Joe Quattrone 00:33
Hank Leber, Co-Founder and CEO of League of Play epitomizes innovation in visionary leadership in the digital realm. With an extensive background that spans from launching groundbreaking platforms to driving significant growth in various startups, labor has made a mark as a pioneering entrepreneur with a deep passion for growth and product development. At the heart of levers current venture League of play is the ambition to revolutionize sports entertainment for Gen Z, the platform is set to offer live interactive competitions with top global creators integrating commerce contests and fantasy sports in a way that engages a new generation of fans. This endeavor reflects Levers consistent pursuit of creating platforms that merge technology with user engagement, pushing the boundaries of traditional digital interaction. Hanks journey is marked by notable successes and ventures including his role in Gigster, where he led the platform to become a go to marketplace for major clients like Netflix, HBO, Disney and Nike showcasing his ability to scale businesses effectively. His entrepreneurial spirit was further evidenced in the co-founding of C3 labs executing la vitamin and each venture illustrating his knack for identifying and capitalizing on niche markets with innovative solutions. Hank Lever is not just an entrepreneur, he’s a forward thinker who seamlessly blends creativity with strategic business growth. His career is a testament to his ability to foresee Digital Trends, engage with the latest in technology cut, three to one action, engage with the latest in technology, and lead ventures from conceptual stages to successful enterprises. Through his work lever continues to inspire innovation and leadership, proving that with the right vision and dedication, one can significantly impact the digital world. His journey with sobriety from alcohol is only just beginning. And we don’t know where it will lead. When I asked him to come on to the pod, it wasn’t solely to focus on his own abstinence, but to lend a perspective on Gen Z creators who are redefining productivity as we speak. With that, let’s get into the show. Welcome back to the FUZZEE’-ish podcast. I’m your host, as always Joey Q. And we’ve got my co-host JM. And today we’ve got a special guest, we’ve got another Virginia boy, and we haven’t brought that many of them to you over the past six months. But Hank Lieber joins us, he’s the CEO and main guy of League of Play, we look forward to getting in a league of Yeah, we look forward to getting into what League of Play is because I think the people that he’s bringing to the table in terms of building that product out have something to say about me total. And Hank himself is on a very recent journey with me total. So we want to get into his story a little bit as well. But before we do that, Hank, me and you met in about 2007-2008, at the VCU brand Center in Richmond, Virginia. Tell our audience a little bit about yourself. First of all, growing up in Virginia, what brought you to VCU? And then what have you been up to? Since that point? I know it’s been a while now. But we’ve had the pleasure of keeping up for the past 15 years. So give us a little bit of the backstory and then we’ll jump into the meat of a little journey.

Hank Leber 03:53
Yeah, for sure. Thanks for having me on the pod. Big fan of you guys. The pot has been a listener since the start and just excited to be here. Yeah, the backstory. I mean, going back to our meeting at Brand center 2007 Just before that, I grew up in Virginia. I went to William and Mary for undergrad back in the dark ages and graduated in 2004 or five.

JM Guthrie 04:17
And I took my June. Did you know Todd garland?

Hank Leber 04:21
I did not know Todd Garland. I knew almost nobody on campus because I left campus every weekend, because it’s not very much of a party-ish kind of campus. Yeah, you know, and so I was more of a, you know, get out and party kind of guy and I would go back home. I’d go back toward the Hampton Roads, Norfolk, Virginia Beach area, and I wanted to play in a rock band on the weekend. So that’s what I did was my second half of William Mary. And then when I graduated, took the English degree and went full on into the rock band life and we toured for five years full time. Wow, cool up and down the East Coast. There’re so many places to play bars and clubs and venues. Was the name of the rock band in case anybody was in a cold rain market? Rain, more rain? Yeah, a weird name, not a great name. Everybody thought of Rainmaker. But no rain market. It’s funny, we just, we were working on tracks. When we got to the end of our run, we got a major label sort of deal on the table kind of, and it didn’t work out. And so that’s kind of like missing your round as a startup. Like if you don’t get it, you can’t get to the next level. So we were recording music back then it’s crazy. This happened like yesterday, we were recording music back then out in Nashville. And we put it away when we shut the band down. We didn’t release it. We didn’t do anything with it. It was the next album coming. And we just released it yesterday, just for fun. It was like, Yeah, let’s put it up on Spotify, whatever. It’s been 17 years. And so we just put it out. So anyways, feel free to go

JM Guthrie 05:46
off. Congratulations, man. Yeah, that’s gonna give that rain market a less.

Joe Quattrone 05:50
Rain market sounds like it sounds like, it sounds like a cloud seeding program and La are like a chemtrails thing, like,

Hank Leber 05:57
It was nothing but negative. The name was not a good idea. We did not do a good job. But it was fun music, we had a great time. I mean, five guys, you know, for on stage and one tour manager. And what it really was was small business and startup training, no lie, like, we had to sell physical product CDs. But in 2002 to 2007, that whole world changed. Streaming was taking over MySpace as their website, there were no CD sales records, lead deals were totally upside down. So we had to switch from CDs to digital and digital distribution and make our own website and tour. And so it was a lot of retrospectively looking. I was training for a startup. So I had five years of life in the trenches, startup training, but with silly haircuts, and a lot of drinking. So like, that’s, that’s what that five years was like, but we did the Great Job had a great time, some of the funnest, most enjoyable years of my life, honestly, was was trying to make it and we weren’t just partying and all of that we would drive, you know, from 2am to 6am to the next venue and get a little bit of sleep and go to work and play the show. So anyways, that didn’t work out. I remember thinking, Okay, now I’m 27. And my resume looks ridiculous. Five years in a rock band on my resume and like an English degree. So like, what am I going to do? I think my girlfriend at the time was like, You should go into marketing and advertising. You’re really good at that. And I was like, I don’t know anything about that. That’s no music, babe. Just music.

JM Guthrie 07:26
I just want to rock

Hank Leber 07:29
that literally like you did all of the like the tour design and the posters and the albums and the stuff you ran the business like that’s all marketing, you know. And I didn’t know that at the time. I remember going to the brand center. I don’t think I’ve ever told you this. I went and interviewed at the VCU. It was called the ad center at the time they switched the name right when I was in the middle of its brand centers, a two year master’s in mass communications, a great program. It’s like a Ninja boot camp, you know, a navy seal for smart thinking about humans and Culture and Communications to your masters. And so I went and interviewed with and toured it. And they showed you how advertising works. Here’s the art directors and the copywriters and the brand managers and the strategists who do like the research and stuff. And I was like cool, said, I did the whole day now, that is so cool. People get paid to be just doing creative, like, thinking about creative ways to advertise this amazing, I’d love to do it. I mean, I’m really interested. And she could go, which track and I was like all of them. She was like no, you have to pick one. I was like why? And so in my mind, it was not you just make it happen. Do all of it, figure it all out together. And that’s when I realized and she helped me understand there’s disciplines that have a specialty and you’ve worked together on teams to do it. And then the one that made the most sense to me was strategy, which is thinking about why people do the things they do. And just doing consumer research, primary secondary research and understanding the the the so what and the insights that exist in culture, and then bringing that into the creative process and saying to a creative team, here’s what’s going on with people, here’s why they’re not doing they’re doing this and we need to figure out how to make them you know, understand this product better not lie to them, not trick them, but show them the truth. The Lens of Truth, that’s when advertising works really well. It’s when it’s a lens that shows you the truth that resonates with you. So anyways, that was the journey into advertising jumped out of brand center 2009 When the world fell apart and the housing crisis and the advertising world imploded and 70,000 people lost their jobs just in advertising, so got lucky. Got a job at McKinney, the ad agency in North Carolina, in Durham and stayed there for about a year and a half do some great work on Travelocity Sherwin Williams Coldwell Banker a Nationwide Insurance and then wound up taking the job off Route in LA on Lexus to be on the digital team over there to help them get into at the time is 2011 mobile, social digital, all that stuff like Lexus was trailing on that. And so went out there to work on that,

