Accomplish 1,000,000x In Your Life Time When You Understand THIS Feat. Tony Robbins

What are the biggest trade offs that both of you consider maybe negative in order to do what it is you do? Because you're both, I mean, incredibly driven, what I would consider insane schedules. But at the same time you're making massive contributions to humanity. So what are the trade offs that you would consider like, you know, we work our asses off, we do a lot of stuff, but this is what we had to sacrifice in order to do it. If you think of it that way.

I think if you think of it as a sacrifice, then you're going to build frustration or resentment. I really don't. If you think it's a sacrifice, you shouldn't do it. I think the challenge is that most people have this illusion about life, work, balance. And I think that's, you know, if you're going to accomplish it, people are laughing because you know it's bullshit, right? What's true is life, work, integration. So I was just in 21 countries, 7 countries, 21 days. But who's with me is my family, who's with me is my friends. And I've done well enough to have a plane and bedrooms and all that kind of cool stuff makes it. But when I didn't, we still, we huffed it together and beginning days it was coach and dragging ourselves around. But I thought it was great for my kids to have schooling, but I thought an education was more valuable and traveling the earth was a part of that. But you know, we're in the middle of this crazy schedule. But it's not work, it's a mission. When it's work, it's that. I always ask people, I said, how would you describe what you do? And people always say, is it work, is it career or is it mission? And most people of course say it's work. And that's exactly what it is. It's heavy. If it's, you know, if it's your career, it gives you something more. But your mission, it doesn't wear you out, it brings energy to you. It's fulfilling. And if you can tie your mission in with the people that you love, it's pretty cool. You know, there's some people in this room there, my friends, I see Dean here in the front row here, and it's like we're all on this mission and we find time to connect and be with each other and have a blast with each other, but we're sharing about things that matter. I'm not a person to go to a party and like, you know, go in the corner and chit chat. It's like, you want to talk about something deep? Let's rock. You don't let me go home and be with my family. You know, let me go do something fun, some of that nature. But in the middle of all that craziness, you know, we were stuck for two days, so we went ice racing. A group of my friends and I were with me, and some of them are my security guards, some of them my co workers, some are partners I have in business. But we went 70 kilometers below the equator and just, excuse me, the arctic and went 200 miles an hour and Lamborghinis. I was doing it like this.

I love that you said, you're stuck, and you went, you did this versus, like, going to a spa and getting pedicures.

Yeah.

Like, once you've that shit, I was able to squeeze in a Porsche. And if you can imagine, 200 km an hour on pure ice on a lake that's frozen as fast as you can drive. And the beautiful thing about it is, like, you know, most people have fears, and I've learned to make sure I give myself enough fear to stay intelligent. But here, you don't have to have it, because when you wrecked, you just went straight into the snow. It was just incredible. So. But we do crazy things together. We have a blast together. We laugh, you know, we cry. We see the impact. And to me, there is no dividing line. And for my kids, you know, like, all the work we do, feeding people. My youngest son, Jarek, when he was five or maybe six, probably five, we would go and even in the early days, I was feeding families, and I take all my friends and we build these baskets up, make them great, and we fed all the families. We had some food left, some baskets left. So we went to this place in Oceanside, this park, and there was a man lying on the ground in the toilet area, covered with a bunch of pieces of rags. And so, you know, I gave it to my son, and I said, come on. He could barely hold the thing, it was so big. I said, you know, can I help you? Give this to this man. He goes, and he set it down next to the man. All of sudden, the man jumped up and grabbed my son's hand, and I jumped. My son jumped. And then he just did this, and he put it down. My son is 30, what, 1 years old now? 32 years old now. He's just gotten married. He was working on kids. His entire life is about contribution. He's got a heart this big. He works his ass off, but he does it in a way that's so fulfilling. And his wife travels with them and they have this great life and he doesn't have to pick between work and mission and he's not burnt out and he's probably been to 100 countries and I'm proud as hell of him. It's just like if you can combine your mission with your family, combine your mission with some of your friends, then you're going to accomplish a million times more. But if you think it's a sacrifice, don't do it because then all you're doing is you're going to have resentment later on or frustration later on and you really aren't contributing because it's, you're, you're trading off, you're not giving. Great, great.

Yeah, ditto. I think I'm a nine year old kid. Those of you who know me know I am a 9 year old child in my body pinching myself every day. That I get to do the shit that I get to do, it is extraordinary. I could not, would not want to be doing anything else. I mean there's hard work and it's, and it's like I push myself more anybody else. But I love it, I love it, I love it. I cannot imagine doing anything else. And that's the challenge, right? The question is a lot of people are doing something to get to something else and that's just wrong. And it's a matter of don't do because your parents told you, because you heard on an infomercial, because whatever, do what is your highest calling in life and love it. And so I don't work at all. I really don't work. And the shit, that's work, you know, Dan has told me to get rid of it and so I get rid of it.

Yeah, well, you know, I mean this room is filled with some very high achievers. And obviously what I wanted to derive from you guys is just some insights, some how tos, some what it is you do to just give them, you know, perspective and stuff. And I carefully chose some questions and this one is you're both masters at achieving what most people consider impossible. And I mean really like what you guys do, most people consider absolutely impossible. So when something is considered quote, unquote impossible, how do you reframe it so it becomes possible in your mind? And how much of that is mindset?

