How This Man Turned a Ghost Town into a Social Media Sensation! | Brent Underwood DSH #607

So I'm taking media training classes right now, actually

to find out their mindset and how I can penetrate.

Answer what they want to answer.

Meaning, like, if you ask a question, they might not even answer that exact question.

They'll dance around it and answer whatever their talking point is.

And so it's like, you didn't answer that at all.

But yeah.

100%.

They're good at that.

As a listener, unless you're trying to perceive it, you don't pick it up.

You're just like, oh, I'm just listening to a story.

You're like, well, he's not answering the question at all.

Exactly.

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And here's the episode.

All right, guys, we got Brent Underwood undergoing quite the mission right now.

Yeah, I'm excited to be here.

Thanks for having me.

Please enlighten everyone what you're up to.

Yeah, so I live in an old mining town in the 1800s.

It's called Cerro Gordo, and it was a big silver mine back in the day.

It was the biggest silver mine in California.

And I've been living up there for the past four years straight, just kind of trying to bring it back to life.

You know, eventually one day we can host people overnight and stuff like that.

But right now, it's just fixing it up, documenting the time that I'm up there on YouTube and other places.

And yeah, just trying to bring a dead town back to life.

So when did it become abandoned?

About 1940.

So the heyday was like 1860s.

So 1865, they started mining silver there, and they mined that for about 20 years.

And they pulled about $500 million worth of minerals out of it.

Holy crap.

If you adjusted it for inflation, you know, that's today's money.

But still, like this town was like a boomtown.

There was 4,000 residents there, dozens of buildings.

And so they mined silver to about 1890.

They lost the vein.

The guy came back in 1910, found zinc.

So he started mining zinc there to about 1930.

So for like a mining town, it had an active life of almost like 60 years, which is crazy.

Usually these mining camps, they thought, you know, six or eight years, they'd get their money and get out.

Yeah.

This had like a really long life.

And then how the story goes is, I guess, a company tried to kind of take it back over again.

They were leasing it.

They couldn't, they had a caretaker in place.

They couldn't pay him.

And so instead of paying him as back wages, they just gave him the town.

Dang.

Here's the town.

Good luck.

And but it's interesting though, because like

at that point in time, it wasn't like historic on any means.

Imagine getting like a four-year-old mining town.

It's like, what am I really going to do with this?

Yeah.

And so he sold some of the materials off and stuff like that.

Oh, there were still some materials left to sell?

More like, more like the buildings themselves.

He was selling off like scrap stuff.

Yeah, scrap metal.

Yeah.

And then 2018,

I bought it and then i moved up there in 2020 full-time during the pandemic wow everybody was looking for places to go after you're what a good place to socially distance and uh yeah here we are so you're the only one that lives there not not these days originally that was the case you know originally there was only um myself but these days we have a full-time like town manager i call them that kind of looks after the town and then we have a lot of volunteers that help nice i started like documenting a lot of it on youtube that's cool created a lot of attention a lot of volunteers coming up a lot of different stuff like that um so these days almost never alone but uh that's cool cool.

Do you think there's anything left to be mined there?

It's pretty much done.

I pulled out like last month, I pulled out a little bit.

I made some rings and coins, but I don't think any on a commercial scale.

Yeah, like the primary middle there is lead and silver to combine, and the process of extracting the silver from the lead is like pretty difficult.

Oh, it costs a lot.

Yeah, so it's like the cost is more than it's worth.

If you can make a small batch, if you can make, let's say, 10 ounces of silver and then make pendants out of it or something, you know, that might be worth a lot.

That's cool.

I've always wanted to go crystal hunting.

There's a lot of crystals there.

Are there?

There's crystals.

We have crystals.

We have natural turquoise.

we have dude.

I gotta stop.

Where is this?

We're about three and a half hours from here.

Bro, just sign me up because crystal hunting has been on my list for a minute.

There's there's uh, there's 30 miles of mines underneath the town.

Oh my gosh, the main shaft goes 900 feet down, and there's just branches and 30 miles down there.

Dude, so you found some cool crystals there?

Found a lot of crystals, found the silver, found like turquoise.

Because I think, and now I have like a little lapidary shop where you can, you know, just polish some stuff up.

Yeah, so imagine like I can go mine my own silver, get my own gems, like make my own rings all from like stuff on the property.

