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0:01:19 [MUSIC]
0:01:21 What’s up, young and profitors?
0:01:23 It’s time to talk about greatness.
0:01:27 And who better to talk about that with than the host of the School of
0:01:29 Greatness podcast, Lewis House.
0:01:33 In this 2023 interview from episode 232,
0:01:37 Lewis gave us a masterclass on how to develop a greatness mindset and
0:01:39 the work it takes to get there.
0:01:43 Once upon a time as a senior in college and an all-American athlete,
0:01:44 Lewis had it all.
0:01:47 Then he received some life-changing news.
0:01:49 The night before a big football game,
0:01:52 Lewis’s father got into a car accident that left him in a coma.
0:01:56 When his dad could no longer guide him, Lewis started seeking new mentors.
0:01:58 And he began reaching out to highly accomplished people,
0:02:01 asking them about their stories of success.
0:02:05 In this conversation, we’ll explore some of the key lessons Lewis has learned
0:02:10 from his quest on covering how we can all embrace our own paths to greatness.
0:02:13 Whether you’re seeking inspiration for your personal journey or
0:02:16 looking to elevate your professional life, you are going to want to hear this.
0:02:24 I’d love to talk to you about your story and your own journey towards greatness
0:02:26 and what you’ve learned along the way.
0:02:28 And from my understanding when I was doing my research,
0:02:31 a major piece of your story occurred when you were sleeping on your sister’s
0:02:35 couch in Columbus, Ohio at the age of 23.
0:02:40 You had an injury that abruptly ended your professional football career.
0:02:43 And your dad was recently in a car accident and was put in a coma.
0:02:47 You were also pretty broke and it seemed like the walls of your world were
0:02:49 basically caving in on you.
0:02:52 So I’d love to understand what were the aha moments or
0:02:56 the series of moments that got you off of your sister’s couch?
0:03:00 >> I think I had something inside of me calling me for something more.
0:03:05 In a moment of, or many moments, many months of breakdown and sadness.
0:03:09 And kind of grieving, grieving the loss of my dream of playing football,
0:03:13 grieving my father who was in a hospital for many months in a coma.
0:03:19 And just kind of grieving loss in general, emotional, mental, physical loss.
0:03:21 And having a lack of certainty.
0:03:22 I didn’t have certainty.
0:03:24 I didn’t have clarity about my future.
0:03:26 I didn’t know what the point of all this was.
0:03:28 And so it was just very confusing time.
0:03:30 And I didn’t have any resources.
0:03:31 I didn’t have any money.
0:03:35 I was in debt from my college loans.
0:03:39 This was in 2008, 2009 when the economy in the US was essentially tanking.
0:03:42 The housing crisis was tanking and everything.
0:03:47 And I didn’t have my father who was kind of my backup bank account.
0:03:50 If I needed money, he would give me like 50 bucks here and there.
0:03:52 It was like a security blanket almost.
0:03:54 Like, okay, go chase your dream.
0:03:57 When you’re done, you can come and I’ll hire you for my company type of thing.
0:03:59 So I didn’t have that anymore.
0:04:02 So I had to learn how to be resourceful.
0:04:06 I had to learn how to kind of fend for my own, really.
0:04:09 And how to tap into a network of people that I didn’t know.
0:04:11 But I felt like I needed to know.
0:04:14 So that’s when I started reaching out to mentors, coaches, guides.
0:04:19 I started consuming as much as I could in terms of resources and books,
0:04:23 going to conferences, and just trying to meet people, learn from people,
0:04:24 and take action.
0:04:26 So that was kind of that journey then.
0:04:30 >> So something that me and you both have in common is that we leveraged
0:04:35 LinkedIn as a launchpad of our careers and our podcasts.
0:04:37 So I did the same thing five years ago.
0:04:39 You did it ten years ago, right?
0:04:42 And so I’d love to understand how you leveraged LinkedIn to get your foot in
0:04:45 the door and start in the world of online business.
0:04:48 >> Yeah, I started on LinkedIn at end of 2007, actually.
0:04:52 I think there was only about 12 million people on the platform at the time.
0:04:55 I wrote a book about LinkedIn in 2009.
0:04:57 There was one other book about it, but
0:04:59 I think there’s probably hundreds of books about it now.
0:05:01 But I was one of the first that wrote a book about LinkedIn.
0:05:04 And I became obsessed with it early on because a mentor said,
0:05:05 why don’t you check it out?
0:05:07 Maybe you can find a job there.
0:05:10 And I was just trying to network on there originally.
0:05:13 LinkedIn was not as robust as it is now.
0:05:17 And so after about five years, I kind of gave up on LinkedIn because it was so
0:05:19 powerful in the beginning for me.
0:05:22 But then they weren’t innovating like other social media platforms were.
0:05:26 And they did not connect with creators, influencers.
0:05:30 They didn’t have any support for someone like me back then.
0:05:34 So I really felt like they neglected the community, in my opinion.
0:05:40 And then I guess about five, six years ago they started to innovate their platform.
0:05:44 And add more tools and resources for creators.
0:05:48 I slowly got back on because I kind of got burnt out from LinkedIn because it
0:05:51 just was, it was so challenging to work with the platform.
0:05:56 And the team at LinkedIn wasn’t responsive as they are now.
0:06:01 It was a launching pad in sense of building powerful connections early on for me.
0:06:06 And I met some incredible people that I networked with on the platform,
0:06:09 that I’m still friends with today back in 2007.
0:06:15 There’s a friend of mine who is a mega billionaire now that I met in 2007 by
0:06:19 just sending him a direct message on LinkedIn and us building a friendship
0:06:23 over the years and going to events together and watching each other grow.
0:06:27 And I just saw him a couple months ago and it’s like all because of LinkedIn,
0:06:29 the power of connection.
0:06:31 So it’s been an amazing platform in general.
0:06:35 I wish I would have used it when I had my podcast launched because I actually
0:06:38 didn’t use LinkedIn that much when I launched the show.
0:06:39 Wow, interesting.
0:06:43 And so I’d love to understand what gave you the genesis and the idea for
0:06:48 starting your podcast because you were pretty early on 2013 at that time,
0:06:50 was still really early.
0:06:51 Yeah.
0:06:55 In 2012, I was going through a transition in my business at the time.
0:06:57 I had an online marketing company.
0:07:00 I was kind of getting burnt out by what I was doing.
0:07:04 And I just didn’t feel like it was meaningful to me anymore.
0:07:09 It was still powerful, it was making money, but it wasn’t a deeper meaning,
0:07:10 sense of purpose.
0:07:14 And what I was doing, though, is I was using LinkedIn before then to connect
0:07:17 with coaches and mentors and leaders.
0:07:19 And I would meet with a lot of them in person.
0:07:22 And I was getting so much wisdom and knowledge from them when I would ask
0:07:26 them questions that I was just like, I should probably record these.
0:07:29 And I’ve heard of this thing called podcasting.
0:07:32 No one knows what it is at the time, 2012.
0:07:34 But I was like, I feel like it might be big one day.
0:07:37 I said, all right, I called two friends that had a podcast.
0:07:40 There was probably only 50 people at the time that had podcasts.
0:07:42 I called two of them.
0:07:43 They told me they loved it.
0:07:44 They loved the experience.
0:07:46 They loved the connection with the community.
0:07:51 They felt like it was the most engaged type of content they were able to create
0:07:53 with people in the community.
0:07:54 So I said, I think I could do this.
0:07:55 I have no clue what I’m doing.
0:07:57 I’ve never done this before.
0:07:59 I didn’t go to school for this, but I feel like I can figure it out.
0:08:01 Let me try it for one year.
0:08:04 I’ll do it once a week for a year as an experiment.
0:08:05 And if it doesn’t work out, then I’ll stop.
0:08:07 But I fell in love right away.
0:08:13 And now 10 years later, 1400 plus episodes later, almost a billion downloads later,
0:08:14 it’s still going.
0:08:16 That is absolutely amazing.
0:08:18 You’ve been crushing it on your podcast.
0:08:23 And after I’ve looked at your story and learned more about how you came up,
0:08:26 I realized that you were an early adopter in so many things.
0:08:30 So you were an early adopter in LinkedIn, then you were an early adopter in podcasting.
0:08:34 And now on YouTube, you’re crushing everybody in the podcast game
0:08:39 because you were one of the first ones to take the full step in and becoming a video podcast.
0:08:45 Yeah, it was almost eight years ago after maybe it was two or three years into the podcast.
0:08:48 I started to see probably the third year in.
0:08:51 I was like, oh, OK, this is a thing.
0:08:53 And there are lots of other people starting to jump in.
0:08:57 I would say I was like the second wave of people that jumped into podcasting.
0:09:00 If Joe Rogan was like two years before me.
0:09:04 And then there was just like some underground tech podcast that was essentially it.
0:09:06 There were no bigger shows.
0:09:10 There were some big shows at that time in the small ecosystem, but it wasn’t mainstream.
0:09:18 Then there was guys like me and Pat Flynn and Rich Roll kind of all came in around the same time,
0:09:23 maybe within a six month window in 2012, 2013.
0:09:29 And so we were kind of like the second wave of people jumping in and trying to figure it out.
0:09:34 And then probably 2015, I think that was probably around the time when Serial came out
0:09:38 and it became more mainstream podcasting.
0:09:40 And then there was that’s kind of the third wave.
0:09:42 And now it just keeps the waves keep coming.
0:09:44 I remember around that time, I was just like, I don’t know.
0:09:47 I feel like this is just going to keep getting bigger.
0:09:51 And it’s hard to innovate audio, at least it was at the time.
0:09:54 And I still think it is kind of hard to innovate audio at this time.
0:09:55 It’s not viral.
0:09:56 It’s not really shareable that well.
0:09:59 It’s you can only do so much with the editing.
0:10:00 There’s only so many things you can do.
0:10:05 So I was like, I feel like I need to film these and just put them up on YouTube
0:10:09 and use it as a promotional tool to promote the audio.
0:10:11 And so for five years, that’s what I did.
0:10:15 I put them on YouTube, I would cut up clips, put it on social media.
0:10:20 But I never monetized the YouTube or the video until two years ago, two and a half years ago.
0:10:23 And then I turned monetization on because I didn’t want guys who were running ads
0:10:27 to be in front of my content selling their Ferrari courses or whatever it was.
0:10:31 So for me, I just wanted to add value and serve and just give for free.
0:10:38 So I invested for five years, a videographer and editor to do it without monetizing it at all.
0:10:43 And it was probably one of the best decisions I did because now we have over a thousand videos
0:10:48 on YouTube that are constantly searchable and shareable and adding value to people.
0:10:49 Yeah, that’s amazing.
0:10:51 You’re doing amazing things on YouTube.
0:10:54 And you may not know this, but I have a podcast network.
0:10:57 So I represent like 20 different self-improvement and business shows.
0:11:00 And I just presented at the IAB up front.
0:11:05 And my whole presentation was about the fact that podcasts are not audio only.
0:11:07 They’re multi-channel now.
0:11:09 You shouldn’t focus audio first even for your ads.
0:11:14 You should be promoting across YouTube, podcast, live streams, even paid live events,
0:11:16 which I know that you also do as well.
0:11:21 So really cool to see you pioneering once again in the podcast space.
0:11:25 So I’d love to understand, when did you first start getting traction with your podcast?
0:11:29 Like how long did it take you to get traction with your podcast?
0:11:35 My first year going all in, promoting every single week on every channel
0:11:43 of marketing efforts that I had, I got only 750,000 downloads total in my first year.
0:11:46 And that was every day promoting everywhere.
0:11:49 The second year, I had a million and a half downloads.
0:11:53 Third year, I think it was like three and a half or four million or something like that.
0:11:58 And so I feel like it took like years, really, for me to get certain types of scale.
0:12:03 Two years ago, I think we had a few hundred million downloads in one year.
0:12:06 But it took many years for that to scale up.
0:12:07 It takes time.
0:12:10 And I think that’s why I tell a lot of people, don’t do a podcast unless you’re committed
0:12:14 to doing it without getting any downloads and any results for years.
0:12:17 If you think you’re going to make money and get millions of downloads right away,
0:12:18 it’s just not going to happen.
0:12:21 So you got to do it because you really enjoy it.
0:12:22 You really love it.
0:12:27 You feel like you’re called to share something in the world in your unique perspective.
0:12:29 Yeah, it was a struggle.
0:12:34 But at the same time, there was traction in the sense that the community loved it
0:12:38 and they were talking about it and they were raving about it.
0:12:41 So there was a small community that was really growing.
0:12:44 It just wasn’t this mass scale for years.
0:12:46 Yeah.
0:12:52 I mean, 750,000 in the first year is still in today’s standards now is really good.
0:12:54 So it sounds like you were doing good from the start.
0:12:56 But now we get that in like a couple of days, you know.
0:13:00 So yeah, it’s totally different now, but 10 years later, right?
0:13:01 Yeah, exactly.
0:13:01 Okay.
0:13:06 So like you said, your podcast reaches hundreds of millions of people now every single month.
0:13:09 And you’ve had a lot of inspiring individuals.
0:13:10 We’ve had a lot of crossover and guests.
0:13:12 Your guests are even bigger than mine.
0:13:16 And you launched a third book recently where you included some of the learnings
0:13:17 that you got from these guests.
0:13:19 It’s called The Greatness Mindset.
0:13:24 And so now that you’re 10 years into your journey or more, you know,
0:13:27 in terms of being an entrepreneur and a podcaster,
0:13:29 what is your working definition of greatness?
0:13:33 It’s really discovering the unique gifts and talents that are within you
0:13:37 and in that discovery pursuing your dreams and goals,
0:13:41 in that pursuit making an impact on the people around you.
0:13:43 That’s for me what it is.
0:13:46 It’s like, what’s the unique talents and gifts we have?
0:13:48 Figure those out over our journey.
0:13:52 Try to help as many people as possible on the pursuit of our dreams and goals.
0:13:57 And I know a big key point in your book is finding a meaningful mission.
0:14:00 And so I’d love to understand what your meaningful mission is
0:14:01 and how you went about developing it.
0:14:04 It’s to serve 100 million lives every single week
0:14:06 to help them improve the quality of their life.
0:14:11 And how I came about that was probably three years into the podcast
0:14:13 as I was building and growing it.
0:14:15 I didn’t know what it was for me.
0:14:17 I was like, why am I doing this?
0:14:18 What’s the purpose?
0:14:19 What’s the reason?
0:14:23 What’s the, why am I getting up every morning and working hard on this thing?
0:14:24 And then I got clear on it.
0:14:26 I was like, well, what do I want to accomplish?
0:14:28 What do I want to, how do I want to serve people?
0:14:29 And how many people do I want to serve?
0:14:31 I would ask other people this question.
0:14:32 I would say, what do you want?
0:14:33 I want to change the world.
0:14:36 I want to make billions of dollars and all these different things.
0:14:38 And I was like, okay, changing the world.
0:14:40 Everyone says I want to impact the world.
0:14:43 And I was just like, all right, that’s hard to quantify.
0:14:47 And so for me, I was like, what is something that I could quantify?
0:14:50 And then I would hear people say, I want to impact billions of people.
0:14:53 I’m like, okay, yes, and you’re just getting started.
0:14:55 So it just seems too far away.
0:14:57 And so I said, I want to reach 100 million lives.
0:14:59 And then we did that in one year.
0:15:02 And I said, okay, I want to do it every week.
0:15:03 I want to reach 100 million lives a week.
0:15:07 And so I was like, all right, that’s, that seems like a big stretch,
0:15:09 but it’s a quantifiable number.
0:15:14 And it will force me to get creative, get resourceful.
0:15:18 It’ll force me to overcome my fears and insecurities that hold me back.
0:15:21 It’ll force me to develop new skills and talents
0:15:24 to think beyond where I’m currently at,
0:15:28 so that I could potentially achieve that goal one day.
0:15:29 And so it just excited me.
0:15:31 And it seemed far away.
0:15:33 It gives me something to measure,
0:15:36 and it gets me something to be excited about every day.
0:15:39 Yeah, so it’s not too unrealistic,
0:15:42 but it’s still pushing you and pushing your boundaries.
0:15:43 Absolutely.
0:15:46 So in terms of this mission, I noticed that you didn’t say,
0:15:50 I’m a podcaster who does this, or I’m an author who does this,
0:15:52 or any other label that I could stick on you.
0:15:52 Why is that?
0:15:56 When I focus on the mission, which is service,
0:16:01 there can be different mechanisms that can do it.
0:16:05 If podcasting dies tomorrow, then I don’t want to be,
0:16:06 well, I’m only a podcaster.
0:16:12 Now I can’t service the mission anymore with this mechanism
0:16:13 because the mechanism is gone.
0:16:19 And there’s always a message within the mechanism to serve the mission.
0:16:23 And so the message will continue to evolve and expand,
0:16:27 whether it’s packaging content and storytelling in a book
0:16:30 and giving tools and resources so people can consume it this way,
0:16:33 whether it’s audio, whether it’s video, whether it’s AI,
0:16:35 it’s always going to evolve and expand.
0:16:38 But there’s a mission, and then you got to figure out
0:16:39 what are the mechanisms that will serve you
0:16:42 in accomplishing the mission’s goal,
0:16:44 which is 100 million lives weekly.
0:16:47 And then there’s a message, what is the message
0:16:49 that you’re going to use and share?
0:16:50 Am I sharing the message?
0:16:52 Is it audio, is it video message?
0:16:54 Is it a written message?
0:16:56 Is it other people’s messages?
0:17:00 How can I distribute that message
0:17:02 through the mechanisms to serve the mission?
0:17:05 And so I’m just trying to think of what are the things
0:17:08 that excite me that I’m good at, that I’m talented at,
0:17:12 that I enjoy doing those mechanisms,
0:17:14 sharing the message through those mechanisms
0:17:16 to get to the mission faster.
0:17:17 That’s what I think about.
0:17:19 I haven’t mastered it.
0:17:22 I don’t feel like I’m close to figuring it out,
0:17:25 but we have something we can measure every single week
0:17:27 to support us in getting there faster.
0:17:29 I think that that makes a lot of sense.
0:17:31 I know when I think about myself and my mission,
0:17:34 I always say I want to be a positive voice for my generation,
0:17:37 and my voice can be on podcasts, on live streams, in a book,
0:17:38 wherever it is.
0:17:42 That way, I don’t have to pigeon-hold myself to one thing
0:17:42 as things evolve.
0:17:44 Because like you know, podcasting,
0:17:46 mine is already evolving so much.
0:17:47 It’s not really what it was,
0:17:49 even like we were talking about 10 years ago.
0:17:54 Let’s hold that thought and take a quick break with our sponsors.
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0:22:34 So let’s talk about something you speak about
0:22:36 in your book called Sweet Spots.
0:22:37 And you say this can help you figure out
0:22:39 what your meaningful mission is.
0:22:41 What is a sweet spot exactly, and how do we discover it?
0:22:46 Yeah, it’s really figuring out the talents that you have,
0:22:47 the skill sets you have.
0:22:50 It’s figuring out what makes you unique.
0:22:54 And then how can I go profit from these talents?
0:22:56 How can I go monetize these talents?
0:22:58 What are the tools and the things available
0:23:00 for me to do these things?
0:23:02 When we figure out those two areas,
0:23:04 I feel like there’s a sweet spot there
0:23:06 in between that that we could take action on.
0:23:07 And for me, again, it was,
0:23:09 I didn’t think I had a lot of talent.
0:23:11 I didn’t think I had a lot of skill, but I was curious.
0:23:15 And I go, how can I use this talent of curiosity?
0:23:15 Is this a talent?
0:23:17 I didn’t think it was, but I was like,
0:23:19 there’s a hidden talent of curiosity there.
0:23:23 So how can I use this to make money and to make an impact?
0:23:25 Okay, I don’t have to be the voice.
0:23:26 I can interview people.
0:23:30 I didn’t know how to use video or how to use audio at the time,
0:23:32 but I was like, these are tools available out there.
0:23:36 How can I use these tools and ask questions?
0:23:37 Can I make money around this?
0:23:39 I have no idea.
0:23:41 But the more I did it, the more I showed up
0:23:42 and was of service to people,
0:23:44 I was able to monetize these things.
0:23:48 And so for me, I didn’t know the path,
0:23:50 but I started to ask myself, what are my talents?
0:23:52 What are the things I’m really good at?
0:23:53 What are some mechanisms out there
0:23:55 that I could start tapping into?
0:23:58 And then how can I just take action consistently around this
0:24:00 so that I can figure out how to make a living
0:24:01 doing the things I enjoy doing?
0:24:02 I love that.
0:24:04 I think that is really great advice.
0:24:06 And another piece of advice that I really liked in your book
0:24:09 is this idea of the perfect day itinerary.
0:24:11 And this will really help us get
0:24:14 into what you call a greatness mindset.
0:24:16 So first of all, what is a greatness mindset?
0:24:17 And then can you go over this exercise
0:24:19 of a perfect day itinerary?
0:24:22 Well, on page 204, I have a graph.
0:24:23 I have a chart.
0:24:26 And I don’t know if we got you a book or not,
0:24:28 but there’s a graph here for people.
0:24:29 Sorry, 201.
0:24:32 And I show the difference between a greatness mindset
0:24:34 and a powerless mindset.
0:24:37 So a lot of people live in a powerless state.
0:24:39 And it doesn’t mean they’re in a powerless state all the time,
0:24:41 but they might have one or two areas
0:24:45 that make them feel more powerless than powerful.
0:24:48 And so I’ll just share these six categories
0:24:52 of a powerless mindset versus a greatness mindset.
0:24:54 And use this as an assessment.
0:24:56 So if you’re listening or watching, just ask yourself,
0:24:58 okay, am I doing any of these things?
0:25:01 If so, it may feel like you are powerless
0:25:04 in your day-to-day or your decision-making,
0:25:06 or you feel like there’s a weight on your shoulders.
0:25:08 It’s probably because of one of these six things
0:25:09 that are happening.
0:25:12 So a powerless mindset occurs
0:25:13 when you lack a meaningful mission.
0:25:17 So when I was living on my sister’s couch for a year and a half,
0:25:20 and I was in a cast and had a surgery
0:25:23 and didn’t know what I was going to do in my life,
0:25:26 I lacked a meaningful mission.
0:25:27 And I felt powerless.
0:25:28 I was like, who am I?
0:25:29 What’s the point?
0:25:30 What am I doing here?
0:25:32 I felt very powerless.
0:25:34 People think they need to get it all figured out
0:25:35 like for the rest of their life.
0:25:37 And it’s really season by season.
0:25:39 Like what is the mission of this season?
0:25:42 This season can be for the next six months,
0:25:44 the next six years, the next whatever.
0:25:45 We don’t have to define,
0:25:47 I need to know what I’m going to do for the rest of my life.
0:25:49 It’s what is this season’s calling?
0:25:52 And getting clear on the meaningful mission
0:25:55 will make you step into a greatness mindset
0:25:57 versus a powerless mindset.
0:25:59 So when you lack a meaningful mission,
0:26:00 you’re going to feel powerless.
0:26:03 You’re not going to feel as courageous, as strong.
0:26:06 You’re not going to have belief in yourself
0:26:07 when you’re in this state.
0:26:10 The second thing is you’re controlled by fear.
0:26:12 A lot of people are consumed by fear,
0:26:15 and there’s three types of fear that cause us to doubt ourselves.
0:26:18 The first one being the fear of failure.
0:26:19 The second one being the fear of success,
0:26:22 believe it or not, almost 50% of people
0:26:24 are just as afraid of their own success
0:26:27 as they are their own failure.
0:26:30 And the third main fear that causes us to doubt ourselves
0:26:33 is the fear of judgment, people’s opinions.
0:26:38 And this causes us to be crippled by making decisions
0:26:40 by acting courageously on our dreams.
0:26:42 I don’t know how if you’ve ever asked someone,
0:26:45 “What is your goal and what’s your dream?”
0:26:47 And they say, “I want to launch my own podcast.
0:26:48 I want to write a book.
0:26:50 I want to do a start a business.
0:26:53 I want to get into a relationship,” whatever it is.
0:26:56 And you ask them, “How long have you been thinking about this?”
0:26:59 And people say, “Five years, seven years, 20 years,
0:27:01 I’ve been wanting to write that book.”
0:27:05 And one of those three fears holds them back,
0:27:06 the fear of failure, the fear of success,
0:27:08 and the fear of judgment.
0:27:13 And so these are factors that cause people to hesitate,
0:27:15 to not take that step forward.
0:27:17 And so we got to understand what’s the root
0:27:19 of one of these three fears
0:27:21 that we all have faced at different times.
0:27:24 There’s a root underneath those fears.
0:27:27 And typically the root is, “I am not enough.”
0:27:30 And when we believe I am not enough,
0:27:32 we are going to allow one of these three fears to
0:27:36 run our lives as opposed to us running through them
0:27:37 and beyond them.
0:27:41 So when we are controlled by fear, we are powerless.
0:27:42 We are in a powerless state.
0:27:44 We’re saying, “This has power over me,
0:27:46 so I’m not taking action.”
0:27:49 The third thing is crippled by self-doubt.
0:27:52 Fear and self-doubt play hand in hand.
0:27:56 When we are controlled by fear, we usually have an insecurity.
0:28:00 I’m not going to be enough, so my self-doubt is holding me back.
0:28:05 I am therefore powerless to these opinions, these beliefs.
0:28:08 The fourth thing, I don’t think a lot of people talk about this
0:28:13 in the different habit, mindset, success books of the world.
0:28:17 The fourth thing is that they conceal past pains.
0:28:22 So for 25 years, I held on to a pain and secrets
0:28:23 that no one knew about me.
0:28:25 I was sexually abused when I was a kid and no one knew it.
0:28:27 And I was terrified.
0:28:28 I concealed this past pain.
0:28:31 It was like a poison running through my psyche,
0:28:36 my body, my heart, my energy, everything because I was ashamed.