I think impossible is not a fact, it's an opinion. When someone tells me it's impossible, I always just look at them. Anybody around me knows that they can't do that. That's Part of it. But if they didn't know me, it's your opinion. And they'll say, no, science shows. And I say, yeah, how many times does science show something's impossible? Now science shows it's possible. Things are impossible until somebody does it. And so I find that, you know, most of your business people, you look at businesses and what does it take to make a business grow? It's not impossible like a business grow. Business has been shrinking for a long time or it's been stuck. The real problem is always the chokehold, is always the psychology and the skills of the leader. Always. And 80% of that is psychology and 20% is the mechanics. Like if you don't know how to read your financials and you're trying to fly the plane of your company, I mean, come on, you know, if all you do is go down, you look at profit loss and you see what it is and you have a beer. Either way, you either celebrate or you get the breast. You know something, you know you're going to be in trouble, right? But if you have the skill sets, that's one thing. But you can get any skill set if you have the psychology. And anytime a business is not growing, it is not because it's impossible. It's because they aren't innovating. And they're not innovating because they're believing it's impossible. I mean, if we all know, what does it take to transform, obviously, help people. It takes three things to create a breakthrough in anything. In your personal life, in your business, anywhere. You need a strategy. But that's not the first place you should look. And it's the first place all of us look. Me too. It's our inherent thing. You want to lose weight. Well, how do I do it? I want to grow my business. How do I do it? It's instinctive. We've been trained to think that way. But the problem is the how to is usually not that complex. I mean, come on, 70% of America is what, 75% of America now is overweight. Is that because it's so complex? How to be fit and strong? Right. You know, only the 1% know the answers. They hide it from you. You have to work your ass off to not hear what it takes. Right? And so, you know, I remember I went to this. I went to a Ted Med center and I watched about 12 doctors, one after another, get up and do these stories about how we could just get patients to take their medications and try to figure out the whole thing. And I was just Looking and going. You're all talking about strategy and you've forgotten psychology because strategy is wonderful. I'm a strategist. I spent my whole life figuring out strategies. As we both know, a strategy could save you a decade and business strategy could save you. It could make the difference between success and failure. But most people have strategies available. Or they could get them, or you could create them. But the problem is you got a story. And your story is why it isn't working. And the story is, I've tried what? What? Everything. If you tried everything, you'd be fit, right? If you tried everything, you'd be profitable. If you tried everything, you'd be there. But people say it, you know, I'm big boned. That's what I used to say. I'm still big boned, but I'm 38 pounds lighter than I was 25 years ago and I've never gained it back. Right when I was big boned, that was my story. All the good ones are gone. That's why I'm not in a relationship. Or they're gay and I'm not, or I'm gay and they are. Whatever the story is, there's always a story. And what I tell people is, you know, if you can just divorce the story of your limitation and marry the truth of your unlimited capacity, then the whole game changes. But it's hard to do that because when you're in your story, you don't even realize it. So you need a third piece for breakthrough. And that's really what my life's about, which is changing people's states. Because in a different state, we're different people. Can mean people be nice? Yes or no? Yes or no? Of course they are. When they're in a nice state, can nice people be mean? Sure. They get a mean state. So really learning to train yourself to be in an ideal state where the best of you comes out for yourself, for your family, for your mission, for your world, for your co workers. To me, that's one of the most important decisions in life to make. You ask me out of all the people I've met, all things I've seen, you know what creates a magnificent life? You know, everybody has goals and dreams that are different. Some people want, you know, picket fence. Some want to make a billion dollars. Some, you know, want to have this huge breakthrough in technology. Some people want to write poetry. Whatever is right for people is what I want them for themselves. I don't want to be like me or you or anybody else. I want them to have Their dream. But to have it, you need two skills. You need, number one, to have the science of achievement. It's a science. You have to know how to take your vision and make it real. And most of the people in this room have already figured that out. And this guy sure as hell has. And you have, and I have. So most of us know and we can all refine our skills in that area, but we know how to take what we dream about, make it real. And if you don't, you can learn from somebody who does. You know, simplest thing is get crazily hungry for something. We all know when you get so hungry, so desirous, your brain starts coming up with answers. And then it's massive action but effective execution, which is all modeling, which is, I assume, what this is about. Find the best example, compress the time, Let someone else take 20 years to figure it out. You do it in two weeks or two months or whatever the period is. We should all be standing on the shoulders of the people around us instead of reinventing the wheel. And then there's this thing called grace. You work your ass off, you're totally focused. You're trying to serve something larger than yourself and you really are executing what works. You need a little grace. Might want to call it luck if you prefer God universe, but it's there and we can all achieve. But I think the more important skill, if you ask me, is to have an extraordinary life is the art of fulfillment. And it's an art. It's not a science. Because there's a science to making money. I don't care who you are, if you do certain things, you're gonna have too much financial stress. You do other things, you're gonna have an abundance. There's a science. There's a science to your body. Everyone here is biochemically different, different genome. But there are certain fundamental patterns that if you and I follow them, you're going to have tons of energy going to feel good. If you break them, you're going to pay the price and have low energy or disease. But fulfillment is an art. What's going to fulfill you is different than the other person next to you. You're not going to learn that from anybody else. And you got to find it. Because success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure. And I get those phone calls all the time for the multi billionaire entrepreneur or politician or business person or the person just won their Academy Award and they're depressed and they can't tell anybody because they got all their goals, but they're not Fulfilled, because they really don't have that sense of meaning in their life. They went for something and they got it. They achieved. And if you doubt this, what I'm saying is relevant to you or us or anyone, just think about a year, what, a month ago, we lost what I consider to be a national treasure, Robin Williams. How many of you loved Robin Williams? Look around the room. Keep your hands up.

Look.

And most of you didn't know him. Almost every. And then. Where are you going?

The world.

People love Robin Williams. By the way, was he great at achievement? Oh, my God, that guy. He said he wanted to make. Become a great comedian. He did that. I want to make the world laugh. He did it. I want to make my own TV show. He did it. I want to have the number one TV show. He did it. I want to make movies. He did it. I want an Academy Award for not being funny. Not his skill set. Drama. And he did it. I want a beautiful family. He did it. And then he hung himself. Make everybody happy but yourself. Not a good plan. So if I had a gift to give you, it would be maybe make a different decision. And the decision is that no matter what happens in your life, you're gonna live in a beautiful state. A beautiful state. And that could be happy. That could be grateful. That could be being generous. Those are all beautiful states, aren't they? It could be curious, it could be fun, it could be playful. You're not limited to one state, but it's different than suffering and most people suffering and all suffering I've ever seen. I traveled 100 countries. I've dealt with presidents of countries and, you know, presidents of businesses, CEOs. I've dealt with people in prison. I've dealt with, you name it, average people. Suffering always comes because you're obsessed about something related to you. You can only be depressed if you're focusing on yourself. No, I'm depressed because it's my kids and they're not doing well. No, you're depressed because you feel you failed your kids. It's about you. It's about how you think, what you should have done or shouldn't have done or what someone did to you or didn't do to you in the past or the future, which don't even exist. So I have a simple goal. My goal is help people make a decision that says, I don't know what's going to happen. You might get a divorce, even though you don't think so. You might find a family of your family with cancer. You might have your House get burned down or have a tornado go by. And if you live in the same place, it happens every two years. And you move back, we should talk. But, you know, some people seem to do that for some reason. You can't control those things. I can't control those things. I don't want those to happen to you or anybody I love or anybody who's even a stranger to me. But they're going to happen. True. Not positive thinking, bullshit. Just the truth. So if that's gonna happen, I say make a decision now that says I'm gonna live in a beautiful state. And I'm gonna find beauty in whatever life brings me. Because life is too short not to. I see a little buddy over here named Shawn. I remember when I got a phone call from the Make a Wish Foundation. See, a young man is about to die, and he wants to meet you. And he came to the seminar and then I took him out afterwards. At the time, if he coughed too much, they said, you can't grab him. I said, I want to take him across the fire. I said, take him across the fire. So if he coughs, he'll break the rib. I said, I'll be really gentle. We're gonna do this thing. And he did it. And afterwards I sat down with him. I said, man, I don't have the answers. But if your body is. You're just coughing and it's gonna make you break a rib, your body is so acid. I said, you should get alkaline. Let me put you together with a doctor. How many years ago was that? You were 19. You're now 36. I like seeing you here. So, brother, give him a hand. He's a beautiful man. But Sean. What made me think of Sean as Sean lives in a beautif. He could be bitching and complaining and whining. What does he do? His whole life is not about himself. That's why he's so happy. He doesn't live in himself. He lives outside himself, serving things he loves. He still takes care of himself, and he's funny as shit. And he likes to seduce women and things. Like, I can't talk about right now, but. Oh, you're married now. Okay, well, good. I'm glad of here. It's about fricking time. All right, John, good to see you grew up. Now, the bottom line is this young man over here who now is at a different stage of life. He's always been. I think he lived because he lived for more than himself. I'm sure he felt pain, but we Only suffer when we think about what's being done to us or what people are going to think or what they should have done or hadn't done. And you can't control that stuff anyway. I mean, why be pissed when people are going to do it? Are people going to be mean? Yes or no? Are people gonna be unfair and unjust? Yes or no? Are people gonna be beautiful and generous? Yes or no? You just never know when that shit's gonna happen, so might as well enjoy yourself along the way. And I suggest today, if you want, if there's any gift I came by to give you, it's to tell you what you know already, but get you to make a decision about it, to actually decide. I'm gonna live in a beautiful state. That doesn't mean I don't get angry or pissed or tired. You know, suffering arises and you end it the moment you go, holy shit, I'm thinking about me. If I leave this, I'll always be suffering. The human mind is always looking for what's wrong. The human brain is not designed to make you happy. It's designed to make you survive. Happiness. That's your job. And you only get it if you draw a line in the sand. That's how it's going to be. And I can tell you, the few people that do it, I know a few people that have done it, they have magnificent lives. And when you're in a beautiful state, the best ideas come in. This man lives in a beautiful state. Every time I talk to him, I love seeing Peter. Peter's just always on fire about something. But notice, you know, he's doing unbelievably well. There's nothing wrong with that. But almost everything he's doing is about more than himself. And so that's why he feels so alive. He's not suffering an ounce. He's an ecstasy. He's not lucky. He's living life a certain way. It's a beautiful way. I'm honored to have you as a friend.