Joe Quattrone 09:54
that doing sprint where you client directory team one, Team One,

Hank Leber 09:59
Team One which was really fun to see such a big car brand, big advertiser and like under the hood of the agency, and how that all comes together. Turns out there at the time in 2011, there really wasn’t a big appetite for innovation and to be social. This is back during when you were probably like, on cars. Yeah, you were doing really innovative stuff without it. And I was over there banging my head on the wall with Lexus not being able to get some of the initiatives through on social or mobile or anything. And that just felt frustrating for me. At the same time, the startup world was really booming in LA, like you literally could get an idea funded with pictures of an app on a slide decK, and they’ll give you money to go make it. So I want to just do that. I left advertising and jumped into the startup world. Because in 2011, I think it was that very year. I couldn’t get anything through to the client about social or mobile, or maybe I just wanted to sell it right, whatever, but I couldn’t get it through. In the meantime, Instagram went from a non-existent business to a billion dollar sale to Facebook in 18 months flat and fundamentally changed the way culture my entire generation shared ideas and everything. And remember, I’m a strategy guy, and I’m like, that is really fascinating, that big giant hole in culture that, you know, Instagram just like dropped, dropped a bomb into it. And I was like, That’s so exciting. And that was my midlife crisis at 30. I didn’t want to make ads. Those are just like the interruptions to the things that you’re doing in culture. I want to make things and that was it so I jumped on startup world real

Joe Quattrone 11:31
quick before we move on past Lexus I just have to bring this up. Because I feel like it’s worthwhile talking about Alan Harker at team one at this point, CFO.

Hank Leber 11:43
I don’t believe so if he wasn’t, didn’t know it. I

Joe Quattrone 11:45
I went up crossing paths with him later on at Vayner. He was an old Saatchi guy who worked at Team One on the whole thing out there and on the West Coast. Either way, that’s That’s irrelevant here. Not here nor there. But what I did want to mention was Alan Saatchi

JM Guthrie 11:56
What’s up though? Alan SaaS.

Joe Quattrone 11:59
What’s up, Alan, it’s been hollering at your boy, Alan. No, but I remember at that time. It’s funny that you mentioned kind of like your experience trying to sell in social because I remember at that exact time, Scott Kia, who was the CMO of Audi at the time, used to always consider social media and innovation and always wanted to fund it because he looked at it as first mover opportunity, first mover advantage. So we were incentivized to try things that brands like Lexus, and BMW and Mercedes work. And I remember thinking with my team, I was like, we’ve probably got about a one year two year run before these brands start understanding what we’re doing. And, and funny enough, you mentioned Instagram, at that same time, we were one of the first 10 brands on Instagram. And as such, all we did was post a photo a day on Instagram. And we grew an audience of 1.5 million followers in one year, just doing that, just that one thing every single day. And sure enough, it was the first mover innovation advantage that we took advantage of if they

Hank Leber 12:58
it will come well, that that was the window, I felt the energy and possibility and it was like it was very uncomfortable to feel how excited that was and to not get the interest right from the client at the time. Because what had happened in between it even I’ll tell the story because we’re adding guys in this fun to wax wax for that a little bit about it. And in McKinney I did a project with Travelocity. That was to put the gnome on Chatroulette that when Chatroulette was a hit thing for a minute, this was before Omegle and Zika were like, like, this Russian kid had built a web of 16 year old to build a website where you randomly chat with a stranger on the internet. And you can pass by them and you know, whatever, you just randomly video chatting. And that wound up getting 20 million unique visitors a month to the website and you could see that all these articles are being written about this new Smash of a thing and I was like, but we’re the brands there’s no brands on the thing at all. And so I remember thinking okay, okay, okay. Why are they not? Alright, so it’s not a broadcast channel. It’s one to one chats 20 million at a time so like, there’s no one too many. There’s no broadcasting at all okay, it’s really hard then how would you even get a brand to be on one brand and one conversation. You know what, and I’m looking around the agency and McKinney. We do all the TV shoots and all this stuff for the Travelocity so we have the gnomes all over the office. He’s like three foot acrylic gnomes. Some of them are burnt. Some are like in a ski outfit or whatever, from the TV shoots. And I was like, you know, like, probably like 40 of them around here. I wonder if we could like, Yeah, let’s put like 40 of them up on the chat. And let’s flood chat with that. That’s 40 it’s not a lot but maybe that starts a little something. And we couldn’t use the voice actor of the gnome because he had a deal. So we just had a notecard on the plastic statue that said, you know, this would be more fun if we were in Rio together with like a beach scene behind him or traveling from person to person doesn’t count travelocity.com Get off your computer and get on a plane, that kind of stuff. And we set him up and let him run and it became a top trending topic on Twitter. Naturally, no more Chat Roulette had created 10s of 1000s of retweets and all this stuff oh my God has called the gnome. This is amazing. And it was a naturally viral thing. We didn’t push any payment to it. Nothing. It is just naturally made. I think the final count after 40 days was 20 million media impressions with $0 spent, technically probably $1.50 on the new cards in the Sharpie. So anyways, that one of winning the shine award that shine, shine strategies, social media strategy of the year, which is like the Oscars of an account plans here. And like, I’ve been in advertising for like 10 months, and I was like, Oh, my God, what? I have to go speak to the Shiites and talk to all the smartest people in my world, all the planning directors at all the agencies. Anyways, my big thing was like, there’s the case study video, I am on stage, like, you know, I’d like to stage playing rock band. I was like, cool, but I was nervous because these people can see right through me, I’m not going to be able to like, skate around on like, the inside behind the Travelocity the ambassador of great travel experiences we saw in the Gen Z No, no, no. I said, I don’t know. And let it sit silent. And I was like, I don’t know why it was such a smashing success in culture. But it was, I don’t know, like, it was fun to have the medium be the message traveling first birth. Like, that’s fine. But beyond that, I don’t know. And I’m not gonna sit here and tell you that I do. But here’s what I do know. I did like 30 things at the agency this past six months, and 29 of them didn’t do anything. And in digital today, the cost of failure is really small. That just means nobody saw it. So this is not some TV campaign, big swings. If you want to be on the stage next year, right here with the winning thing, go back to your agency, tell all your young people to do 30 things and don’t disparage the brand or anything but just go play around. And then you’ll probably be up here on stage next year. That’s when I got any questions. And I thought I’d been laughed off the stage. And it turns out I got like seven job offers from that at other agencies who were like, that’s innovative. And I was like, No, that’s not that’s not innovative. Anyways, the head of planning and Lexus was like hey, let’s push on let’s really get some innovation over in the Lexus camp. I really like the way you’re thinking. And so that was the idea to go over there. And I think it was just that just a touch early. And in my own life phase. I had my midlife crisis about the things and not the ads at the time where it made more sense for me to jump out of there love the team one guys love Mark Miller and all the guys over there. But that was the saga that got me into the startup world, on the front edge with the machete in hand, like hacking through the jungle to try and figure out what the next insights are in culture, which is way harder than sitting in an agency trying to get an ad to hit. So that was a lot of retraining my body to like sleep and trees and drink mountain urine out in the world, you know, with barely any funding like no cushy anything, but then you get addicted to it. Because if you can make it through that you don’t want to be in the hotel anymore, metaphorically. So fast forward to today, I’ve started four or five different companies on an idea that is an opportunity in culture to try and drop something in, you raise some money to try and test it. So that’s 500,000 or a million bucks or whatever. A team that built some technology had to learn all that stuff on the fly. But you know, I’ve had some successes and some failures, built b2c mobile app stuff, built b2b SaaS, b2b services, which was just an agency. Turns out I didn’t like that. A marketplace for production locations like Airbnb for film shoots, was my last company called Gigster GI Joe.

