How to Build Your Community and Grow Your Influence – Jon Levy with Dave Asprey : 822

Bulletproof Radio, a state of high performance.

You're listening to Bulletproof Radio with Dave Asprey. Today is going to be a lot of fun because I'm getting to interview a behavioral scientist, a guy who has studied human connection, trust and influence, and a guy you might have heard, if you're a longtime listener, because he was on episode number 395. That's about 50% of the show ago where we talked about using behavioral science to become successful. And his name is John Levy. He's the founder of Influencers, which is a private community of about 2,000 industry leaders, including some Nobel laureates, Olympians, celebrities, executives like me, royalty, not like me, and more. And today I wanted to interview him about influence and how you create influence. It's particularly useful if you're new to Clubhouse or you're working your way through Clubhouse or for your job and for. For your profession or even your family, because influence has changed in a world where we get less FaceTime and there are no pheromones. And who's taller than anyone else? I don't know. Angle your camera. So a lot of our signals have changed. We're going to talk about his new book, which is about influence, and about his influencer dentist, and just have a lot of fun. John, welcome to the show, my friend.

I am so excited to be here. I had an absolute blast the last time I was on. So for all of you listeners, I recommend going back and checking that one out. And we always have so much fun together, just in general. So thanks for having me on.

I used to think you were a crazy person. I got this weird email from Jarvis a while back, who is your assistant, and saying, dave, you should come and have dinner with people you don't know. And I get a lot of dinner invitations from people, more than I could ever possibly eat. But you said, well, here's a link in the New York Times about what I do. I thought, okay, maybe Jarvis is real. And I ended up at a condo somewhere in la and there were a bunch of people in the room and we weren't allowed to say what we did for our career so we could talk about anything else. And then we made dinner together. And then at the end of the dinner, as we were eating it, we went around and guessed what everyone did, which was totally funny. I'm like, oh, there's some famous people and people who've done big things in the room. But you wouldn't know, because when we don't talk about what we do, it's a very different vibe. And you call those the influencers. You call the influencer dinners a secret dining experience. And what made you decide to do that? Because it's weird.

Yeah, I decided to do it because it's weird. So let's just do a quick comparison. People listen to you because what you say stands out. And it's backed by research, but it's novel or different. Years ago, I was 28 at the time, and I came across this completely insane study that changed my life. It was by these two guys, Christakis and Fowler, and they were curious about the obesity epidemic. And what they found was that if you have a friend who's obese, your probability of obesity increases by 45%. Your friends who don't know them have a 20% increased chance, and their friends have a 5% increased chance. Now, this is crazy. This means that not only are we the, let's say, average of our five closest friends, but their friends and their friends. Which meant that if I wanted to accomplish things like being healthy, happy, successful, the most important thing I could do is maybe figure out how to connect with extraordinary people and also connect them with each other. So I needed to figure out, how do I hack connection, how do I. How do I hack trust? And how do we use that to create a positive impact? And that's kind of what started the whole search for the research. And one of the most important things I learned is that if you want to connect with very influential people, it really helps to stand out and do something novel or different.

Do you consider yourself a very influential person?

No, I don't. Not at all. I consider myself somebody who's really fortunate because the magic of anything I can do is a byproduct of the relationships I create between other people. So, for example, we might meet an athlete preparing for a big Olympic challenge or something like that. By me being able to introduce them to you or to a breathing expert or something like that, their performance increases. But I'm not the one who really define that. I might have been able to nudge it along the way to make the introduction. And that's kind of my superpower.

You're sort of influencing the influencers and lets you hang out with them, which is a lot of fun. And frankly, it's one of the reasons I started the bulletproof radio is just I wanted an excuse to talk to people who were doing amazing thinking or had knowledge that I wanted to be able to learn and assimilate and put into the frameworks I use. I'm like, this is great. I probably couldn't have picked up the phone and called them, but now I can. And I imagine you have a similar experience doing that. And you also now have a community of people who support you. And the old, was it a Tony Robbins ism or a Jim Rohn? You know, you're the sum of the five people you spend the most time with. And one of the things that. That also attracted me to having you back on the show is the greatest predictor of human longevity isn't actually whether or not you drink bulletproof coffee. I know people listening are going to be really surprised. And it's not whether you live in a blue zone. And it's not food, it's close social ties and social integration, being part of a community and that knowledge, it led me to actually build the mentorship community called the Upgrade Collective. And we have a bunch of members listening right now, where it's not just me teaching stuff, but it's people learning in a community and in a group, because I think you learn better that way, in addition to living longer. And there's a lot of loneliness because of the pandemic and all that. What have you changed in your life because of the pandemic? So that you still have community even if you're not able to go see people.

Oh, wow. So there's, I think, two or three things. And I do want to point something out, because we're talking about how lonely people are because of the pandemic or the impact of social media on loneliness. This started way before any of that. In 1985, the average American had about three friends besides family. By 2004, just 19 years later, it was just about two friends, and that trend probably continued. And. And my hunch is that the reason is that it became more acceptable for people to move, to go for a new job or after college, and so they lose their social ties. So this is a devastating trend. When, like, you point out the impact of loneliness is on par with, like, smoking a pack a day of cigarettes or something like that, that's terrible.

So loneliness is like kale.

It's like kale. Is kale that dangerous?

No, it's just gross. Got it. It's not as dangerous as cigarettes. I just like to pick on kale because it's not that good.

So it's. So what we began to realize was in the pandemic, there were kind of two issues. One is the people who are normally social, they were feeling, like, the need for social contact. Right. But what's actually more dangerous is the people who are already isolated. When you feel lonely and you're isolated, it breeds a belief that you're deserving of being isolated and lonely. So if you have three friends and one of them moves and you're down to two, then the world seems suddenly much smaller. And then you think, okay, I guess I'm limited to these two friends now. And that's what I'm really concerned about. So during the pandemic, I started examining the research on human behavior to try to understand since we can't physically be around each other, which is normally how we deal with great social stress. So you look back to the blitzkrieg during World War II on London. The entire city is being attacked. Everybody's freaking out, and people are trying to get into shelters, and everybody's worried that there's going to be fighting and looting and attacks in the shelters, and there weren't any. And that's because in times of great stress, human beings are phenomenal at coming together.

In fact, we're wired to do that. And I think it's in our cells, the basic algorithms to do it. We have those four F words I keep talking about in the show. And the fourth F word that we all do and all life does is friend. You've got to do that. And if you're not doing that, you're malnourished. Right.

I couldn't agree more. There's even this really solid argument that the Maslow's higher order of needs that maybe we should put as the most important social integration. Because if you look at the greatest punishment that we give a person when we don't want, like when they're a problem in our society, it isn't like starving them. What we do is we either put them in solitary confinement or we push them out of our culture. And so for human beings, it seems that there's no greater need than the need to fit in. We're in fact, willing to deal with just about anything in order to feel like we're part of a culture society.

