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Bert Martinez:
Let’s start off with this. You open the book with a moment where you stood at a second-story window wondering whether jumping would be less painful than staying. So, what was happening in your life at that moment?

Dave Rossi:
Oh, I— well, that’s a great question. You know, I owned a business. I had 130 employees. I was married to my partner. We started the business together. And it was painful. A lot of decisions I made were to be successful. my decisions were driven by what the definition of success looked like in Silicon Valley, the definition of happiness.

Dave Rossi:
If I became successful, I’d be happy. If I was successful, I’d be a man. If I was successful, people would like me. Game over. I’m at the finish line. Where’s the, where’s the chalice full of milk? Right? And, you know, it was painful because it wasn’t authentic. It wasn’t, it wasn’t built on things that I truly enjoyed, both the relationship and the business. It wasn’t— it made money, you know, I had 4 houses, I had 2 buildings, I had 2 boats, I had 3 kids, um, and I was really, really unhappy.

Dave Rossi:
And I numbed myself for a really long time. I don’t mean numb myself with alcohol or other substances, which is fine too. I mean, everyone has to cope. I coped by just going inward and working harder, harder, and becoming more and more numb to the pain. And eventually I realized this, how did I get here? Like, what am I doing here? Like, how did I work so hard? I had a back injury. I was supposed to have surgery. My best friend died. I wasn’t talking to my family, which I was really close with.

Dave Rossi:
I had this horrible marriage and I basically came to grips with accepting that my life completely and totally sucked and I was completely and totally unhappy, but I had tons of money. I had all these things and I had houses, like beautiful houses. Right. And, and I really contemplated, I don’t, I wasn’t suicidal as much as I was contemplating And it was really an awakening of how much, how much pain I was in.

Bert Martinez:
So you’re saying, okay, so you weren’t really suicidal, but you said you were contemplating. Walk me through that. What’s the difference?

Dave Rossi:
Well, I think the difference is that I, I looked and realized that I was so unhappy that, that there’s actually a comparison that, wow, what if I just jumped? How much easier would that be? It’s like, to even have that conversation with yourself is, is contemplating it, is, is an awakening of understanding how bad my life actually was at that moment. Where prior it was work harder, make more money, make life easier by, by making more money, make life easier by getting another project or a better employee, or maybe marriage counseling to communicate better with my wife. There’s something out there that I need. There’s something out there to make my life easier. And it got to this point where I realized, no, really, it’s, it’s really something’s wrong with me. Something’s wrong with the path that I took.

Bert Martinez:
Well, and I think just a bunch of people listening to your story, they’re going, well, you should have been happy if you have this level of success and all this other stuff. And, you know, first of all, I think that there’s this gap because there is this, I think, both on an academic side and a society side, where getting, you know, being successful and happy is attributed to your money and your business or career success. And you don’t really hear people talking about family and emotion and the fact that, yes, having success in business and having a lifestyle like you have, Definitely adds to your life and to your happiness. But in your case, you were miserable. You didn’t really enjoy what you were doing. You’re miserable at home. And that is left out of so many conversations that people have to go through all this junk to realize, oh, wait a minute, this is not everything.

Dave Rossi:
Well, I think it’s really important. And I think this is— I want to hit this home really hard. There is a way to be an entrepreneur and be successful that’s healthy, and there’s a way that’s unhealthy. And desire can be fear. People don’t understand that my desire to be successful was fear. I was afraid of not being enough. I was afraid of not being manly enough. I was afraid of not being a man.

Dave Rossi:
I was afraid of not being the best husband I could be. When you think you need something To be whole or to be happy. That’s unhealthy. Now everyone’s like, hey, that’s why we’re in business, to make money. Yeah. Yes. But the second it affects your identity, the second your desire to be an entrepreneur infringes morality or values or principles or basic tenets of internal happiness, it’s a slippery slope. It’s not sustainable.

Dave Rossi:
And you’re most likely gonna go down my path. Or the paths of a lot of people that I see who are very successful, who have no desire to change, because I could just go to another football game. I can go get first, uh, first row tickets at the Warriors. I can go on another boating trip. And that is the, the external patch that, that, that suffices this hunger of inner happiness. It’s just a patch and that’s not sustainable. And, and you will go down the path of not being happy.

Bert Martinez:
Internally. Why do you think, um, so many men suffer in silence? And, and, and I think now some women are also starting to go down this path. But let’s talk about this. Why do so many men, so many successful men suffer in silence?

Dave Rossi:
Well, I think it’s, I think it’s a couple of things, and I cover this in my research. You know, as animals, we all started from the animal kingdom. Homo sapiens are not excluded, and we You know, we, um, to be an animal, to share defenselessness, to share being vulnerable is a weak position. You’re looked at as a weaker being or, or animal if you show defenselessness as a horse or a tiger or whatever, right? And so as men, we’re also trained, don’t show vulnerability, don’t show defenselessness, don’t show weakness, okay? And then we’re trained as young boys, we’re trained in society, and also even in modern society Oh my God, the comments about politics and what it means to be a left, you know, non-manly feminine, you know, in politics. Right. So we’ve come to become a society that says it’s weak to be vulnerable, yet it takes the most amount of strength to be vulnerable. We’ve equated it as an animal and as being raised in a society that it’s bad. And weak, and it’s not.

Dave Rossi:
It’s the opposite. And everybody wants to survive. Being an entrepreneur, making money is about survival at the basic instinctual level, except we’ve taken it too far and we’ve let it marginalize our happiness, marginalize our families, marginalize what’s important to us, and most of all, marginalize what does take the most amount of strength, is to be honest and ask for help. And that was what I had to grapple with. It was very tough for me to ask for help when I went through my collapse.

Bert Martinez:
And I think you’re right. There’s no doubt that, again, women have their roles kind of dictated to them. And as men, we have our roles. We’re supposed to be strong, not supposed to cry, not supposed to show weakness or vulnerability. Yeah. And to your point, I think it was Brené Brown who talked about being vulnerable in that when somebody gets up on stage or wherever and and they are truthful and they are being vulnerable with people, you do not make fun of that person. You, in your mind, you are going, wow, that takes guts.

Dave Rossi:
Yep.

Bert Martinez:
To really just talk about what you are afraid of and what you are dealing with, that takes guts. And, but at the same time, it is this weird thing where we still do not like to do that. It is definitely, you know, kind of showing a sign of weakness. But And I agree with what you’re saying. It’s not. It’s just, it’s uncomfortable, but it’s not weakness.

Dave Rossi:
And, you know, I’m not suggesting you walk around the street going to the post office or ordering coffee crying and saying, oh my God, I’m such a loser. You know, I’m not advocating this, this, you know, emotion on your sleeve kind of persona. What I’m saying is if you have to say something and you need to say something like, you know what, I need help. I’ll tell you, I was, I was in so— I wrote this in my first book. I so misunderstood the paradigm. What I mean paradigm is the setting of the room, right? I would go to these giant commercial projects, I mean like billion-dollar construction projects where I was a general engineering contractor, and I would come in and we were doing excavation or something in my company. And I went into an office to argue with someone thinking that this is an argument, and I brought a bazooka, and they’re, they’re out there with flowers saying, hey, let’s work this out. And here I am Completely misunderstanding the paradigm of the room and vice versa.

Dave Rossi:
I would come in thinking it was a knife fight and they had bazookas. Like, you know, you lose reality, you lose objective reality, you lose your ability to understand what you’re dealing with. If you’re afraid, if you’re masking pain, if you’re hiding vulnerability, instead of me saying, hey guys, look, I’m really underwater on this. And what you’re saying here is, is might make sense to you, but we got to find some middle ground. Like, like, you got to help me. And that phrase is not something that I would ever use, being a former linebacker in football in college and contractor, you know.

Bert Martinez:
A manly man.

Dave Rossi:
A manly man, right, from every external objective. But, you know, um, if you have time, I’ll tell this great story. I had this one project. So what happened is I got divorced. I, I left my, my wife. I said, this is a horrible business. Can I buy your half? She said no. I said, You buy my half? She said, no.

Dave Rossi:
I said, business shuts down. Shut it down. 130 employees. Goodbye. You’re all fired. Everyone. Goodbye. Shut it down.

Dave Rossi:
You know, lawsuits. And anyway, I had this one job. There’s a ton of money in the completion, and it was a big hospital in Oakland, and they called our bonding company to finish. And there’s tons of money in this. And at the end, the, the project was called backloaded anyway, in terms of how you bill with construction. And the bonding company said, we made a settlement with a contractor and you gotta sign off on it. And basically you get nothing. And so I went to Seattle to sign this deal and I went to the company who hated me for years of fighting with them with the wrong paradigm.

Dave Rossi:
And I hated them because they were abrasive and mean anyway. But this time I had changed. At this time I’d read a bunch of books. At this time I’d had that moment on the balcony, you know? And I said, look, I’m going to sign your settlement document. And I know there’s maybe half a million dollars of profit in for you of my money. And I’m not gonna stop this cuz I have no resources in my divorce to, to, to defend this money or to get this money. So I’m gonna sign off, but I need to tell you something. I’m in the middle of a divorce.

Dave Rossi:
And if, if you could, $50,000 would mean a lot to me right now. If there’s any way you could peel that off with this deal and change it and add $50,000, I would be really grateful. You’re under no obligation and I’m not gonna stop you, but boy, I can’t tell you how much I’d appreciate that. And he came back and said, you got it. ‘Cause you were vulnerable and you were honest. I’m gonna give you $50,000. Easiest 50 grand I’ve ever made. Well, I should say, I should take it with the hardest, ’cause it was hard to say that in a meeting with people after fighting with lawyers and bonding companies and bonding lawyers.

Dave Rossi:
And, you know, it was, it was tough to say. And, you know, it was really, uh, it was really rewarding.

