How to Make the IMPOSSIBLE Possible? Feat. Tony Robbins and Brian Tracy

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— if you're going to accomplish anything, it's— people are laughing because you know it's bullshit, right? What's true is life-work integration. So I was just in 21 countries— or 7 countries, 21 days. 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 huffed it together. In the 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, I 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 that are 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 go in the corner and chitchat. 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. Let me go do something fun, some of that nature. But in the middle of all that craziness, we were stuck for 2 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 coworkers, some are partners I have in business. But we went 70 kilometers below the equator and just— or excuse me, the Arctic. Went 200 miles an hour in 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, who wants to do that shit? I was able to squeeze in a Porsche, and if you can imagine 200 kilometers 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 didn't have to have it, because when you wrecked, you just went straight into the snow. It was just incredible. But we do crazy things together. We have a blast together. We laugh. We cry. We see the impact. And to me, there is no dividing line. And for my kids, all the work we do feeding people— my youngest son, Jerick, when he was 5 or maybe 6, probably 5, we would go— and even in the early days, I was feeding families. And I'd take all my friends, and we'd build these baskets up and make them great. And we'd 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 a 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 year 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 him, 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. And so it's 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 then you really aren't contributing because you're trading off. You're not giving. Great.

Great.

Yeah, ditto. I think I'm a 9-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 like I push myself more than 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 it because your parents told you, because you heard it 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, 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 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?

Well, 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, so 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, and how many times has science showed something's impossible and now science shows it's It's possible. Things are impossible until somebody does it. And so I find that, you know, most of you are business people. You look at businesses and what does it take to make a business grow? It's not impossible to make a business grow. A 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 depressed, you know, something, you know, you're gonna 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, people, it takes 3 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 TEDMed 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've spent my whole life figuring out strategies. As we both know, a strategy could save you a decade. In business, strategy could save you, you know, 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've 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. 'Cause 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 coworkers, to me that's one of the most important decisions in life to make. If you asked me out of all the people I've met, all the things I've seen, What creates a magnificent life? Everybody has goals and dreams that are different. Some people want a picket fence, some want to make a billion dollars, some want to have this huge breakthrough in technology, some people want to write beautiful poetry. Whatever is right for people is what I want them for themselves. I don't want them 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 and make it real. And if you don't, you can learn from somebody who does. You know, the 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 2 weeks or 2 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 know, 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. You might want to call it luck if you prefer, God, in the 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, you're 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. 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 businessperson or 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 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 you go in 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. I want to make my own TV show, he did. 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.

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 in the description, or you can wait till the end of this video, or you can simply go to joesfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

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's suffering and all suffering I've ever seen, I've traveled to 100 countries, I've dealt with presidents of countries and 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. You say, "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. 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 member 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 that happens every 2 years and you move back, we should talk." 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 going to happen, I say make a decision now that says, I'm going to live in a beautiful state and I'm going to find beauty in whatever life brings me because life is too short not to. I see a little buddy over here named Sean. I remember when I got a phone call from the Make-A-Wish Foundation, say, "We have a young man who's about to die and he wants to meet you." 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." They said, "Take him across the fire?" I said, "If he coughs, he'll break a rib." I said, "I'll be really gentle. We're going to do this thing." And he did it. And afterwards I sat down with him and 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? From '36, I was 19. You were 19 and 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 is Sean lives in a beautiful state. 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—

I'm married.

Oh, you're married now? Okay, well, good. I'm glad to hear it. It's about frickin' time, all right, John? It's good to see you grew up. Now, the bottom line is this young man over here who now is different stage of life, he's always been who he is. 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 that? Are people going to be mean? Yes or no? Are people going to be unfair and unjust? Yes or no? Are people going to be beautiful and generous? Yes or no? You just never know when that shit's going to 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 going to 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 do 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 gonna 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 in 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.

Wow. Now say something better than that. I mean, like, let's, let's really see how good you are here.

Oh God, you know, this guy goes, my mom, like, There's no way to follow this. What the hell was the question?

He doesn't have to say anything. 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 see a show of 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 what he's able to create because of it. He is a 9-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 and mindset and so forth.

Yeah.

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 increase my— or reduce my sales by 10%, save 10% more of 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 10 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, 3 magical things happen. Number 1, 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, you know, the infrastructure that you've built to let yourself go. You know, 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 on to. 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, you know, 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 on board 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 what 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. 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 who do you— 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? 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 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. 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 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 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 in your network is showing you airplane accident, airplane accident, airplane accident. What problem is that the news networks never tell you, there was no school shooting today at this school, you know, or there was 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.