Joe Quattrone 18:27
So let’s pause for a second and dwell a little bit on James’ background because JM could probably empathize with the service business side of things having not built and sold an agency very recently. So tell JEM about this because your agency had a very specific angle to it or bend to it and it pissed a lot of people off. So tell us about, I mean, it pisses a lot of people off but a lot of people also consider it to be very innovative and stuff like that. Maybe also an idea that was a little bit before it’s time given what we’re seeing now post pandemic, but talk to us a little bit about the agency you found it.

Hank Leber 19:00
Yeah, so the company that wasn’t an agency, it was a SaaS product called vitamin VYT. MN it’s not around anymore scrubbed it from the internet. So don’t bother looking it up. But the vitamins were great. We call it growth as a service guess instead of SaaS and growth, meaning what’s going to bring traffic and traction to your business. And in the, this 2014 When social was like actually, you know, pick it up, and it was kind of infused into most brands and companies, the stuff you’re supposed to be doing on social as a company, small early stage startup or a small business, even the big ones, likes favorites follows retweets Add to list all of these things. People were staffing humans to do it but weren’t getting the ROI. And so it was all just kind of a loss leader like you would get some vanity metrics. But unless you were with Joey’s camp and doing top top top quality campaigns with big brands, smaller businesses weren’t able to get the ROI from social. So we decided to automate all of that because by Back then Twitter and LinkedIn. And most of these, they allowed you to hit the API like crazy. You could do 1000 actions a day on Twitter, one account could follow 900 people and tweet 99 times. And so that wouldn’t be flagged as automation. And we were like, Okay, well, that’s crazy. Okay, and so we started to build a bunch of accounts for your business, if you had a, like a bamboo frame, sunglasses company, bamboo sticks, we would build like 1020 Twitter accounts that were your mercenaries, they were called Bamboo fashion trends, bamboo lovers, bamboo freaks, bamboo, whatever, sunglass, you know, whatever. And all these like related third party authority accounts that had an automated feed of sharing out from an RSS just automated feed of like bamboo fashion trend articles from the internet, just posting every few minutes. And the bio of that account would say, this is an automated feat of the best bamboo fashion trends that you’ll ever read. By the way, these sunglasses are dope. Bitly linked to your landing page. And that those accounts will go out and like and favorite and follow and all this anybody talks about bamboo, anything? And so you had all of this noise going on. But that link the traffic is so you post like oh man saw dude wearing like bamboo slippers, it was amazing. You get some bamboo specs, or bamboo fashion lovers like that added you to the smart people list. And you’re like, really? Well, it turns out, people go see who that is. And they read the bio, and they click that link. And then I remember this clearly, we were able to sell that package through. And the traffic that would hit your landing page would convert to a sale at an average of 10%. Well, which is like, mind blowing is like 10 times anything anybody was getting? Because it worked really well. The problem was, it flooded the internet with a bunch of social media noise, which was bad.

Joe Quattrone 21:55
debatable whether it’s bad, you’re still seeing that now on Instagram at TikTok. And then it’s kind of having a second life now.

Hank Leber 22:01
Right? Well, now watch out AI is gonna make all over again, only the quality is gonna be so high, it’d be even harder to detect it. And the reason was that the company didn’t keep going. Twitter changed the 1000 threshold, down to 200. A day and eradicated 3500 Twitter accounts. So we had run out of reach of like 8 million, we could trend topics if we wanted to. And at 200, it made us have to do five times as many accounts and too much overhead for the little tiny startup to handle if we had had more money, maybe but we didn’t. So it was that the whole story is to say, from the ashes of that company that Twitter just killed with a switch flipped the switch. We just made an agency out of it, which was a growth marketing agency, and instead of charging 1000 a month for the SAS product, we charge like 10,000 a month minimum to be working with us. And so we picked up a bunch of clients and did a lot of the same stuff just manually. And like, you know, we would build a better landing page and better email marketing. And we just felt like a full funnel, an early stage company growth marketing agency, which turned out to be a nightmare. And the reason that was a nightmare was everybody wanted it to be really easy to sell and really easy to get clients, we probably had 1012 clients at any given time. And the meetings would be early stage companies or small businesses that are running out of money. And they have very low runway and they’re like, where’s the growth? What? How many conversions do we get? What is the target? Like, what’s the messaging, who’s the target and like, we’re trying to figure out your target for you. And the messaging because you don’t know it because you’re at an early stage and you barely have any money and then everything’s an emergency all the time. After like, three, four months, I was super unhappy, I’d wake up every day being like, going to have all these meetings with these companies as an emergency and retiring as CEO, and I’m not building any IP, I’m gonna build a value and take all these skills and the margins are crap. And it’s like, this is the saddest I’ve ever been making $100,000 a month. Like it was just terrible. And so anyways, I Yep, in LA, there’s hot media’s out there. I know Eric Cuban really well. And he’s built a tremendous marketing agency that does deal with a lot of the earlier stage companies, and the bigger churn rate and the emergencies and all that he’s built a great team. They had like 100 Plus clients at the time, and I was like, Eric, Listen, man, like, I’ve got some I’ve got some cool cool clients over there. But like, I don’t like this. Do you like it? He’s like, I like it. And I was like, Okay, well let’s figure out a way to work together and it was that they just acquired the agency completely and took over the client. So it was a sale. Nobody really got rich and bought a jet or anything but technically you know, an acquisition happened and Hawk media the way better home for those clients. And I got back into doing the stuff that I love, which is building technology based enhancements to whatever it is that is something disorganized in culture. That’s really why the best startup ideas just organize something that’s less organized, Uber, the cars everybody already knew and all of the demand already existed. The technology was kind of basic, but it worked really well. Airbnb, same thing, not not mind blowing. Technology, just a website that did this thing for these people and then made this money. So that’s that’s I got my mindset right to stay in that world, which is how Gigster came to be, which is Airbnb for film shoots, you can’t shoot Airbnbs you need a white brick fireplace, you can’t find that on the internet, and have it land on a house that wants to rent their house to you for two hours. So that one that’d be great. It’s still around the company and is great and working well. But that led to a lot of work with creators, YouTubers and TikTok renting houses on Gigster to get that pool, backyard pool to do their video. So like 1000s of bookings were happening every month with creators. And that was when you know, I was like, wow, and this creator space is probably like 2018 1920 coming into the pandemic. The creative space is just so obviously blowing up before the real big sort of media stories like Mr. Beast and all this stuff. Sure, he’s got to see how cool the crater industry is. And that led to the company today, which is League of play. And one of the investors in Gigster was the Global Director of top creative partners at YouTube. So I knew all the biggest creators and said there’s an opportunity here for like sports and competitions with top creators. You look at the big boxing matches, Jake, Paul Logan, Paul, they’re doing these huge Pay Per View events. There’s a group called the Seidman in the UK that are just a bunch of Motley gents. And they do a football match once a year that sells out stadiums like 27,000 capacity stadiums in 22 and 23 60,000 capacity London stadiums just to watch creators play soccer together. And I’m going where’s the? Where’s the structure? Where’s the League of this? Why? I mean, there’s millions of people watching millions of dollars being made, and hundreds of 1000s of live attendees like we’re Where’s Lee, kind of like back in the Travelocity thing? Where’s the brands? Like there’s the people, there’s the evidence. So that’s when I was like, Okay, this is it. Let’s go get it. And so that’s what we’re doing. Now Liga play is, you know, is Live Live Interactive tournaments with top creators, and we’re just about to launch in the US a series of tournaments that are different sports, like pickleball and dodgeball, and ping pong and things that are approachable. But also soccer, baseball and football are totally there as well. But what we found with the top creators are, you’ve got these big ones like the big ones 1020 30 million subscribers, Mr. Beast up their turn, and 50 million plus, they all have similar needs and wants, which is to grow and grow together. And these sports opportunities are collaboration exercises. So it’s been really fun getting to that space. So