Bert Martinez:
Wow. And again, you know, maybe the stars aligned, like you’re saying, you had this very volatile relationship with these guys. So he was obviously touched that you were being so raw and real. And yeah, look, I, you know, he, whatever, you touched him and he said, yeah, I’ll do that for you. And that’s, that’s a miracle. That’s incredible.

Dave Rossi:
I’m not saying that’s gonna happen every time. But I think, I think the lesson is that vulnerability can be rewarded. And even if he didn’t give me $50,000, it was rewarding and cathartic to get that out and to become become a new person that worked on relationships and partnerships and not, not, not adversarial. And, and even now in my construction work, I started a new company in 2022. You know, we’re probably doing, you know, 8 figures right now, um, as a business, you know, and it’s great. And I have really powerful clients, multi-billionaire clients, over $100 billion— one of my clients, actually maybe 2. And These are conversations that you better be a partner. There’s no fighting.

Dave Rossi:
If they see things differently than you, which often happens, you have to accept that people see things differently. Okay, you see it blue and I see it light blue, and how do we move forward? And I think that’s, you know, business at times can be very adversarial and contracts can become, you know, kind of a leverage arm that we leverage. I don’t ever want to be in business anymore where I need to use authority or leverage to make a to make amends.

Bert Martinez:
Yeah. Bottom line, contracts are only as good as the people who sign them. And sometimes we— and I guess talking about myself because I would get involved in these contract disputes and try to nickel and dime, but just try to hold somebody to fire. This is what you signed. This is what we agreed to. So far, I’ve held up my end. Now, you got to hold up your end. And later on, I found out that the better approach, back to what you are saying, is to try to find some kind of middle ground if you can.

Bert Martinez:
People are going through crap that you do not understand. And just, again, trying to discover or uncover what is going on. Why is this happening now? And Because anybody who’s filed a lawsuit will know that filing a lawsuit isn’t always the answer. It certainly isn’t the fastest answer, right? It’s, it’s long.

Dave Rossi:
And I’m not coming to you from someone that doesn’t have experience in lawsuits. I worked in the recession in construction in Los Angeles, you know? And so I understand lawsuits. My dad’s a lawyer, my, my brother’s a lawyer. And in fact, I was talking to my dad last night and I said, hey, I was trying to get this job with him. And I said, um, you know, I’ll do design oversight for free. Like, we’ll oversee the design. I didn’t say for free. I said, we’ll oversee it.

Dave Rossi:
And he says, well, Most of my clients don’t wanna spend that kind of money. I said, no, no, we do it for free. He’s like, well, what happens when they don’t hire you? I said, well, I’ll do it for free if they hire us. He said, what if they don’t hire you? I said, then I walk away. He’s like, well, why would you waste all that time? That’s still, you need to sign a contract. And I said, dad, look, if someone’s gonna have me work for free for a year and then not use me, even though they said that they would, then I, I should be lucky I got out early before I started really spending money into a construction contract. Right? And design’s easy. I can make meetings and I can chat and it’s free and I’ll give ’em my time.

Dave Rossi:
I can learn who they are. They can learn who I am. If they’re going to stiff me early, ah, thank God. He’s like, that’s a good point. Then you’re not under contract and you can both walk away. I said, exactly. You learn who your partners are before you get into real contractual language where you’re locked into something.

Bert Martinez:
Yeah, absolutely. And, and one of the things that I also discovered is that sometimes, uh, on, on this higher level of business strategy and litigation. There was a case. So, the iPhone, the trademark iPhone was owned by Sprint. Apple came to Sprint and said, hey, we want to buy your trademark because they weren’t even using— they had plans to someday use it. But it’s been like my understanding or from my recollection, I believe they had— they’ve had this trademark for 5 or 6 years. They’ve never used it. Sprint’s never used it.

Bert Martinez:
So they— Apple contacts Sprint. Sprint says, no, we’re not, you know, we have no interest in giving it up for any amount of money. And Apple says, okay, well, we’re going to use it anyway. And so they come out with the iPhone. And of course, Sprint sues for infringement, whatever, and copyright infringement or trademark infringement, and they end up settling. out of court and maybe they got a bunch more money, whatever. But in that case, I think Sprint used it strategically. Certainly, Apple was like, yeah, we’re Apple.

Bert Martinez:
We have as much money as anybody else. So, we’re not going to pay attention. But I think for the most part, 99% of the time, a lawsuit is a waste of time and energy. Seldom do you walk away, even if you win the lawsuit, seldom do you walk away going, man, that was awesome. That was like such a great investment of You know, resources and time and emotion. It’s, it’s, they’re, they’re a distraction.

Dave Rossi:
Yeah. And I can say from experience, you know, look, I think, I think when people get locked in emotionally to ideas, it’s kind of like dating. Oh my God, this is the perfect match. This girl is like every resume. It hits all this. We’re going to be happy and have a house. And you begin to fantasize and you begin to, and the same thing happens with deals. I’m going to make so much money.

Dave Rossi:
And you get really locked in to this idea and you begin to obfuscate logic. Now, there’s nobody that weeds through this bullshit faster than Warren Buffett, right? I mean, he also someone that says happiness equals success, not success equals happiness, right? He switches it. When you’re content and you’re happy, you don’t need to chase deals. You don’t need to retrofit a fantasy of money into a category that you then have to hold on to, or then you can’t accept reality that they’re a bad partner or a bad person. And I think you need to take these stories of like Apple and Sprint, which is a great example, and maybe my example with this client, and distill it into everyday practices and apply it to how you talk to people, how you talk to clients, how you talk to your employees, how you talk to yourself. It’s really, really important. And, you know, my book’s a spiritual book, but I don’t mean spiritual like woo. It’s just principles about how to deal with the psyche and how to deal with the world in a more You know, robust, honest way.

Bert Martinez:
All right. So, so, here you are again. You have the house, you have this great business, money, status. Why wasn’t it enough?

Dave Rossi:
Well, because there’s 2 types of happiness. There’s internal happiness and there’s external happiness. There’s happiness as an emotion, which is external, and happiness as A state of being, which is internal. And so all these things gave me external happiness, and anything that’s external ends, and then you’re unhappy. So hey, I bought a boat. This is awesome. Hey, built a house for myself on a big piece of property up in the hills. Wow, this is great.

Dave Rossi:
Okay, now what? Oh, you know we can buy another house. Oh, that’s a good idea. Let’s buy. Then you burden yourself with these responsibilities because you collect things that that ultimately. served a purpose at one moment, and then they become the opposite. They become burdens. And so when you’re internally happy, you can say, I don’t really need to buy a house here. I could— I don’t need to buy a house in Michigan.

Dave Rossi:
I can just go rent one or get a nice hotel. And why? Unless it’s a good investment, then I look at it differently than something to give me happiness. And I think if you use things to make you happy, it’s, it’s, again, it’s not sustainable. And it’s— and I’m not saying don’t do these things. I’m saying they shouldn’t be the underlying source of happiness, which should be an internal state of being. I’m just happy for the sake of being happy. I don’t need anything. Right.

Dave Rossi:
That’s, you know, the Stoicism talks a lot about this. You know, if you’re content and you’re happy with what you have, you’re invincible. You don’t need things. Then you can be prudent and make really smart deals and not get yourself overextended and take too much risk. I’m not against taking risk, but if you can see risk properly and accurately, then you can mitigate risk and manage risk. When you get swept away and I need this and this is really important to me, Those are different types of conversations. And so, it wasn’t that it wasn’t enough. It was that I looked at the world differently.

Dave Rossi:
It was enough. I just didn’t see it enough because I was not internally happy. I didn’t have a state of being of contentedness, which I do now.

Bert Martinez:
Do you think that success or maybe chasing success is actually just a great big distraction from having that, that inner reflection, right? Discovering who we really are because we’re so busy, quote, being successful.

Dave Rossi:
Yeah. Success. Again, the question is, why are you chasing success? Are you chasing it for happiness? Are you chasing it for status, for performance, for a facade, for, you know, peacocks and a feather— feathers and a peacock? Am I chasing success so my feathers will look better? my car or my house or my image will look better? Is that why I’m chasing success? And, you know, these, these are not new discussions. These are discussions that go back 3000 BC. You know, there’s an ancient text called the Bhagavad Gita, which is an old text, and it says, look, go be a farmer not to grow fruit on a tree, but because you want to be a farmer. And, and, and the quote, the quote I like to use is, if you love to walk, If you love to farm, you will walk longer and farther. You’ll farm better and deeper than you would if you’re walking to a destination. And so if you’re going to walk to the lake, it’s all about the lake.

Dave Rossi:
And you ignore the walk. What makes you amazing at your job, what makes you amazing at your endeavors, is that you love the walk, that every step is based on loving every step. Wow, I put my foot in the perfect place. That was amazing. I’m so glad. This is great. Like, look at this.

Dave Rossi:
And then you begin to build. and you begin to build this, these skills and these experiences that, that, oh, we’re not going to the lake. That’s okay. I love to walk, you know? Right. And so the farmer, the farmer doesn’t farm to grow trees. Those aren’t up to him. But, but the yield of his crop is not exactly up to him. It’s sun and it’s rain and it’s a lot of other things than his skills. But if you love to farm, the result will be maximized if you focus on that.

Dave Rossi:
And that’s, you’re right. So I think people focus on, The destination and not the walk.

Bert Martinez:
And I think you’re right. Again, it, you know, there’s so much emphasis about becoming successful versus discovering who you are and finding something that makes you happy. You know, Arnold Schwarzenegger, you know, he’s got several videos out there and he says, you got to discover who you are. And that’s more important than You know, all this other stuff. And so, and then, of course, Oprah Winfrey, right? What is it? Go after your bliss or chase your bliss or something like that, and then you’ll be successful. And I think there, you know, there is some truth to that. I think that to your point, why has to be researched? Why are you doing this? Is it for your parents? Is it for What you think is going to make you happy. And then, I think there’s an exercise and it’s called why-why, right? So, I’m going to have a business.