Thank you, brother.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video. And I want to let you know that I have a new book that's come out, and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link below, below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video, or you can Simply go to joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

Wow.

Now say something better than that.

I mean, like, let's.

Let's really see how good you are here.

Oh, God.

Yeah.

This guy going through my mind like.

There'S no way to follow this.

What the hell was the question?

Truthfully, he doesn't have to say anything. He lives this shit. I'm just telling you what he lives. He really does. I'm not saying that to blow smoke. This guy lives it. If you meet this man, how many met this man before? And he was in a wonderful state. Let me show hands. I don't think I've ever seen him not in a wonderful state. I've seen him have some painful, challenging places. But he doesn't stay there and look at what he's able to create because of it. He has a nine year old boy who's on fire. He's on fire. To light the world on fire with what's possible, it's a beautiful thing. I honor you.

So the contribution I'll make. Thank you, Tony. And I think it was about impossible in mindset and so forth is the reality is there is very little that's impossible, period. It just is. And your mindset, as soon as you say something is impossible, then you shut down every possibility for solving it, right? And we all know this. And the challenge is that it's really hard not to be in that state because we get thrown stuff all the time. And what I want to share with you is an experiment which is to say, okay, not only how do I make it, not how do I make it possible, but how do I actually go 10 times bigger? And you've heard me speak about this moonshot thinking, bold thinking, whatever the case, whatever terminology you want to give it, and most of us in our life are trying to make a 10% improvement. And we know this, this is. I'm trying to increase my revenues by 10%. I'm trying to reduce my sales by 10%, save 10% more of the, you know, the lands out there, whatever it truly is, we all have this sort of beaten into us by life and by the rest of the universe that you can make these small incremental improvements. But the fact of the matter is that there are those in the world that go ten times bigger. And you, every one of us can be that. And as soon as you say I want to not only solve this thing, but go 10 times bigger in my work, in the things. And can I say this in something that you're truly passionate about, not just about earning a little bit more money. I mean it really should be in something that you care truly about that is bigger than yourself, that is impacting the world. As soon as you try and go 10 times bigger. Three magical things happen. Number one, even if you have no idea how to solve it, no idea how to get there, you'll be amazed at what you come up with. And what's interesting is our legacy, our past anchors us to where we are today. And you have to let go of that. You truly have to let go of all the stuff in your past, what you thought you'd done, all of the infrastructure that you've built, to let yourself go. When Elon Musk built Tesla, the reason Tesla was such an amazingly better car is he didn't have 100 years of Detroit to hold onto. He started with a clean sheet of paper and imagine what could be. The second thing is when you try and go 10 times bigger versus 10% bigger, it's 100 times the value proposition and it's never 100 times more expensive or 100 times harder. And so you get this increased capability. And then the third thing is when you try and go 10 times bigger to solve a problem 10 times bigger, you've got to reinvent stuff. You have to actually go and figure out, okay, I have no idea how I'm going to solve that, but you're going to start to reinvent things. So when Eric and I were working on asteroid mining, we had to reinvent, we had to have so much computational power onboard the spacecraft, we had to come up with brand new sensors and hyperspectral and mid wave IR that didn't exist had never been licensed because these spacecraft were going to be operating at 200 million miles away. And that forced us to come up with new kinds of capabilities that were not currently possible. And you'll be amazed with those capabilities that you create in your business, in your life enable you to do. And so there's this massive benefit, this payoff, this dividend that comes from expanding your mind and not being anchored to the past. And so I think that there are very few things that are truly impossible. I think that impossible is a state of mind. And I'll say one other thing, the people in your life are part of that anchoring. And so how do you anchor yourself with a new set of people? Right, I'm looking at my dear friend Naveen Jain here, with whom we've opened up XPRIZE India and are really working on solving women's and girls issues in India and providing abundant drinking water in India. I mean, so how do you surround yourself with amazing people who live in the state of anything is possible. I'm blessed at xprize at Singularity University At HLI and pri. I live that constantly. And so how do you do that? Where are you doing that? What is your nothing is impossible community here? Yeah, it is here. It is truly here. And so that's really critically important because once you get into that mindset, then you start freeing yourself from the bullshit that other that you tell yourself and people tell you, because we are living in a world where constant amazing miracles happen. The other thing, because I'll put my commercial into this. Stop watching the news. Stop watching the news. You could not pay me enough.

To.

Have the crisis news network or the constantly negative news network, whatever you call cnn, pollute my mind.

Really.

I have social networks, I have, you know, Google filters and so forth. I was just telling Arianna about this and hopefully she'll do this. I want. On the front page of Huffington Post, I said, I want a slider where I can control the percentage of positive news stories.

Right?

How would you like that? Instead of. Because right now it's. Because right now it's 10 to 1 negative to positive, and that pollutes your mind. And we heard an amazing presentation this morning. I apologize. Who was. Who was the gentleman who was talking about that? Talking about a few minutes of negative news in the morning.

Thank you.

Yeah, Sean, it's true. It's like, why would you possibly invest in the world and in the life and all these things if the world is falling apart? If the crisis. New network is like showing you airplane accident. If airplane accident, airplane accident. What problem is that? The news networks never tell you there was no school shooting today at this.

School.

Or this airplane actually flew LA to New York and actually made it and everybody survived. That's not news. And so we get this disproportionate view. And so our minds are constantly. The mindset you have when you watch the negative news is awful. Not that it's not going on. It's not that there's this amazing hardship and lives that are on the precipice of hunger and death around the world. But the world is getting better at an extraordinary rate. And you can make a difference in it. And there is no problem. There is no problem we cannot solve. Period. End of statement.

So.

Awesome.

Okay, cool. Yannick, you know, that actually ties into something that I truly, absolutely love and admire you for is the fun and the just that amazing DNA that you instill in all your businesses and the culture. And where does that come from? Does that come straight from you and it kind of bubbles down top down? Or is it literally just everybody? Is it Creates that. I think the chairman of a company needs to be willing to let their hair down. And if, you know, if you take a party situation as an example, you know, if the chairman of the company stands in the corner sipping sherry with his fellow directors, as normally happens in a lot of company parties, everybody else in the room will be standing in huddled corners, you know, having boring conversations. If the chairman of the company is the first to throw themselves in the swing pool and drag a whole lot of other people in with them, everybody else will be in the swimming pool or have the most memorable party they had in the year. And they would have had fun. And that sort of spirit of fun can be. It can make it a fun company to work for. And therefore, you know, chairman of company has to be a leader. I mean, it has to, you know, has to try to, you know, get that sort of spirit of, you know, spirit of fun in the company and not take themselves too seriously. I mean, obviously, there's the serious side of running the business, which people will appreciate and expect. You know, if you're running an airline, you know, you've got to make sure the planes fly and that the, you know, in the daytime, the engineers don't drink, and they. And the pilots don't drink when they're flying and so on. You know, but when people are off duty, people should be able to have fun. And it's getting, you know, getting that balance. And I think that Virgin, you know, we've managed to get that balance. You know, we've got the best safety record of any airline in the world. But that doesn't mean that our staff can't have fun. And because they're having fun, because they enjoy the company they work for, they're genuinely proud of the company, they smile, they're happy. And therefore our passengers who fly on our planes, they smile, they're happy, and they come back for more. And therefore, we have a successful business.

Okay, well, I mean, I think we can all agree that we're all massive supporters of business owners and entrepreneurs. And you believe that.

