Who are your heroes? Meet the ones in Brian's office. (Part 1)

Hi there, my name is Colton and I'm the director of Growth at Heroic. Before you dive into more wisdom in less time, we wanted to quickly let you know about our Heroic movement and invite you to join us in creating a world in which 51% of the population is flourishing by the year 2051. For more about how Heroic will help you flourish and to become a founding member, head to www. Heroic.us. and if you'd like to own part of the movement by becoming a heroic investor for for as little as $100, check out the invitation letter from our founder and chief executive, philosopher Brian Johnson at www.heroving.us invest. You can also find those links as well as required investment related legalese in the description below. Let's change the world one person at a time. Together. Starting with you, me and us today.

Hey guys, what's up? This is Bry. I am getting ready to hit the studio to record basic training. I could not be more excited. That's what my whiteboard looks like. 51. 2051. If you haven't heard, I'm all in folks. Where'd it go? There it is. Can we help create a world in which 51% of the population is flourishing by the year 2051? Can we make history again? This time as one of the fastest growing startups to an enterprise value of a billion? Our super ambitious target, 3-6-2024, which is exactly 3.33 the big three cubed years away from our founding. Then most importantly, can we change the course of it? We train heroes. Our brand promise is simple. If you use Heroic, then you will flourish. More specifically, science says if you hit 10 virtuous targets per day, then you will be X percent more energized, productive and connected. And brand promise number two at the collective level, if enough of us use Heroic, then we will change the world together. So fired up. Theory, practice, Mastery. We've got seven objectives. Getting us from theory to practice to mastery is the whole point of the app. It is the one thing that we intend to do better than anyone else out there such that we can deliver on that value promise that science says if you use Heroic then you will flourish. Period. So we got the theory, which is this. Seven objectives, the distillation of my life's work. Again. So excited. Taking the 600 philosopher's notes, those thousand plus ones, the 50 optimal living 101 classes, the 300 day mastery series coach program. We now have 10,000 coaches in it from 114 countries, which is amazing. It's Been scientifically proven to work. So I'm taking that and distilling it into even tighter, shorter form kind of next level thinking in the new studio, etc. Anyway, seven objectives. You got to know the game you're playing and how to play it well. Eudaimonia via arete flourish by putting your virtues in action. Then you got a forge antifragile confidence. You got to know that it's not supposed to be easy. Then you got to work your protocol such that the worse you feel, the more committed you are to showing up powerfully, such that again you get stronger the more life kicks you around. And you have true deep confidence that requires that you have a protocol that you know how to work and you crush it, especially when you don't feel like it. Which leads us to the next. And the whole app is helping you create that protocol. Who are you at your best? Energy, work and love wise, which is our big three cubed. What are your identities from what you need to live? What virtues do you embody and what targets are you going to hit? Today the entire app again is architected around this. Moving to this, making today a masterpiece. Two parts to our practice. You need to commit in the morning. One minute commitment routine. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. Basically our carpe diem journaling process in the app. Identity, virtues and behaviors in your energy, your work and your love. The app's much more attractive than this, but you get the idea. Who are you at your best? Tap it. I'm an athlete, I'm a leader. I am a soulmate. Boom. What virtues do you embody? Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. And then what are you going to do? Today you commit via a one minute commitment routine. In the morning. We'll talk a lot more about all these details, of course, then you hit it. Then you repeat that day in and day out. And your highs are going to get higher, your lows are going to get higher and we can deliver on the value promise, which is if you use heroic, then you will flourish. Then of course we move from there to mastering yourself. We got structural, reactive, expansive discipline. This is new stuff I've never shared in this context. Those are Phil Stutts phrases. But the basic idea is you need structural discipline, which is your protocol. You know who you are at your best and you know how to show up like that best version of you consistently. Then you need reactive discipline, which is stepping in between stimulus and response. And by the way, I turned this video on to film my wall of heroes for Michael and I Kind of went off on the other stuff. We'll come back to these heroes. Viktor Frankl tells us that in between a stimulus and a response, there's a gap. And in that gap exists your freedom. We call that in heroic