and couldn't go to school simply because if he went to school, people would find out that people were beating him. And so he had to stay home a lot and he had to work and he didn't get to close his bowling alley. His father owned a bowling alley and a nightclub and he was really sleazy guy. If you couldn't tell by him beating his wife and his two sons.

but they worked with the bowling alley needed to be completed by the children and the wife or David's mom. And they didn't get done until like two, three in the morning. And cause they, I think they closed at like one and then they had to clean all the alleys, clean the shoes, disinfect everything. And then that's when the night shift started at the nightclub and

his mom and David didn't get to go home because they only had one car because his father was very controlling. And after which they'd have to sleep on the couch, but wouldn't get much sleep because there's a nightclub right above them and then would go to school if he wasn't beaten. And that was really his childhood for a while until his mother got fed up with it and left.

Dalton Anderson (06:18.883)
And after that...

Dalton Anderson (06:23.586)
David had found, or David's mom had found a nice man who was a good father figure to David and helped him gain his confidence back and have a foothold in life and believe the willingness to live. Because if you're going through that as a kid, from what David was saying, it's just really rough, of carves you out and leaves you hollow.

and you just got really nothing left. And the new partner that his mom had provided some life, some life, some light at the end of the tunnel. And then after which he was murdered. And I don't think there was a resolution stated in the book, but he was murdered in the garage of his home.

Luckily David wasn't there, but he also saw some other trans dramatic stuff, like a kid getting ran over by a bus and seeing all of that as a kid and the underneath and how everything looked. Not going to describe it because I don't, I don't know who's listening. Like who's the audience. So just being careful. But yeah, you described it in the book.

And then all that happened and then he was surrounded by racism.

and not getting the attention he needed because he needed more attention than other kids. And he had some good teachers, but then after that, lot of teachers just abandoned him and left him to his own devices. And he result that that resulted in him cheating a lot. And that's how he got through school. He would cheat. So you cheat everyone's stuff. If you do, you cheat on the homework, cheat on the

Dalton Anderson (08:24.598)
exams. He didn't know how to read, he said. And after that, things just, things just kept going downhill and he started doing the cockroach extermination. And then he wanted to get into the army and become not the army, but he wanted to go or he was in the army and then he was disqualified. Something like that where he had, he'd

Miss PT or something like this and he was removed and then after that he Was then Doing cockroach extermination and did that for some time hated his life didn't like it and Randomly one day he was just like I can't do this anymore. I can't and he wanted to become a Navy SEAL, which is Which is so much higher

than where he was. And so I think he was 293 pounds and he's not that tall. mean, he's tall, but he's 6'1 or 6'2. He's over six foot, but he's not massive. It's not like he's 6'8 or something like that. So he's big, very big. And he has trouble walking on the treadmill. He has trouble running, like he can't run. There's all sorts of issues.

for him to make the cut or at least even be able to try out, he has to get a crazy score on his test, like his test scores like for mechanical and like the entry tests for the military, I think it's the ASVAB. And he has to get a great score, one of the best. So that requires a lot of studying and then he also has to lose

over a hundred pounds and like not that long, like three months. And so he's just going crazy. And he didn't know to swim at the time. Like there's all sorts of things that like didn't really add up, but you don't know how to swim. You don't swim that well. You want to be in the Navy. You're 150 pounds overweight. You don't have the highest reading comprehension and there's all sorts of just crucial things that need to be solved in three months. And they all.

Dalton Anderson (10:50.306)
or time consuming to solve for. And you know the story, the long story short, as he gets in and eventually becomes an ABCL, but he had to go through three hell weeks and if you fail the third one, then you're out, you're done.

Eventually becomes a Navy SEAL. He does that for a while and he had some buddies that went on some missions and didn't come back because it's dangerous stuff. And then he started working with the Warriors Foundation and they basically help families and veterans out that were, you know, they're involved. I don't know what I'm getting at there. The Veterans Foundation helps veterans and families affected by military activity.

So David was like, I need to raise money and I want to raise money. So he started working with the warrior foundation and he's like, what's the craziest thing we could do? And he's like, let me do the bad water. The bad water.

100 or 150? on. 135, sorry. So it's 135 mile race that has thousands of feet in elevation gain in the desert. And it's like 130. You've got to take breaks and pop up a tent to cool yourself off or your body will overheat. You die. It's an insane race. And

To get that done, he had to qualify and run a couple, he didn't have that much time, right? So there's a qualifying period, maybe six months, eight months before the race. And David's idea, he was like, okay, I'm a Navy SEAL, I'm the real deal, I'm gonna apply and then they'll let me in, I'll just train. And then,

Dalton Anderson (12:52.942)
The race director at the time was like, I don't care who you are, run 100, run 100 miles in under 24 hours and get back to me. And then he also sent him a link, he's like, hey, there's a 100 mile race this weekend, you could do that. If you do that, then I could potentially consider your application, but right now it's instantly rejected. So then after that, he does the race and he wasn't prepared at all.