Does that mean that Cancel Culture is actually creating loneliness because people are afraid of being ostracized now?

I think so. And the reason I would. I think that that's actually a really good observation is that when Google was looking at what the greatest predictor of a team's success was, they. You know, there's a lot of things that people think. Like you take a diverse group of people who are geniuses and you throw them in a room together, let them solve a problem. That's it. Or tenure, or Something like that. But it was actually psychological safety, the feeling that you're part of the group, even if you have a descending view. So the two of us can't explore an idea. If I agree with everything that you.

Say, well, it's kind of boring.

And we'll also never find the problems to improve it. Right. Ideas are anti fragile. The more pressure you put on them, the more you discover the strength of them and where you need to sure things up. And so I think that you're kind of spot on with this cancel culture thing. If you're scared of saying anything that's unpopular, then we're never going to get to a better idea. And also, let's be honest, when has shaming anybody for anything been the solution?

Shaming doesn't work very well to change behavior, now does it?

No. If shaming worked well, I would have been skinny my entire life. I'm dyslexic. I would have learned to read in a weekend. If people making fun of me was the answer, I would be a perfect human being right now.

And if shaming worked well, we'd all be Catholic, right?

Well, I'm Jewish, so believe me, there's no lack of guilt.

Yeah, I come from a Catholic family, so I can say that fairly, I think. Although if I offended you, I'm very sorry.

Oh, no, not offended. You are canceled officially.

This goes down to something a little bit deeper and something that you're exploring in your new book. You're talking about hacking human connection and trust. Because on one aspect there's connection. But right now it seems like, okay, every company out there is trying to take advantage of you. There's a whole bunch of people out there who are trying to take advantage of you. You never know because you can't see them. You get an email. I only need to send $10 million to Nigeria. I know I'm going to get it back. You know, so there's untrustworthy people.

Oh, you know that guy too.

Exactly. Right.

I'm still waiting for an email back with the details for the return of the funds, but I'm sure it's coming anyway.

It's going to come. Yeah. Just don't even worry about that. By the way, I have another email for you. It's an even better deal. Just don't even worry. Right?

Is it those pills? Oh, my God.

Nice. The issue that we have though is if you want to create connection with someone or with a group, first they have to trust you and you have to trust them. So how do you go about building trust.

So this is super interesting, and I'll be honest, this wasn't stuff that I knew before I started researching the book. But we all say, as you point out, trust is really important. It's the basis of relationships, all that. And if you ask people, great, what is it made out of? Like, why do we even have it? Because the fact is that, and you pointed to this a little, that trust is the willingness to be vulnerable, right? And if I'm willing to trust you, you could steal my money, you could hurt me, and so on. So trust doesn't actually make any sense to have, except for one problem. From an anthropological perspective, I came across some research that suggests that a single mother with a child can't collect enough calories in a day to support her and her offspring and protect it. Meaning that without trust, without knowing, okay, this person can care for the child while I collect food, or this person can go get me food so that the child can survive, we would have gone extinct. So trust is necessity from an evolutionary perspective. The problem is we still don't. That doesn't answer the question of what is it made out of? And for the most part, researchers agree that it's made out of three things. Some argue four. But for the purposes of anything we actually care about, three is fine. And that's competence, your ability to do something, honesty or integrity, if you're truthful. And then the third is benevolence, that you have my best interests at heart. And here's what's really interesting. Three pillars, all really important, but they're not equally important. So if I came to you one day and I shared something, and the next day I was like, oh, I found out that study was wrong, you wouldn't say, oh, John is incompetent, he got something wrong, I can't trust him anymore.

Well, if you're a YouTube commenter, you would.

For sure, because of cancel culture. So you can see that you can have a screw up in competence and you're still in the clear, right? As long as you have a decent track record. But if you found out somebody lied to you, you then doubt everything they have said and everything they say moving forward. So you can see that breach in honesty is a much bigger deal than a breach in competence. And then the third thing is there's actually this weird loophole in it. And so if the two of us are walking down the street and I say, hey, Dave, I just forgot something at a friend's house, do you mind if we quickly pick it up and you're like, yeah, yeah, sure, no problem. And when we walk in, 40 of your closest friends jump out and scream, surprise. It would be very, very strange if you turned to me and. And said, john, you just lied to me. We can't be friends anymore. And that's because, you know, I lied to you for benevolent reasons, which is I had your best interests at heart. And so we're more willing to forgive that, especially if it's for, like a temporary kind of joke or something like that.

Right.

And here's what's interesting about it. Everybody tends to lead with competence, like he's capable or she's capable of whatever it is. But really, it seems that human beings care about benevolence more than honesty. So what we should be leading with is that we have other people's best interest at heart. You'll also notice there's, like, one other kind of weird thing. Do you remember when Wells Fargo had that whole thing about opening up bank accounts?

Yep.

Right. That is fundamentally a breach in benevolence. They don't actually care about their customers.

Oh, you mean like all the social media customer or companies?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So. But whenever there's an issue, they don't admit, oh, yeah, you know, we had some managers that just don't care. What they say is that it's an issue of competence. They say, sorry, we put an overview committee to make sure that accidents like this don't happen again. But we want you to know that we really care about our customers. So they very cleverly tried to hide where the breach in trust is. And it's like, the more people are aware of it, the more we can see, okay, can we actually trust these companies or not? We can really take a look at these things. So that's what trust is made out of. But that didn't really answer the question for me of how do I build trust quickly with somebody? Especially if I meet somebody very influential. I only have a few minutes with them. So the question became, what is the mechanisms that build trust and how do we accelerate the process so that if I only have 20 minutes or an hour with you, by the end of that, it feels like we're old camp friends. And that's what the dinner is actually built on.

The dinner really did create a sense of trust because there's some vulnerable sharing. And I'm embarrassingly forgetting who's the guy from Top Gear that you sat me next to. Do you remember?

Yes. Adam.

Adam. Is it Savage?

Yeah. Adam Savage was there that night. Jennifer Morrison was there that Night from House. And once upon a time there was also somebody from like One Tree Hill or something like that. Like, and he was also on the Walking Dead for a while. We had a famous. I remember your dinner. It was a crazy dinner. We had a famous magician. We had a famous furniture designer who also had his own show with Common. Yeah, it was like a crazy, you know, L. A. It's a lot of entertainment people.

I didn't know who any of these people were. I'm such an. I'm such a nerd. I'm like, I don't know. I'm pretty sure you're an actress because you're short and you look like an actress. And actresses are all short. That was my one guess. That was correct. Everyone else, I got wrong, which was kind of funny.

I think it was also really amusing how surprised people were that you were the. At the time, you know, this is years ago. You were the coffee guy. Yeah, right. Oh, the coffee guy. Yeah. Butter. I love butter.

