Heroic Interview: How to Harness the Power of Your Authentic Voice with Todd Henry

You're listening to how to harness the power of your authentic voice. An Optimal Living interview with Todd Henry and Brian Johnson.

Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to the Optimal Living Interview series. Today I'm thrilled to be chatting with Todd Henry. This is our second chat. In our last chat we talked about his great book Die Empty. He has another great book out, his newest, which is called Lo louder than words. Harness the power of your authentic voice, which I loved. I still need to read his first book, which is the Accidental Creative, which is the name of his consultancy where he works with leading companies to help them cultivate brilliant ideas. He's a speaker on creativity, productivity, leadership and passion for work. And just a great guy. I really enjoyed our last chat and I really appreciate you taking the time to explore some of my favorite big ideas from this book, Todd.

Well, thank you. It's great to be here again. And I tell you we need to do this every week, right? Because I've been looking forward to this since our last chat. So I'm really excited to dive into this.

Right on. I think we could. We had to constrain the last chat and I'm sure we will this one as well. Your books. One of the things I really admire about your work is just the way your mind works in articulating these ideas to frame a theoretical concept, but then to drill it into a. Okay, here's how you apply it to your life now. So I'm excited to do that again. And let's just start from the top. So louder than Words. The subtitle is Harness the power of your authentic voice. Can you tell us about the book about authentic voice from a high level?

Absolutely. Yeah. Your voice isn't just what you say. It's how you're heard by other people. Your voice is everything because it's how people interact with your work. It's how people know you. It's the unique stamp that you put on your work. It's how you communicate your idea at its essence. Your voice is an expression through a medium to achieve an impact. And I believe that if you want to have a voice that resonates and a voice that creates impact, which ultimately I think that's what we all want to do if we care about our work. We wanted to create impact. You have to have all three of those things. You have to have a clarified expression. You have to know what it is you want to say or what you want to make or how you want to present yourself to the world. You have to have mastery of a platform and Then you have to have an impact in mind. What is it you want to do? How do you want to influence people? Who do you want to influence? How do you want to change their life? At the end of the day, your voice, or the collective expression that your work makes, is at the confluence of those three things. Those are the three things that we can focus on as well to help us develop a voice and ultimately to become more influential and to become more resonant with the people that we're trying to reach.

Hmm.

So good. In two kind of different directions. We can go there. One, there's the voice engine, which has the three aspects. Let's just go there. So we'll go into how do we create. Actually, no, let's talk about the resonant voice. I love that word. You talk about five attributes of the resonant voice. Can you describe that for us? Then we'll get into how to kind of unpack it.