That is awesome, man.

Yeah, it's fun.

So you're going to turn it into like a tourist thing?

Eventually, yeah, we're hoping to have Overnight Guest.

We're building a hotel right now.

Nice.

It's going to have six rooms, a bar, and a restaurant.

And hopefully that comes online maybe later this year.

Oh, nice.

And then after that, who knows?

You know, it's, it's 400 acres.

It's a lot of land.

That's huge.

In the middle of nowhere.

Holy crap.

You're surrounded by nobody.

And so hospitality is kind of the main hope.

And then long term, maybe, I mean, who knows?

It's like a, it's like a, it's not a blank canvas, but it's a canvas to keep like kind of painting on for a long time.

Yeah, it's fun.

You must be seeing some UFOs and some weird shit out there.

There's a lot of time.

There's a lot of place.

I mean, it was a dangerous town back in the day.

You know, there was, there was, the newspaper said like a murder a week.

Oh, it might be haunted.

We should get some ghost hunters experts over there.

Yeah, we have a cemetery there that has about 400 people in it.

Wow.

Yeah, we know ghost hunters guys out here.

Zach Baggins went up there before.

Oh, he did?

Yeah, he's got a day to the show about it.

Oh, I didn't know that.

Sam and Colby went up

out here in Vegas, too.

Did they find anything interesting?

They both found their own.

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Thing, you know, I've never had that like connection, I guess, necessarily, but I'm interested.

So you're sleeping in a...

haunted place.

150-year-old house that might have some ghosts in it.

I just found out my childhood home was haunted.

Really?

Two weeks ago.

How'd you find that out?

Through a psychic.

Like, I got a psychic up there.

You got a good psychic?

Yeah, I got a good one for you.

She'll know within a day.

I'd love to have her up.

Yeah, I'll introduce you guys.

I think that'll be a cool thing to film.

Yeah.

Yeah, I don't know.

I'm a believer, but some people don't have that belief.

I'm just open to it.

Like, I'm waiting for that experience to happen to me, you know?

Yeah.

Just not yet, I guess.

Yeah, I'm open to like a weird experience, but nothing actually happened other than like sleep paralysis, I guess, which.

That's something.

Yeah.

Did that happen to you ever?

Not yet.

I mean, the worst, the closest I've gotten, I've heard heard different noises, but that was early on there.

So either I'm just becoming more comfortable up there or, you know, we're finding our places to go habitat or something like that.

I love that.

Yeah.

You got a dog out there, too?

No dog yet.

I have six goats, three alpacas, and some cats.

That's cool.

Yeah, it's cool.

You have to have some life.

When I first moved up there, there was nothing, like no heartbeat at all.

Yeah.

Because the town's in the mountains.

It's about 8,500 feet up.

And so there's no natural wildlife or anything like that.

And so I kind of brought some animals up there just to have a little bit of like a life up there.

Yeah, because it could get lonely.

That's like being in solitary.

Yeah.

It was, I mean, it was easy during the pandemic because I felt like everybody was kind of socially distancing and by themselves a lot.

But like these days, when I see my friends, you know, like going to dinner or something, it's like, oh, yeah, on social media.

Yeah.

How long were you alone up there?

The whole pandemic?

Not for the whole pandemic, but a decent, like, it'd be like months at a time.

Then maybe a friend or two would come visit kind of thing.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So it would be a long time.

We were all alone for months.

Yeah, it was a long time.

I don't know how you stayed sane.

Yeah.

I don't know either.

Well, COVID, people were going crazy.

Yeah.

Well, I think that like during COVID, it was almost a blessing being up there because I had so much land to explore.

You know, I wasn't cooped up in an apartment in New York or something.

I got all my friends.

So like I could go out and do a, you know, a 10-hour hike if I wanted to.

So that was cool then.

But yeah, 400 acres.

You probably haven't even been to the whole place.

There's trails.

I mean, I tried to walk through it, but there's just so many old mining camps and there's a bunch of mines and like campsites and stuff.

It's pretty cool.

Wow.

So this turned from a side project into like your main thing now.

Yeah, it was my, it was the side project.

I worked in like digital marketing, too.

I did book marketing.

I've worked with a lot of authors.

And then this was kind of, I always had this love of hospitality.