It was a really weird trust building experience. But you really felt you got to know someone different than you would at a normal dinner where you're a little bit more guarded just because you couldn't do the normal stuff you do.

So here's what's really interesting about it, and here's the design and what people can actually use and take home with them. So there's this. This really weird characteristic of human beings. If I were to, like, take you out for an expensive meal, you may or may not actually care about that. Nobody really wants another business dinner. They often feel like obligations. And if I just give you a bunch of swag at an event or a throw a party, people barely remember who threw the party. And they mostly just throw out or give away the swag bags, which means none of that kind of stuff of trying to, like, buy people off really works. There is an exception, which is I. I know that you're really into biohacking, and if I find this, like, one really rare thing that you really care about and get it for you, you'd say, oh, wow, John really cares about.

Yeah, a thoughtful gift does something different than a. A T shirt.

Exactly. So the question is, what actually does work? And it turns out that it's the exact opposite. It's called the IKEA effect. And it states that we disproportionately care about our IKEA furniture because we had to assemble it.

So you make them work for it.

Yeah, that's exactly it. Anything we put effort into is what we care about. Disproportionately and so I'm not trying to win anybody over by being, you know, gifting and like, spending a fortune or anything like that. What I'm actually looking to do is find ways for us to invest effort into each other together. And there's this really interesting thing, and it's kind of obvious when you really think about it, but the reason the IKEA effect works is that anytime you have a problem that's too big for one person to solve by themselves, then joint effort is required. And then we produce something known as a vulnerability loop. It works like this. Let's say I came to work at your company and I'm sitting at the desk next to yours, and it's my first day there, and you hear me say, I am so overwhelmed, I don't know how I'm going to do all of this. I've just signaled vulnerability at a certain level. Now, if you ignore that or make fun of it, trust will be reduced. But if you acknowledge it and throw out your own signal, John, my first week running this company, I was totally overwhelmed, too. I know how you feel. Let's see if we can figure this out. You've just signaled your own vulnerability. You used to be overwhelmed. Now, we've both shown that we're safe with each other at this level, and now we can trust each other more. Now, when we're working on a project together, like cooking a meal, then these loops are created very quickly, especially if we're time locked. And suddenly we're starting and closing loops. Like, Dave, quick, pass me the. And then you pass me a knife so I can cut something, or pass me like a spatula so I can make sure something gets on the stove. And all these loops are opened and closed and suddenly we feel like we can really trust each other. Now, notice trust did not precede vulnerability. Vulnerability precedes trust. So if we want to accelerate the process for building trust quickly, we need to do a couple of things. We need to one, notice people's vulnerability loops. It could be something they say or they do physically. And we have to be willing to put out our own signals. Now, the fastest way to create that is probably by finding some task that both of you can do together. And the reason is that human beings are terrible in an interview setting where they're sitting across from each other. It's like a miserable way to meet somebody. But if you go on a hike together or you play a game together, then suddenly the loops get created quickly and it's a natural experience to actually bond.

All Right. So now you walk into a room, hey, everybody, I'm vulnerable. Now we get back to that trust issue. And then, you know, the three sociopaths in the room are like, great, you know, fresh meat. So how do people know when and how to express vulnerability so they don't get screwed? Because that's the reason people won't express vulnerability in the first place.

So the. The simple answer is that. And this is kind of funny, in the book, I explore this too. The. Have you ever seen all those, like, Criminal Mind type shows?

Oh, totally.

Yeah. They're great drama, right? Criminal minds lasted like 15 years, hundreds of episodes. So I interviewed the. The guy who created the show. It turns out that the behavioral sciences team at Quantico has probably never caught anybody based on behavioral sciences. You cannot predict a single person's behavior. It's just not possible. Like, maybe if you really, like, dedicate your entire life, you can get really pretty accurate, but you could do it on scale. And here's the problem. There are certain tells that you can probably figure out, but hoping that you're going to get a zero rate of meeting jerks is near impossible. And that's also because human beings change over the course of a lifetime. So we might be best friends this year and next year I suffer a tragedy and I start drinking or something like that, and I become a jerk. So it's expecting or trying to get that number to zero is tough. What we can do is a few things. Mostly people trust others due to what's called the halo effect. Right? So I trust your friends because I trust you, and that's fine. It's like, at least you've got some signals like, oh, Dave thinks he's cool, so I'll probably think he's cool. The bigger issue, I think, is that the length of time it takes for us to trust somebody or not, like, at the basic level, is the length of time it takes for, like, a hummingbird to flap its wings once. It's like a single frame of a movie.

Yep. We know it in our bones, but we don't listen to it.

And what's interesting about that is that most of those signals aren't based on anything real. So it's like you said, are they taller, where their cheekbones are, is their nose pronounced? These signals. And some of them are probably genetic and probably some of them are social. Right? So in. In American culture, people have criminalized dark skin. Right. There's a whole culture of white supremacy that has made people scared. Shows like Cops have led to it. And So I think it's really tough to. To judge these things. I think, like, even. What is it? Judges are so bad at guessing who's telling the truth and who's lying that they have, like, a 53% accuracy. That's awful. They do it professionally.

Sounds like a pretty good job. Flip a coin.

Yeah, I'm average, and you have the job for life, so it's really good. So I think that the bigger issue is. Or I'll take a step back. Let's say you come into a room and you want to meet people. My question is, do you actually want to go into a room to network? Because the fact is that networking is a really terrible way to meet people. It makes us feel dirty. Research out of Harvard Business School found that the implicit association to networking is wanting to wash our hands. Right? Like, it's just awful. Nobody has ever said, oh, my God, networking's so fun.

I don't think that's a true statement. People new to their career who are clueless and eager are happy to go to networking events. And they're all excited about it because there's lots of people they could take advantage of. It's like the people on Clubhouse, like, I've got to ask a question. Let me tell you five minutes about myself before I ask my question, which is a problem for people new to clubhouse, right? And so you do find people who have way more to gain than they have to give are the ones who are most eager to go to a networking event. At least that's been my experience of going to those.

So let's separate two things. One is there was a study done. I think it was on Columbia University MBA students. So these are people who have the highest desire to network, quote, unquote. They even say networking is a major priority. When they actually go to networking events, I think they spend more than half of their time talking to people they already know, and then a very small portion talking to some new people. But the. The reason networking doesn't feel right is that that's not really how most of us are going to feel comfortable with people. From a social perspective, almost everyone we meet is either through a shared interest and activity or through the fact that we grew up with them through friends. Right? And so if that's the case, maybe we should be looking at how do we make friends instead of networking? And for that to happen, we probably need some kind of activity or experience, because 40,000 years ago, human beings wouldn't have been like, oh, I'm going to. Like, I'm Going to walk five villages away so I can network. It's not a realistic expectation on our species.