What actually makes a successful business that most of what is taught in the entrepreneurship faculties of the universities is nonsense. In fact, if you— he said that there's something like 1,687 professors of entrepreneurship, and their primary focus is drinking their own bathwater and telling that entrepreneurs have to have a business plan, and if you have a business plan, you'll be successful. And they spent 2 years in their faculties teaching people how to set business plans, and 49 out of 50 businesses are started without a business plan. Including some of the most successful businesses in the world today. So we are now just starting to learn what we really need to do to build successful businesses. And what Joe is doing here is absolutely marvelous because it can save you years of hard work, hundreds, even thousands of hours of hard work to understand how to do it much, much faster, to shortcut. We say there's always a learning curve in anything, and what we want to do is we're going to jump the learning curve. We don't want to spend years and years learning what we need to learn to reach a certain level of income. And so I've majored now in the last few years on doing seminars and talking and books and articles and programs for owners and would-be owners of small and medium-sized businesses. Now I've got 45 minutes, so I'm going to have to condense what sometimes I share in seminars for days, but I understand you're some of the smartest people in the world so that you could take a lot of information in a short period of time. Is that true? Did anybody not understand the question? So I'm going to try to bottom-line several of the concepts. One of the first concepts which I thought was interesting was a little story that was in the papers recently. Warren Buffett, who is one of the richest men in the world, and Bill Gates, who is the richest man in the world, and Bill Gates Sr. were at a dinner party, and the three of them are good friends, and they were talking. And a gentleman came up to them and said, you know, I was looking at you, and you gentlemen are very successful. What would you say is the most important quality of success? And all three, according to a bystander, all three broke off their conversation and turned and simultaneously said, focus. Focus is the most important requirement for success in our fast-moving world today. If you can focus, you can succeed, and if you cannot, you cannot. It's almost a black and white thing. Well, I thought that was interesting because the way Joe and I met is I put together a program some years ago called the Focal Point Program, which basically brought in business owners like yourselves and taught them to focus. And we spent 3 years going through every single aspect of life. We had 82 exercises that dealt with family and business and marketing and product and service and competition and positioning, and it was focus, focus, focus. And my offer, which is not as good as Joe Polish Polish's, but my offer was that you will double your income and double your time off within 12 months, or there'll be no charge for this program. And I never had to give a refund. In fact, many people doubled and tripled their income within 30 days just by learning to focus and just by thinking in terms of focus. So it's really, really important. I read an article about myself. It was a very successful entrepreneur in New Zealand, and the article was sent to me last week. I'm reading this article, and he said the turning point in his life was when he went to a Brian Tracy seminar and learned how to focus. He was broke, he was unemployed, he had no money, and he walked out of the seminar a completely different person, and he had written goals. He then looked around, and as it happens, he saw an article on coffee shops and Starbucks' success in the United States. And it said coffee shops are a good business to be in because more and more people like the idea of a specialty coffee shop, and if it has Wi-Fi, then they go there, it becomes a social center and so on. He knew nothing about coffee, and before the dust had settled, he owned 80 coffee shops in Australia and New Zealand. And then he says he got into a divorce and had to sell it for $50 million. To share the proceeds with his wife. But he did not share, he did not sell off the worldwide rights to it, so he's rebuilding. Anyway, his point was at the end of the article they said, well, what would you say to aspiring entrepreneurs who want to be successful? And he said just two things. He said focus and fail fast. Focus and fail fast. Learn quickly, try something new. And I thought I would just pass that on because it's sort of what I have discovered over the years. Is the faster you fail and learn, the faster you succeed. You actually learn to succeed by failing. You know, Thomas J. Watson's famous line, if you want to increase your rate of success, you must double your rate of failure because success lies on the far side of failure.

So I have a question that's a little more personal in nature. I'm wondering when you first started— and no, yes. When you first started and you were getting everything going, did you find it challenging at all to have any kind of balance? And 'cause I know you love your kids so much and you love your wife so much. 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 possibly it's the advantage of owning your own company. And that is I've always worked from home. So I've never worked from an office. When I say never, not pretty well never. Right in the early days, I'd pop in a lot to our record company. And so I originally worked in a— in a houseboat. The kids would be crawling around on the floor. I'd be having meetings with people. I might even be changing a nappy. So the kids literally grew up with me as we were building the Virgin empire. And then when the kids' holiday time came, we would pack the bags, and I would just move my office Tenerife Island. And so I would always be around my family. I suspect we're closer than a lot of families because of that. Yes, I would spend quite a lot of time on the phone, and I'd be busy. But we were around each other. Now, I think if there's any lessons to be learned from that for other people, I mean, I do think— I 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 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 balance is absolutely critical. And making sure that you bring up great kids who are happy and, you know, loving, and you found that time for them is critical because they are going to be the next generation.

Um, you know, what is your unique ability? I mean, what makes you Richard Branson? People consider you charismatic, friendly, funny. Um, I don't want to say good-looking. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that pretty much sums it up. Yeah, no, I mean, what, what, what, what makes you effective? I mean, so, you know, people look up to you as one of the most recognized, uh, successful, fun entrepreneurs on the planet. I mean, what, what makes you you?