basic training, Reactive discipline. Can you step in between? Stimulus, response. In that gap exists your freedom. Boom. Get really, really good. I've got some ideas on that from Marcus Aurelius as well. He calls it your inner citadel. Nothing penetrates your mind, so we'll have fun with that. Expansive discipline is part of self mastery and mastering yourself. Expansive discipline is basically having courage, which Aristotle tells us is the number one virtue that helps us put all the other virtues in action. But basically, when you feel fear, doubt, discomfort, you got to remember that your infinite potential. Where's my finger? Your infinite potential exists on the other side of your comfort zone. How does it feel to leave your comfort zone? By definition, you feel uncomfortable. Fill in the blank. Fear, anxiety, self doubt, etc. Perfect. Reverse indicator. Make that a go sign. Have expansive discipline, say, bring it on. Remembering that your infinite potential exists just on the other side of your comfort zone. That's a discipline that we're going to practice in Heroic. Then you got to dominate your fundamentals. Eating, moving, sleeping, breathing, focusing, celebrating, prospering. You want to see how tall a building is going to be? Look at how deeply they're digging the foundation. We need to have a very, very strong foundation if we want to go high in actualizing our potential. The seventh objective is another new thing. It all comes into soul force. You need to activate your soul force. We have an equation for that. Energy times, focus times what's important now to the power of consistency. You don't do it once in a while. That's a C. That doesn't look much like a C. Masters show up, they put in the reps. When you do that, your power becomes infinite. We call that soul force, which is a Gandhi phrase. Gandhi coined the word soul force. Martin Luther King used the phrase soul force in his I have a Dream speech. What's up, Zeus? Yeah. So that is a quick look at what basic training will look like. Now let's look at my hero. So every morning I sit down and I do my hour meditation on this PEMF machine that Zeus is enjoying. Now. This is my oldest possession, by the way, in the world, I think. No, actually, it's not. Sorry, buddy. Did I startle you? Sorry, dude. Sorry about that. Got that, I don't know, 17 years ago. No, it's actually not my oldest possession. My journal is 17 years ago, 18 years ago at a Zen center in Santa Monica. Anyway, PEMF machine. Meditate for an hour every morning. And what I do is I invite my heroes in after I 12 minutes of breath work and then bring in my heroes for 12 minutes, sometimes two cycles of 12. Then I do the virtues that make up our virtue compass. Then I basically empty my mind and allow some creative thinking to come in. It's incredible to me what has been downloaded. So here are my heroes, and I'm going to share with you what they say to me. So when I bring them into my meditation, I literally kind of welcome them, like, hey, what's up? And I've been doing this for a year now, so it's become a pretty quick, instantaneous thing. But imagine inviting your heroes into your meditation and into your life, which is an ancient stoic practice. Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus. To imagine your ideal sage, to think about the qualities they embody. Viktor Frankl was a practicing stoic. You may not know that, but he was. Anyway, imagine the qualities your heroes embody, that you want to embody more in your life. And then imagine what they may say to you today as a kind of a command is how I think about it. Or just say, hey, let's think about this. Let's go. So Ralph Waldo Emerson, Abraham Lincoln. My best, most heroic version of myself, my daimon that stares at me and barks at me all day. Every single time I get up and do my burpees, I say, act like that guy. Connect to that person. That is the ultimate purpose of life according to Aristotle. To be a Yudaimon, to be a good soul. To live from that best version of ourselves more and more consistently. Which brings us to the second tattoo. Arete. This is how Aristotle tells us we win the ultimate game. Longer chat on that. Close the gap between who you're capable of being and who you're actually being. Ralph Hodo, Emerson, Lincoln, me, Steve Jobs, Marcus Aurelius, Joseph Campbell, my beloved coach, Phil Stutz. My Catholic upbringing represented Jesus. A little tilty right now. Sorry. Jesus. Need to figure it. Fix that for you. My Catholic upbringing, represented by Jesus, Ignatius, Mother Teresa, which embodies love for me. Talk more details in a second. We've got Confucius, Epictetus. We've got John Wooden. These are hardcore philosophers. We've got Aristotle, Viktor Frankl and Abraham Maslow are scientist philosophers. Then we've got the leaders. Alexander the Great, who was tutored by Aristotle, who conquered the material world. Then we've got Gandhi, who conquered the spiritual world. Then we've got Martin Luther King, who of course had a dream that his children would live in a world in which they were not judged on the basis of the color of their skin, but on the content of their character. Martin Luther King Day a few days ago we sent out a note saying, I have a dream too. And every morning