It's kind of funny. You created some online exercises that you use in your community, and I stole one of them with your permission for the Upgrade Collective. So for all the Upgrade Collective listeners, there's a reason that we go through that quiz to work as a team, to guess what some photos, some microscope photos are because of exactly what John's talking about now. And you can see it gives you a chance to get to know people even though you're remote. Which I thought was a really cool hack because I've been to events where I'm sitting with a bunch of people who funded the X Prize and we're building moon bases out of Legos at a cocktail party.

So.

So we'd have a team event to do. That was a period Diamandis thing. But it really did work, right? It doesn't even seem to matter how trivial it is, just as long as it's a shared activity.

Yeah, I would actually argue that. So there is some research that just shows that we bond over shared activities. More so than kind of just like the interview style. Oh, you two should sit down and talk. That's really awkward. I think the reason is twofold. One is you get that IKEA effect. And two, if you want to be quiet while you're doing an activity, that's fine. It's not weird. If you want to be quiet for a moment while you're in conversation with somebody, that's awkward. And we feel really uncomfortable with silence. So I think you pointed to something though, that's really interesting, which is that not only does it not matter how trivial it is, but sometimes the fact that the activity is trivial is what's great about it. So when Covid hit and everybody started sheltering at home, we started looking at why do people actually go to events? Because all the digital events that people were doing were miserable. It was less entertaining than Netflix, it was worse quality than YouTube. Right? Like, why would I sit there watching some fundraiser concert over Zoom or some big, large scale tech event when I could just read an article about it the next day? Right? And so we, we found that there's a handful of things that people actually want when they go to an event, even if it's not like ultra exclusive. When you go to a concert, you're not just there for the music. You're there also because there are other people. You want to connect. You want to feel like you're part of something bigger, just being in people's environment. So connection is critical. The other is influence. And I know this might sound a little weird, but if I'm at a concert, I can boo, I can scream, I can shout, I can dance. I have an impact on the people around me. If I'm on webex and I die, no one will notice. Like I'm logged in there. I could be washing my dishes, I could be, you know, answering emails, anything that just gives me a feeling or sensation of having an impact on the world. And so when we started designing experiences, we said, okay, we need to put people at the heart of the experience because it's not about me, the host, it's about the participant. So we started with breakout rooms where we have eight people or seven people play a game together and they compete. And the reason that we do that is that it creates that time locked problem that forces them to create those vulnerability loops or that IKEA effect. So they end up connecting at a much deeper level after 15 minutes than if they would have been at some cocktail party, frankly.

Wow. And it works remotely.

Yeah, and it works remotely. It also gives them that sense of influence. Like they matter. Now here's the funny part. You said it's trivial, right? What we started doing is we'd have former dinner guests give gifts to the winning team, but they'd be ridiculous. Like we had the president of Hanes underwear.

I was on for that call, right?

Were you the winning team? Did you win underwear?

The winning team did not win a year's supply of underwear.

No. I'm sorry. We'll see what we can do about that. I know that knowing you, you probably have like special underwear that aerates and does all this stuff.

They're made out of leather. They're awesome.

Now I know what I'm shopping for my, my book launch gift for myself. Leather underwear.

I'm sure they make them, but I can tell you that's not something that I normally wear except at Burning man. And then that's different.

So.

But, but you, you do some zany stuff like that. But it, like I said, it didn't matter what the prize was because it was all in the spirit of fun. But I noticed that it really stood out. And it's funny that you've, you've studied the science of that because it was a really successful zoom meeting with a sizable number of people. Much more successful than the average zoom meeting with a large number of people. And I'm, I'm actually using some of your techniques from your book. And by the way, if you just dialed in on Clubhouse. This is John Levy, who's the author of you're invited the Art and Science of cultivating influence, which is a book about how do you actually do that? So I'm breaking people out during the virtual conferences coming up, and we should have many thousands of people in that, but I'm doing my best there. How do we create this opportunity so that people get to know each other a little bit, so we break down those barriers because it actually makes for a good event. So thank you for, for teaching me how to do something better. I mean, that's why I like the show, because I get to learn. But I want to understand why is your book called you're invited instead of you're influential? What's the invitation aspect of this? Is the air you're breathing making you sick? Just because you don't see mold doesn't mean it isn't there. My friend Jason Earle has been on a mission for over two decades to help people understand the hidden role of indoor air in their health. He's one of the world's leading experts on mold and indoor air quality. And he created the Got Mold test kit to make professional grade air testing simple and accessible. It uses cutting edge air sampling tech that top inspectors trust, and it's engineered for you at a fraction of the cost. It takes just minutes to get samples using the patented Biovac air sampling pump. Then you send them prepaid to one of the most prestigious microbiology labs in the world. No guesswork, no paperwork, and no hidden fees. You get fast results, intuitive reports, and great support. And since you keep the pump, you can retest anytime for less. It even comes with a lifetime warranty. Mold may be invisible, but its impact isn't. This kit helps you understand your environment so you can take action for your health. Go to gotmold.com and use code DAVE10 to save 10% and see what's in your air. Because the best biohackers don't guess. They test.

My argument is that our influence is a byproduct of who we're connected to, how much they trust us, and the sense of community that we share. And so if it starts with connecting with people, it starts with an invitation. Now, that invitation could be to come and cook me dinner at one of my influencers dinners. It could be an invitation to go on a hike or have coffee. But fundamentally, unless I'm inviting somebody to participate, it could be an invitation to check out my content. But it begins with this vulnerability loop. I'm putting myself out there. Are you interested? And here's what's crazy. An invitation is a very strange social agreement because when I extend an invitation, I'm in a position of request. But when you agree to shifts the dynamic to state I want to participate, it is an active request on your part. And so it shifts the dynamic completely. Now suddenly you are a demand for whatever it is that I'm offering. And that's really interesting because now there's an opportunity to do something special. So whether it's getting married or starting a social cause or building a company, it all actually begins with an invitation. And here's what's kind of crazy. I'm not sure if we covered this already, but we had talked about how the greatest predictor of longevity is social integration and close social ties. It turns out that on the company side of things, on the corporate world, you can measure company stock value, employee sick days and profitability and track it to the level of oxytocin in people's bloodstreams, meaning how much people feel they belong. So if your employees are really committed to one another in the company, it's no surprise that they'll work harder, be more dedicated to the ideas, and want to take less sick days because they're not interviewing somewhere else for a job.

It totally works. It's why for upgrade labs where I'm focusing this year on growing that out or franchising. I've been putting oxytocin in the butter in the coffee that we all drink every morning and man, the results are off the roof. Okay, not really, but we've had Dr. Love come on a while ago, Paul Zak, and talk about oxytocin. We actually played one of his videos that raised oxytocin at the live, the live biohacking conference. I think 90% of people would see a spike after watching a one minute video. So I'm like, yeah, let's do that. At the beginning, it was an epic conference because we were hacking our neurochemistry as a group at the beginning. Do you know which of the things that you talk about in your book, the the IKEA effect or anything else, which of those are raising oxytocin?

