Ep. 9 Sam Knight | Entrepreneurship and Wellness: Finding Success in Mind, Body, and Business

Sam Knight [00:00:00]:

Meditation is a practice. And the reason that it's called a practice is because it's something that you need to do over and over and over in the compound effect builds up. So next thing you know, someone cuts you off in traffic and you don't react because you've you've trained your brain to not react to the stimulus and to just sit and to just be. And so what it does is, is it allowed me to create a barrier between my thoughts and my reactions. So I can have a thought, I can get stimulus, but there was a barrier that allowed me to pause before I would react. And that was extremely powerful. I call it nervous system training. We don't think about this, but our nervous system runs everything. If you look at it's like this crown around our head and like millions of cords that go down our body and send these electrical signals all down. And if you're not maintaining your nervous system and taking time to pause, to take a deep breath, You're slamming your foot on the gas of the car 24-7. That's not good. What do you think is going to happen when you're doing that long enough? Well, injuries, disease, sickness, you're eventually going to wear the car down. And so meditation is an opportunity to take a step back, to take a deep breath, and to just be. So that's kind of how I view it. Man, that was amazing. That constant foot on the gas analogy is golden because it's something we could simply think about. Like, what if I just held the gas on my car for 24 hours? It

Andres Sanchez  [00:01:20]:

would probably blow up. Welcome back to the Virtual Ventures Podcast. I'm your host, Andres Sanchez. Today we have an amazing guest, Sam Knight, the co-founder of Artifact Labs. I'm super excited to get to meet you, Sam, and learn a little bit more about what you have going on. And thanks for coming on the show. Yeah, absolutely, brother. I'm super excited to be here. I've heard some great things about your podcast. I'm excited to dive in. Awesome. I like to just dive right in. Tell us a little bit about yourself. Who's Sam Knight? Where you are right now? And we'll just build off that. Yeah, absolutely. So I'll give you the 10, 000 foot view of my life. Basically, right now I'm living in Miami, Florida. I'm from Atlanta, Georgia. Originally, growing up was super involved in all types of sports, played college baseball at the Division 1 level at a school in Charleston, South Carolina. I've always been super interested in technology.

Sam Knight [00:02:21]:

So out of college, I moved to Los Angeles, started working for a tech startup, worked for 2 different startups. And then I have a very strong passion for holistic health. So to make a very long story short, I jumped from the startup kind of corporate world to go work with this guy named Sean T. Sean T created the Insanity Workouts. And around like 2010, you know, Insanity was the biggest workout in the world. He's 1 of the bigger fitness influencers in the world for sure. And I worked with him for 3 years, traveled across the world, hosted events, fitness, mental health, just helping people transform their life is what we called it. And from there, learned a lot of valuable skills from the kind of influencer creator world and also had the software experience. So I wanted to figure out how I could merge these 2 things. So I left, started my own business. Originally, the business was called Holistic Attention, but it's recently been rebranded to Artifacts Labs. And that's kind of the main mission right now, in addition to some side stuff that I'm doing. But that's kind of my trajectory to get to where I'm at right at this very moment, living in Miami. That's amazing. 2, I mean, 1, it's awesome that we both live in Miami.

Andres Sanchez  [00:03:24]:

2, something we could talk about off camera, played baseball my whole life. So I'd love to talk more about that off camera, which is really cool. 3, I work in tech, so I'd love to talk off camera more about your life in tech. So we're already kind of getting the ball rolling here. Shanti, the funny thing is Shanti was a huge part of my high school life. In the summer, our baseball program, we would all go and have summer training and a way for the coaches to kind of get to not deal with us and make us go work out. They'd shove us in the in the wrestling room where it was about a million degrees, roll in 1 of those big old fashioned TVs and pop in a Sean T insanity video. And we just do that every day all summer long. So that's a hilarious connection. How did that come about? How did you connect with Sean T? How did you end up traveling with him? It's crazy. So I sort of similar when I was in college, I was using Insanity