I think, I think the, um, the, the sort of The fun side is perhaps natural. I mean, I think I've always enjoyed having fun and making sure other people have fun around me, whether it's building a UFO and flying it over London on April Fool's Day. I was quite young when I did that and caused absolute panic with the police force and the army coming out and so on. It's natural. I think other people 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 if they make a real effort, they can also find the fun side in them. And I think you can train yourself out of— I mean, I was an awful public speaker when I was young. And the amount of ers and ums, I can now feel them coming back again. Somebody once did an interview with me, and they cut out all my ers and ums. And my ers and ums were longer than the actual words that were there. So I think you can train yourself. Train yourself out of difficulties. Somebody said to me, 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 that helped me a lot. So from then on, I just have a chat with friends, and it seems to manage all right. 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 do some things that other human beings don't do, and it makes you really effective. And I've often wondered, have you ever identified that, or do you really not know? I mean, 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 is the— 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 Therefore, hopefully people can trust me. So if you look back over Richard Branson's life, there's the exciting side. They're trying to be the first to fly around the world in a balloon, or the fastest across the Atlantic in boats, and so on. And I think that slightly sexier side of my life the fun adventurous side has also helped the brand and helped make the brand a bit more interesting than, say, British Airways, where the chairman hasn't put his life on the line too often. And then there's the actual companies themselves, the fact that I think we have made quite a big difference to people's lives, whether it's you fly on a plane or travel on a train or listen to music, et cetera. I think in a lot of different areas we've made differences to people's lives. And so I think there is some substance there. Hopefully then it's down to personality, whether you're good at dealing with people, whether people want to actually spend time with you, and whether you genuinely care about people. And I'm just extremely lucky. I love people, love spending time with people, love learning from people. As good a listener, uh, you know, which I think as a good leader's got to be a great listener, not, not wanting to listen to themselves all the time.

What's the key to success? You just had it. And, uh, there's no shortcuts, and it doesn't take any genius. Well, no offense. Uh, it just takes starting and completing your most important task. And if you'll just do that get my book, Eat That Frog.

It's a—

and I'm not trying to sell books because you don't get very much with a book. But the thing is, the book is now 50 languages. Can you imagine that? 50 languages, 2.5 million copies. And by the way, it's probably closer to 10 million because there are several countries like Iran that don't pay royalties and other have published the book without telling anybody. So it's published all over the world, but they cheat you on the royalties. So it's probably 10 million copies of it have been sold. And so that's my starting point and everything else. Here's another thing, by the way, and I love what the lady was saying about values. I had a good friend, maybe you know him, his name is Mark Waldman. And Mark came to my office when we were doing our coaching program some years ago and just, he just dropped in. He lives in Northern California, San Francisco. And he said, I said, so what's happening in your life? Is it a break? He said, well, I've come up with a new question. And he said, I'm just walking around teaching everybody. And the question is, what is my most important value in life right now? What is my most important value in life right now? And I thought, geez, that's a great question because all of us think about values and are impressed by values. So I asked everybody in the room, what is your most important value in life right now? And he said, you have to ask this question every day, all day long for a week. Every day, just keep asking the question. Your first answer will be, you know, love and truth and God and things like that. Just keep asking the question. And keep drilling down deeper, keep drilling and drilling until you finally, the most important value pops out and that can change your life. And so what I did is I did the same thing. I asked the question for a week, what is my most important value? And the way you can tell your values are because of your behaviors. What you do is you look at your behaviors and especially your behaviors under stress, when your behavior is in difficulty. You'll always demonstrate who you really are inside by what you do on the outside when you have difficulties or challenges. So I finally concluded my most important value is what the lady said, is freedom. Freedom is my most important value. And you know something, America was established by people for whom Freedom was their most important value and it changed the entire world. There is still no country in the world for which freedom is the organizing principle. Freedom is a concern for everybody, but Americans more than any other nationality—

Thank you.

—love freedom. And so therefore your job is to have freedom. How do you have freedom? Well, one of the things is you have to have enough money. So that you can buy the things that you want, that you can take care of your family, that you can provide for your spouse and for your children. And when you achieve freedom, more freedom, you feel happier, you have more energy, you have higher self-esteem, you feel more in control. And everything that you do moves you toward having more or less freedom. So that was a turning point for me, is that freedom is the key. And then I look at my family, Everything I've ever done with my 4 children and my wife has been to increase their freedom, give them more freedom, open doors for them, open up opportunities for them. So freedom is mine, so what is yours? That's a great question. And the way you tell is you simply look at what do you do under pressure? What do you care about more than anything else? What is really your value? And it's a great question, great organizing principle for your life.

Yeah, but you know, Brian, let me, and as you know, most Genius Network members are, you know, have teams, many have running multimillion-dollar businesses. What is the dark side of success? In the midst of building and growing, what have you noticed where things become out of control, out of hand, where people start losing it? Because as you know, a lot of entrepreneurs, because of the success they have comes responsibility, obligations, messes, navigating things. And here we are in the, you know, the middle of a pandemic. You know, what have you found to be success traps that people have gotten themselves into that you would have any advice, suggestions, or insights on either how to avoid or how to navigate if you're in the middle of it?