0:28:38 And I thought, “If people knew this about me,
0:28:42 no one would accept me or love me and I’ll die
0:28:43 if they actually knew this about me.”
0:28:48 That was the story running through my mind constantly.
0:28:51 And I was afraid of the opinions and judgments of others.
0:28:52 That was my biggest fear.
0:28:54 I was not afraid of failure or success,
0:28:57 but people’s opinions crippled me
0:29:01 because I had this shame and guilt inside of my soul.
0:29:03 And when we conceal past pains,
0:29:06 I’m not saying you need to say everything publicly to the world,
0:29:08 but when you’re holding on to something
0:29:12 that is a poison inside of you, it will make you feel powerless.
0:29:16 You will not be stepping into the greatness mindset
0:29:17 with this inside of you.
0:29:19 So we’ve got to learn to heal.
0:29:21 Most of my book is about healing.
0:29:24 It’s a trojan horse for processing, healing,
0:29:26 and getting out the poison inside of us
0:29:29 so that we can thrive at the highest levels.
0:29:32 Most of these books don’t talk about revealing past pain,
0:29:36 but from all the research and the 10 years of doing this,
0:29:38 this is the path.
0:29:41 It is the path to achieving greatness
0:29:44 is by setting yourself free emotionally and psychologically.
0:29:47 The fifth thing is being defined by the opinions of others.
0:29:50 This is something I mentioned already a couple of times.
0:29:54 When we are defined by people, they have control over us.
0:29:57 They control our decisions and our actions
0:30:00 because we’re so concerned about their opinions.
0:30:04 So therefore, you are powerless if someone else is controlling you.
0:30:07 And the sixth thing is you drift towards complacency.
0:30:11 I’m not saying you need to be striving to be making more
0:30:13 and doing more all the time,
0:30:16 but I just feel like when we are drifting,
0:30:19 when we are wanderers and we aren’t improving
0:30:23 or growing in some area of our life, we feel powerless.
0:30:26 These six areas of your life,
0:30:29 I would ask everyone to do an assessment, a self-assessment,
0:30:31 and say, “Is there any one of these things
0:30:33 that’s happening for me right now
0:30:36 or maybe causing me to doubt myself more?”
0:30:38 If so, there’s a way to break through them.
0:30:40 You have the awareness now.
0:30:43 Then we’ve got to make a decision and a commitment
0:30:46 to break through to get into the greatness mindset.
0:30:49 And the greatness mindset is the sixth opposite.
0:30:50 It’s driven by a meaningful mission.
0:30:52 You heard mine.
0:30:54 Impact 100 million lives every single week.
0:30:57 I’m driven by that and it’s meaningful for me.
0:30:58 It gives me a direction.
0:31:01 It gives me a place to go towards that I can measure
0:31:02 that excites me.
0:31:04 It doesn’t mean it’s not challenging at times.
0:31:06 It doesn’t mean I don’t go through pain and hardships
0:31:10 and certain agony at moments,
0:31:11 but at least I know where I’m heading.
0:31:14 Second thing is you turn the fears into confidence.
0:31:17 And fears are going to come at different stages and seasons.
0:31:19 As we unlock new potential,
0:31:21 there’s going to be a new fear and uncertainty.
0:31:24 So we have to keep driving into the fear,
0:31:25 turning into confidence.
0:31:27 You overcome self-doubt as number three.
0:31:28 I’m supposed to let it cripple you.
0:31:33 Number four, healing past pains, not concealing them.
0:31:38 When we heal, we become greater than our past powerless self.
0:31:41 The fifth thing is creating a healthy identity.
0:31:45 Most of us, Hala, say a lot of negative things to ourselves
0:31:48 unconsciously and outwardly.
0:31:51 When someone compliments us at times,
0:31:52 we diminish it.
0:31:54 We say, “No, it’s not me.”
0:31:58 We put ourselves down and our body remembers
0:32:00 and our body listens to the words and the thoughts that we have.
0:32:03 So we must shift that into a healthy identity.
0:32:05 And the sixth thing is taking action with a game plan.
0:32:07 I’m not saying you’re going to accomplish
0:32:08 all your dreams and goals if you do these things,
0:32:10 but you’re going to feel a lot greater when you do.
0:32:14 And you’re going to have a deeper sense of peace,
0:32:17 harmony, and alignment inside of your soul
0:32:19 when you step into these things,
0:32:21 as opposed to being in the powerless mindset.
0:32:24 That was an amazing recap.
0:32:26 So I want to dig into some of those ideas.
0:32:28 We can put a pin in the perfect day of itinerary
0:32:30 where you can get back to it.
0:32:32 So let’s talk about overcoming fear.
0:32:34 So I know you’re an athlete.
0:32:36 And so the fear of failure was something
0:32:38 that you have to deal with all the time.
0:32:40 When you play a sport, you either win or lose.
0:32:42 And it’s basically a 50/50 chance every time.
0:32:46 So how did being an athlete help prepare you in business
0:32:47 when it came to fear of failure?
0:32:52 I never was afraid of failure because in sports,
0:32:55 I was taught that failure is the pathway to success.
0:33:00 So for me, I knew that missing a shot didn’t make me a failure.
0:33:04 It just means I needed to practice better technique.
0:33:06 I need to learn better.
0:33:07 I need to become bigger, faster, stronger.
0:33:10 So all information was all feedback.
0:33:11 Failure was always feedback.
0:33:15 Information telling me what’s not working yet
0:33:17 and how to get better at the thing.
0:33:19 So for me, it wasn’t about failure
0:33:22 because I understood through coaching and through sports
0:33:26 that you have to fail in order to succeed.
0:33:29 There’s no way to not fail in order to succeed.
0:33:32 So if you want success, this is the pathway.
0:33:35 It’s about reshaping what it means to you.
0:33:37 A lot of people have a deeper meaning.
0:33:41 If I lose or if I miss the shot or if I failed,
0:33:42 then I am a failure.
0:33:46 And I never identified with that as me being the failure.
0:33:48 I was just like, oh, I wasn’t prepared enough.
0:33:51 Oh, I need to get faster.
0:33:52 Oh, I need to get stronger.
0:33:54 I need to have better technique.
0:33:55 I need more reps.
0:33:59 I didn’t like the feeling of failing or losing.
0:34:03 I hated it, but it also drove me to get better.
0:34:05 Success was not something that I was afraid of either,
0:34:08 but most people are afraid of success.
0:34:10 And I didn’t understand this.
0:34:13 When I started doing the research 10 years ago
0:34:14 and asking people in large rooms,
0:34:16 I’d say, how many people are afraid to fail?
0:34:18 Most people would raise their hand.
0:34:21 And I’d say, how many people in the room are afraid of success?
0:34:25 And over 50% of the room would still raise their hand.
0:34:27 And I was always like, what?
0:34:30 Because you want to be successful, but you’re afraid of it.
0:34:34 So why would success come to you when you’re afraid of it?
0:34:35 You’re resistant to it.
0:34:37 You are scared of it.
0:34:39 And yet you want it.
0:34:43 You sound like a clingy girlfriend who wants to be in a relationship,
0:34:47 but is anxious and scared to be open and emotional and vulnerable,
0:34:50 but is needing your attention all the time or whatever it might be.
0:34:54 If you want to be successful, you cannot be afraid of it.
0:34:56 And I didn’t understand it.
0:34:57 It didn’t make sense to me.
0:35:00 But then it started to make sense the more I asked people questions
0:35:02 over the last 10 years.
0:35:07 And really, when people become more successful, unfortunately,
0:35:10 there’s usually a couple people in their family
0:35:12 or their close friend circle that is not accepting.
0:35:14 Some people are like, you’re amazing.
0:35:15 Keep going high five.
0:35:16 You’ve got this.
0:35:20 But there are some people close to us that start to pull away,
0:35:21 that think, huh, what are you doing?
0:35:22 Are you better than us?
0:35:23 Come back here.
0:35:25 Come be comfortable, safe.
0:35:29 Don’t keep learning and growing and expanding beyond your reach.
0:35:30 That makes me feel uncomfortable.
0:35:34 When you leave the tribe to go for success,
0:35:38 not always the tribe is supporting of that journey you’re going on.
0:35:42 And that is a big factor for a lot of people who are married
0:35:45 or their parents don’t want them to do that or whatever it might be.
0:35:48 When you want to grow and go beyond something,
0:35:49 it can be scary for others.
0:35:52 And you want community and love.
0:35:55 And if you’re leaving to go after something,
0:35:57 or if that’s what it looks like,
0:36:00 then you may not get that love and attention and affection anymore.
0:36:01 So it made sense to me.
0:36:04 And over my journey, I lost a lot of friends.
0:36:07 A lot of friends that I thought we were going to be friends forever,
0:36:09 just stopped returning my calls.
0:36:16 Just weren’t as supportive or jealous of my success or whatever it might be.
0:36:20 And it was sad and it hurt for a long time, these different stages.
0:36:22 But I learned that’s part of the process.
0:36:27 If you’re going to grow and others aren’t in alignment with your journey,
0:36:31 it’s important to find people in your friend circle who support your success
0:36:34 so they can grow with you as well.
0:36:37 Another fear that success has with a lot of people is the weight.
0:36:41 There’s an amazing documentary called The Weight of Gold,
0:36:47 which is about Olympic gold medalists who commit suicide,
0:36:51 go through extreme depression, become addicted to drugs
0:36:53 after they win the gold medal.
0:36:59 And about all of the suffering that gold medalists have afterwards.
0:37:02 They were happier before they won the gold medal.
0:37:06 And it documents the lives of all these people that have committed suicide
0:37:09 within a year or two after winning gold.
0:37:13 Going after the gold they had their entire life, they win it.
0:37:16 And then they die, they commit suicide, become drug addicts,
0:37:18 they suffer and they lose it all.
0:37:23 In the documentation, there’s this immense pressure
0:37:28 that if you are not prepared to handle the fame
0:37:32 everyone talking about you, the success being at the top of the mountain.
0:37:38 And now needing to maintain that level of success is an extreme pressure.
0:37:41 And that’s why you see a lot of people go bankrupt
0:37:42 after they make a lot of money.
0:37:45 That’s why you see a lot of lottery winners who make a lot of money
0:37:49 go through death or go bankrupt as well within a couple of years.
0:37:54 And you see people that exit big companies sometimes losing it all quickly.
0:37:59 Because if you’re not emotionally and mentally prepared for the success,
0:38:00 you will sabotage it.
0:38:05 That’s why healing past pain is so important.
0:38:09 Because you can win and succeed and make money,
0:38:15 but if you have pain in your chest, guilt, shame, insecurity, all these things,
0:38:18 that doesn’t go away until you heal it.
0:38:20 And if you heal it on the journey,
0:38:24 you’re going to be able to sustain the success in a different way and maintain it.
0:38:27 I wasn’t afraid of those things because I wanted to be successful.
0:38:28 I wanted the weight.
0:38:29 I wanted the pressure.
0:38:31 It was challenging at times, but I wanted it.
0:38:35 For me, it was the fear of judgment.
0:38:37 That was the thing that crippled me.
0:38:40 So when I was successful or growing or whatever,
0:38:43 and I would get nasty comments online about stuff,
0:38:47 it was almost as if I had to defend my life with these comments
0:38:48 and had to reply to everyone.
0:38:50 And I was so worried about what they would think about me.
0:38:53 That’s the thing that got me in trouble or crippled me
0:38:59 until I learned to heal past pains, until I learned to realize I am enough.
0:39:01 It’s okay.
0:39:02 People are going to have opinions about me.
0:39:04 I can’t please everyone.
0:39:06 I’m not going to conform to everyone’s opinion.
0:39:08 That was part of the process for me.
0:39:10 Yeah, I love that.
0:39:12 This is really, really interesting stuff.
0:39:16 I feel like I haven’t really heard any material about this fear of success,
0:39:18 the way that you described it.
0:39:22 So I know you mentioned that judgment was something that really got to you.
0:39:26 And I know personally, for me, when people doubt me or say anything bad about me,
0:39:30 I tend to take like, “I’ll show them, right?
0:39:30 I’ll do this.
0:39:32 I’ll become a famous podcaster.
0:39:36 I’ll start a million-dollar business and prove them wrong.”
0:39:42 And I kind of used this underdog chip on my shoulder as a way of motivation.
0:39:46 But I understand from you that that can be pretty unsustainable.
0:39:48 It can be an amazing driver.
0:39:50 And it’s what I did my whole life.
0:39:53 It’s because I was picked last on sports teams.
0:39:54 And so I said, “I’ll never be picked last again.
0:39:57 I’m always going to be the most valuable person on every sports team.”
0:40:03 And it drove me to train six hours a day as a kid and not play video games,
0:40:06 but go outside and play sports all night until I had to come home
0:40:09 because I was like, “I’m never going to experience this pain again.
0:40:11 And I’m going to prove everyone wrong.”
0:40:13 And I did it.
0:40:15 I’d proved people wrong.
0:40:18 And I felt empty, unfulfilled.
0:40:24 And I felt like exhausted, drained, emotionally frustrated, resentful.
0:40:28 And all these anger emotions inside of me that continue to drive me
0:40:32 until 10 years ago, I realized this is not sustainable.
0:40:34 It got me external results,
0:40:37 but left me feeling completely emotionally bankrupt.
0:40:41 And it can only last so long until things fall apart,
0:40:44 your relationships, your business, something,
0:40:48 which everything fell apart for me 10 years ago.
0:40:50 That’s one of the reasons why I got into this show,
0:40:54 starting this because I was like, “I need to learn how to heal.
0:40:57 I need to learn how to not be driven by my ego.”
0:40:59 It’s one of the reasons why I called it the School of Greatness.
0:41:01 I didn’t call it the Lewis House Show.
0:41:03 I was like, “My ego needs to die.
0:41:08 I’m so worried about other people’s opinions and proving people wrong.
0:41:10 And that’s what’s causing me pain.”
0:41:14 Sure, that chip got me results and got me credibility
0:41:16 and got me on stages and helped me make money,
0:41:21 but why am I emotionally exhausted?
0:41:23 The ego must die.
0:41:27 And 10 years ago, I started to kill my ego and not make it about me.
0:41:29 And I started to put the light on everyone else,
0:41:32 shine the light on everyone, make it less about me,
0:41:34 be of service, not about me being successful.
0:41:37 And it started to shift.
0:41:39 And by no means did I do it perfectly,
0:41:41 and I still made mistakes and stumbled along the way,
0:41:48 but that intention of letting go of my ego allowed me to thrive.
0:41:51 Now, it’s a dance because in a world of personal branding
0:41:55 and being a host and being an author and writing books
0:41:58 and you’re being on the cover of magazines and stuff like this,
0:42:00 you’ve got to learn to build a brand,
0:42:05 but not believe that you’re the best thing in the world
0:42:07 and how to continue to be of service.
0:42:11 And that’s why I try to focus constantly to remind myself,
0:42:13 this is not about me and my success.
0:42:17 This is about us and the service we have on the world.
0:42:20 And when I do that, I feel a lot more harmony and peace
0:42:23 than when I say it’s all about me.
0:42:25 So there’s a dance because in marketing,
0:42:26 you’ve got to promote things.
0:42:28 You’ve got to promote yourself.
0:42:29 You’ve got to promote your name.
0:42:31 You’ve got to promote your brand.
0:42:34 But I think internally, you’ve got to remind yourself,
0:42:35 this is about service.
0:42:37 Yeah, I totally agree.
0:42:39 I always say, especially for anybody who wants again
0:42:42 to the podcast world or develop a personal brand,
0:42:45 you’ve really got to be of service and have pure intentions.
0:42:46 It shouldn’t be about making money.
0:42:48 It shouldn’t be about being famous.
0:42:51 If you have these pure intentions of helping other people,
0:42:54 everything falls into place as long as you take the actions.
0:42:58 We’ll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors.
0:43:01 Hello, young end-profiters.
0:43:04 Running a small business means you’re wearing a lot of hats.
0:43:06 Your personal phone becomes your business phone.
0:43:09 And before you know it, your juggling calls day and night.
0:43:10 When I first started YAP,
0:43:13 I made the mistake of using my personal cell phone
0:43:15 to handle all of my business inquiries.
0:43:17 It worked fine at first,
0:43:19 but as soon as my team and business scaled,
0:43:22 it became impossible to manage things.
0:43:24 And that’s where Open Phone comes in.
0:43:26 Open Phone is the number one business phone system.
0:43:28 They’ll help you separate your personal life
0:43:30 from your growing business.
0:43:33 And for just 15 bucks a month, the cost of a few coffees,
0:43:35 you get complete visibility
0:43:38 into everything happening with your business phone number.
0:43:41 Open Phone works through an app on your phone or your computer,
0:43:44 and it integrates with HubSpot and hundreds of other systems.
0:43:47 They use AI-powered call transcripts and summaries.
0:43:50 So what that means is that you get a summary of your phone call
0:43:52 and action items as soon as you hang up.
0:43:54 And if you miss a call,
0:43:57 automated messages are sent directly to your customer.
0:43:59 Open Phone is affordable, it’s easy to use,
0:44:01 and whether you’re one person operation
0:44:04 and you just need help managing your own calls,
0:44:05 or you’ve got a large team
0:44:08 and you’re looking for more efficient collaboration,
0:44:11 Open Phone is the solution for you.
0:44:14 Right now, Open Phone is offering 20% off your first six months
0:44:17 when you go to openphone.com/profiting.
0:44:20 That’s O-P-E-N-P-H-O-N-E.com/profiting
0:44:23 for 20% off the first six months.
0:44:25 That’s openphone.com/profiting.
0:44:28 And by the way, if you have an existing number with another service,
0:44:32 Open Phone will port them over at no extra charge.
0:44:34 That’s openphone.com/profiting.
0:44:42 So I want to talk about identity for a minute.
0:44:46 So you talk about this idea of establishing an identity.
0:44:48 I think we’ve both interviewed Benjamin Hardy,
0:44:50 and he talks about this idea of future self.
0:44:52 And that was one of my favorite conversations
0:44:54 that I’ve had all year.
0:44:56 You’re not your past self, you’re not your future self.
0:44:59 You just have this current moment to take action
0:45:01 and close that gap between who you are now
0:45:04 to who you want to be, your future self.
0:45:06 So talk to us about this idea of identity
0:45:07 that you bring up in your book
0:45:09 and what your thoughts are around that.
0:45:12 Yeah, just last night I was doing a session with my therapist.
0:45:18 And the conversation was, what do I want my 50 and 60-year-old self,
0:45:24 90 and 100-year-old self to say to me right now
0:45:27 about the decisions I’ve been making on a daily basis?
0:45:30 Because I’ve been very focused on my health
0:45:33 and almost making it a full-time job.
0:45:36 Not in the sense of I’m spending 10 hours a day on my health,
0:45:41 but I’m thinking and intending it to be optimized
0:45:45 in the level that I’ve never fully done in the last 10 years.
0:45:47 Now, I’ve also been a professional athlete
0:45:48 and I’ve trained hard and all these things,
0:45:51 but just being very intentional about nutrition,
0:45:54 sleep, recovery, working out,
0:45:58 and tracking and measuring it in a different way than I have before.
0:46:03 And I was having a conversation with my, I’m 40 now,
0:46:07 and I was having a conversation with myself as my 50-year-old.
0:46:10 So I don’t know if you can go stay with me for a moment,
0:46:13 but I was in the future having a conversation
0:46:15 with my current self at 50 today.
0:46:18 Then I went in the future at 60
0:46:20 and I had a conversation with myself today.
0:46:24 Then I went to 90 and 100 and I told myself
0:46:30 and I imagined the feeling that I had as 50, 60, 90, and 100
0:46:34 and the appreciation I was telling myself today
0:46:37 for how I was taking care of my health.
0:46:42 Because at 50, at 60, I’m still able to work out
0:46:46 like a 30-year-old and I’m flexible and I’m strong
0:46:49 and I’m running marathons and I’m lifting heavy weights
0:46:52 and I’ve got muscle and I’m flexible and all these things.
0:46:56 I’ve got all the capacities as a 30-year-old at 50 and 60.
0:47:01 At 90 and 100, I was saying thank you for taking care of me
0:47:06 at 90 and 100 today at 40 by making these decisions.
0:47:09 Because look at us, there’s sadness all around us,
0:47:13 unfortunately, because your friends are dying.
0:47:16 Your friends are getting hip replacements.
0:47:19 But you took care of us when it was uncomfortable,
0:47:22 when it was challenging, when it was hard, when it wasn’t easy.
0:47:29 You said you were thinking about me and us at 90 and 100.
0:47:31 So I was having these conversations with myself
0:47:36 last night doing these exercises which allows me to be intentional
0:47:40 about my decisions today, to not be so strict and hard on myself,
0:47:43 but to be really intentional and deliberate
0:47:46 about how I want to feel in the future.
0:47:50 And I was having this multi-time dimensional conversation
0:47:54 with self from the future and now all last night.
0:47:58 And I just think that’s an important strategy or exercise
0:48:01 that we should be thinking about our futures
0:48:05 and making decisions today based on what will make our future self proud.
0:48:10 Yeah. Okay. One more last question about your new book.
0:48:15 And that’s how you recommend to get over trauma and heal yourself.
0:48:17 So I know that you went through a lot of personal trauma.
0:48:20 You were bullied a little bit when you were younger.
0:48:24 You had some sexual abuse that you mentioned.
0:48:26 Your dad was gone to a bad car accident.
0:48:28 Probably things we don’t even know about.
0:48:31 Everybody has had traumas in their life.
0:48:34 So how did you actually rewrite the script of your life?
0:48:37 What are the things that you did to heal your past trauma?
0:48:42 I feel like I keep doing lots of different exercises,
0:48:45 events, workshops, therapies.
0:48:47 I’m willing to try lots of stuff.
0:48:49 And what I originally did was 10 years ago,
0:48:51 I just started opening up about it.
0:48:53 I started talking about these things.
0:48:58 I think the first step is finding a safe environment and space to be able to share.
0:49:01 And I’m not saying you need to post about things on social media.
0:49:04 I don’t think that’s wise until you feel like,
0:49:06 “Oh, I feel like I really want to do this for whatever reason.”
0:49:12 But finding spaces and people that you trust to talk to about your shames.
0:49:16 And that’s the first step is allowing it to get out of you,
0:49:19 allowing the poison to get out of you.
0:49:24 And then there’s lots of different somatic physical healing therapies
0:49:28 and things like that and emotional therapies and retreats and workshops.
0:49:29 And they’re all great, I think.
0:49:35 Like anything you do, if you go all in on it, I think you’ll get some results.
0:49:38 If you’ve seen other people do it that recommend it and they’ve got results,
0:49:42 as long as you go all in on the therapeutic experience,
0:49:44 I think it will be serving to you.
0:49:47 I’ve never personally done drugs or psychedelics.
0:49:49 I’ve never been drunk or high in my life.
0:49:52 So I don’t prescribe just something that I haven’t done,
0:49:56 but I have friends that swear by psychedelics.
0:50:00 I’m more afraid of the side effects that the brain chemistry has
0:50:03 based on the people I’ve interviewed who are experts in the brain
0:50:06 that I get worried about that stuff for long term.
0:50:09 But I think if you have tried everything
0:50:11 and you feel like you’re not getting any results,
0:50:16 then that might be your last resort to allow your mind to relax and open up.
0:50:17 But I think there’s a lot of things you could do.
0:50:19 And it’s worth exploring different things.
0:50:23 Okay. So just circling back on the perfect day itinerary,
0:50:27 you say this is a great way to ensure that you have a greatness mindset throughout the day.
0:50:28 Can you tell us about it?
0:50:30 Yeah, there’s really two parts to it.
0:50:36 It’s one, imagining and visualizing what you would like to experience on a perfect day.
0:50:39 If you could close your eyes and think about it at some point in your life,
0:50:41 what would this look like?
0:50:45 What would this feel like a day in a life that you feel like, wow,
0:50:51 when you shut your eyes to go to bed, you said that was a perfect day.
0:50:54 From every moment to moment, from the moment you wake up,
0:50:56 where are you waking up?
0:50:58 What do you see first thing when you wake up?
0:51:02 What area of the world are you living when you wake up?
0:51:04 Is there someone next to you?
0:51:05 If so, what does that feel like?
0:51:11 So putting yourself in an emotional state of all five senses,
0:51:14 imagining that perfect day scenario.
0:51:16 And obviously, if you did the same thing every day,
0:51:18 it wouldn’t be perfect anymore.
0:51:21 But just imagine what that experience that feeling would be like.
0:51:24 And then writing it down.
0:51:31 Writing it down what that dream is like, that experiential feeling is like.
0:51:35 Writing it down in detail and description is part one.
0:51:38 Part two is flipping the page over and scheduling it.
0:51:45 Something I learned early on when I was 15, I joined the football team for the first time.
0:51:49 Day one in my locker was a piece of paper hanging up on my locker
0:51:53 and every kid’s locker that was the itinerary for practice.
0:51:56 And I’m thinking, I’m just going to go out there and kind of run around
0:51:58 and just we got drills.
0:52:04 But every five minutes was scheduled from putting on our pads to water breaks,
0:52:11 to coaches giving us talking and giving us speeches, to stretch breaks,
0:52:16 to offense, defense, special teams, to individual practice time.
0:52:18 Every minute was detailed.
0:52:22 It made sense because it allowed us to prepare and put attention
0:52:28 on all the things to become great as a team and have the perfect game
0:52:34 to excel in the perfect way when game time happened at the end of the weeks.
0:52:39 And so I think when we get intentional about our schedule and our time
0:52:44 and we marry it with the vision and the experience of the senses,
0:52:48 we can take action on the perfect day almost every day.
0:52:51 And it’s just figuring out how to work into that,
0:52:53 how to work into that experience and that feeling.
0:52:57 And there’s, again, different seasons and stages of my life that didn’t feel perfect.
0:53:00 I was a truck driver for three months, driving eight hours a day.