Sam Knight [00:04:17]:

to do some cardiovascular training over the summer. I mean, as you know, those workouts are brutal. I mean, they murder you like no other workout in the world. And so I loved them because, you know, I wanted to be in the best shape I could. I was lifting a lot, so I wanted to get my cardio in shape. Anyways, I started doing a lot of Sean's workouts, really looked up to him. He was very inspiring to me. He's amazing on camera and just really like helped me a lot in my journey for fitness and baseball and everything. And so I followed Sean on Instagram, didn't really think much of it. And then 1 day I was sitting at my desk at this startup in LA, really didn't love what I was doing at the time. I was doing sales. It was just a very cutthroat environment where I was at, not great energy. And he posted on Instagram, he's like, Hey guys, I'm looking for someone that can kind of help me do some assistant type stuff, some marketing stuff. And instead of going to some job board, I just wanted to reach out to my, he called him Fit Fam, my Fit Fam out there and see if there's anyone that would be a good fit or would be interested. Apparently thousands of people applied, but I went ahead and decided to shoot my shot as well. So I applied, kind of crazy because didn't hear back for a while, then finally heard back, hey, we liked your answers, can you jump on another call? So I jumped on a call with someone from the team, then someone else from the team, and then another person. And then it was the day before I was supposed to sign a year long lease in LA. I reached out to him. I was like, Hey guys, I haven't heard from you a couple of weeks. Assume, decided to go in a different direction. No big deal, but just want to confirm before I signed this lease. And they're like, Oh yeah, can you jump on a call with Sean tomorrow? And I was like, holy shit, this is insane. So long story short, I jumped on a call with Sean. The interview went really, really well. Told him my situation. They offered me the job pretty much on the spot. And they said, can you move to Arizona in 6 days? I was in Atlanta visiting family. And I said, absolutely. So I booked a last minute flight back to LA, packed my stuff in my car, drove to Arizona. And then I worked with Sean for 3 years, lived in Scottsdale. The first 3 months I lived in Sean's transformation center, which is like he's got this house and then he's got a house next to it, which is the transformation center where they hold retreats. So I moved there last minute, couldn't find a place in time. So I lived there for about 3 months and then worked with Sean for 3 years. Insane experience, honestly. I mean, it was wild. Got to, you know, really host some incredible events with hundreds, thousands of people and just really make an impact on a lot of people and just got to see someone that's so passionate about their craft and just to help them push that mission forward was really, really just a blessing, honestly. That's amazing. And it seems like all these amazing stories are always like that. Everything's last minute, everything's on the fly. And I feel like that's the cool thing about life is life presents you a lot of opportunities, but sometimes makes them almost unachievable.

Andres Sanchez  [00:06:51]:

You have to take that big leap and just dive in and say the hell with it. I'm going for it. And I think this is a prime example. You did that and look at this amazing experience that you got. Was he a cool guy to work with? Yeah,

Sam Knight [00:07:04]:

he's a really cool dude. They welcomed me like family. They treated me well. I have no bad things to say about their whole operation. 1 thing that was really interesting to me, you see these people that are kind of at the top and you're like, Oh man, they, they've got it so easy. They're crushing it, dude. That guy works, you know, he knows how to work. And for example, we traveled just an insane, it was almost like a professional sports team, how much we traveled. It was every week going somewhere, which was really cool at first. But then after a while, I mean, it really starts to kind of burn you down and burn you out a little bit. And I remember vividly about 6 months in, we landed 1 Sunday night around 8pm after we had traveled for literally 2 weeks straight, you know, and when you're traveling, it's not like you're just sitting back sipping a coffee and relaxing. We're working when we're traveling, right? So it's intense. We're always on, we're going at all hours and we land and I'm like, thank God, like it's Sunday, but we're going to take a couple of days off. And as we start to part ways, he's like, all right, see you tomorrow at 8am. And I was like, what? Like, What do you mean? But that lesson really taught me a lot about what it actually means to work hard and to be so dedicated to your craft that you know, it doesn't matter if you're traveling for 2 weeks, you got work to do tomorrow. And that's not to say you know, he obviously took time off and and you know, took care of himself and spend time with his family. But so that to say that most of these people that are super successful kind of at the top of the food chain, if you will, it's not by accident. You know, they're really putting in the work and doing the inputs that they need to get the outputs that have led to where they are. Yeah. And for me, as I've started to put myself out there and meet more amazing people and build some great relationships over the last few years. I think you're spot on. Like whenever I meet somebody who is like an idol of mine or someone from a big caliber, it's always like, I get why you're here. Like I see why you're at the top. So I think that's super cool. What was next? What did you do after working with Sean? Yeah. So, you know, I got a lot of experience with Sean and it was kind of a cool position because they would just let me throw myself into the fire with random stuff and figure it out. And 1 thing that I threw myself into the fire with was learning Facebook ads. So I pretty much taught myself Facebook ads because we would host events in different cities and he had merchandise. So I had no idea what I was doing, but I had a budget to use and I was able to kind of use that budget to learn. Long story short, I mean, we just started crushing it with Facebook ads. And this is like 2019-ish, early, early 2020, like right as COVID started to hit. And we just started absolutely crushing it. We were making stupid amounts of money. I mean, spending a couple of thousand dollars and making 50K in return, you know? And I was like, this is absolutely insane. I still have to say, I really started to sharpen my skills, email marketing, you know, anything marketing related, I was kind of helping with. I wasn't like obviously running his social medias, but I was very involved, learning about what it's like to run accounts with millions of followers. So basically I was just decided, I've always been very entrepreneurial. I've always wanted to kind of do my own thing and steer my own ship. And I pretty much had a choice to make. It was a hard choice too, because on 1 hand I had this unbelievable job. The perks were insane. You know, there was a bit of a status that came with working from someone like that. So there was a lot of really amazing things about it, but I wasn't making tons and tons of money necessarily. And there was a point where it's, I had to decide, do I want to really go out into the wild and try to figure out how to build the life that I want? Or do I want to kind of continue to, I want to say play Robin to someone else's Batman. I don't mean that in a derogatory or a bad way at all. It's just like, it's the Shanti show. It's his thing because he built this unbelievable, amazing platform. And there was a time where I was like, you know what, if I don't do this now, I might never do it. And I'm so glad that I took the leap when I did. It was a very difficult decision. Anyways, I went and started my own agency. And it's really funny because there's this whole money Twitter world of like, everyone's talking about agencies and marketing. I didn't even know that existed. I had no clue. I wasn't on it at all. And I just went and started my own agency, started my own thing. I mean, it was a complete train wreck disaster a lot of the times. I mean, I would lose clients. There was times, I can't tell you how many times since then I've just sat and stared at the wall and just thought, I don't know what I'm going to do. I don't know how I'm going to figure this out or what I'm going to do. Very, very difficult stuff. But best decision I've ever made. I mean, now the business is really growing, expanding, working with some incredible people. So yeah, I started this agency, started growing it. And then really up to about a couple of months ago when I met my new business partner who was doing something similar to me and we kind of joined forces, but it's been about 3 years in the making. And there's a lot of good things that come with running your own operation. There's a lot of bad things too. I don't want to say bad things, but it's all on your shoulders for better or worse. Yeah. And that's something that I miss and don't miss at the same time when I was owning my own business. I mean, 1, the hours are long if you really want to see it succeed. And 2, you have to shoulder all the decisions. And something I want to call out for anybody listening, because Facebook marketing and Facebook ads and all these things like these are huge buzzwords for people. And I don't think people comprehend how hard marketing really is. Like It is anybody like yourself and Diego, your business partner. When I meet with people like you guys and we talk through your strategies and the approach in this, I am just blown away. As somebody who tried to just do it on my own and figure it out and had a bunch of failures, and it is tough and it is hard. When you were kind of teaching yourself, like how did you get through like all the, I mean, cause it's just like, it feels like it's unlimited amounts of information and data and things to use. Like how was that? Yeah, well, it's a great point. And you know, marketing is 1 of these weird things where everyone thinks they know, like, you could talk to this, the random person and they're going to tell you they know how to do marketing. Right. But it's not that simple, not even close. And it's really difficult actually. And especially with the work that we do, you know, it's like the results are either there or they're not. Right. So there's a lot of pressure involved and it's a lot of it's heavily weighed on performance, which is great for me. I'm a competitor. I'm an athlete. I love that pressure. I think that's what gets the best out of people. But in terms of learning marketing, I have been obsessed with business and entrepreneurship for at least 10 years at this point. So a lot of it was just binge listening to podcasts like this, reading all the marketing books, the classics, things like that. But I'll tell you without a doubt, the most important thing that I could say in this entire conversation