He didn't do nutrition. didn't make sure he had the right calories. He didn't he didn't manage his sodium. And so it didn't go that well. He wanted up finishing, but went too hard at the front of his race, like his pace, his race pace was too fast and burnt out and then had to walk the last like 30 miles.

And he was so bent out of shape. He had stress fractures on his shins. He had to tape everything up. He said that he was...

Dalton Anderson (13:59.854)
I say this in a good manner. He was, I'm trying not to make it all weird. I guess he was bleeding out of his butt, that's the best way. There's all sorts of, his body was legitimately falling apart. His feet were fractured, his shins were fractured, because he never ran 100 miles before, and he didn't train for it. So he was just like, all right.

We're going to get this done. This is what we do now. And.

Dalton Anderson (14:37.11)
That whole experience had provided him with a humble amount of caution, a humbling amount of caution because he said it was just absolutely brutal. He had to go to the hospital afterwards. His toes, his feet were all jacked up. They're all skidded and all raw and he didn't do that well. What he used to prep for the

the race was crack like Ritz crackers and Gatorade or something like that for a hundred miles. You didn't have any liquid fuel. You don't know like liquid fuel is like this liquid, like literally fuel for your body. So think about it as a liquid that you drink that has like the nutrition and calories that you would need to keep running and keep your body functioning for long periods of.

Exercise something like running a hundred miles or biking really far like biking 300 miles

Dalton Anderson (15:44.014)
So after that race, he emailed the race director. He's like, I ran this hundred miles. Please consider my application. Then the guy was like, yeah, I mean, just because you ran the hundred miles doesn't mean that you would get in. I just said you'd even you would need to run a hundred miles to be considered at all. So then David's like, I'll do another race. So he did this race. It's called the Hurt 100 is in Hawaii and it's this like mountainish.

trail that goes through the forest and cuts up through this, I wouldn't say a mountain, but like a massive hill. From what it was described, I haven't seen it.

And he does that. He's once again, absolutely brutal. Absolutely brutal. And after that, he's like, OK, I'm going to take training seriously and we'll be training training for for the for the bad water. And why he's training, there's a couple of things that he created in his mental framework for resilience, some of which he created when he was

becoming a Navy SEAL or becoming someone else when he had no hope, no testosterone, no...

no ambition for years. And I said no testosterone because like when you're that heavy, like your testosterone really lowers. When you're, you know, 150, 180 pounds overweight, it affects your hormones and stuff. So I want to share a video, some videos that I like of David. And these are some videos that I find in my cookie jar and

Dalton Anderson (17:35.01)
things that I think of David as and hmm.

Like these are memoirs of David and these are something that I would represent and identify with David highly. So let's see. So this one is a good one. So wow.

share my screen.

Dalton Anderson (18:03.948)
Alright, you ready for this?

Dalton Anderson (18:19.344)
man, I accidentally did that, sorry.

Dalton Anderson (18:28.45)
Okay, so that was one of David's famous videos where he's running in a blizzard, I think in New York. And he says, pain is just a feeling.

And that's how he feels. Pain is just a feeling. And it's something about, hey, there's things that you don't wanna do or that hurt and you just do them. And that leads to another one that I think is a good fit. And this is what we do now.

Dalton Anderson (19:46.136)
that messaging resonates with me and should with a lot of people, especially with me when I think I have a really good discipline, right? Like I'm very disciplined. And before I discovered David, I would do these crazy things like, okay, I'm training for not my body, but for my mental. Like this is to prepare me mentally, like this kind of mental pain that I'm going through.

the things that I don't want to do, I'm doing anyways.

I have a strong feeling that this is going to help me later on in life. And then you see David and he says something years later, like similar to how I'd felt earlier. But if I said that to somebody, they're like, you're out of your mind, man. You're crazy. What is going on with you? You loony tune. And that could be true. That could be true. But there's another video from Dave. He's like, I might be crazy.

I say I'm not crazy, I'm just not you. This is the last one I want to share with David and this is probably one of my favorites. I would listen to this all the time in the morning before I go on these massive morning runs. Currently I can't run, unfortunately.

have I not been sharing? Man, that's brutal. Okay, I don't know how that turned out, but let's share this tab instead. Okay, so this one is...