Bert Martinez:
Why? Because I like helping people. Why? And so, you go down this and you realize, oh, wait.

Dave Rossi:
To be happy.

Bert Martinez:
To be happy, yeah.

Dave Rossi:
Or survive.

Bert Martinez:
And survival is definitely part of happiness. You want to do that.

Dave Rossi:
So, I mean, I think to put an accent on that, I think there’s a lot of confusion On these types of discussions. There’s a lot of confusion on purpose. There’s a lot of confusion on bliss. People are beginning to blend. You know, you found your thing if, if you don’t call it work. Okay. Like, I don’t, I don’t look, there’s a lot of things I do that I don’t really like, but because I’m content, it doesn’t really matter. Like, there’s things I do for my business that, that really aren’t that glamorous, but it’s just what I do because that’s what I do.

Dave Rossi:
I’m a farmer. I love to walk and that’s just part of far— I pick up a dirt clot. Okay. Right? You know, I had these multi-billion dollar clients and here I am picking up trash. Like, it’s okay. Like, you know, it doesn’t really matter. And I think the thing that you need to separate is you don’t try to be somebody. You remove the things that you’re not.

Dave Rossi:
And so I think to say, oh, go find yourself— don’t find yourself. Yourself will emerge automatically if you just stop removing the things you’re pretending to be. And I know it sounds really confusing and it takes years of practice to Have self-actualization and say, am I doing this because it feels right, or am I doing it because I’m going to look good? Am I doing this deal because it’s the right deal, or am I doing it because I like the reward? Now, I can tell you that I constantly check myself and not getting tricked on why I’m going to get into a project. And I, I look— someone asked me to look at this big, you know, $10 million construction project, $20 million house. up here in Silicon Valley. And I’m like, you know, let me slow down and see if the client is a good match. Met the client, took them on some of our projects. Let me make sure the architect and the team is the right team.

Dave Rossi:
Something’s uneasy about this for me. Now, I really wanted this deal. Great deal, great project, great resume project. Like, slow down, slow it down, make sure it works, make sure it fits. And I walked away from it and I said, this isn’t a match. It doesn’t feel right. It does— something doesn’t feel like this is, you know, my group of people. I couldn’t put your finger on it.

Dave Rossi:
I couldn’t say it wasn’t bliss or it wasn’t purpose and all these other words people like to use. But I can tell you that I, I’ve looked at myself enough to know that this is not a situation that I think I want to be in. And I left.

Bert Martinez:
I’m a big believer that how you feel is more important than what you know. And, and You know, to your example there, sometimes we’ll get this feeling that something’s off and we ignore it. And then after it goes bad or badly, you go, oh, that’s why I had that feeling that I shouldn’t have done it.

Dave Rossi:
Yeah.

Bert Martinez:
And it doesn’t have to be anything major. You know, many, many years ago, I was invited to a party. It was, you know, they were going to fly me up and all this other stuff. And it was all going to, you know, quote, all the people who are people are going to be there and blah, blah, blah. blah, blah. And, and I am praying and meditating, you know, and I do that. I try to do that every day. And so, during this, this state, I had this little whisper that came to me and said, don’t go to that party.

Bert Martinez:
And I just got a bad feeling about this party. Yeah. So, I don’t go to the party. I called my host. I said, I’m sorry. This is going to sound weird, but I’m not going to go to your party because I got this bad feeling about going to your party. So I’m not going to go. Now, nothing bad happened.

Bert Martinez:
Nobody got killed. You know, nothing bad came from that party. And all I can think of is maybe something would have been— something would have happened for me personally, right? If I was there, maybe I would have done something that I would regret it. Maybe I would have, you know, who knows? But I don’t regret not going to that party. It didn’t affect my life. And so, how you feel is more important than what you know. And as humans, we do stuff all the time that doesn’t make logic, but it makes us feel good.

Dave Rossi:
You said 2 key things I want to really accent. Number one, meditation, probably the best business practice anybody can engage. Everybody who’s successful from Ray Dalio to Oprah Winfrey, every athlete, they meditate. And, and, and, and I’m gonna loop us to the next thing you said, which is the feeling. Okay. When, when the noises in your mind are turned down, which meditation helps, the more you can hear. So you have this practice of praying and meditating, which is both, you know, I, I would say, you know, praying is you talking to God and meditating is you listening. Right.

Dave Rossi:
And, and I think, and I don’t mean in a religious way, but it’s, it’s a, it’s a two-way street of, of getting outside of the body and turn the, the, chatter in the mind down. And when that happens, your subconscious and your, and your gut feeling can come up. And I think it’s really important that you didn’t lament what did or didn’t happen at the party. Let’s say something phenomenal happened. Then what you say is you don’t lament that you didn’t go. You said, what were the metrics that said I shouldn’t go? Because I want to make sure that I learn my lesson for the next time. I did a really bad construction deal and I— all the signs were there. It was huge remodel, $3 million remodel on a $45 million house in 3 months.

Dave Rossi:
This is great money. $3 million in 3 months, a million a month. Love that job, right? But you know, the owner who’s in charge doesn’t treat her husband very well. Well, that’s a sign. A lot of really rude— I’m like, I, I should just get away. Like, but yeah, 3 months, you know, it’s my earlier jobs. And I took it. Disaster.

Dave Rossi:
It was complete disaster. And all the metrics are there. So do I lament losing money? No. I asked myself, what did I miss? Why did I miss it? Why didn’t I listen to myself? Did I rationalize? the deal to, to stay in it rather than avoid the red flags that are always there. And I think what you said is really, really pertinent.

Bert Martinez:
All right. So in your book, you talk about Omega Man. So why don’t you tell the audience about Omega Man?

Dave Rossi:
Well, the Omega is a, is a, a next evolution of an Alpha. You know, everyone who’s a Beta, who’s a follower, wants to be an Alpha. The Alpha is the, the ram with the biggest horns and the peacock with the brightest feathers and the gorilla that’s the strongest It’s just innate in our animal being to, to be that. Okay. The next step, there’s now a sigma, which is basically an alpha who wants to be more than an alpha to call himself more than an alpha, but it’s really not anything other than an alpha who wants to be a bigger alpha. The omega is about stepping off the field of that, of that dichotomy and saying, look, we are the only enlightened beings on this planet. We don’t need to be animals anymore. Let’s stop performing.

Dave Rossi:
So the alpha. defines their value by performance and by what they exude. The omega does it by expressing value, not yelling value. And if you need to express your strength, then you’re probably not strong. And the omega way of— the omega path is kind of like Odysseus. It’s like you begin to distill things to the essence. What’s important? Your family, your morals, your values, getting back to something that’s intrinsically valuable. And how do you live in this world? That’s full of omegas.

Dave Rossi:
I mean, full of alphas and full of betas and full of sigmas. How do you walk in the world? And the omega basically says, I don’t really care. I don’t need to care. I don’t need to care what anybody else is doing. If if Trump wants to make money with meme coins, that doesn’t affect me. Great, go make money with meme coins. I’m not going to get upset about it. I can make money on my own.

Dave Rossi:
I can be a sovereign person, master my emotions, master my fears, master my demons, and walk through life with choices. Conscious choices that always put me in a better spot rather than one that’s trying to perform or put fake feathers out like a peacock.

Bert Martinez:
All right. Again, you write, I did not invent Omega Man, but I remembered him. What do you mean by that? Because now we’re going into spiritual woo-woo. Talk about it.

Dave Rossi:
Well, I think it’s really simple. You know, on a very cloudy day, the sun’s there. But we just see the clouds. And those clouds in our life are fears, insecurities, self-worth. We feel less than something. As a kid, maybe we whiffed out a lot in baseball and coaches said, you suck. Maybe we weren’t the most handsome kid and people teased us. Maybe we were tall and gawky and got teased for being tall.

Dave Rossi:
These are all clouds that begin to block our self-esteem and our true self. And these things can build up in business and college and childhood. And all of a sudden we have this thick marine layer that blocks who we really are. The Omega Man is saying, I don’t need— who cares about beta? That doesn’t— like, I’m not a title. What? I have plenty self-esteem. Like, what? Why do I need to pretend I’m— if I can choose, which you can, why would I choose low self-esteem? You begin to pull away these clouds and all of a sudden the sun’s there and it’s always been there. And so the Omega is about removing these things that that you think that you’ve manufactured as an ego, as an identity. You know, we put up our feathers and we look at the other guy and say, his feathers are bigger than mine.

Dave Rossi:
Shoot, they’re brighter too. What am I going to do? Let me get a Ferrari. Maybe that’ll make my feathers brighter, right? That’s not real. That’s just the— that’s just the shield we put up that people want to buy. I want people to want the bird. I’m advocating that people get down to vulnerability and awareness and self-mastery to really be who you are and bring that authenticity out and be the bird and don’t be afraid of it. You don’t need the feathers. Just go be good.

Dave Rossi:
Go be competent.

Bert Martinez:
So correct me if I’m wrong, because it sounds like you’re saying that the person that we’re trying to become is actually the person we were before all of our Let’s say programming from our parents, our, our environment, our peers. Is that what Omega is?

Dave Rossi:
Yes, it’s a purity. It’s an authenticity. It’s, it’s standing in your ownness without feeling like you have to portray something. Because if we find a necessity to portray an identity, then we begin to build our life around that identity. And if we do, what happens is when that identity gets damaged, when someone attacks the identity, we begin to defend it. So now we’re spending energy defending, um, a manhood or a persona or a success level, or begin defending who we think we are. We don’t want that image to be tarnished. And so a lot of our energy is now focused on maintaining an image.