And so I had a bed and breakfast in Austin, Texas, like an old Victorian mansion kind of thing.

But it was again the side project, but then pandemic hit, moved up there, and it just kind of came the full, the full gig.

Wow.

Yeah.

Again.

So you were an author, you were helping authors publish books before this?

Yeah, not publish them necessarily, but more like...

market them, edit them, you know, stuff like that.

And so I worked with a lot of like non-fiction authors primarily.

Yeah.

And so that was always kind of my day job and my like passion but i always loved you know like hospitality history and so like this place was an idea to like combine both of those in one it's gonna be awesome i only read non-fiction yeah i probably i mean i probably worked with a lot of authors that you know uh oh yeah probably like we work with like robert green ryan holidays and his partner um you know tim ferris all those types of six and so uh some of the ogs in the non-fiction space yeah those are some of the top-selling authors of all time in the business space wild and it's just like I felt very lucky to be able to like learn from them.

And like now,

I mean, next week I I have a book coming out.

And so I feel like finally the tables have turned, you know?

And so the same guys that like I looked up to forever, now like their blurbs are on the back of the book, which is incredible.

It's cool.

It's very like.

Who'd you get on the back?

Robert's on there.

Robert Greene's on there.

Ryan Holiday's on there.

Michael Easter wrote this book called The Comfort Crisis.

It's pretty big right now.

These are legends, bro.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

What were some things you learned from Robert Greene?

I mean, he has this concept of mastery.

So his idea is basically like, we're all on our journey to find our life's task, you know, what a purpose, if you want to call it that.

And he basically says the best way to do that is think about kind of what excited you as a kid, you know, like what fired you up as a kid.

And then think about since then, like, what skills can you combine in a unique way that nobody else can?

And so for me, when I started thinking about that, like growing up, my grandfather would watch Gunsmoke, which is this Western show, just over and over and over again.

So I had this like love of the American West.

And then I went to school for finance.

So I have that finance background.

And then I had the hospitality thing.

and the marketing.

And so I started thinking like, oh, well, like an abandoned mine in California hits, you know, Old West.

It hits the real estate that I went to school for.

It hits the storytelling aspect, working with authors, you know, because we're kind of storytelling around the town.

And so, yeah, it feels like I kind of like finally settled on that life's task that Robert talks about a lot.

Yeah.

And that was like, I don't know, it feels pretty good.

It's good to find your purpose because it takes some people longer than others.

It took me 26 years to find podcasting.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's just like, it's one of those things that I think sometimes.

People are always like waiting and waiting and waiting.

And I think that's part of it too, but you also kind of like identify, eventually you kind of almost decide right like for me i was there i was like oh this could be it and then i think that when you fully like commit to like that being your thing there's like this

comfort in the commitment meaning like you're not worried about what the next project is the next project the next project at least for me like i was like oh okay instead of thinking you know what am i gonna do next what am i gonna do next like this town that i'm in cerro gordo is like the project probably for the foreseeable future yeah and i like there's a lot of like comfort to me in that yeah you feel comfortable right that's how i feel with this too exactly yeah it's hard to describe but yeah because i've done so many different businesses, so many different things, and I've never felt so at peace.

Like, I wake up now pumped.

Yeah, like you, you enjoy what we're doing.

You know, you get to interact with the type of people that you want to interact with, you know, and it just feels like this is where I'm supposed to be.

Yeah, it feels like a lot's in your control.

Rather, my other businesses, there were so many things outside of my control, and it wasn't comfortable.

Yeah, you know, with this, I get to choose who I talk to.

Yeah, that's awesome.

Yeah, it's a fun life, man.

I know what it Rogan doesn't know.

Yeah, yeah, and that money ain't bad either.

I believe it.

I believe it.

250 mil, sign me up.

Oh, my God.

Same with Ferris, though.

His pot is huge.

He'll probably sell that shit for like nine figures.

It's big, yeah.

I mean, he's, he's just, he's a master, too.

He's like in his own way.

You know, he's just such a meticulous researcher.

We're just like laser focused.

And just the attention to DFTL is something that working with him.

I don't know.

It was another like lesson, just like kind of on the front line kind of thing.

There's another level to him.

Yeah.

Four-hour work week, though, I couldn't do it personally.

Yeah.

No, I just.

I like work too much.

Me too.

I love it.