0:53:03 I did a lot of different odd end jobs at different times.
0:53:06 It’s figuring out, okay, how can I build into it?
0:53:09 How can I use my gifts and my talents at this time to enjoy this,
0:53:11 to experience something beautiful?
0:53:15 And then if this is not for me right now, what can I step into next?
0:53:18 What’s the next season to get closer to that perfect day?
0:53:19 And that’s what it’s about.
0:53:22 Yeah. Well, thank you so much, Lewis.
0:53:24 This was such a great interview.
0:53:26 I end my show with two questions.
0:53:30 The first one is, what is one actionable thing our young and
0:53:33 profiteers can do today to become more profitable tomorrow?
0:53:35 Focus on gratitude.
0:53:44 I just think that gratitude is a universal energetic law that allows you to open the
0:53:46 doorway for abundance.
0:53:53 When we are grateful and we experience gratitude continuously, our energy shifts around us.
0:53:57 Our attitude, our perspective, our way of being shows up differently.
0:54:03 And people are attracted to others who are positive, who are kind, who are generous,
0:54:04 and who are grateful.
0:54:09 We aren’t attracted to people who are ungrateful and frustrated and negative.
0:54:10 That’s not an attractive quality.
0:54:16 When you express gratitude from the inside out, people gravitate towards you.
0:54:23 And you will create more opportunities, whether it’s in your career, you’ll advance further.
0:54:26 Or if you’re starting a business, it will be more effortless feeling.
0:54:31 And you’ll attract more abundance in the journey.
0:54:34 I completely, completely agree with that.
0:54:38 And the last question is, what is your secret to profiting in life?
0:54:41 And this could be beyond financial, beyond anything we talked about today.
0:54:44 It just goes back to healing.
0:54:49 I know a lot of wealthy people who are miserable internally, or who are sick,
0:54:55 or who are physically overweight and struggling, because they have yet to heal.
0:54:59 And you could build the business and make all the money and have all the,
0:55:06 the, and know all the celebrities and get in all the press and have the biggest following.
0:55:13 But if you are sick emotionally, or unwell, and you have yet to heal the things that cause
0:55:16 you the most pain, then you’re really living in a powerless state.
0:55:22 And having it all, but feeling powerless internally, is one of the greatest prisons
0:55:26 we can be in psychologically, because you don’t know what else to do.
0:55:32 You’ve done everything to become more successful and make more money and accomplish,
0:55:33 but you still don’t feel enough.
0:55:38 And for me, that’s a, that’s a prison sentence psychologically.
0:55:42 And until we heal, we will never feel enough.
0:55:44 And anybody who’s feeling that way,
0:55:48 Lewis basically wrote the playbook of how to get out of it with this new book,
0:55:48 The Greatness Minds On.
0:55:50 So make sure you guys go get that.
0:55:52 And where can our listeners go learn about everything that you do?
0:55:57 Lewis Howes, anywhere on social media, and the School of Greatness podcast.
0:56:00 Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time today, Lewis.
0:56:01 It was a pleasure.
0:56:09 Thanks, Hala.
0:56:13 You.
0:56:15 (upbeat music)
0:56:24 [BLANK_AUDIO]

0:00:03 Today’s episode is sponsored in part by Airbnb,
0:00:05 OpenPhone, Shopify, and Rocket Money.
0:00:08 Hosting on Airbnb has never been easier
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0:00:38 Rocket Money is a personal finance app
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0:00:51 As always, you can find all of our incredible deals
0:00:55 in the show notes or at youngandprofiting.com/deals.
0:00:58 (upbeat music)
0:01:08 – Hello, young and profitors.
0:01:11 Welcome to episode three of the Yap Creator series
0:01:13 presented by Opus Clip.
0:01:14 In this series, we’re diving deep
0:01:17 into the art and science of content creation,
0:01:20 how to create, connect, and thrive as a modern day creator.
0:01:21 It’s the start of the year
0:01:23 and it’s time for goal setting for everyone.
0:01:26 And in order to achieve our goals in 2025,
0:01:29 we need to stay motivated and consistent
0:01:30 while not burning ourselves out.
0:01:34 And that’s exactly what today’s episode is all about.
0:01:36 While this episode is tailored toward content creators,
0:01:39 it’s actually relevant for all entrepreneurs
0:01:42 because it’s really just about mindset, motivation,
0:01:43 and building up momentum,
0:01:47 whether you’re building an online platform or your company.
0:01:48 We’ll feature past Yap guests,
0:01:51 Jenna Kutcher, Jeff Hayden, James Clear,
0:01:54 Dr. Editi Norokar, Jasmine Star, Benjamin Hardy,
0:01:56 and Case Kenny.
0:01:58 Guys, this one is gonna get pretty deep.
0:02:00 We’re gonna cover everything from motivation loops
0:02:03 to habit building and gap and gain thinking.
0:02:05 There’s so much content to get to,
0:02:06 so let’s jump right into it.
0:02:13 Starting out as a content creator is no small feat.
0:02:15 You’re juggling everything, coming up with ideas,
0:02:17 filming, editing, and promoting,
0:02:20 all while trying to grow an audience.
0:02:21 In the beginning, it can feel like you’re shouting
0:02:25 into a void, and that can be incredibly discouraging.
0:02:28 The truth is, consistency builds credibility.
0:02:31 Every post, video, or podcast you put out
0:02:34 is another brick in the foundation of your personal brand.
0:02:36 But in order to be consistent,
0:02:38 you first need to get started.
0:02:40 Here’s Jenna Kutcher, one of the most successful podcasters
0:02:44 in the world, who is also in my Yap Media podcast network
0:02:46 on letting go of perfection and taking action
0:02:49 when it comes to getting started as a content creator.
0:02:55 At the beginning, my show was interview only,
0:02:57 which did not work out well for me.
0:02:59 I recorded it from the front seat of my parked car
0:03:02 in my garage, ’cause I was afraid my dogs were gonna bark.
0:03:03 I didn’t even own a microphone.
0:03:05 I had iPhone headphones, and I was like,
0:03:06 “All right, let’s just do this.”
0:03:09 And so I committed to doing it for 90 days,
0:03:11 and I was like, “Let’s just see how it feels.
0:03:13 “I can always quit it if it doesn’t work,
0:03:15 “if I run out of things to say.”
0:03:17 And here we are years and years and years later,
0:03:20 and it’s evolved, and I think one lesson from this
0:03:22 is that so often when we start a new project,
0:03:25 we overthink all the things that don’t really matter.
0:03:29 I remember worrying about like the cover art, the title,
0:03:31 how am I gonna sign in and sign off of every episode?
0:03:32 How long is it gonna be?
0:03:33 What is the format?
0:03:35 When is it gonna be published?
0:03:37 All of those things have changed and evolved
0:03:38 over the last seven years,
0:03:41 and my show has stayed consistent, right?
0:03:43 And so one thing that you brought up
0:03:46 is like so many people don’t actually dive in
0:03:47 and do the thing.
0:03:49 We think about all the things around the thing,
0:03:51 whether you’re writing a book or starting a podcast
0:03:52 or starting a business,
0:03:55 you fixate on all the decisions you have to make
0:03:57 instead of doing the actual thing,
0:04:00 which in my case was sitting down and hitting record.
0:04:02 Once I did that, the rest is history,
0:04:05 but it was so easy for us to overthink all those things.
0:04:07 So my podcast started as an experiment,
0:04:10 and we’re still going strong 100 million downloads later.
0:04:14 (whooshing)
0:04:15 Like Jenna said,
0:04:17 when it comes to getting started as a content creator,
0:04:20 whether it’s on social media or podcasts,
0:04:23 you really need to just get started and experiment.
0:04:27 It’s okay to evolve over time and get better as you go.
0:04:28 To be a content creator,
0:04:30 you must create content consistently.
0:04:33 I find that if I’m having trouble getting started
0:04:34 on something, I just tell myself,
0:04:36 I’ll do it for 10 minutes.
0:04:37 Before I know it,
0:04:40 that initial ick and anxiety of getting started
0:04:43 just melts away and the task seems more manageable
0:04:46 once I actually dig into it for 10 minutes.
0:04:47 It’s not as scary anymore,
0:04:51 and I end up working on it for longer and getting it done.
0:04:53 So just start for 10 minutes,
0:04:57 tell yourself I’ll just do it for 10 minutes.
0:04:59 Now, getting started is easier said than done
0:05:00 for a lot of people.
0:05:03 So many people feel that they can’t get the motivation
0:05:04 to get started.
0:05:06 They need to find the motivation
0:05:08 to kick themselves into high gear,
0:05:10 but this is the wrong way to go about it.
0:05:12 I learned from Jeff Hayden,
0:05:14 one of the world’s top ghost writers,
0:05:16 that getting started is the thing
0:05:19 that will actually give you the motivation to keep going.
0:05:21 Contrary to popular belief,
0:05:24 motivation doesn’t come first, effort does.
0:05:27 Let’s hear Jeff’s perspective on creating motivation.
0:05:34 So talk to us about how you can actually create motivation
0:05:38 by starting and being consistent at something.
0:05:40 Probably the biggest gap,
0:05:42 or the biggest hurdle that people have to cross
0:05:44 when you wanna start something new
0:05:49 is you are starting at a place of no experience,
0:05:50 no expertise.
0:05:53 You’re kind of at the zero spot in most cases.
0:05:55 And so if you look ahead to where you want to go,
0:05:58 that bridge that you have to cross is incredibly daunting
0:06:01 because it’s like, okay, I’m just this.
0:06:02 How am I going to get all the way over there?
0:06:07 And so if you’re constantly focused on that end place,
0:06:10 then even little successes that you make early on,
0:06:11 which you tend to do because you’re new,
0:06:15 so you learn quickly and you gain some skill fairly fast,
0:06:17 they’re meaningless to you
0:06:20 because compared to what you think you wanna be someday,
0:06:21 well, it’s nothing.
0:06:25 And so the biggest thing for me is,
0:06:27 ’cause I struggled with the first few things I wrote,
0:06:30 but then I thought, and I would think to myself,
0:06:32 how am I ever going to be able to do this?
0:06:34 Because it takes me way too long.
0:06:37 I’m creating decent things, but gosh, it takes forever.
0:06:39 And there’s no way for me to make this work.
0:06:42 And I thought, well, okay, but I can’t sit down
0:06:44 and think, okay, I’m going to be Malcolm Gladwell tomorrow
0:06:46 or something like that.
0:06:48 But what I can do is just work really hard
0:06:50 on whatever is in front of me.
0:06:53 And so I switched over and just said,
0:06:56 my goal, every time I do something is,
0:06:57 all right, I have this to do.
0:06:59 I need to do it as well as I can.
0:07:01 I need to finish it.
0:07:02 I need to get good feedback from it,
0:07:04 which means I did a good job.
0:07:07 ‘Cause whether I thought I did a good job didn’t really matter.
0:07:09 It’s what the client thought.
0:07:12 And that’s all I can do right now, but that’s enough.
0:07:16 And so if I stack enough of those experiences up,
0:07:18 then the experience kind of comes.
0:07:21 And so by keeping a short time horizon
0:07:24 in terms of my inner feedback loop,
0:07:26 then if I worked on a project one night
0:07:29 and it was a short one and I got it done,
0:07:31 that felt really good because I set out to do
0:07:32 what I wanted to do.
0:07:34 I completed a task.
0:07:35 It went well.
0:07:38 That was enough to get me to the next one.
0:07:40 And so I just fell into this place
0:07:43 of all I need is enough motivation to get to the next one.
0:07:46 And if I get to the next one and I get to the next one,
0:07:49 then suddenly you can look back and go,
0:07:51 wow, I’m starting to come a long way.
0:07:54 ‘Cause you pop your head up every once in a while
0:07:56 and sort of look at where you are and go, wow,
0:07:57 that is really cool.
0:07:59 And then you need to put your head right back down again
0:08:02 and just focused on next and next and next.
0:08:06 And so, and then the other part of it is that
0:08:08 I’m not particularly smart.
0:08:11 I have a college degree, but I’m not particularly educated.
0:08:12 It’ll have anything.
0:08:14 There’s nothing, I’m decidedly average.
0:08:15 Let’s just say that.
0:08:16 So I don’t have anything.
0:08:17 – I don’t think that’s true, but okay.
0:08:19 – Well, I don’t have anything special going for me
0:08:22 except for the fact that I realize that
0:08:24 if I put in enough effort,
0:08:25 there are a lot of things I can do.
0:08:29 And so I’m very much an effort kind of a person.
0:08:32 And so that actually works really well
0:08:36 because I don’t think you get motivation from like this.
0:08:37 I’m sitting around one day
0:08:39 and suddenly I have the lightning bolt that says,
0:08:42 I want to be a famous writer or something,
0:08:43 whatever it is you want to be.
0:08:45 I don’t, that doesn’t work.
0:08:47 I don’t think that kind of motivation.
0:08:49 I don’t know anybody that has that.
0:08:52 All you really need is to say, I’m interested in writing.
0:08:55 Let me get started in some fashion
0:08:58 and through effort, if you work hard at it,
0:09:01 you improve because we always get better
0:09:02 at things we work hard at.
0:09:04 It is a natural thing.
0:09:05 It’s just like taxes.
0:09:07 It’s a law of the universe.
0:09:10 And whenever you get a little better, that feels good.
0:09:14 And so effort equals a little bit of achievement,
0:09:18 which feels good, which creates motivation
0:09:20 for you to take a little more effort,
0:09:22 which means you’ll improve a little more,
0:09:23 which feels good.
0:09:26 And so there’s this really cool virtuous cycle
0:09:29 of effort, achievement, fulfillment, happiness,
0:09:33 motivation that you can spend forever and ever and ever
0:09:35 if you focus on doing it that way.
0:09:39 All you care about is this big end result.
0:09:40 It’s demoralizing and defeating
0:09:43 and you have to rely on willpower alone.
0:09:46 And none of us have enough willpower to do that.
0:09:49 But if you just get that cycle started, there it is.
0:09:52 So to be a motivation, does it come first?
0:09:53 Effort comes first.
0:09:54 – I love that.
0:09:56 So let me pause you right there because I wanna make sure
0:09:57 that my listeners really understand this.
0:10:01 So what Jeff is saying is that you don’t wanna focus
0:10:05 on some big goal because you’ll keep comparing yourself
0:10:06 to that goal.
0:10:07 You’re gonna think about where you are now,
0:10:10 how far away that goal is, you’re gonna feel bad.
0:10:12 And you don’t wanna feel bad if you wanna be motivated.
0:10:13 You wanna feel good.
0:10:16 So you wanna focus on these small wins.
0:10:19 So how can we better focus on these small wins?
0:10:21 Is there a trick that we need to do?
0:10:23 Is it something we need to reflect on every day?
0:10:26 How do we make sure that we’re constantly looking
0:10:27 at these small goals and making sure
0:10:30 that we’re making progress toward our bigger goal?
0:10:33 – So process really is everything
0:10:35 with anything that you want to do.
0:10:38 So you do need a big goal, I think.
0:10:41 But your goal, your big goal is just there
0:10:45 to help you design the process that you would use
0:10:46 in order to get there.
0:10:49 So if I, this is a terrible,
0:10:52 it’s not a terrible example, but it’s an easy example.
0:10:55 Say you wanna run a marathon and you’ve never run before.
0:10:58 So running the marathon is your big goal.
0:11:00 But as you said, if that’s all you focus on
0:11:03 is being able to run 26 miles and you can only run one,
0:11:05 you’re gonna quit because it’s too far.
0:11:07 And you feel bad after that one mile,
0:11:08 you’re never gonna get there.
0:11:12 So running a marathon, though, you can back it up
0:11:15 and say, okay, what are the steps and stages
0:11:17 that I’m going to have to go through
0:11:20 in order to build up the endurance and stamina
0:11:21 and speed and all that other stuff
0:11:22 that will allow me to get there.
0:11:25 And there are plenty of people in the world
0:11:27 who can lay that program out for you.
0:11:29 So you know what to do.
0:11:33 So the goal informs the process.
0:11:35 Then you just say, okay, I’ve got a whatever it is,
0:11:38 six month plan, what’s tomorrow?
0:11:42 Tomorrow is I’m gonna go run a mile and a half.
0:11:44 Cool, when you run the mile and a half,
0:11:46 you can check it off, you get to feel good about yourself
0:11:49 because you did what you set out to do that day,
0:11:51 which if you think about it at the end of the day,
0:11:52 the days you feel best about yourself
0:11:55 or when you got done the things that you said you wanted to do,
0:11:57 where you feel bad is when you didn’t.
0:12:01 So you get to feel good about it, you checked it off,
0:12:02 you had a successful day,
0:12:05 that will give you enough motivation to tomorrow go,
0:12:07 okay, what’s tomorrow?
0:12:10 Whatever it is, that’s all you have to do.
0:12:12 You just have to do whatever it is
0:12:13 that you have to do today.
0:12:17 And if you focus on that, you get to be successful every day,
0:12:19 you get to feel good about yourself every day,
0:12:22 and you will stack up enough of those days
0:12:24 that every once in a while, you will pop your head up
0:12:27 and say, wow, I just did a 10 mile run.
0:12:29 Who thought I could do that?
0:12:31 But before you get too excited and go,
0:12:34 oh, what about the 26, you gotta put your head back down.
0:12:36 ‘Cause you’re not there yet.
0:12:39 And then you say, cool, I can run 10 miles, that’s awesome.
0:12:40 What’s tomorrow?
0:12:41 Tomorrow may only be a three mile run
0:12:43 because that’s part of your process of recovery
0:12:45 and whatever else it may be.
0:12:48 Whatever it is, if you’re doing what you set out
0:12:50 to do that day, and if that goal is,
0:12:52 or if that process is designed
0:12:55 so that it will basically guarantee
0:12:58 that if you put in the effort, you will succeed,
0:12:59 you’re good to go.
0:13:01 So the goal informs the process,
0:13:03 and then all you worry about is am I doing
0:13:05 what I need to do each step of the way?
0:13:07 You didn’t start a side hustle
0:13:10 and end up with 35 people working for you
0:13:13 by one day just saying, you know, that’s what I wanna do.
0:13:15 You knew you wanted to create a marketing agency
0:13:18 and you knew what you wanted to do,
0:13:20 but you broke it down into, okay,
0:13:21 but what can I do right now?
0:13:24 What am I doing each day to get there?
0:13:28 And then all of those wins stacked up on themselves
0:13:29 and probably made it a little bit easier
0:13:31 for you to keep working that hard
0:13:34 because you saw a path to where you were going to go.
0:13:40 – What Jeff told me that day about motivation,
0:13:41 really stuck with me.
0:13:43 The conventional view of motivation
0:13:45 is if you fire somebody up enough,
0:13:46 they’re gonna go out and achieve
0:13:48 whatever their target is.
0:13:50 Traditionally, they say achieving success
0:13:53 is all about generating the right mindset
0:13:57 and that motivation will trigger you to succeed basically.
0:13:58 But Jeff overturns this idea
0:14:01 that motivation leads to success.
0:14:03 Instead, he tells us that small successes
0:14:05 lead to constant motivation.
0:14:08 Jeff believes that motivation is a result.
0:14:10 It’s not the spark or trigger
0:14:12 that gets you started on your next project.
0:14:15 Real motivation comes after you start.
0:14:17 Motivation is the pride you take
0:14:18 in the work you’ve already done,
0:14:20 which fuels you to do even more.
0:14:24 Motivation stems from success and fuels more success.
0:14:26 So the only thing you need to do to succeed
0:14:29 is to have one small victory to get ahead start.
0:14:31 Then you just follow that loop.
0:14:33 Jeff calls this the motivation cycle
0:14:35 or the motivation feedback loop.
0:14:37 The cycle goes something like this.
0:14:39 A small success leads to some motivation,
0:14:42 which leads to another success and even more motivation,
0:14:45 which leads to another success and even more motivation
0:14:47 and you get the idea.
0:14:50 That’s why motivation isn’t something you have.
0:14:52 Motivation is something you get from yourself
0:14:54 after you take action.
0:14:57 Okay, so to be a successful content creator,
0:14:59 you need to create content consistently.
0:15:01 You need to take action.
0:15:03 And that means you need to get into the habit
0:15:05 of creating content.
0:15:07 The keyword here is habit.
0:15:10 And many of you know that I’m one of the top LinkedIn creators
0:15:12 and I’ve been an influencer on that platform
0:15:14 for over five years now.
0:15:16 And I remember when I first started
0:15:18 my content creator journey on LinkedIn,
0:15:20 I was working a full-time job
0:15:23 and I also started this podcast as a side hustle.
0:15:25 So I basically had two jobs,
0:15:27 a full-time job and a part-time job with this side hustle.
0:15:31 And now I was taking on LinkedIn as a third part-time job.
0:15:34 So I really didn’t have a lot of free time.
0:15:36 And I decided that I would make it a habit
0:15:38 to create my LinkedIn post on the train
0:15:40 on my commute to work.
0:15:42 So I had a 45-minute commute to work
0:15:44 and that was my only job on the train.
0:15:46 I didn’t do anything else.
0:15:48 My job was to post on LinkedIn,
0:15:50 to decide what I was gonna post,
0:15:52 to write up the caption, to pick out my image,
0:15:55 to post the content up before I stepped into the office.
0:15:59 Sometimes it also required me to film a video
0:16:01 while I was waiting for the train.
0:16:03 And then during lunch and on my commute home,
0:16:06 I would do all my comment and DM engagement.
0:16:10 And then I did the same routine five times a week
0:16:13 as a habit every single weekday.
0:16:16 And within a year, I acquired 60,000 followers on LinkedIn
0:16:18 and I became an influencer.
0:16:20 And fast forward to today, I still post daily
0:16:22 while my habits are different.
0:16:26 I have over 260,000 followers on LinkedIn
0:16:29 and I’m recognized as a top voice on that platform.
0:16:32 So small habits can make a big difference.
0:16:34 And nobody aligns to this more than James Clear,
0:16:37 author of the bestselling book, Atomic Habits.
0:16:43 So the heart of your book, Atomic Habits,
0:16:48 is that the idea that small habits can make a big difference.
0:16:49 Why don’t we start there?
0:16:50 Why do you believe that’s true?
0:16:53 – Time will magnify whatever you feed it.
0:16:55 So if you have good habits,
0:16:58 even if they’re little and seem relatively minor
0:16:59 on any given day,
0:17:01 you’ll continue to put yourself
0:17:03 in a stronger position day after day.
0:17:04 In many ways, if you have good habits,
0:17:05 you’re on the right trajectory.
0:17:08 And so all you need is time, you just need some patience.
0:17:11 But if you have bad habits, time becomes your enemy.
0:17:12 And every day that goes by,
0:17:14 you kind of dig the hole a little bit deeper.
0:17:17 And so this idea that small habits
0:17:18 can make an enormous difference,
0:17:20 what it really is about,
0:17:25 is about emphasizing trajectory rather than position.
0:17:28 There’s a lot of discussion about position in life,
0:17:30 how much money’s in your bank account?
0:17:32 What’s the current number on the scale?
0:17:33 What’s the stock price?
0:17:34 What are the quarterly earnings?
0:17:35 We have like all these ways
0:17:38 of measuring your current position.
0:17:41 And then if the measurement isn’t what you wanted it to be,
0:17:43 or you haven’t achieved what you set out to achieve,
0:17:45 you kind of start judging yourself
0:17:48 or feeling guilty for it, or you feel bad about it.
0:17:50 And what I’m encouraging is to say,
0:17:51 listen, just for a minute,
0:17:55 let’s stop worrying so much about our current position,
0:17:56 and instead focus a little bit more
0:17:58 on our current trajectory.
0:18:00 And this is why one of the key things I talk about
0:18:02 in atomic habits is getting 1% better each day.
0:18:05 Are you getting 1% better or 1% worse?
0:18:07 Is the arrow pointed up and to the right,
0:18:08 or have you flatlined?
0:18:10 ‘Cause if you’re on a good trajectory,
0:18:13 even if it’s a very modest gain on any given day,
0:18:15 all you need is time.
0:18:16 And if you’re on a bad trajectory,
0:18:18 even if you’re in a pretty strong position right now,
0:18:20 it’s not gonna end well.
0:18:23 And so building better habits,
0:18:24 making these small improvements,
0:18:27 it’s really about getting you on a path
0:18:29 that can lead to where you wanna go.
0:18:30 I really like that question of,
0:18:34 can my current habits carry me to my desired future?
0:18:36 You know, and if they can, then great,
0:18:37 maybe you just need to be patient
0:18:38 and let the days work for you.
0:18:41 But if they can’t, then something needs to change
0:18:42 about your trajectory.
0:18:44 And so your habits are one of the things
0:18:46 that kind of set you on that path
0:18:49 and determine how far you’re gonna go
0:18:51 and whether you’re improving day in and day out.
0:18:53 And so for all of those reasons,
0:18:54 I like to refer to habits
0:18:56 as the compound interest of self-improvement.
0:18:58 You know, the same way that money multiplies
0:18:59 with compound interest,
0:19:01 the effects of your habits multiply
0:19:03 as you repeat them across time.
0:19:05 Many of your outcomes in life,
0:19:07 many of the results that we also badly want to have,
0:19:10 they’re kind of like a lagging measure
0:19:12 of the habits that precede them.
0:19:14 So your bank account is a lagging measure
0:19:16 of your financial habits.
0:19:18 Your knowledge is a lagging measure
0:19:19 of your reading and learning habits.
0:19:22 Even little stuff like the amount of clutter
0:19:23 in your living room is a lagging measure
0:19:25 of your cleaning habits.
0:19:29 And so we also badly want better results in life,
0:19:31 but the somewhat ironic thing
0:19:33 is that the results are not actually
0:19:35 the thing that needs to change.
0:19:36 You know, it’s like fix the inputs
0:19:38 and the outputs will fix themselves.
0:19:41 Adjust the habits and you’ll be set on a different path
0:19:44 and carried to a different destination naturally.