Sure, yeah. And these fall within those other categories, but if you really break them down into their constituent parts, there are really five, or now actually six core elements of a resonant voice. The first one is authenticity. When you're authentic, it means at least the way that I'm using it in this context, it means that you're invested in what you're saying and what you're doing that people can see you have skin in the game. I think that one of the things that is true in the marketplace, one of the things that's true of people who interact with what we do these days, is that most people have a high degree of skepticism and maybe even a high degree of cynicism. And I think that people tend to filter out that which they feel is not authentic. And when they see that you have skin in the game, it tends to cause them to pay attention. It tends to cause them to at least give you an audience for your idea. If you want to resonate, you have to invest yourself in your work. And we could talk more about how to do that in just a little bit. The second element of resonance, or marker of resonance, is uniqueness. This is what sets you apart from everyone else. It's what allows you to make bold decisions with your work that causes you, at the end of the day, to stand apart from the noise and the clutter. You have to be unique, and you have to stand apart. You have to make bold decisions if you want to resonate. The third one is precision. Precision means that it's really easy for people to tell whether they're in or whether they're out. When you communicate, this is important because if you want to reach an intended audience, if you want your work to resonate with someone, then it means your probably not going to resonate with other people. You have to be precise in how you communicate, which means that you have to have a clear sense of who you're trying to reach and what you're trying to do. And you have to target your work and your messaging so that it reaches those people very specifically. The fourth marker is consonance. Consonance is kind of like an internal consistency within your work. For example, if you go to see a band play and you go to a concert, let's say, for example, U2, you're going to go watch U2 in concert, and all of a sudden you two walks out and they break into some jazz fusion piece and Bono's on the piano and they're saying, hey, welcome. It's like Spinal Tap and puppet show kind of thing. And all of a sudden you're going to be highly disappointed. Why? Because there's kind of a dissonance, not a consonance there. But what if you go to a show and all of a sudden the lights are down, you hear ding, ding, ding, ding. It's like you hear that sort of the edge, you sort of hear his guitar thing and it's like, okay, well, I recognize their music by their voice. And it's not that it's the same every time, but it's that there kind of internal consistency or a consonance to their voice. If you're always bouncing from this to that to this to that, then people won't be able to stay with you and eventually you'll lose your audience and you won't resonate. So that's what consonance is all about. The next marker is empathy. Empathy is about the ability to not just recognize what your audience is feeling, not just sympathize with them, but to actually enter into what it is they're feeling and to walk alongside them and to be able to create a message that is tailored to how they feel and how they receive information, not according to what you think they should receive. And sometimes, by the way, empathy means saying things to people that they don't want to hear. So this isn't about pandering to people, but it is about ensuring that you're delivering what they need at the right time. And in order to do that, you have to cultivate empathy. And I talk a lot louder than words about how to do that. And then the final element or Marker of resonance is timing. You can have all the other pieces together. You can be authentic, unique, consonant, precise, empathetic. But if your timing is wrong, then your message is less likely to resonate. You have to pay attention to the confluent forces in the marketplace. You have to pay attention to what you care about, what your audience cares about. Then the third piece of that Venn diagram is, what are some ideas that already have momentum? What is. What is something out there that's going to give them some context for what I want to communicate so that they already have a bit of an understanding of what I'm going to say? It doesn't mean ripping off, it doesn't mean trend chasing. What it means is you have to contextualize your work so that people can latch onto it. Because the best idea in the world that people don't understand, that they can't wrap their mind around isn't going to be useful to them. It's not going to be adopted. Those are the six markers of resonance, authenticity, uniqueness, precision, consonance, empathy, and timing. And we can develop these.

Brian.

We can develop these markers, and if we care about our work, we should develop these. Because if we want our work at the end of the day to move the needle to impact people, then we have to put as much effort into how we reach out with our work, how we communicate with our work as we do into shaping the work itself. Because otherwise it will fall flat.

That's awesome. Which reminds me of one of the key things we talked about in our chat on die empty. You had mapping, making, and meshing. So this would fall squarely in the meshing of developing the skills such that we can actually integrate these attributes. Obviously, we can talk about each one of those as a standalone episode. And you go into great detail in the book, recognizing that. I'd love to chat about the authentic voice. These are the attributes of the resonant voice. And then you talk about the voice engine, which starts to drill into a really practical way to bring that to life. The three domains, identity, vision, and mastery. Can you walk us through that and their relevance?

Sure. So identity is what most people think of when they think of finding your voice, right? And I tried really hard to scrub any language of finding your voice from the book, because I don't think it's something you find. I think it's something you develop over time. I think it's something you work on. And it comes in layers over time as you become more and more aware of who you, you are and the Impact that you're capable of making. Identity, at the end of the day, is about what you care about. It's about who you are. It's about drilling into authenticity and founding your work upon something of substance, something that you really care about, and investing yourself in the work. It's easy to tell when somebody's phoning it in. It's easy to tell when somebody really doesn't care what they're talking about. It's easy to tell when somebody is just putting something out there because they have some kind of ulterior motive. And I think our culture is very, very savvy about that these days. But when you invest yourself in what you're doing and when people can see that you have skin in the game, it completely changes the equation, because suddenly they begin to pay attention. And we're seeing this, right? We're seeing this in the presidential race. There are two candidates who have, for whatever reason, separated themselves from the pack, and one of them's not even in the race yet. But you have. On one side, you have Donald Trump, who is in the race, but everybody is talking. I think a lot of people. Why is he clicking with people? Because I think from the outside, people look at it and they see him making some bombastic statements and saying all kinds of things. But I think at the end of the day, it's pretty hard to argue that Donald Trump doesn't at least believe what he's saying. And he's not kind of going all in, right? He's not hedging his bets. I mean, he's basically saying what he thinks, and he's just kind of out there doing it. And I think for that reason alone, I think people are kind of. His message is resonating with a certain segment because I think they see, wow, this guy is stepping into the arena and he really believes what he says. And I'll follow somebody with conviction. Now, that can also be dangerous. The same thing could be said about a lot of people who had conviction and maybe shouldn't have been followed. And I'm not making a statement either way in this case. The other person who I think is interesting on the other side, he's not even in the race yet, is Joe Biden. He did an interview with Colbert a couple of weeks ago, and it was. I mean, all the headlines were, oh, my gosh, Joe Biden, the authentic person. All he was doing was having a conversation. He didn't come out and share some deep, dark secret. I mean, he was just being real, but he was kind of Revealing his emotions. He showed what he cared about. He was talking about some of the struggles his family's been through of late, and people really resonated with that because he was investing himself in what he was talking about. We can do the same thing. I think that we like to think that in order to. We have to protect ourselves, we have to be stoic in order to make headway in the marketplace. But the reality is we need to invest ourselves and figure out what we care about and then put that out there for people and let them see it. And that's what identity is all about. It's about recognizing who you are, what you care about, where you're at your best, and then leveraging that knowledge in your work so that you click with the people you're trying to click with.