JM Guthrie 27:39
two things on that one is

Hank Leber 27:42
super cool idea. I love it. I also just love the comparison to the Travelocity and sort of how you’ve manufactured another another concept using similar strategy and thinking so you’re ready for the staging and I guess but um, my son played in a flag football tournament around the Pro Bowl, they won their little regional thing up here in DC, they go to Florida, they’re playing in these games, there’s, you know, they have credentials, they feel super cool. Justin Jefferson, one of the more famous wide receivers in the NFL is speaking on a stage. And there’s a creator, a YouTube guy, I wish I could think of his name right this minute doesn’t matter. Not one of the top tier people kind of middle of the road, millions of followers, for sure. Dude, these kids are lining up to try to be in his little trivia game on this field, or get a picture with him don’t give a shit about Justin Jefferson. And this is kids from my son who’s my younger son who’s six, up to 16 they’re lining up for the Creator could give a shit about Justin Jefferson. So I can see just the wildfire of that, you know, so clearly and also just running completely rampant because it touches every person of every shape and size and age category. On and on. So that’s super cool. And so second thing, you mentioned boxing matches, you mentioned the Paul brothers. So yesterday, there was an announcement. Yeah, that iron Mike is going to get in the ring with Jake Paul. And they’re going to stream on Netflix.

JM Guthrie 29:17
Thoughts. You know, media reaction?

Hank Leber 29:22
I’m not. I’m actually not surprised at all. And not surprised at all. Because I live it every day. We’re talking with all these big creators. We know some of the deals that are going on. I didn’t know about that one. But like, why would anybody be surprised by the last pay per view event that either one of them did? I think it was 32 million in the night. It was the number five biggest Pay Per View event ever. And they’re all still young guys, Jake and Logan. And so why wouldn’t you go bigger and bigger. I think after Mike Tyson, it’ll be like Elon Musk or Zuck like, why not? I’m sure he wants it.

Joe Quattrone 29:54
I’m gonna shoot my shot here and call for a Jake Paul victory. Because I’ve seen a lot of top boxers like high end boxers, like to give him a lot of accolades and think he’s a really good boxer. So people just clown on him because he’s a YouTuber, but like, he could box and he’s in really great physical condition, I wouldn’t want to. I mean, granted, I understand I wouldn’t want to get in a room with it either that might get my head bashed in. But like, I don’t know, if I had to pick one versus the other. I probably go up against Mike Tyson at 50 something years old versus 60.

JM Guthrie 30:24
He’s going to be 60 next year,

Hank Leber 30:26
and I’ll take the other side of that Joey and I’ll we’ll we’ll figure it out. After this call. I’ll go up against you. I think Tyson is going to annihilate him. Okay, here’s the thing. I agree with you Jason in great shape. He’s gone from being a YouTube entertainment YouTuber to being a boxer. Cool. How long? Three years? For maybe? Cool. Good job. Mike Tyson. I’m sorry. Like that guy has been boxing longer than Jake’s been alive. And I know that he’s older. I know that. But do you remember watching him fight like one shot is going to put Jake on the floor. And I

Joe Quattrone 31:02
I guess we have to really debate the merits of whether or not this is all real or staged? Because I feel like some of it also is like the outcome is agreed upon before the match, but I could be wrong.

JM Guthrie 31:13
Yeah, I

Hank Leber 31:14
I can’t comment on that. I literally don’t know. But it feels like it’s real. And they’re gonna get in there and figure it out. I just felt like when I heard it, and I was like Tyson, Jake Paul, I don’t know. I grew up. We all grew up right in that era of Tyson when he was like, 1819 20, like annihilating people, and just the power and the speed. I think you know what, I saw some training footage of him on TikTok, a couple of weeks ago, still training, and I watched the speed of his punches. And I was like, Oh my God, that guy is still a total killer. He’s not a geriatric and as we’ll see, I think it’s gonna be a really good contest, because it’s not clear who would win. I just feel like Tyson is getting in there. And just like, just bob and weave and just knit just hit him right in the jaw with a power player is a cause never felt.

JM Guthrie 31:58
There’s an enormous aspect of sport, and in particular, something like boxing. That is pure fucking mental. And Mike Tyson is to your point, a killer. I mean, dude, I remember I snuck out of my house when I was a kid in Reston and went and watched that Holyfield fight where he literally bid the guy’s ear off. Like that doesn’t go away. Right? And Jake, Paul doesn’t have that killer, or he’s more of a KJ Paul’s an entertainer man, Mike Tyson is a killer. So I tend to lean on, on Hanks thinking there because if you look at fury, the fight he had with fury, big punches he didn’t do as well against that he’s done better against guys that are considered boxers that don’t have the heavy hands. Mike Tyson has a heavy hand. So we’ll see. I can’t wait. I don’t have to. I already have Netflix. So I don’t have to. I wouldn’t pay $75 for it. My kids would probably ask me to. But I’ll be on Netflix.