0:19:47 So this concept of getting 1% better each day,
0:19:50 it’s really a philosophy and attitude and approach
0:19:53 of showing up, trying to make some small improvement
0:19:55 and trusting that that little improvement
0:19:57 can compound something much greater
0:19:59 over a broad span of time.
0:20:04 – Well, you heard it from James.
0:20:07 Just like exercising, showing up regularly
0:20:09 and putting in the effort in your content creation,
0:20:13 even on tough days, builds long-term results.
0:20:15 So think about it, yeah, fam.
0:20:17 What habits are you gonna do to build in your daily,
0:20:20 weekly or monthly routine to accomplish your goals
0:20:21 as a content creator?
0:20:23 Okay, so we spoke about getting started
0:20:26 and staying motivated and building habits.
0:20:28 Now let’s talk a little bit more
0:20:30 about the flip side of content creation,
0:20:33 the dark side, I should say, which is burnout.
0:20:35 It’s easy to feel overwhelmed
0:20:38 when you’re consistently in creation mode.
0:20:40 And that’s why it’s so important to set boundaries
0:20:42 and find ways to recharge.
0:20:46 As entrepreneurs, we tend to be proud of our energy levels
0:20:49 and we often even boast about our own resilience
0:20:50 and hustle culture.
0:20:53 But Dr. Aditi Neurocar, a stress expert
0:20:56 at Harvard Medical School, told me
0:20:59 that you can be resilient and still be much more burned out
0:21:00 than you think you are.
0:21:07 – Resilience and stress go hand in hand.
0:21:10 When you think about what is resilience,
0:21:13 the scientific definition is that it’s your innate
0:21:16 biological ability, so we all have it.
0:21:19 And it’s that ability that you have to adapt, recover
0:21:22 and grow when life throws you a curve ball
0:21:24 or you have a challenge.
0:21:27 Now, resilience doesn’t function in a vacuum.
0:21:28 You need a little bit of stress,
0:21:32 that healthy positive stress for resilience to show itself.
0:21:35 What happens though, is that that word resilience,
0:21:37 you and I hear it and others who are listening
0:21:39 to this conversation may hear the word
0:21:41 and have a visceral response
0:21:43 because it’s gotten a really bad rap
0:21:44 over the past several years.
0:21:47 The word resilience is a positive connotation,
0:21:49 but it feels very negative when you hear it.
0:21:51 And the reason it feels negative now,
0:21:53 you’re like, “Oh, don’t tell me to be resilient.”
0:21:57 It’s because that definition has changed and morphed.
0:22:01 Societally, we’ve moved away from true resilience
0:22:02 towards toxic resilience.
0:22:04 And so what is true resilience?
0:22:05 True resilience, it’s like, like I said,
0:22:07 it’s your innate biology.
0:22:10 We all have that ability to be resilient.
0:22:12 It honors boundaries.
0:22:15 It honors your human limitations for rest and recovery.
0:22:17 And it really focuses on self-compassion
0:22:21 and leaning into that versus toxic resilience.
0:22:24 Toxic resilience is when you and I hear the word resilience,
0:22:27 immediately you cringe, that’s toxic resilience.
0:22:29 It’s a mind over a matter mindset.
0:22:31 It’s productivity at all costs.
0:22:34 It’s like all systems go all the time.
0:22:36 It’s the energizer bunny here in the US.
0:22:40 Just keep going in the UK, keep calm and carry on.
0:22:46 Every single society has some concept of toxic resilience
0:22:48 because it’s a manifestation of hustle culture.
0:22:51 And so I hope that the entrepreneurs listening,
0:22:54 what they take away from our conversation
0:22:57 is that you can be resilient and you can still get burnt out.
0:23:00 That’s called the resilience myth that people think,
0:23:02 “Oh, I can’t be burned out, I’m so resilient.”
0:23:06 Those two things, because what you’re likely living through
0:23:08 is this idea of toxic resilience,
0:23:11 because we’ve been taught from a really young age
0:23:14 that resilience is about tolerating a lot of discomfort,
0:23:16 but that’s not actually true resilience.
0:23:20 And so I want to dismantle that idea of resilience
0:23:23 as being toxic and rather lean into your true resilience,
0:23:27 which really honors your need for rest and recovery.
0:23:29 Because then that is how your brain,
0:23:32 newsflash that your brain really needs rest and recovery
0:23:35 to be productive and to really be functioning
0:23:36 at its optimal level.
0:23:40 (air whooshing)
0:23:43 Recovery is essential to avoiding burnout,
0:23:45 but you can also do a lot for yourself by planning ahead.
0:23:48 That’s why one of the best techniques to avoid burnout
0:23:50 is batching your content.
0:23:53 By setting aside dedicated time to plan and create in bulk,
0:23:55 you reduce the stress of having to come up
0:23:57 with content on the fly.
0:23:59 Jasmine Starr, a business strategist
0:24:02 who helps entrepreneurs build their businesses,
0:24:04 shared with me a powerful system she uses
0:24:07 to batch her reels and TikToks efficiently.
0:24:10 (air whooshing)
0:24:14 So what are your top tips for batching content?
0:24:19 – So I am producing three to four reels a week,
0:24:22 and I’m posting also on TikTok in the same frequency.
0:24:25 And what I tried to do is batch all of the content
0:24:26 two days out of the month.
0:24:30 And so I’ll set aside five hours every other Friday.
0:24:34 And what is so important is to have a plan going in.
0:24:37 I know the reels that I want to create.
0:24:40 I also write down the copy for the reel.
0:24:42 So it’s like, instead of is wasting time like,
0:24:44 “Oh, what are my three tips for this reel?”
0:24:45 So everything’s laid out,
0:24:48 including am I gonna do an outfit change?
0:24:49 ‘Cause if I need to do an outfit change,
0:24:51 I need to have a total count for the outfits
0:24:53 that I need for that specific time.
0:24:56 And so I go in and I have a document,
0:24:57 the reel I wanna create,
0:24:59 how long I think it’s gonna take me to create it,
0:25:02 what props that I need, and the copy for that reel.
0:25:04 Sit down, create them in real time,
0:25:06 save them as drafts or just save to the video,
0:25:08 and then upload when I’m ready.
0:25:14 – Jasmine’s approach shows how a solid plan and process
0:25:16 can save you time and energy.
0:25:19 If you prepare ahead and you prepare your scripts
0:25:22 and your outfits, you can then streamline your workflow
0:25:25 and focus on your creativity during your batch sessions.
0:25:27 Batching also helps you stay in the zone
0:25:29 because you’re not task switching,
0:25:31 which can actually really disrupt your flow.
0:25:33 When you’re focusing all your energy
0:25:35 on content creation for a set period,
0:25:38 that will maximize your productivity.
0:25:41 So in short, try establishing a production routine
0:25:43 that you follow for each video, podcast,
0:25:46 blog posts, or social media posts.
0:25:48 When you follow the same exact process
0:25:50 for every piece of content that you do,
0:25:53 it becomes second nature and gets easier over time.
0:25:56 The routine not only helps you produce content faster,
0:25:59 but also reduces the mental load of constantly
0:26:01 having to start from scratch.
0:26:03 If you’re feeling a bit of creator’s block,
0:26:05 give OpusClip a try.
0:26:07 You can use their all-in-one editor
0:26:09 to jumpstart your ideas for your videos.
0:26:12 It’s especially useful if you have long-form videos
0:26:14 that you wanna chop up into viral content.
0:26:18 Their AI identifies the most compelling hooks,
0:26:20 extracts highlights from different parts of your video
0:26:22 to create short viral reels.
0:26:25 They also have a social post scheduler
0:26:27 to auto-post your clips to YouTube, TikTok,
0:26:29 Instagram, LinkedIn, and X,
0:26:32 so you don’t have any excuse not to be consistent
0:26:33 in the new year.
0:26:36 You can try it out at opus.pro/clipanything,
0:26:39 that’s opus.pro/clipanything.
0:26:41 And yeah, bam, every good thing takes time,
0:26:43 sacrifice, and consistency.
0:26:46 You are not going to become a top content creator
0:26:49 without putting in the time and effort.
0:26:51 However, it does get easier.
0:26:52 And once you put in the reps,
0:26:54 and once you achieve some success,
0:26:56 it’s okay to then slow down.
0:26:58 It’s okay to start saying no to opportunities
0:27:00 and not burn yourself out.
0:27:04 So for myself, I hustled so hard for four years straight.
0:27:07 I worked every weekend, I worked till past midnight,
0:27:09 I hustled, I hustled, I hustled,
0:27:12 and I built up my platforms and my companies.
0:27:14 But then I realized at a certain point
0:27:16 that in order to become my best self,
0:27:18 I needed more rest and more balance.
0:27:19 I needed to work on my relationships.
0:27:21 I needed to work on my own health.
0:27:24 And I put in so much work that my business
0:27:26 and my platforms were compounding
0:27:29 where I didn’t really need to hustle as hard anymore
0:27:30 and everything would still grow
0:27:32 without me working so hard.
0:27:33 I basically hustled enough
0:27:35 where I grew everything to a point
0:27:37 where I earned the right to slow down.
0:27:39 Here’s Jenna Kutcher again for a second time
0:27:41 to drill this point home.
0:27:42 Jenna is in my podcast network,
0:27:45 and I’ve seen firsthand her turn down huge opportunities,
0:27:47 thousands and thousands of dollars
0:27:49 for the sake of her mental health and joy.
0:27:52 She takes it very seriously.
0:27:57 – So something else to know about Jenna
0:28:00 is that she only does stuff that brings her joy.
0:28:02 You only do things that you wanna do.
0:28:04 I bring Jenna opportunities all the time.
0:28:05 She’s in my podcast network
0:28:07 where I’ll be giving her like,
0:28:09 I booked sponsorships for her
0:28:11 and she’ll be like, I don’t wanna do that.
0:28:12 I’m burnt out.
0:28:13 I’m burnt out on IG Reels.
0:28:15 And I’m like, but it’s thousands of dollars.
0:28:16 Are you sure?
0:28:17 And she’s like, yeah, I don’t care.
0:28:18 I’m burnt out.
0:28:19 I’m not doing that.
0:28:20 You can do it.
0:28:22 You can book it in two months or whatever.
0:28:23 So talk to me about that.
0:28:25 Like, how are you able to sort of just put your foot down?
0:28:29 A lot of people couldn’t just turn down money like that.
0:28:30 – Yeah.
0:28:32 I mean, first off, it is such a privilege
0:28:33 to be in a position.
0:28:34 – Yeah, it wasn’t always like that.
0:28:35 – No.
0:28:36 – You’ve got to sacrifice.
0:28:39 – But I’ve realized, and here’s what I’ve really realized,
0:28:41 is if you have listened to this whole episode,
0:28:43 you recognize the power of trust.
0:28:46 And I want my community to trust me.
0:28:48 And if something isn’t in alignment,
0:28:50 not only do I feel it, but they feel it.
0:28:53 And so I have had to get so good at discerning,
0:28:54 what are the right partners?
0:28:56 What are the right opportunities?
0:28:59 What are the right like sponsorships to take on?
0:29:01 Like, is this in alignment?
0:29:03 And I feel that way with every opportunity,
0:29:05 whether it is getting asked to speak on stages
0:29:07 that I would have once dreamt of being on,
0:29:09 but now I’m saying no to,
0:29:11 or whether it is, you know, hosting a mastermind
0:29:12 or all these things.
0:29:13 I could do a million things.
0:29:14 I don’t want to.
0:29:17 And I think that I’m just at this place in my life
0:29:21 where I just recognize that like peace is,
0:29:22 needs to be protected.
0:29:25 And right now in this stage of my life,
0:29:27 like my priority is my family.
0:29:30 And anything that I’m saying yes to is a no to them.
0:29:32 And what is the most important thing to me?
0:29:35 And so, you know, turning down things like,
0:29:37 recording another social media reel,
0:29:39 it’s, to me, it’s like,
0:29:40 but this is more time with my kids
0:29:42 or this is protecting and preserving
0:29:45 the integrity of my followers.
0:29:47 – She’ll even turn down things that are a good fit.
0:29:48 – Totally, totally.
0:29:51 – She’ll turn down things that are a great fit for her
0:29:52 because she’s like, no,
0:29:54 my time with my family is more important.
0:29:57 – Yeah, and I think that like boundaries
0:29:59 protect what’s sacred to you.
0:30:02 And I’ve just had to relearn this lesson
0:30:05 over and over and over again of like boundaries aren’t bad
0:30:09 and boundaries like keep what I say most important to me
0:30:11 and they exemplify that.
0:30:12 Like what I am saying is most important to me
0:30:14 is reflected in my calendar.
0:30:16 It is reflected in my bank account,
0:30:18 is reflected in the way I show up every single day.
0:30:22 And so it’s, it’s a muscle that you have to learn to flex
0:30:25 and it takes time because I think that, you know,
0:30:27 there was a time in my life where I got paid $50,
0:30:29 take pictures of a cat and I couldn’t believe it.
0:30:31 Like somebody is paying me to do something.
0:30:33 I love, this is amazing.
0:30:35 And what a blessing that is.
0:30:37 And the better that you get out listening to your gut
0:30:40 and discerning like, well, this is a great opportunity
0:30:42 but is it the right opportunity for me?
0:30:45 It keeps you in alignment so that you are not passing up
0:30:47 things that you should be saying yes to
0:30:48 and that you are not saying yes to things
0:30:50 that you should be saying no to.
0:30:54 And so I feel like I just have like a really strong intuition
0:30:57 and a gut game and I don’t apologize for saying no any longer
0:31:00 because my no is literally just a reflection
0:31:02 of like what is mattering the most to me right now.
0:31:04 – Yeah, but let’s stick on this mindset
0:31:06 because yesterday I was talking to Jenna,
0:31:08 I had been working on this crazy presentation
0:31:10 for like three months and I was like,
0:31:12 guys, I killed myself on this.
0:31:16 I worked so hard and we were with our other friend,
0:31:19 Amy Porterfield and she was saying, you know,
0:31:20 I’m the same way.
0:31:23 Like I work really hard sometimes and burn myself out.
0:31:25 And Jenna was like, I don’t know how you guys do that.
0:31:27 Like I would never do that.
0:31:31 I would never choose to kill myself on anything.
0:31:35 And I always, a lot of the times take the hard route.
0:31:37 I don’t know why it’s my personality.
0:31:39 Why are you like this?
0:31:40 Like how did this come about?
0:31:41 Were you always like this?
0:31:42 Where you’re just like, no,
0:31:45 I’d rather just have my joy than the money.
0:31:48 – I feel like I’ve realized that like our piece
0:31:51 is so expensive and life is so short.
0:31:54 And I definitely am not anti-hustle culture
0:31:56 because I do believe hustle is required
0:31:57 to get the dream off the ground.
0:31:59 No matter what the dream is,
0:32:00 there have been so many points in my career
0:32:03 where I get an idea or I have a project or something like,
0:32:05 yeah, I can hustle.
0:32:07 But if hustle is the only way that you can operate
0:32:09 and sustain what you’re building,
0:32:10 that is not a business.
0:32:13 Like you are building a prison for yourself.
0:32:15 And I’ve watched so many people
0:32:19 who have really successful businesses and really lousy lives.
0:32:21 Like they are rich in their bank accounts
0:32:22 and empty in relationships.
0:32:25 And like to me, that’s just not worth it.
0:32:27 That is such a high cost.
0:32:30 And I feel like I have had to learn how to discern
0:32:34 like what are my best yeses and like what can I say no to
0:32:37 without having FOMO, without having guilt.
0:32:40 And it’s interesting because I think becoming a mom
0:32:43 really shifted that for me of like,
0:32:47 anytime I’m away from my kids, I want it to be worth it.
0:32:50 And the only way for me to alleviate mom guilt
0:32:54 was to know that like I was doing work that I love,
0:32:56 work that I enjoy, work that gives me peace,
0:33:00 that excites me, so that whenever I’m working,
0:33:02 I’m not there thinking I should be with my kids.
0:33:04 And whenever I’m with my kids, I’m thinking I should be working.
0:33:06 It’s like the only way to get past that
0:33:09 was to just be in total alignment of like,
0:33:10 what do I want for my life?
0:33:14 And I think we focus so much on like leaving a legacy,
0:33:18 but I think in reality, we have to focus on living a legacy.
0:33:21 And I’m like, I want my kids to see the joy.
0:33:22 I want them to see the peace.
0:33:26 And you know, I’ve had so many turning points in my business
0:33:29 where like I’ve just realized that like money isn’t the answer.
0:33:33 Like at times in my business where I’ve earned the most money,
0:33:35 I’ve been the most miserable.
0:33:38 And I just feel like there’s this threshold of like,
0:33:39 where do I get more joy?
0:33:40 How do I derive joy?
0:33:42 Like what does peace look like?
0:33:43 Like when I go to bed at the end of the night,
0:33:45 how do I truly rest?
0:33:48 And it’s just been a huge shift.
0:33:49 And it’s not easy.
0:33:52 And it doesn’t come naturally because I am an achiever
0:33:55 and I am a hard worker and I am driven,
0:33:58 but I’m just at a place in my life where I’m like,
0:34:00 I just want to enjoy it.
0:34:00 – Yeah.
0:34:02 I love the way that you and your team handle it.
0:34:04 You guys take Fridays off.
0:34:05 – Yeah.
0:34:06 – You don’t work on Fridays,
0:34:09 but you’re still crushing it and getting so much done.
0:34:12 Like you don’t have to overwork yourself to be successful
0:34:14 and you were such a great example of that.
0:34:15 – Yeah.
0:34:16 There’s this quote that I heard
0:34:19 that totally changed my mentality.
0:34:21 And it was instead of asking yourself,
0:34:24 if you’ve worked hard enough to earn your rest,
0:34:26 ask yourself if you’ve rested well enough
0:34:27 to do your best work.
0:34:30 It was by a girl, Nikola Hobbs, I think is her name,
0:34:31 or Nikola Dobbs.
0:34:34 And I heard that and I was like, whoa,
0:34:36 like I have been wired of like,
0:34:38 I just need to get this done and then I can rest.
0:34:40 And I was like, what if we like flip this on its head?
0:34:42 And it’s just been so transformative for me
0:34:45 because I’m like, no, I need to like come into this
0:34:48 feeling rested and well to do my best work.
0:34:49 And that is like totally shifted things.
0:34:50 – I love that.
0:34:56 – I really love that mantra that Jenna mentioned.
0:34:59 Have you rested well enough to do your best work?
0:35:02 Remember, you’re running a marathon, not a sprint.
0:35:04 And that marathon is long.
0:35:08 You will most likely not become an overnight success.
0:35:10 It will take you years before you make money
0:35:13 because being a content creator is not easy.
0:35:16 And it’s easy to be down on yourself and give up
0:35:18 when you feel like you didn’t become an influencer
0:35:20 or you haven’t gone viral yet
0:35:22 or reached a point to monetize your content.
0:35:25 Benjamin Hardy, an organizational psychologist,
0:35:27 taught me that when you think that way,
0:35:28 you are in the gap.
0:35:30 You are practicing gap thinking,
0:35:33 which is a really unhealthy place to be.
0:35:37 Instead, you really wanna practice gain thinking.
0:35:39 Now here’s Ben to explain gap and gain thinking.
0:35:46 – I heard you say on another podcast
0:35:48 that when you released that book in 2018
0:35:49 that you came on my podcast to talk about
0:35:51 willpower doesn’t work.
0:35:54 You actually considered it a failure
0:35:57 because it didn’t reach New York Times bestsellers list.
0:35:59 And that’s like every author’s dream.
0:36:01 But nonetheless, when you came on my podcast,
0:36:03 I remember thinking it was such a big deal.
0:36:04 You were such a big blogger.
0:36:08 And we had scored Benjamin Hardy episode number seven.
0:36:13 And so you were a big deal to us and to the outside world,
0:36:14 but inside you felt like a failure.
0:36:16 So I wanna talk about that.
0:36:19 I think it will give us some color on your journey
0:36:22 and help us understand the gap in the gain concept as well.
0:36:27 – So I served a church mission from 2008 to 2010.
0:36:29 And like going on that experience
0:36:30 was very transformational for me.
0:36:32 I grew up in a really intense environment.
0:36:35 But ever since I came home from that experience in 2010,
0:36:37 I wanted to be a professional author.
0:36:41 Over the from 2015 to 2017, I grew enormously
0:36:44 as a blogger and was able to get a book deal
0:36:45 and be able to start providing for my family.
0:36:48 So essentially I got a multi six figure book deal
0:36:49 to write a book.
0:36:50 I’m living my dreams.
0:36:53 It all happens way faster than I thought in early 2018.
0:36:56 Honestly, it was March of 2018, the book comes out.
0:36:58 And I did have way in my head.
0:37:00 Like I had built everything up in my head
0:37:02 that it needed to be a certain level.
0:37:03 It needed to be a New York Times best seller.
0:37:07 And I admittedly as well, threw so much money at it.
0:37:10 And so yeah, it didn’t hit the goal.
0:37:12 And for probably four or five months,
0:37:14 I was in a very deep depression, very deep slump.
0:37:19 And kind of back to the idea of the gap in the gain now.
0:37:22 I guess I’ve learned to measure my own self differently.
0:37:24 So the gap in the gain is something I learned
0:37:25 from Dan Sullivan.
0:37:27 I read his little book on the subject.
0:37:29 Maybe actually it was in 2018.
0:37:32 I read his little book and I was still blogging back then.
0:37:34 And it was just an idea I loved.
0:37:38 And I thought if I ever get a chance to write books
0:37:40 with Dan Sullivan, I’m going to make this a major book.
0:37:42 And the idea is very simple.
0:37:45 I mean, it’s basically the idea that as a person,
0:37:49 we all feel happy or sad based on how we measure ourselves
0:37:51 and how we measure our experiences.
0:37:53 The reason I went into a deep depression
0:37:56 after I had made a monumental achievement.
0:37:58 I mean, I’d never done that before.
0:37:59 It was totally new.
0:38:01 And yet I felt like a loser ’cause I was in the gap.
0:38:04 I was measuring what was against what I thought it should be,
0:38:05 which is an ideal.
0:38:06 When you’re in the gap,
0:38:07 you’re measuring yourself against your ideals,
0:38:09 which you’re always changing, always moving.
0:38:11 Whereas the gain is the opposite.
0:38:12 You measure yourself backward
0:38:14 against where you were before.
0:38:16 Truth was is I was way further than I’d ever been.
0:38:18 And if I was just measuring myself backward
0:38:22 against my past self, competing only against my past self,
0:38:24 I was radically further than I ever was
0:38:26 and I just did something huge.
0:38:29 And so I’m learning and I’ve learned over the years
0:38:30 to be more in the game.
0:38:35 And it’s a far more enjoyable, far happier experience.
0:38:37 – Yeah.
0:38:39 And I’d love to kind of dig deeper on this.
0:38:41 If you can help us understand the difference
0:38:43 between ideals and goals
0:38:45 and why that matters with all this.
0:38:50 – So ideals are very, they’re very ephemeral.
0:38:53 Like they’re not actually tangible.
0:38:55 And so like how I learned it from Dan
0:38:58 is ideals are like the horizon in the desert.
0:39:01 Like you can see them out there and like,
0:39:04 but every time you take a few steps forward,
0:39:05 the horizon keeps going.
0:39:07 And in America,
0:39:10 we’re actually trained to always be pursuing happiness.
0:39:11 That’s even in the Declaration of Independence,
0:39:13 life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
0:39:16 And so we’re very big on ideals in America,
0:39:16 which is good.
0:39:17 Like it’s good to have ideals.
0:39:18 It’s good to be idealistic.
0:39:20 There’s nothing wrong with ideals.
0:39:23 The problem is, is that they’re immaterial.
0:39:24 Like I think a definition of ideal
0:39:27 is whatever you believe is perfection.
0:39:28 So when you’re in the gap,
0:39:30 you’re literally measuring yourself
0:39:32 against your view of perfection.
0:39:34 But back to the idea of the horizon,
0:39:36 that view is never endingly changing.
0:39:39 Like my former self would have felt
0:39:42 like it was perfection just to get a book deal.
0:39:44 But then once I got there, the ideal changed.
0:39:45 The horizon moved.
0:39:47 And now, and so if you’re always measuring yourself
0:39:49 against a moving target,
0:39:53 and also a moving target that by definition is unreachable,
0:39:55 you can’t actually reach an ideal.
0:39:56 It’s an ideal.
0:39:58 But if you’re always measuring yourself against it,
0:40:00 then you never feel like you’ve moved anywhere.
0:40:02 And that’s actually why we wrote the book,
0:40:05 is because high achievers by nature have huge ideals,
0:40:08 but they also usually measure themselves against them.
0:40:10 And our culture is trained that way.
0:40:12 Social media trains us to have ideals
0:40:14 and to always be comparing ourselves externally.
0:40:15 And sometimes ideals are other people.
0:40:18 But if you’re always measuring yourself
0:40:19 against something that’s way up ahead
0:40:22 and also something that you can never actually reach,
0:40:24 then what that does for you internally
0:40:26 is it feels like you’ve never made any progress at all.
0:40:30 It also devalues everything you’ve done to that point.
0:40:32 And so whenever you’re in the gap,
0:40:34 it does not matter how much you’ve achieved.
0:40:36 It doesn’t matter if you’re living way, way, way
0:40:39 beyond the dreams of anything you ever thought you would do,
0:40:41 you actually feel like you’ve made no progress at all.
0:40:43 And you feel like a loser
0:40:45 and you’ve devalued not only your current self,
0:40:47 you’ve devalued everything that got you here.
0:40:48 And so ideals are beautiful.
0:40:51 They’re just not useful as a measurement tool.
0:40:54 They’re useful as a direction tool.
0:40:56 Goals are far more concrete.
0:40:59 Obviously, you can have goals that you set
0:41:01 that move you toward your ideals.
0:41:04 And so goals are specific.