I love it. And again, just to step back for a moment, as I went through this and kind of used it as a tool to kind of hone my voice, it's fascinating to see that all the kind of challenges of communicating effectively are actually strengths when you embrace these things. Right. Because when people see that, wow, you actually do care about me, and you care about what you're doing, which is something that I feel blessed to receive more and more of. You differentiate yourself from everyone else who's just trying to do whatever they can to kind of play the game. And the power of having that clarity and then the courage to actually express yourself and all the attributes you're talking about is remarkable. Right.

No question. At the end of the day, courage, compassion, and clarity trump tactics. So you can have the best tactics in the world, but if people don't see that, you're courageous because you're stepping out and you're putting your skin in the game. You're not compassionate because you really don't care about who reads it or what happens to them. And you're not clear because you're trying to reach everybody, then people aren't going to click. Those three things always trump tactics. You can have the best tactics in the world, but if you don't have those other three things, you're not going to build a body of work that you can be proud of, first of all. And second of all, you're less likely to resonate with the people you're trying to reach.

Yeah, that's so cool. Okay, so identity. And again, you do go into so much in the book, but walk us through vision.

Yeah. So vision is about where you're going. It's about who you're trying to connect with. And where you're trying to lead them with your work. In the book, I talk about your intended audience and the importance of defining your intended audience. Some people, when they think about an intended audience, they think about a group, they think about a demographic, they think about some section of the populace that they want to influence in some way. But the reality is that that tactic often falls flat because you're trying to reach too many people and you're not going to be precise if you try to reach a group. What I really encourage people to do in the book and give some examples of people who have done this, is think about one person when you're creating something or when you're crafting a message. I do this when I create podcasts. I do this when I write books. Each of my books has been written to one person very specifically. I don't use their name in the book, but one person very specifically. The reason is I want my writing to feel like I'm sitting across the table from someone explaining a concept to them. As a result, people come up to me at speaking events, they come up to me in companies all the time, and they say, did you write this book to me? People think I wrote the book to them, or they think I've been putting cameras on the walls of their office or something because the book feels like it's written to them personally. And the reality is it was written to a person. It wasn't them, but it was written to a person, which is why it feels so precise and why it feels so directly applicable. Vision, at the end of the day is about who you're trying to reach and how you're trying to influence them. And the more specific you can be in defining that audience, the more likely you are to create work that will connect, that will resonate with them.

This is so good. And I got to riff on this for a moment because when I read this, the idea of the intended audience. I've always had an allergy to the kind of focus group name create an avatar or whatever you call it on this group. I'm like, that's so. It's just the opposite of, from my perspective, what we're talking about here, of I want to serve this individual, right? And of course, they fall into a broader group. But that just felt so tepid to me. And as I did this exercise, it was fascinating for a couple reasons. First of all, whenever I do anything, this chat, a video, whatever, I have a little pre shot routine. And the final thing that I do in that just takes a few seconds is one person. I hope I affect one person's life with this work. It's not about me. Just let me give my best and just let one person be affected. And then with your work, as I did that, I realized the truth of Austin Kleon in Steal like an Artist and show youw Work. He has a great line that all advice is autobiographical. Right. So I realized, well, I'm really serving me at different stages of my journey. There's the part of me that was super depressed, couldn't figure out what I wanted to do, and how did I get through that phase to the I'm stabilized to the wow, what am I capable of? Phase. And then one individual came in my mind of, wow, that's who I want to serve. So I really love that exercise. To write for one person creates that intimacy and inspiration and true visceral, empathic connection. Right?