Dave Rossi:
And I, I’m, I’m fully, fully in support of reputation. But the reputation should be built on things that are honest and real rather than trying to obfuscate. And I don’t want to use the word lie. I want to use white lie or curate or obfuscate, right? And I think that the Omega path is about bringing more energy and intelligence and brainpower back to you. I don’t think people understand how much brainpower goes towards Preserving a fake identity. If I feel insecure, I’m going to ask— act the most secure. My bravado is the biggest, right? Whatever you see people are presenting, it’s usually to hide the biggest fear. And so when you have this dynamic in your brain, your brain’s a computer, and if you’re going to allocate a lot of brain power to thinking and encouraging people to see you as strong, then that’s where you’re going to put your energy,

Dave Rossi:
Instead of saying, I’m already strong, that’s a coping mechanism, right? To be an omega is to heal and say, I am strong. I don’t need to pretend I’m strong. I am strong. I don’t have to act strong because I am strong. Does that, does that answer your question?

Bert Martinez:
Oh, absolutely. This is what it brought to mind is, uh, we have Elizabeth Holmes who had the blood

Dave Rossi:
Yeah, yeah.

Bert Martinez:
Tirano. Yeah, whatever.

Dave Rossi:
Tirano.

Bert Martinez:
Yeah. Yeah. And then, and I compare her to Elon Musk in the sense that both of them at one point were way behind delivering on their promise. So, Elon was going through a divorce, working 80 hours a week, sleeping at what we call Tesla. He was 2 or 3 years behind delivering his first Teslas that people have already paid for. Yeah. You know, the smell of class action is in the air. And he’s like, I’m going to deliver.

Bert Martinez:
You know, he knew what he was going to do. He was totally focused and confident. I will deliver. And then Elizabeth Holmes, back to your point, I think this is what brought to mind was she got so caught up on her ego, on being unlike— she didn’t want to go through the pain of being humiliated in public and being told that she’s a failure. And so what did she do? She starts falsifying data and starts treating people harshly. And, and that’s really why she ended up in jail. Yeah. Because if she would have just stuck to her guns and say, yeah, we’re a year behind or we’re 2 years behind, But I still believe she would have— she would have continued to raise money.

Bert Martinez:
I mean, there’s companies out there that haven’t made a profit and they’re publicly traded and they’re going on 10 years without a profit. They’re still raising money because people believe in their leadership or they see the vision. And that to me is the difference between, let’s say, an alpha to an omega. Who was omega at this point. Yeah. And Elizabeth Holmes, who lost her way.

Dave Rossi:
I, I think it’s a great example. Let me ask you a question. Do you think Elon Musk was doing those things for money and the destination or for the love of the walk?

Bert Martinez:
At that point, I think he was doing it primarily for the love of the walk.

Dave Rossi:
Yes, I agree. He’s one of those guys that sets his mind to something. Now, now I think this is where maybe we can help some of your, your audience with filling some gaps. So the, the, I’m going to deliver this date, those are just like the, the judgment calls that are surface level that, you know, things that happen. Oh, I think I can do this. That’s just a judgment call. That’s maybe a lack of experience. And those things happen.

Dave Rossi:
That doesn’t mean that you still don’t love the walk. If you make a mistake and you say something, you know, for whatever reason, it’s okay to make judgment mistakes. I’m not saying anything’s not okay. Yeah. something you learn from. But the underlying energy, the underlying gasoline in that tank is, I love to walk and I want to put this thing out there and I’m going to do it. Okay, I gave the wrong date out. So what? I’m still going to— like, I’m here to do this because I love it, right? He still loves it.

Dave Rossi:
That guy is out there. Now, you know, there’s some other things that I think he falls short on being an omega, but, but in general, he definitely loves loves to walk and he’s doing something for the walk. And I think Warren Buffett again is a really great example, and Ray Dalio is another great business example. And, and this, it can be very confusing, and I can respect that. And it was very confusing for me. I try to walk through some of the confusion in the book. I write a lot of articles for CEO World Magazine on leadership, and it, and, and it really resonates with, with, um, the leadership community in terms of authenticity and connectiveness and self-awareness and vulnerability. And nothing will bring you closer than having these— this purist approach.

Dave Rossi:
And I think you nailed it with that example.

Bert Martinez:
I think also it just takes time because, you know, again, in your— in your 20s, you have virtually no life experience. You’re just getting out of high school. Maybe you’re doing college or trade school. You’re trying to, quote, find yourself or whatever. And that’s all great. But in your 20s, you have really almost no idea who you are. There are a few. It’s not 100%.

Bert Martinez:
There’s a few people that know exactly who they are and this is why I’m going to go and do this thing, right? Whatever that thing is. But I think for the most of us, it just takes time to get to the point in your life where you go, I don’t need this crap anymore. And the quicker you can get there, the better you’re off. And, of course, the longer it takes you to get there, I think you’ll suffer more because you’re still being, what do you call it, controlled by your peers or by what other people think or the fact that you posted this on social media and you only got 6 likes and everything else. And then, you start to realize none of that crap matters. Yeah.

Dave Rossi:
Yeah, I think the important word here is pivot. I think, um, when you have to pivot, a lot of people don’t because of identity. They’re afraid of what it might look like. It’s your Theranos example. Um, you know, I lost everything when I left my business. My, my, um, ex-wife wouldn’t sell me her half and wouldn’t buy my half, so it shut down. And so everyone that was owed money sued, and everyone who owed us money wasn’t going to pay because we didn’t have the resources to go after them. So, it was legitimately an asymmetrical AR and AP situation.

Dave Rossi:
And so, I legitimately lost my house. The house secured the debt against the business. The other houses were in a trust. I couldn’t have access to them. They’re for my kids. So, I legitimately had no money at this point and started over again. And so, I’m not coming from a place of, you know, having all this money and then solving my problems with money. I started from scratch.

Dave Rossi:
And I got a job. I was making $500,000 a year to make $65 an hour. Wow. my next job, right? So I’ve been there. I know what that’s like. And I know what it’s like to rebuild. And I think pivoting is the key word because the answer is, if the metrics, the paradigm, the logic, the reason, the data says this is happening, to pivot fast. And I think that’s where young entrepreneurs get hung up is they get so hung up on idea.

Dave Rossi:
Consolidation, letting go, cutting back, changing directions is part of being an entrepreneur. Being an entrepreneur isn’t always about grow, grow, grow, grow, grow. I’m in Vistage, and my Vistage, um, teacher, Vistage leader says, what are your goals? I don’t have any. You don’t have any goals? I don’t have any goals. Why don’t you have any goals? Because it’s not up to me. I have ideas of where I want to go, but I can’t control tariffs. I can’t control fear in the market. I can’t control the building boom or bust.

Dave Rossi:
I’m here to pivot what the market gives me. And if I stay too stuck to my goals, Then I’m not gonna miss the opportunity to pivot fast in an evolving market. So he’s like, well, what’s your, you know, how do you wanna grow? You know, keep loving the walk, keep doing the best I can, and things are gonna come. I throw the fishing line out. If the fish bites, it does. If it doesn’t, I throw another one out and I pivot. That’s what I do.

Bert Martinez:
Yeah. And, and again, it’s, it’s one of those things that it takes time because As an entrepreneur, I think one of the hardest things is this thing about sticking to it, right? Tenacity. You got to, you know, whatever. Tenacity, tenacity, tenacity. But at one point, you got to come to the realization, this is not working. I got to let this dream die. I got to let it go. Yeah.

Bert Martinez:
That is super hard. And the more— also, the more time you invested in that project, the harder it is to let go because Man, I’ve spent the last 2 or 3 years doing this. I can’t admit to myself I was wrong.

Dave Rossi:
Tenacity directed in the wrong direction is stupidity. And you can have tenacity and downsize or pivot or adjust. I’m not saying lose or loss or failure. I’m saying pivot. I’m saying adjust. I’m saying tenacity focused on collecting data and making good choices. is still tenacity. Yeah, you don’t— just because you have to change a little bit of an approach, maybe change your marketing or change your product, or, you know, it’s like the, the, the BlackBerry.

Dave Rossi:
You see the movie about the BlackBerry? Oh, okay, talk about missing the paradigm and missing the market and, and being so convinced, you know. And I, and I definitely have a lot of respect for the people that do have that, um, that attachment to their beliefs and their attachment to what they think the market will be. But there’s points when you have to be self-aware enough to know whether it’s rationalization for identity or rationalization for a dream or a pipe dream or a wish, and true logic-based gut intuition that you think you can push through it. There’s definitely a line between that. And it’s hard to say what that is. I can tell you, again, Warren Buffett gets it right. He doesn’t get confused with that line. He doesn’t hold on to things too long.

Dave Rossi:
He lets go of things when it’s high. And people say, why is he letting go of that placement? He sees something. And sometimes he’s made mistakes, and he just learns the new metrics behind it. He’s not lamenting it. But the point is that he walks that line very, very well. And I think it’s a great example because there’s no greater entrepreneur in business than him in our era.

Bert Martinez:
One of the things I love about Warren Buffett is that he is very transparent. He goes, I don’t know when to buy a stock or when to sell it. I just know that I’m going to buy it today. In 10 years from now, I’m going to sell it for more money than it’s worth.

Dave Rossi:
Yeah.

Bert Martinez:
And to your point, sometimes that hasn’t worked out that way and he’s lost. But it’s very, very, very small. I mean, very few times that he’s lost. One of the things that he, again, is transparent about, he says he’ll spend months researching not only the company but the leadership of that company. And if he doesn’t like the leadership, if he doesn’t trust the leadership, he won’t buy the stock.

Dave Rossi:
Yeah.

