Activate Your Heroic Potential (on the Life in the Front Office Podcast)

Welcome to today's episode on the Life in the front office podcast presented by Suju Organic. Excited for today's episode? Episode 400. This day was going to come, but you know, here's, here's the deal. We've got Brian Johnson on founder and CEO of the Heroic. We'll get into his background, all the great accomplishments he's had thus far in his career and how he's really trying to provide a service for others. And that's ultimately the inspiration behind this podcast. Right. Is to be able to provide advice, insights to those in and around the industry, those who want to get into the industry and ultimately learn something new, better themselves and you know, have an opportunity to exponentially learn. So, Brian, welcome. Excited for the conversation, Jake, I'm really.

Looking forward to the conversation as well. Thrilled to be number 400. Let's go.

So when you think about all the content that you created and we'll give our listeners a quick debrief on what the Heroic is. Your new book, activate your heroic potential. This is your fourth company you've started, been a part of. Talk a little bit about the mission behind the Heroic, what it is and all of the content that you've created and collaborated on that you're trying to bring to people across the world.

Yeah, funny, I lost count. Four companies now. Let's go. That's funny. Our mission with Heroic is really simple and just on one side or the other of impossible. We want to help create a world in which 51% of humanity is flourishing by the year 2051. I got that from Martin Seligman, the guy that founded the positive psychology movement. And of course we're not going to do that by ourselves. But can we play our roles well to help create a world in which the majority of individuals are doing well, you know, they're flourishing and you know, how do we do that? Well, we got to help one person at a time. How do we, as per the book title, activate your, literally your heroic potential and you're a guy of influence. So if we can bring you up to the next level, if we can bring everyone, you know, that we're blessed to come in contact with up to their next best, most heroic self, we have a shot at making a difference in the world. But that's the basic, really high level mission and we can go wherever you want to go from there.

Yeah. Well, let's real quick, let's cover the four companies that you are a part of because I think it's, you know, for those that are listening, they're going like, how does it relate to sports? Well, you part, part of where you got your start was in the youth sports world and, you know, the tech space. So enlighten us on kind of just how you've gotten to where you are in a quick GPS of your journey.

Yeah. So dropped out of law school. The only thing I knew I wanted to do at 22, whatever it was, 23 years old, was to coach a little league baseball team. So that's what I did. And frankly, we sucked. No idea what I was doing. Bad News Bears, you know, but I had done a little bit of consulting at the old Arthur Anderson, you know, consulting group. And I could see that in a matter of time, this is 1998, every single team and league in the world would be online. Right. Using it for everything from schedules and standings and pictures. Grandma, Grandpa could check out, stuff like that. So basically I created my first business, which was kind of like an ESPN for youth sports. And we got thousands of teams using it. We won a business plan competition at UCLA's Anderson School, raised some money, and then I wound up hiring the CEO of Adidas, who was stepping down at that time to replace me as the 25 year old CEO of, of that business. Right. When the market crashed. So, you know, I've got a huge affinity to, to sports and that was the first business that kind of got me started on the, on the journey of integrating technology and my passion generally, you know, at that point, youth sports was kind of a big part of it.

And then you go on to a couple of other businesses and I want to highlight that, know, you go from one to the next. Right. But they're all kind of connecting in helping others. Right. And, and that's kind of at the core foundation. But when you think about the other businesses that you've been able to get into, just talk a little bit about the experience, the journey, what you've learned thus far. And for someone listening like, oh, how could I start my own business? Or what does that look like? I mean, the funding piece is one and that's certainly a big obstacle to overcome.

Yeah, well, when we, you and I connected, you know, privately, before, we were talking about Finding Joe, the documentary on Joseph Campbell and the modern hero's journey. So when I dropped out of law school, that was the hardest time of my life, full stop. I mean, I was scared, I was overwhelmed. Didn't have any of the tools I have now, but I just knew that law school wasn't for me. And for whatever reason, you know, this is now 27 years ago, 26 years ago, I had the trust to, to go, you know, and to. To follow my, my heart at the time. And the only thing I knew I wanted to do was to coach these kids. I had no idea that I would create a business out of that. And then, you know the joke I actually share in that documentary, I happened to be in a Finding Joe with Deepak Chopra, Laird Hamilton and Tony Hawk and guys like that. But I tell the story that before I would have graduated from law school, I hired the firm I would have wanted to work for, you know, but I never could have predicted that. So for me, the thing that I've learned to trust more and more and more is myself, is when I have a deep intuition of what's right, I follow it. And my coach is a guy named Phil Stotts, who I mentioned to you as well in our chat. He's in a documentary right now by Jonah Hill on Netflix called Stutz. So he says a great performer, you know, and he works with everybody in Hollywood, right? So a great performer is like a great running back. They see a hole in the line of scrimmage and they hit it. They don't hesitate, right? So when I feel that, and I have goosebumps right now, when I feel that clarity of that's it, that's what I'm here to do, I hit it. I mean, I hit that hole as hard as I possibly can. And I trust myself. I'm not always right, but I trust myself. And the most important times of my life, I have been right, which are the three, four businesses that we're talking about here, where I just knew that's it, that's my next quest. I'm going to go do everything I can to make it happen. So business wise, that's, that's my number one tip, is trust yourself. But then it's quickly followed up with, you need to be trustworthy, so you got to have a deep intuition that's actually worthy of being trusted. And so my number one thing I teach all the people I coach, and I've trained 10,000 people to be our coaches, our heroic coaches from over 100 countries around the world. And I've worked with a lot of executives, a lot of athletic coaches, executives, et cetera, in that world. But I say, look, your consciousness, who you are is your number one asset. So you better be taking care of yourself. You better be eating, you better be moving, sleeping, breathing, focusing your mind and getting to the point where you. You're worthy of your Own trust. And that's a whole nother chat we can have because it's a big part of my book. But that's. That's how I approach things. And then I found that when I do that, right, the money tends to be there, the team tends to be there. When I'm both following my bliss, as Joseph Campbell says, and my grunt working really, really hard to make it a reality again. Campbell says, then hidden hands come into your life. Doors appear where there were only once walls before. So again, now I'm jumping around on a couple of different themes, but that's how I have approached it and how I coach people to approach it.