he tells me that. And I say, well, I have a dream too, to help fulfill your dream and create a world in which your children's children's children are taught how to cultivate the content of their characters such that they can win the ultimate game. Live with eudaimonia, etc. Eleanor Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Eisenhower. We begin in love, we end in war. And the basic idea here is there is an invisible war within each of us, between vice and virtue. Between the daimon, the best within us, and the demon, the worst within us, which is just the diminutive of daimon. Demon, daimon. They're related. Good soul, not so great soul. There's an invisible war not just within us, but within the world we believe within. Between vice and virtue. We're doing our next prospective crowdfunding on June 6, 2022. D Day. That invasion was led by Eisenhower. All the asterisks apply. Legalese, we need to qualify with the SEC to do a big potential crowdfunding round. But excited about that. So Ralph Waldo Emerson integrated East and west. So I deeply admire the fact that he was a classic American philosopher, arguably and almost certainly the first true American philosopher integrating Western thinking and Eastern thinking. Amazing. If you haven't read Self Reliance yet, get on that. We named our son Emerson after him, of course, and our daughter Eleanor, after Eleanor Roosevelt. Emerson was also super intense, much like Epictetus. Challenging people to trust thyself. This is what he tells me every morning. First person I bring in every single morning is Emerson. The first thing he tells me from Self Reliance is trust thyself. Every heart vibrates to that iron string. If you lose trust in yourself and faith in yourself, it's as if the whole universe is against you. You must trust yourself. We must if we want to show up and serve heroically. Check out the notes on Self reliance and the collected writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. He is unbelievably quotable. He says a lot of different things to me on different warnings. He also tells me God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. That's a powerful line. God will not have his work made manifest by cowards. Thank you, Emerson. Abraham Lincoln tells me, win the civil War within yourself so you can help win the civil war out in the world. Then he tells me to embrace fierce ambition, which is something I talk about in the letter that we're sharing and just recently shared on our next crowdfunding. I was ambivalent about my ambition for a long time. Ralph Waldo Emerson and Abraham Lincoln helped me dissolve resolve, iron out any last ambivalence. He was fiercely ambition, Doris Kearns Goodwin says his biographer his ambition was ferocious and was as central to his makeup as his backbone. She says, so anyway, without Lincoln and his ambition or Churchill and his ambition, we wouldn't be standing here and hanging out in the world in which we live now. So I appreciate his ambition and his personal humility and his indomitable will. Those are the qualities that make up what Jim Collins calls a level five leader. So literally I imagine these qualities in Lincoln and in me that I want to embody more like him every single morning. So that's what he tells me. Those are the qualities I admire in him. That is, I guess I already said, kind of the eudaimonic heroic portrait of me. When you join our heroic team, the very first thing we do is say, hey, what's your favorite profile picture? The picture that most makes you feel like, yeah, that's me at my best. And then we create. We have our unbelievable great artist, unbelievably great artist in Austin create a heroic portrait for you. So that version of you is your icon in zoom and in Slack, etc. And our commitment to you and our challenge to you is to help you show up as that best, most heroic version of yourself. So my daimon, I actually skip him, then come back to him because I do more work on him. Steve Jobs, insanely great. Obviously I admire his creativity. No perfect human beings. Notice none of these people, including him, are perfect. Not even one. Well, we'll skip Jesus in that conversation. Abraham Maslow tells us there are no perfect human beings and you and I will not be the first is how I like to joke. My 4 year old daughter got to share a video of her saying I'm not perfect. Nobody's perfect. As she laughs. I wish I was taught that growth mindset wasn't part of my upbringing. There are no perfect human beings. Steve Jobs was certainly not perfect, but he was certainly creative. We are following his four part strategy, which he tells me every single morning to pay attention to. Number one, you got to create something insanely great. Ten times better than anything else in the marketplace. That makes people say What? That's amazing. Number two, you want to put together a small team of the very best engineers and designers in the world. We're blessed to be working with Metalab and a small team of the very best designers and engineers in the world. Then number three, you got to pour resources into making the interface visually stunning. In quotes. I'm really proud of what we've done with Heroic Four on that front. Four, you need to embrace really innovative marketing