Bert Martinez:
And look, it’s very difficult to be able to put that kind of time into buying stocks or buying anything. And I think that’s what makes him so successful that, to your point, he is very confident in who he is and he is not going to change who he is because he missed this deal or whatever. And people come to him all the time, not only for advice, but to get bailed out. I think he— I can’t remember which investment company he bailed out, but during the 2007-2008 crisis, whatever. But the guy is a genius. And one of the things that I appreciate about him, when you listen to him talk, because he is so relaxed about what he’s doing that he helps you relax.

Dave Rossi:
Yeah. Do you think he’s impatient?

Bert Martinez:
I don’t think he is. No, it’s like, you know, and the same thing with Charlie Munger. They’re both like, yeah, you know, if this deal doesn’t work out, there’s, you know, we live in a time when there’s just a deal a second.

Dave Rossi:
You know, I, I learned that. I learned that along. You know, there are situations where you have to jump fast, but in general, things— life should not be haste. You should not have to make things in haste. I, I think, um, you know, you watch his success, and you— if you chase and if you push data because you’re impatient, that impatience can be drawn from, I need to be a man, I need to be happy, I need to be successful. I’m too young. I don’t wanna miss this market. I, I don’t wanna miss the upswing of AI.

Dave Rossi:
Look, you know, you gotta stop living in fear, and fear drives so many choices. And you, you’ve said it several times. You gotta be patient. You gotta be patient. I think that impatience, if you’re impatient, you need to ask yourself why. Because a lot of people who are impatient are perpetually impatient. They’re just, they’re, it’s like, it’s like a hamster wheel of impatience, and it’s not meant to be that way. Life is not supposed to be.

Dave Rossi:
And I always said, you know, nothing should be hard. Nothing should be hard. And I mean by that is that even though you put effort and you grit and you, and you put a lot of time and energy, doesn’t mean it’s hard. If I walk and I’m walking up a hill, it might be strenuous, but it’s not hard. I chose it and I’m happy to be there. And that’s the difference in business is you definitely want to do hard things in a place where it’s hard, but you know, deep down inside, you put yourself there and it’s okay and it doesn’t feel hard.

Bert Martinez:
Yeah, I think that, that, that is one of the things that really messes with people. I think that as humans, we were constructed, created, or whatever you want to call it, to do hard things.

Dave Rossi:
Yep.

Bert Martinez:
And not that it’s got to be— it’s not going to be— it’s not necessarily soul-crushing hard. But in a case like, let’s say, Elon Musk, where he’s 3 years behind or 2 years behind delivering his first set of Teslas. That’s hard. You’re going through some hard stuff, but he was able to stay the line and keep that vision. And he knew that he knew that he knew that he was going to deliver these cars and the rest is history. And I think that we could all go through hard things. And more importantly, we should not avoid hard things because really, that’s how we get to know who we are.

Dave Rossi:
Yeah.

Bert Martinez:
And we build confidence knowing that, hey, I did that hard thing. I can do the next hard thing. But, to your point, there should be a certain level of relaxedness or easiness, right? Hey, this is a rough spot we’re going through, but that’s okay. I enjoy the walk. I enjoy— this hill is a little strenuous and I might— And

Dave Rossi:
I think what I’m passionate about doing and what I really try to help people with is understanding that it’s the man that makes the business leader. It’s the man that makes the father. It’s the man that makes you masculine. It’s the man inside of you, who you are as a person translates to business and to life and to relationships and to family. And I really am passionate because I went through all these failures and pain. I was supposed to have back surgery and lawsuits and unions suing me. Like, I’ve been through that stuff and I’ve been through that birth to say that when the man becomes whole, when the man is sovereign, When the man has contentedness and he’s secure and stable, his path is going to be a lot more authentic and successful and sustainable. And it may not always be glamorous, but you’re no longer an alpha and you’re no longer on that— you’re no longer in that competition where you’re looked at by what jersey you wear.

Dave Rossi:
You just completely ignore that. This is your path. You take your path. It doesn’t matter what anybody thinks. It doesn’t define you. It doesn’t make you. It doesn’t break you. You do what you do because that’s what you’re going to do it for.

Dave Rossi:
And that’s what I really want to help people

Bert Martinez:
What’s, what’s your take, uh, based on your book and your research and your experience? What’s the biggest mask that as men, uh, that we wear?

Dave Rossi:
Masculinity. I mean, it’s biological. No, it’s biological. And I, and I think it’s important because there is a biological component to so much of our life. Our connection with our parents is biological. From, from an elevated level, they’re just people, okay? But we, we have these chemical connections and these biological, you know, um, you know, parent-child relationship that crosses boundaries, that lets us mistreat the closest people to us because of these boundaries. And, you know, when you begin to break free of biology— fear is biology, survival is biology— you know, we begin to make better choices. And so a lot of people just are afraid as men not to look masculine.

Dave Rossi:
Now, the definition changes all over the place. So, so what’s masculine in Japan is different than what’s masculine in South Africa, which is different than masculine here or London. And so we begin to mask and meet what society wants us to meet because that’s what it tells us. We look like we’re surviving. We’re part of the herd. Survival is part of the herd. You survive when you follow. And then when you’re enough, have enough stability, you break out of the herd, and then usually you get cut down.

Dave Rossi:
So you go back, you know, when you’re not afraid, uh, to be yourself and you’re not afraid to mimic what society wants you to be, you’re free to be anything. And you’re free to, to live your authenticity and you’re free to live logic and reason and not be afraid to follow logic and reason. I know, for example, I, I misread logic and reason because I wanted to be a masculine, successful man in Silicon Valley, and I couldn’t come to grips with that. So I began to prop things up and You know, borrow more money and pretend this is fine. And I made a deal with Home Depot on this project that I looked great. I lost a lot of money doing it, but it looked like I was really successful. Like, I was just chasing these ideals and this masculinity. So I think for men it’s hard because it is so ingrained in our biology to be a real man and to be masculine, but it provides no value in how to live life.

Dave Rossi:
Yeah.

Bert Martinez:
Uh, I want to talk about this because in the book, and you have already mentioned it, uh, your best friend passes away, David, uh, and you describe it as a turning point in your life. Why did his death affect you so deeply? What happened there?

Dave Rossi:
Well, you know, he was, uh, my best friend in 3rd grade. You know, I was a shy kid that moved, and he was the, the popular kid that took me under his wing, and we became instant friends. And he didn’t need to do that. It was something deeper in terms of our friendship, his social suicide by taking the new kid who— I was shy. And we became just lifelong friends. And there was a time in my life where I would have said nobody knew me better than this guy, Dave. And he died in an accident. And he lived a very unconventional life.

Dave Rossi:
Here I was, this founder of this company with general engineering, with excavators and bulldozers. you know, 100 employees and, you know, real big stadium projects. We work on the 49ers Stadium, big earthwork projects. And here was a guy that went to Bali and, you know, scuba dove and built decks on the side. And when he needed to work, he came work for me and he flagged construction sites for trucks passing by. Like, he led a very unconventional life, and yet he was happy and he was peaceful and he didn’t care what people thought. And He died very suddenly. And so I couldn’t come to grips with that loss.

Dave Rossi:
So it took me years to understand what that meant. Like, his death can’t mean nothing to me. Like, something has to change. I just can’t— oh, this incredible force of my life died, who was a guy that built decks, right? Ultimately, he was an alcoholic that he hid from me. His alcoholism— he was kind of a binge drinker, and he hid it from me because he was embarrassed. And ultimately, he died because he kind of— he got drunk and he choked and slipped in a creek and drowned on a cup of water. Mm-hmm. It’s a divemaster from Baldy Dives, dies, drowns, you know, in a creek.

Dave Rossi:
And so I said to myself, you know, um, I couldn’t go a week without crying for 5 years because I thought his life was a loss. Wow. And it was a loss. I had nobody in my life that I was that close to. And then I realized, wait a minute, his, his death could be a gift. I can’t bring him back. So if I categorize his death as a loss, I’m gonna cry. I wanna hear any, song from the ’80s, right? And then when I categorized his death as a gift, like, he died for me.

Dave Rossi:
He died for me to change my life. And that was kind of the catalyst of leaving my, my wife at the time and hitting reset on my life, that I don’t need to have all these trappings. He led a very happy, stable, content life. I think his alcoholism was part of the pain of living in a world that didn’t accept him because he was unconventional. And his dad said, hey, we’re not going to have a funeral for Dave. I said, what are you talking about? He says, no, no one No one’s going to come, Dave. He led an unconventional life, and he didn’t have a lot of friends. This is very competitive Silicon Valley.

Dave Rossi:
And I said, no, no, we’re going to have a funeral, and I’m going to pay for it if you’re not going to. And over 200 people showed up. Wow. It surprised his family to death because he just wasn’t that guy that lived the way a lot of us did in this area. And so it devastated me in the sense that I wanted to learn something from it. And I learned what I needed to learn. There’s more to life. than being a CEO and an entrepreneur.

Dave Rossi:
And, and I wanted to incorporate that into my, my, the new way to live.

Bert Martinez:
How much of, of your book exists because of David?

Dave Rossi:
Oh, most of it. I mean, the whole, the whole change in my life exists because of him. I very easily could have stayed in this really horrible marriage. Uh, and I think I had to have all of these things build, his passing, You know, the rough time with the recession, my back injury from reinjury from football. I had to have almost— I canceled surgery, but I was supposed to have surgery. All of these things just kept hitting me. And ultimately it was his death that kept asking myself, what am I supposed to learn? What am I supposed to learn? I’m missing something. I’m missing something.

Dave Rossi:
I worked really hard to be really successful, and yet I was the opposite of what that really meant. I was not happy. And so how does someone work so hard, fail so miserably? And yet, and I, and his death was the one that asked, kept asking me to ask myself that question.