Business owners having fun?

Totally.

I mean, well, first off, let me talk about that for a moment. You know, I mean, here we are on necker, and we're bringing a group of people, all of us in our own businesses. Yannick has his maverick business adventures, which mixes fun with business and just, you know, allows people to do amazing, awesome things. Marie, I wrote down a rule that.

You said yesterday, which was there's no work that can be done in the afternoon necker. And you literally Stepped in and said, we're not having this meeting at 4:00'.

Clock.

And, and that's so amazing because it's like most entrepreneurs never take that time to just re. Energize and regroup. I think that you can have meetings after meetings, after meetings where people can actually end up being burnt out. Whereas if you're having fun with people and get to know people and getting to know people in fun situations.

You.

Can learn a lot more than perhaps in formal meetings. So, you know, so yeah, we mustn't eat into our fun time.

I mean, Peter Drucker said you're either working or you're in meetings. So I tend to like that. Okay, Richard, I believe that you believe that social and economic problems can be solved in many ways through entrepreneurism. And I wanted to get your perspective on that.

I think it's worth making one point, first of all, and that is that creating businesses in themselves can, can solve social problems because by, by being an entrepreneur, creating businesses, you create jobs. By creating jobs, you can help help take people out of poverty. And obviously that applies, you know. Well, that applies worldwide today. I think, I mean, it's particularly with recessions and things around the world. But equally, I think that, you know, once you've actually created a successful business and you feel that, you know, the business is secure, I think if, if every business could then become a force for good and you can use your entrepreneurial skills to think, how can we, as, you know, as a company, tackle a social problem in the local community? Maybe if you're quite a small business, use our entrepreneurial skills to see how we can tackle it better than it's been tackled before, or if you've created a bigger business, maybe how can we tackle some of the seemingly intractable global problems and again, use our entrepreneurial skills to see how they can be tackled in a better way than they've been tackled before. And I think if every business could do that, an awful lot of the problems of the world would get resolved. So you've had the experience of meeting, I'm sure, just thousands of entrepreneurs over.

Time and also helping to create them. Is there any consistent mistake that you.

See entrepreneurs make in business that they could possibly avoid? I think, I think that if you don't protect the downside and you sort of treat your business a bit like going into a gambling, gambling, gambling casino and, you know, sort of keeping on doubling up to, you know, hoping that you're going to get out of a problem, you know, then, then you're asking for trouble. And eight out of 10 businesses do go bust. And quite often it's because people haven't thought of the, you know, the downside consequences of what they're doing. So without being too conservative, it is important, I think, to always think, you know, if I do this, what's the worst that can happen? Can I afford the worst? You know, for instance, right now, you know, some of our airlines have protected against oil. Oil going up now. A lot of, A lot of people within our airlines said, well, look, it can't possibly go any higher. We've got a recession on, you know, so do we really have to protect the wiser people at Virgin said, yes, you know, we should protect against the worst happening, you know, so it was, it was good and sensible that they protected against the downside. I've seen that too, Richard. I mean, just as a great example is like Virgin Mobile, as we'd say in the uk, but Virgin Mobile and like, just instead of buying, like building all the communication, all the, all the infrastructure, it would take you literally leased, I think, Sprints lines. And so there's very little downside and very big upside. If it worked for you. We have a strong brand and therefore we're able to avoid the enormous infrastructure costs of, sometimes of building new businesses. We can piggyback on other people's infrastructure using our brand and we'll put in the brand, we get 50% of the company, we'll use our marketing skills and other people will put in the infrastructure. And that in itself also, as you say, protects the downside.

With all the decisions that you have coming across your desk wherever you're at your beach. I guess it could be. Yeah, exactly. How, how do you, how do you make really tough decisions on a daily basis? Because you're just. You've got to be. You've got so many requests and demands of your time and people that want your attention in the world and like, what's the Richard Branson methodology of, I guess, time management, priority management, really thinking it through. I mean, how do you, how do you do all of this?

Well, you know, we spoke about delegation and I think the first thing is to make sure that everything is running without you. So, you know, if, you know, when I'm swimming around the island every day, you know, if a shark comes and decides that I look tasty and I disappear, that, you know, everything will continue to run. And, you know, it may not run in exactly the same way, but it will continue to run and Virgin will continue to grow. The fact that everything is running We've got a fantastic team of people on a global basis. It means that literally I can work out how I want to spend my day. And I think it's absolutely essential for all of us that we stay fit and healthy, because if we're not fit and healthy, we're not going to achieve anything. I will swim around the island every day, or I'll, you know, go kite surfing, or I'll play tennis or I'll, you know, I'll do something to make sure that the body is healthy and the endorphins are running and, and, and then I can throw myself into work. And I suspect at least 50% of my time is sort of setting up not for profit organizations in the world to tackle, you know, some, some of the bigger problems of the world. And the other 50%, I suspect is diving in and out on some of our businesses around the world, maybe doing a bit of firefighting when things are going wrong or giving them a push when things are going right. I have a question that's a little more personal in nature. I'm wondering, when you first started.

Yes.

When you first started and you were.

Getting everything going, did you find it challenging at all to have like any kind of balance?

And, and because I know you love.

Your kids so much and you love your wife so much, you know, when.

You'Re getting something going, you invest a.

Lot of time in the ramp up stage. Did you ever deal with that sense of guilt of like, oh man, I have to put the phone down or oh God, I have to just shut it off, you know what I mean, and spend time with my family? Well, I've done something which is slightly unusual and I think, you know, possibly it's the advantage of owning your own company and that is I've, I've always worked from home, so I've never worked from an office. When I say never, not pretty well, never. I mean, you know. Right, right. In the early days, you know, I'd pop in a lot to our record, record company. And so I originally worked in a, in a houseboat. You know, the kids would, you know, be crawling around on the floor. I'd be having, you know, meetings with people, might even be changing a nappy. You know, so the kids literally, you know, grew up, you know, grew up with me as we were building the Virgin, the Virgin empire. And, and then when the kids, holiday time came, you know, we would pack the bags and I would just move my office, you know, to Necker Island. And you know, so I would always be around my Family, I suspect, you know, we're closer than, you know, closer than a lot of families because of that. And you know, yes, I would be, you know, spend quite a lot of time on the phone and you know, I'd be busy, but we were around each other. Now I think the, if there's any lessons to be learned from that for other people. I mean, I, you know, I do think that with modern communication one shouldn't have to get stuck in an office. You know, the more one can get out and about, the better. If you've got companies, go and you know, go and live, live your companies, live, you know, spend a lot of time with your people and spend as much time with your family as you can. And you know, I think getting that, getting that balance is, is absolutely critical and, and making sure that you bring up great kids who are happy and, you know, loving and you know, you found that time for them is critical because they, they are going to be the next generation.

You know, what is your unique ability? I mean, what makes you Richard Branson? People consider you charismatic, friendly, funny, good looking? I mean, I don't want to say good looking.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that, that pretty much sums it up.

Yeah.

No, I mean, what makes you effective? I mean, people look up to you as one of the most recognized, successful, fun entrepreneurs on the planet. I mean, what makes you, you.

I think the sort of fun side is perhaps natural. I mean, I think, you know, I've always enjoyed having fun and making sure other people have fun around me, whether it's, you know, building a UFO and flying it over London on April Fool's Day. You know, many. I was quite young when I did that and caused that absolute panic with the, the police force and the army coming out and so on, you know, but I think it's sort of, it's natural. I think other people can, you know, who are maybe not naturally that way inclined. I think they can train themselves to enjoy life more than they perhaps are and they may be taking themselves too seriously. I think they can, you know, if they made it, make a real effort. They can also find a fun side in them. And I think you can train yourself out of, I mean, I, I was a awful public speaker when I was young and you know, some. And the amount of ERs and UMS, I mean, I can now feel them coming back again. You know, somebody once didn't did an interview with me and they cut out all my urs and ums. My urs and ums were longer than the actual words that were there and that. So I think you can. I think you can train yourself, train yourself out of, you know, difficulties. Somebody said to me, the way to, you know, the way to overcome fear of public speaking is just think of yourself. You're in a living room having a chat with some friends. And, you know, and that helped me a lot. So I just, from then on, I just have a chat with friends and, and it seems to seem to manage all right. But, but let's move on to another question I can't remember.