It does. And the other thing that I uncovered in the book, when I was doing research, I talked to Jeremy Pryor from a company called Epiphyo Studios, and he said that in their work, their goal is always to make the audience, that intended audience, the hero in everything they do. And so everything they create, if they create a video, they don't make the product the star or the hero. They don't make the narrator or the company. They make the audience, the person viewing the video, they make that person the hero. And that really challenged me to think, how can I make the audience the hero for my work? How would I change how I communicate if I was putting them in the role of hero instead of trying to elevate my idea or elevate some platform or some product or whatever? What if I was making them the hero? What would it look like then? It completely reframed the way I saw my role in the world, frankly, once I had that perspective so good and.

You and I were chatting before that, I had recently interviewed Idawn Ravine, who's The coach of LeBron James, Carmelo Anthony, and Kevin Durant, and all these guys, and his whole thing is love, and that is that obviously these guys are heroes, right? But everyone else in their lives, or a lot of people in their lives, are looking to get something from them. And all he cares about is, I want to make you as great as you can possibly be. I have goosebumps as I say that. That's just his fierce commitment, which resonates to go back to the resonant voice of being that profoundly committed to profoundly serving. It's where the power lies, eh?

Absolutely. No question about it. And then it goes back to this idea of identity as well, which we talked about before, Vision, which is that his work is founded upon a profound love of the game, first of all, and a profound love of other people. And I'll bet if he were to write a manifesto, it would be something to talk about in the identity chapter. I'll bet that the kinds of words he would use would be the kinds of words that would resonate deeply with somebody who is at the peak of performance in the game of basketball. Because what he loves, what he cares about, overlaps so greatly with those people. But that's probably not the kind of thing that he just stumbled. I mean, it probably took him a while to develop that understanding that this is really my sweet spot, this is the place where I could have maximum impact. But now that he's found it and he's clarified, he's defined it to that point, now he's become the guy in that space. But it's not the kind of thing that just happens overnight. You have to really drill down into what do I care about, who do I care about, how am I leading them, how do I make them the hero?

Which leads us to the third principle. So we talked about identity, we talked about vision and the third and perhaps arguably most important, mastery. Talk to us about that.

Mastery is about owning your platform. It's about becoming a master of craft because you can have a great sense of identity and know who you are. You can have a great sense of vision and where your going. But if you're not a master of your craft, you're going to be seen as incompetent, nobody's going to pay attention to you. You have to build practices into your life to keep you in game shape, to keep you at a place where you're ready to deliver at a moment's notice. And you have to engage in regular practice of your craft so that you can get your idea into the world. The best idea for a novel in the world that is poorly executed is not going to go very far. In the same way, you can have wonderful sense of craftsmanship, but if you don't know who you are and you don't understand who you're trying to reach and how you're trying to reach them, then it doesn't matter how great the words are, they're not going to connect with people in a way. So mastery is about owning your platform. It is developing a sense of empathy, it's developing timing, and it's also just developing the raw skills that you need to Be able to get your work out into the world.

You walk us through some of that, which I'm excited to circle back to in a moment. This is all so good. We've talked about authentic voice, resonant voice, identity, vision mastery. And then I think the process of mastery is something that's obviously incredibly important. And the way you frame it is really, really helpful. You talk about the journey through the canyon, the U shaped kind of never ending process. Can you describe that for us?