Bert Martinez:
In your book, by the way, I, I wanna talk about this cuz in your book you, you referenced Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey.

Dave Rossi:
Yeah.

Bert Martinez:
Uh, why does that story resonate so deeply with, with us, with men?

Dave Rossi:
It’s everybody’s journey. If you pretend it’s not, it is. And just because you pretend it’s not, it still is. If you don’t think it is, it still is. And this is the thing, the sooner you can embrace that there is an evolution of our, of our, of our life, okay? It’s written about in every culture, in every century, in every decade. Joseph Campbell so eloquently categorizes as a historian all of these stories. that all through history has had and all through culture has had, because it’s real. And if you don’t understand that that trajectory is going to happen with you, then you’re just resisting the natural flow of things.

Dave Rossi:
Water is going to flow downhill. It’s going to take the easiest path. Your life will take this path. And if you resist it, then you’re just going to dam up a river that’s going to blow up all the dams and make a mess of everything, right? And I think if you embrace and understanding, your life will be easier. And you understand that there is a call to change. And that call to change is to remove all of the programming that your childhood and your youth gave you in terms of low self-esteem and jealousy and worry and doubt and fear and, and, um, insecurity of survival. All of these things, at some point you will break free of that. And the more you resist that, the more problems you’re gonna have.

Dave Rossi:
Like my life, more shit will fall on your head. before you come to grips, say, wait a minute, I have to change. And I think everyone will have that calling.

Bert Martinez:
Yeah, I think that, again, it’s, it’s that, it’s that process, right? That, and it happens to both men and women where, where, again, in your 20s, you think life is this way. You’re trying to figure yourself out. And, and if you’re lucky, And I know that for a lot of people, this is going to sound crazy, but if you’re lucky, you’re going to have a catastrophe happen where you lose it all.

Bert Martinez:
Yeah. And you get to rebuild on your terms.

Dave Rossi:
Well, I think that the way to take Joseph Campbell’s lesson and distill it into something very tangible is instead of saying, why did this happen to me? You say, what can I learn from this? Now, it is very, very hard to do because when, when things blow up, you’re like, oh my God, why did this happen to me? I messed up. This is how horrible it is. And you focus on the fallout. You instantly focus on how to prop up the movie set that broke, right? Right. The facade of the Western Village is now broken down and people see behind the scenes. Let’s get that shored up. And we’re so focused on that. that we don’t look back and say, why did that break? What, what about that? What did I learn from this? And we get so focused on repair rather than, than learning.

Dave Rossi:
And that’s how I think you take Campbell’s lessons about the call to adventure. The call to adventure is to say, what am I supposed to learn from this crash? What do I need to dive into deep that’s going to be painful and hard to learn rather than resist and rebuild Too quickly.

Bert Martinez:
Tony Robbins, who I think has a lot of great strengths and definitely imparts a lot of wisdom, and he said something that has stuck with me that is kind of along your lines, that life is not happening to you. Life is happening for you. And sometimes we Because of fear and ego and stuff like that. When we lose a deal, we think, oh, the world’s ending. You know, it’s unfair, blah, blah, blah. But maybe it just saved you from a bad situation, right?

Bert Martinez:
Yeah. And so, when you start thinking about what can I learn from this experience, life is happening for me, when you use both of those mindsets, man, It’s a different— it’s a different world.

Dave Rossi:
Well, I think I’m going to say this phrase, and this might shock a lot of people. And this, I believe this today, 100% of the times what I think something is, it is 100% not that. I mean, I mean, seriously, like when I first got married, I met this woman and she was a PhD from Princeton and an MBA from Wharton. And I’m like, this is— I had so many ideas of what I thought that was. that I made decisions based on what I thought it was. Okay, now I’m so— I know how easily it is to be tricked. My AI, I put a protocol that says I’m in— I’m a Briggs-Myer this and an Enneagram this, and I’m a birthday this, and I’m a, you know, I’m a Taurus, I’m a middle child, all these things. This is who I am.

Dave Rossi:
You tell me what I’m missing. You tell me what I’m predisposed to miss, because I don’t want to miss reality again, to make decisions based on wrong data. Right. So, when you walk through life with that Tony Robbins quote and you realize that life is happening for you, you just don’t see it. You’re blind to it, and you, you, you’re so myopic in your interpretation of the immediate moment. This feels bad, so it is bad. This feels fearful, so that I must be in danger. This feels scary, so it’s probably worth being scary.

Dave Rossi:
But it could be your programming that’s calling it scary. It could be my programming that called this person, a good mate because of who I was in my programming. Everyone else is like, hey, she’s got too many degrees. She’s got a problem. She’s insecure. And I’m like, this is fantastic. What a high achiever. Right? So, it’s how we interpret the data.

Bert Martinez:
Yeah.

Dave Rossi:
That interprets how we live through the world and whether we look at the world as happening for us or to us. And I think when you begin to self-actualize that your belief structure and your data, your way to interpret data can misinterpret is when you start saying, wait a minute, I don’t want to believe this is unsafe. Let me dig deeper. I don’t want to believe that this is good for me until I dig deeper. And you restrain those emotions, not feelings, not gut feelings, but emotions. You begin to look at life a little bit differently.

Bert Martinez:
In your book, you talk about the abyss. What was your abyss?

Dave Rossi:
Standing on that window, right? Realizing that everything I thought the world had was wrong, realizing that my understanding of happiness was wrong, realizing that happiness is not the next boat or the next house or the next accolade or the next, hey, great job, or the next $100,000 in my bank account. The abyss was realizing that everything that truly does matter, I didn’t have in my life. And that was self-reliance. That was authenticity. That was the ability to be vulnerable and be myself. And in fact, when you become vulnerable a lot, when you say things with such a raw honesty— and I’ll give you an example. My, my, I have this person I knew, and I asked her to plug my daughter’s car charger in, and she didn’t do it. I said, hey, why didn’t you do that? She said, well, I forgot.

Dave Rossi:
And I go, wait a minute, I know you. Did you get lazy and just say you forgot? Because you’re too embarrassed to say you’re lazy? It must suck knowing me, right? And, and, and you look at that and you say, accuracy is, I was just lazy, right? And, and if you take that story and really look at it, when you’re so vulnerable, you become invulnerable. ‘Cause now you can be so honest with motives and feelings that you can connect to them and, and life becomes so much easier. So, so the abyss was losing and not being connected to all these facilities and all of these aspects of my, my inner being that I lost connection with. And I, and I’ve blocked, I removed all the things that, that stopped me from connecting to those. And that was my abyss.

Bert Martinez:
You know, something else, because you had mentioned that, that we all receive this call to adventure, right?

Dave Rossi:
Yeah.

Bert Martinez:
What do you think happens when we ignore it?

Dave Rossi:
You’re gonna get another one. Usually when you ignore it, there’s some distortions, there’s some like amalgamation of repair that is like, uh, you know, um, a bunch of tape on a, on a floaty. You try to keep the air in, right? And then it’s still— you see bubbles leaking out, you get but more tape, right? It’s like, it’s like this mass of protecting something that isn’t the right application to make this thing whole. And so we patch, we manage, we maintain, we curate, we manufacture, we prop. And so it works for a little while, and then something’s going to happen again. And these things keep happening. And if you do find success, which is great, I hope anyone successful stops and says, let me reevaluate my belief structure. But lots of times when you have a lot of money, you just kind of ignore it and you just say, I don’t need to do this.

Dave Rossi:
Yeah. But it still makes you not happy or whole or content. And I know, again, I know some really, really, really wealthy people, and they are not necessarily happy people. They’re making a lot of personal choices to find some kind of happiness, and bad choices at that.

Bert Martinez:
Well, and we see it all the time. Uh, you have these guys who, again, have all the trappings of success. Uh, some of them even have fame, uh, love, Beloved. They have everything going for them and they get caught up in a drug scandal or an infidelity scandal or sexual scandal or some other financial scandal, right? I mean, Tiger Woods. Look at Tiger Woods. Yeah, the guy has what most people would look at and say, that’s an awesome life. I would love to be Tiger Woods.

Dave Rossi:
He’s not happy.

Bert Martinez:
He’s not happy. I mean, he—

Dave Rossi:
Look, when I say contented—

Bert Martinez:
Third time in rehab, I think. Anyway, go ahead.

Dave Rossi:
When I say contentedness, when I, again, I studied this, I researched this, I had my fall, I was, went through the, the, the fire. And this is gonna sound really weird, and this pertains to business. I had, I had no libido. I just didn’t care. And what that meant is when I did go back out to date, that wasn’t driving my choices to be lonely or I needed somebody. Hey, I’m really happy to be alone. I don’t need to go do this to find happiness, and I don’t need to go do this to find happiness. You don’t, you don’t have affairs when you’re content.

Bert Martinez:
Right.

Dave Rossi:
You have affairs when you’re— when something else is lacking and you use that to mask some other pain. And so you’re, you’re literally like a puppet at the, at the mercy of your weakness. What bothers you owns you. And if you— I like that. And if you can’t figure out what bothers you, if you can’t figure out what your leverage point is that others can use on you, you use it on yourself and you’re not— you’re a puppet to that thing. And so being sovereign is about saying, I don’t need to mask loneliness with, with having a relationship that isn’t going to be right for me. I don’t just need to have an episode that I know won’t lead to a relationship and waste my time because I need to. I don’t need to go chase a deal and make money because I don’t need to.

Dave Rossi:
I’m, I’m content. And so that’s what happens with these, you know, all these scandals. I say people have holes that they try to fill with other things that isn’t the hole itself. They’re coping, not healing. And I think if you heal as an individual, you will— life will be so much easier.

Bert Martinez:
Yeah, no, absolutely. I think that ultimately what most people are chasing is to be happy with themselves.