Hank Leber 32:49
So here’s a few things. You got Netflix, running that fight, which is a little unprecedented, right? There’s no design or not pay per view, HBO any of that? Netflix also bought it? WTF? WWE was a Monday Night Raw? Monday? No, yep. 10 years of it for like $9 billion or something. It’s a crazy number. Yep. And so just I’m just saying like that, you know, back out into the strategist mindset. How many more signals do you need, that creators in sports are an explosive combination that creates tremendous value, from user eyeballs to dollars to whatever it is you want to measure. So I’m really excited to be at the early stage of the mainstream-ification of it. And the league, that is where competitions live. And by the way, though, we don’t, we don’t want to be taking over boxing for creators. Like there’ll be these one offs that happen they’re supposed to out there. We’re talking about collaborative, approachable activities. Pickleball, dodgeball, mini golf, you know, whatever that kind of stuff where like, for the reason that is for League of play, fans of yours are playing along so you can vote live on distractions that come into the players, if you’re watching the live. So they’ll be around during like, say, a pickleball tournament, where you vote on whether everyone should put on roller skates for the next round or like blindfolded. And then they played like that. So it’s very collaborative, it’s very together, we are going to make this experience a certain way together as fans, which I mean, personally, I’m 43 I have a five year old daughter, like looking at what’s coming up and how social media is affecting, you know, young kids and they’re just depression is up and suicide is up and loneliness is up because they’re all just out. I mean, one driving reason is because they’re all just on their phone. This is a together, together if occasion a collaboration effort to try and get, you know, young people to work together, you know, and to enjoy this together, maybe do a watch party together for that tournament, which is way more important to us than whether or not we do boxing or whether we do MMA or so

JM Guthrie 34:55
I’m going to segue here something in probably maybe we’re Joe is gonna go to you know, You mentioned your daughter and your phone and her phone. I’ve got three kids, I’m just about the same age as you mine are 10, seven, and five. And they all are devices, right? And we try our best to govern what they’re watching. But the reality is they find their way into basically whatever they want. So I’m curious as you think about these creators, and you think about these influencers, and even think about sort of pop culture in the top of pop culture, the Taylor Swift’s of the world, what responsibility do they have to being role models to these kids, right, you see, and you see in the world and you see in, in the press, a lot of conversation around alcohol, in particular, these people drinking in public, these people consuming alcohol, talking about alcohol, saying things that they do, we talked about that on this show a lot. And it’s not necessarily just that topic, generally speaking, what are these people’s role as creators or pop culture icons to be role models for the kids that are watching their content on these various devices? Yeah,

Hank Leber 36:03
That’s great, that’s a great question. I think the answer is going to be at least from our perspective, mine is similar to what we’ve seen in the Hollywood era. And music eras of the past two three decades, where some stars are known for being loose cannons and out there and edgy from the Marilyn Manson’s of the world to like Billy, Billy Idol back in the day, whatever it is, like they party, and they wear it on their sleeve. And that’s what they do. But then there’s, that’s a class of their creators like that. And they’re known for partying, and they throw all that stuff on their footage, and their fans are that kind of fence. There’s a real big group of creators that are just entertainment lifestyle creators, and they don’t bring that in. I think that’s a new thing that’s not as prevalent in old Hollywood and music errors as today. You’re displaying what looks like your regular life, your epic life, but it’s like there’s my life guys, look, I’m gonna go jump off this building today. But they’re not all hammered about it. They’re not, they’re not. You know, jackass is probably the last time it was like, Whatever, let’s just, you know, it didn’t matter if you were drinking or not, it was just wild and loose. This is way more responsible for a display of life and enjoyment where in the mainstream top creative world, you really don’t see a lot of alcohol known at all. And that’s not just because the programming needs to be clean. A lot of these creators just aren’t, they aren’t doing that much, because they’re running multimillion dollar businesses behind their personal brand. And there’s not a record label, and there’s not a Hollywood studio, it’s straight up you. And that has cut out a lot of

Joe Quattrone 37:45
so I think part of what you’re getting at is that because they’re independent, there’s not the same image consultants and stuff like that there’s not as much pressure to kind of conform to like a caricature of what success looks like, as there was with the generation of stars when we were kids, which is kind of kind of fun. And I think that’s going to be kind of interesting for our kids to grow up with. Well, so

Hank Leber 38:05
yes, and you are your consultant, you are the star, You’re the writer, editor, director, and star of your own movie that comes out once a week, that is your life. What are you gonna do, you’re gonna drink all over that and have been hungover for your show that you have to fill in the night, they’re filming every day, they got to be on onpoint. And I think it’s a really good example of seeing an entire culture of people, specifically, these top creators who are taking their lives so seriously, to be the best version of themselves. They don’t, they don’t drink as much in general not not saying they don’t drink, like they just alcohol is not a pervasive part of that top grade or culture. And I just think that’s indicative. It’s not necessarily one cause correlation, whatever, it’s just how it is, because they’re serious about their business and their life. And alcohol doesn’t have much apart. Isn’t

JM Guthrie 38:56
It is so interesting even to say that out loud, right, they are trying to live the best version of themselves. And through all the things that you just said, and all of these different measurements and filters and being the best. At the end of the day, they believe, at least seemingly least, this seems this way, since most of them can say that their best version is without alcohol. And that literally, you know, tying it all back together is the foundation and the thesis of this podcast or at least how it started right? The reality for us was alcohol isn’t the right answer for us for a lot of different reasons. And there’s not necessarily an answer that cures for everyone. It’s not that I say this all the time. It’s not a one or zero. You know, sometimes it’s whatever is a better relationship. And for some, it’s nothing and for some, it’s less often, but the reality is, the best version of ourselves is with a better relationship with booze, whatever that is. And it’s just cool to hear that personify in such a very different world and from such a different perspective than we’ve talked about. And we’ve even thought about it frankly, to this point, so I just really appreciate that.

Hank Leber 40:03
You know it. Now that we’re talking about it here, I kind of didn’t think about this ahead of time. But it seems to be a pretty straight correlation. That the mean total and the way you guys describe it, which is really just like, like you’ve been standing on a budget here, but like a focus on the things that make me the best, me that I can be in any situation, from a family member to a friend to a parent to business or whatever, really just focusing on maximizing that, like, it’s, you got a pure example of that with with a Creator, who is putting out constant videos about their lives, and collaborating with their friends and having to be super on point all the time, what a pure look at what a meet total existence looks like. Because your business is also you. And pretty much everything you do all day, it’s not a job that you just kind of go to and phone it in and then leave to get the money. Because you could probably be less of yourself there. If you just were motivated to be better, that’s fine, you get out of the job, you can’t do that, as a top creator, you need to be maximally awesome all the time. So you get a really clean look at what a lifestyle looks like when you are the pure reason for your success. And there’s no excuses.

Joe Quattrone 41:16
I think one thing that this conversation around the young young creator classes forced me to think about in terms of how we think about me totally in general is, yes, it is a recipe for being at peak performance. But there’s also a key factor of when, because I think one thing that we don’t necessarily talk about is there’s going to be phases of your life where you don’t need to be at peak performance. And it’s probably okay to learn and go through the learning process of substances and alcohol and stuff like that. But you don’t have as much riding on it. Or as much on the line when I was 21 years old, there was no pressure on me to go, you run a 60 million 60 million person YouTube subscribership. I wish there was but it wasn’t right. So I’m thankful for the experiences that I’ve had in the past because they shaped who I am now. And I haven’t necessarily closed the door on maybe when I’m 60 years old, having a glass of wine every once in a while when my kids are in college. But right now, when I’m gonna find a bourbon 75 ish, Mr. And my kids are right now when I’m 44 years old, and my kids are 973 and six months, there is no other alternative. I have to be at peak performance all the time. You know, I’m not I’m not a YouTuber like those guys are. But, you know, for kids and a high end career, it’s a lot to juggle, and I don’t want to be hungover at all ever. Right? So I think the win is a key kind of thing to consider as well. Yeah.