I think he was more trying to argue a way of life more than necessarily a prescriptive number of hours.

And so I think that like, if you find what you love, I don't think that he's going to be like, no, don't work more than four hours a week, you know?

Yeah, because it's also subjective what is work actually, right?

Yeah.

So I feel like what I do, maybe you could relate, like, most of it doesn't feel like work necessarily.

It just feels kind of like what I want to be doing.

Yeah.

It's stuff you do in your free time.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That makes sense.

So are you like raising money for this?

Are you just going to self-fund it?

Yeah.

So so far, you know, when I went to buy, I didn't have enough money.

I kind of took a big loan against my property in Austin.

And then then I got a couple of friends to chip in, you know, for as like investors, but more just like friends.

And then I've been self-funding it since then.

So the social media helps.

So I got the YouTube channel that chips in.

I mean, kind of a drop in the bucket comparatively, but I still work my day job with authors.

So that's kind of the day job still.

And that kind of like I funnel money from that into the town.

But I hope that once we open the hotel, it stabilizes, you know, financially.

And then who knows?

I mean, like over the years, if I'm there for another 30 years, we could do,

I mean, why couldn't we just keep building buildings forever?

You know, keep building this like really really cool place that'll exist for maybe another century or two.

Empire, yeah.

Yeah, it'd be fun.

What are you seeing working in the book space right now?

Because is there a pivot to audio,

audible, and stuff?

Yeah, audible is huge.

I mean, of course, I think that like that's big.

As far as like things that people exposure, I guess, like podcasts, obviously, are huge.

Just people are listening to more podcasts than ever, which, you know, a good, a good time to be.

A good time to be in the podcast game.

It's not that like, you know, people used to think like legacy media used to sell a lot of stuff.

Like, oh, I need to be in the New York Times or I need to be on the Today Show, which are still fine but there's podcasts that will like dominate either of those you know we've had authors that are on the front page of the new york times they're on the today show and then they'll go on like tim's podcast and tim will sell 10 times more books than either of those other ones will i could see that because i bought a lot of their sponsors products like athletic greens yeah whoop yeah because you gotta think about it like in in a today show spot You're on for three minutes, then it's gone forever.

A podcast, you're listening to a person for maybe an hour, right?

And so you kind of have to build that resonance that you don't build maybe on like a quick hit tv spot right and so i just think i mean i think you're in a good place with these podcasts i think so too man i think you're really good it's it's something with trust like the guest is talking for an hour rather than a tv spot you don't even know who it is yeah you forget it or like on the radio you forget like i don't know and like with podcasts it's just It feels a little bit more personable, I think.

It is because people are actually being themselves for the most part.

Some of them put on a front, but when you're talking for an hour, you get a good sense of someone.

Yeah, definitely.

Some of these guys are hard to break, though, man.

They're stonewalled.

There's like you're trying to get through the character.

These celebs because they're so media trained.

Yeah.

So I'm taking media training classes right now, actually,

to find out their mindset and how I can penetrate.

What's the biggest trick of trying to crack through that you've learned so far?

I mean, I only had one class so far, but they're basically trained to give the most bare answers.

Okay.

So they're trained to like not expose themselves.

Right.

So you just have to look at it from that point of view and get them to open up.

So I try to relate to the guests before we start filming.

Yeah.

And I'll figure out what that angle is.

It's different for every guest, whether it's like if we grew up in the same town or we like the same food or the same band, I'll throw in that sentence, oh, I saw you were friends with this guy, so am I.

Yeah, build that trust.

Drop the guard a little bit.

Drop the guard because you got to drop the guard with these celebs, man, or else they're not going to do shit.

Yeah.

And I think a lot of times when I listen to sometimes, like, if it's like a real famous celeb, they'll.

answer what they want to answer meaning like if you ask a question they might not even answer that exact question they'll dance around it and answer whatever they their talking point is yeah so it's like, you didn't answer that at all.

But yeah, 100%.

They're good at that.

Politicians are great at that.

Really good.

Because as a listener, unless you're trying to perceive it, you don't pick it up.

You're just like, well, I'm just listening to a story.

You're like, well, he's not answering the question at all.

Exactly.

The only one that knows is the host if they're good at articulating.

And you see that with so many politicians.

Yeah.

They'll completely avoid the question.

Have you had any politicians on?

I've had two on.