Dalton Anderson (21:23.022)
Groundhog's Day.

Dalton Anderson (22:24.894)
Exactly. Couldn't agree more David. Appreciate you. No, a hundred percent. I train mental for the mental. The body is a representation of how callous my mind is. It's kind of what David would say. So how do you callous your mind or how do you increase your discipline? One of the first things that David started doing was called the accountability mirror and the accountability mirror.

allows you to hold yourself accountable. You got to be your biggest fan, believer and critic. And a lot of people want to be their biggest fan and believer, but they don't necessarily like being the biggest critic, but being your big biggest critic leads you one step closer to being your biggest fan or believer, all of which are linked together. So the accountability mirror started when David was training and he had to look himself in the mirror and he's like, Hey man, like

This is not you. You used to do these things and you used to have this going on for you and now look at you. You don't want to go to work. You don't find anything interesting. You're just flowing through life, Like what are you doing?

You need to take care of yourself. You need to learn how to read and write. You can't go through your whole life not knowing how to And you gotta take care of your body.

How are you gonna do that?

Dalton Anderson (24:14.17)
and set some goals. like his goal was, I want to be a Navy SEAL, which was insane at the time given where he was.

He became a Navy SEAL, but during that process he was constantly, okay, here's the accountability mirror. Did I do my runs that I needed to do? Did I do my hours of swimming? Did I do my studying on the bike? And he had this whole regimen that he would go through, and if he wasn't making those things, he'd be like, okay, what is going on? And this accountability mirror thing started, I think, late high school.

when he would describe himself as like some kind of hoodlum and he was just always acting out and that's when David's just shaved his head. He's like, we need change. We need to change this, man. I don't like who I see in the mirror and we gotta change this. So then he shaved his head, started doing better in school. He was on the path to failing. So that's where the Count of Million Mirror starts from. Just taking a look at my notes.

He also suggests that you use sticky notes. Write down your goals and reminders and put them on the mirror. So every day when you wake up, you wash your face, you brush your teeth, you see your goal. You see everything. Don't forget to study. Don't forget to work out. Don't forget to tuck in your kid or whatever your things are that you want to have on your mirror. Put them on your mirror.

So another thing that he had created was he calls the cookie jar. Get some cookies out the cookie jar. He describes that as one of his joys of his childhood was his mom would always keep a cookie jar in the house and when they're doing good or they had a great day or something like that or a bad day, like his dad would be beating him or his mom, it would get.

Dalton Anderson (26:20.526)
They would get a cookie out the cookie jar just to help things go by. Or if they did well, David, grab a cookie. And you only got one cookie. And they'd always try to get more than one, but that was the rule. And he relates to cookie jar to just things he's overcome, either good or bad. Like, Hey, we've done this before. We've been here before. This is nothing. This is nothing. Remember that time?

when you did x and it

It reduces the potency of the situation, I would say. When you can look back and be like, hey, you've done this before. Hey, you're fine. Don't worry about it. You might be having an off day, but even on your off day, you did this. And I would describe that as a way to benchmark where you have these things that you're going through or things that you're doing that are just seemingly

monstrous in the moment. You're like, my gosh, this is just a wave. And then afterwards,

you kind of forget about it because it wasn't a big deal. It's not a big deal to you. But when you talk to other people, it is a big deal. So having that recall ability to recall those hard moments and to pull that back in to either motivate you to keep going or ensure that you can do it helps out.

Dalton Anderson (28:02.998)
And mine's not necessarily a cookie jar, but I recently have been researching how to start a company and start up and talking to co-founders and founders, either searching, recruiting for a co-founder or talking to co-founders that have already founded a company and trying to see how it all went. And doing all this research, you get to talk to like exceptional people.

and the people that you read about are top tier, the best of the best. And that makes sense given that they founded a company, they're not gonna, and it's a startup too. So they've got all sorts of things going for them. They're high level intelligence, great social skills, communication skills top 1%, intellectual abilities very high. And they have a rap sheet of just

an amazing background of just positions that they've held. And you look around like a man.

Am I in the right place here?

Is this really something that it's easy to do that? And one thing that kind of demystified the whole thing was like, hey, I've been in places where people didn't think I belonged before, although I thought I belonged there. And you could also read about these people, go on these recruiting sites or try to recruit for co-founders and see that they're no different than you are. At the end of the day, no one's special.