Yeah, we'll get into the internal trust kind of equaling confidence here in a minute. But, you know, when you think about the sports landscape, you know, long hours, you know, lots of games, lots of events, you know, constantly working, and you, you know, you mentioned taking care of yourself, right? And that's a big piece that look for, you know, a while it was thought like, hey, it's only the players. Players got to take care of themselves. It's like, no, everybody in the front office needs to take care of themselves, right? Because whether it's the eating, the sleeping, the meditation, whatever it is that you're talking about, whether you're traveling or not, there's a lot that goes into it, and everybody's situation, circumstance is different. But if you look at the sports landscape as a whole, right, it's one of those industries that's known to, you know, long hours and more so than others, right? And so when you think about bettering yourself, focusing on yourself, putting the energy there and the time to, to be able to not only create those habits and that, you know, internal trust to yourself of, hey, I'm getting better, I'm going to continue to improve and build that confidence for yourself. Like, what are the things that you coach people on that, hey, if you're listening to this, you know, you're burnt out or, or. Or you're, you know, kind of in a space where you need a little, little pickup. Like, what. What are the things that you're coaching people on?

Yeah, I mean, I, I'm, I'm pretty intense about this, and it's perfect for, you know, your industry. You got to train like you're a professional athlete. Is my attitude. When you walk into a room, you. You should be the most energized person there. I mean, you want to have authority in, in the boardroom and the locker room, show up like you mean it, because we all know whether you're living in integrity with the things you're telling your players that they need to live in integrity with. So I show up personally, I strive to like a world class athlete. I mean, I'm disciplined, I show up. And again, we all have our idiosyncratic constraints, but so do the players. And they're held accountable. They got long hours, they're playing, they're doing this, they're doing that, but they're the best among them. Figure out how to do what it takes, you know. And again, sports is such a cool thing because you can be direct, you know, military. We have a lot of, of relationships in the military, same thing. And for them, obviously it's infinitely more important. It's life and death. You're either showing up and you're playing the margins well and you're doing what you need to do, whether you feel like it or not or you're not. And lives are at stake in that scenario. But to bring that level of energy, that level of commitment to excellence into everything we do, I think is essential. You know, so when work with players or with coaches or with executives, you know, I wish I can come in and just help run the organization because I'd go from the ground up. Eating, moving, sleeping, breathing and focusing. The core fundamentals. It's John Wooden 101, greatest coach in history, according to ESPN, won't let his players touch a basketball until he teaches them how to put on their socks. Cool. We each have our own idiosyncratic socks and we each know what our kryptonites are. And then the question is, do you have the wisdom, do you have the self mastery to actually do the things you know you could be doing? And that creates a culture within any organization, whether it's a family or a business or a sports organization. And that starts at the top, period. I mean, that's just a given. So you're either in integrity with your own ideals or you're not. But everybody knows and most importantly what you know, which comes back to the trust. So if you know you could be doing this and you're not doing it, and you know you shouldn't be doing that, but you are doing it, you shouldn't trust yourself. I mean, it's really that that simple confidence means in Latin, confidere, intense trust. So if I want trust in a relationship and you and I schedule this chat for this time in the morning and I don't show up, you know, and I actually missed a meeting with you because morning was crazy, made it up the second time. And here I am now. If I missed the second meeting, you wouldn't trust me. You look at and go, all right, I'll give them one pass here. That's cool. And goosebumps right now. I can't get away with that again, right? So if you're telling yourself, I'm going to go to bed at this time, I'm going to get up and I'm going to do this at this time, I'm going to hit the gym and I'm going to eat this, I'm going to eliminate sugar or whatever, and you don't do it. Conor McGregor comes to mind in his new documentary. He's got a great scene on this. There is a point in his career in which he said he was going to do things and he didn't do it. And then he didn't do it. He didn't get up at a certain time, he didn't show up at the gym at a certain time. And then he didn't even want to show up at the gym. You don't want to show up at the gym or in an octagon when you are doing those little things you better be doing because your opponent's doing it anyway. All that comes together. But what's exciting is it's actually really easy to solve. Start doing the things that you know you do when you're at your best. So we help people get clarity on who they are when they're at their best. And what we call the big three, energy, work and love. We help them create an identity. So I'm a heroic, disciplined athlete. That's my identity and energy. And I show up like it. And I do certain things, whether I feel like it or not, that I do when I'm at my best. And then you bring that into your productivity. You bring that into your relationships with your family, with your executive team or whatever. But those are some of the ways that we approach it.