How'd that go?

So, uh, good.

Carrie Lake was super media trained, obviously, because she's from media.

Yep.

But she's more open.

So I thought that one was good.

And then I had Marianne Williamson on.

She's a Democrat.

I think she's in like second or third on the Democrat side.

And that was interesting because I'm not a Democrat, but as a host, it's my job just to steer the conversation.

Yeah.

And it was, it's good.

I think having opposing viewpoints is good on a podcast.

Definitely.

You should be able to entertain the other side no matter where your opinion.

Yeah, I get upset when I see shows that are so closed off and they're talking shit about whatever and they won't even have the person on.

Like at least have them on.

Yeah.

See if there's some middle ground because you're not going to evolve.

Yeah.

I agree.

There's so many people I disagree with, but I'll take a bit or two from them.

Yeah, you want to stretch yourself.

I think that that's part of like growth in general.

You know, you want to kind of like go a little bit out of your comfort zone each time.

And that's kind of like how you're going to get a more rounded personality.

And that's why I'm evolving at a rapid pace because I take a piece from each guest right now.

I've had on 600 people, apply it to my life.

And I'm just

learning non-stop.

I feel like you have like a blender and you guys put in like the best ideas every single day.

And you're like drinking like knowledge smoothies.

Yeah, for real.

No, between my health, my spirituality, my business, every aspect has just skyrocketed the the past year.

That's so exciting.

I'm excited for y'all.

And that goes for the next like five, ten years.

Yeah, I think it's got to be a big, big thing then for sure.

You got to, you got to come out and visit the town sometime.

I'm going to come.

I'm going to take my girl.

We'll come out there.

We'll drive out there.

Yeah.

Three and a half hour drive, you said?

About three and a half hours.

Maybe we'll do a podcast in one of the old mines or something.

Yeah, that'd be cool.

It's in Utah?

It's in California.

California?

Okay.

Just on the other border.

How far is it from L.A.?

About three hours.

Okay.

So it's like in the middle of the kind of both.

Got it.

Either one.

Interesting.

There's a tiny little airport.

If you ever want to, if you don't feel like doing the drive, there's like a little airport out there.

You could take a little tiny meter plane or something into.

I wonder what routes where it flies.

No, like commercial planes.

It's going to be like either like some local pilot or something like that.

Oh, yeah.

I know a couple of pilots.

A pilot is a good friend to have in your network.

It is.

I'm about.

a couple hours into my license.

But if you feel like living out there, I don't want to drive.

So for instance, when I have to go to New York or something, I have to first drive three and a half hours to the airport, then fly.

So if I could just at least cut that down by flying.

Yeah, so you're dead by the time you land.

Exactly.

Because the whole day is gone.

It's like trash.

Because you got to show up two hours early, too.

So you're

the whole day is gone.

Damn.

Yeah, they need to get you a pilot license out there.

How many hours do you need to get it?

I think you need 100.

100 hours of fly time?

Yeah.

And

you flew two hours?

I flew two.

So I got a long ways to go.

Wow.

Was it scary?

I like it.

It's actually the first flight's pretty cool.

It's like you have an instructor with you, obviously.

And it's almost like they have the training pedals like in a...

you know, one of those cars like they're they're steering.

But it feels very free.

It feels kind of like what i need to do interesting no it for real is one of the most useful skills you could probably have in business yeah because being able to fly your own plane saves you hours and stress and yeah i fly jsx out here it's such a lifesaver jet suite x is that like kind of like a

it's like a private jets yes there's like 20 to 40 people it's only 150 200 bucks whoa yeah that's awesome but you show up 30 minutes before your flight yeah the networking's great yeah and they don't check your bags that's awesome yeah so you can fly with uh people have dogs all the time Yeah.

Yeah.

It's super cool.

Nice.

Yeah, if you're ever in LA, tons of routes from there.

All right.

Check that out.

What were you doing before books?

I went to school for finance, so I thought I was going to do that.

I went to Wall Street.

Yeah, I went to Columbia, got my degree in finance.

Damn, dude, you're an Ivy Leagueer?

Yeah, for graduate school.

Undergrad, I went to FSU.

Then I got my master's from Columbia.

I went to work for a real estate investment bank for about a week.

I was like, I really, really, really didn't like that.

Damn.

So imagine that feeling.