Dalton Anderson (29:45.934)
So that doesn't mean that your life doesn't mean anything, but you're just not special. I'm not special, you're not special. We're all here and we're all capable of amazing things. And if you want to achieve those things, then it's gonna be tough and it's gonna be ugly. But yeah, reach into the cookie jar when things get hard.

Another interesting, stop sharing. Another interesting thing that he'd come up with after the cookie jar and after the accountability mirror was Taken Souls. And Taken Souls was created when he was doing his hell weeks for the Navy to become a Navy SEAL.

And during hell weeks, it's hell and it sounds brutal. Like the first week of hell week, you're not given like any food, like barely any food and you have to stay in frozen water and they've got doctors on standby just in case you go into hypothermia and you've got to carry these heavy boats and logs and there's all sorts of logs carrying and

running around. It just sounds brutal, brutal. they have you covered in sands. The sands like cutting through your skin over a week. And then after that, they do that for some time. Like hell week is, yeah, hell week is crazy. It just sounds insane. It just doesn't sound fun at all. Where you're just there for, I think there's one where you're there for your stay up for like over a day and you're locked in and you're just,

getting hit by waves and people are making you run and do whatever and you get no food and no sleep, it just sounds brutal. That I could deal with. I feel like that's doable. But then when they went to dive school, and this might be because David was trying to take souls, and I'll talk a little bit why that's a drawback, but during the dive school piece, there's a section of it where you've got to,

Dalton Anderson (32:10.574)
dive down, you don't have a respirator or anything like that. You just have your own breath. So you're solo, free diving. You're going down, it's 15, 20 feet in the pool, there's knots at the bottom and you gotta tie knots. And the instructor can ask you to tie up to three knots at a time. And they've gotta verify each knot before you can go up and surface for air.

The issue is the instructors can intentionally.

take their time to verify the knots and they don't have to give you rest when you come up and they could splash you in the face, make it so you can't breathe, like all sorts of stuff that they can really mess with you. And there's times where you can just.

You can just be on there for minutes. And they're just trying to push you, push you as far as you can. And if you surface before they approve your knots, you're kicked out, you're done. And so on the third hell week, he was really getting a hammering by the instructors, because the instructors see you through every time. So this is the same people, pretty much. mean, they do rotations during.

during deployment, they'll do an active deployment and then they'll come back and some people will rotate as instructors. And so those instructors were on that same rotation. So they're the same folks. And so they were kind of rubbed the wrong way by David so-and-so called taking souls. And so this taking souls thing has negative effects where people just want you to fail. And this instructor was basically trying to drown.

Dalton Anderson (34:02.136)
David and he had

When you start getting chest convulsions in your chest, when you're out of air, when your body's trying to breathe, your, like, it's happened to me before when I'm free diving, like, you don't have much time left. And when you come up, you really need air. And then for someone to keep splashing you in the face and then make you go down again and then take their time to prove the knot, it just sounded horrific. And actually, somebody died in his last hell week.

They drowned and that stuff happens all the time apparently during that school, the dive school.

So taking souls is all about just, just slaughtering the person. And not in a bad way, it's really like pushing yourself so hard that you demoralize your competitors or even those in authority. But here's the thing, that doesn't work in all scenarios. And the military is very macho, this is, this is, I would say,

doesn't model real world,

Dalton Anderson (35:19.624)
If you go into work and you just annihilate all your colleagues, you're going to alienate yourself. You want to do well, but you don't want to alienate yourself and make others feel bad. If you do that, you'll get passed up for opportunities. You people won't like working with you. And at the end of the day, no matter how good you are,

If people don't like working for working with you or working for you, then what good is it? It's not any good. It doesn't help anyone if you're the best in the world, but no one wants to work with you or for you. You got no money and no one wants to work for you. So you can't scale.

And that was an issue that David was running into. his whole mantra was taking souls, taking souls, doing this, doing that. And that had hurt him in his career when he wanted to go into these elite schools within the Navy, like these special forces, any of the special forces he was having, he was having difficulty getting through to the end for the screening process. And the general sense of it was,

He had embarrassed his authoritative figures, his CO, his commanding officer, or other folks on his team, and he never fit in because he was always like, all right, if you don't wanna do this training, then the real men are gonna be over here training while you guys sleep in. You're not ready. If you were half as strong as you thought you would be, you'd be over here training.

Like all sorts of stuff, just laying in to his teammates instead of being like, hey, know what, maybe we could dial back the training. My training regimen is too high, high volume, and I'm focused on the wrong things. We should be focused on teamwork and us getting better every day. And unfortunately for David, he didn't figure that out until later on in life. So.

Dalton Anderson (37:32.046)
Figure that out now.