0:41:08 They’re concrete, they’re mile markers on a journey.
0:41:11 And then the useful thing to do with your goals
0:41:14 is to obviously become increasingly
0:41:16 intrinsically motivated towards the goals you set
0:41:18 and even the standards you set for yourself
0:41:21 that they’re less about what anyone else thinks,
0:41:23 what anyone else wants.
0:41:24 And you actually get better at doing that
0:41:26 when you just start measuring your progress backwards.
0:41:28 So like I’ll set a goal for myself.
0:41:31 I’ve got huge goals for 2023.
0:41:33 But in terms of where I’m measuring myself
0:41:35 and in terms of my benchmark,
0:41:36 like my benchmark for 2023
0:41:38 is what I accomplished in 2022.
0:41:40 Like I accomplished some cool things,
0:41:43 but I’m using that since it’s tangible.
0:41:44 Ideals are not tangible.
0:41:47 Like I have concrete evidence of what I did in 2022.
0:41:50 And I can use that not only to propel me forward,
0:41:51 but I can also use that to say,
0:41:53 what do I wanna do that’s even gonna be bigger
0:41:54 and more exciting?
0:41:56 So you can just measure yourself backwards
0:41:59 and use that as the baseline for what you can do.
0:42:02 – Yeah, so I hear you saying a couple big ideas here.
0:42:06 The first one is ideals are a moving target.
0:42:07 You’re never gonna get there.
0:42:09 So you’re never gonna be happy
0:42:12 trying to go towards those ideals
0:42:13 because you’re never gonna actually achieve that.
0:42:15 You can’t actually achieve your ideal.
0:42:16 And it’s always moving further and further
0:42:19 as you become more successful, right?
0:42:21 Second is comparing yourselves to other people
0:42:25 that never helps in terms of our mindset or happiness.
0:42:28 And then I hear you saying that goals can be tangible
0:42:30 and you can have mile markers.
0:42:32 And it’s okay to have goals,
0:42:35 but you need to make sure that you’re judging
0:42:38 your progress on those goals based on your past,
0:42:43 not necessarily how far you are from your ideal place, right?
0:42:44 I know I probably didn’t say it as good as you,
0:42:46 but that’s basically what I’m getting at.
0:42:48 – You actually broke it down beautifully.
0:42:50 I think that this is one of the main problems
0:42:51 with the narratives.
0:42:52 Like there’s a lot of narratives
0:42:54 about how you shouldn’t have goals.
0:42:57 Obviously, I think it’s impossible to not have goals.
0:43:01 I think human beings are, we can’t not have a goal.
0:43:05 That’s part of being intentional,
0:43:08 but the problem is the measurement.
0:43:10 I mean, even if I had hit my goal,
0:43:12 I would have gone into the gap.
0:43:13 I would have moved the target.
0:43:17 So even if I had hit the New York Times bestseller list
0:43:18 from a gap perspective,
0:43:20 I still would have felt terrible about myself
0:43:22 because I would have moved the target.
0:43:23 The target would have been,
0:43:25 well, why wasn’t I on it for four weeks?
0:43:26 – Or why wasn’t I number one
0:43:27 like New York Times bestseller yet?
0:43:29 – Yeah, or why didn’t I hit number one?
0:43:30 So it doesn’t even,
0:43:32 whether you hit the goal or not doesn’t even matter.
0:43:34 If you’re in the gap, it will never have been enough
0:43:36 because the target will keep changing
0:43:37 and you’re measuring yourself
0:43:39 against something that’s immeasurable
0:43:42 and something that’s external and always changing.
0:43:44 And so, yeah, whether it’s other people
0:43:45 that you’re measuring yourself against
0:43:48 or whether it’s just your inflated ideals,
0:43:52 that’s the point is that you won’t be happy
0:43:55 hitting or not hitting your goals if you stay in the gap.
0:43:57 And that’s just the key.
0:43:59 – Yeah, so then on the flip side,
0:44:00 let’s talk about gain thinking.
0:44:03 What does it look like to have gain thinking
0:44:05 or to practice gain thinking?
0:44:08 – So I look at gain thinking two ways.
0:44:10 One is, it’s a way of measuring your progress
0:44:11 and measuring your experiences.
0:44:13 So for me, for example,
0:44:17 like I’ve had a number of experiences already today,
0:44:18 like even just to this point.
0:44:20 And some of them went to plans
0:44:22 and some of them didn’t go to plans.
0:44:23 But if I’m in the game,
0:44:24 I’m measuring what actually did happen.
0:44:26 And I’m measuring myself backwards.
0:44:28 I’m only measuring myself against where I was before.
0:44:31 And the truth is I’m always ahead of my past self.
0:44:34 Even if things go backwards seemingly,
0:44:37 like even if I lose my leg in a car accident, right?
0:44:40 Like a lot of bad things can seemingly happen.
0:44:42 But if you’re in the game,
0:44:45 you’re finding the gains and you’re creating gains
0:44:46 from your experiences.
0:44:48 And so I consider it your squeezing
0:44:51 as much juice out of your experiences as possible.
0:44:54 You’re also always choosing to become better as a result.
0:44:58 No matter what happens to you, you’re in the game.
0:45:00 So everything ultimately happens for you.
0:45:01 So I guess it’s really two big ideas.
0:45:03 One is is it’s measuring yourself backward
0:45:04 against where you were before
0:45:08 and always realizing that you’re further than you were before.
0:45:10 And that the only thing I’m actually measuring myself
0:45:13 against is myself, which is where I was before.
0:45:15 So that’s number one is just measuring yourself backwards.
0:45:17 The second one is literally turning everything
0:45:20 that happens to you into something that happens for you.
0:45:23 So anything, no matter what it was,
0:45:25 you can actually gain and grow from it.
0:45:27 And if you do, then you’re always getting better.
0:45:30 You’re always learning from every experience.
0:45:32 Whereas if you’re in the gap,
0:45:34 then your past becomes a problem.
0:45:37 Like that’s from like a psychology standpoint,
0:45:38 what you need to be happy in the present
0:45:41 is you need a happy past and an exciting future.
0:45:44 And the past is literally a meaning.
0:45:48 And so the gain is just a lens of using your,
0:45:51 or of transforming your past into more gains, more learning,
0:45:53 even from your most extreme traumas,
0:45:55 you can learn to turn those into gains
0:45:56 so that you’re constantly better
0:45:58 and even grateful for them,
0:46:01 which is what psychologists would call post-traumatic growth.
0:46:02 So it’s really just those two things.
0:46:04 I’m only measuring myself against myself backward
0:46:07 and I’m literally turning every experience into my gain.
0:46:13 – Yeah, BAM, I have to say, for some reason,
0:46:16 this second interview that I had with Benjamin Hardy
0:46:19 a couple of years ago just really hit different from me.
0:46:21 I’ve thought about this conversation so much
0:46:23 since we had it that I honestly can’t believe
0:46:25 this conversation was two years ago
0:46:27 because it feels so fresh in my mind.
0:46:30 The first time Ben was on my show was episode seven,
0:46:32 which is six years ago now.
0:46:35 And I was literally just starting out as a podcaster.
0:46:38 Now, if I look at the progress from then until now,
0:46:41 it is beyond anything I could have ever imagined.
0:46:44 Cover of podcast magazine, Webby Award honorary,
0:46:45 dubbed as a podcast princess,
0:46:48 now running the number one business podcast network
0:46:51 with $6.5 million in revenue last year,
0:46:54 representing huge legends that I used to look up to
0:46:57 and thought I’d never even meet Jenna Kutcher,
0:46:59 Amy Porterfield, Neil Patel, Russell Brunson.
0:47:02 I mean, my past self six years ago
0:47:05 would have never imagined my future self.
0:47:07 But even with all this progress,
0:47:09 I don’t always feel accomplished.
0:47:11 Sometimes I’ve fallen to the trap
0:47:13 of comparing myself with others,
0:47:15 with other podcasters who were early adopters
0:47:18 and captured more market share on Apple,
0:47:20 with podcasters who seem to get more traffic than me
0:47:22 but don’t try nearly as hard
0:47:24 or don’t have as good as content.
0:47:26 People who feel like overnight successes
0:47:30 like Steven Barlett or Alex Ramosy who came out of nowhere.
0:47:33 And even though I’m a top podcaster,
0:47:36 a top 100 podcaster, I wanna be a top 10 podcaster.
0:47:40 I want everybody in the world to know my name.
0:47:41 And that was always my goal
0:47:43 when I set out on starting the podcast.
0:47:47 And I fall into what Ben calls the gap.
0:47:50 But really, I shouldn’t measure myself this way.
0:47:53 I should be measuring my progress, the game.
0:47:56 I should be measuring my current self against my past self
0:47:58 and not my future self.
0:48:00 And although it’s healthy to measure progress
0:48:01 looking backwards,
0:48:03 it’s actually not healthy to always stay there.
0:48:07 It’s better to think about who you want to be in the future.
0:48:09 And Ben told me the best thing to do
0:48:13 is to get really clear and connected with your future self.
0:48:14 You’ve gotta hear this.
0:48:21 – This is a really interesting concept in psychology.
0:48:22 Typically the way we look at time
0:48:25 is we look at it as past, present and future.
0:48:27 And we kind of look at it sequentially.
0:48:29 So, and we also look at it chronologically.
0:48:31 Like my past is behind me.
0:48:33 There’s no way I can get back there.
0:48:35 My present is now and the future’s up ahead of me.
0:48:37 I’ll never actually be able to go into the future.
0:48:39 All there is is really now.
0:48:40 From a psychology standpoint,
0:48:42 that’s not how psychologists view time.
0:48:44 Psychologists don’t view time sequentially.
0:48:45 We actually view it holistically.
0:48:48 So what I mean by that is that the past
0:48:50 is currently existing in my life.
0:48:54 Like who I’m being right now is a complete amalgamation
0:48:57 of my views of my past, my experiences of my past.
0:48:59 We even today were talking about
0:49:02 us having a conversation four years ago, right?
0:49:05 And so like my past is of course influencing me right now.
0:49:08 And my narration of the past, my story of the past,
0:49:09 the feelings I have toward my past,
0:49:11 the anchors I may have in my past
0:49:15 that are unresolved, call it trauma or whatever.
0:49:17 But also my goals are heavily influencing me.
0:49:20 I mean, anyone who’s listening to this
0:49:21 is listening to it for a reason.
0:49:22 They’re listening to it because they feel like
0:49:24 this is gonna help them contribute to their goals
0:49:25 or help them move forward in their lives.
0:49:28 And so everything about my life right now
0:49:31 is a combination of my feelings and my perspectives
0:49:33 of my past and also my excitements
0:49:35 or my feelings towards the future.
0:49:40 And so they’re certainly not mutually exclusive
0:49:41 in terms of being in the game,
0:49:43 but also having a future oriented mindset.
0:49:46 Most people who read the gap in the game
0:49:48 are very future oriented people.
0:49:52 The game doesn’t stop you I guess from having a future.
0:49:55 Actually in my perspective, whenever I’m living in the game,
0:49:58 it actually helps me to be more,
0:50:00 it helps me to have a future that’s more genuinely
0:50:02 coming from my own self,
0:50:04 rather than something that’s coming from the outside.
0:50:07 Usually people’s goals and they’re called,
0:50:08 their standards or their ideals,
0:50:11 actually were fed to them by culture, by society.
0:50:13 They don’t even, you know, the future that they want
0:50:17 actually isn’t genuinely intrinsically motivated.
0:50:19 And so for me, tapping into the game
0:50:20 just helps me to stop worrying
0:50:22 about the outside world as much,
0:50:24 stop competing with other people.
0:50:27 And so in terms of future self,
0:50:31 I guess I would say in simple terms,
0:50:33 we all have a future self.
0:50:36 What the research shows is that most people,
0:50:37 especially the older they get,
0:50:41 they stop thinking about their future self very much.
0:50:44 Most people probably 30 and above
0:50:47 assume that even their future self,
0:50:48 10, 20 or 30 years from now
0:50:51 is mostly gonna be the same person they are today.
0:50:53 So most people don’t have huge imagination
0:50:54 towards their future self.
0:50:57 What the research does show is that your future self
0:50:59 is gonna be a wildly different person than you think.
0:51:01 Even in five or 10 years from now,
0:51:03 it’s gonna be hard to fully predict
0:51:04 who your future self will be.
0:51:06 But if you start imagining it, start thinking about it,
0:51:08 and importantly getting really connected
0:51:11 to your future self, who you want to be in the future.
0:51:13 You can then start using, obviously,
0:51:15 your vision of your future self
0:51:16 to guide and direct who you’re gonna be today,
0:51:18 and you can be extremely intentional about it.
0:51:22 And so from my standpoint, the best thing to do
0:51:25 is get really clear and connected to your future self,
0:51:27 who you wanna be, get very specific about that,
0:51:30 and then use that as, I guess you could say,
0:51:32 the North Star for directing everything
0:51:33 you’re doing here and now,
0:51:35 and each and every day as you’re moving forward,
0:51:38 you’re measuring yourself against where you were before.
0:51:39 You’re measuring yourself backwards,
0:51:42 and you’re always seeing that by increasingly living
0:51:44 intentionally as your future self,
0:51:47 you’re always outgrowing your past self.
0:51:48 And I do this daily.
0:51:53 I mean, if I even look at where I was a week ago,
0:51:58 I am not the same person I was last week.
0:51:58 I’ve changed a lot.
0:51:59 I’ve grown a lot.
0:52:03 I know a ton of things my past self didn’t know.
0:52:05 And so I’m never my past self,
0:52:07 and I’m always growing into my future self.
0:52:09 And that’s kind of how I see it.
0:52:14 – So yeah, bam, who is your future self
0:52:16 as a content creator?
0:52:18 What goals will your future self achieve?
0:52:20 And how can you make these concrete goals
0:52:23 rather than chasing an ideal that has a goalpost
0:52:26 that is ever moving and leaving you feeling unfulfilled
0:52:28 in a gap mindset?
0:52:29 Write these goals down.
0:52:31 What is your future self as a content creator look like
0:52:34 in one year, in five years, in 10 years?
0:52:38 Imagine with limitless boundaries and write these goals down.
0:52:41 Then use these goals to prioritize and plan your actions.
0:52:43 Understand who you want to be
0:52:45 and then make your decisions from that lens.
0:52:46 It’s your North Star for directing
0:52:49 what you do day in and day out.
0:52:50 It’s the start of the new year
0:52:53 and there’s no better timing to set out on new goals.
0:52:55 Finally, I wanted to touch on a concept
0:52:57 that might seem a little abstract,
0:52:59 but which is actually deeply connected
0:53:01 to staying motivated as a creator.
0:53:04 Luck, have you ever felt like certain people
0:53:05 seem to get all the lucky breaks
0:53:07 while you’re stuck spinning your wheels?
0:53:10 Well, what if I told you that luck isn’t just random?
0:53:13 It’s something that you can actively cultivate.
0:53:15 Case Kenny, a writer and mindfulness expert,
0:53:17 broke down this idea beautifully for me
0:53:19 when he shared how luck is intertwined
0:53:22 with patience, action and authenticity.
0:53:28 I was listening to an interview with you
0:53:31 and James Altichur a couple of days ago
0:53:35 and you guys were talking about how luck is similar to faith,
0:53:38 which I thought was just a really cool way to think about it,
0:53:41 that luck is very similar to how you would think of faith.
0:53:43 How can we make ourselves more lucky?
0:53:47 What are some ways that we can break the rut that we’re in,
0:53:48 the routine that we’re in
0:53:51 to try to bring more luck into our lives?
0:53:53 I like the idea of luck as faith
0:53:56 and I like the idea of luck and faith and patience
0:53:58 being intertwined.
0:54:01 When you give yourself patience,
0:54:03 that is saying I have faith in myself.
0:54:05 When you’re saying I don’t need to rush to do this,
0:54:07 I don’t need to conform to someone else’s timeline,
0:54:08 I just need to keep doing what I’m doing.
0:54:11 That is faith in yourself and that is what creates luck.
0:54:13 There’s a book that I referenced quite a bit
0:54:15 that has been passed around a little bit
0:54:17 about the talks about luck.
0:54:18 I’m blanking on the author of it,
0:54:20 but it’s called “Chase Chance and Creativity,
0:54:22 the Lucky Art of Novelty”
0:54:25 and it’s basically written by this scientist professor
0:54:28 who was talking about the role that luck has played
0:54:31 in some great scientific breakthroughs, right?
0:54:32 Specifically luck in the lab,
0:54:35 like the invention of pasteurization and Louis Pasteur
0:54:36 and the invention of penicillin.
0:54:39 These were technically mistakes that were made in the lab
0:54:41 when they just randomly did things,
0:54:43 not scientists that don’t know the exacts,
0:54:45 but they randomly mixed things together
0:54:46 and something great happened, right?
0:54:46 It was luck.
0:54:48 It wasn’t part of the plan, it was luck.
0:54:52 And basically the scientist looked over the years,
0:54:55 over the many decades and centuries of luck in the lab
0:54:59 and he said luck is actually categorizable.
0:55:00 It’s something we could break down
0:55:01 and it’s something we can’t control.
0:55:03 And he said there’s four kinds of luck.
0:55:05 And one luck is the kind of luck
0:55:08 that I think we’re all so apt to identify by.
0:55:10 And for me, I used to think,
0:55:11 well, I’m an unlucky person, right?
0:55:12 I’m number one in the lottery.
0:55:13 I always hit red lights.
0:55:15 Like if something bad can happen,
0:55:16 it tends to happen to me.
0:55:18 That’s the kind of luck that we need to ignore.
0:55:19 That’s random luck.
0:55:21 Like we don’t really care about random luck.
0:55:23 We can’t control it, it is what it is.
0:55:24 But there’s three other kinds of luck
0:55:26 that he identified in the lab
0:55:29 that I think is very immediately transferable to life.
0:55:32 The first was luck that comes from experience
0:55:33 and association.
0:55:35 Basically the more you do something,
0:55:37 the wiser you get about it,
0:55:40 such that in the future you make better decisions.
0:55:43 You’re able to quickly form more mental associations
0:55:46 of if this, then that, and you just have better results.
0:55:48 It’s luck that comes from wisdom, right?
0:55:50 So for me, it’s like with writing quotes.
0:55:53 I’ve written, I don’t know, a thousand on Instagram.
0:55:56 I kind of know what people want.
0:55:59 I know what makes people feel seen.
0:56:01 So people are like, I posted something yesterday.
0:56:02 Today it’s got like 90,000 likes.
0:56:04 That’s a lot of likes.
0:56:04 That’s a little bit lucky.
0:56:07 The algorithm lucked me today.
0:56:08 Well, kind of.
0:56:10 It was just a little bit of association.
0:56:11 So that was luck one.
0:56:13 The other luck was luck that comes from motion.
0:56:14 Can’t deny that, right?
0:56:16 The more you do, the luckier you get.
0:56:17 Objects in motion, stay in motion.
0:56:20 Objects in motion, bump into other objects in motion.
0:56:22 The more you do, the more podcasts you release,
0:56:23 the more music you release,
0:56:25 the more cold calls you make.
0:56:27 Literally the luckier you get.
0:56:29 People, for some reason, we conflate luck
0:56:32 with being irregardless of effort,
0:56:34 but luck is truly effort.
0:56:35 And then the last luck that he broke down
0:56:38 was luck that comes from uniqueness, originality,
0:56:41 authenticity, just the fact that the more real you are,
0:56:45 the luckier you get in the sense that people can detect that.
0:56:47 Like some of the examples would like,
0:56:48 if you have blue hair, right?
0:56:51 And that’s like authentic to you and your expression.
0:56:52 It strikes up a conversation with someone.
0:56:54 Oh, and they’re an editor for Vogue
0:56:55 and you want to be a fashion model.
0:56:58 Things like that, luck that comes from originality
0:57:01 and authenticity, that in very practical ways,
0:57:02 whether it’s a conversation in an elevator
0:57:04 or something you post that shines through
0:57:06 to attract the right people and you get lucky.
0:57:08 But it comes from that level of realness.
0:57:11 So yeah, I like thinking about luck in that sense
0:57:14 because I used to really victimize myself
0:57:16 as an unlucky person.
0:57:17 And of course that’s not true.
0:57:18 And that’s unfair.
0:57:20 Back to the idea of that’s bold of you and vulnerability.
0:57:23 It’s an unfair thing to say I’m an unlucky person.
0:57:25 You could break yourself free of being unlucky
0:57:28 by being real, by leaning on your past
0:57:29 for those associations.
0:57:31 And then for doing more, of course.
0:57:38 – Cases breakdown of luck is such a powerful reminder
0:57:40 that you don’t have to sit around
0:57:42 waiting for opportunities to come to you.
0:57:45 Instead, take action, stay true to yourself
0:57:47 and trust that your consistent efforts
0:57:48 will eventually pay off.
0:57:50 And that’s a wrap for episode three
0:57:52 of the app creator series.
0:57:54 Today we explore the journey of staying motivated
0:57:56 as a content creator from starting small
0:57:59 and staying consistent to avoiding burnout
0:58:01 and gap thinking while practicing game thinking
0:58:05 and focusing on transforming into your future self.
0:58:08 And remember, content creation is a marathon, not a sprint.
0:58:10 The keys to find systems and tools
0:58:12 that support your creativity
0:58:14 and make the process sustainable.
0:58:15 Whether that’s batching content,
0:58:16 automating your workflows
0:58:19 or using tools like OpusClip to save time
0:58:21 while making awesome content.
0:58:24 I wanna thank OpusClip for sponsoring this series.
0:58:26 OpusClip’s AI-powered clip anything
0:58:28 can transform how you create.
0:58:30 Effortlessly discover hidden moments
0:58:33 in your long form videos and turn videos
0:58:34 into shareable viral content
0:58:36 that resonates with your audience.
0:58:38 They also have a social post scheduler
0:58:40 to auto post your clips to YouTube,
0:58:42 TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn and X
0:58:44 so you can save your precious time
0:58:47 and stay consistent with your posting in 2025.
0:58:50 If you’re ready to take your content to the next level,
0:58:52 try OpusClip today for free
0:58:54 at opus.pro/clipanything
0:58:57 that’s opus.pro/clipanything.
0:58:58 Thanks for tuning in
0:59:00 and I can’t wait to see you in episode four
0:59:03 of the Yap Creator series presented by OpusClip.
0:59:05 This is Hala Taha signing off.
0:59:08 (upbeat music)
0:59:11 (upbeat music)
0:59:14 (upbeat music)
0:59:17 (upbeat music)
0:59:25 [BLANK_AUDIO]

0:00:03 – Meaning and purpose is ultimately all that matters.
0:00:04 If you have all the money in the world,
0:00:06 but you don’t believe in what you’re doing,
0:00:08 then it will be a very empty pursuit.
0:00:11 Progress is a foundational pillar to human happiness.
0:00:14 The average human is designed to get better.
0:00:15 So if you put time and attention
0:00:17 into getting good at something,
0:00:19 you will actually get good at that thing.
0:00:22 – How do we push through our emotions to achieve our goals?
0:00:23 – I think people should…
0:00:26 Don’t let anybody tell you something is impossible
0:00:29 unless it legitimately violates the laws of physics.
0:00:31 You’ve built a billion dollar companies
0:00:32 across different industries,
0:00:36 and right now money is really not a concern for you.
0:00:37 – Money only monetizes once.
0:00:38 You can only spend it one time,
0:00:41 but knowledge and connections monetize forever.
0:00:42 As long as you’re here,
0:00:44 then you can’t have everything you want.
0:00:51 (gentle music)
0:00:54 (gentle music)
0:01:02 Yap gang, hold onto your screens
0:01:05 and get ready for an inspiring and insightful episode
0:01:07 as we welcome Tom Billu,
0:01:09 the co-founder of Quest Nutrition
0:01:11 and the visionary behind Impact Theory.
0:01:13 Tom’s not just a successful entrepreneur.
0:01:16 He’s a master at transforming challenges into opportunities.
0:01:17 And in this episode,
0:01:20 he’ll share his journey from building a billion dollar business
0:01:24 to pivoting into the world of media and personal empowerment.
0:01:25 He’ll also share his thoughts on how AI
0:01:27 could transform the creator economy.
0:01:29 Tom is somebody that I’ve looked up to
0:01:30 for such a long time.
0:01:33 I’m so excited to have this conversation.
0:01:35 He’s been such an inspiration to me.
0:01:39 Impact Theory is a legendary platform.
0:01:42 And honestly, like he’s just inspired so much of my journey.
0:01:43 I can’t wait for this conversation.
0:01:45 So without further delay,
0:01:48 here’s my discussion with Tom Billu.
0:01:51 Tom, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.
0:01:52 – Thanks for having me.
0:01:55 – I’m so excited for this conversation.
0:01:56 You are somebody that I look up to
0:01:59 both as a podcaster and an entrepreneur.
0:02:01 You’ve built a multi-million dollar
0:02:04 and billion dollar companies across different industries.
0:02:08 And right now money is really not a concern for you.
0:02:10 And so I’m curious to understand
0:02:12 when you think about starting a new project
0:02:15 and a new company, which are always starting new things,
0:02:18 what are the considerations that you have?
0:02:22 – Impact, meaning and purpose is ultimately all that matters.
0:02:23 If you have all the money in the world,
0:02:25 but you don’t feel engaged,
0:02:27 you don’t believe in what you’re doing,
0:02:29 then it will be a very empty pursuit.
0:02:32 And I thankfully learned that lesson when I was quite young.
0:02:36 So yeah, when I had all the financial success at Quest,
0:02:38 I knew that whatever I do next
0:02:40 has to be grounded in meaning and purpose
0:02:41 just like Quest was.
0:02:43 So my last day at Quest was Monday
0:02:46 and my first day at Impact Theory was Tuesday
0:02:48 and just got right back to it.
0:02:50 ‘Cause that’s ultimately what feeds me
0:02:51 is that sense of, okay,
0:02:53 I’m doing something with my time that matters.