Well, Joe, that's a really tough question, but you and I have talked about this subject is that what is our ultimate goal in life? Remember the old thing is write your own obituary. You wrote your own obituary. What do you want people to say about you when you pass on? And, I went for a long walk on a beach near Brisbane in Australia some years ago, and it was about an hour or 2 hours of walking. And I asked myself that question, and the answer that came up for me and never changed again is that after I pass on, I want when my children meet someone who knew me, they say, oh yeah, I knew your father. He was a really good person. That to me was my ultimate goal in life. I knew your father, he was a good person. And I have never deviated from that. I never have done anything or said anything to anybody under any circumstances that would cause anybody to say other than he was a good person. And so you have to keep that in mind. See, this is the purpose in life. And one of the things that I learned is that success does not change you. It just makes you more of what you already are. It just makes you more of what you already are. If you're a good person, you become a better person. If you're a jerk, you become a worse jerk. If you're honest, you'll be more honest. If you're dishonest, you'll be more dishonest. So you always have to think in terms of long-term. One of the things that I found, and I've written about it extensively, I wrote a book by the way, couple of years ago called Get Smart. And it has 10 ways of thinking that have been developed over the ages. And basically it says that successful people think this way. And in the same way of thinking, unsuccessful people think that way. Most important, which I learned from Drucker, from many others, is long-term versus short-term thinking. Is really successful people think long-term. Unsuccessful people think short-term. In other words, they go for advantage, opportunity, making money. They're short-term thinkers, whereas the very best people think long-term. They think, where do I want to be in 5 years or 10 years from now? What do I want people to say about me when I'm gone? And so long-term thinkers, surprisingly enough, when you think and act long-term, you accomplish vastly more than if you're a short-term thinker.

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 in the description, or you can wait till the end of this video, or you can simply go to joesfreebook.com and you can get a copy there. And there's—

I mean, and the book, uh, Get Smart, has basically 10 different ways of thinking. One of them is it comes from Daniel Kahneman, who got a Nobel Prize for it. He's an economist. A philosopher and it was, you know, it was, um, um, what is it? Two ways of thinking. Um, Think Fast, Slow. Yes. Thinking, thinking fast and slow. And, uh, what he says is basically successful people think slowly about important things in their life. One of the things that Kahneman sort of touches on, but which I hammer is, is the word consequences. And consequences, as you always ask, what are the likely consequences if I do or don't do this? And everything in life has consequences. And the true measure of how really smart you are is your ability to predict the consequences of doing something or not doing it. Milton Friedman said this exactly, this— the Nobel Prize-winning economist. He said the quality of your thinking can be measured by how accurately you predict what will happen as a result. One of the greatest thinkers of history, a man named Frederick Bastiat, said the same thing back 200 years ago. He said that the primary consequences of everything you do are good. You eat this, drink this, do this because the primary consequences are good, or why would you do it at all? He said, but it's the secondary consequences that are more important than anything else. And your ability to accurately predict the secondary consequences of a behavior determines your whole life. And so, for example, the people who belong to the Genius Network, one of the reasons that they belong, one of the things that they get is they get ideas that can affect their lives and work long-term. Truly superior people are long-term thinkers and they make the sacrifice and they travel and they invest the time and the money. And it's all aimed at long-term results, consequences, what happens as a result of what you do, and then what happens, and then what happens. And so that's what you and I learned right at the very beginning is we started exchanging ideas. We read Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich and how the mastermind was the starting point of success for so many people. And then we started doing it. And then it was sort of like a baton in a race. We handed off the baton and you took it and ran with it. And here you are. Yeah.

Well, you talk a lot about your mother in the book. I mean, there's some great sayings that she had. I'd love to have you share a couple of the insights. And you literally tell such a beautiful story about when she passed away. I mean, it's pretty incredible. So talk about your mom, because obviously she was such a huge influence. Influence on you. She was.

The book is dedicated to her, and I say that in a way this book is a homecoming for me, because when she lived that life, when, for example, while I was rushing, rushing, rushing, she had that timeless rhythm. You know, going to the farmers market with her was like an exercise in patience, because she would connect with everybody selling anything. She would make a personal intimate connection. She would be totally present. And now that she's gone, I just feel that I need to embody these qualities myself. It's not enough to have— when my mother was there, it was almost like, well, if I'm living with the Iron Chef, I don't need to learn to cook. So now I need to learn to embody all these qualities. You know, she— when she died, I mean, as I describe in the book, the moment, you know, she— when she fell, she knew that this was the end. But she didn't want us to know because she didn't want us to take her to the hospital. She had been in and out of the hospital with a heart condition. She wanted to die at home. And I talk a lot about death in the book because so often we don't talk about it. It's the one thing that unites us all. You know, as the Onion headline said, death rate holds steady at 100%. And yet we don't talk about it. And I feel if we talk about it, not in a morbid way, but in a way of realizing that worrying about the little things makes no sense. You know, when we know that sooner or later this life ends. So do we really want to worry about every little thing that happens? Worse, worry about the future. Because a lot of people don't even worry about what has happened. They worry about what may happen. And I love Montaigne, the French writer, who said, "There are many terrible things in my life, but most of them never happened." Right, right.

Well, you know, why do you think overwork and burnout and lack of sleep are really viewed by a lot of people as a badge of honor? You know, why do you think, why does that exist? It's become a cultural thing.

Because I think our culture is fueled by this idea that in order to succeed, you have to work 24/7. And when you're very busy, it means you're very important. And so we forget to really nurture ourselves along the way. And often as we succeed, the first things that go are things that that help nurture and sustain us because we feel we don't have time for that. You know, you hear people say, I'll sleep when I die. That's kind of silly.