Where does the heroic come from? Where does that mindset, that terminology come from?

I love you dropping the in front of it. I'm like, we may need to adapt the brand. We just call it heroic. So, you know, we're a public benefit corporation, so it's the heroic public benefit corporation. But as a brand, it's heroic. So I tattooed my body with heroic. And the mission we have, playful joke there is, you're 43% more likely to hit a goal if you write it down. I got some important goals I wrote down on my arm. I can't miss it. Hopefully that will help us hit them. But the word hero is a really interesting word. So etymologically, it's an ancient Greek word. So in ancient Greece, they had to come up with a word for what we now know as hero. And I like to say that they didn't pick a word that meant tough guy or killer of bad guy, bad guys, you know, they picked a word that literally means protector. So a hero is a protector, and a hero has strength for two. And a hero's secret weapon is love. And my whole thing is and why our brand is called heroic and why the app and the book how heroic and it is. Our world needs heroes today more than ever before. And we need you, literally, you and anyone who's listening to this to step up and be the best, most heroic version of themselves. And why I love what you do so much and why, you know, Dennis, who obviously connected us and I are so close, is you and your community of athletes. They are our world's primary heroes, some of whom are worthy of that and many of whom could afford to go up to the next level in not just their work and their craft as athletes, but as human beings. And so for me, I'm really excited about our relationship and what we are doing in the sports world already and what we can do. Because if we want to change the world, we need to get the people who are seen as heroes by their fan base to be true heroes who are showing up as good human beings and modeling what we hope the kids who are watching them aspire to be. So that's. That's the heroic platform. It's a social training platform, kind of like an Instagram, you know, that instead of showing off your six pack, I want to see the athlete changing their kids diapers and showing us that their life is about more than just flashing the latest car. You know, and Dennis and I have talked about this a lot. Now I'm kind of going off, but that's the idea, etymologically of hero. And my thing is, go look in the mirror. You're the hero we've been waiting for. Quit looking outside of yourself for someone that's going to come in and rescue you or our society. We each need to step up, be the best, most heroic version of ourselves and in service to something bigger than ourselves. And the good news is then you win the ultimate game and you feel great and you actually experience the deep joy you want, not the hedonic. I impress people. And that was cool for two seconds or I had some nice champagne and that Felt good for whatever, or even winning a Super bowl or a World Series. But I know I'm winning the ultimate game. I know I'm showing up as a good human being day in and day out for my friends, for myself, my friends, my family, my colleagues, my community. And then when you do that, you tend to win all the other games everybody else wants. And you're not sacrificing the way that most people are when they're just chasing the next thing that's going to impress people.

And I love the. You know, with social media nowadays, right, with the way in which people care almost too much about what others think about them, or to your point, like the flashiness and whatnot, how do you create that confidence in yourself? And I know it starts with the trust piece, but how do you create the confidence in yourself that you don't need any of that? That doesn't matter. How do you focus in on yourself and the best version of you?