Absolutely. This came out of a conversation I had with an artist, Lisa Congdon. She said that her art teacher once told her that every great endeavor, it doesn't matter if it's launching a business or creating an art project, whatever it a U shape. And at the beginning we have crystal clarity about where we want to go, right? And we see the objective and we see the path in front of us, and it's great. And then we start hiking down into the U, into the canyon, if you will. And all of a sudden our vision becomes obscured. It's a little bit more challenging for us. We start to question our direction. It gets really, really hard. And this is the thing, Brian, I think, is the great lie that people tell anyone who tries to do something of significance. They tell you that the hard part is getting started, started. And that's a great lie. The hard part isn't getting started. And frankly, the hard part isn't finishing. The hard part is squarely in the middle. Because in the middle is where you start to have second doubts. It's where narratives start to plague you. Like, should you have done this? Are you headed the right direction? Are you stupid? Why would you have even thought you could do this? Look what this person's doing. Maybe you should go do what they're doing instead. All of these things start playing in your mind when you get into the really difficult part, in the bottom of the U and the bottom of the can. But you have to continue pushing. You have to continue pushing up the other side. And if you do, if you persist up the other side, if you fight those things, fear and narratives and inertia, just the love of comfort, and you push up the other side, then eventually you get to the next plateau, you get to the next place that you want to be. But I think that is something that we need to talk more about. The challenge isn't in the beginning and the challenge isn't in the end. The challenge is in the middle. The challenge is in the place where you still have time to turn back, you still have time to change Direction because you're not too far into it to cut your losses and you start having all of those nagging doubts and second guesses about what you're doing. But that's exactly when we. That is the fire in the depths of the pit of the creative process. That's where we're refined, that's where our voices develop. That's where we really have to steal our gut and say, no, this is what's important to me. That's why identity becomes so important in the pit of the valley. Because if your work's not founded upon something of substance that you really care about, then it's easy to waffle, it's easy to go another direction.

So good. Again, several things come to mind. One is, I think it was Chris Gillebeau who shared a story in the Happiness of Pursuit, reminding us of basically this idea and the hero's journey. And we look at the Odyssey, for example. Odysseus was like at sea for years. There's these moments where they're punctuated of challenges and whatnot, but just the boring monotony of showing up, the self doubts and all the things that you just mentioned. And then just the kind of boring plateau side that as masters we need to learn to love, Right?

Absolutely. And this is, I think, another great lie that we tell ourselves, Brian, is that success is either a destination or an event. Oh, I did that and then I was successful. The reality is anybody who's experienced a measure of success, which we all have in different arenas, right. Will tell you that success isn't an event. Success comes in layers. That success layers over time. And when you reach what you think is the point that would define success for you, it doesn't often feel like success because suddenly you see there's another plateau in front of you, right? And so I think that's the other thing that we have to kind of be careful not to allow to infect our thinking about developing our voice, doing great work, making a contribution to the world is we can't make it about a destination and we can't about an event. We have to embrace process because success comes in layers. Your voice is developed in layers. It takes a long time to build a body of work that you're going to be proud of. And it's not a linear path, it's a series of views. And so you have to steel yourself and prepare yourself for the journey because it is a long journey. Like you said, all the stories we tell in the hero's journey, it's always event driven, narrative but we don't talk about all the gaps in between where nothing really happened. It was just everyday life. Then she got up and she had breakfast and then she had lunch and nothing really happened that day. And that went on for three weeks. And then something big happened. But we don't talk about that. We just like to talk about the events. But we have to prepare ourselves for the journey. We have to steel ourselves for the process. Because it's in the process, the refining fires, that greatness is pouring.

So good. This is one of my favorite themes and I'm excited to drill into that a little bit more with you. So how do we do that? You mentioned the phrase game shape. How do we stay in game shape such that we're enduring this part of the process and are prepared to continue to do the work and take advantage of opportunities as they arise, et cetera?