Well, no, no, I want to go a little deeper with that one, just for a minute, though, because, I mean, you. You do some things that other human beings don't do and it makes you really effective. And I, and I've often wondered if you ever identified that or do you really not. Do you really not know? I mean, do you. Do you know what makes you powerful and influential and persuasive and causes people to want to surround themselves with you and get behind your causes and become a client of your businesses? I mean, what's the Richard Branson secret sauce? I mean, do you really know?

Well, look, I think you are only as good as the reputation you've built over many years, and I hope you know that I've managed to build a good reputation and, and therefore, hopefully people can, you know, can trust. Trust me. So, you know, if you, if you look back over Richard Branson's life, there's the exciting side, you know, the, the trying to, you know, be the first to fly around the world in a balloon or, you know, the fastest across the Atlantic in boats and so on. And, and I think that that sort of slightly sort of sexier side of my life, you know, the fun, adventurous side, has also helped the brand and helped make the brand a bit more interesting than say, you know, British Airways, where the chairman, you know, hasn't put his life on the line too often. And then, and then there's the actual companies themselves. The fact that I think we have made it make quite a big difference to people's lives in, you know, whether it's, you know, if you fly on a plane or travel on a train or, you know, or listen to music, etc, you know, I think in a lot of different areas, we've made different differences to people's lives. And so I think we. There is some substance there, you know, hopefully then, you know, it's down to personality, whether you, whether you're good at dealing with people, whether people want to actually spend time with you and, you know, whether you genuinely care about people. And I just extremely lucky. I love people, love spending time with people, love learning from people. And hopefully I'm as good a listener, you know, which I think as a good leader has got to be a great listener. Not not wanting to listen to themselves all the time.

Could you speak to the whole concept of work, like bad work, good work? What is that? Because I think it so much ties into who.

Not how. Are you talking to me or.

Yeah, talking to you, Dan?

Yeah, yeah, the. Yeah, well, you know, it wasn't our idea to get born, you know, I mean, first of all, you have to accept that. And the other thing is that when you arrive, none of the universe was designed with you in mind, okay? So if you accept those two rules that it wasn't your idea to arrive and when you arrived, nothing was designed for you, then, then you've got a, a reference point that's going to be true for the rest of your life. So if things are going to work, I mean, it's very useful to have great parents, you know, and it's very useful to have every bit of help. But I've known a lot of people who had every advantage in the world who never went anywhere because they thought it was supposed to be done for them. So I, you know, I'm a farm boy and I grew up on a farm that was just barely surviving. And I'm a fifth child and I got it real early that you had to be useful. If you weren't useful, you didn't get anything. And so my sense is that it takes a while in our world for your unique abilities. First of all, you have to recognize them. And the people who don't, don't believe in unique ability, who say unique ability is a myth, simply means they haven't identified their unique ability and matched it up with the right work. They have matched it up with the right network of who's and everything. So, you know, people who believe in unique ability believe in 100%. Believe people who don't believe in unique ability absolutely refuse to accept it 100%. It's a choice and it's a courageous choice because you gotta be willing to commit to your unique ability and be courageous before you start getting results in the world. And you know, I've tried the rugged individualist approach to entrepreneurism and to my personal life and you know, I didn't need to get hit in the head more than three or four times. I said, you know, this is not, this is just a stupid way to proceed. And I've got Some useful skills. And my skills get more useful when I match them up with someone else's really great skills. So, yeah, I'm 76, and I don't intend the next 25 years till I'm 100 or 24 years till I'm 100 to be difficult. I don't intend it to be hard. I don't. And my goals for age 100 are incredibly bigger than what we're doing right now. So, you know, I mean, try it. You know, I mean, the only way to do is take the idea and start with your personal life. You know, if there's part of your personal life where you're doing work, you don't, like, hire somebody or get somebody in to do it, you don't have to hire them full time and, you know, maybe it's four hours a week and just see what it feels like to have somebody else who's really good at something to handle part of your life. You can do this bit by bit, but after a while, you realize that your financial goals are so you can hire more who. So all my financial goals are hiring more who's skilled, who's. The greatest freedom in my life is to have better and better who's in my life. So how much is that going to cost? Whatever it takes. So my goals keep going up and I'm not hiring who's to get to my financial goals. I'm getting to my financial goals so.

I can hire who's for Everything I know about you, you're a very generous, giving guy. And of course you have to make hard business decisions and stuff because you have a, you know, I mean, depending on how detailed you want to get, you have a million things that you could attend to. What was it about how you approached him that you believe caused him to give you that time? Because there's certainly some people that are opportunists, but they approach someone in a way that doesn't engender them wanting to help them. It actually makes them want to run away. Do you know what that is about you?

Yeah.

So I know that both on how I approached him and then how others have approached me, good and bad. And so when I approached Fred, I was just, wow, really impressed with what you've built in a sincere way. And wasn't trying to flatter him or manipulate. I just was really, wow, I couldn't believe I got to meet him. And I said, you know, I've got some questions and I'd really love to run them by you. And I think he could Tell that I was sincere and that I had real questions. And he maybe saw a little bit of himself in me or something or a little bit of me in him when he was a kid. And it just, it seemed to work. And so people reach out to me all the time. And I always try and say yes to someone who sends me an email, as long as it feels real and there isn't a hidden agenda. And nothing's more frustrating than when you get on a phone call and you find that right away it was just to pitch you on something.

Yeah.

But if somebody really wants help and needs help, I think entrepreneurs, it's just like an unwritten rule to help those that need help in the same space. Because we all got help.

Yeah.

And we know how hard it is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And when I say hard. Let me, let me, let me reframe that or at least talk about hard, because I said this funny thing. I even mentioned it yesterday when I was doing another interview where I said it at an event once. I said, if I would have known how difficult it would have been to be successful, I would have stuck with being a loser.

Right.

Because there's a lot of work involved in it.

Right.

And, you know, I say in a funny way, and look, I love my business, I love my life. There's definitely difficulties and challenges. Now is a better time than I've ever had. But, man, there are some days, weeks, years that were just hard. I mean, just gut wrenching difficult. And you know, there's. Because your book is called Willing to Fail, you have a frame of how you think about this stuff. So do you enjoy hard or how do you think about the term hard? Because we hear a lot of people advising, work hard, do a lot of hard work. And, you know, and there's this work smart, not work hard. In a lot of ways, it's work hard on smart things. You know, I mean, that's. But not all the time because you can totally burn out too. And you've probably. I'm sure you've hit burnout stages. Of course. So I'd love to hear you talk about what hard means to you and how you operate within it.

Yeah, I love what I do. So many times it doesn't feel hard. Even when things go wrong, it's still like, oh, cool, we got a challenge to overcome here. And you want things to go as planned. You want your sales targets to happen. You know, let me tell you a story about how I think I would define hard. So putting together the book with Roy Williams we're sitting down and we're trying to. I was trying to come up with the title. I just felt like that's the first. That's the starting point of a book. What's the title?

Right?

He said, no, no, no, we're going to put together the manuscript, we're going to close the book, the title will pop out. And I said, roy, I'm a branding guy.

Wow.