They're going to die quicker. Yeah, exactly.

And now we have the evidence that shows that people will die quicker. But also, I don't enjoy my life when I'm tired. Like, if I wake up and go through my day like a zombie, I want to enjoy my life. You know, here's the thing, I don't want just to be effective. I want to really feel grateful and relish, you know, what is around me and what is in front of me and feel how blessed I am. You know, everybody has horrible things happening in their life, some worse than others. Everybody faces challenges, but So often we don't focus on the good things. That sense of gratitude is a very big part of Thrive.

The subconscious mind, your survival brain, operates 400 millionths of a second before you're consciously able to do anything. That's so cool. 400 millionths of a second. It has already gone forward with its plan, right? So it's in action. And there's a part of the brain, the frontal lobe, which is our conscious mind, our logical, reasonable mind called the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, which is supposed to be the impulse control. Mm-hmm. But it's already 400 millionths of a second behind. And if it's a logical thing and you can stop it, it's possible. But chances are, if it's a survival thing, mm-hmm, it's not a chance. It can never stop it. And that's why I always say to people who are in addiction, This has nothing to do with your character, morals, willpower, or strength. You can't stop your subconscious mind that's survival-based from protecting you, even though it's operating with an error message.

So how do you stop it? I mean, what do you— so what's the— there's got to be a way, like you were describing, of essentially what you were, uh, doing was rearranging the limbic, uh, to support what the logic— if you call logic the thing you want to do Like if somebody wants to stop the behavior that manifests the addiction or whatever, the impulse control that we're unable to muster with just the logic. You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to stop drinking Mountain Dew or I'm going to stop drinking alcohol or whatever. It seems logical that that's easy. And then what do I need to do? I just need to not drink. Or not to eat, you know, McDonald's or not, whatever. It sounds great when you're planning it in your head, but in the real world, then the limbic system doesn't— whatever you say, whatever that says, it's doing its own thing, right? Is that— Absolutely.

And it's not listening to that logic because it says, if I have to rely on logic, I could be dead by the time I figure out whether it's logical, right? So it is already engaged. So I'll give you an example. I worked with a professional baseball player. And so we're there and he's hitting in the bat, not the batting cage. His coach is pitching to him behind a screen. And so the coach throws the pitch, he hits the ball straight back at his head, right at the screen, right? And the coach, boom, down in the dirt. And so I said to him, I said, did he choose to duck? He didn't. His mind, even though there's a cage in front of him, he can't possibly get hit by this baseball, right? He cannot stop ducking. And he would duck every single time because his mind tells him there's a ball coming at your head. Yeah, logically we shouldn't have any worry because the screen's there, but that's gone out the window because it doesn't take any chances. And the other thing that we see, we do brain mapping. When somebody has post-traumatic stress, for an example, the mind is looking at subconsciously old information from years ago and responding to it in real time. The brain map shows us that the occipital lobes, the O1, O2 area in the brain, are lit up, which tells us it's looking at something. It's not looking at what's in front of them. It's looking at memory. So what we do, Dean, is we reset the memory. We take it at a high definition. It's stored in— when you have a traumatic memory, all your senses are heightened: sight, smell, hearing. So it goes into a high beta brainwave state and records it in high definition. And so what we do is reset it and bring it back into a lower resolution, and we can do that in like 2 minutes. We can reset it all.

That's so amazing. I recently heard, like, I have a perfect example of this that, uh, I recently heard someone— I forget who it was— but they said basically, if you're going to tell yourself a lie, tell yourself a good lie, right? Like, because you're lying to yourself anyway, right? So an example was, if you're repeating this constant belief that you have, or something. So I'll give you the perfect example of it. Sometimes I'll, I'll wake up at like 4:30 in the morning, and in the past I would think— because that's an awkward time where you're like, okay, there's not that much more time till when I'm gonna wake up— and sometimes I couldn't get back to sleep. But I started— so that was my pattern. When I wake up at 4:30, I think, oh, it's that awkward, I won't really get, uh, good sleep. But I started, when I heard that, started telling myself a better lie. I started saying to myself, when I wake up at 4:30, I get excited about that because I'll go pee and then I come back and have the best 2.5 hours of sleep that I've had all night. And I started repeating that in my mind. And wouldn't you know it, that now I have the best 2 and it's data supported by my Oura ring. That I actually have the best, like, sleep in that last 2.5 hours of the day because I've told myself that that's what's going to happen. It's fascinating.

But it's because your subconscious mind is literal. Yeah. I always tell this when I work with an athlete, say a golfer. If you say in your mind, don't hit the ball in the water, it doesn't understand the negation. Don't. All it hears is hit the ball in the water. Yeah. So when you tell your mind that, your subconscious mind is literally taking that. Yeah. The logical part of the mind doesn't always use that, but the subconscious does every time.

Hey, that's my— that's funny. I'm a golfer too, and I would always— I might have great belief about my driving. I never miss the fairway. I can hit it as straight as I can point. Those are the words that I say to people and to myself, and it's true. You know, I very rarely ever go off the fairway. So interesting.

I love this kind of stuff. Yeah.