Andres Sanchez  [00:12:58]:

is that you learn by doing. Like you could read 17 million books on a subject, but you're still not gonna understand it unless you're actually in the trenches getting your hands dirty. And the best way to learn is by doing, and I've made this mistake so many times, dude, like thinking that, like, I mean, my intentions were clear. I wanted to learn, I wanted to get better. But next thing I knew 6 months ago, but I don't even remember what I was learning. You have to be actively implementing whatever you're learning, or you're pretty much just wasting your time. You're better off just not even learning in my opinion. So for now on, for the rest of my life, whenever I want to learn something, I've got to make sure that I'm actively implementing what I'm learning, whatever that looks like, because otherwise, it's just going to come and go. Yeah. And that's something that I struggle with myself. And again, it's always with good intention. Like I want to read more, I want to learn. Next thing you know, I didn't implement anything that I actually read. And it was like, well, did I actually get something from it? And that's like 1 of my big things is, I'm not the biggest fan of college, but I think people should still go do it. But a way to go do it and get some value from it, which is what I tell people, go start a side, a hobby, go start a business. And people, I think this is a little bit of a gap here. When people say, oh, go start a business. They're like, oh, well, how I got to make all this money. You don't like you could just start something small at its core that you really enjoy. But when I did that, when I started my own businesses in college, I became way more engaged in the classes because they were applicable to what I was actually doing. And I was able to go get actual value out of what I was paying for, which most people just go to college to get the paper. I was actually getting to go to my marketing professor and be like, Hey, I actually implemented the things that we talked about today in my strategy. And it was great. Or this was worthless. Like, why are we even talking about this? And that was super cool for me. And then I heard this like super cool story of a teacher who was teaching a master's program. And everybody showed up to school on the first day and the teacher said this class is about going Viral pick your social media everybody go try and go viral if somebody gets over a million views There's no final 1 of the students was smart enough to take their phone out and record the teacher saying that, posted it, and it blew up. And then the class had no final. So I think that's super cool. And I agree so much that you have to do what you're learning. If not, it goes in 1 ear and out the other ear, no matter how good your intentions are. 100%, there's no doubt about it. Yeah, the subject of college, that's an interesting subject. I definitely have my opinions about it, but regardless of whether it's college, taking an online course, it doesn't matter. You need to be implementing it. And it's just as humans, how we're wired, You know, it's just however you want to call it. I'm not a scientist, but driving those neural connections, you know, and making sure that you're actually getting your hands dirty with whatever the task is. Cause it's like you said, if you want to start a business, you don't have to go spend a million dollars. Like let's say you want to learn Facebook ads. Okay, great. We'll find a product to sell and spend $50 on Facebook ads. It doesn't have to be a million dollars, but that $50, if that means a lot to you, you're going to learn lessons, probably painful because you're going to lose it, but you're going to understand, oh, well, next time I need to make sure that I don't do this type of targeting, or I make sure the creative looks like this or whatever the case might be. And otherwise, you know, you can just read, read, read, and you're just not going to get it. It's just very few people are able to just read and actually understand in my opinion. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, I think that's spot on. Let's talk about artifact labs. That's the new thing you're really working on. You're partnered with Diego, a good friend of mine who helped us get connected. Maybe give a little bit of a high level on what it is, what the mission and goal and what's coming. Yeah, absolutely. So it's really interesting. Diego and I have been partnering up for a couple of months now. He's an amazing dude, wizard at business and marketing.