So what's interesting is, and I actually talked to Dr. Love himself about this for the book, it seems that every time a vulnerability loop is created and closed, oxytocin is likely released at a higher level. It's that any pro social behavior really accomplishes that. When we work together to make a meal at the dinner or a hike or here's a really crazy one. I think the study was they had people do wall sits together. They didn't talk to each other, they didn't know each other. But just being in pain from the wall sits together caused them to feel closer and like each other more.

Shared suffering works.

Yeah. Which is crazy. From a logical perspective, that should never work. Right. Just because I experience the same pain as you in a nearby area, like in the. In your vicinity, should not mean that I'd like you anymore. In fact, I should probably associate the pain with you and dislike you more, which is the misattribution of arousal. Something that, that actually reminds me that I think you'd. You'd find super interesting is that there was research by Matt Lieberman. I'm not sure if you've ever discussed him on your podcast or had him on. Don't think he's been on Lieberman's brilliant. He One of the things he studied was social pain, like isolation or being made fun of, things like that. And he created the dumbest game I've ever heard of. It's called Cyber Bowl. It's not really a game. It's a game for an experiment. And the way it works is you're put in an fmri, your brain is scanned, and you're told that there are two other people playing with you doing the same thing in a different room. And the game is just a digital game where you see a character throwing a ball to you, and you can press a button and pick will you throw it to player A or to B. And you keep passing the ball around. And at a certain point, the other two players stop passing you the ball and they just keep passing it to each other. And people experience isolation as a byproduct. And when they looked at scans of the people participating in this, they found that almost the identical areas of of the brain activate from social pain as physical pain. Literally, if you look at scans, you're not going to be able to tell the difference. So they said, you know, we're going to one up this experiment. We're going to take two groups. Group one will take a Tylenol for two weeks. Group two will take a placebo and think they're getting Tylenol, and then we're going to put them through the experiment again. And they did the scans, and what they found was that Tylenol actually blocked the social pain, and those who had a placebo didn't. So it kind of demonstrates something really interesting, which is we're used to thinking of emotional pain or social Pain and physical pain as distinct, right? You don't go to jail for hurting somebody's feelings, but you do for breaking their arm. Well, if they're both processed by the brain in almost the identical way, maybe we need to reevaluate the impact of these things.

There's also something we'll call it toughness training. And it's tough because sometimes when the coach says, walk it off, like, actually, that's a broken leg. You shouldn't walk that off. But there's other times where you need to just realize your body's screaming at you more than is necessary, and there's a toughening up. And I did a practice like this with my daughter. She's 13. And some guy I don't know with a very large following out of the blue names me con man of the year. I'm like, it's only March, dude. That's kind of cool. And a bunch of out of quote, out of context quotes and all because I said that food quality is more important than calories. It was just a classical online bullying scenario that didn't bother me one bit. But I'm like, hey, let's look at this, Hannah. So we sat down and we read the comments, right? And you look at that and it's, you know, classical bullying stuff right out of the stuff that you would experience in middle school or high school, right? And then like, okay, how can we make this into a toughness training kind of exercise? So we thought about it and we talked about it, and then we held a sale and we used that guy's name as the coupon code for the sale.

That is so good.

Ninja moves of not giving a shit about emotional or about an attempt of someone you don't even know to cause you emotional pain, Right? And if it's someone you know, it's a different. A different thing. But it feels like there's so many people you don't know who, you know, come in and say mean stuff on social media and all that, and it causes a lot of pain. Do you. Or did you come across research on how to build toughness in adults or kids? And so, like, oh, that person disagreed with me or that. That person said, you know, I'm fat, or whatever they said that actually hurt your feelings. How do you toughen up? So you just don't give, you know what.

So this is super interesting and. And we talked a little bit about earlier how one of the big reasons that people have less friends is that they're moving more. I think one of the other Big reasons is helicopter parenting. So human beings in general and living systems in general function on an antifragile system. So if you have something fragile like a glass, and you break it, you drop it, it'll shatter and break, right? Antifragile systems are ones that when you apply pressure to them, actually get stronger. So you work your muscles out, you build more muscle. So the key, just like in muscle building, isn't to throw 5 tons on a human being because they'll die, smash them, right? You want to do stuff that's just at that comfort zone's edge. And so if I were to, you know, if you were to take your daughter for example, and her on stage in front of a thousand people, that would be like a 5 ton weight being dropped on her. Like if all of them are making fun of her simultaneously, that's just too much, right? But also, if you don't expose people to getting beat up a little, then they're going to be so fragile that they're going to be in trouble throughout the course of their life. Who was was John Haight talked about a study and found that there's actually a key time period in your life to experience tragedy and it's in your later teenage years. If it's before that, then it's so impactful that it, you don't know how to process it. If it's too much after that, like you're 27 years old, then you haven't been toughened up enough beforehand. And so I'm in full agreement. I think that there's a line between walk it off and you have a broken leg. And that's the difference between discomfort, like when you hold a plank for a long time, and actual pain. It's the difference between perceived risk and peril. A perceived risk is public speaking. Now, nothing's going to happen, but you'll get really scared.

It's the number one fear of people in the US is public speaking.

And it's incredible, right, because you're totally safe. But it kind of goes back to that desire for belonging because if we screw that up, we might not belong anymore.

It's a tough thing. I look at the amount of fear out there and sometimes I'm like, you know what, you need to toughen up a bit. You're willing to drive 40,000 people a year, die in car accidents, but you're not losing your mind over it. And some of it just does come down to just. I think it comes down to exactly this, you know, being comfortable with knowing that maybe it Might be uncomfortable. So we, I think we have a societal problem. Maybe coming from schools, maybe coming from teachers, maybe coming from parents. Where do you think it's coming from? Do you think it's worse now? Or is this just what everyone says when they get enough wisdom to look back?

I think the stats were like, well, first of all, everybody's going to assume that the current generation is like, lazy and stupid.

And if you know me back then, the current generation is way better off on average, just to be clear.

Oh, yeah, they're much more accepting. They, like, care. Right. You know, there's, there's. I. So I think that there's just a bit of that. My hunch is that there's a few problems. One is that we've lowjacked our kids, right? It used to be that you could have a child at the age of 6, go and buy milk a block away. Now parents will be arrested if they are. If somebody finds out that they let their six year old walk more than five feet away from them. And so it's kind of crazy. And I think that that gets exacerbated because of a behavioral cue known as the saliency effect, which is that when something's easily accessible by memory, we think it happens more often than it does. So if you. The problem with. We talked about serial killer shows earlier. The problem with that is that there just aren't enough serial killers.

There are almost no serial killers. I'm more worried about lightning than serial killers in my daily life. And neither of them reaches the point of I'm worried unless my hair is standing on end and I'm in a field and there's lightning.