One day painting Shaq Shine 1-800-got junk. Like, I start with brands. He said, it doesn't work like that in books. So he said, we'll close it off and I promise you the title will jump out. So after rereading the book, the title jumped out, wtf? Willing to fail. Because I realized it was failure, Learn, Succeed. Failure, Learn, Succeed, Fail. And so reframing for me, those failures aren't hard. Those failures are gifts. I mean, on Christmas, doesn't everyone love opening presents? I'm like, I got another gift here. And while some people might go, yeah, it's easy to say, you've built a 400 plus million dollar business. No, I've always felt that way. I've always felt that there is a gift in every failure. I just need to recognize and learn what could be better that will come from that failure as a result of that learning. And so the number one thing I'll do, and yes, I'm human. Yes, I get days where I'm depressed and I'm in bed for three days and don't know what to do because of a failure. But when I'm ready, I take out a sheet of paper and I write down, what's the one thing better than where I am now that can come from this seeming failure? And I'll write stuff down and I commit to just writing one thing. Sometimes it's 10 things. But I've never been let down. Every failure has led me to a better place.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You're either winning or you're learning. And if you know how to learn from the failures, then you still win. Ultimately, if it doesn't, simply yeah, yeah.

And I mean, you've met more entrepreneurs I can imagine than anyone on the planet. Have you ever met an entrepreneur that hasn't failed over and over and over?

Yeah, no, it doesn't happen. I mean, have you ever met an.

Athlete that hasn't failed over, like it's life, you know?

You know what's interesting about failure? There's some celebration of failure that I think gets improperly celebrated. Meaning no one likes to fail, no one wants to fail. And I think getting up and saying, hey, you know, we're just going to go at it, and we're going to fail. There's a lot of people that just screw that up. There's other people that just know it's just part of the process. You know, in the same way that if you're going to go through a difficult workout, you're going to exert effort and failure on the path of success is just part of the path of success. And it's the road. It's part of the road. What's the difference between being willing to fail versus being reckless or unprepared or having just a terrible, undoable business model? And someone's enthusiasm is far more exhibited than any form of intelligence. Yeah.

I mean, when I'm saying be willing to fail, it's not being reckless. So let me give an analogy for a second. That's real life. One of my daughters, you know, four years ago, she comes out of ski school. We're all a family of skiers, and she comes out of ski school. She's like, I hate this. It's not for me.

This sucks.

And I go, why don't you like it? She goes, because I keep falling, and it hurts. And I said, no, no, you don't understand. Falling is how you get better. You fall, you reflect on why you fell and what you'll do differently, and then you get better. No one becomes a great skier by not falling. So the next day, she goes to ski school, she comes back, she goes, guess what? I fell today. And big smile on her face. And I was like, that's awesome. A, because it taught me that, like, my wisdom actually sunk, but, B, that she understood that that's a process.

Yeah.

And so I think people just have to recognize it's as much of a part of success as getting anything right. In fact, it's probably a bigger part.

Yeah.

You know, we in life, we watch sports and we celebrate, you know, the NBA championships. But if you think of this year, our team, the Toronto Raptors, gets there. It was all the mistakes that led up to it that I hope those players remembered and celebrated in their minds. When I look back, when we hit our goals, the stories that stand out that we talk about over and over weren't the, like, wow, this was easy.

Right?

It was the pain, it was the trauma. It was the, oh, my gosh, do you remember when we didn't have this? And that makes life sweet.

Totally. You know, and when I sit and ask entrepreneurs to think of the greatest breakthroughs they've had 99% of the time those things came out of pain. It's turning shit into fertilizer. I mean, it really, it's taking something that's adverse and being able to transform it.

Yeah.

And when you're in that fertilizer or sorry, in the shit, you don't understand necessarily that something great is going to come from that. But you have to be open to that possibility and have a little bit of faith. And I don't mean that in a religious type way, but just like, just have some trust that you know what, that is going to bring you to a better place. Just allow it and be okay with that. And you know, I think when you talk to entrepreneurs and even if I think of my own breakthroughs, I don't think I was aware of the breakthrough the day that that bad thing happened.

Right.

It was time that went by where I started to reflect and think, oh, you know what? It was that moment that taught me this.