Yeah, that's awesome. And just to be clear, I'm not against fame, wealth, and hotness. No problem with that whatsoever. But let those be downstream byproducts of your commitment to something more important. So I'm not saying that you need to sacrifice winning the super bowl or literally the game tonight. I'm saying you're more likely to win that game if you focus on the ultimate game. So in the book, we have seven objectives, as you know. But the first objective is the most important one, which is, well, first of all, there's actually objective zero. So in a hero's journey, the first, most important thing that happens is the hero answers the call. So we all have a voice within our head saying, dude, we're capable of more. This isn't quite the life that I signed up for. Most people want to numb that voice, and they want to go drink or they want to go do whatever they do to make that voice go away. But at some level, you need to pay attention to that voice because it's not going away. So you need to answer the call and realize this isn't a dress rehearsal. You're capable of more in every aspect of your life. That's objective zero. Then objective one is you got to know the ultimate game. So we just talked about it, but I basically framed that up by bringing in my thing is ancient wisdom in modern science and then practical tools. But I spent Basically the last 15 years reading every book I could on stoicism, all the ancient wisdom traditions, all the modern positive psychology stuff, and tried to figure out what they all say. In common and then help people change their lives. So if you asked ancient wisdom philosophers and religious tradition leaders and modern scientists what the ultimate game of life is, they'd give you the exact same answer. So my, My playful, very quick take on it is bring Aristotle in as a representative of ancient wisdom. Bring Martin Seligman in as a representative representative of modern science and say, guys, what's the ultimate purpose of life? They'd look at each other and smile because they have the exact same answer. Aristotle would say that the summum bonum, the greatest good, is to experience what he calls eudaimonia, which means good soul, to be your best self, right? Then we say, all right, Seligman, what do you think? He'd laugh and hold up his book, his most recent book, which is called Flourish, which is the English translation of the ancient Greek word eudaimonia. It's deeper than happiness. It isn't the hedonic happiness, it's the eudaimonic happiness. When you're being your best self, Then you say, all right, guys, how do I experience eudaimonia, that deep sense of joy and flourishing, knowing I'm doing what I'm here to do? And then Aristotle would answer you in a single word as well, And I tattooed my other arm with that. It's an ancient Greek word, arete, which again, is difficult to translate. We translate it as virtue or excellence. But the way that I describe it is it's being your best self, moment to moment to moment. So if you're capable of being this, and I'm drawing a line in the air, if you're listening and you're only being this, and there's a gap between who you could have been at any given moment and who you are being. It's in that gap where regret, anxiety, disillusionment, and depression exist. If you can close the gap and be your best self and live with arete in that moment, then there's no room for all the stuff you don't want to experience. You feel good. And so the ultimate game of life is to know that that's the ultimate game of life and then to show up and do your best, moment to moment to moment. Now I'm going to come to the confidence thing. Then you got to realize that it's supposed to be hard. Most people are playing the wrong game. They think it's fame and wealth and hotness, and they think it should be easy. When you combine those two things, you get a lot of anxiety, depression, and all the other things. But if you actually know the right game, which is what we just discussed. And you know that it's supposed to be hard. When you watch a great sports game or you watch a great movie, you want it to be really challenging. If it isn't, you walk out of the movie theater or you walk out. You literally walk out of the stadium. And if it's 25 to 0 and it's a base, who cares? That game's over. They're not coming back. But yet we reject the challenges that make our lives interesting. Now, if you want to forge antifragile confidence and go from being fragile to being antifragile, then you got to get clear on who you are at your best and literally make a list of the things you do when you're at your best. And then you got to do those things all day, every day, especially when you don't feel like doing it. That's how. And that's. We could talk about it more, but that's how you create true confidence. You know, you're the type of person that shows up and does what needs to get done, whether you feel like it or not. There's power in. In that moving. All Paul is there, though.

Yeah. No, are. Are those. When you say do those things, are those habits? Are those. Is that discipline? Is that things that simple stuff, the health, the. The what you eat. I mean, the exercise, like, what. What are. What are those things?

I'm going to share my. My screen with you. People won't be able to see it per se, but I'll share the. The app with you right now. So you should be able to see it on my screen. This is the heroic app, right?

Yeah.

So here's what we call our big three protocol. So I've got all the content that we've talked about in here. You can look at ancient wisdom, positive psychology, the philosopher's notes, all that stuff, how to create mental toughness, habits, sleep, et cetera. But then I told you that I get clarity on my identities in my energy, work and love. So energy wise, I'm a heroic, disciplined athlete. And then we've got the others for the work and the love. But then what I've done is. And what we created the app to do. And we created this app with the same company that built Slack and Tinder and Uber Eats in Elon Musk's new business. And I am in the. The country here. So the wi fi is a little bit slow. But basically what we do is we have you. Like, you can think about it right now. Who Are you. When you're at your best, what do you do? Literally, what specific things do you do? So for me, I get nine to ten hours of sleep a night. Most people think that's insane. Perfect. The best athletes get that much sleep more. Jeff Bezos gets that much sleep. Warren Buffett would never sacrifice a night of sleep for any deal. Yet here we are. You're too busy to get more than five, six, seven hours of sleep. Awesome. You're doubling. Your risk of getting cancer is so high it's not even funny in the longer term. But more importantly, with due respect, you suck at your job. Because there's no way you're going to show up as creatively as you could if you're getting five or six hours of sleep, full stop. Unless you're one of the 1 in 11,000 people who can get by on less than the recommended seven to eight hours of sleep, you will not be performing at your best without sleep. The odds of you being that person are the same as your odds of being struck by lightning, full stop. Now, again, you're too busy to do that. Really, because when I'm out, Stephen Covey talked about this seven habits. You see someone out in the forest and they're sawing down a tree and it's very clear they're not getting anywhere and their blade is dull. So you say to them, hey, I think you'd be able to saw that tree down faster if you paused and sharpened your saw. And they tell you like you were going to tell me right now I'm busy to do that. I don't have time. Perfect. And you go, keep on trying to cut down that tree with a dull blade. And you tell me how that works for you. A, it's going to take way longer and B, you're barely going to get it done. Versus what I encourage people to do is I don't want a sharp saw, I want a chainsaw. So I focus on my energy like I'm a world class athlete. So I do an hour or two less of work a day so I can get an hour or two more of sleep, because I know that. And again, I work 10, 12, 13 hours a day. I work hard. You know, I'm not like, I'm sitting here in bubble wrap and not working hard yet. I prioritize it.