But here's the funny thing. At my dinners, right? Everybody arrives. There are all these, like, kind of interesting folk. And at about 25 minutes in, I say, okay, everybody, we're about to start cooking. This is the perfect time to message your spouses, your significant others, your friends, and let them know that you still have both of your kidneys and you're alive. Because, like, literally that's what they're worried about. It's. They're worried that, like, somehow the invitation that they were sent with an address at somebody's home and is somehow going to be unsafe. As if, like, that's really going to be the risk. In the scenario I've done, the long con spent 12 years building a community of over 2,000 members, from Nobel laureates and Olympians to business leaders and members of royalty. And then what I'm going to do is I'm Going to steal somebody's kidney.

Royal kidneys and Nobel laureate kidneys are higher value. So I admire your strategy.

I would say that I agree with half of that. Most Nobel laureates are like in their 80s, and I don't think anybody wants who wants their kidneys.

That's a fair point. And we won't make any comments about substance use amongst royals, because they're perfect.

Of course.

You had a chapter in your book that I thought would be helpful for a lot of people listening, especially if you're earlier in your career or you've made a transition and you talk about not just building trust, which we all want to do, but it's the science of building trust quickly. It's the fourth chapter in the book.

Book.

And you have some really good stories in there. And can you tell me about Gino the salesman?

Oh, yeah. So Gino the salesman, his last name is Leo Cotte. He has the weirdest job in the world. Like since the 1970s, he's convinced mostly housewives to open the door to their homes. And he's carrying a bag of knives. And that's insane, right? Think it's like 1970, a woman is alone at home and a guy with a bag of knives shows up and says, I want to talk to you. And what? Gino is a professional cutlery salesman, and he used to go door to door selling these knives. And it's called Cutco, you might know it.

Oh, yeah, Cutco knives are great.

They're phenomenal. But Gino and his colleagues eventually realized that it's really hard to build trust when you're just randomly knocking on people's doors. And they said, maybe we could figure out a way to get people to trust us ahead of time. And so he realized that if he could get, let's say, Susie to recommend a bunch of her friends, then maybe by name, dropping them when he called, then they trust her more. So he calls up Margaret and he'll say, oh, hey, Margaret, do you have a minute? I was just sitting down with Susie and she said, you might be able to help me with something. Now, if he was paying really careful attention, he'd also remember that Susie's nephew and nieces names and maybe her grandchildren or several other friends, maybe he met Susie through another person. And with each additional piece of data like that, it elevates the amount of trust. And the reason is that human beings experience something known as the halo effect. And the halo effect is that if we trust, let's say you, Dave, and you say, oh, do you Know who you're going to love? Steve. Then suddenly, the associative property will say, okay, I really trust Dave. Dave suggests I get to know Steve, so I'll trust Steve ahead of time. And so, as a byproduct, Gino has sold millions of dollars worth of kitchen products, going from family to family in what should be completely insane and nowadays impossible, which is to get somebody to open their door when you're carrying a bag of knives. And here's what's interesting, though. The halo effect affects all of us. If you've ever gone to see a movie or eaten at a restaurant from a friend's recommendation, that's the halo effect. If you've ever tried a brand extension. Right. So Gatorade releases a new flavor or something like that, then you've been affected by the halo effect. Right. There's no reason that brand extension is necessarily good. It's just you generally trust the brand and so you're willing to try. And so that's one kind of really odd quirk. Another. And did we ever discuss the story of the greatest art heist in history?

No, no, that's in the book, but we haven't got to it yet.

Okay. Do you want me to share that or. Yeah, please do. So while researching the book, I came across this completely insane story. And it's similar to the halo effect in that it's. It's kind of the shortcut to what will get us to trust or like something. And in 1911, a workman walked into the Louvre on a Monday. Louvre is closed on Mondays for photographs and cleaning. And he walks into the Renaissance section, randomly finds the smallest painting he can find and rips it off the wall. Takes his workman's mock wraps it around the painting, walks out the next day. Eventually, somebody notices it's missing. 60 detectives search the entire Louvre. It's a thousand rooms. They only had 11 guards on duty, and most of them were probably drunk at the time. Wow. The painting goes viral, a lot of it, because it was right before World War I, and countries wanted to embarrass the French government for being incompetent for managing the Louvre. And stories around the world spread pictures of the painting. The story becomes so sensational that people stand in line just to see the empty spot where the painting used to be. Right. It's like a spectacle.

It's like a banksy thing, but 100 years ago, right?

Exactly. A reverse Banksy. So those nails are probably worth a fortune that it used to hang on. So three years later, the Guy tries to hawk the painting. He goes to Italy, goes to get it evaluated, and they call the police, and he gets arrested. Painting does a tour of Italy, eventually gets brought back to the Louvre. Once again, stories around the world about the return of this painting. Now, the painting sits behind bulletproof glass and is considered the greatest painting in the world. It is the Mona Lisa. Now, this is completely insane. If you ask most people what's the greatest painting of all time, they say the Mona Lisa. It was painted, I think, in 1506, 1508, or something like that. It wasn't until the 1800s that it even got a single reference as a good example of Renaissance art.

That's influence.

Yeah. Nobody cared about this painting until it was stolen. And then because all of the people who read newspapers saw pictures of it, because of all the wanted posters showed pictures of it, we were exposed to it more often. And as a byproduct, we trusted it or we liked it. And so this mere exposure effect affects us so much, it's completely insane. Me and my research partner, Dr. Moran Sirf, who's this wild neuroscientist, did the largest study. I think it's the largest study in history on dating. We looked at 421 million potential matches. Wow. And what we found is really weird things.

Still no dates, John.

Still. I'm married, so I hope yes, very much. No more dates. So what we found, though, is really weird. We found that if you have the same initials, you're 11.3% more likely to date.

Unbelievable.

Wow.

Completely invisible.

Yeah. And the reason is that it's this mere exposure effect to the extreme. It's called implicit egotism. Anything that reminds us of ourselves, because the most familiar thing is usually we like more. And so people tend to like things that remind them of themselves. You'll notice couples tend to look similar or friend groups have similar ideas, and that's generally how we tend to connect. But it also means that if you can draw lines between things that you have as similarities, you'll be able to connect with people much faster. So if I know you have kids, great. Now we can talk about kids. If I know that you're an entrepreneur, we can talk about that. If I know there's a movie you love or a hobby that you have that we share in common, we're far more likely to connect. This is called multiplex relationships. Essentially the idea that the more lines of contact that we have with each other or similarity, the more likely we are to find common ground and become friends. Otherwise, what you're going to need to deal with is something called the Allen Curve, which is just really weird.

What's the Allen curve? You brought it up. You have to define it.