Yeah. So I was a couple of years ago, I was speaking at an event on Coronado island, which is just off San Diego. And as we were driving from San Diego over to Coronado island, many of you may know that you drive down this narrow strip of land. On the left side there is a naval base. On the right side is the Navy SEALs Buds Training Center. Basically, this is where SEALs go to become SEALs. And my driver said that he had a buddy who was stationed there and said they will be out there training at all hours of the day. I mean 12o, 3am, 6:30am, 3:30 in the afternoon, they'll just randomly be out there doing these intense drills at all hours of the day. His buddy said the reason that they do that is because they have to be prepared at any moment to deploy. They don't know if they're going to get a call at 12:30am and they're going to have to go off to someplace far from where they are and be ready to perform, be ready to deliver. They don't know they have to be ready. They have to be battle ready at all times. Wow, that is a great phrase. You hear athletes talk about being in game shape off season. They work out. So they're in game shape, which means they could step on a court or they could step on the field at any moment and deliver their best. And I thought, man, what would it take for me to be battle ready or to be in game shape? I thought, well, in many ways I've already kind of been doing that because I've had this practice in my life, Brian, for about a decade now. I call the dailies. And the dailies is a set of practices that I engage in every day that help me hone my skills, develop my craft, stay mentally sharp, stay emotionally sharp, stay physically sharp, stay spiritually sharp every single day. I have this practice that I've been engaging in called the dailies. And it's things like studying every day, which is one of my dailies, is things like writing a thousand words every day, whether I feel like it or not, because I don't like to write, which is terrible to admit for somebody who's written three books in five years, but I don't like to write. It's not something I enjoy doing, but I definitely love the outcome of it. I love the results of it. It's things like having a meaningful conversation with my family every day, which is a little more on the personal side, but for me, it's important that I have have a meaningful conversation with each member of my family every day. My three kids and my wife. It's things like doing business development every day, which for me is important. That's an important daily discipline, something we often let drift. If we don't have that discipline in our life and over time, then we're not planting seeds, and those seeds aren't growing into something more meaningful. I don't know what that set of practices would be for everyone listening, but you need to have a set of daily practices that you engage in not because you feel like it, not because it's going to give you immediate results, but because you're planning planting seeds now that they're going to reap a harvest later. And that's what it means, I believe, to be battle ready or to be in game shape. It's engaging every single day in little activities that keep you ready to step on the field of play at a moment's notice.

So good game shape. And I interviewed Mark Devine, commander in the Navy SEALs, and he described exactly this. He said that you go through buds, and actually, that's unbelievably hard, but that's the easy part. Then, then after you've earned your trident, which is what the SEAL gets, right, you need to earn that trident every single day. You're not exonerated from future work, as some other guys who wrote the book called the Tools say. We want to get to this place where we're no longer required to do the work, but the greatest among us get the fact that every single day is the next day to bring it right. I love your dailies. I talk obsessively about the. I call them fundamentals. And that idea of we need to have a deep foundation if we want to build something we're proud of in our lives. The body of work as you would describe it. Right. So cool. So for everyone listening, what are your fundamentals? What are your dailies? The things that you do when you're on, and how do you do those? Consistently, non negotiably. So good.

I'll tell you. I've had a little index card I've used for years and years and years. But I'll give you a little tip. I've recently started using an app for my iPhone and also for the Apple watch. It's called Streaks S T R E A K S. I think it's a couple bucks maybe in the App store, but it tracks how many days in a row you've done something. You can choose whether you want to do it Monday through Friday or Monday, Wednesday, Friday, or every day or whatever you want to do. And then you can easily just sort of check off those things and keep track of it. And so now instead of using my little index card, which I've been doing for years and years and years, I'm using that and it's actually working. Worked out really, really well.

So cool to riff on that for a moment longer. My wife just is reading Jane McGonagall's new book and is into super better at this point and making it a game, doing it with her family and stuff. I turn on my iPhone once a week. That's part of my deal right now. Just to be in my craft is to not be online. But that idea of streaks is so fun and to actually see it and then to not break that streak, whether it's via the Streaks app or I have a little calendar thing. And for me, I've missed one day of meditation over the last seven and a half years. It was day 1500, actually. Whole nother conversation. But there's something really, really liberating about that. And I do a series of physical exercises every single day. And making it a game such that we're in game shape consistently is just so cool. So love it, love the tip. And this is good. So journey through the Canyon U Shape. Let's kind of wrap it with. Talk to us about the importance of running your own race, which obviously is tied to the first attribute of authenticity and I'm sure everything else. But can you describe the importance of that?