The kind of thing I talk with the professional golfers, this is a really interesting concept. When I work with them, the first thing I'll say to them is, do you think you need to be confident to play good golf? And they'll all say, yeah. And I'll say, no, you don't. You have skill. Right. Confidence is a byproduct of your skill. It's what happens after you execute your skill. If you put it in front of your skill, you'll chase confidence all over the golf course. But if you rely on your skill, you'll never have to worry. And these guys are so good at the professional level that they can hit any kind of shot in any kind of situation. Yeah, they're so highly skilled, they don't need confidence. Confidence will leave them all the time.

You were talking to a 25-year-old a few years ago and mentioned how you'd trade everything you had being the CEO of Whole All Your Wealth, All Your Success for being 25 years old again. And because it's all about the journey, what are a few life lessons you would share with the entrepreneurs here as it relates to aging, enjoying the journey, and living consciously? And this is one of the questions I think would be one of the most important things I could hear from you. Just love to get your perspective.

Well, first I'm going to tell that story because I think it's interesting. So, you know, I forget where I'm at, at a conference, or I made a presentation and Somebody who clearly really admired me, a young man came up and he said, "I hope to do something like you've accomplished someday. I really admire what you've done with Whole Foods." And he says, "I just hope someday I can be like you." And I said, "You know what? I'll trade with you." And he says, "What do you mean?" I said, "I'll trade with you. You can be me, you can have all my money, you can have all my success, fame, all the other accoutrements that go along with that." CEO of a big business, and I'll just be you. And he thought about it. He says, well, why would you want to do that? And I said, you would be a fool to make that trade because life is about living. It's the journey itself. It's— people oftentimes ask me, say, aren't you so proud of what you've created? And it's like, well, hey, I didn't do it by myself. We created it. But B, you know, I'm excited about the things I'm doing now. I'm excited about what I'm creating, not what's been created. It's like an artist that has done a painting, they're too busy working on the next painting or writing the next book or whatever. Their past is something maybe when they're really, really old they might look back on with some satisfaction. But the joy of it is the actual creating it. The journey itself of life is rewarding of itself. So yes, absolutely, I'd trade everything to be 25 years old again because then I could go, I'd still be on the journey of life, of adventure, of learning and growing. And that's so much fun, isn't it? I mean, how many people here think of themselves as entrepreneurs? Yeah? There ain't nothing more fun than building a business. It's hard, but it's so deeply fulfilling because you get to be creative. You get to explore, you learn about yourself, you have to grow as an individual and as a human being. It's just such a grand adventure. And I don't say I have no regrets, but I don't have any major regrets. And I absolutely would do it all over again if I could. So what are life lessons? That's one life lesson right there. Love. I've talked about— I've given lots of lessons here. Everything I've said is a lesson, something I've learned on my journey.

So what are some of the biggest hiring mistakes you see entrepreneurs making and how and how could they or should they avoid them?

Well, there are, I think, some categories of mistakes that are worth mentioning. The first one is too many entrepreneurs hire people like themselves. Because naturally we empathize with people like ourselves and we see ourselves in them and so we want to hire them. When in fact, we should be hiring people who complement us. One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make, particularly once they get successful, is it goes to their head and they think they're geniuses, they think they're brilliant, and they don't have enough self-awareness to understand that they need to hire people that compensate for their weaknesses. And I suppose one of my advantages in business is I've always been aware pretty well of all the things I can't do very well, and there's a huge list of them. So I always hired people, it's like, they're going to compensate for my weakness in that area. So, because I really believe in the power of the team, and you will never create anything great by yourself. It'll always be a team that you, you will create it together. And you need a team that helps your strengths to shine forth and compensates for your weaknesses. So that's one category mistake that people make. A second mistake that people frequently make when they hire is they are afraid to hire people that are smarter and better than themselves. Because they're afraid, you know, their own egos can't handle the idea that someone is, you know, might be better than they are. So they hire weaker people. That's such a stupid strategy. If you hire great people, they'll make you look good. They'll make you— I always say I've gotten far more credit for Whole Foods' success than I deserve. And I might add, far more blame when things go bad than I deserve as well. Because we've, again, it's been a team effort. So you got to hire great people that complement you, and you got to hire people that are smarter, better than you. And together you can do some pretty amazing things.

Yeah, you know, like I was, I was on Richard Branson's island a couple years ago. Which you helped me—

Yeah, I introduced you.

Thank you, Joe. You guys hung out. And I asked him, unlike you, it's hard to get Richard to say stuff that actually makes a lot of sense in terms of strategy. Now, he's a very bright guy, but he's a very intuitive entrepreneur. He doesn't, like, if you ask him, how do you do it, he doesn't go really deep into it. And one thing I, the best thing he ever said to me about hiring though, did you want to say something? No, go ahead. So, I said, Richard, I was just joking with him, I said, when's the last time you you know, went to a grocery store. And he like looks up, he's like, I've never gone to a grocery store. And I'm like, what do you mean you've never gone to a grocery store? I go, when you, you know, Sid Vicious or Johnny Rotten, they needed to buy beer for them or something. He's like, I've never done the grocery store. And I was like, that didn't make any sense to me. I go, well, when's the last time you did laundry? And he's like, I've never done laundry.