Dave Rossi:
Yeah.

Bert Martinez:
And that’s just— it’s a process. It takes time. I do want to ask you this, get your take on masculinity, because you and I were raised with a certain, let’s say, definition of masculinity. And I like your point, by the way, that masculinity is different depending on what part of the world in. But here in the US, you and I were probably raised with more or less the same definition of masculinity. And you hear all the time in, in today, uh, in media that young men are struggling right now. Why do you think that is? Do you think that their definition of masculinity is different than ours? Is it the same? But, but why are they struggling?

Dave Rossi:
Oh, I think it’s very simple, very simple from what I understand. Um, there’s an identity crisis. Um, if you look at TikTok and you flip you have Josh, whatever his name is, yelling about Obama, saying that he’s tough. And he— in his press conference was, I’m not going to apologize because I don’t want to be a coward. If you— and I’m sure a lot of people think he’s masculine, right? He’s a fighter. He played football. You know, I’m— if you have to say I’m afraid of being a coward, that’s the definition of being a coward. Sorry.

Dave Rossi:
Right. I mean, you know, and so, so then you flip the next page and then it’s somebody who’s like, like maybe a Keanu Reeves who’s emotional and kind and soft. And well, he’s really winning. And then there’s Dan Bilzerian. Wow, look at all the women he’s got. That’s masculine. The identity crisis is every 7 seconds is a different definition. And so these young men are like, I’m going to wear these feathers.

Dave Rossi:
Oh shoot, those feathers don’t work. I’m going to wear these feathers. No, I’m going to make money. Oh, the girl liked the guy with abs. I’m going to have abs. Wait, I can’t have both. And so you’re— I think young men are con— they’re, they’re subconsciously so confused on the mammalian side of their existence as a mammal. They do not know what it means to be the survival of the fittest.

Dave Rossi:
Darwin’s, um, um, Origin of Species was right— the survival of the fittest. But we’re not animals anymore, and the mammalian side of us is still very prevalent, and we’re not able to get over it. And the rate at which information’s traveling in terms of social media, it makes it more and more confusing. And I, and I equate this to like, um, military tactics. Okay, there’s military technology and there’s military tactics. Okay,

Dave Rossi:
And the tactics of the Napoleonic era was to line up in a row and march, and then everyone shot. That was the tactic, right? Well, then there’s technology— a machine gun. It took decades to change the military tactic. The technology outgrew the tactic. So as men, we’re still in an old tactic with a new technology. We haven’t adopted to this, these new technologies of the internet and the definitions are changing and the definition of masculinity is changing and we’re chasing definitions that cannot be defined. And so what is the upgrade? Stop defining it. Stop trying to be anything.

Dave Rossi:
Stop trying to be an image every 7 seconds that somebody wants you to be. But that’s, I think, where the confusion lies. And the sooner you let that go and you stop being a mammal, things will change for you.

Bert Martinez:
What’s— what I find interesting, you mentioned, you know, Blazarian. And, and when you look at, when you look at what’s happened in his life, superficially, somebody may say, oh, that’s a man’s man. He’s got money and it curls. He’s got all these women, you know, and I tell people all this time, first of all, this is all a facade.

Dave Rossi:
Yes. You know how much he’s paid to have this look?

Bert Martinez:
You know, he’s— I guarantee you some of these women are there because they’re paid to be there. And I’m not saying prostitution. I’m saying they’re models and they’re hired for this job to pose with him and, and look this part. Tai Lopez is another guy that does almost the same kind of thing. Andrew Tate is another guy. And all of these guys are to me, totally unhappy. And Bilzerian lost everything. He was chased out of the country, right? I mean, along with his dad.

Bert Martinez:
Yeah. Tai Lopez is going through all this SEC investigation for a bunch of junk that he did incorrectly. And I think that these young guys don’t look at the full picture. They look at this, Oh, I want to be like that. Look, he’s on a private jet with a bunch of sexy women. That is so cool. Oh, yeah.

Dave Rossi:
They’re looking at the feathers. As a mammal, we’re looking at the biggest gorilla. Right. And so, you know, it is real to a mammal to say, I need to beat that to be picked. Stop acting like a primitive primate. Like, that’s, that’s the message I’m trying to get out, is that it is very easy to succumb to that. In fact, women reward that. A lot of women still reward that, and that’s okay.

Dave Rossi:
But it becomes very confusing to a man like my boys to say, wait a minute, so I act like that and I can get that girl, and I put up these feathers and I can get that? Hey, that’s an easy map. The map isn’t so clear anymore. And so they keep changing masks. So men, young men, and they’re so burned out of, I should act this way. No, I should act that way. I should act this way. And there’s no clear path to this mammalian survival of the fittest where it was very clear 100 years ago, do this, you’re a winner. Right now, is it abs? Is it money? Is it intelligence? Is it emotion? What, what is it? And there’s still this mammalian side that’s subconsciously scanning the world for success, scanning how do I become the 800-pound gorilla, how do I become the survival of the fittest.

Dave Rossi:
And I’m advocating just push all that mammalian stuff aside and just start focusing on the bird and authenticity and try to force yourself to steer your thoughts away from those types of primal aspects of masculinity and create a new definition of masculinity that’s built on Authenticity, vulnerability, awareness, all of those things.

Bert Martinez:
What’s your take? Why are men like some of the guys that we mentioned, Andrew Tate, Blazarian, Tai Lopez, why are, why are so, so many of these fake individuals so attractive to men?

Dave Rossi:
Again, they’re trying to emulate and find the 8-pound gorilla. They’re trying to find what works. That, that is a very clear mammalian sign that that 800-pound gorilla is visibly winning. If I’m going to be the survival of the fittest, that’s the example of what I need to be. Wait a minute. No, no, no, no. Keanu Reeves. No, no.

Dave Rossi:
Sorry. He is. No, no. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. It might be— no, no. Sorry.

Dave Rossi:
In fact, the Blazarian. Look how many women he has. So wait, wait, wait a minute. Right. But in general, there is a lot of they’re very outwardly focused, right? A lot of the really quiet, silent strongmen aren’t vocal like Lazarian. If you have to present that you’re strong, you’re probably not strong, okay? If you have to act like you can get women, you probably can’t, right? Right. If you have to— if you have to try, right? I mean, you know, the strongest man in the room isn’t the one that says he’s strong. It’s the one that actually doesn’t need to convince anyone that he is.

Dave Rossi:
That’s the strongest man in the room, the one that doesn’t need to convince anybody that they are. But it’s not, it’s not visual, it’s not vocal. And we’re visually visualized men, or, you know, we visualize.

Bert Martinez:
Yeah,

Dave Rossi:
And I think that’s where we can pick bad partners and bad deals based on visualization and not based on logic and reason.

Bert Martinez:
Yeah. And to your point, we As humans, if somebody starts telling you how honest they are, we know it’s time to run.

Dave Rossi:
Yeah.

Bert Martinez:
But sometimes, but we don’t apply that same logic to other things, right? To your point, when somebody says, look at me, I’m so rich, I’m the best that there is, I use the best words, I never lie. Well, you know, red flags, right?

Dave Rossi:
You know what really helped me was there was a phrase— I don’t even— it might have been Hawkins, Dr. David Hawkins, that said there’s no such thing as, um, security in nature.

Bert Martinez:
Hmm.

Dave Rossi:
And so all of us are searching for security. And I thought about that. Well, Steve Jobs, I didn’t have any security. Ah, Kobe Bryant didn’t have any security, right? Like, ultimately nobody has security, and we strive for security. And that’s back to walking to the destination. The destination we’re after is to give us security. When you begin to realize there’s no such thing— bad things happen to you, it doesn’t mean you’re a bad person, and it doesn’t mean that you’re insecure. Everything is insecure.

Dave Rossi:
There’s no such thing as security. When you begin to just write it off as a one-off— hey, I got kicked in the teeth, okay, let’s not crater because of that, let’s not overly create, put more tape on the hole of the floaty toy— let’s just recognize that there’s no such thing for security. Do the things I’m supposed to do for the reason I’m supposed to do them, not because I’m trying to endeavor Lifelong security. It doesn’t exist. We’re chasing the wrong ideals.

Bert Martinez:
Yeah, absolutely. I think that, again, there’s so much distraction, so much noise out there and social media. And look, I’m a capitalist, I’m an entrepreneur, but I think social media needs to be regulated. I think that one of the states just recently passed a law that says you can’t, you can’t join social media until you’re 16.

Dave Rossi:
Yeah.

Bert Martinez:
And I think that’s still too early. I think social media is hurting a lot of people because they, they don’t understand it’s 99% of it is fake.

Dave Rossi:
Yeah. And I think it’s a parent’s role and I think it’s a friend’s role and, and you know, um, mentors to help you see through that. I spend a lot of time with my kids saying, well, that’s not real. Well, so-and-so did this. Well, you think they did it that way, but do you know for sure? Maybe they have some kind of fear or weakness that you’re not aware of. Well, they did this. Give them some respect for being flawed. Like, you don’t have to judge them, you know? Right.

Dave Rossi:
And I think it’s the role of a parent to help your kids see reality more objectively and focus on what you truly do know versus what you’re assuming to know. I always say, never assign meaning. We assign meaning so often. They didn’t call me back, they must not like me. They didn’t call me back, they’re a jerk. They must be going behind my back. We assign meaning to everything when oftentimes it’s just a weakness or, or unconscious behavior that they’re role-playing out. And we, we assign meaning, and then we react to the meaning that we’ve assigned to it.

Dave Rossi:
I know they did this because they’re doing that. And then we react to that. Oh shit, I was really wrong, you know. And all these things that I’m saying, you know, The book gives some very, very direct, um, practices. This does take time and you have to practice these things. Just because you listen to this podcast and you like these phrases doesn’t mean that you can go walk out in the world and all of a sudden throw ’em out there. You have to learn how to walk a new way to walk, and you have to practice implementing these ways to live. And one of the, I think, play number 2 in my book is live with funeral wisdom.