0:02:55 Obviously I’m very thoughtful to make sure
0:02:56 that I enjoy what I’m doing,
0:02:58 even when I’m failing that it’s a thing
0:03:01 that I not only care about the potential outcomes,
0:03:03 but that I enjoy the process.
0:03:06 So you got to fill your time somehow
0:03:08 and I’m not a retired to the beach kind of guy.
0:03:11 So Impact is to say it in a word.
0:03:13 – Yeah, and something that I love for you
0:03:16 is that you’ve got so many different like philosophies
0:03:18 and ways that you live your life.
0:03:19 And one of the things that you’ve said
0:03:22 is that the most crucial aspect of life
0:03:26 is what you think about yourself when you’re not alone.
0:03:28 – Now what you think about yourself when you’re by yourself.
0:03:30 So there’s no one there to hype you up.
0:03:31 No one there to tear you down.
0:03:34 What do you think about you?
0:03:36 And it’s normally in that quiet space
0:03:38 that people start beating themselves up
0:03:41 and they don’t feel they’re living up to their own ideals.
0:03:42 That matters.
0:03:45 I think ultimately we just were hardwired for it.
0:03:47 And so how do you feel self-respect
0:03:50 and having self-respect for yourself
0:03:52 is impacted by the work that we do
0:03:54 and the jobs that we have?
0:03:56 – Well, so we are a hungry species.
0:03:58 We are designed to pursue.
0:04:01 We’re designed to grow, to keep getting after things.
0:04:04 When you think about it from an evolutionary perspective,
0:04:07 you would be hardwired to do the things
0:04:09 that are gonna keep you alive long enough
0:04:10 to have kids that have kids.
0:04:13 And so hard work contributing to the group,
0:04:16 facing difficult tasks, making progress.
0:04:18 Like all of those things are hardwired.
0:04:22 So the things that you do either make good
0:04:23 on those evolutionary algorithms
0:04:26 that you have running in your brain that say like,
0:04:27 hey, you’ve just been lazy.
0:04:28 I don’t feel good about that.
0:04:30 Or whoa, like you really did something
0:04:32 and it helped a lot of people.
0:04:33 You’re gonna feel great about that.
0:04:38 So in that sense, what you do becomes a critical component.
0:04:40 So the way I like to explain it is
0:04:42 we are both the shout and the echo.
0:04:45 So we’re the things that we do, that’s the shout.
0:04:48 And then we’re what the world tells us they feel
0:04:49 about the thing that we did.
0:04:51 And anybody that thinks that they can escape,
0:04:55 that sense of like that feedback impacts me in some way
0:04:56 is delusional.
0:04:57 You are going to be impacted.
0:04:58 Now you wanna keep it in balance.
0:04:59 You don’t wanna let that get out of hand
0:05:02 where you only live for the validation of others.
0:05:03 But we are a social animal.
0:05:08 And so you will be impacted by what other people think.
0:05:10 – And so something that I know about your journey
0:05:12 is that at certain points in your journey,
0:05:17 you worked really hard, like 120 hours a week at some point.
0:05:19 And you didn’t really have so much work-life balance.
0:05:23 So how has your mindset changed regarding the way
0:05:26 that you prioritize work and life?
0:05:29 – To be honest, it hasn’t changed in a very long time.
0:05:31 And so when I was working the 120 hours a week,
0:05:33 which was a couple of years ago,
0:05:36 I knew that I was making a short-term error
0:05:38 for a long-term gain.
0:05:40 And it really did though get to the point
0:05:42 where I was beginning to damage my marriage.
0:05:44 And that’s always my barometer of, okay,
0:05:46 if my marriage is really the most important thing
0:05:48 in my life, simply because it is yielded,
0:05:50 the most return on my investment,
0:05:51 then I needed to make a change.
0:05:53 And so at the height of all that,
0:05:55 I pulled my wife aside and said,
0:05:57 “Look, I will find my way back to you.”
0:05:59 And it just became about putting business processes
0:06:01 in place that I could hand things off
0:06:02 that I wasn’t trying to do everything myself.
0:06:04 And so it’s like, look, at the same time,
0:06:06 it was, it’s the period in my life
0:06:09 that I’m probably the most proud because it,
0:06:11 if the world was ever going to break me,
0:06:13 that was going to be the moment.
0:06:15 And so it didn’t, and I kept pushing forward
0:06:17 and I got the business to where it needed to be.
0:06:21 And I got back into the rhythm of prioritizing my marriage.
0:06:24 And so look, it was not a period without its consequences.
0:06:27 But if you’re very cognizant of that,
0:06:29 if you engage in my case with both the business
0:06:33 and the marriage to communicate, okay, business,
0:06:34 this is what we’re gonna have to do.
0:06:35 We’re gonna have to get people in
0:06:37 that replace these different elements.
0:06:38 We’re gonna have to create new processes
0:06:40 so that this isn’t so manual.
0:06:42 And then dear wife,
0:06:44 we’re gonna need to start setting aside some time.
0:06:46 I need a couple more months
0:06:48 to like really put these processes in place.
0:06:50 But if you can just bear with me until this time,
0:06:52 I won’t be working these stupid hours anymore.
0:06:55 And so because I was able to make a promise,
0:06:57 make good on that promise,
0:06:59 and then she could see the results
0:07:00 that I was yielding in the business.
0:07:02 So it’s like through communication,
0:07:03 all things are possible.
0:07:06 So I don’t believe in balance.
0:07:09 The cheesiest way to say it is I believe in harmony.
0:07:13 The more accurate way to say it is goals make demands.
0:07:16 And as long as you’re executing in priority order,
0:07:18 then you can have everything you want,
0:07:23 but you can be very efficient in what you get done
0:07:25 by just saying, okay, this is the most important thing
0:07:26 that I can do based on my goals
0:07:27 and where I wanna end up.
0:07:29 This is the second most important,
0:07:31 so on and so forth down the list.
0:07:34 And if it’s integrated with a marriage and friendship
0:07:36 and things like that, you’ll be fine.
0:07:38 But most people, and this is really like,
0:07:40 hey, dear everybody listening,
0:07:42 if you wanna know one problem I see over and over and over
0:07:45 is people allow themselves to get overwhelmed.
0:07:50 There is not an amount of things barring a hot war
0:07:51 where people are literally getting shot
0:07:52 and dying around you.
0:07:56 There’s nothing that should be able to overwhelm you.
0:07:59 And so overwhelm is about an expectation
0:08:00 that you are putting on yourself
0:08:02 that you can carry an infinite load
0:08:06 that triggers a psychological revving up
0:08:08 of you trying to track every variable.
0:08:12 And the reality is that I don’t ever get overwhelmed
0:08:14 even when I was working 120 hours a week
0:08:16 and it was a massive physical toll.
0:08:18 There was never the additional layer
0:08:21 of I’m mentally breaking because I just,
0:08:22 it’s all about priorities.
0:08:25 I have them in priority order, I draw a dotted line
0:08:26 and say the things below the dotted line
0:08:29 just are not going to be addressed right now.
0:08:31 And I’m able to just shut that door.
0:08:33 And what I find is people are not able to shut the door
0:08:36 on the things that exceed the number of hours
0:08:37 that they’re willing to work.
0:08:39 And so they’re trying to track everything,
0:08:42 even the things that are what I call dormant priorities.
0:08:43 And that’s the thing that drives them crazy.
0:08:46 And you literally just have to do what’s known
0:08:47 in behavioral cognitive therapy
0:08:50 as cognitive behavioral therapy, excuse me,
0:08:52 as a pattern interrupt.
0:08:55 And so like anybody, I get that initial impulse of like,
0:08:58 oh my God, like I can feel my brain speeding up.
0:09:00 And that’s when I say to myself, I don’t do overwhelm.
0:09:03 And then I do diaphragm breathing
0:09:06 and I slow down ironically and then slowing down
0:09:09 rather than trying to speed up to do everything.
0:09:10 It just dissipates.
0:09:13 And I thought this would be something
0:09:15 I could just tell people about, they would adopt it
0:09:16 and it would be great.
0:09:18 And I see people get overwhelmed all the time.
0:09:21 – I feel like so many entrepreneurs get overwhelmed
0:09:22 and it’s so true what you’re saying,
0:09:27 overwhelm is a feeling that is maybe not necessarily real.
0:09:29 We can only do so many things.
0:09:32 And so if we just prioritize what we’re doing
0:09:33 and set some boundaries,
0:09:36 then we shouldn’t necessarily get overwhelmed.
0:09:38 It also helps that you have a wife
0:09:42 where you guys are very communicative about your goals.
0:09:44 You both set out to be entrepreneurs.
0:09:47 You’ve decided to do things like not have children
0:09:49 so you can be successful entrepreneurs.
0:09:53 So do you feel like the relationship that you chose
0:09:57 with your wife also helps you be a better entrepreneur?
0:09:58 – No doubt about that.
0:10:01 My marriage has given me more of everything
0:10:03 that you could want than anything else.
0:10:05 So my wife has certainly made me a better person.
0:10:07 I do not know who I would be if I had not met her.
0:10:10 I met her in my early 20s.
0:10:13 And we’ve been together for 24 years, married for over 22.
0:10:15 It’s crazy.
0:10:16 Yeah, it’s extraordinary.
0:10:17 Absolutely.
0:10:18 And having somebody that supports you
0:10:19 and having somebody that sees things
0:10:21 that you would otherwise be blind to,
0:10:23 somebody that instead of getting on their knees
0:10:25 and crying with you when things are going rough,
0:10:26 they’re like picking you back up
0:10:29 and reminding you who you are and brushing your shoulders up.
0:10:33 My wife has given me the Jerry Maguire speech many times
0:10:36 to get me back in the game when you’re starting to flag.
0:10:39 So that’s really been incredible.
0:10:42 Being self-aware and having a partner
0:10:45 that is also self-aware and that can talk with you
0:10:48 and lay options out and help you problem solve,
0:10:52 that’s really the thing that I would give the credit to.
0:10:55 And so you don’t necessarily need a significant other.
0:10:58 It helps, it’s wonderful and I encourage it for everybody.
0:11:01 But I don’t want people to feel like that’s out of reach
0:11:03 simply because you don’t have a partner
0:11:04 ’cause it ultimately comes down to
0:11:07 what are the beliefs that you hold that are choices?
0:11:09 What are the values that you hold?
0:11:10 Those are choices.
0:11:13 And if you live by your beliefs and your values
0:11:16 and your beliefs and values are positive
0:11:17 and they move you in the right direction,
0:11:18 you’re gonna be fine.
0:11:20 Now, if you have a significant other
0:11:22 to reinforce it all even better,
0:11:24 that’s certainly not necessary.
0:11:27 So we were just talking about how entrepreneurship
0:11:29 can be a little bit overwhelming.
0:11:33 I mean, you were building a new virtual world, right?
0:11:34 That’s a very complex thing
0:11:36 that I’m sure took a lot of dedication.
0:11:39 There was a lot of experimentation, a lot of challenges.
0:11:42 And I’m sure a failure along the way.
0:11:44 So as a seasoned entrepreneur
0:11:46 who has built many different successful companies,
0:11:49 how are you approaching failure now?
0:11:52 – Well, so failure, the only right way to approach it
0:11:54 is to approach it like AI.
0:11:56 So when AI is trying to learn a pattern,
0:11:59 which is essentially what all of us are trying to do,
0:12:01 it tries a thing and it gets a result.
0:12:03 And it’s not like, I mean, you can’t imagine the AI
0:12:05 having like an emotional breakdown.
0:12:07 Oh my God, like I tried to play this video game
0:12:08 and it didn’t work.
0:12:09 It’s like the AI just goes,
0:12:11 okay, I’m trying to learn the rules of the game
0:12:12 and I move the paddle this way
0:12:14 and I don’t make contact with the ball.
0:12:15 I don’t get any points.
0:12:16 So what if I move over here
0:12:17 and then eventually it makes contact with the ball
0:12:19 and the ball bounces and scores a point.
0:12:20 It’s like, oh, okay, I see now.
0:12:23 I have to make contact with the paddle and the ball
0:12:24 and the ball will then hit this.
0:12:28 And so you’re just getting what are known in AI as samples.
0:12:30 So you try a thing, it gives you a piece of data.
0:12:32 This is a sample.
0:12:34 Now you know a little bit more about the world.
0:12:37 And if people understood that you’re running trial and error
0:12:39 as a way of building up a prediction engine
0:12:42 so that you know, oh, when I do this, I get this outcome.
0:12:43 And that really is all life is.
0:12:45 It’s what I call the physics of progress.
0:12:47 You’re trying to build a prediction engine
0:12:49 so that you know when I do this, I get this result.
0:12:52 And I wanna go to XYZ goal
0:12:54 and I see what I have to do in order to get there.
0:12:56 And I’ve got such an accurate prediction engine.
0:12:59 I can now do all the things that are gonna take me there.
0:13:02 Now, you can never be guaranteed to arrive at your goal
0:13:05 because the world is just changing so rapidly.
0:13:08 But at least if you’re running this exercise
0:13:10 of the physics of progress,
0:13:12 you always know what to try next.
0:13:13 Whether it will work or not
0:13:15 depends on a whole host of factors.
0:13:17 But that is really, really useful.
0:13:21 And failure is a necessary part of that sequence.
0:13:23 And there’s an amazing guy,
0:13:26 is the largest hedge fund manager in the world
0:13:27 named Ray Dalio.
0:13:28 He’s got a great quote,
0:13:32 which is pain plus reflection equals progress.
0:13:34 And so when you fail, it hurts,
0:13:37 but that sting causes you to reflect and say,
0:13:39 okay, I wanna feel this way again.
0:13:40 What did I do last time?
0:13:41 What was the outcome that I got?
0:13:44 Let me change my behavior so I can get where I wanna go.
0:13:46 And as long as you don’t let that emotionally break you,
0:13:49 then you can hit escape velocity.
0:13:51 – So something that I’m hearing you say
0:13:54 is that we need to kind of push past our emotions.
0:13:55 Like we might feel overwhelmed.
0:13:56 We might feel stressed.
0:14:00 We might feel like just everything is out of control.
0:14:04 How do we push through our emotions to achieve our goals?
0:14:05 – I would say it slightly differently.
0:14:08 So I think people should distrust their emotions.
0:14:09 So this is where you wanna ground
0:14:12 in the fact that you’re having a biological experience.
0:14:15 And so I’m gonna ask myself, okay, I feel some kind of way.
0:14:17 Why do I feel the way that I feel?
0:14:19 If you’re really gonna go macro,
0:14:21 this is evolution only has two levers.
0:14:22 Pleasure and pain.
0:14:23 Evolution has one goal.
0:14:25 To make sure that you survive long enough
0:14:26 to have kids and to have kids.
0:14:29 Okay, so I’m doing something right now that hurts.
0:14:30 That means I’m doing a thing
0:14:33 that evolution does not want me to keep doing.
0:14:34 Or I’m doing something pleasurable.
0:14:36 This is something that evolution wants me to keep doing.
0:14:39 Okay, now if my goal is not focused
0:14:41 on having kids that live long enough to have kids,
0:14:42 I have some different goal,
0:14:44 then those emotions might not be what I need
0:14:45 to reach my goal.
0:14:47 And this is what I see all the time.
0:14:51 People confuse feeling with thinking.
0:14:53 Don’t make that mistake, boys and girls.
0:14:54 Feeling is not thinking.
0:14:59 So feelings are literally a very high bandwidth communication
0:15:03 from the part of your body and your subconscious mind
0:15:07 that can read a lot of points of data very, very quickly.
0:15:10 But it’s hard to translate that into conscious thought,
0:15:14 into words, even more narrow of a data pipe.
0:15:16 And so you just get a feeling, right?
0:15:17 Tiger and bush run.
0:15:18 You don’t have to like think through it.
0:15:19 In fact, you may not even get to tiger.
0:15:20 You just have a sense.
0:15:22 I need to get out of here right now.
0:15:23 You don’t know why you don’t know what it is.
0:15:26 Maybe you picked up on a rustling in the bush,
0:15:28 certain way, you know, a stick cracked.
0:15:31 And the same is true in relationships, in business.
0:15:33 You just get this overwhelming feeling.
0:15:34 Now, if in that moment,
0:15:36 you realize my life isn’t actually in danger.
0:15:38 So the fact that I’m having this really strong emotion
0:15:42 should lead me to pause and go, why am I feeling this?
0:15:47 And if you can pull that very high bandwidth emotion
0:15:50 through that low bandwidth pipe into your conscious mind
0:15:53 and say, oh, this is what all of that is boiled down
0:15:54 to something very simple,
0:15:55 which is almost always,
0:15:57 if you’re having a negative emotion anyway,
0:15:58 it’s almost always an insecurity.
0:16:01 So I’m worried if I don’t get this right,
0:16:03 my business is gonna fail and then I’m gonna lose her.
0:16:06 I’m a loser and my parents are gonna disown me
0:16:08 or my girlfriend is gonna break up with me, whatever.
0:16:11 And it’s all happening again, based on that level of emotion.
0:16:14 If you can slow down and say, hold on, that’s overwrought,
0:16:15 that’s ridiculous.
0:16:18 This is one of many things that I need to think through.
0:16:20 I can make a lot of mistakes and still be fine.
0:16:21 I do need to be thoughtful.
0:16:24 I need to learn my lessons, but people don’t do that.
0:16:26 They get mad and they react mad
0:16:28 and then that makes things worse.
0:16:30 And they never take the time to say, why am I mad?
0:16:32 Oh, wow, this is an insecurity,
0:16:35 not anything positive or empowering.
0:16:39 This is an emotion designed to mask the underlying thing.
0:16:40 – I know a lot of entrepreneurs
0:16:41 that are tuning into the show.
0:16:46 Like we’re talking right now about challenges, failure,
0:16:50 trying to not trust our emotions, like you said.
0:16:52 And I know that you talk,
0:16:54 or at least in the past you’ve mentioned before,
0:16:57 you might have changed your approach to this,
0:17:00 but you take a first principles approach to thinking.
0:17:02 Can you talk to us about what that is?
0:17:05 – Yeah, and if I ever change my first principles approach,
0:17:07 you should be the first to come punch me in the mouth.
0:17:10 So first principles is quite literally
0:17:11 the only way to think.
0:17:13 It is at its simplest.
0:17:16 It is trying to get to the fundamental base reality
0:17:19 that we all live in, which we are shockingly bad at.
0:17:20 And I can explain why later,
0:17:23 but the idea is don’t reason from analogy,
0:17:25 reason up from physics.
0:17:29 So the great example of this is Elon Musk saying,
0:17:32 hey, for us to make a electric car
0:17:35 that is priced to a place
0:17:37 where the average person can afford it,
0:17:38 we have to completely reinvent
0:17:40 the way the batteries are made.
0:17:41 Now, when they went around to everybody,
0:17:43 everyone’s just like, but this is the cost of batteries.
0:17:44 And he was like, well,
0:17:46 does it violate the laws of physics
0:17:47 to lower the cost of batteries?
0:17:49 It might, if you go and look at what it costs
0:17:50 to get it out of the ground and all that stuff
0:17:53 and to mine it and you may be like, yeah,
0:17:55 this is just it and there’s no way to get any cheaper.
0:17:57 But when he looked at it, he realized, whoa,
0:17:58 there’s like all these markups along the way
0:18:00 we could actually get closer to the source.
0:18:01 We can do them for a lot cheaper.
0:18:03 Cool, same thing happened to me at Quest.
0:18:06 We took our formulation for a protein bar
0:18:09 to the manufacturers and they said, this bar can’t be made.
0:18:12 And we’re like, hold on, does manufacturing this bar
0:18:13 actually violate the laws of physics?
0:18:15 Like that doesn’t seem true.
0:18:18 And so we went and looked at it and long story short,
0:18:20 we realized what was happening is
0:18:23 because the government subsidized corn.
0:18:26 Everybody used high fructose corn syrup
0:18:27 in their products as a sweetener.
0:18:29 It’s cheap, it’s delicious.
0:18:32 So all the equipment that had been manufactured
0:18:35 over like the last 70 years could be made
0:18:37 with the assumption that all the products
0:18:39 that would run on it would have high fructose corn syrup.
0:18:41 So this government intervention
0:18:44 had all these downstream effects that nobody thought of.
0:18:45 So when we said, well, wait,
0:18:47 it’s not that the bar can’t be made,
0:18:49 it’s that we would have to engineer our own equipment.
0:18:52 And so by being willing to engineer our own equipment
0:18:53 and becoming our own manufacturer,
0:18:54 suddenly it wasn’t impossible,
0:18:57 it was just impossible with that equipment.
0:19:01 And so by thinking from first principles of, okay,
0:19:03 this bar only takes a certain amount of pressure
0:19:05 to put down, the bar has a certain viscosity,
0:19:08 the bar has a certain level of stickiness.
0:19:10 So what could we re-engineer on the equipment
0:19:14 to deal with the deviations from a standard product
0:19:15 to our product?
0:19:17 And once you engineer equipment
0:19:18 with those different tolerances,
0:19:19 now it produces just fine.
0:19:21 And that ends up being one of the reasons
0:19:22 that we are very successful.
0:19:24 So that’s thinking from first principles.
0:19:26 You’re not allowing anybody
0:19:28 to hand you a frame of reference.
0:19:30 When people say, think outside the box,
0:19:33 what they mean is you’ve been handed a frame of reference.
0:19:36 You see the entire world through that frame of reference.
0:19:39 And you don’t realize it’s artificially limited
0:19:42 because it’s all shorthand, it’s all analogy,
0:19:45 instead of saying, well, hold on,
0:19:46 this is just how we view the world.
0:19:50 It’s not necessarily how the world actually is.
0:19:53 And so let me, again, go back down to base physics
0:19:54 and build up from that.
0:19:57 And if you sell an info product or something like that,
0:20:00 start with human psychology and build up from that.
0:20:03 But don’t let anybody tell you something is impossible
0:20:06 unless it legitimately violates the laws of physics.
0:20:08 – What do you mean start with human psychology
0:20:09 for info products?
0:20:10 ‘Cause I think I have a lot
0:20:12 of like online entrepreneurs listening.
0:20:14 – So I don’t want people to feel like
0:20:16 this is an exercise where it’s like, oh my God,
0:20:20 do I really have to go back to quarks and bosons
0:20:21 and all that stuff,
0:20:23 which we don’t even fully understand anyway.
0:20:27 So most of the time when I’m running this experiment,
0:20:29 it’s for something for sales and marketing.
0:20:31 And so forget all the early stuff.
0:20:34 Just get to how does a human mind operate?
0:20:36 What do people look for in products?
0:20:37 Like what is the truth?
0:20:39 The inescapable truth of the human mind.
0:20:41 So like, for instance,
0:20:43 people don’t make decisions rationally,
0:20:44 they make them emotionally.
0:20:46 I mean, I can just tell you that from the architecture
0:20:49 of the human mind standpoint, that is true.
0:20:51 And so once you get to that, it’s like,
0:20:53 oh, well you may want to sell this product
0:20:54 on features and benefits,
0:20:56 but it won’t work because that’s not the architecture
0:20:57 of the human mind.
0:20:59 So now instead of like,
0:21:02 if you’re looking at somebody else in your field
0:21:03 and you think, well,
0:21:05 they’re doing it as good as it can be done.
0:21:06 Well, not necessarily.
0:21:09 What are they missing in terms of their approach?
0:21:12 That would allow you to get more bang for your buck.
0:21:15 If you go back to instead of the frame of reference
0:21:16 that they’re handing you and go,
0:21:17 what do I know to be true
0:21:19 about the way the human mind works?
0:21:22 Now you can do something better.
0:21:25 You can do something different and when,
0:21:28 because you’re building up from universal truths
0:21:29 about how people think.
0:21:31 – Let’s hold that thought
0:21:33 and take a quick break with our sponsors.
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0:26:12 So I want to move on to your personal journey.
0:26:14 I feel like a lot of your philosophies
0:26:17 about life came from your own struggles
0:26:19 and learning from them and things like that.
0:26:21 So when I did research about what you were like
0:26:24 as a child and a teen, it turns out
0:26:27 that you self-describe yourself as somebody
0:26:29 who is naturally lazy.
0:26:33 And I’d love to learn about what you were like
0:26:36 as a child and a teen and what kind of self-respect
0:26:40 or lack of self-respect that you had for yourself back then.
0:26:42 Okay, so that went in interesting waves.
0:26:46 So when I was young, I felt very confident in myself,
0:26:50 but I absolutely lacked self-awareness of any kind.
0:26:52 And then as I began to develop self-awareness,
0:26:56 I became incredibly self-conscious and very insecure
0:26:58 and then was afraid that I wasn’t gonna be able
0:27:01 to achieve the goals that I wanted to achieve
0:27:04 because I wasn’t good at the things I needed to be good at.
0:27:08 And I, at the time, just by default had a fixed mindset.
0:27:10 So I believe that my talent and intelligence
0:27:12 were fixed traits and life was just about
0:27:14 making the most of what I had.
0:27:17 Now, the honest answer is we are 50% hardwired.
0:27:20 Like half of what you’re gonna be able to achieve
0:27:24 is grounded by just the hand that you’ve been dealt,
0:27:25 but 50% is malleable.
0:27:29 And so I started really focusing on the part
0:27:31 that I could change and not worrying
0:27:34 about whatever was hardwired, it is what it is.
0:27:37 And so what can I do with that part that I could change?
0:27:39 And once I started leaning into that,
0:27:41 then it was like, okay, I didn’t need to believe
0:27:45 I was special, I just needed to believe that I was average
0:27:47 and that the average human is actually designed,
0:27:49 it’s what I call the only belief that matters.
0:27:51 The average human is designed to get better.
0:27:53 So if you put time and attention
0:27:55 into getting good at something,
0:27:57 you will actually get good at that thing.
0:27:59 You just have to put the time and attention in.