I'm like, what do you mean you've never done laundry?

What about when you were a kid? Did you ask him, did he take it?

What did he do last time he took a shit?

I didn't ask him that. I should have. I know he's taken a shit. He's actually, I've seen him piss in the ocean, right? When we were like during the barbecues. But basically he's like, I never, he's like, he goes, I've never done laundry.

I'm like, well, you know, when you were a kid?

He's like, well, my mom did my laundry. And I'm like, your mom did your laundry? And what he said, he goes, Joe, he goes, hire people to do stuff you want to do. He goes, one good hire could save you thousands, tens of thousands of hours in your life. And, you know, Richard said a lot of things, but the fact is, like, that's one thing he's done incredibly well is he's built a team of people around him. And so the reason that your perspective— I could ask a lot of people about how they think about hiring, but you have, you know, 85,000 people that work for your organization. You have been through it. And so I think Hearing what you have to say can make all the difference in the world. It just comes with a far deeper experience than the average person.

So I went to see Daniel Amen, and I got my scans, and he looked at my scans and he said, "I've heard you're successful, and I don't know how with such a shitty brain." So that was the— that was it. So that was good. He did, however, take my money. Anyway, so, you know, I have— I'm a coach, but one of the reasons why I'm a coach is that I'm very coachable. So I have a lot of people who I really watch and I learn from from them. And Joe Polish is one of my really great coaches because Joe has an ease about himself, you know, when he's in public that I really admire. And most people who have seen me over the last 3 or 4 years— it'll be 5 years since February since I've been in 25K— they said, "You've really loosened up." And I said, "Because I watch Joe." You know, I mean, Joe can go closer to the cliff without falling off than any other individual I've ever seen in my life, you know. And he can punk somebody without hurting them more than any person I've ever, ever seen, you know. And so I really admire it. And, you know, Peter, I watch Peter, and just working with Peter over the last year, we've really, really transformed our company. And we have about 100, and last year we had 107 Strategic Coach members who went to Abundance 360, and I can see the enormous impact that Peter's thinking has had on them. And so we're, we're so supportive of what Peter's doing. I think he, all things considered, the brain that Peter has, the people that he's connected with, and his own capabilities, I think that he is truly one of the most important human beings on the planet right now. And Forbes magazine several months ago, I think it was about 4 or 5 months ago, listed him as one of the 50 most influential human beings on the planet. And they had him listed, yeah, it was down around 43. And I sent him an email and I said, 43rd? I said, "Must have been Russian judges. Must have been Russian judges." So I said I wanted a recount, you know, because I don't know who's above him. So anyway, I get enormous inspiration from my friend Richard Rossi. I've got so many individuals here who I gain an enormous amount about. The one thing that I have really focused on for a long time is the mindset of 10,000 10 times. And so I believe for a number of reasons, 10 times is a very useful thought today simply because of the capabilities that are in the world around us. And Peter gave a very, very good background to why it's so possible now for us to think in terms of 10 times. And it's because of all the exponential capabilities that are are now being created in the world around us. So this wasn't true. I was born in '44, so I was— I just celebrated my 70th birthday in May. And I have to tell you, I mean, Richard and I have conversations because Richard is, you know, checked around for 6 years and then he said it was okay for me to be born. 6 years? 10 years. 10 years. And we talk a lot about it, but the things that you are doing in today's in today's world simply weren't possible for someone of your intelligence and creativity in the 1950s. I have to tell you, this was not possible. You could not be enabled and empowered by the system that you were living in in the 1950s like you can today. So this— I'm in complete agreement with the notion that this is a very extraordinary period to be born in. And I'm going to talk about title here of 10 times is easier than 2 times. And I'm going to give you a comparison of 2 mindsets because somebody look at that, well, it's just 5 times, 2 times. And I'm going to show you a difference that 2 times is actually bad for your brain. You should not be thinking in terms of 2 times. It actually does something bad for your brain. And I'm going to show you what 10 times does. That 10 times is actually very, very good for your brain. And I was just estimating here, you know, just what probably the revenues were for this room. You know, here we got like 220 people, I think, that are in the room, and I would estimate it's in the billions. Well, you know, Dina takes care of one of them, so I know it's more than— I know it's more than— I know it's more than 1 billion, but what I see is very, very possible that within a period of time, and it would differ for each of you, that let's say the number was 3 billion, the total revenues in the room was 3 billion, that in a short period of time, that 30 billion would be very, very possible for this same room, the people who are here and that. And when I show you how this would happen, you'll see you'll see that it's actually very reasonable. Actually, it's not only reasonable, but it's actually the only way you would want to think.

I know something I wanted to talk about with you briefly, and that is you and I just got back from spending some time at the visioneering, XPRIZE visioneering. There were a couple of things that I thought were particularly interesting, especially how they organized the conversations. I'd like you to talk about that a little bit, and then we're going to talk about Genius Network and the annual event that's coming up too. Yeah. All right. Okay.