Taking souls is not the best thing to be doing when you want to have long-term success in networks. It just doesn't work. Being great and being a great team player, that's good. But taking souls consistently.

It's gonna hurt you long term. Like it hurt David. So the next thing is the 40 % rule. I don't know if this came up in his runs or in Hell Week. He talks about it a lot while he's running but.

Dalton Anderson (38:14.03)
Basically, the 40 % rule is...

Dalton Anderson (38:21.772)
When you think that you're at your limit, you're only at 40%.

Dalton Anderson (38:28.238)
So you got 60 % left, which is crazy. So you're like tired, you're like, man, I can't do this anymore. And you got some person on your side, just outside of you. That's great. You got another 60 % left, buddy. You're like, hold on, hold on, on. Seriously, another 60 %?

Yeah, you got another 60.

That's a difficult thing to comprehend for anybody. I've pushed myself pretty hard, but I don't know if I've got another 60 % after when I pushed myself. There was a run one time where I been, I committed doing marathon, which I didn't do because I hurt my leg, my ankle. I a third degree sprain in Japan when I was playing pickup soccer.

during that time I was training from the marathons and I would have long runs on Saturday. You know, I would run at least 15 miles and I live in Florida. So I really have to run in the morning or it gets too hot. I had overslept the previous weekend and then the next weekend I was like, Oh, I've overslept again. So I guess I just won't run. And I was like, no, no, no, this is what we do now. We do long runs on Saturday. So if you don't wake up at the right time, that's on you.

but you're still running. So I went and ran, I think I did 18 miles and it's summertime Florida, it's very hot. And at the end of my run, had been just, I wasn't running a straight line anymore. I was just hobbling about. And luckily I didn't get hurt or anything like that, but my vision wasn't all there. My...

Dalton Anderson (40:26.294)
motor functions weren't all there. Like I was pushing it. I pushing it pretty hard. And it took me about 45 minutes to recover, like 45 minutes to an hour to recover enough to like go home. I couldn't drive home. I was like, okay, let me just go my car and cool off and see. Like in those moments, I don't know if I have another, I mean that'd be great if I had another 60, but I don't know if I have another 60 in that one. I'm just trying to think back in a moment where I'm like, I'm done.

but now you've got another 60.

If I had another 60%, that's absurd. That would mean I have.

Dalton Anderson (41:08.546)
Like another 10 miles in me. Regardless, that's one of his frameworks. And then the last one is like callusing your mind. So if you build up all those things, you have an accountability mirror for your goals. You have this notion of taking souls, but I say, draw, reduce that, like drop it back a little bit. Don't take souls. Maybe take respect, where you earn respect by working hard and.

being good at your job and being a good person, you take respect. You know, around, you take it. You take it through your actions and leading through example and being a leader versus taking souls. And then the next thing would be the cookie jar. Combine the cookie jar, taking souls, I'd say the reduced ones, so taking respect, the accountability mirror, the 40 % rule,

All of that combined calcifies your mind and gets you in a mental state where just because you don't want to do it, you do it anyways. Just because it's hard, you think you're at limit, you can push further. You've done something hard, you're having a hard time with the challenging events that you're going through, pull something out of the cookie jar.

And so it gives you this mental framework to deal with any scenario that is difficult, either from a discipline standpoint or a challenge, or just you think you're at your capabilities. There's all sorts of things that just like, Hey, this is hard. You've done something hard before. Check this out. Press play on that. See how you feel now. You think you're done. You've got another 60%.

Dalton Anderson (42:56.93)
Have you, know, check in with yourself? Are you happy with yourself in your accountability mirror? And so.

Dalton Anderson (43:08.824)
I feel pretty strongly that those things would help you out. And I would recommend this book. I liked it a lot. This is a great book. I think it's better for someone who's trying to find themselves, especially in the area of discipline and taking on hard challenges. I was already very disciplined. I'm probably one of the most disciplined people I've met. And I haven't met myself, but I haven't met that many people that I'm like, wow, that person's way more disciplined than I am.

So I didn't need help in that regard. I just love David Goggins and everything that is David. So I've got my David Goggins teddy bear. I'm just joking. I don't have a David Goggins teddy bear, but I this book was great. I loved it. And I would highly recommend it to anyone trying to find themselves. I think a good spot would be like a junior in high school or junior in college that is just going through a rough spell.

or someone who is going through a new chapter in their lives and they find it challenging. This is a great book for them. I hope that you enjoyed today's episode.

And wherever you are in this world, have a great day, good afternoon, good evening. Thank you. And listen again next week. See ya, goodbye.