This is my journal entry from January 29, 2026 — my real, unedited day, shared just as it happened.
I woke up this morning to begin the day with a call with Joe Parys. Joe Parys, you can see him at JoeParys.com. I've coached him and known him for over a decade now. He first ran into me on Udemy when he was creating his first course. Now he's up to almost a million students on Udemy. He has 80-some courses. He paid me to coach him when he was building up his brand new YouTube crypto channel, which now has hundreds of thousands of subscribers and has done very well for him over the years, although it's not a great time right now with the crypto environment. And he's looking to build himself a new business model. We scheduled a call just to catch up, and he showed me he found some girl that's selling 24 courses for $24. And I told him he should sell 27 courses for $27 and build a bundle and a business system similar to her if that's what he wants to do. He told me that she gets most of her traffic from paid ads.
And we talked a lot about the whole business system. I did ask him ethically. I said, do you think this is a good experience for all the suckers who are clicking on these paid ads and are buying this girl's courses and coaching? How many of them are actually getting any kind of decent results? Probably almost none. According to the statistics I remember on Udemy, the majority of students who bought my courses never even watched it. Joe said the same thing with his crypto course. Even people paying hundreds of dollars generally did not even watch more than one single video. And it's not because of the quality of the course, it's that people buy stuff all the time they don't actually use, even if it costs $300. So I said to him, is this a good thing? Is this worth your time? Is there anything better than you can do? And he said, you know, I'm not worried about that. If people want to buy stuff that's up to them, I'm worried about making a business system that's profitable and that gets my courses out there to people who will watch them, shares my experience online. I'm like, okay, I get that.
And he said, you know, I could pay you to help me with this because I don't know how to do paid ads. And I said, well, I'd recommend you do the paid ads yourself and I'll coach you on how to do the paid ads along the way and make it easier. So what's really cool is he might hire me for some coaching, which would be some nice income coming in. This did get me inspired thinking, man, I could do a business system like that, but I'm just not feeling it. It just doesn't. I can't imagine creating courses and doing all that crap with social media ads. I'm like, man, if there's some way I could put these skills to work, I'd love to find it. But right now, I'm not sure.
After the call with Joe, I have a training session scheduled with my personal trainer. And therefore, the best thing to do seems to be to hit an AA meeting before that. So I go to the AA meeting, hang out there, say hi to people as usual. Then I come back and do my session with my personal trainer at 1230. Meanwhile, the woman from my gym has not responded in almost a day to my text asking if she'd like to go out. My personal trainer confirms that that's a reasonable text I sent, like she should have responded by now. And I'm like, what the hell is going on with girls just not responding at all? The woman I'd been talking to hasn't responded to my message yesterday. I sent a couple more messages, and several of them didn't get responded to either. It's up to me to make the effort, right, and it's not up to me to get results. It only takes one girl that's really responsive and likes me to make a huge difference.
I finish up with my training session with my personal trainer, which takes a little longer, and I have a great leg workout doing that with him. I schedule the rest of my sessions with him before my time runs out and we have a great chat about dating. And I'm going to try now approaching girls whenever I can. If they're really attractive, I'm just going to acknowledge that at the beginning of the conversation because it seems really powerful and I'm just going to blast through my fear that there's going to be negative consequences because there were already what you'd say were negative consequences of going to a yoga studio, even though I was trying to be so discreet and indirect. It's like, fuck it. Might as well just go say what I want to say and be honest and be direct, be myself. My personal trainer makes a great point that if you're in the right place, you'll be supported being just as you are. And that's great. If I can't go to a yoga studio and tell girls they're hot, then I should go somewhere else where my business is better appreciated.
After working out with my personal trainer, I come home and I stop at a grocery store on the way home, grabbing a whole bunch of whole plant foods. I mean, look at my cart. It's so obvious I'm healthy. There's potatoes in there, all vegetables, fruit all over the place. I got some tahini. It's like, no shit, this guy's healthy. Look at his grocery cart. Not one bullshit thing in my grocery cart. I head home and make myself a nice big salad, and I record a chapter of my book, which I feel really good getting back to recording my book. I do a nice long St. Pete chapter. Actually, fuck, no, I did that yesterday. I did the St. Pete chapter yesterday, but I started editing it today, and I get ready to have the kids come over.
My ex-wife drops the kids off. My son's feeling a little bit of what we call floppy, and he is just wanting to rest, so he lays down in bed for most of the day, and I have some really nice time with my daughter. My daughter and I draw some pictures and talk. Then I take my daughter to her piano lesson where I spend 30 minutes as my son rests in the back seat laying down. I edit the St. Pete chapter of my Un-effin'-myself book. Then I'm back home with my daughter, and my son is up for playing the Harry Potter Monopoly game. Lays halfway down in the chair and just drops the dice on top of the table and we move for him. We have a good time. We get in bed nice and early tonight with me, including me, getting in bed before 9 p.m. And I'm looking forward to a nice long day of sleep.
Right after the kids got here, the woman I'd been talking to did text me back yesterday. She sent three messages. I don't need to put everything she says, but I sent her three messages back after four hours. And I felt really good just getting a fucking message back. And I leaped into fantasy and like, well, it's nice to at least get some attention. And I'm enjoying the adventure of not knowing who's going to be the next one. And at least there's some potential candidates right now. She certainly, I think she's probably top of the list right now, but maybe I just need to make the list bigger. I get in bed with the kids nice and early and I'm really grateful for a day that was pretty relaxing with them, productive for me, and I'm feeling full of optimism about my business going forward.
If you connect with how I live and think, you can follow the rest of my days on YouTube in my Life playlist.