and basically launch it as the next cool thing. This is Steve Jobs four Part strategy, as discussed in Good Strategy, Bad Strategy. Check out those notes on that book as well. Then we've got Marcus Aurelius. I also recite Steve Jobs. Here's to the crazy ones, the rebels, the misfits, the troublemakers, the round pegs and the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. They have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may call them the crazy ones, we call them genius or we see genius, because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do. I've said that over a thousand times in my head. Whenever I get up at night, I recite that. I recite a quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson. And I recite a quote from Winston Churchill. And from WH. Fall Back Asleep to Sweet Dreams. Marcus Aurelius tells me, practice your philosophy. Aurelius, of course, was the reluctant philosopher. I'm sorry, he was not a reluctant philosopher. He was a reluctant emperor who was a Stoic philosopher. One of the great leaders in history, of course. Check out the notes on all of his books. He tells me, practice your philosophy. And he tells me, play your role well. Do what you're here to do. The Stoics said, you don't get to choose your role. You get the opportunity to play it as well as you possibly can. I'm fiercely committed to doing my best in that regard. Viktor Frankl, again, was a practicing Stoic. He played his role well. He was a therapist in the concentration camps of World War II. That's an intense place to wind up. He lost his entire family, including his pregnant wife, in the Holocaust. And yet he found meaning in playing his role as well as he could. Unbelievably inspiring human being. Joseph Campbell tells me, remember, we train heroes. What else? He barks at me, we train heroes. Joseph Campbell, of course, the great hero scholar. If you haven't watched the documentary Finding Joe yet, check that out. I happen to be in it with Deepak Chopra, Laird Hamilton, Tony Hawk, Sir Ken Robinson, Robin Sharma, others on the modern hero's journey. And Heroic is basically bringing all of his wisdom across all cultures and all time into practical reality. How do you move from theory to practice mastery and truly show up as heroes? Well, Joe reminds me we train heroes. Let's go. Every single morning. And then again, he's a quote machine, you know, reminding me of a lot of different things, including some Nietzsche wisdom. You got to love your fate, Amor Fatih. And that the demon you can swallow gives you its power. When you can overcome the biggest challenges you face, boom. You become, as Phil Stutts says, frightened of one less thing you want to constantly say, bring it on. Embrace expansive discipline and my beloved coach and spiritual father, Phil Stutts, who will be featured in a documentary, a Netflix documentary, soon by two of his other clients, Jonah Hill and Joaquin Phoenix. We've worked together every week for over five years. You should see the stack of my notes from last year alone. Maybe I'll grab that. Let me see. We'll keep it here. What, do we just put it into my. My desk or my closet, rather, this morning. So check this out. This is literally my notes from one year's worth of work with Phil. So we met twice a week over the last year, and it has accelerated my own growth in an astonishing way. At some point, I'll walk through more of this, and I actually might walk through. I printed out the very first page of notes from my very, very, very first session with him five years ago. Right. And that one page has so much wisdom on it, it's not even funny. I sent it to Michael, our head coach, who also works with Phil for the last couple years, and he printed it out, put it up on his wall. It's just so insane. So, anyway, maybe we'll talk about that another time. But Phil tells me, conquer the impossible, son, is what he tells me. He's my honorary father. I call him Father. He calls me son. Unbelievably sweet, dynamic. And he tells me, conquer the impossible. Let's go out and demonstrate that we can achieve things that may look impossible when we are aligned to get emotional with these truths and we actually practice our philosophy. Thank you, Marcus. More and more consistently. Maybe I'll break this up. I'll do two videos. That's that wall. I'm gonna break it up now. Heroes unite. Who are your favorite heroes. That might be my favorite thing in my whole office. By the way, Emerson loves Dad. I love you too, buddy. All right, day one, let's go.

It's Colton again and we hope you enjoyed getting more wisdom and less time. Also excited to invite you to join our movement to create a world in which 51% of the population is flourishing by the year 2051. For more about how heroic will help you flourish and to become a founding member, head to www. Heroic.us. and if you'd like to own part of the movement by becoming a heroic investor for as little as $100, check out the invitation letter from our founder and chief executive philosopher Brian Johnson at www.heroving.us invest. You can also find those links as well as required investment related legalese in the description below. Let's change the world one person at a time, together, starting with you, me and us today.