0:28:01 So then it’s like, okay, well, my goal makes a demand
0:28:03 that I be good at XYZ thing.
0:28:05 Am I willing to go get good at it?
0:28:07 Because I could certainly just assume
0:28:10 you can get a hundred times better at anything.
0:28:11 Am I willing to put the time and energy
0:28:13 to get a hundred times better
0:28:15 and is a hundred times better gonna be good enough?
0:28:17 And if it is and you’re willing,
0:28:18 then you go down that path.
0:28:20 And if it’s not, you either stop pursuing that thing
0:28:23 or you find a partner that can be good at the thing
0:28:25 that you’ve decided you’re not going to invest in.
0:28:28 But really getting the lay of the land
0:28:30 of how the human animal actually works
0:28:33 was freakishly liberating for me
0:28:35 because I didn’t have to believe I was born special,
0:28:38 but it was incredibly encouraging to know
0:28:42 that I could get better in any aspect of my life.
0:28:43 – I wanna dig on this a little bit
0:28:46 because I thought this was one of the most interesting things
0:28:49 that I learned about you is that you feel
0:28:52 that free will is an illusion
0:28:55 or you’ve at least said that before, right?
0:28:58 – Yes, free will is an illusion though.
0:29:00 And I mean, is an illusion.
0:29:03 And if you don’t believe me, read the book Determined,
0:29:05 it’s an unrefutable take.
0:29:07 People will try to refute it, but if you read the whole book,
0:29:09 I mean, he really does attack every answer.
0:29:10 – Is that Robert Sapolsky?
0:29:11 – It is.
0:29:14 – Yes, I had him on the show and we talked about it, yeah.
0:29:16 – So good, man, so good.
0:29:17 You’ve got good guests, I like it.
0:29:19 I’m in good company here.
0:29:21 So yeah, Robert Sapolsky, absolutely brilliant.
0:29:23 It’s just a horrifying truth
0:29:26 that we all think we have free will, but we really don’t.
0:29:28 But I don’t think it matters.
0:29:29 And I think if you let it influence your life,
0:29:30 it will drive you crazy.
0:29:33 You need to act as if you have free will.
0:29:34 It’s the only logical way
0:29:37 because here’s why that matters.
0:29:39 Even though we are a automata
0:29:41 that are just responding to things,
0:29:44 we do respond to ideas and we are changeable
0:29:45 and we are changed by our surroundings.
0:29:47 This is why culture just keeps getting
0:29:49 better and better and better
0:29:52 because as we learn more, we’re able to do more,
0:29:56 but there is no ability to escape your biology.
0:29:57 It’s just not possible.
0:29:59 Like even the most monk of monks
0:30:01 has not escaped their biology.
0:30:04 They’ve leveraged their biology in a pretty fascinating way,
0:30:06 but they have not escaped their biology.
0:30:08 And so just as nobody can will themselves to fly,
0:30:10 they cannot will themselves to think a thought
0:30:12 that they’ve never thought, if they could,
0:30:14 then I would say, please solve quantum physics
0:30:17 because that’s in need of a solve.
0:30:19 And if they then say, well, but I’m not smart enough,
0:30:20 it doesn’t have to do a free will.
0:30:21 Yes, it does.
0:30:24 You’re just telling me that you’re limited by your biology,
0:30:25 which we already agree on.
0:30:27 So I wouldn’t spend a lot of time there,
0:30:29 but it is true.
0:30:30 – Yeah.
0:30:31 So basically what you’re saying is that
0:30:34 even though there might be biological factors,
0:30:38 environmental factors are like our own personal history
0:30:39 that impacts all of our decisions,
0:30:42 we have the ability to change.
0:30:44 We have the ability to improve and things like that.
0:30:45 Yeah.
0:30:47 I was just gonna say, when I talked to Robert Sapolsky,
0:30:51 he was really adamant that like nothing is in our control.
0:30:53 And he basically was saying that,
0:30:56 if somebody’s poor and poor 20 years later,
0:30:57 it’s not their fault.
0:30:59 If somebody is obese and cannot lose weight,
0:31:00 it’s not their fault.
0:31:01 If somebody has a drug addiction, it’s not their fault.
0:31:02 It is their biology.
0:31:05 It is like out of their control.
0:31:07 Basically saying that anybody who’s successful
0:31:08 is basically lucky.
0:31:09 And to me, I was like,
0:31:11 I don’t know if I necessarily believe that.
0:31:14 I feel like everybody has the ability to change.
0:31:16 – You do have the ability to change.
0:31:16 The question is,
0:31:19 do you have the ability to direct that change?
0:31:22 And I think he is correct.
0:31:24 I know he is correct that we don’t.
0:31:26 But here’s the catch.
0:31:31 That idea is a worse idea for knowing
0:31:35 that people will respond and change based on ideas.
0:31:37 So it’s one of those, it is true
0:31:40 and I never fight against anything that’s true.
0:31:42 But part of the reason I don’t bang that drum a lot
0:31:44 is that it’s just not a super helpful idea.
0:31:47 So I have a goal and that’s human flourishing.
0:31:50 To get to human flourishing, you have to pursue fulfillment.
0:31:53 To pursue fulfillment, you need to act as if
0:31:57 you can change your circumstances and make your life better
0:31:59 and make the lives of others around you better.
0:32:03 And if you go down that path,
0:32:04 you will feel better about your life.
0:32:06 And if you don’t, you won’t.
0:32:07 Now, it is just true.
0:32:09 I can’t stop myself from saying that.
0:32:11 I am hardwired, I’ve encountered these other ideas
0:32:13 that make me want to say this.
0:32:16 But great, I’m still gonna act as if I’m in control
0:32:18 and it makes my life better.
0:32:20 And so I have a rule.
0:32:24 I only do and believe that which moves me towards my goals.
0:32:27 I’m not trying to create a false picture of the world.
0:32:30 In fact, I’m trying to get to ground truth.
0:32:32 However, I know that humans are ridiculously bad
0:32:35 at identifying what is actually true.
0:32:38 Therefore, I have to steer by something that I can tell
0:32:39 and that’s effectiveness.
0:32:44 So how useful is an idea in getting me where I wanna go?
0:32:46 And if I, going back to one of your earliest questions,
0:32:49 if I wanna feel good about myself when I’m by myself,
0:32:53 what do I need to believe in order to do that?
0:32:56 And so even though I know I’m just responding
0:32:58 to my environment and my biology,
0:33:00 that’s not a good overarching narrative
0:33:02 because it demotivates me.
0:33:05 And so it’s true, I just don’t think about it.
0:33:07 I think about things that motivate me.
0:33:09 And that has led me to where I wanna go.
0:33:11 – So free will is an illusion,
0:33:14 but we need to act as if we’re in control
0:33:15 and operate from there.
0:33:18 – As long as you understand need as it relates to,
0:33:22 it is a more efficient way to get to the goal I have stated,
0:33:24 which is human flourishing.
0:33:25 But if somebody has a different goal,
0:33:27 then it may not be as necessary.
0:33:30 Like obviously for Robert Sapolsky,
0:33:32 he’s got a goal that’s more in line with being,
0:33:37 he would probably sum it up as a moral compassionate being.
0:33:41 And so he to him, it is a moral violation
0:33:44 to hold people responsible for their lot in life.
0:33:47 Whereas for me, it is a moral violation
0:33:51 to let people roam around the streets, attack people.
0:33:54 Even though I’m like, sure, it’s not your fault,
0:33:57 but I don’t care, you can’t roam the streets hitting people.
0:34:01 So everything is an echo of somebody’s goal,
0:34:03 whether they realize it or not.
0:34:04 – Makes sense.
0:34:08 Okay, so you were saying that you’re naturally lazy
0:34:11 and you’ve been able to create a billion dollar company
0:34:14 with quests, you’ve built impact theory.
0:34:16 How can other people who might feel like
0:34:18 they’re naturally lazy,
0:34:21 that they don’t really feel like getting out of bed,
0:34:23 but they still feel ambitious?
0:34:26 What are some tips for them?
0:34:28 – All right, I was just talking about this
0:34:31 on my Twitch gaming stream this morning.
0:34:33 So, okay, it goes like this.
0:34:36 First, you need to know exactly what your goal is.
0:34:40 You need to care deeply about your goal.
0:34:42 Like you have to really want it.
0:34:44 And you can run something I call the loop of desire
0:34:47 to reinforce that, but you have to know what your goal is,
0:34:48 you have to really want your goal.
0:34:51 Then you have to make sure that you’re doing the things
0:34:54 that are causing you to actually progress towards that goal.
0:34:56 Tony Robbins talks about how progress
0:34:58 is a foundational pillar to human happiness.
0:35:00 Anytime you see something like that,
0:35:02 you know you’re tapping into those evolutionary algorithms
0:35:04 that are running in your brain.
0:35:05 So it just feels good.
0:35:07 And then on top of that,
0:35:09 this needs to be something that you have
0:35:12 a really strong why that you’re doing this.
0:35:14 So I’m doing this to help these people
0:35:16 is gonna be the most universal why.
0:35:18 There’s a group of people you care about
0:35:19 for whatever reason you care about them.
0:35:22 And you’re pursuing this thing to help them.
0:35:25 And now that taps into the evolutionary demand
0:35:27 that we have that we contribute to the group.
0:35:30 And so if you want to stop being lazy,
0:35:32 ironically, that’s the sequence.
0:35:35 And then one thing I’ll add is you need rules in your life
0:35:38 just so that you can demarcate whether you’re doing the thing
0:35:39 that you should be or not.
0:35:42 So the most important rule I ever put in my life
0:35:44 was that once I realized I’m awake,
0:35:46 I get out of bed in 10 minutes or less.
0:35:48 And I did that because I would lay in bed
0:35:51 four and five hours a day every day.
0:35:53 It was, I mean, looking back now, it’s really crazy.
0:35:57 The heartbreak I feel over how much time I lost.
0:35:59 So finally, I was just like, this is absurd.
0:36:01 I’m now ashamed of myself.
0:36:03 Shame actually ended up being helpful,
0:36:05 but it was not fun to go through.
0:36:07 And so once I finally built up enough shame,
0:36:10 I was like, okay, the only way I can think to break this
0:36:12 is to set a timer and be like, okay,
0:36:14 you have to get out of bed no matter what.
0:36:19 And that one simple rule has been one of the most
0:36:22 impactful things in my life.
0:36:23 Such good advice.
0:36:25 And I know Mel Robbins has that like rule
0:36:26 where it’s kind of like one, two, three,
0:36:29 jump out of bed, talking to her soon.
0:36:30 I’m looking forward to it.
0:36:31 – Oh, she’s amazing.
0:36:32 You’re gonna love her.
0:36:36 – So let’s talk about you joining film school.
0:36:40 So it’s no wonder that you’ve built this incredible video
0:36:43 podcast that has been pioneering the industry.
0:36:46 And film school was really a turning point in your life
0:36:50 where you started to really turn things around
0:36:53 and you got really motivated by being in film school.
0:36:56 But I did learn that you had sort of a catastrophe
0:37:00 in your senior year that really made you rethink
0:37:02 the way that you approach yourself and the world.
0:37:05 Can you share that story with us?
0:37:07 – Yeah, well, so the catastrophe was just realizing
0:37:08 that I didn’t have talent.
0:37:11 So that was gut wrenching.
0:37:13 So I had a fixed mindset.
0:37:14 So I believed however good I am now
0:37:16 is how good I will be forever.
0:37:18 And that was the mystique of film school was like,
0:37:21 hey, you’re finding the best of the best.
0:37:23 And it was like a whittling down process.
0:37:24 Like, could you get into film school?
0:37:26 That was the first thing.
0:37:29 ‘Cause when I went to USC film school,
0:37:32 it was easier statistically to get into Harvard Law
0:37:34 than it was to get into USC film school.
0:37:36 There were just that many people applying.
0:37:37 And so I got in and I was like,
0:37:40 oh, maybe I really am this brilliant filmmaker.
0:37:42 And then you go through these series of classes,
0:37:44 basically auditioning to see if you can be
0:37:47 one of the four people chosen to do a senior thesis.
0:37:49 And I ended up being one of the four.
0:37:50 And I was like, oh my God, I knew it.
0:37:51 Like this is my chance.
0:37:53 Like I’m just everything I’ve ever wanted
0:37:54 is gonna come true.
0:37:55 I’m gonna graduate.
0:37:56 I’m gonna get the three-picture deal.
0:37:58 I’m the next Steven Spielberg.
0:37:59 It’s gonna be incredible.
0:38:00 And I mean, I could taste it.
0:38:02 And then I made my senior thesis film
0:38:05 and it was terrible, just objectively terrible.
0:38:07 On every metric that a film can be terrible,
0:38:08 it was terrible.
0:38:10 And I didn’t think, oh, cool, let me break this down
0:38:12 to what are the things that I’m not good at yet
0:38:13 that I need to get better at?
0:38:15 Why was it that the earlier films
0:38:18 that got me to be one of the four chosen,
0:38:21 what did I understand about that style of filmmaking
0:38:22 that I didn’t understand?
0:38:23 ‘Cause this is actually a pretty big leap
0:38:25 in style of storytelling.
0:38:27 I would say naturally I had an intuition
0:38:30 for silent storytelling that I did not have
0:38:32 once you bring in dialogue and all of that.
0:38:34 But at the time I couldn’t understand that.
0:38:35 I was just like, oh my God,
0:38:36 like I’m actually not good at this.
0:38:38 I thought I was, but apparently I’m not.
0:38:42 And so that was as close to an existential crisis
0:38:45 as I have ever been.
0:38:47 Because I thought that was gonna be my whole life.
0:38:49 That was the death of a dream that I had.
0:38:51 I mean, when you’re, you know, whatever 22,
0:38:52 you feel like, wait,
0:38:55 my whole life has been pointed towards this.
0:38:57 I thought this was gonna be the next 60 years of my life
0:38:59 and it’s just dead.
0:39:02 And then you find yourself selling insurance door to door.
0:39:04 So I was like, whoa,
0:39:07 it was one of those my how the mighty have fallen
0:39:10 because I went from being celebrated at film school.
0:39:12 I graduated second in my class.
0:39:15 It was like, yo, this guy’s really gonna do something
0:39:19 to actually hold on, no embarrassing.
0:39:20 Everybody knew my film was bad.
0:39:22 It was not like, oh, this is me being hard on myself.
0:39:25 Everyone was like, oh God, that was like a train wreck.
0:39:28 So it was emotionally devastating
0:39:30 and I had no idea what to do.
0:39:33 And then thankfully between Tony Robbins
0:39:36 and some stuff about brain plasticity
0:39:39 and which now of course we would call a growth mindset
0:39:41 but Carol Dweck had not written that book yet.
0:39:43 Unfortunately for me.
0:39:46 So start reading about brain plasticity.
0:39:47 Realize, wait a second,
0:39:49 maybe it is possible to change and get better.
0:39:51 I start teaching film and I realized, wait,
0:39:54 I’m helping these students make their films better.
0:39:57 Why couldn’t I help myself make my own films better?
0:39:58 And so then I was like, oh my God,
0:40:01 this is a game of skill acquisition.
0:40:03 And so then the things we’ve been talking about now
0:40:06 start coming together as my belief system.
0:40:07 And I realized, okay, wait a second,
0:40:09 if I can get better then this is about
0:40:11 putting time and energy into getting better.
0:40:13 And so I just poured myself into that,
0:40:15 poured myself into it from a film perspective,
0:40:18 poured myself in from a business perspective
0:40:19 and the rest is history.
0:40:23 My life is what happens when you answer the question,
0:40:26 how far am I willing and able to go
0:40:28 if I get a hundred times better
0:40:31 at a small number of things that really matter to my goals.
0:40:32 – This is really interesting
0:40:36 because you basically got the motivation
0:40:37 to get better at film.
0:40:39 And earlier you were mentioning that
0:40:41 this is called the loop of desire.
0:40:43 Could you break down what that is exactly?
0:40:45 – Yeah, the loop of desire is really basic.
0:40:48 So you are having a biological experience.
0:40:52 Your brain responds to certain things in a certain way.
0:40:55 One very key thing to understand about your brain
0:40:57 is you become whatever you repeat
0:40:59 because of a process called myelination.
0:41:02 So myelination is the wrapping of fatty tissue
0:41:06 around the connections of the neurons in your brain.
0:41:09 So any emotions you feel, any thoughts you think,
0:41:11 they will become easier for you to think
0:41:14 and therefore will be the things you keep repeating.
0:41:16 So the more you repeat something,
0:41:17 the more you repeat something.
0:41:19 So be careful what you repeat.
0:41:21 So understanding that,
0:41:24 that whatever I repeat is going to solidify in my mind.
0:41:27 So what if I intentionally repeat something positive?
0:41:28 Cool, so let’s try that.
0:41:32 Then there is your brain will justify
0:41:36 whatever amplitude of emotion you display.
0:41:39 So if you freak out, your brain goes,
0:41:41 whoa, I guess this really matters.
0:41:44 So I was like, okay, well, then if I repeat
0:41:46 a really high emotional state,
0:41:48 every time I talk about my goal,
0:41:50 would it begin to myelinate?
0:41:54 Such that now whenever I talk about it,
0:41:55 I get that big emotional response.
0:41:58 So at first it felt like I was faking it.
0:41:59 And then six months later,
0:42:00 whenever I would talk about it,
0:42:03 I would feel that sense of like passion and excitement.
0:42:05 I was like, I can’t believe this works.
0:42:10 So be careful ’cause you can align yourself to dumb things.
0:42:12 So if you pick a goal that’s honorable,
0:42:14 that is legitimately exciting to you
0:42:17 and then talk to yourself about it,
0:42:19 what you’re gonna achieve, what you’re gonna do,
0:42:21 and like with that feeling of passion and excitement
0:42:24 that you hope one day you will feel naturally.
0:42:25 And then when you talk to other people,
0:42:27 which is even easier than talking to yourself,
0:42:31 same thing, you embody, embody the emotion you wanna feel
0:42:33 and do that over and over and over.
0:42:35 And then at least in my experience,
0:42:37 I would call it four to six months later.
0:42:38 Now you can just be talking about it normally
0:42:40 and you get that sense of like,
0:42:41 oh man, this is really important to me.
0:42:42 This is really exciting.
0:42:45 You’re like, wow, it’s so crazy because six months ago,
0:42:47 I was interested, like it was legitimate.
0:42:50 I didn’t try to tie it to like, I really love grass.
0:42:54 Like it’s something you already have an interest in.
0:42:55 But by doing that,
0:42:57 now you’ve got the impetus to gain the skills.
0:42:59 And by having that initial burst of energy
0:43:02 married with getting the actual skill set,
0:43:03 now you can make progress.
0:43:06 When you’re making progress, then passion kicks in.
0:43:07 But you’re not gonna get to passion
0:43:10 until you’re actually able to use that skill
0:43:12 in the real world to get feedback from other people.
0:43:14 You were the shout in the echo.
0:43:16 People are telling you, hey, you’re improving my life
0:43:17 by that thing you do.
0:43:19 That thing you do could be podcasting.
0:43:21 That thing you could do could be building a video game
0:43:22 like I’m doing now.
0:43:23 It could be accounting, whatever,
0:43:25 but people give you positive feedback.
0:43:29 This is why so often adults are pursuing something
0:43:32 that they first got that positive feedback on as a kid.
0:43:35 We’ll be right back after a quick break from our sponsors.
0:43:41 Okay, let’s talk about storytelling
0:43:44 because you went to film school,
0:43:46 now you are running Impact Theory,
0:43:48 which is a huge platform.
0:43:50 And I know a lot of what you do with Impact Theory
0:43:55 is really storytelling to bring about impact.
0:43:56 So talk to us about what you’ve learned
0:43:58 about storytelling both at school
0:43:59 and then of course in the real world,
0:44:01 building impact theory
0:44:03 and how we can use storytelling in our businesses
0:44:05 to attract customers.
0:44:10 – Okay, so at Quest, we had 3,000 employees
0:44:13 and 1,000 of them that grew up in the inner cities.
0:44:15 And I thought, hmm, these guys are smart.
0:44:17 Some of them smarter than me,
0:44:19 but they’re not doing anything with their lives.
0:44:20 And when I started asking them like,
0:44:22 hey, why aren’t you doing this out of the other?
0:44:24 The answers that came back were just ridiculous.
0:44:28 And so I was like, this is not a intelligence problem.
0:44:29 This is an idea problem.
0:44:33 So I started what I then called Quest University.
0:44:34 And I was like, let me teach you everything
0:44:36 I know about entrepreneurship.
0:44:37 One, it will just be good for your life.
0:44:39 You can go on to work for any company at that.
0:44:42 Like if you can master the skills that I’m teaching you guys,
0:44:43 you’ll be able to work anywhere.
0:44:45 Now, my hope of course is that you stay here
0:44:47 because you realize I care about your future
0:44:49 more than your own mother,
0:44:52 but you’ll be empowered, you can go anywhere that you want.
0:44:53 And I poured my heart and soul into it.
0:44:55 I came early, I stayed late.
0:44:58 And we’ve had people start other companies
0:45:02 that are still running to this day almost a decade later.
0:45:04 Absolutely incredible, I love it the most.
0:45:07 The only catch is it was only 2% of the people
0:45:12 that I brought those ideas to, 98% did nothing.
0:45:14 And so I really started to get obsessed with,
0:45:17 okay, what would we have to do to reach the 98%?
0:45:20 And I very quickly realized you have to bypass
0:45:21 the logical centers of their brain.
0:45:24 You can’t just say, think like this, act like this.
0:45:27 You’ve got to really get into the storytelling of it all.
0:45:29 And I mean, look, when you see political campaigns
0:45:31 and stuff like that, that’s exactly what they’re doing.
0:45:32 They’re telling a story.
0:45:35 Stories simplify things and they focus attention.
0:45:38 And that is the magic of storytelling.
0:45:42 This is exactly how humans are able to come together
0:45:44 in these gigantic, flexible groups
0:45:46 with people they’ve never even met and cooperate.
0:45:47 You have shared stories.
0:45:49 It could be shared story of a nation state.
0:45:52 Could be shared story of a religion,
0:45:55 but you need some sort of shared story to pass on values,
0:45:59 to pass on identity, to give people a unified narrative.
0:46:03 So for better or worse, humans are a meaning making machine
0:46:07 and stories allow you to transmit meaning.
0:46:10 So they’re just a mechanism by which you simplify things
0:46:12 enough to extract meaning from.
0:46:13 So we do it all the time.
0:46:18 When we stub our toe on the coffee table, we tell a story.
0:46:20 We’re an idiot because we don’t pay attention enough
0:46:23 to our surroundings and that’s what stubbing our toe means.
0:46:25 Or you could tell yourself the story of,
0:46:27 man, I’m so hardcore.
0:46:29 I probably broke my toe just now, but I don’t stop.
0:46:30 I don’t quit.
0:46:32 I’m the kind of guy that keeps pushing forward.
0:46:34 So it all comes down to what’s the story
0:46:36 that you tell yourself about that thing.
0:46:39 So it isn’t what happens, it’s what it means.
0:46:41 And once people understand what it means,
0:46:43 you’re telling yourself that story.
0:46:44 Someone may have said it from the outside,
0:46:46 but you decided that that’s what you were gonna repeat.
0:46:48 That’s where you were going to adopt.
0:46:49 So whether you’re a marketer,
0:46:51 whether you’re just trying to lead your own team,
0:46:52 you’ve got to tell them a story.
0:46:54 This is why every company needs a mission.
0:46:57 Your mission statement is about galvanizing your team.
0:46:59 It’s about telling the consumer what it means
0:47:03 to buy your product, what they’re sort of becoming a part of.
0:47:05 And then in your marketing, you wanna tell something
0:47:07 that’s simple enough that people can remember it
0:47:08 like it’s a story.
0:47:11 And oftentimes just literally telling a story
0:47:15 inside of your marketing is one of the most
0:47:16 useful things that you could do.
0:47:18 A couple of times in this interview,
0:47:20 you’ve asked me to tell stories for my childhood or whatever.
0:47:23 And so we all just resonate to story.
0:47:26 So in the same way that when humans look at an image,
0:47:28 we look for eyes.
0:47:31 When people are hearing, okay, this thing happened,
0:47:32 they’re looking for the story in it.
0:47:34 And so if you reveal character through it,
0:47:35 if you reveal a moral through it,
0:47:37 people are gonna remember it way more
0:47:39 than if it’s just a list of facts.
0:47:42 This is why humans get so bored in high school history,
0:47:44 only to later discover through, you know,
0:47:46 like a hardcore history episode.
0:47:48 Actually, history is amazing,
0:47:51 but history is only amazing when you tell it like a story.
0:47:52 If you tell it like a story, it’s fascinating.
0:47:55 You tell it like disembodied facts and figures,
0:47:57 not interesting at all and hard to remember
0:48:00 because that’s not the architecture of the human mind.
0:48:02 – Storytelling is so powerful in business
0:48:03 and personal relationships.
0:48:06 I feel like storytelling is a skill that everybody
0:48:08 could improve and continually improve.
0:48:11 So speaking of stories, I wanna hear the story
0:48:13 of you becoming an entrepreneur.
0:48:14 Was it not being an entrepreneur something
0:48:18 that you always imagined or did it kind of just happen?
0:48:19 – Well, didn’t just happen,
0:48:21 but it was not something I ever thought I would do.
0:48:25 So you heard the story of me graduating film school
0:48:28 and things not going well.
0:48:32 I met these two entrepreneurs and they were bang on the money
0:48:33 and they said, look, you’re coming to the world
0:48:34 with your hand out.
0:48:36 And if you wanna control the art,
0:48:38 you have to control the resources.
0:48:40 So if you wanna build a studio,
0:48:41 you wanna tell your own stories,
0:48:44 you should get into business and get rich.
0:48:46 And I was like, oh man, that’s so smart.
0:48:49 I can’t believe I didn’t think about that before, brilliant.
0:48:53 And this is like right before the tech bubble burst.