Well, I'm not a marketing person, so I'm going to talk to you about marketing. So think about it. There's nothing more powerful than a changed mind. And I'm not talking about changing your client's mind, I'm talking about changing your own mind. Because success is in your mind. You decide when you are happy, you decide when you are unhappy. You may think it's your children, it's your client, it's someone else who gives you happiness. But imagine if someone who gives you happiness, you're giving the remote control of your happiness to them. The same people who make you happy have a power to make you unhappy. Happy, unhappy, happy, unhappy. Right? You don't ever want to give control of your happiness. Every one of us here is so focused on going out and becoming successful that they forget that after being successful, you still have to go out and become significant. How do you become significant? How do you find the happiness? How do you find the fulfillment? Interestingly, the human body, our DNA is designed for us to be generous. Because we realize when we were way back when in the tribes, we realized if we didn't help each other, we all die. Our DNA says the only way we survive in the long term is when we take care of each other. Then why is it that we constantly try to play tricks on our mind or play tricks on our client's mind for them to do something that they are not intended to do. Think about, when we hire people, what do we do? We take advantage of basic chemical in our brain called dopamine. We give them a goal if you meet this goal, you get this bonus. If you do this, you get a promotion. If you do this, you get this. It's a constant dopamine hit. And what happens is they get addicted to the dopamine and they constantly keep doing it. And at the end of the end of the day they all fall, feel unfulfilled because dopamine only lasts for very little time, short time. And they all feel down because you have let them down. The only way you can build relationship is like thinking of your employees, thinking of your clients, same as your children. So I'm going to say that being an entrepreneur and the best successful marketing is treating everyone around you just like you will treat your children. Interesting thing about being a parent is there is nothing that you do gives you the instant result. You don't go to your children and do something and hoping something will change. Nothing changes. But guess what happens five years later, 10 years later, you look and say, oh my God, what a wonderful kids they have grown up to be. And that's what it takes. In fact, building that trust and safety that you do for your children is what creates the long term sustainable relationships. And if you don't do that, what you have a short term relationship. Imagine. So what I can tell you is that as a father, one of the things we have done with our children is amazing. We let them know that our love for them is unconditional. There is never they have to ever worry about do we love them, but our approval is not approval. They have to earn, but they never have to worry about do we love them. And one thing that I have absolutely religiously followed, there is never a time when our children will call that I will not answer. There's never will happen. So imagine if ever they call you. It doesn't matter what I am doing. There's nothing more important to me than taking that call. I want them to know that I am willing to give them my time because that's one thing I don't have enough of, is the time. But they have that, that is a true love in some sense. When you're thinking about as a parent, you have to start thinking about what is it that's important and what lessons can you possibly give impart to them that is meaningful. So one thing that I've learned is the living a life of significance and teaching our children about how to grow up in a family that actually is doing really well. So for me, growing up in India was easy. We were poor, we didn't have food, we could struggle and Came to this country with $5 in my pocket. And God has been amazingly kind to us with that kindness. There was tremendous amount of burden that I feel. And the burden came because there were so many people in my life who helped me become who I am. I tried to find these people, tried to help them. They didn't need my help. And that was really way for me to figure out what can I do to pay my debt back. And I realized if I can't pay back, I can certainly pay forward. And I decided I'm going to do what I can to help as many people as I can. And one of the things I learned was that fulfillment only comes from something that is so basic about truly caring about others. And just like you would take care of your children. And only story I can tell you what true care is a story that my mother told me when I was young. Remember, my mother was completely illiterate. She cared that even though we were poor, she was illiterate. That I study. She will wake me up at 5 in the morning, ask me, read this and tell me what the answer to this question is in the math. I didn't know that she couldn't read. I will say, mom, the answer is seven. She said, don't make me look, do it again and I'll do it again. Say mom. Answer is seven. She said, good, now go to the next one. Point was she cared. The story that she told me that I still touches my heart. She said there was one kid who grew up and wanted to join a gang. And the part of joining the gang, the gang says, I don't think you are quite ready. And I know you are ready when you can go in, take your mother, cut her off and take the heart out. And I want a beating heart. And if you can bring that, we know you're ready to do what is it it takes. The young man goes there, finds a mother, stops her from breathing, cuts her heart, brings the beating heart in his own hand. And he's walking back and he trips over and the heart says, son, are you okay? She didn't care what he did. What she cared was, is he okay? And that's what the unconditional love is about. So if you think about it, can you truly care for people who are employees in your company? Don't think of them as resources by calling having a department called human resources. They are not a resource for you. They are your family. So when you tell them you're joining a family, do you really mean it? And if you treat your family that way I worry about you. I really honestly worry about you, that if you treat your family that way. So one of the things we do always in our family is that what we do out of love for our children is not necessarily right. So I can give you some really example that I think we did for our children that I think is fundamentally, I think you guys can at least get some wisdom out of it. When our daughter was 16 year old, she came to me and said, dad, I found my true passion. I know what I want to do. And I know you love science and technology. I want nothing to do with it. As a father, my easiest thing for me to do would have been, you know, my doll, what is it that you want to do? I will find you the world's best and pursue your passion. To me that was same as saying, I don't give a shit, just do whatever you want. You know what I did, I cared. And I said, you know, you have to let me do a job as a father. What's father's job? Father job is really simple. Let me expose you to enough things because you don't even know what you don't know yet. And she said, well, so what is it that you would like me to do? And I say, I would like you to go to Singularity University, learn about neuroscience, learn about artificial intelligence, learn about nanotechnology, and say, dad, I know you don't hear me one word. I say, did I just not tell you I have no interest in science and technology? And I said, well, if you make me a promise, you're going to go there for four weeks, learn about all these things with an open mind, wanting to learn and wanting to like. I make you a promise that when you come back, you get to do what you want. She came back. The first thing she did was open the door and said, dad, I made up my mind. You know what I told her? I said, darl, first thing honestly was, oh, shit. Then I say, well, I gave you my word. Tell me, what is it that you would like to do? She said, dad, I've decided I'm going to be either a neuroscientist or a genetist. And I imagine that I said, doll, at the risk of changing your mind, would you tell me what made you change your mind? He said, dad, you're so dumb, you don't realize that I go to high school, I mix these chemicals, I learned these science, and I say, why do I really care? When I went to Singularity University, I realized you knew I care about girls. Education. I realized, until I learned about the human brain, how can I change education? Until I learn about genetics, how can I take care of their health? So I realized science and technology is not a destination. It's simply a tool in my tool chest to do what I care about. Imagine that 16 year old, and if I didn't do what I did, the world would have lost out on a great scientist and she would have never found her true passion. So at the end, what I would tell you would be, as Peter said, if I ask people, what would you die for? Is there anything who would tell me, what would you die for? In this room, I can tell you, most people will say what I would say. Our children, there is nothing else in our life we would die for. And if I were to ask you, what are you living for? These very few of them say, I live for my children. Imagine if there's one thing you could go out and learn is live for your children. If you're willing to die for them, live for them. Give them your time. Treat your employees like children. Don't think anything when you go out. You know, I go out with my wife and tell my children, don't call me because I'm having my private time. Guess what happens when they grow up? Don't call me. I'm having a private time.

Right.

If you don't care about them, they won't care about you. So just go out and make sure that if you're willing to die for them, live for them.

A lot of people in business talk about changing the world and making an impact, and very few people actually do it. And so you often say you want to change 100 million lives. And so are you really doing that?

I mean, that's the goal. It's obviously a stretch goal. We have doled out hundreds of millions of burpees to people, right? And so if you measure a change in somebody's life, like I do, which is getting, like getting you to do those burpees, like, and then you tell 10 friends, oh, yeah.

I mean, I've influenced hundreds of people, right?

And it's not just burpees. It might be going for a run, it might be carrying a kettlebell. Although no one, no one's picking that up as a pastime. Yeah, it's not going viral like the.

Burpees did, man, I swear, you should freaking like you should. This is a marketing idea, because I can't help myself. But you should just have Spartan branded kettlebells and just, you should have sponsors. Once they win, they're able to lug a kettle ball around for a year, document it on social media and after they do that, they get some special meeting with you. You would have enough crazy bastards lugging around.

People are not picking that one up. But if you measure lives change that way it's possible we could get 100 million. Now, we're not going to get 100 million people to come out and do a race, but if they could sprinkle a little Spartan in their life, maybe they take a cold shower, maybe they do some burpees, maybe they go for a run, maybe they sign up for another event and that motivates them to do stuff. Maybe they get their kids off video games. That's the goal.

Okay, so can you talk about the revenues and stuff of where you're at.

Right now, like how big you're going to rough numbers. So this year we hope to hit 1.2 million participants. It's roughly $100 to do a race. Then they buy some clothing and some other things. And so you could do the math and figure out the size of the business. It's 250 events in 41 countries. And the real switching gears, a real business opportunity is can, can we become a lifestyle brand? Yeah, right. That word I joke with Richard Branson, right? Like if you. For me, I think spartan's a better word than virgin, but you know, that's just me. And so that's a powerful word. What can we do with it?

Virgin, Spartan. I mean there's, what is, what does a Spartan mean? What does it mean and what does it mean to you?

So like everybody conjures up an image in their head with when they hear the word Spartan.

Right?

It might be an image from the movie 300. It might be a spartan life where you're sleeping on the floor or on a futon. A simpler life. It's less words. Say more with less. Right. And so even across the 40 plus countries, no matter where we go, everybody has those same images in their head. And look, I think certainly in the first world we have too much stuff. And when I think about nutrition, I think I want to sell less stuff. I don't think cabinets should be filled with protein powders and all that. I don't think you need all that. When I think about training, I don't think you need these fancy, fancy gyms. I think body weight exercises covers most of it. Maybe you don't need a full time four year education at Cornell University. Right? Maybe you can get it done like you're suggesting. So I'm a big believer in less is more. Now if it was 400 years ago, I might be sitting here talking about like we need couches.

Right.

People are broken. Right. So. But in the first world, it's tough right now because we have too much.

How long ago did you start Spartan? And what I mean, so this is. You've grown tremendously. So I want to talk about community. Yeah.

So this is eight. An 18 year overnight success. Right. So 2000. You're gonna love this story.

I don't know.

It's gonna be on video. You're gonna. Can I say something? And you cut this part out.

Yeah, yeah.

Just make a note of it.

So in 2000, I bought the URL peak.com p e a k.com and that was my brand. In my mind I was gonna build a social network for lunatics that would climb Everest and go on long runs. And it was too early. And my product was a 350 mile. There was nobody that was willing to sign up for it. There was no social network. I was focused on Wall Street. I didn't have the time. But I paid a million dollars for Peak.com and I messed around for 10 years and I lost millions of dollars and I just couldn't make it work. In 2010 I got serious, changed the name, changed the format, against my will. 3 miles, 8 miles, 13 miles. Facebook existed. Tons of veterans coming back. CrossFit, it was just the right time. And Hockey stick, it took off. Four days ago. I got a call, somebody wanted to buy peak.com and like literally I've been playing a tape for 18 years. What an idiot. Who would pay a million dollars for. I'm such a jerk. 4.5 million dollar bid 4 days ago for peak.com? right.

Did you sell it?