I've piqued your interest. The Allen Curve is that it's research from MIT that found that the closer our desks are, our communication grows exponentially across all platforms. So if our desks are next to each other, we'll talk a ton. If they're 20ft, we'll talk significantly less. And by about 50ft or so, we might as well be on different planets. And that's kind of one of the problems of the pandemic, is that unless we have calls with people constantly, we forget they exist, and so we don't talk to them. It's like that mere exposure effect or the saliency effect.

How does all this apply to family?

Ooh, interesting. I think families are really complex, but I think, first of all, we can have influence on each other in a really meaningful way because we opt in. So I come to you for advice, you might ask me a question. Family's a little bit more tough because they put up with us. Right. Like, my dad doesn't want health advice from me. He's going to listen and then not do anything I say anyway. So rather than me trying to influence my dad by telling him to do something, I'd go back to that study about obesity, how our. Our social ties have such an impact on each other that it affects our happiness and exercise and all that. And I would try to help him make friends with people who have values that are really important. So if I feel like he's gaining too much weight, I'm going to probably try and find some very active friends for him to spend more time with and then really foster those relationships so that they can impact. Yeah, because he's never going to listen to me anyway.

And it's. It's built in. You know, parents will never understand if you're the kid, and, you know, they'll never listen to you if you're the adult. So I think that's built into our cellular biology somewhere. I haven't figured out where yet, but it must be because it's always true.

The rebellious gene.

Yeah, exactly. Probably a book coming out by that name by some way or another. How about taking some questions from the Upgrade Collective and from Clubhouse?

Oh, I would love that.

All right, let's go to the Upgrade Collective first. Susan, you had a question?

Hello. Thank you very much for this time together. Really appreciate it. My question is, how does The Allen curve work with virtual. That's a really great question. And I've been struggling with how to make up for it. The fact is it works terribly in the sense that all those things that we gained from being in an office, like seeing our co workers occasionally bumping into people, having water cooler breaks, all that kind of pro social behavior, was really healthy for us. And so if we're completely virtual, we need to be a lot more intentional about remembering one another. So there's a few things that I came up with for companies that were kind of ridiculous. For small companies, I suggested that they get bobbleheads of each other and that sit on their desks so they always remember everybody on the team. At larger companies, I thought maybe team photos or something like that, that could be people's backgrounds so that there's this awareness of everybody and, oh, the people that they need to be in touch with. Right. Oh, I totally forgot I have to call so and so today. But because they saw their background, they can accomplish that. The other thing that might be really helpful is doing random breakout rooms when you're doing town halls. So when you have everybody together, split teams randomly into groups of like 8, 10, 12, and let people from different divisions connect with each other. Because at companies, one of the big problems, especially large companies, is that accounting has a view of legal and legal has a view of marketing. And unless you can draw some connections and ties with each other, they see each other as very one dimensional. But when you know Jamal, who's you know, head of marketing and he has got three kids and loves the Harry Potter series, suddenly he's really human and he's not just somebody in marketing causing an issue or something like that. And so you have to be significantly more intentional when things are digital and actually design around them.

That's a really cool piece of advice. Thank you, John. Let's take a question from Maxi on Clubhouse. I'm just inviting her up. Maxi's a documentary filmmaker on ayahuasca, so this could be a super weird question. I'm hoping it is. Welcome, Maxie.

Actually, it is so conventional. It is so conventional. I actually have found, I must say, in this year of the Pandemic, I have found that the telephone and zoom has created greater intimacy. But it's all work related, you know, or really intense. You know, it's all in collaboration, so it's very intense. And this is such a conventional question I'm almost embarrassed to ask, but my world has become certainly my social life, I'm single, has become much More. Well, has become kind of non existent. My romantic life, not my social life. And I wonder how people connect. And I wonder if you have. You know, I always think that I'm in such exciting worlds. For example, the world of Ayahuasca. You meet really interesting people. But. And I don't like that idea of dating online, which I did for three months and then quit after having a stalker and some horrible experiences. And I just didn't seem like a way to create intimacy. This is such a conventional question. Do you have any other ideas about that? Because I have none about how people get together? Because you don't want to. I have to say, first of all, dating on Zoom might be okay if you're 25 or 30 years old, but it doesn't really appeal to me. Got it. So, Dave, maybe I should repeat the question just because the connection was.

That'd be helpful.

So I believe the question is, how do we create intimacy and develop a dating relationship over virtual technologies when being around each other physically isn't an option? And I think that this is a really, frankly, a complicated issue. You pointed to and. I'm sorry, what was maxi? Maxi. Maxi pointed to something really interesting, which was, in most cases, people feel less connected as a byproduct of being on Zoom. There are a small collection of people who actually use it as a way to create greater intimacy because you suddenly have a. Literally a camera into people's lives, and they use the opportunity of a child interrupting to create a vulnerability loop. They use the fact that you can see into somebody's kitchen to make jokes about, like, oh, they need a renovation or something. And suddenly you get a larger picture of somebody's life and more depth of personality. So you can highlight things that you would never be able to highlight if you were just in a suit, walking into a meeting and talking. And so there is the opportunity, if you're willing to embrace it, to create more vulnerability loops. There's actually a very strange thing that's kind of associated to dating and also interviewing. It's made famous by rom coms, and it's called the pratfall effect. And it works like this. Have you ever noticed that Hugh Grant is falling all over himself in every movie? He's kind of like a doofus. Well, it turns out that if we screw up a little in front of people, they like us more. And researchers had people come into job interviews and spill a little bit of coffee on themselves and found that those people were rated higher because it's these vulnerability loops and really humanizing experience. Experiences.

You can't, you can't say that. Number one, you're wasting coffee. And no, number two, there's going to be a huge wave of people where every time they get an in person interview, they spill coffee on themselves. And there's going to be a huge amount of laundry detergent that gets wasted because of that advice. There'll be no one who gets a job without coffee stains.

Because you did this, John, I'm willing to risk it. And I do want to point out if more people are spilling coffee, more people are buying coffee.

In that case. I love your advice.

I'm just saying it's awesome.

I did not know about that.

So that's called the pratfall effect. Now back to your question on dating. I'll be honest, I've done research on mobile dating. But let's be honest, mobile dating isn't really dating. It's mobile discovery. And so the issue then becomes, if we can't be in the same place at the same time, what can we do that's novel or different that doesn't feel like a job interview? Because a date activity takes the pressure off. You go roller skating, you go to an art museum, you do an escape room or something like that. And so my recommendation is to take the pressure off, then go ahead and find an activity that you can convert the digital meeting into a digital experience that you actually enjoy. And let me emphasize this, it should probably be something you actually enjoy because if you don't enjoy it and they're a terrible date, then the whole thing is just going to be awful. The other thing I'd encourage is, and this is, Dave, you're going to like this hack. It's called the misattribution of arousal. And the famous experiment is two groups of men were asked to cross bridges. Group A crossed like a standard solid bridge, got to the far end and there was an attractive woman who said, hey, thank you for participating. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me. Group B crossed a high ropes bridge. Their hearts were pumping, they were excited. And when they got to the far end, same woman, attractive, said, hey, if you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me. A disproportionate number of the people who were on the high ropes bridge asked her out. Now why is this important? It means that we confuse our physical state of excitement for the person we are with. If we want people to be more excited about going on a date with us or more excited by the end of it because we really like it we should probably do something that's a bit more exciting, that elevates heart rate because we are going to confuse or misattribute the feelings that we have for the experience with a person. And that's natural. So if it's natural, we might as well do it to our advantage.