Hank Leber 42:37
I’m in the same exact camp where we’re standing up Liga play right now, which in success is as big as the Olympics globally, FIFA sure, like that kind of level, because it exists in all these different countries, different sports, different cultures, different languages, Japan, all stars playing us. And it’s all creators, like that’s a massive opportunity. Why would I be anything less than 100% of my sharpness going into conversations with creators, with brand partners, with investors, with stakeholders with team members, like it’s time to be ultra sharp. But like I said, whatever, 1015 years ago, 17, technically, based on the new release, I drink a lot and the bad days because we the definition of your best self was way, like low, low resolution, you know, I mean, like, I had a lower resolution life, it was like, Yeah, this is great, I’m fine. And it didn’t have goals that were bigger or tighter, or have a clearer picture of why it was so important to be my absolute 100% best self. And the older I’ve gotten, especially into these projects that I’m working on, it just becomes clearer and clearer to me as I get older. And it’s funny, like in the parallel here in the startup world, I’ve been doing self examination, how to be a better just a better leader, a better startup team member to do my to my co founders and team. And I’ve always felt like I wanted to do a better job of creating urgency, without emergency. If you look back at the last 1012 years of my startup career, I had a lot of times when it wasn’t urgent until there was an emergency and then you had to fix it on the fly. And I was moving from one fire to another for years. And it’s like some of the best founders I’ve ever known can dial up urgency without the emergency. So that does relate to this though, in a way it’s like I personally had this feeling of the pressure of needing to be more excellent to cut back on, on drinking and things like that, because not an emergency, but I needed the outside pressure. And I think that the most amazing and impressive moves I’ve seen are when people don’t have that urgency. They just want to be better, which is awesome. But yeah, it’s crazy. Humans probably need pressure. Yeah, but what’s crazy is in terms of time, but what Joe said in what you’re like I say all the time. There was a time I was talking to somebody about this yesterday. A 20 plus years ago, there was a stretch where I was a maniac, and we were doing crazy shit. And there are times I’m like, how do we even make it through those days or nights, right. And I’m so thankful. And if I tried to go that hard again, right now, I’d be dead on the street, honestly. And I treasure those experiences, because I got it out of my system, right, like I did it. And then there’s not really a thing in my mind. I mean, there are needles and things that I fortunately didn’t get to like, that I don’t have as an experience, but I did, I did enough that like, like, I’m good. And so like, in this me total, or even sober lifestyle that I’m in, I feel like I can do that. Because I’ve experienced that. And to Joe’s point, these creators, they’re at the age when I was going, you know, really hard, and they’re not. And I think that there’s a tie to the cultural norm of that now, and that there’s an acceptance and that there’s a movement around, you know, alcohol free, or at least these other things that you have like cannabis and some of the other psychedelics that you can maybe keep a better frame of mind and not do stupid shit. But going back to your thing about urgency and not emergency business, the founder built a business, 10 years old and a year or so ago, in the services world, to your point is for the birds. And I say that all the time still doing it, right, like selling services is truly for the birds, but somehow, someway, that’s what I’ve been doing for 20 years. What I didn’t realize, Hank, was that I went through this thing a few years ago, where I was like, You know what, I’m gonna try not drinking, it wasn’t because I had a serious problem. It wasn’t like I was falling in, you know, I was in a ditch, I had three kids. Already I was functioning as a business owner and founder. I had a happy wife to a degree ish, right? Stop drinking. And I gotta tell you, dude, the last three years, the amount of output that I have been able to put forward different than the days when I was drinking, the amount of success that I’ve seen, right, the amount of times where it hasn’t felt like an emergency, because you just don’t have that visceral passion or that angst in your heart. I mean, I can, I will have to talk offline. I can give you 100 examples of this, but I put it down. Period. Like there’s no other there’s no other thing that happened. That created the circumstance that ultimately turned into this trajectory like this. And so that’s why this show even started to talk about that, because I can’t explain it. David Goggins always talks about what that feeling is like, you just get to that, like, that’s the feeling of me totally. That’s like, I am the best version of myself. And now I don’t feel like it’s an emergency, I’m going to be the best leader. I’m going to be the best teammate, I can be the best boss. I can be the best Joey Q, homie, I can certainly be the best dad and husband, right? I mean, those are the things that matter. And ultimately, all professional success comes from it. And then with your creators, it’s infectious. They want to work with you, because they can feel it too. And so I’m inspired by you, man, I am supernatural, and it’s super exciting.

Joe Quattrone 48:00
It’s funny, Hank, because the whole time you were setting up your career. The one thing that you kept saying that resonates with me the most is when you got into something, and it was cool. And you were like, where’s this? Right? Like, where is this? And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought that since I quit drinking, getting out into the world of like, alcohol sobriety and stuff like that, in 2018. And being like, where are the non alcoholic ashes? Like this seems like something that almost every person’s gonna go through at some point in their lifetime. But yet there’s nothing here to service those people like people that have health issues, people that are alcoholics, there’s millions of people and where’s this? Where’s anything that’s for the support groups? Where’s the community there outside of alcohol and Iona and this and stuff like that. And there was none of that stuff. And now there’s tons of it, which I’m super happy about. And if anything, we look forward to being able to be the, the armchair psychologist to people, as well as maybe help get them into stuff that’s, you know, maybe going to be a little more therapeutic from a wellness perspective from a commercial standpoint, but I love the way you think in that where’s that this is something that rings hollow or not fertile rings true in my mind, hopefully.

Hank Leber 49:13
So what if that’s great, that makes me think 2018 To now is not a long time. That’s not a long time at all. But you had pretty much a sea change that is very evident that there’s a lot of those options now commercially, maybe businesses give like that’s because there was some other cultural truth and that makes my mind go What happened 2018 And now why is five years so important in the last 500 years, at least the last 50 and I have

JM Guthrie 49:41
my perspective on that

Joe Quattrone 49:42
I want to what do you think you go first I’ll

JM Guthrie 49:45
Wait, I will lead the way. Well, I’m biased here but

Hank Leber 49:48
I’m gonna go creators, because you’ve got an entire generation of young people coming up who are watching their new heroes. You’ve said like they literally line up for one of these creators, not a sports star, not a movie star. are not rockstar creators and those creators, for the most part are exhibiting a lifestyle where alcohol isn’t in the videos. So like it literally just doesn’t get baked in to seeing some drunk rocker on stage in 1993, maybe you’re a bit more likely to go get drunk also, maybe that’s a part of it is the creator economy has completely boomed from 2018 At least until now such a huge new thing and culture. Now on the other side, could not the other side, but similar. You’ve got celebrities that are more and more publicly moving away from alcohol to news like, like having a problem and getting on top of it. But being public about it. And I did bring something in. I’ll do a reading for you. A reading and reading. I ran across this which I thought was really good. I’m a big John Mayer fan. We were making music the same time he was coming out back in the day. So I really love him as a musician and as a thinker. He’s an articulate smart guy. And he’s, you know, he’s famous for having stopped drinking. I don’t know if you guys know the story. He went to Drake’s birthday party. I don’t know how long ago this was. But this is in People Magazine. So it’s very easy to find. But he went to Drake’s birthday party and got caught just super drunk and had a great time making a real acid himself. But he had a great time. But he wound up being he said he had like a six day hangover and was quite embarrassed about the things that he did and didn’t remember most of the night. He was a mess, right? She was embarrassed about that in front of probably a bunch of other celebrities or whatever. So anyways, here’s his quote, afterwards. He says, I looked out the window and went, Okay, John, what percentage of your potential would you like to have? Because if you say like 60, and you’d like to spend the other 40 Having fun, that’s fine. But what percentage of what is available to you? Would you like to make this happen? There’s no wrong answer. What is it? And I went 100 100. Yeah. And that was it. And that was his thing was alcohol causes me to have a reduced version of myself for at least a day or two afterwards. That might be he says 6040 is like, that’s not a good deal. That’s not a good deal. I don’t want one or two hours like a high over here, that I’m an idiot about it anyways, and then lose a day or two at 60%? No, that’s not a good equation. And he just made it more about math than chemicals. I thought that was really interesting. Because so