Sam Knight [00:16:35]:

And so he had an agency and I had an agency. And being a solo founder, I'll never do it again. I'm not saying that some people can't do it, but it's just not as fun. All of the pressure is on your shoulders. 100% of when things go good, it's for you. And when things go bad, it's for you. And you need people that complement your skills. And Diego and I have very complimentary skills. I'm very interested in technology and software. Diego happened to be working with a lot of people in technology and software. So, you know, I'm very active on Twitter and always talking about marketing and just random stuff, but really heavy on the marketing. He and I kind of formed a relationship, started chatting. Long story short, we met for sushi 1 day. The energy was just right. We just felt it. And we just decided to shake hands and go for it. So we spun off a new agency. He's still running his to the side. I'm running mine to the side, but we're working on kind of getting everything into 1 bucket and just moving forward. And our goal is to really, I mean, we have a big goal and it's to impact culture through media. And the way that we do that is by, you know, the amazing clients that we work with, the businesses and individuals. I mean, we work with some crazy AI companies. We work with technology founders. We work with 1 of the former CEOs of AppSumo. He took them from 3 million to 80 million a year. So we work with some amazing people, a guy, amazing human named Patrick Campbell. He sold his company for like 200 million. So these people that are very, very successful, but they're also good people. And what we wanna do is help them bring their brand and their mission to life, whether it's a person or a business. And ultimately we wanna impact culture for the better because the main way that you can make a difference in this world is by impacting culture, right? And so Artifacts Labs, where that name comes from, you know, if you think of an artifact, it's something significant that stood the test of time, that stands out, that is unique. And so we're trying to create content that stands the test of time, that is unique. And then Labs is because if you think about it, we're kind of like here creating all this like formulas and concoctions, but with media, of course. So that's where Artifacts Labs is right now. I think in a year from now, it's going to be insane, the growth we've had. We've already got some really amazing preliminary results, some amazing clients. We've been talking to some incredible businesses and we're very excited about the direction that we're going. But I see us stepping into, right now we're working with technology, but I also work with 1 of the more popular songwriters from like the 1970s. And he wrote a ton of songs for Elton John and all of these insanely famous musicians. So we wanna permeate that world too. And I'm very passionate about holistic health. So we want to tap into the conscious creator community and ultimately just be a voice for good because I think a lot of people, when they think of marketing and advertising, they kind of get like a slimy, like, ugh, I don't like that. It's not good. But what we want to do is we want to make a positive impact in the world And we want to do it while helping our customers make more money, expand their influence and grow their messaging essentially. That's awesome. And I think it's really cool how you guys, like I know a little bit on the inside, Diego's explained to me, he's created this amazing network and I'm sure you have as well. So you're able to tap into that. But it's cool how I just love meeting people like you and him that are kind of on the same like mindset as me because it's not very common. And I could not agree with you more than I don't want to do solo projects anymore. I did a few. It was awesome in the time, but super stressful. It's way cooler to get to win with other people. So I think that's awesome. You've talked about holistic medicine and holistic. Let's talk more about that, where that passion comes from and Educate me because I'm not very educated and I'd love to learn. For sure. Well, it's a great question. I mean, where this all stemmed from was when I was working for these startups, I was having the most insane anxiety ever. I have no idea where it came from, but I was just waking up. My heart would be pounding. I'd be anxious. I'd be nervous. And I think this is a thing that a lot of people, maybe not that extreme, but a lot of people deal with anxiety and stress, maybe even a little bit of depression. And it just didn't make sense to me. I was this young dude, I was healthy, at least I thought, but I was having all of these mental health issues and it was really bad. I mean, it was like tearing me up. And this was like 7 years ago. It was like really, really tough, honestly. Very dark times. And I was just so obsessed with figuring out a solution to all of this. And I've always been a person that's obsessed with learning from people that are a few steps ahead of me. So 1 thing that I did was I was always listening to CEO interviews, successful people. And this is kind of like early podcasting days when podcasts were really getting cranked up. And 1 thing that kept popping up and all these people that I listened to was that they all meditated. And I was like, interesting. Okay. Like I don't even know what meditation is at this point. I'm like, I don't really understand it. I don't know what it is. I'm not sure why it's helpful. Didn't really think too much about it, but it got to a point where I was just, I was like, man, I'm not going to take medication. It's just something I'm not going to do. So what do I do? Because I'm getting to the point where I can't even get out of bed in the morning. Long story short, I started practicing meditation. Didn't even really know what I was doing, but I was trying. Had a profound impact on my life. I mean profound. It helped my anxiety, it helped me think more clearly. It just, it basically permeated every single aspect of my life and impacting me so deeply that I became obsessed. I became so passionate about it. I created a blog immediately. I started telling everyone I knew about it and I've always been a fitness guy just cause you know, sports and stuff. But then it really clicked for me that we are so much