If I had known that when I was a teenager, I would have gotten a job on a high ropes course and you would have completely changed my life.

What?

Okay, you could probably use that to go on a date too. But okay, if you're young and you're looking for the best job on earth, there you go.

I love that I went with like, oh, wow, I should do more activities. You're like, I should be the source of the activity. So everybody likes me.

Exactly. And of course, I mean, when you're a teenager, dating more is not a bad thing. And so there you go. You'd get more dates that way. Of course that would require that the higher ups course was open, but oh wait, it's outdoors with wind, so it ought to be. Let's do one more question from the Upgrade Collective, my group. And if you're listening to this the Upgrade Collective, go to our Upgrade Collective. This is my private membership and mentorship group where I teach everything I know in a community that I am helping to build using John's principles from his awesome new book. And let's see here, let's go to. Actually let's go to Joe's question. I was going to have aiming up, but Joe has a great question. Joe, you ready to ask? He's saying what company are you familiar with that employs the most of your strategies for their employees for bonding? So is there one company that just rocks at this point?

Okay, so the company that I think is actually best at this is probably Disney.

Oh really?

They in fact have an entire research group called the Disney Institute. I will give you an example that is half like. I'm not sure if it's rumor or true, but I think it's true to some degree of how much design they put into people enjoying themselves. And it's complete insanity. So Walt Disney World, right down in Florida, if you drive in, park your car, take the escalator up to the ticket booth, you buy your ticket and you ride a 23 minute monorail or boat ride to get to the front gate of the Magic Kingdom and then you can enter. Now here's what's crazy. Disney is very clear on what their objectives are. They want to be the happiest place on Earth and A wildly successful business. They're unabashed about that. So the question is, why would they make you wait 23 minutes to enter the front gate? And I got this wrong when I.

Guess it's got to be to raise anticipation for when you get in.

So that's what I thought. But then the person pointed out, told me about this, that if you've already been driving, you've been through the parking lot, you've known for months that you were going, anticipation was already super high. It turns out that according to the stats, the average American probably earns, I don't know, somewhere around 44k post tax. This was before the pandemic. I don't know what it is now. And a five day pass at Disney I think is like $1,200, which means that's a pretty significant chunk of the family's income. That's like mortgage and car payment and medical bill, right? So $1,200. So if I'm mom or dad or, you know, uncle or whatever paying that bill, suddenly I have an extreme feeling of like buyer's remorse. I knew about it, I know I wanted to be there, but that's still a natural feeling when you pass over that money. According to the researchers I spoke to, the length of time for buyer's remorse for that purchase is just about 23 minutes. So that when you enter the Magic Kingdom, you are ready to be happy and you are ready to spend again.

They're doing you dirty. That's mean. You're not going to walk away after you invest 23 minutes to wait in line to spend 1200 bucks.

I actually think it's great. And I think it's great for two reasons. One is, let's say you earn a bunch more money, then there's a good chance, first of all, you're staying on premises at one of the resorts and you can just enter. The second is that even if you're not affected by this, you don't want to be around a bunch of grumpy parents. Right? It changes the feeling at the park. And if you've just spent all that money, you want your memories to be positive. And so they want to make sure that you are emotionally capable of having really peak experiences. And if you're grumpy, that's going to take it away and it's going to make your kids experience worse. And so I can see how some people interpret it as like, why would they do that to us? I actually think that it's one of these scenarios that really benefits them. Financially and also benefits people's experiences. I think it's like a win win. Now what's interesting about this is that they put just as much design thinking into giving the the servers a feeling of belonging at the company. When I was at at Epcot for an event, somebody asked the waiter, how many years have you worked there? And I think he said it was like 27 and I can't wait to hit 30. Wow. Now that's a service industry job. To give somebody a feeling of belonging in a job where much of the time people are ignored and underappreciated is incredible. And I think they do a phenomenal job of that. Now you might have a lot of complaints about the company. I respect that.

No, no, I'm not going to complain about the company. You just can't go because you have a beard. That's all I'm saying.

I can't work there because yes, they don't let cast members with like be all funky like me with beards and sideburns and stuff like that.

It's a very funny company, but they definitely have dialed in their culture. You know, it is what it is.

Yeah.

Well, John, thank you for a fantastic interview. If you're listening on Clubhouse, definitely make sure you're following John. His book is called you'd're invited. His website, John Levy. L E V Y T L B. What does TLB stand for anyway?

Oh, I spent a lot of my life adventuring. So it's inspired by Peter Pan and the Lost Boys going and exploring. So it's the Lost Boy. The issue is that my name is the most common name in New York. I literally get mail for other John Levy's constantly and so I had to find some differentiator. And so it's about living a life of wonder and adventure like the Lost Boys.

I love it. And that is exactly playful and curious and about as good as it can get. John, I look forward to seeing you in person at another influencer dinner when have decided that it's actually important to connect with other people. And that's coming soon because I think people are getting ready for that. Have a wonderful evening and clubhouse. Thank you guys. Make sure you follow John. Follow me, tell people this is a cool club to be a member of and all the other cool clubhousey stuff you do. Upgrade collective. Thank you for being part of the live audience. I think the podcasts have improved seeing you guys here and watching on video and seeing your questions. So I feel like I'm a better interviewer when you're here with me. The Power of Connection yet again. I will see you all on the next one.

The Human Upgrade, Formerly Bulletproof Radio, was created and is hosted by Dave Asprey. The information contained in this podcast is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended for the purposes of diagnosing, treating, curing, or preventing any disease. Before using any products referenced on the podcast, consult with your healthcare provider carefully read all labels and heed all directions and cautions that accompany the products. Information found or received through the podcast should not be used in place of a consultation or advice from a healthcare provider. If you suspect you have a medical problem or should you have any healthcare questions, please promptly call or see your healthcare provider. This podcast, including Dave Asprey and the producers, disclaim responsibility for any possible adverse effects from the use of information contained herein. Opinions of guests are their own and this podcast does not endorse or accept responsibility. Responsibility for statements made by guests. This podcast does not make any representations or warranties about guest qualifications or credibility. This podcast may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products or services. Individuals on this podcast may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to herein. This podcast is owned by Bulletproof Media.