There's a difference between, there's a difference between working hard, working smart. We were talking about this on another episode and it's, and it's not just the number of hours, but it's like to Your point? Are you able to be creative? Are you able to focus? Are you able to actually, you know, communicate in a way that works, right? Like just whatever the case is. I think when I hear all of that too, right? It's like, hey, if you use the dull saw, you're also gonna be exhausted, right? And then that, and then you've got burnout and you've got all these different things. But you know, when you think about sleep impacting work, right? Work impacting your eating cycle, impacting your exercise, impacting your, you know, home, home life, like whatever that looks like, right? Or social life, et cetera, all these things are interconnected, right? And then, you know, one, if one ultimately impacts another and you don't know necessarily how it does, it just does.

Because, dude, I mean, yes, everything you just said, yes. And that went on along aside when you asked me what specifically I do in the app, I've documented that. So I literally have every single thing that I do when I'm at my best. And guess how often I do them? Every single day. So I move a certain way, I sleep a certain way, I eat a certain way, I do certain things. And again, I have very high standards that I'm very committed to living up to. But it's idiosyncratic. It's different for me than it will be for you or anyone else in the world. So you know too, the number one virtue most highly correlated with flourishing, according to the positive psychologist, is they have a goofy word for it, zest. It's energy. And so there's research done now by Harvard mds. You want to understand all the chronic illnesses, diabetes, obesity, cancer, et cetera, heart disease, of course, et cetera. And every single psychological issue, anxiety, depression, even schizophrenia, all the other things, it all comes down to mitochondrial function. If your mitochondria, the little energy powerhouses within every single cell of your body, are not optimized, you are not optimized. And I don't know about you, dude, but I can bring my wife in here and she'll tell you that I'm a different person when I'm well rested versus not. So not only, as you said, am I not productive at a high level. I'm also not fun to be around. So I prioritize my energy like I'm a disciplined, world class athlete. And then it's exciting because then you get more done in 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 hours than the tired version of you could ever get done. So you get more done in less time at a higher level. When you show up with a certain level of wisdom to know that these things matter and self mastery to do it, and then it becomes fun, then you're not giving yourself chores. I love working. I mean, I love doing all the things that I do. So, yeah, super fun, obviously, but that's how we do it. Yeah.

If you step back for a second and you just go, why does all this matter? Like, you know, trying to be the best version of yourself, optimizing your energy, all these different things, Right. Ultimately, if you're listening to this, you want to get better, you want to be the best version of yourself, you want to, you know, get the next promotion or whatever the case is. But like, if you really, truly step back and you go, why? I love the question why? Right? Because it leaves it super open ended. But everybody nowadays, and not that it didn't happen before, but everybody asks why, Right. No matter what the context is. But if you step back and you go, Brian, like, why does optimizing all those different things, being super disciplined, trusting yourself, all these different things, why does it matter?

Well, I hope that that's a rhetorical question and we can obviously all fill in the blanks, but to me, I would ask that question back to the individual asking that question, which was, will you tell me, have you thought deeply about it? Were you too busy scrolling through your Instagram feed or too busy doing whatever it is that you do when you're not thinking about things that actually matter? And again, our world is overwhelming us with inputs and most people spend very little time thinking about anything deeply, let alone the most important things deeply. Because that answer is so straightforward once you spend two second thinking about it. Well, obviously everything I do is in order is to experience, quote, happiness, which is a weak word because we want more than just happiness. We want to feel a deep sense of meaning, purpose and joy in our lives. We want to feel connection to ourselves and to people in our lives. We want to know we're getting better, we're making a difference in our world. Psychologists call those intrinsic motivators. I wanted to become a better person, mastering myself, my craft, etc. Right. I want to be connected to people in my life and I want to make a contribution to life. Those are very simple intrinsic motivators juxtaposed by the extrinsic fame, wealth and hotness. And again, ultimate game, you got to know which game you're playing. But the ultimate why is the joy and it's not, quote, happiness, Because a life like we're talking about is hard There's a story that the ancient Greeks and other Stoics would tell about Hercules. So Hercules, mythical God, of course, but when he was a young man, before he was Hercules, he's walking on a path in the woods and he comes up to a fork in the road, he's got to decide which way he's going to go. And two goddesses rush up to him, right? And one goddess is kind of overly made up and she's kind of rushes in front of the other, bumps her out of the way and is sort of preening. You can almost see her taking a selfie on Instagram. And she says, hercules, my name is Happiness. She's lying. Her name is Vice. And she says, follow me and I'm going to give you everything you need. I'm going to make you feel so good, you're never going to have to work a day in your life. Goosebumps again, right, so here's Vice dressed up, this happiness, right? Then the other goddess is sitting there and she's patient and then she steps forward and she's got this. She's beautiful and radiant, but she's got a more understated beauty to her. And she says, hercules, not how it works. I promise you a life of hardship. I'm going to challenge you and you're going to be challenged. But if you follow me and you follow my path, you live a life of deep meaning and purpose such that you feel great about yourself, the gods revere you, etc. And this is the choice of Hercules. He chose a noble, heroic, hard life. It's the hedonic versus eudaimonic conversation that we're having. But there's. That's the ultimate why that all ancient. This isn't me, this is all ancient wisdom traditions, positive psychologists, the science of well being and flourishing is founded on these exact same ideas and virtues. And then it becomes fun. Most people think that all this, oh, where's all the fun go? How much fun are you really having? Waking up hungover or feeling burned out or all those things? The true joy in life comes when we start embracing these ideas. And then the irony. It's not an irony, but the beauty is you get all the other stuff. I'm not saying you sacrifice all that stuff. You'll still have all the fame and the wealth and you'll look great. Not because you're trying to impress anybody or you need to show off your six pack, but because you do the simple basic fundamentals. And people who do that, as the Greek said, you're Good. You're true. You're beautiful. There's a coherence to it that people feel and, and, and, and, and this is ancient Chinese philosophy, so they called it wu wei. So Confucius, Lao Tzu, all these guys have different approaches to the same thing. Wu wei is effortless, right? Action. It's a great athlete. A great athlete effortlessly dominates. How do they do that? Goosebumps again. Well, obviously did it. Reps, reps, reps. A great leader, which is what the ancient Chinese philosophers focused on. They wanted to create leaders who could effortlessly do the right thing. There's a neuroscience to that. People who live in integrity with their ideals have a moral charisma that people are naturally magnetized to and want to follow. So everything you do becomes easier. And you win all the other games when you prioritize the first game. Again, deliberately repeating. But there you go. Long answer to your question.

