Dan: Hello. Welcome to The Evryman Podcast. This is episode 14. I’m here with my new producer Duke. I just hired him. Duke, would you like to say hello?

Duke: Hey, Duke.

Dan: Duke is a little over a year old. His favorite song is “Despacito.” His favorite book is “Go, Dog. Go!” He’s eating dinosaurs right now. Wanna say anything else?

Duke: Hey, Duke.

Dan: Deep thoughts from Duke. So on the way to daycare this morning, Duke barfed all over himself and so he’s hanging out today. And I don’t know if anybody can relate but getting a full day of work done with a little one around is difficult. So Duke is with me as I get this podcast ready to release. Evryman continues to march forward in a relaxed and pretty progressive direction away. We sold out our expedition experience which is coming up in a month. I’m pumped about that. What else do I have to say? Well, here’s what I have to say. Our guest today is Ezra Firestone. He is the founder and head cheese at smartmarketer.com and he has a handful of online businesses that do incredibly well.

I met Ezra a handful of years ago in New York City and actually helped him get his first feet on the ground, off the ground with some web videos. That’s a long time ago. I’m really excited to have him here today. He’s a good friend of my close friend John O’Connor who is on a different episode of this and I’m speaking today with Ezra. He is in Hawaii. There’s a lot of really cool, fast-paced, brilliant stuff happening in this interview. Stick around afterward and do… What should they do? What else should I do?

Duke: [Inaudible 00:02:10 ].

Dan: They should eat cheesy dinosaurs? You should also go to our Facebook page, The Evryman Facebook page. Like us, follow us, share us. We’re gonna be ramping up our social media presence in the next couple of months and we would love for you to be a part of it. And I’m gonna be more active on there and I can answer your questions directly and we can be more involved. So go to our Facebook page and go to our website evryman.co. We’re still ramping up to launch more and more groups. There’s a lot of resources on there that will be expanding as we move forward. So I need to take care of this little turkey and I hope you enjoy the show.

All right, I’m here with… I’m gonna start that again. I was laughing. I was laughing in the middle of my intro. I’m here with Ezra Firestone. And, Ezra, before I hear anything else, I wanna know, describe to me your surroundings because I hear something in the background and it’s making me feel happy.

Ezra: So I am sitting in a house on Sunset Beach on the North Shore of Oahu, Hawaii across the street from the elementary school where I went to elementary school. And I’m actually meeting with my third grade teacher a little later this week which is gonna be kinda wild.

Dan: That’s amazing. Well, two things sound amazing. A, you grew up on the North Shore, that’s amazing. And two, your third grade teacher, did you reach out? Did you set this up?

Ezra: No. Actually, she reached out to me because, you know, some of my family still lives here and she has this blog called “Rex the Surf Dog” and she’s like educator for education, helping people create curriculum for third grade education across America. And she’s got this like stuffed dog that she travels with and writes a blog about it or whatever. But my auntie still works at the farmer’s market and Mr. Bill [SP] goes down at the farmers market so she kinda knows some of my family. And she said, “Hey, how’s Ezra doing?” and got a sense of what I was up to in the world and reached out and said, “Hey, I wanna connect, like I really think what you’re doing is cool. And I always thought that you needed to work on your listening skills. But other than that, I really thought you were a cool kid.”

Dan: Amazing. Well, man, I gotta ask. How are your listening skills now?

Ezra: You know, I’ve been working on it. You know, we actually pulled my report cards. I have all my grade school report cards and like all of the content is quite similar. It’s like, “Ezra is such a bright child. He really needs to work on his listening skills. Ezra is a really bright child. Can someone teach him not to use foul language?” like all this crazy stuff. You know, like we were kind of a rabid bunch of animal…like pack of animals. Actually, I grew up on a hippie commune, for lack of a better way to describe it, sort of like an alternative lifestyle experiment which is a fascinating backstory that I would love to tell and take like three minutes to give you the history of it.

But one interesting thing that I’ve been thinking about since I’ve been in Hawaii is growing up in Hawaii like 20 years ago, the…being a white kid, being a haole boy, you were a minority. And I don’t think that…like I think it was an interesting experience to be in the group that like… I don’t know how to articulate it without sounding offensive. But to be in what was considered a minority group and we’re treated differently because of the way that you looked and that being like it wasn’t cool to be a haole boy. You got picked on. You got beat up. You know what I mean? And it was just a really fascinating and valuable experience. I also, obviously, love Hawaii and like totally, you know, once you fit in, you fit in but…

Dan: So I do want you to go… So one of the ways I love to start this is I’d love to hear like a minute bio. And I want it to be as, you know, dropped in and punchy and direct as you possibly… Like who are you, Ezra? And we’re gonna keep fleshing that out but tie that into its…since we have this reference point, this third grade teacher you’re about to… Tell me who Ezra was, as part of this, tell me who Ezra was as a third grade-year old boy or a third grade boy and if that takes us into the unique circumstances of how you grew up, please take us there, man.

Ezra: You know, what I’ve been searching for my whole life is connection and intimacy. And that’s like…you know, I’ve been sold this bill of goods that…and I think every man in society has been sold the same bill of goods, that production is what’s going to bring you satisfaction because the way that like guys get value in the eyes of society is based on what they produce. The more money you make, the more you produce, the more highly regarded you are in society. For women, it’s youth and beauty. Women are told that their life is pretty good till about 35 and then it’s like, tighten it up, tuck it in, chop it off, inject it, you know, dye your hair, like anti-aging, anti-wrinkle.

And so like their value proposition in the eyes of society is youth and beauty and our value proposition in the eyes of society is production. And what’s interesting is I’ve gone really deep in the world of production. I have a business. I’m not answering your question and I will answer it. But I understand I’m off on a tangent. But I got 50 employees. I have this crazy production cycle that is being really fulfilling but, ultimately, what I’m up to in my life is not this production cycle. It’s not what I talk to people about. It’s not my path in life. It’s just something that I do because I enjoy it but what I’m really up to and cultiva