0:48:56 So I was like, oh word, man, I’m gonna get into tech,
0:48:59 take 18 months, build a company, sell it, all’s good,
0:49:01 be able to make my own movies.
0:49:03 And that didn’t work.
0:49:07 So 18 months turned into 15 years, but it did work.
0:49:10 And so that obviously ends up being incredible.
0:49:14 And during that journey, I end up finding stroke,
0:49:18 constructing the reason that I was gonna make films.
0:49:20 So instead of just doing it ’cause I like stories,
0:49:24 it became who am I gonna help impact theory arises.
0:49:25 It’s literally called impact theory
0:49:27 because my theory on how to impact people
0:49:29 at scale is through story.
0:49:31 So putting empowerment at the center of it
0:49:33 becomes the whole jam.
0:49:35 So I got into business strictly
0:49:37 so that I could control my own destiny.
0:49:39 But I learned a very powerful lesson,
0:49:42 which is I can guarantee you’re gonna struggle,
0:49:44 but I cannot guarantee you’ll be successful.
0:49:46 And so you better struggle well.
0:49:48 And so I stopped asking myself
0:49:51 what I think is the worst question people could ask,
0:49:54 which is what would I do if I knew I couldn’t fail?
0:49:57 Because failure is the most likely outcome.
0:49:59 So I started asking myself,
0:50:03 what would I do and love every day, even if I were failing?
0:50:07 And so that’s why impact theory is literally architected
0:50:09 from the ground up to be the things that, man,
0:50:12 if I’m gonna fail at something, I wanna fail at this thing.
0:50:16 So that has improved my life immeasurably,
0:50:18 but do keep in mind I’m saying that
0:50:22 after having the gigantic financial success.
0:50:24 So if I had to do it all over again,
0:50:27 I would very much go straight into storytelling.
0:50:30 I would not go into business first, for sure,
0:50:34 because it really is true that your network is your net worth.
0:50:36 These are gonna be the people that open doors for you and stuff.
0:50:39 And so I’m having to completely reinvent myself,
0:50:41 meet all the new people, all that.
0:50:44 And it’s added a decade to my journey.
0:50:46 So I could have gotten it done a lot faster.
0:50:49 Now the problem is going into business
0:50:51 allowed me to learn all these principles.
0:50:54 So I don’t waste time lamenting that I didn’t do it,
0:50:57 but I am not somebody who’s like, I have no regrets.
0:51:00 Yeah, I would do it differently, but such is life.
0:51:03 – So you would have started impact theory first
0:51:05 before the software company, before Quest.
0:51:07 You would have just went straight to impact theory if you could.
0:51:09 – No, I would have gone to somebody
0:51:11 who was living the life I wanted to live,
0:51:14 which would have been at the time in filmmaking,
0:51:17 and said, I will work harder and smarter than anyone you know.
0:51:21 And all I ask in exchange is knowledge and connections.
0:51:25 So I would literally live in a hovel with five other guys,
0:51:27 eat the world’s cheapest food,
0:51:29 do whatever I had to do to get by,
0:51:32 but so that I could be as close to that person
0:51:34 as humanly possible.
0:51:36 I don’t want to work for somebody who works for them.
0:51:38 I want to be next to them all the time,
0:51:39 watching how they deal with the world.
0:51:42 That is insanely useful.
0:51:44 It’s all the in-between stuff that you would never even know.
0:51:46 It’s how a deal is structured.
0:51:48 It’s how to talk to somebody who’s being a dick
0:51:51 in a meeting, but doing it in a way where it’s like,
0:51:53 they’re not quite crossing the threshold
0:51:54 where you can just call it out.
0:51:56 Like how do you handle things like that?
0:51:58 Or somebody comes to you and asks for something
0:52:02 that is clearly they’re reaching beyond
0:52:04 what they have any right to ask for,
0:52:06 but they’re kind of in a tough spot.
0:52:07 And like, do you help them out?
0:52:08 Do you not?
0:52:09 Like all of those things,
0:52:11 when you’re in your early 20s, man,
0:52:13 you have no idea how to handle all that stuff.
0:52:14 You might be shooting from the hip,
0:52:16 but you really don’t have a sense
0:52:17 of how it’s all gonna play out.
0:52:19 And when you can watch somebody go through
0:52:21 all of that soft stuff that’s next to impossible
0:52:22 to teach in a business school,
0:52:25 then it’s like, if you can ask the occasional question,
0:52:27 like, hey, I was really surprised the way you handled that,
0:52:28 that you’re normally so hard on people,
0:52:30 but you were really nice just then.
0:52:32 Like, how do you know when to be hard
0:52:33 and how do you know when to be soft?
0:52:35 And if they’re a thoughtful person and can be like,
0:52:38 okay, well, let me explain why I was doing this here,
0:52:41 why I did something completely different here
0:52:43 and how I typically will make those decisions.
0:52:45 And then to some extent it’s just seeing the patterns
0:52:47 over and over and over and over and over.
0:52:48 But you’re not gonna get that when you start
0:52:51 as a junior, junior, junior, something in a corporation
0:52:53 where everybody’s afraid of losing their job
0:52:55 and they’re lying to each other and playing politics.
0:52:57 It’s all just stupidly nightmarish.
0:53:00 So what I always tell young people is, look,
0:53:01 money only monetizes once.
0:53:03 You can only spend it one time,
0:53:06 but knowledge and connections monetize forever.
0:53:09 – So good, I love that advice.
0:53:11 So Quest Nutrition is a company
0:53:13 that you started as a side hustle
0:53:16 and you ended up selling it for a billion dollars.
0:53:19 So I’m also growing a company called Yap Media
0:53:20 that’s doing really well.
0:53:21 We’re the number one business
0:53:23 and self-improvement podcast network.
0:53:26 We also have a social agency and it’s doing really well.
0:53:27 – Let’s go.
0:53:30 – Yeah, I represent a lot of top podcasters,
0:53:32 Jenna Kutcher, Amy Porterfield, John Lee Dumas,
0:53:33 Russell Brunson.
0:53:34 – That’s amazing.
0:53:36 That’s a stack of really cool people.
0:53:37 I love it.
0:53:39 – I couldn’t imagine selling my company,
0:53:42 but that’s because I think my company’s making impact
0:53:45 and it’s really aligned with my values and my future.
0:53:47 And it feels like everything just feels so aligned
0:53:49 and fun for me right now.
0:53:51 But you ended up selling a company.
0:53:52 That also had a great mission.
0:53:55 So I’m just curious from your standpoint,
0:53:56 what made you decide like, okay,
0:53:57 I’m just gonna sell the company
0:53:59 and work on something now?
0:54:02 – Well, the big thing was I only got into business
0:54:03 so that I could build impact theory.
0:54:05 So that was always self-evident,
0:54:08 but we had had so much success
0:54:10 and my partners and I no longer shared a vision
0:54:12 on how to grow the company.
0:54:14 And so I was like, well, we’ve been this successful.
0:54:17 So I had been building what’s now impact theory
0:54:18 inside of Quest.
0:54:19 It was literally called Inside Quest.
0:54:22 And I said, let me spin out this studio
0:54:24 into a standalone company.
0:54:26 They agreed, spun that out.
0:54:28 And like I said, left Quest on Monday
0:54:30 and on Tuesday was that impact theory.
0:54:32 But yeah, that was the whole thing from the beginning.
0:54:34 The guys that I was partners with back then
0:54:36 were the ones that had said,
0:54:37 hey, you’re coming to the world with your hand out.
0:54:38 You should get into business.
0:54:41 So it was not a surprise to them.
0:54:44 So it was a very simple transition.
0:54:47 And we’ve been at this now for almost a decade.
0:54:49 It’s crazy.
0:54:51 – So one of the things that I read
0:54:53 is that you say that content creation
0:54:55 is going to completely change.
0:54:56 You say the world, as you know it,
0:54:59 as a content creator will end in two years.
0:55:02 Now, as a content creator, that’s very scary.
0:55:04 Why do you believe that?
0:55:08 – So AI tools will make it such that all of the things
0:55:11 that we use as a moat are gonna go away.
0:55:14 So it takes a while to master all the tools.
0:55:16 It takes a while to get all the different people
0:55:18 on your podcast, all that stuff.
0:55:20 What’s going to end up happening
0:55:23 is all of this information is gonna fracture,
0:55:24 like hyper fracture.
0:55:26 And somebody will be able to have an idea for a video
0:55:28 with or without a guest.
0:55:30 I mean, you could post videos of like,
0:55:31 here’s my conversation,
0:55:34 my imagined conversation with Elon Musk, stuff like that.
0:55:36 And instead of actually needing to get that person
0:55:39 on your podcast, you just have the AI spin up
0:55:41 his personality, you ask a bunch of questions.
0:55:43 And if you do it in a way that the audience
0:55:45 finds more interesting than the next person,
0:55:47 then that’s gonna be what it’s gonna be.
0:55:49 So what’s gonna end up happening is right now,
0:55:52 it’s already changed so much, you’re so young,
0:55:53 you probably don’t have a sense
0:55:55 of just how much it’s already changed.
0:55:57 But like when I was growing up,
0:56:00 there was whatever five channels and that was it.
0:56:01 And they controlled the narrative.
0:56:04 And we didn’t even realize the narrative was being controlled.
0:56:07 And then as things have gone to social,
0:56:10 now you start seeing things break apart.
0:56:12 Now, when I started podcasting,
0:56:14 people literally like, Tom, why are you doing this?
0:56:15 It’s already played out.
0:56:17 All the players that are there, that are gonna be there,
0:56:20 it’s already decided, man, it’s too late.
0:56:22 When I started, there were 400 podcasts.
0:56:25 There’s now six million podcasts.
0:56:30 So it is just insane how many more podcasts,
0:56:32 I may have said 400,000 podcasts.
0:56:36 So the world has just changed absolutely dramatically.
0:56:37 And that’s gonna keep happening
0:56:40 where the format of a podcast itself
0:56:44 is gonna get disrupted by somebody alone with an AI
0:56:46 doing things that nobody’s ever thought of before.
0:56:49 And the difficulty of production,
0:56:52 the friction of going from idea to execution
0:56:53 is the current mode.
0:56:55 That’s gonna go away,
0:56:56 which means this will be more like TikTok.
0:57:01 So instead of there being a person that has a podcast,
0:57:03 take a Rogan or something like that,
0:57:06 instead of that person dominating the landscape,
0:57:07 you’re gonna have like,
0:57:09 oh, one of his episodes might pop off,
0:57:11 but somebody else is gonna release something else
0:57:14 that’s a totally unique format that nobody saw coming.
0:57:15 And it’ll just be like that.
0:57:17 And people will just be scrolling onto the next,
0:57:18 onto the next, onto the next.
0:57:20 And that’s gonna happen across everything.
0:57:22 It’s gonna happen across video game production,
0:57:24 which I trust me, I have just as much anxiety as you.
0:57:29 But the key is to adopt AI faster than the competition.
0:57:32 And then just remember that one,
0:57:35 we’re moving towards an abundance reality
0:57:39 where if AI does all of the wildly disruptive stuff
0:57:42 that people think it’s gonna do over the next, say, 10 years,
0:57:46 it’s also gonna be dropping the cost of virtually everything.
0:57:47 So everything is just getting cheaper.
0:57:50 Now this takes you into a post-capitalistic society
0:57:53 and there are big questions around what that looks like,
0:57:55 but people will have access to the things
0:57:57 that they want for far, far, far cheaper.
0:57:59 Now that doesn’t mean people won’t find a way to peacock
0:58:01 through other means, because we will.
0:58:04 But especially when you throw in the mix,
0:58:05 brain-computer interfaces,
0:58:08 this is all gonna get real weird.
0:58:10 There are already people that can play video games,
0:58:12 like proper video games,
0:58:15 using just their brain-computer interface.
0:58:16 It’s nuts.
0:58:18 – And you were just saying, when you first started,
0:58:21 400,000 podcasts and everyone was telling you,
0:58:23 there’s no chance, it’s already saturated.
0:58:26 AI is gonna make things even more saturated.
0:58:30 So what is your perspective about the increased competition
0:58:33 and if there’s even a point to participate
0:58:36 if there’s gonna be that much competition?
0:58:38 – So I think people make a mistake
0:58:41 when they do preemptive quitting or preemptive strikes.
0:58:43 The reality is you wanna pay attention,
0:58:44 you wanna be at the cutting edge,
0:58:46 you wanna be integrating AI right now.
0:58:49 AI is a phenomenal tool and it is a terrible master.
0:58:51 So it’s not gonna be able to do things
0:58:52 without humans yet.
0:58:54 So people should be excited right now for this phase.
0:58:57 It’s going to allow you to do more with less.
0:58:59 And so if you’re somebody like you that’s paying attention,
0:59:00 you’ve got a whole thesis,
0:59:02 you know what you’re moving towards.
0:59:04 AI is gonna help you keep costs down,
0:59:06 it help you stay really nimble.
0:59:09 Now, if AI starts changing the landscape,
0:59:10 then just pay attention.
0:59:12 Like, okay, what do we need to do to stand out?
0:59:14 How do we add value?
0:59:16 And yes, it’s going to change things and yes,
0:59:19 some people are going to get smashed into little pieces.
0:59:21 But if you’re really paying attention
0:59:24 and if you continue to look at
0:59:26 where’s the puck going to go,
0:59:27 then you’ll be in better shape.
0:59:30 Now, I’ve often made the quip that yes,
0:59:32 you should always skate to where the puck is going to go,
0:59:33 but it’s getting a little hard now
0:59:35 ’cause the puck is teleporting,
0:59:36 but it’s the right idea.
0:59:40 You wanna pay attention to, okay, predictive engine.
0:59:41 Where is this going?
0:59:43 What does this mean for content creation?
0:59:45 I think there is gonna be that hyper fragmentation.
0:59:48 I think this is really gonna be about deep communities.
0:59:50 So part of the reason that I’m on Twitch now
0:59:53 doing my video game streaming is that yes,
0:59:53 I’m building a video game,
0:59:56 so I need to build community around that.
0:59:59 But also historically, I built audiences, not communities.
1:00:02 And so this is a chance for me to really build
1:00:05 a deep community where the interactions are very different.
1:00:06 And that’s gonna be something that AI will have
1:00:08 a hard time with just because people know
1:00:11 on the other side of this is not a person, it’s AI.
1:00:13 And so I think there will be some things
1:00:16 that people just have a weird resonance
1:00:19 when it’s AI versus when it’s a real person.
1:00:21 So I’ll be looking for opportunities like that.
1:00:23 I’ll be looking for places where I wanna lean in
1:00:25 to the humanity of it all.
1:00:26 And I’ll be looking for places
1:00:28 where I wanna lean into the AI of it all.
1:00:29 But because I don’t push back
1:00:31 on the way the world actually is,
1:00:34 AI is here, AI will keep getting better.
1:00:37 AI may slow down, but I don’t think it’s gonna stop.
1:00:40 So I’m just paying attention to where it’s at
1:00:42 and how I can leverage it for now.
1:00:45 – And can you tell us more about Project Kaizen
1:00:47 and how it fits into your vision of impact theory
1:00:49 and the future of content creation?
1:00:53 – Yeah, so it is impact theory in the sense
1:00:55 that my theory on how to impact people at scale
1:00:56 is through entertainment.
1:00:58 The most dominant form of entertainment right now
1:00:59 is video games.
1:01:01 Also a core part of my thesis is that
1:01:04 who I’m focused on is 11 to 15 year olds.
1:01:07 So Project Kaizen is a game,
1:01:10 if anybody’s ever heard of Extraction Royale,
1:01:11 it’s an Extraction Royale game
1:01:14 that’s aimed at 11 to 15 year old demographic,
1:01:17 technically 13 and up because of SOPA laws.
1:01:19 But that’s that core demographic
1:01:21 that’s in what’s known as the age of imprinting.
1:01:23 And so trying to reach them
1:01:25 so that we can introduce empowering ideas.
1:01:27 So one of the characters in the game right now,
1:01:28 which is out right now by the way,
1:01:29 if anybody wants to play it,
1:01:33 it’s a free to play game at projectkaizen.io.
1:01:36 And Bruce Lee is one of the characters in the game.
1:01:38 And it’s an official collaboration
1:01:39 with the Bruce Lee family.
1:01:42 And the reason I wanted Bruce to be our launch partner
1:01:45 was he had a tremendous impact on my life,
1:01:47 even though he had passed away before I was born,
1:01:50 but he wrote a book called The Dow of Jeet Kune Do,
1:01:52 which was about his style of martial arts.
1:01:53 And some of the ideas in there,
1:01:55 even though I didn’t train in the martial art,
1:01:58 the ideas were profoundly shaping
1:02:00 for the way that I think now about mindset
1:02:02 and getting better and all of that stuff.
1:02:06 So we wanted him to be a character in the game
1:02:09 who’s like our Morpheus or our Obi-Wan Kenobi,
1:02:13 is the mentor character that’s giving the players advice.
1:02:16 So yeah, really excited for people to get into it.
1:02:18 And then the other part is the UGC aspect.
1:02:21 So players can come in and build their own maps.
1:02:24 And this is the very beginning of a much deeper set of tools
1:02:28 that we’ll build for players to build their own content.
1:02:31 – And you say that projectkaizen is the blueprint
1:02:32 of the creator economy.
1:02:35 Can you help explain what you mean by that
1:02:36 and how it could help build communities
1:02:38 and things like that?
1:02:40 – Yeah, so I think the way that creators need to think
1:02:43 is your job is to create a container
1:02:45 for your community to come in and create.
1:02:48 So because I think in IP, the way that we look at it is
1:02:52 we’ve created projectkaizen, it’s this gigantic sci-fi world
1:02:55 and inside that world, there’s characters and stories
1:02:58 and physics, if you will, rules of the game,
1:03:01 the way that it all works, the conceit of our story
1:03:05 is that everything you’ve ever known is a simulation.
1:03:07 So imagine the matrix, but there’s no real world.
1:03:09 The matrix is the real world.
1:03:10 There’s nothing else.
1:03:14 And in that story, that means that we’re connected
1:03:16 to other dimensions and all that kind of stuff.
1:03:20 And that way, as players spin up their own story lines,
1:03:23 they can be like, oh, we’re from this,
1:03:25 what we call instance, a server instance
1:03:27 or a universe, if you wanna think of it in those terms.
1:03:30 So we’re from this universe, these are our people.
1:03:32 This is what our world looks like
1:03:34 and they can literally build that up as much as they want.
1:03:37 It could be as simple as one little floating island.
1:03:40 It could be all the way to a planet, not yet, but one day.
1:03:43 And them being able to tell their own stories
1:03:46 and then giving the community the ability to say,
1:03:50 hey, this person’s storyline follows all
1:03:52 of your guidelines impact theory.
1:03:56 We love it and want this to be canon in your world.
1:03:59 And so when a story meets certain criteria,
1:04:01 players can vote for it.
1:04:03 And then if we approve it,
1:04:05 then it becomes official canon within our world.
1:04:08 And so our goal is for them, if you know UEFN,
1:04:11 this is what Fortnite’s doing is absolutely brilliant,
1:04:14 giving the players the tools from the game
1:04:17 to build their own sort of mini games inside of it.
1:04:19 And so we’re doing a very similar thing,
1:04:21 much smaller scale compared to Epic,
1:04:23 which is absolutely gigantic.
1:04:24 But I think this is just the future.
1:04:26 I think everybody’s gonna be doing this.
1:04:29 So it’s not like, oh, we’re trying to be some pale shadow
1:04:30 of what Epic is doing.
1:04:33 I just think this is the future in the same way
1:04:35 that if you were gonna launch a video site,
1:04:37 of course you’re gonna let people upload to it.
1:04:38 There would be no other way.
1:04:41 That is our plan now is to give players the ability
1:04:45 to create unique experiences within our container.
1:04:46 – Amazing.
1:04:49 Well, it sounds super fascinating and very exciting.
1:04:51 And I can hear the passion in your voice about it.
1:04:54 Tom, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast.
1:04:56 I was very nervous to time.
1:04:57 I never get nervous.
1:05:00 And I was so nervous in the beginning for some reason.
1:05:03 Like, so I just have looked up to you for a long time.
1:05:04 So I just appreciate your time.
1:05:06 I end the show with two questions
1:05:08 that I ask all of my guests.
1:05:09 And this can just come from your heart.
1:05:12 It doesn’t have to be anything that we talked about today.
1:05:14 What is one actionable thing our young and profitors
1:05:19 can do today to become more profitable tomorrow?
1:05:20 – Always be learning.
1:05:22 Always be learning.
1:05:24 So it should cue off of your goal.
1:05:25 So again, your goals make demands.
1:05:28 But I spend on average two hours a day,
1:05:32 365 days a year every day for the last 15 years,
1:05:34 maybe more, learning.
1:05:37 Be a relentless learning machine.
1:05:38 – Amazing.
1:05:41 And what is your secret to profiting in life?
1:05:44 – So for me, I know that nothing matters more
1:05:46 than reciprocated love.
1:05:49 So I make sure that I put a ton of time
1:05:50 and attention into that.
1:05:52 And then also I manage my biology.
1:05:56 So I get sleep, I eat healthy, I exercise, I work out.
1:05:59 I maintain loving relationships beyond just my wife.
1:06:01 The things are incredibly important.
1:06:03 And then if I can really ground this for people,
1:06:05 guys, you have to learn how business works.
1:06:07 Like business has physics.
1:06:08 And if you really want to get good,
1:06:10 you need to learn those physics.
1:06:13 And they are available for anybody to learn,
1:06:14 anyone to master.
1:06:16 The game is really relatively simple.
1:06:17 Learn it, learn the game.
1:06:19 Do not let yourself get overwhelmed.
1:06:21 Just one piece at a time.
1:06:23 Pick apart the skill set, learn it.
1:06:24 – And when you say physics,
1:06:26 do you mean like sales, marketing, finance,
1:06:28 those kinds of things?
1:06:30 – Yes, and where it interfaces with leadership
1:06:32 and human psychology?
1:06:33 – Yes.
1:06:35 – And where can everybody learn more about you
1:06:37 and everything that you do?
1:06:38 – At Tom Dillew, Across the Socials,
1:06:40 Best Places, Probably YouTube.
1:06:41 – Amazing.
1:06:43 Thank you so much for all of your time.
1:06:44 Really appreciate it.
1:06:46 – Absolutely, thank you.
1:06:48 (upbeat music)
1:06:53 – Well, guys, this was such an important interview for me.
1:06:56 And I was kind of nervous as I think you could tell.
1:07:00 I’ve admired Tom as a leader, as an entrepreneur,
1:07:02 as a podcaster.
1:07:05 I love his brain and the way he approaches the world.
1:07:08 And I’ve just been a fan for so long.
1:07:11 And I consider him to be a podcast king.
1:07:14 And now, even though I’m a podcast princess,
1:07:16 I still have to bow down to the king, you know?
1:07:18 Like I was nervous.
1:07:21 And one of the things that I found most inspiring from today
1:07:23 was his approach to failure.
1:07:26 Tom says he tries to approach failure
1:07:28 in the way that AI might do it
1:07:30 as a pure learning experience.
1:07:32 In other words, you try something new,
1:07:34 you experiment, it works, it doesn’t.
1:07:36 And you go back to the drawing board
1:07:38 with that new knowledge in hand.
1:07:41 There’s no energy wasted on being frustrated
1:07:42 or getting emotional.
1:07:46 And the key ingredient in that process is failure.
1:07:48 Along these lines, Tom also advises us
1:07:51 to distrust our emotions.
1:07:53 Evolution developed emotions to push us
1:07:55 in certain directions that improve our chances
1:07:58 for survival, for having kids.
1:08:01 But those same emotions can be extremely counterproductive
1:08:03 when it comes to achieving our goals.
1:08:05 So if you’re feeling a strong emotion,
1:08:07 then step back and ask yourself
1:08:09 why you are feeling that strong emotion
1:08:13 and whether it’s pushing you in the right direction or not.
1:08:16 Tom also believes that we should work on what we can change.
1:08:19 We all come hardwired to be a certain way,
1:08:20 but there’s still plenty of room
1:08:21 for us to play the cards we’re dealt with
1:08:24 and focus on the things we can change about ourselves
1:08:26 and our circumstances.
1:08:27 For example, one of the things
1:08:30 that we’re most hardwired to be is lazy,
1:08:31 but we can address that.
1:08:33 And one of the best ways to do that
1:08:36 is by tapping into another evolutionary demand
1:08:38 like helping your tribe or your group.
1:08:41 Nothing seems to energize us more
1:08:44 than pursuing a goal that is in service of others.
1:08:47 Thanks for listening to this episode of Young and Profiting.
1:08:50 Are you ready to do something in service of others
1:08:52 that will make you feel good and full of energy?
1:08:54 Do you know somebody who would love to hear
1:08:57 what Tom Billu has to say about failure
1:08:59 or the future of content?
1:09:02 Then why not share this episode with somebody right now?
1:09:04 And if you did enjoy this show and you learned something,
1:09:08 then why not drop us a five-star review on Apple Podcast?
1:09:10 Nothing helps us reach more people
1:09:12 than a good review from you.
1:09:14 And if you prefer to watch your podcast as videos,
1:09:16 you can find us on YouTube,
1:09:17 just look up Young and Profiting
1:09:19 and you’ll find all of our episodes there.
1:09:22 You can also find me on Instagram @yappwithhalla
1:09:24 or LinkedIn by searching my name.
1:09:26 It’s Hala Taha.
1:09:28 And thanks to my incredible YAP team
1:09:29 for helping me put this episode together,
1:09:32 you guys are the absolute best.
1:09:33 This is your host, Hala Taha,
1:09:36 AKA The Podcast Princess, signing off.
1:09:39 (upbeat music)
1:09:41 (upbeat music)
1:09:44 (upbeat music)
1:09:47 (upbeat music)
1:09:57 [BLANK_AUDIO]