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, it's like, hey, look, you step into a room or you go to a conference and you see this person speaking and you walk away and you're like, you know, mind blown, right? Like, how do they do that? Or, you know, they, they made that look so easy. It's like, yeah, well, all, you know, for all you know, they've got a fear of speaking, right? And they've had to do rep after rep after rep and discipline to be able to get to that point. You know, you don't see the all of the back end, behind the scenes work that goes into it.

But the thing is, your executives do so, you know, the athletes that put in the effort, and those are the ones you want on your team. So the question again is, are you putting in that level of effort that you hold them accountable to? Your world is such a perfect accountability mirror. Because literally you trade the guys that don't run all the way through first base, that don't show up and don't put in the extra reps and the batting cages or whatever are you. Again, it's a beautiful, beautiful frame. And Epictetus, my favorite philosopher, he constantly used sports. It was wrestlers for him. Pankration. You know, these guys get it. They understand. Why don't you live like that? He said to them, you know what I mean? They're the true philosophers. They're the ones who are actually living this philosophy. So you all have such a perfect. Literally right there, look down at the field and it's process. What's so exciting about this is this isn't complicated. You know, the basic things you do when you're on. You just don't do them. So life can be simple. If you put on your socks the way that John Wooden encouraged, so you don't get the blisters, you don't have to sit out, practice, you aren't performing well in the game. So the question is, what are. The practical question is, what's the number one thing you know you could be doing right now in your life? That if you started doing it consistently, would most change your life? And more importantly, because the fastest way to change your life is not to start doing something, it's to stop doing something. So what's the number one thing? The Kryptonite is what I call it. The number one thing that you know you're doing, and we've all got it. No shame. But what's the number one thing you're doing that is crippling your life right now that if you stop doing it, would most significantly change your life? You combine the two of them, and again, one of the chapters in the book is how to do that, to install habits and to delete habits. And again, there's a science to that, et cetera. That's how you bring all this from the nice and warm and fuzzy theoretical into the really practical. And then the master is the one who shows up, like the players that are paid 25 million or whatever dollars a year. Cool.

Well, and. And to that point, like, that's not an easy question to necessarily answer, right? So when you think about, you know, what's that one thing that you have to stop doing? Not. Not necessarily an easy answer for everybody that, you know, you're going to have to think a little bit about that one. And you're going to have to build on it and see where it goes. But I want to get to one last thing as we start to wrap up the episode is, you know, it's funny when you go into different interviews, sure, someone listening to this has been asked this question in an interview. They go, hey, if you had a superpower, which one would it be? Right? You go, is it flying? Is it, you know, invisibility is, you know, whatever the case is, right. You know, strength. But one of your objectives is to activate your superpower. So how do you know what your superpower is? And if you don't know, how do you figure that out?