You spend six years of school.

I'm still paying for it.

You're paying for the debt and you hate the job first week.

So your whole life got turned upside down.

It was one of those things where like both my parents are teachers, so education was really important.

And so it's like, are you going to be a doctor, a lawyer, a banker?

You know, you kind of have a couple options.

Yeah.

And so I was like, well, banker sounds cool.

You know, that sounds like a fun thing to do.

I had watched like, you know, Gordon Gecko.

And then I just really didn't enjoy it.

This was like, I graduated right when kind of like we were packaging non-performing loans.

This was like 2010-ish, like right after a big financial collapse.

And so it just was not I need to do.

And I kind of want those things where I sat down on the cable.

We were at this due diligence consulting gig, and I looked at all the people around me that were maybe 10, 20 years beyond me.

And they all just looked miserable.

You know, they were waiting to die, it felt like.

And I was like, I can't do this.

And so, like, I quit.

I traveled a bunch.

I did, I did like the backpacking thing.

I did backpacked for about

Southeast Asia and then South America.

Oh, nice.

So I did those two for like about a year backpacking.

Wow.

Came back.

I was broke.

Still paying for Columbia and student house, but I moved like deep into Brooklyn, got like a three-bedroom apartment sharing with four people, you know, one of those places for $500 a month or thing.

Yeah, and like I was writing articles online for like $5, and it was dumb because like using my degree, I could be making much more, but at least I felt like free.

I was like, I'm not in a bank, I'm not putting on a suit, I'm not doing that.

And that's kind of how I met the authors because I was writing stuff.

So I met an author.

They were writing a book about marketing.

And so that led me to meet another author.

And so then I just started working with authors on the marketing aspect of it.

And that was just like 12 years ago.

Wow.

And so I just did the the marketing stuff for a while i want to dive into some some of those backpacking stories that is fascinating so you did that for a full year yeah about yeah and that's kind of why like that seed of hospitality got planted too that's kind of why i bought this ghost town is because

when i was doing the backpacking i was staying in hostels you know bunk beds yeah the whole thing and uh i just loved sitting around and meeting people every night like with a similar mentality and like kind of like maybe how i used to do every day like learning their story And I just thought like, that's cool.

Maybe in the future, if I didn't have to travel forever and do that, that might be something fun.

And that's what led to the bed and breakfast in Austin that led to Cerro Gordo kind of.

Yeah, I can relate, man.

I went to some bed and breakfasts in Ireland where only like six people can stay in them out a day.

So it's really intimate.

Yeah.

And you just meet some cool people.

Grandma's cooking you amazing food.

Yeah.

Like it's a vibe.

Yeah.

I really enjoy it.

I love that stuff.

Similar mentality.

If they are taking the leap to stay in a place like that, maybe they like you're closer to get along with them than maybe somebody ran them off the street.

Yeah.

Yeah, Ireland's a vibe, man.

It was so the town, one of the towns I stopped in, the amount of residents there was 100 people.

And the town had four bars, and they were all packed.

Every resident was at the bar every night.

Yeah, all super packed.

Wow.

Like, it was an interesting imagine growing up in that.

I think experiencing cultures is really important.

Which places stood out to you on your trip?

I loved, I loved like Bogota in Colombia.

I love that.

And I love Thailand.

Everyone loves Thailand.

I love Thailand.

The food is amazing.

Yeah.

I like went down to Kofanyan and all the islands off the East Coast and stayed there for probably like a month and a half.

Wow.

And just, you know, the hostel was $2 a night, I think.

And like I played a pad tie this tall was like a dollar a night.

And so as somebody who had just quit my job after a week, I didn't have a lot of money.

And so it was cool just to be able to like experience that for, you know, $20 a day.

Like you're living for like $20 a day.

So you didn't have any agenda.

You were just

winging the whole trip trying to figure out what was next.

And actually, kind of like a fun.

turn of events there.

Like when I was on that trip, I was still stuck in this mentality that I needed to be either like a doctor, a lawyer, or a a banker kind of thing.

And my friend had pirated for our work week.

Sorry, Tim, like, I apologize.

Yeah, and he sent me.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

He sent me the PDF.

And I was like, it literally blew my mind.

I was like, oh my God, like, this is like, there's another way to do this other than just, you know, working at a traditional job your whole life.