I just got an email. The cash cleared.

Wow.

I can't even. I figured there's no way anybody. No one's paying. I can't believe it. My luck, I probably sold it $4 million too cheap, but. Unbelievable.

Luckily you weren't on the fax program.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

Well, that's awesome. And so explain to people what the races actually are or what it actually is so they get a context of it and everyone, you know, the red for the blood and all of that stuff. I mean there's some interesting stuff.

Yeah.

So it's not. It's not hokey in any way. It doesn't feel like the Renaissance Games. Everything we did had to be athletic and legitimate. And so I went back and we look, even in the ancient world, the original Olympics, you know, back when the Spartans actually existed, or even the modern Olympics 100 years ago, or military training 100 years ago. And it's really no different. It's scaling walls, it's climbing ropes, it's crawling under barbed wire. It's all the things that a human being, from a mechanical standpoint, should be able to do. We should be able to crawl, climb, jump, and we sit and we type, and that's all we do.

Right.

And so we're actually learning helplessness. And so I'm trying to make people harder to kill. Did you guys see that? There was Apple news yesterday, I think, or the day before. There was a runner in Colorado attacked by a mountain lion. Choked it out. Choked it out, killed it himself. Right. Like, that's what we're doing. We're trying to make people harder to kill. Like, you know, you may want to.

Get that guy for your next spokesperson.

We already spoke to him. He's like, I gotta recover a few days in the hospital before I'm ready.

Wow.

Yeah. No, I want to. I said, get him on the phone. I want to go right to the hospital. He's like, I need a few days to recover. I'm still getting stitched up. Yeah. That's awesome. By the way, I was at the Explorers Club. You've heard of the Explorers Club in New York, Right. There is a stuffed lion on the wall. And same exact story from, you know, 80 years ago, where one of these explorers literally choked out a lion by sticking his arm down the lion's throat and choking him. And the Explorers Club president that's explaining the story is like, I don't know if it's true or not. But then when you hear this story, it's like, you know, you're fighting for your life.

Yeah. That is.

Wow. Right?

So, all right, so people, explain a little bit of the logistics. If someone signs up for a Spartan race, what are their options in terms of the length? In terms of.

So it's three miles. First of all, 99% of the people are going to finish. Really? The imagery is scary. The word Spartan is a little scary. Right. But it scares you into training, to not drinking as much, to waking up a little earlier. That's what it's meant to do. But 100% you're going to finish the thing.

Well, almost everyone that goes through it actually will swear that they've had a total life change.

Life change, yeah. Now, again, if we were in the Third World, somebody would do it. And Say that was a joke. The way I live every day is tougher than that. Right. But just because we learn helplessness and we're living the way we live, it's like a little bit of a rite of passage.

Yeah. Who is the community, where are they coming from and how do they engage outside of your core product of just the races?

You know, I mean, you guys are pros at marketing. And I wish I could say, like my answer may be a terrible answer, which is it's a marine, it's a mom, it's a monk. Literally. Monks show up in robes. It's big, tall, short, skinny, fat. It's everybody. It doesn't matter what country, what culture. So people just don't feel first world. You just don't feel alive. You don't feel good.

Right.

You have it a little too easy. And so a friend signs up and then a friend gets eight buddies to come out and it's a 6 million person community. And they get tattoos and they feel like they're part of this tribe, this Spartan tribe. And there's nothing negative about the brand. That's just a positive brand. And you know, if you went into a restaurant, you'd see right away who the Spartans were. And once you've suffered through this, like you don't. Like you cut me off. That's all you got. Like, I'm not running through barbed wire right now. Like. Right. So yeah.

So you know, it's interesting. Like we had talked about this before. So you have a ton of. You have like an economy within Spartan that with some good marketing on this. Just because we have a room full of marketers. How much water is consumed during a Spartan race?

I mean you're.

And where does it come from? Do you have a water sponsor?

No, it's ridiculous. You know, the problem is. This is going to sound crazy, but I would welcome. I am help agnostic. Anybody can give us help. The problem is even the big companies, even Aribach, who was our sponsor for a while, they're not big enough to handle us. Because that sounds crazy, but like for them to execute in 40 plus countries, it's just too much of a nightmare for those employees to figure it out.

Right?

Look at Clif Bar. Clif Bar came on as a partner of ours. They branded 100 million bars for us. 100. Who could do that? They do 800 million in sales. Right. So that's the problem is it's not unsolvable. You know, Rakuten next week I gotta get. Rakuten's having a Conference here next week, I'm coming back. And they're a digital company so they can execute across like they get it right. So they became a giant partner of ours this year.

I mean, think of the opportunities here with the right partnership with 6 million people that are pursuing betterment.

It's big. It's big. Can you do a race every year? You're going to do a race every year? Oh, about a million. A little over a million. Yep. And the thing is, and I'm not saying this to be self serving, you'd see it if you came out, if anybody was doing the race right now and you're at mile two, three, whatever, you're climbing a hill, you're exhausted, you're sweating and all of a sudden there is a Clif Bar there to give you nutrition. You'll never stop eating. Like the psychological, the connection, the neural pathways that get connected. Right. I'm dying. Clif Bar saved me. That's it. Rest of your life.

You know what's funny? I went scuba diving in Hawaii and I remember getting like, this is the first time I ever scuba dived and I was so thirsty and so hungry. When I got out, I ate pineapple and it was the most delicious pineapple I'd ever eaten in my life. And it totally, it just wired something in my head about pineapple.

Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly, exactly.

Right. Wow.

On the subject of sponsors and the difficulty of getting a big enough sponsor to sponsor the event, if you had the right system, you could do regional sponsors.

Right?

Just like we do regional and we do local, I'm, we do lots of them. And so I'm probably answering this wrong. I'm a bit snobbish. I don't know if that's the right word. I want some big global partners. It's easier for me, selfishly. Right. And the other thing is, so for example, in Spain, Mercedes Benz is a partner, right. In China, Infiniti is a partner. In Japan, BMW. It's ridiculous because when I put this stuff out on social, it bleeds across markets. So like, who is it? Is it Infiniti, is it BMW? Is it Mercedes Benz? And I'm banging my head against the wall in meetings with Germany, with BMW. Like, I don't understand if it's good enough in Japan, why don't you just do a global deal with us? Mercedes, if it's good enough. It's just mind boggling.

How many media impressions are like in a last year, if you could.

So it's 1 million plus, by the way. I Use numbers loosely. So like it could be 1.2 million per month. Uniques come to our website. I remember when we did the deal with Reebok, it was a crazy number in the first quarter. We got like 500 million impressions or something. Some crazy number. Because the reason is. And this is one to think about you and I talk about this. I take 8 million photos a year. I take 8 photos of each person.

Right?

Think about those photos get shared by everybody. How do I not have an owner? How does Canon or Nikon or somebody not put their name on 8 million? I don't get it.

Doesn't even make.

It only cost me a million dollars a year to shoot those 8 million. Like who doesn't pay a million dollars to put their name on that?

What would you pay for that?

No, no, I would take. I just want my cost eliminated. I don't.

Right.

Like it's gotta be worth a million dollars.

So if someone gave you a million bucks, you would.

8 million photos that are gonna share all over the world in 40. Are you crazy? Who doesn't own that shop?

It's.

Yeah, yeah.

We should come up with some headbands. I put 1.2 million headbands on people that get seen in all those. Like anyway, it's just craziness.

Don't use a sponsor, just private label.

Make them yourself. Well, I do. I mean, right now they say Spartan, right? And those photos say Spartan. But I want to eliminate the cost.

Okay.

I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to to click here. And if you want to watch some more videos that will be useful and awesome, click here. Go ahead, you're over here. Do it now.

Come on.

Thank you. Watch them.