Oh, dude. Great question and great frame for the question. So the seventh objective of the book, you know, you got to know the ultimate game. Then you forge antifragile confidence. Then you optimize what I call the Big three. Energy, work, and love. And then you make today a masterpiece. Then you master yourself through what I call structural, reactive, and expansive disciplines. Then you dominate the fundamentals that we talked about. Eating, moving, sleeping. Then when you do all that, you activate your superpower. Now, the way that I frame up the superpower is I look at my heroes on my wall, and if you look at those heroes, they're all very, very different. So above what you can see in this film right now, I have Winston Churchill and Gandhi, right? So Winston Churchill and Gandhi lived in the same era, and they were as different as they could be. They didn't even like each other. Right? But they're both heroic. And I would offer they both have the exact same superpower, which is they lived in integrity with their highest self, and they had that moral charisma that we talked about. And the name that I give to that is Soul Force, which is a Gandhi frame that Martin Luther King talked about in his I have a dream speech. But my thing is, when you do all the things you're capable of doing, you. You will have a felt moral charisma that people will feel. There's something about people who live in integrity with their highest ideals that people can feel, and that is all of our superpowers. So then you will express that in your own idiosyncratic, unique ways. Aaron Judge is hitting bombs and doing his thing. The executive who's showing up and doing their thing is going to have their own superpowers. I happen to have, you know, a skill or two in different domains, teaching and leading in different ways. Right, Perfect. But the essence of our superpower is exactly the same, and the means by which we activate it is exactly the same. Again, those objectives that we talked about. As you live in integrity, with your highest ideals, you come alive, you've activated your heroic potential, then that again, is how I think we change the world. And you are really important in that process and everyone listening here, because, like I said, you have influence over people that are paying attention to what you and what your clubhouse and what your players and your coaches are doing. And if we can bring out the best in you and bring out the best in your coaches and players to inspire the next generation of people to be the heroes. We literally change the world one person at a time, starting with us together.

Today, I think the biggest impact that even teams, college athletic departments, leagues, etcetera, have is within their communities. Right? Like, that is the fundamental of why a team exists. Hey, there's a community that rallies around it. So, yes, You've got the talent on the. On the field, the court, the ice, whatever it is, but you've got people in the business going into the community every day to make an impact on different areas of wherever you live, name that location, but also different backgrounds of people, different diversity of situations. Right. Whether they're, you know, in need or whether it's, you know, a little league community. Right. Like whatever the case is, there's people that you can help inspire and be able to provide kind of an outlet. Right. To hopefully better themselves and activate their superpower. Right. But I think it all starts with yourself, to your point about if you go back to the confidence and the trust in yourself. You can't instill trust in someone else if you don't have it in yourself. Right. And so I want to end the episode with, you know, well, and we will get to a quick, rapid fire. But how do you go about building the internal trust in yourself to create that confidence and then also have that level of confidence? Not be arrogance, and it's simply confidence.

Yeah. Again, so we go briefly, we go back to the etymology. Confidence confidere means intense trust. So we need to build intense trust in yourself that if you say you're going to do something, you do it. And that's Leadership 101. Literally, if you say you're going to do something, do it. But you got to lead yourself first. So you got to know who you are at your best. We call that a protocol. So I literally. We work with people. Tell me who you are at your best. What did you do when you were at your best? We've all had peak moments in our energy, in our work, and in our love. And we did certain things. This is not that complicated. So I do my set of things, you do your set of things, but we just need to get clarity on that. And then you need to do it consistently. And then the algorithm that we have people run that changes their lives is the worse you feel, the more committed you are to your protocol. So first you got to identify your protocol. What you do when you're at your best, then you want to make that best your new baseline. Then you gotta. You gotta flip it around. Because most people, when they get a little wobbly, they get a little stressed, a little overwhelmed, and we all do. That's when we spiral out into vicious behavior we know we shouldn't do. Then we gotta dig ourselves out and do it all over again. What I'm suggesting is when you get knocked by life, can you, in that moment choose to Double down on your protocol, because if you do, rather than spiral out and become a circus again, you become better. And then if you do that consistently, you love challenges. You eat them like energy bars because they make you stronger, because they force you to practice your philosophy at a higher level. You do that even 1, 5, 10% more than you do today, you will forge a deeper level of confidence, and you will become antifragile. You'll no longer break when life hits you hard. You literally will get stronger when life hits you hard. That's the essence of antifragile confidence, as I see it. But that's a forge. So to activate the reason why the book is called activate your heroic potential. Activation energy is a scientific phrase. Nothing happens. If you want to boil water, you got to turn up the heat. Nothing happens at 150, 170, 200, 210 degrees. You have to get to 212. If you want to make a fire and you're stranded in the woods, Nothing happens rubbing two sticks together until you get to 451 degrees. So you got to activate. You got to realize this is not a dress rehearsal. Step the up and give us what you got. But that's not enough. If you want to truly do what we're talking about, you have to enter a forge. A forge is 20, 120, 200 degrees. And again, the greatest athletes, they forge themselves all day, every day. The greatest human beings do the exact same thing. So that's the energy. But when you do that, you have humility because you realize how hard it is, and you realize how often you've failed and how often you've fallen short. It's Socrates. He was the wisest person in Athens because he knew he knew the least. So calm, confidence, energized tranquility, has a deep, deep sense of humility. You know that every moment you're called again to be your best self. You're never exonerated, as my coach Stutt says, from the hard work, from the pain, the uncertainty, the hard work. And that has a deep sense of humility. And then you also have compassion, because you know how hard it is for you to do this stuff. You're no longer pretending. Imposter syndrome goes away in this world because you're working hard. You're paying the price. You know that you're not perfect. Then you can have both compassion and encouragement. And you can humbly say, I get how hard it is. And look, it's important. And this is what I've learned through the process. And let's go. Today's the day to do it. And then you combine compassion with encouragement. And there's a true, grounded, really humble confidence. Arrogance is to juxtapose confidence and arrogance. Arrogance is thinking you don't have to work hard in order to achieve all the things that we're talking about. And again, you don't want that athlete on your team. You don't want that executive on your team. You don't want that version of you looking at you in the mirror. That's the version of you that makes you not want to get out of bed in the morning. The same way Conor McGregor didn't want to go to the gym when he stopped doing it. You got to get me fired up here, Jake. Hey, I got something I'm excited about. Let's go.