more than this physical body. We're also mental and spiritual beings. And I became just obsessed. And so that's why the opportunity that popped up with Sean was so incredible because I really got to go spend time doing something that I was so passionate about. And it's 1 of the main times in my life where I just felt so fueled by passion, like waking up in the morning, like I was put here to spread this message and so very much feel that way. So holistic health is so important to me because I think with the Instagram world we live in, people get obsessed with the body and the aesthetic And that's important for sure. Like you want to have a nice body, you want to be in shape, but the mental side of things is so freaking important. And it's getting more attention now and talked more about now, but it's still in my opinion, very overlooked. I think a lot of people, especially smart people are like, oh, I don't need that. I'm not worried about that. But you know, the truth is, we could all use a little bit more of it. So the holistic aspect is, you know, we're not just our physicality, we're not just our fitness, we're also our nutrition, but we're also our mental health. And we're also our spiritual practice. And when you combine all these things, you build a foundation for a human being that is full of energy, happy, thriving, it's not always going to be sunshine and rainbows, but you have the tools in your tool belt to combat whatever it is that you're dealing with. And not to mention, you're probably going to live a much longer life because you know, a lot of disease starts in the mind. And that's, you know, probably a rabbit hole for another conversation. But there's a lot of disease that's created within the mind. And it is formed in the body because that's your body telling you, hey, something's wrong here. So I'm extremely passionate about holistic health. I think it's just very, very important. And it's just something that you know, for me, it's every day I'm trying to work on myself, improve myself. And I just think that most people could benefit from it by combining all of these things, because I've been the dude that was super jacked in the gym, but was just an absolute head case, you know, and I've seen people that are everything in between. So it's just to me super important and I wanna keep spreading that message. Yeah, that's awesome. And I've always wanted to get into meditating, but I'm like a little bit of a quitter when it comes to it. I do it like twice and I don't like see, I don't like get it. So what are some tips for meditating? And also What are just some holistic best practices? Cause I'm super interested. I want to start working on myself. I feel like for me, I'm at this point in my life where I'm going from college kid, having fun to like an actual adult with a real job, doing real things. And I want to work on myself. So this is really cool for me. Absolutely, bro. So, I mean, you got to think about it like this with the way that technology is today and social media and everything. We have access to anything that we could ever want, right? Anything. And really, the differentiator between someone that sells a company for 250 million versus someone that's struggling. I mean, not it's not as black and white as this, but a lot of that is their brain, right? And so it's important to invest in the health of our brain and to make sure that our brain is functioning at the highest level possible. So It's not something you can see, you know, it's not like a 6 pack, but it is so, so important for how long you can focus for, you know, your energy levels for your creativity. So anyways, meditation is like maintenance on your brain, because if you think about it, We get so much stimulation every single day. I mean, legitimately, this is insane, but I think this is a fact. We consume more information in the course of 1 day than maybe our grandparents or our great-grandparents did in their entire life combined. We are getting text messages, phone calls, Instagram, TikTok, email, YouTube. I mean, it's nonstop and it's just input, input, input, input and we never take the time to pause and to just be, just be still or the famous saying is be here now. And the tough part is like you said, you're not going to meditate 1 time and start levitating and feel amazing, right? And the same way that you know, you go exercise, you're not really going to feel much either. Meditation is a practice. And the reason that it's called a practice is because it's something that you need to do over and over and over in the compound effect builds up till next thing you know, someone cuts you off in traffic and you don't react because you've trained your brain to not react to the stimulus and to just sit and to just be. And so what it does is it does a lot of things, but like, you know, it forms new neural connections in the brain. I could go on a whole tangent about that. It shrinks the amygdala, the fear center in the brain. It does a lot of stuff with the default mode network, which allows us to be creative and think outside the box. But it also, the first thing that I noticed, because I used to have a bad temper, this was the first thing I noticed about meditation, is it allowed me to create a barrier between my thoughts and my reactions. So I can have a thought I can get stimulus but there was a barrier that allowed me to pause before I would react and that was extremely powerful for me at the time not to mention, you know, I call it nervous system training. We don't think about this, but our nervous system runs everything. If you look at the nervous system in the body, it's actually insane. Anyone listening to this should just Google an image of the nervous system. It's like this crown around our head and millions of cords that go down our body and send these electrical signals all down. And if you're not maintaining your nervous system and taking time to pause, to take a deep breath, you're slamming your foot on the gas of the car 24 7. That's not good. What do you think is going to happen when you're doing that long enough? Well, injuries, disease, sickness, you're eventually going to wear the card down. And so meditation is an opportunity to take a step back, to take a deep breath into just be. So that's kind of how I view it. I mean, man, that was that was amazing.