JM Guthrie 52:18
So yeah, yeah, we’ve talked about that. A couple of we’ve talked about him. I’ve got a couple. I love John. I’m a big John Mayer fan myself, I have a funny Atlantic City’s version of a story that I’ll share offline. But my story that I will share is that I went to James Madison, in Virginia and other schools not as good as Bill and Mary are both a better party Senate way better. Yeah, but we didn’t have to leave. We did not have to leave the Valley for the party. That is true. We had a good time. And to that point, we took a bus one time to Hampden Sydney for a John Mayer concert because it was right when he had started and he was touring doing his first record. And so it was like the body is a wonderland and why Georgia while there’s like sort of original smashes that he had the first hits, yeah, great. It’s, it’s we’re at this show, and with my girlfriend and her friends and a couple of my buddies, it’s probably like, 12 of us that are sort of hanging together towards the front of the stage. Like, you know, we’re on the floor. All of a sudden, towards the end of the show, the girls are gone. Okay, look around, no girls. And it’s just my buddies and I, and we’re like, Where’d the girls go? Okay, this is before this is like pre cell phones and stuff to like, you’re not like just dial in your girl and be like, where are you at? Dude, two hours after the show, we’re still waiting. We don’t know where they are. They show back up to this, you know, shuttle bus thing that we had rented. The dude had told his security guard to grab them and brought him on his bus to hang out after the show. preed not stop drinking. But he literally scooped all six of our girls, brought him on, brought him on his bus, and then released them two hours later. Back to back to us. So legend, John Mayer as well.

Hank Leber 54:09
So the point, the point of that segment was, to me, like 2018. Until now, the big change in culture is that mainstream personalities from the creators who are on every day with the young, you know, the Gen Z’s of the world and the younger millennials, they don’t see it in the lifestyle and then we got these big celebrities who are probably being like I’m done. It’s fine Brad Pitt, you know Republicans about it. John Mayer, somebody’s really iconic people who might make millions of individuals go maybe, you know, maybe they don’t need the urgency or the emergency to consider choosing a better life because their heroes are doing I think, I think we can say mainstream media really helped bring that meat total have not called that into the limelight into the mainstream over the past few years, which is great. It’s a good time for products now and for everyone now so I understand that that’s an acceptable mainstream lifestyle approach, and better in every way. Like, I think it’s great, I think that I think you nailed it, my mind is going to be it’s just, it’s more so it’s socially accepted. Robert Patrick is another guy that we talked about a few different times, like the guy who was on Terminator two in the unit, like that iconic actor. He’s like this kind of rough, you know, motorcycle riding, but his best biking is the booze fighters, which is so cool, right? Like stuff like that. It’s like all different levels of celebrity, right to where it’s just accepted. And I think that the other thing that we talk about all the time is that the data is accessible, right? Like, there’s that you can find whatever information about whatever you want, in whatever context you want, pretty much anytime you want now, right? And the reality is, alcohol is not good for you. And more and more people are talking about it, and more data is accessible to see that. And so the health sort of benefits and improvements, I think, drive that as well. And then just lastly, to your Creator point, right? They have to be so self aware, right? There’s a self consciousness about not only how they’re presenting themselves, but also who they surround themselves with. And what I’ve realized as a non drinker, is how quickly somebody changes, wondering to drink, certainly 10 drinks. And I think just knowing you need to be at the top of your game, right? In the best version, it becomes really easy to realize how quickly that changes to the alcohol.

Joe Quattrone 56:28
I have a different opinion. So originally, I was gonna say COVID, but I’m gonna switch my answer up. So I feel like if big alcohol wanted to keep you thinking that alcohol had any kind of redeeming qualities to it, that would still be the narrative. I feel like they’re starting to give up on the stranglehold that they have, because they’re starting to see life outside of alcohol. So like if alcohol brands can own cannabis infused beverages, or things that achieve the same thing without any of the side effects. Why wouldn’t you want to do that? Right? So not that they’re going out, they’re scooping them all up right now, because there’s a lot of regulatory red tape and stuff like that. And still not societally completely acceptable. But I think they’re starting to think, Okay, I don’t have to sell alcohol for the next 50 years to make money, like so. So let’s start letting things out about the fact that alcohol is a class one carcinogen, right, that would have never come out five years ago when alcohol was still clinging on to their power into their grip over society. But now that there’s a possible way forward, similar to what cars were doing back 15 years ago, when I worked in cars, they never wanted to convince you that the world was going to come to an end because of climate change. But now that electric cars are out , they don’t have to think about what they’re gonna do after fossil fuels. You know what I mean? So I think that lobbying has a big deal to do. Yeah,

JM Guthrie 57:43
That’s the data. Yeah, for sure. So

Hank Leber 57:46
So are you saying you get thrown into prediction Joe that let’s call it like five years from now, company like Diageo may have a whole different subsidiary holding company called like me as you where they lean into the total where my burrito to lodge yo, Joe I made right now I got that when I’m gonna get the trademark Why would

Joe Quattrone 58:10
Five years from now, there are companies that are creating products right now that will acquire other companies. They don’t necessarily have to come from the ABN Bev’s with a constellation of brands of the world or dashes or whatever. But yeah, those brands are absolutely going to get off of the side the sidelines once it is legally acceptable for them

JM Guthrie 58:29
To do so, the stigma is officially gone. Yeah. And and once banking is

Joe Quattrone 58:33
cleared up, what’s insurance is cleared up and all this stuff, and it’s safe for them to enter into the waters 100,000% There’s gonna be a ton of acquisition happening in this space.

Hank Leber 58:42
I hope so. I hope that’s true. Because what those companies are probably doing all along is selling a good time. And the definition of good time is changing in a way that allows them to sell other things. And I hope that that’s like the big so what is that, that doesn’t have to be alcohol anymore, and that just fades back into a mix of possibilities to get smaller and smaller over time. I do have to come back before we get too far away from Jim, you mentioned the public data of the health consequences and just the truth behind alcohol. I read a book recently. I have to plug it in because if listeners on the show might really enjoy it, it is called this naked mind by an author named Annie grace. And it was awesome to read. It’s about alcohol and her journey to move off of it. I think she’s an advertising marketing exec who is quite successful doing a lot of presentations, speaking at a lot of conferences, and this is all in the book. And she’s very comfortable drinking before, during and after those things like a couple of bottles of wine a night kind of thing. And then she’d wake up in the middle of night when the alcohol runs out. But the sugar ends up having panicky feelings like 3am and then drinks another glass or two to go back to sleep like it’s pretty heavy. Anyways, her journey away from alcohol is not about she’s actually way more about just understanding what it is And the relationship to your body and your biology. It’s poison. And it’s really bad for everything it touches. And it does this to you. And if you understand that, you can change your relationship with it by yourself on your own without the 12 step program and without calling it a disease, you it’s a thing you put in your body, it’s not a disease, she pushes back on that says there are people who might have a very strong pension for addiction, and you need professional help and all that. She said, for the vast majority. It’s your understanding and your relationship. Anyways, very, very, very good. Total read,

JM Guthrie 1:00:32
I’ve read that book. I loved it. And it is such a prime example and profound sort of an additional mention of the fact that everybody’s journey is different.