This is why. This is why. Episode 400. Like, look, I wanted to bring everything that you do to the listeners of, hey, we're doing many more episodes from here on out, right? That, that's not stopping. But to have someone like you explain all these different things. I mean, look, if you're listening to this, go back and listen to it 2, 3, 4, 5 times, you're going to pick up something different time. And then, you know, there's the element of we don't always necessarily take the time to stop and reflect or stop and think. We're always on the go. We're always doing something next. It's always, to your point, the busyness or whatever, you know, not enough hours or, you know, couldn't call this person just, just like the power of the pause, I think, is such an underrated thing of just being able to. And again, you can't do it every day. I mean, you can. I shouldn't say you can't, but to try and make that a habit, right, of just pausing. What comes to mind? What, what, what are you thinking about? It's powerful, right? The, the ability to just sit there and think for five minutes is. And, you know, have silence around you, right? It's like there's, you know, and that's, that goes into meditations and all sorts of different things that you can do. But again, in the sports and entertainment world, you're always running around. There's always more, more things to do. It never stops, right? And so it's like, okay, when do you call the timeout and to sit and think and pause and focus on yourself to build that trust, to build the confidence, all of those different things. And look, it's not, to your point, not easy, right? Like Getting to. Getting to 400 episodes. I use that example. Not easy. It's taken a lot of discipline. Doing once a week, you know, finding, you know, having new guests on all these different things and, you know, doing it outside hours too. Right. Like recording at 7am all those different things. Takes a lot of discipline, creativity, you know, and just excited to have you on to bring that content to the listeners. Let's get to Rapid Fire to wrap up though.

Let's do it. And I appreciate that. And again, so great on 400. Your favorite philosopher, Epictetus.

Your favorite place that you've visited thus far. Could be any country.

Yeah, we'll go to Ephesus, Turkey. It's an ancient Roman library in Ephesus, Turkey. I have a painting of the. The ruins that in my living room. So, yeah, we'll go there. All right.

I know you coached the Little League team, but if you could coach any other sport, what would it be?

You know, I. That's a great question. That's a very good question. I was at the Astros angel games because one of my guys is the mental toughness coach for the Angels last weekend. I'm a baseball guy by heart, but what excites me is that the systems of it, the architecture of it. So I'd frame it slightly differently and say I'd coach the executives who are running these organizations and get them to focus on the. Everything we just talked about. And I'd literally want. I'd want a. I'd want a franchise to do these things and to win forever as. As Pete Carroll says John Wooden did when he figured it out. And he took the time, by the way, took him 18 years to win his first championship, plus all the other years that came before that. But I'd look at it at a meta level and this is just a chess game. It's just, well, how do you put these pieces in place? And no one's thinking about these things at this level. It'd be such a competitive differentiation. And again, I work with some very, very, very, very high level coaches, so it's fun to play with it, but it's a strategic advantage. So I take them all.

Last two for you. If there's any food that you had to give up, what would it be? And if there's only one food you could eat for the rest of your life, what would it be?

So I drink these days, again, way too much Spark Mountain Valley sparkling water with a little bit of stevia. That would be my primary ind. Feeling pretty good about that, though. I have Very bright lines. And it's very easy for me now. I follow a nutrition protocol, which is one of the targets I hit. Follow your nutritional protocol. Now. It's effortless for me to maintain the energy, the. The, you know, whatever weight and physique and all those things. I like my rib eyes. Let's not. Let's not get rid of those. So let's go there.

Steak. Steak for every meal.

Let's go. Breakfast and chip.

Yeah. Last one, Last one for you. If you could be a professional athlete in any sport, what would it be?

I gotta go back to baseball. I grew up, you know, watching the Angels in, you know, Orange County. Boy. Yeah, it would have to be baseball for sure.

You and you and Shohei Ohtani on the same team. There you go.

Let's go, baby. It was fun to watch. These are some good, good guys. And good guys, too. Those are some examples of just good dudes that are worthy of the emulation, you know?

Yeah, absolutely. Brian, really appreciate your time, your wisdom, your perspectives. I mean, look, there's so much to unpack here. We could have gone on for hours, but again, check out Brian's new book, Activate your heroic potential. Check out the. The app. All the different things that he's bringing to different, you know, to different walks of life for people to ultimately make themselves better. Better, and the best version of themselves. So, Brian, appreciate it, dude.

I really appreciate you. I'm going to go thank Dennis. Great chat. Thanks for making the time.