Yeah.

So I came back and I was like, I'm not getting a traditional job.

I'm going to do something else.

And another fun thing is like, when I moved to New York originally for school, my other friend,

one of my best friends growing up, gifted me the 48 Laws of Power, which is Robert Greene's book.

So now to like

know both of those guys, have Robert be on the book that I'm coming out with right now is this like full circle, you know, from like totally lost in my life to now like feeling like I'm in my purpose and I have a book coming out about that.

And Robert's green, Robert's name is on the book.

It's just like, it's cool as it gets.

A lot of stuff comes full circle.

It's just a matter of how long that circle takes.

I noticed.

I like that.

Yeah.

I see it in so many areas of my life.

Yeah.

That's how it feels right now.

Like if you just put in the work, man, and have the right intention, it really does come back.

And when you start seeing it happening, it's like very like

comforting, I guess.

It is, yeah.

That's why I'm so giving because people are always like, why do you give away all your connections, information, knowledge, money, and stuff?

But I know it'll come back to me.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's a scarcity mindset to kind of hold everything in, I think.

Yeah, I agree.

I think knowledge should be shared for a cheap price.

That's why I like books.

I'm a big audible guy.

I mean, books are amazing.

You have to think, like, an author's put...

Many years of their life into their very best ideas, and then you can buy it for like 25 bucks.

Less on Audible.

Exactly.

And people are like, oh, books are no, they're not.

That's like four years of someone's life, you know?

Yeah.

And like, that's the cheapest thing you could ever buy, really.

Um, and so I just like grew up loving books.

Now to have like my own book coming out.

I don't know.

Amazing, man.

I used to love going to the library.

I love going to Barnes and Noble, man.

Yeah.

Smell of fresh books.

It's unbeatable.

Shout out to Barnes and Noble.

They let you sit there and read that shit for free, too.

And

they don't kick you out.

There's less than there once was out there of Barnes and Noble.

Yeah.

There's still a few out there.

Yeah.

Amazon bought them, right?

I don't know who bought them.

It's just, I think Amazon's eating everybody's lunch.

They're just like, that's where you go for books it's where you go for podcasts it's where you go i mean you go for everything now and so uh it's hard for some of these brick and mortars to compete do you buy your books new or used new i just i mean working in books i want to support the authors most i can best i can i'll like buy them if i can buy them from an indie store like if i'm somewhere i can go to the local bookstore that's better um

but unless there's like unless there's like a serendipitous moment about a used book so for instance recently i was talking to my friend about the hero's journey like robert uh joseph campbell it's like his whole thing yeah and then an hour later i was walking by a bookstore in brooklyn and that book was like in the front shelf i was like all right i'm gonna buy the used book because like it seemed like fate or something like that that's destiny right there yeah yeah i love books man any any books that really stand out to you um

on my own ghost town living i'll throw that i'd enjoy that but i think that like

For me,

a friend of mine named Ryan Holiday, he says that there's books that are called quake books that like shake you to your core and basically like make you rethink everything.

And so I would say like for me, the biggest three with that were like four hour work week when I read it, you know, it's a little bit dated now, but like I think the mentality is one that like still applies to like doing something traditional.

Yep.

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.

You know, I haven't seen

a huge book.

Yeah.

It's like, so Marcus Aurelius was the emperor of Rome like 2,000 years ago.

And he wrote essentially what's like a journal to himself.

Wow.

How to be a good person.

2,000 years ago.

And they never anticipated it being published.

This is one of his private thoughts for, he was the most powerful man in the world at the time.

You know, he was running the whole world.

Yeah.

It was notes about like how to be a good father, how to be a good brother, how to be a a good person.

And then it eventually got packaged and put into a book.

And it holds up.

It's like every line is just like punches you in the face.

Holy crap.

It's only like maybe 120 pages.

And it's like, it's not like narrative.

It's like little sentences that are kind of connected to each other.

Yeah, check it out, dude.

I need to.

And that's my style because I don't like the super long ones.

No, just like this you can pick up for five minutes and you're going to walk away with something.

You're like, oh, I can use that today.

You know, because like he was the father of stoicism, basically, one of the main guys in stoicism.

And stoicism is supposed to be like this like practical philosophy that you use in your everyday life.

And so like that, that book is just like mind-blowing.

That's awesome.