Dave Rossi:
You begin to live like life is short every day, you’re, you’re, you’re gonna start adopting some of these principles. You might be more content if you realize you can get hit by a car tomorrow. And so I think all these things take practice. They take time. You’ve said it many, many times, and I think you’re, you’re, you’re right on with that. It just takes time.

Bert Martinez:
Well, and to your point, we practice a lot of this, let’s say, limiting belief stuff. We practice it for years. We have this chronic, terrible way of talking To ourselves, about ourselves, right?

Dave Rossi:
Yeah.

Bert Martinez:
And so, now, if you’ve been, let’s say, negative, we’ll call it that. Well, you’ve been negative for 20, 30, 40 years. You got to give yourself at least a couple of years to try to turn that around. It’s going to take time. There’s no doubt. Let me ask you this. Let me ask you this. If you were, let’s say, your younger self, You’re, you’re the guy standing at the window.

Bert Martinez:
Uh, and so now your younger self is sitting right across from you right now today. What would you tell them?

Dave Rossi:
I would say this. Every second you’re living somebody else’s life for guilt, for masculinity, for image, for a parent, for us, for a spouse, for Every second you’re doing something that’s not for you. You’re doing it for somebody else, even a mask, even a persona, even an ego. It’s not for you. And every second you’re on the wrong train going the wrong direction. You’re not on the right train going the right direction. And when I learned that, and I use it every— if I take this project, I might be getting on the wrong train, which means I’m not on the right train.

Bert Martinez:
All right.

Dave Rossi:
If I take this project knowing it might be right, then I might miss the right project that takes me to the right direction. I, I don’t want— I’m very cautious about giving my life up to fear, to perception, to assignment of meaning, to security, to ego, to masculinity, to acceptance, for happiness, for anybody else, for guilt. I’m very, very cautious not to make moves for those reasons, because those reasons will take me away from— this is the right reason. It is intrinsically deep down inside, authentically for me, meant for me, my destiny, my path. All of the good things that are meant to happen to me will never happen if I am afraid and guilty. We are doing it for image. We are doing it for low self-esteem. Anything that I do in that direction Is not that direction.

Dave Rossi:
And that’s what I would tell myself. Be very cautious about that.

Bert Martinez:
If every man listening right now were, were to remember only one lesson from Alphas Die Early, what would you want that lesson to be?

Dave Rossi:
As a man, you’re enough. There’s nothing wrong with you. You’re not broken. You don’t need to pretend to be somebody else. If it’s scary to be you, then you should probably be you because you need to come to grips with yourself. And you somewhere along the line think that you’re not enough to say that I need to hide myself. And you are whole. The second everybody truly to their heart believes they’re enough, which they are, they’re not broken.

Dave Rossi:
You’re not broken because you have a mask. You’re not broken because you want to be an alpha. There’s nothing wrong with an alpha. The point is, if you believe you’re not enough, then you believe the wrong thing. And I think the second you believe you are enough, a lot of these menageries, these games, these patches, these distractions go away because truly you are loved and truly you are solid and truly you are confident and truly you have value. There’s no value in being scared. There’s no devaluation in being scared. You’re not devalued because you’re scared.

Dave Rossi:
And I think if people realize that, that there’s nothing wrong with them to be themselves, that is the strongest place to be, is to be yourself. It’s harder for people to take hits emotionally than it is to take a punch in the face. It’s more manly to admit who you are and who you’re not than being manly to pretend.

Bert Martinez:
Yeah. You know, and the thing that makes it hard too is, you know, I remember as a kid, as a teenager, just rolling my eyes at my parents thinking, man, they’re just so out of touch. They’re so dumb. You know, and It just cracks me up. And we have 5 kids. So, wow. I, because I remember how I behaved. I just get a kick when they, you know, when they’ve done that to me.

Bert Martinez:
You know, they’re all grown and out of the house and stuff like that. But it’s as humans, man, we make it harder than it has to be.

Dave Rossi:
Yeah. Again, it’s back to 100% of the times. What you think is 100% not what it is.

Bert Martinez:
Yeah, I like that so much. I’ve enjoyed our conversation so much. It’s been great. The book again is Alphas Die Early, available at your favorite bookstores or Amazon or wherever you get your books. Author is Dave Rossi. And Dave, again, it’s been a lot of fun getting to know you.

Dave Rossi:
Oh, thank you. And likewise, I hope it kept it interesting. I hope it kept you on your toes. There’s a lot to unpack there, and I’m glad I can get it out. Thank you so much for having me.

Bert Martinez:
You bet. Hey, we’re out. Thank you so much. That was a lot of fun.

Dave Rossi:
I’m so glad you had. Yeah, there’s a lot there. And, and it sounds like you’ve read the book or part of the book.

Bert Martinez:
I did. I went in and, uh, you know, it’s, it’s— what do you call it? There is a lot there. And, and again, what— now that I’ve gotten to know you a little bit, think about it like this. You could not have written that book In your 20s or 30s?

Dave Rossi:
No. You know, I’ll tell you, I talked to one guy, a guy from London, and he goes, I thought you’d be so different after reading your book. I thought you were going to be this nerdy, like, like a research nerd. And, and he is like, you came out, you’re so different than I thought you’d be from reading the book. No, I could not have written that book unless I had the failures that I had.

Bert Martinez:
Yeah.

Dave Rossi:
And, and, you know, I want to get it out. I want to help people. I, I, look, you don’t make money writing books. You— I make money in my construction job, and I do this to help people. This PR is to help people. You’re here to help people. And it’s such a wonderful thing. The world would be a better place if more people did that.

Bert Martinez:
Yeah. And you know what’s so funny? I was having this conversation yesterday. I don’t know if you’ve seen this guy. There’s a— there’s a— he’s a lawn care guy. He’s got a fairly substantial YouTube following, and it’s basically him taking these Super nasty lawns.

Dave Rossi:
Yes, I’ve seen him.

Bert Martinez:
Yeah. And he does it super fast. And so not— there’s 2 different episodes that I’ve seen where one of them is this lady who— both of them are old ladies and they’re having health issues.

Dave Rossi:
Yeah.

Bert Martinez:
And the city has sent this old lady a notice saying that if you don’t clean up your lawn, we’re going to do it for you and then we’re going to charge you Whatever, hundreds of dollars that she got for it. And so this guy hears about it and he’s in there cleaning it up for free.

Dave Rossi:
And the city gets mad at him.

Bert Martinez:
The city gets mad at him. The police show up and threaten to arrest him if he doesn’t stop. It’s like, how did helping your neighbor become this issue? And then this— there’s another episode of him doing the exact same thing. It’s an old lady and the neighbor calls the police and the police show up and said, what’s going on? And he explains and the police says, okay, carry on. You’re good to go. And all I could think of is, what is this neighbor’s motivation? And all I could think of is that he’s probably somewhat involved in the HOA and was hoping to maybe kick this lady out. Get him out. Yeah.

Bert Martinez:
HOA has so much power now where they can foreclose on you for just almost any reason. And all I could think of is that that’s something that makes sense. Because again, why? This is your neighbor, number one. It’s an old lady, number two. Uh, by cleaning up this lawn, it helps everybody. It’s a win-win. But as humans—

Dave Rossi:
Well, it’s very simple. Um, if you look at a tree, it’s doing one thing: surviving. Trees’ leaves go up for light, roots go down for water. That’s all it does. A fish All it does is survive. It doesn’t— it’s not like, hey, it’s really pretty. All it does is say, where can I eat? How do I hide? Right? Humans do exactly the same thing. The underlying algorithm of every living being is survival.

Dave Rossi:
Yet we have defied the odds and become the only hominid that’s still not extinct.

Bert Martinez:
Right.

Dave Rossi:
And we’re thriving, right? Everybody’s unconscious behavior is to survive. And the definition of survival changes from person to person. HOA person wants them out because they want a better neighbor, increase the value of their house, whatever it is. Everybody’s doing things to survive. Some mask it more than others, but ultimately, Blazarian is there to survive. This is his— this is his trees, his roots, and his leaves. This is how I get light and how I get water. I can make shit up, it works, I’m surviving.

Dave Rossi:
I can lie, I can get a bunch of people to pay me money. Everybody just wants to survive. And you remember that. Look at every person, that’s all they want to do.

Bert Martinez:
Yeah. No, I think that’s right there is an aha because that’s so true. Whether you like, let’s, I’ll just pick on Trump because, you know, he’s visible. But yeah, everything he does is to survive. I like your philosophy there. That’s so true.

Dave Rossi:
And his boundaries are different.

Bert Martinez:
Huh?

Dave Rossi:
And his boundaries are different than other people’s. He says, I’ve learned that if I act this way, I’m successful. So, his boundaries keep moving. In terms of what’s acceptable of, of, of behavior. Now, my behavior is much more cons— if I was in survival mode, I’m a codependent. I wouldn’t wanna be so abrasive. I want people to like me. I wanna be nice.

Dave Rossi:
You know what I’m saying? My lessons in life, his upbringing, his programming is I can survive by having bravado. And that’s just what people are. Everyone survives a different way.

Bert Martinez:
Yeah. I love that.

Dave Rossi:
Well, hey, I’m happy to come back anytime. I loved your show. I have your number now. See if you text me. I know who you are. And I hope, I hope your guests get a lot out of this show. I certainly have a lot, a lot to teach. Hopefully they get a lot out of it.

Bert Martinez:
I do. I do too. Thank you so much, Dave. We’ll talk to you later, man.

Dave Rossi:
Okay, take care. Bye-bye.