Andres Sanchez  [00:27:02]:

Like what a great, I always love when people do a really good job of putting things into perspective like, and it's funny because it's happened a few times today to me. And this I think is a perfect example. Like that constant foot on the gas analogy is golden. Because I mean, it's something we could simply think about, like, what if I just held the gas on my car for 24 hours? I mean, it would it would probably blow up overheat. That's super cool. And it's something that I and the thing for me, like I'm on that stage now, like I've graduated from just doing whatever I want and thinking that I'm young and I'm going to be fine. And I've become much more conscious of certain things, but I've done a poor job of executing them. And I think, so I'm like right on the cusp of like, if I could just get into a really solid routine and implement a lot of these tools, it'll just become second nature. And I've done that from a financial perspective with just some like mental rules and making things just straight up non-negotiables. I need to do a better job of doing that for me personally, like my health. And it's weird, like, and I mean, you could probably relate to this. Like I was an athlete my whole life. And like, man, sometimes when you're going nonstop, it's hard to train and train and train. So when you're done, it's finally like, oh man, like no practice, like no weight room, like all these things. And I feel like I'm still on that gap year of like, oh, I'll get to the training eventually. I'm just taking a break because I trained for so many years. So I think for me, I'm talking about myself here, but you've got me fired up about all of this cool stuff. And for anybody listening, I'm sure there's tons of people in the same boat as me. Let's just take the leap of faith, dive in, start to build this routine because I think the more and more I get to consume and I love your point about how much we consume on a daily basis. I don't even think that we stop to think about that. Your body, your mental health is so important. Like get ahead of it now.

Sam Knight [00:28:51]:

Years time flies by. So I think you did such a great job explaining it and like you've got me fired up to go and get after it and change my lifestyle. Absolutely. You know, and it's like you said, it just has to be something you commit to because if you're just like, Oh, yeah, I want to start meditating, you're never going to do it. Right. And I would encourage anyone listening, I cannot stress this enough meditation benefits from compounding action. So it gets the more you do it, the more it impacts your life and permeates into different parts of your life. So you know, I think also that if you like Francis, after this conversation, if you try to meditate for 20 minutes, it's going to be very hard for you. Like you're going to really struggle with it. And I think that If you think about it, it's crazy how hard it is to do nothing. And it's because we're just constantly stimulated. We're constantly used to getting input, getting input, getting input. And that's, that's a sign in and of itself. It's like, okay, why is it so hard for me to just be still for 20 minutes? You know? And like A lot of people think meditation is thinking of nothing and floating or whatever, but what meditation really is, is being the awareness and the observer of your thoughts. So like you don't fight the thoughts coming in, the thoughts come in, you observe the thoughts and you let them go. I love to use the analogy of like when I'm meditating and I'm always focusing on my breath, the inhale, slow inhales, the holds and the exhales, because that grounds me in the present moment. But inevitably, after a minute, 3 minutes, 7 minutes, whatever the case might be, I'm thinking about that email or that call, you know, it's life comes in and that's okay. People get discouraged because they're like, I can't stop thinking, but that's not the point. When these thoughts come in, you need to just be aware, observe the thoughts. It's not a good thought or a bad thought. Oh, that's interesting that I was thinking that. It's interesting that I was, you know, that popped in my brain. And I like to pretend like I'm laying on the grass. The thought is a cloud in the sky. And once I become conscious of the fact that I'm thinking of the thought, I just let it go. I just let it go away. And then I come back to the present moment and it happens again. And then I come back to the present moment and it happens again. So a lot of people put too much pressure on themselves to just be completely, you know, silent in their minds. And what Naval said, if you're familiar with Naval, what he talks about is eventually you're going to get to a point where your brain does reach that inbox 0 and those thoughts are not there. And the level of peace and serenity that you'll get from that will be unlike anything you've ever experienced in your entire life. So it's worth putting in the effort for it. You're not gonna meditate 1 time and be the most calm, relaxed person ever, but it will pay off. Man, by the time this episode comes out, it'll be early June. I travel all the rest of this month, but I'm going back to the gym in early June. I'm putting it out there to the public world too, so people can hold me accountable that follow me and interact with me. I'm going back to the gym. I want to start to implement a lot of these things because I feel like lately life has just been crazy and I can feel myself like not feeling great like constantly and I think this is like a big change and Then I want to come back and have an episode again in 2 3 months and we can really dive into this specific Topic see kind of where I've gotten and because because at this point like this is selfish for anybody listening. I hope you're enjoying this journey because I'm selfishly taking it down this rabbit hole because I like to learn. That's 1 thing that's helped me. Like I'm very curious,