There's another one called On the Shortness of Life by Seneca.

Same thing.

Small book, just like mind-blowing.

And then I really like this book called The War of Art.

And it's like by this guy named Stephen Pressfield.

And so he's talking about like the creative act and how difficult it is.

Sometimes he calls it like resistance, how hard it is to put your work out there sometimes and get places.

So this is, I would say, one of my favorite books.

Interesting.

Yeah.

I'm going to check out that.

You said meditations?

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius.

I'm going to get that on Audible on the way home.

Immediately, text me.

Let me know how you think about it.

It's really good.

That's cool.

I've been leaning more towards podcasts lately.

Yeah.

But I want to get back into audiobooks.

Yeah, that one's good.

And that one, like I said, like.

Put it on for five minutes and pause it.

You're still going to take away something.

Wow.

It's good.

You got to really think about what he's saying.

Yeah, yeah.

It's pretty heavy.

One of those.

Yeah, that's cool.

That's cool.

Do you do any like meditations?

A little bit.

I recently got into Headspace.

I used to have that.

Yeah, just because up there, it's difficult.

Living in the middle of nowhere, you need some type of structure sometimes.

And so like

I was never a meditation fan, you know, but like that's helped a lot.

Yeah.

It's really been like grounding.

And I think that the other thing is just I live in 400 acres with nothing all around me.

And so

there's mountains that are right across the valley from me is Mount Whitney, which is the tallest mountain in the lower 48.

And so that sense of like awe, you look up and you're like, you know, it takes your breath away actually has been like the biggest change I would say between before I lived there and after I lived there.

Because i think that like in cities you can get awe in different ways like i think that like huge orchestras can be like awe-inspiring i do think that the term awesome is like really thrown around way too much you know like it is not everything is awesome yeah you know like an article that's like a default answer to like i didn't pay attention to like oh that's awesome you know it's like oh it's probably not awesome you know i think out there like that there's some like the awe of nature is like true and i think that out there

That and a little bit of headspace has been like the biggest change for me.

And you said there's no animals out there?

Not a bunch because we don't have water.

Wow.

So we're in the high desert.

So people, like, we're at 8,500 feet in elevation, it's like really tall, but there's almost no water.

So we have like small rabbits and stuff, but there's no big game, like deer or anything like that.

Damn.

Yeah.

That's a shame.

I have a bumper.

Yeah, I love deer.

I grew up in Jersey where they're everywhere.

Yeah.

Literally on the street.

Got to be careful going home at night.

Yeah, man.

I almost had a run-in with one.

Did you?

I think I would have died if it went through my windshield.

His horns were, goddamn.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Don't mess with deer, man.

Especially the one Joe Rogan posts.

Those elephants.

I think those are the ones you stop and you go around.

Yeah.

Or you let them pass.

Yeah, exactly.

For real.

Any podcasts you're listening to right now?

See, I don't know tongue because I'm kind of in the middle of nowhere.

But I've been.

Oh, wait.

Do you even have Wi-Fi there?

We have Wi-Fi now.

When I moved up there, I didn't.

Holy crap.

Yeah, I didn't know.

I was using like,

I get like two bars of AT ⁇ T.

So I was using like a hotspot, you know?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

And I couldn't stream anything, so I wasn't.

doing much.

Oh, so you couldn't even watch videos?

No, this was right, you know, this was like when like Tiger King just came out or whatever, and like everyone's like talking about i don't know the guys talking about um so i don't listen to a ton of podcasts just because like i don't have the like infrastructure still and i love this like go wander what i usually do is just put on like a movie soundtrack that's kind of what i love it's like you know star wars yeah star wars or like interstellar or you know like uh requiring for a dream they're inspiring yeah and you just like i feel like my thoughts are like firing because you feel like you're in a movie you know walking through the mountains movie soundtracks are great workout and motivation yeah it's kind of my go-to right now yeah i love that uh Dude, it's been fun.

Anything you want to promote or close off with?

I know you got the book.

Yeah, just the book, Ghost Town Living.

You know, the YouTube is the same name, Ghost Town Living.

It's about living up in an old mining town, trying to bring it back to life.

I think people will like it.

Awesome.

We'll link it in the video.

Thanks for Quinn, man.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah.

Thanks for watching, guys.

Check out the book, and I'll see you guys next time.