Absolutely, yeah. So if you're. Let's imagine you're running a race and you're in your lane and the starting gun goes off and you start running and you hear some footsteps beside you. And you look to the right and you start watching the person beside you running. And you look to the left, you start watching the person beside you running. Let's say you look to the left for about 10, 15 seconds. Your body is naturally going to want to go in the direction your eyes are looking. So you're going to drift out of your lane if you're looking too intently at the other person, if you're not looking ahead, fixing your eyes on the goal and where you're going. Now, peripheral vision, I believe, Brian, can be a blessing and a curse. It's a blessing because it allows us to benchmark. It allows us to see what's out there, to absorb stimulus that can make us better in some ways, ping other things to get our bearings. But if we use peripheral vision to compare ourselves too intently to other people, then it's very likely that we're going to end up drifting off course and we're not going to run our race. We're going to run somebody else's race. Any runner will tell you the most important principle in running a race is to run your race, not someone else's. Because if you try to keep pace with somebody else, then it's very likely they're going to burn out and you're going to burn out with them. You have to run your race. My encouragement to anyone listening is this. Keep your eyes fixed on the impact that you want to have in the world. Understand who you are, what you care about. I mean, I give a lot of tools and a lot of them words about how to do this, but understand who you are, what you care about, and what your best work is founded upon. Understand who you're trying to reach and where you want to take. Cultivate a vision for your intended audience and then have a set of daily practices that you can engage in that will help you achieve mastery. And over the course of time, you will do work that is impactful, that is resonant, and at the end of the day, you will build something that's reflective of you and not everyone around you. The most profoundly sad thing I think that could ever happen is for someone to spend their entire life building somebody else's body of work because they never took the time to found their work upon what they truly care about. So develop your voice, run your race, and build a body of work that's reflective of you and not everybody around you.

So good. Preach it. This is awesome. Oh, yes. Press, pause, rewind. Listen to that again. What have we not talked about that you want to make sure we touch on if anything.

Yeah, I mean, I think the most important thing is. Listen, we live in an age where there is so much noise. It's so easy to build a platform. Please don't fall prey to this idea that if you build it, they will come. And don't fall prey to the idea that because it's a golden age to put workout into the world, that you should just put work out into the world for the sake of it. I think that we don't need more noise and we don't need more copycats and we don't need more of anything that's already out there. What we need is you. And we need you to have the courage to go out there and to build your body of work and to do it in the service of other people, to stand in the gap for people who need to hear what you have to say.

Say amazing. Thank you, Todd. Appreciate you and your commitment to creating a significant impact and the clarity you've cultivated and the courage and the compassion to really dial in everything we just talked about. But Todd, thank you once again.

Thank you, Brian.

Hi, this is Brian. A lot of people don't know all the stuff I do beyond these free videos I share on YouTube. So I thought I'd do a quick video to give you an overview of our membership program that you can get access to and get a ton of other stuff. So here's a quick look. Ten bucks a month. Join the Optimal Living membership program. You get Instant Access to 250 Philosopher's Notes on some of the best Optimal Living books out there. Old school classics, positive psychology, modern stuff, Mindfulness, peak performance, purpose, neuroscience, wealth, et cetera. And what you may not know is that in addition to the PNTV episodes, I create PDFs on all these great books. So six page PDFs. Let's take a look at one of them. Joseph Campbell, you want to figure out how to live your hero's journey? Well, this is a great place to start. I basically pull out my favorite big ideas, riff on them, connect them to other books and other ideas, and help you apply this wisdom to your life today. That's what the PDF looks like again. We have 250 of these on all these different great books books. And then I record those PDFs as an MP3 so you can listen to that MP3 while you're on a walk or working out or doing some errands or whatever that is. Philosopher's Notes. A lot going on there and then in addition to Philosopher's Notes, you get access to optimal living classes. Optimal Living 101 idea here is that all those great teachers come back to the same big ideas again and again and again and again. I distill those ideas into classes. Super practical, fun, inspiring classes ranging from Habits 101, Confidence 101, Getting Stuff Done 101, Meditation 101, instant access to all those classes and then Future classes include Relationships 101, Energy 101, Purpose 101 business goals, etc. Those are our full length classes. And then I create micro class 2 to 3 to 5 minute little bursts of wisdom on my favorite great ideas from these great books across the domain that you want to optimize in your life. So we have dozens of these so far. I create 50 new micro classes every month and 10 new philosopher's notes every month for 10 bucks a month. So we're blessed to have thousands of members who are are enjoying the program and sharing some incredibly kind words with us. And super simple $10 a month cancel anytime. Would be honored to be a bigger part of your life and I appreciate your support. And here's to optimizing and actualizing.