Hank Leber 1:00:43
And heard one thing you also mentioned, you know, realizing how different you are perceived wandering to dress templates, and there’s a section of the book, she recommends that if someone is working on it with alcohol, and they’re very comfortable with alcohol jpy go ahead and drink to your point of awesomeness. I feel awesome right now. Like I’m, you know, you’re sitting at home, and then video yourself, do a video call and talk about whatever you want to talk about. And then watch it later sober. And she said it blew her mind because she thought she was sharp and witty and funny. And when she watched it later, she was like, Oh, my god, is that how I’m being perceived to other people? And that helped her understand from an outside perspective, not just inside, what are you putting out there? What is that? How much less than 100% of us and 98? Or is it 48. And I didn’t do that. By the way, I took a year off mid 2020 to mid 2021. It took a whole year off, which is great. I did some traveling. I went back to Tennessee. My dad was sick at the time and took care of some stuff with him. And then it kind of crept back into my life and between companies. There wasn’t an urgent emergency and there were a couple of weddings and whatever this kind of stuff so crept back in. But then now the pressure is dialing up again. I know that I took a year off and it was not the first two or three weeks. Do you think about it often? I did at least I was like oh yeah, drink kava now I guess I’m not doing that. Right. And then after like, two, three weeks, it literally was a tiny little thought every once awhile they come Oh, yeah. Well, you know that picnic, but we’re not gonna drink, then the rest of the year was fine. And then it was actually kind of hard to start drinking again, because my body was like yuck. After like two or three beers watching football. I was like, Oh, God felt awful the next day. So anyways, I’m back on a run here that in my mind is I don’t need it. Don’t not need it. But I don’t know why. Why would I sacrifice even a portion of the next day or an evening or quality of conversation in any form? For what I’m doing in life right now as a father, as a business professional as a team leader? As in collaborators? Does it make sense? So I’m not saying that I wouldn’t have a drink. I suppose there’s possibly some sort of client or deal or something where they’re like, let’s do a drink. And I don’t say, Hey, I’m not drinking. Yeah, there may be a time when I can’t make you go. Or what I’ll do is, I got it, I’ll order it. And I order a club Soda with lime and lie about it. I’m not sure about that. I haven’t worked it out yet. But I just know that the sensible decision is to not do that. In my life, it doesn’t make sense. I don’t have a problem. And the problem is, when that’s okay to do with your life, and you’re not living to your maximum, so I want to avoid that problem. Not one about drinking. So anyways, I’m a huge fan of what you guys do. I think it’s so good to be talking about it. Because I think a lot of people quietly do this, like it’s a problem instead of a solution and creating a whole bunch of new opportunities, which is a great way to look at it. I think we’re talking about socially and culturally. Great time to be talking about it too.

Joe Quattrone 1:03:45
Well, we got to start wrapping things. Well, I’m gonna cut it off love to have you back on for another episode. But

JM Guthrie 1:03:50
before we go, Well, my couch anytime, man.

Joe Quattrone 1:03:53
Yeah, here we go. Knowing that you’re kind of like more of a recent addition to the meat total movement and you’re dry for now, but you haven’t necessarily sworn off alcohol. I think it’s interesting because you’re probably the most unique person we’ve had on the show in the sense that like, you might go back and it might be soon. Who knows? We don’t know yet. But while you are dry, we have a little segment that we like to call products and practices. What do you do to keep your mind off of it? I think I’m really interested in that for the people that are very new to this world of not being, you know, exposed to alcohol on a daily or weekly basis. What helps you through this situation?

Hank Leber 1:04:29
It’s a great question. And it didn’t always come in so I gotta think on the fly. First of all, to me both times are like 2020 and now the first two three weeks is the part where I needed something to even think about past that. There is no mechanism I literally just don’t, I don’t, but for that first two, three weeks for sure, getting up and moving around, like literally getting up yo body, walk around, walk around the block, do some push ups or something. Just get up and move to get your brain taking in other information that isn’t sitting in a chair thinking about drinks, and then just five minutes, that resets the thinking, you’ll think about something else, and you’ll see a bird or whatever. So for me it was that, and maybe my own ad, or whatever I don’t have 80. But on my own, I like the perception of new things such as looking at work for meat, getting up and doing something. Because if you sit there and think about the thing over and over, you’ll start, you’ll weaken your resolve, and you’ll start to make up excuses, be like, well, maybe, maybe we’ll maybe just what, no, just get up and do something, there was that. And also, I know, we do not have time for it today. But dopamine is such a huge factor in human beings at all, like motivation to do anything is all dopamine that’s like your currency of energy, and excitement, do anything. And alcohol is a big dopamine blaster in your body, and so is your body. I think Grace talks about this in the book. And there’s a bunch of studies that show when you’re thinking about having a drink, your body is producing the opposite of don’t ever forget what it is, but they’re producing stuff to lower your dopamine in anticipation of the boom coming. That’s how efficient your bodies are. And so you feel down makes you want to drink more. That is literally what a craving is so fascinating. But if that’s the case, figure out your dopamine, maybe go watch a TED talk, or maybe something that’s interesting that makes you think, Oh, you get excited about something that’s a good dopamine, and try to get swapped over and do that. So there’s been times when I did that, I think it was to go to TED talks, some of my favorite podcasts and just get into it. First two, three minutes are annoying because you’re thinking about a drink. And then you’re then thinking about cool ideas. And you’ve got your, you’ve broken the cycle. So I hope there’s more study about the biology of cravings, and motivation. I think Dr. Andrew Huberman has a lot of good stuff on that. super fascinating because I think the big problem overall, biologically with alcohol is dopamine. And what it does to your dopamine system, and it screws up your long term goals and ambitions and you get stuck. And then the only way you get through is having a couple drinks every night and then you’re in this thing that’s really hard to get out of. Yeah, so that’s my mini rant. Well,

Joe Quattrone 1:07:09
That was a great rant and hey, you’ve been a great guest. Thank you so much for coming on. Folks that are in the listening audience. You know where to go fuzzy ish podcast.com If you want to listen to this or other episodes, like just extend my thanks and gratitude for you. It’s been great catching up this week. And everybody you’ve been listening to the fuzziest podcast and the future Chief Strategy Officer of me total Algeo. Hank lever. Hank, where can people connect with you on the internet? the interwebs that are out there.

Hank Leber 1:07:40
So my last name is lever L E. R. That’s rebels spelled backwards.

Joe Quattrone 1:07:45
That’s not Leber. That’s crazy. For 20 years and I’ve never you’ve never heard

Hank Leber 1:07:50
75% of people say Libra and I correct me anymore but it’s rebel spelled backwards which isn’t rebel same spelling pattern Leb or AB tell you the ladies right there. So Hank Leber, you can find that all my handles are the same Hank Leber on Twitter on LinkedIn or anything and then League of play.com We’re pre launch but go and sign up and stay tuned if you want to see what’s coming. We got some really exciting stuff coming up.

Joe Quattrone 1:08:16
Cool, the very non-neurodivergent Hank Leber. Thank you for joining us. We appreciate you.