Andres Sanchez  [00:31:58]:

always interested in learning new stuff and how it works. So this has been something now I can go down the rabbit hole in my spare time and when I'm traveling these next few weeks, it gives me something to put some time into and learn more about. So yeah, for sure. Well, I'll hold you to that then when this episode comes out, check in with you, see where we're at. Yeah, there you go. Sam, something I like to do as we come get to the tail end of the episode. It is a super simple question. I've had people answer with something as simple as what they're going to eat for dinner tonight. Or I've had people answer with a 15 minute long winded conversation about how aliens are coming and all this crazy stuff. What are you excited about in the near future? Yeah, in the near future, what I'm excited about is the opportunity to show up and continue building. Because I think that kind of going back to what we were talking about, this constant simulation, we're used to instant gratification. We're used to overnight success, if you will. And what I'm doing right now, there's been a lot of ups and there has been a lot of downs. And we're in a weird time with the economy. We're in a weird time with the world in general. There's a lot of change happening, transformation.

Sam Knight [00:33:04]:

And I am grateful and excited for the opportunity to be able to be alive during this time and to continue to build. And what I mean by that is, you know, Artifacts Labs may not be a million dollar company in 2 months from now, but we get the opportunity to work with and serve incredible people and to build. I just think that as human beings, it's in our DNA to want to create and to build and to grow stuff. I just, I feel very strongly about that. And I feel blessed with the opportunity to be able to show up each day with intention and put in the work towards this greater vision, this overall vision to where we want to go. And regardless of if you're talking about a business, your physical body, your mental health, I think that having things that we are building and improving and growing is a part of our nature. And as a result, you know, we improve because of that. And so the world becomes a better place because of the improvements that we make for ourselves, for our business, whatever the case might be. So for me, I'm just excited to keep showing up and building regardless of if the results happen tomorrow or 2 years from now. I absolutely love that. You've got me fired up, not only about continuing to build stuff, but my health as well. All of Sam's information is going to be linked in the bio to the video, but I've always got to take a notch on people. I know you're all really lazy, so maybe read out where they can primarily follow you and find you for anybody that doesn't want to just click the link in the bio. Yeah, absolutely. So right now my handles on social are the Sam Knight. That'll probably get changed pretty soon. But basically, if you search Sam Knight, you'll see me, you'll see my page with, you know, it'll mention something about marketing and holistic health, you know, you're in the right place on Twitter. It's digital attention because I'm very focused on marketing, but yeah, the Sam Knight or digital attention and that's night with the K. So yeah, you should be able to find me if you hop on there. And I'm usually talking about something, really a lot of the stuff we talked about today and then just dive even deeper into it. Awesome. Sam, it was an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much for coming on the show. And I'm looking forward to this continued relationship. Yeah, likewise, bro. I appreciate you having me on. It was a great conversation and looking forward to following you and your journey as well. Awesome. Thank you. All right, brother.