So, so what do I, what are my thoughts on visioneering? So visioneering was started by Peter Diamandis. Um, it was part of the XPRIZE, uh, foundation. And that was started many, many years ago when Peter, uh, in his crazy ways decided to put up a $10 million, uh, prize. Uh, he didn't have the money yet. So the XPRIZE, the X actually stuck because it took so many years for them to find a sponsor that was supposed to take over the, uh, X, which was Anoush Anasari, who funded the $10 million Space Prize that was won in 2004, which is pretty much responsible for the creation of private space travel, which is not yet civilian yet, but it's very close. So for sure, now they deal with solving all kinds of the world problems. And you know, what's great is one of my teams, the team, not one of my teams, but my team won the toxin detection prize that's now going to be created and formulated. And I, you know, I put in some, a little bit of money into making sure that that prize is created and developed to identify toxins. So any world problem you could imagine in all kinds of different areas, from space to climate to disease to innovations, I'll be presenting an addiction one, and we'll see about getting one for addiction recovery. So it's pretty cool, but they're conversations and processes. So they first get people's brains to be thinking about what are these global problems that need solved that bureaucracies and government and entrenched institutions have not yet solved. And in a lot of ways, bringing sort of innovation from an entrepreneurial standpoint or people that, you know, have no background in some of these areas that they're solving some of these problems. So, they first look at moonshots and space shots and big thinking, and then they put people in teams and take them through a way to think about how to incentivize it. And if you can get clear on what it is you're trying to solve, then there's a good opportunity that it will be solved because who the hell is going to solve some of these problems if it's weird, neurotic, crazy people trying to— And you got to incentivize them, right? They're just not going to sit around and—

'Oh yeah, I think I'm just going to tackle some of the world's greatest problems because I want to.' Yeah, no, I'll tell you what I really liked was, first of all, it's the first time I'd been there and how they structured things, which is a couple lectures, then break off, pick a track. And I don't even remember all the tracks. So we had environment, we had— I can't remember what were the 4 main categories. I suppose I could look—

Well, there was health and longevity, there was You know, it is funny, our brain— like, this is what also happens to your brain, is that having paced at the end. I mean, and plus, well, I just have to say, as soon as we were done with this thing, we went back to San Diego to visit a friend who's literally going to die in the next, uh, probably the next couple days. It's been a really intense, you know, 24 hours. And so, uh, that's, that's how we kind of wrapped up the end of the, uh, you know, the end of the thing. But there's There's all kinds of different initiatives.

Yeah, here, here I brought them up actually. So we had Future of Food and Agriculture, we had Future of Housing and Infrastructure, Future of Human Health and Longevity, and then Future of Waste and the Circular Economy, which to me didn't sound particularly interesting, but they open up, there's an expert there, talks about a few concepts that they've been, and then people just throw out ideas, they write them down, and then democratically you vote on what's most interesting, then break into teams and fill out a form. And then we start pitching each other and that gets votes. So it's very democratic. And then from there we go into a room, do kind of a test vote, and then people start saying they're going to provide money and you're supposed to go out and ask for money, get money that's going to provide a minimum of $500,000 to create the initiative and make it happen. I was, I was just very interested in how that evolved. Do you know how, where the original basis of this came from and how it came to be? The structure and format of the event is what, uh, I found particularly interesting. I'd never seen anything quite like it before.

Well, that was like my third or fourth, um, okay, X Prize that I had gone to. And, you know, there's open space technology, which is not necessarily, uh, maybe there's parts of that is what they're using. And I sat next to a guy named, uh, you know, Jerry, who's an expert in this particular area, who was even teaching me different ways on how to put groups of people together and to, you know, get them to develop ideas and come up with solutions to things. I— like almost everything in Peter's world, by just this insane— I mean, literally insane passionate desire to try to change the world. I mean, a guy who probably wakes up never feeling satisfied with anything and a certain level of uncomfortableness and dissatisfaction and this motivation that gives you a high, be it a form of excitement, adrenaline rush. And as Dan Sullivan says, irritated oysters make pearls. Right, right. Yeah.

I mean, that is the— Dan's always about what bothers you. Now in this case with Peter, so my respect for him increased dramatically when I saw how crazy this is, and it's been going on 25 years. That's something else that I was pretty surprised about. And there's a lot of money in the room, and we had Harrison Ford showed up and talked. Deepak was there. Harrison— this is one interesting thing about Harrison Ford. He plays himself in every role. You know, I've seen him, I've watched him be interviewed before, but he, you know how he just starts snarling and he's like, What is this bullshit? You know, and gets into it. And it's just like watching one of his movies. You see Han Solo performing.

It's so funny. No, he's the character. I actually met him at TED a couple years ago. And he's, you know, I don't know him. I mean, just like, you know, run into the guy, right? He's a famous actor and everyone's always trying to mob him. And they love him from his roles and stuff, which he doesn't seem to like talking about all that much, right?

He does not. Yeah, when Peter wanted to talk to him about Star Wars and lightsabers, He simply ignored him and moved on.

He's like, did not engage.

You know, but here's the thing. So this was at Paramount Studios, and there was a lot of famous people there, right? And I think Peter just has done a great job of corralling all of these influential individuals that many of the people in that room were extraordinarily wealthy financially. Yeah. And he gives them something they can rally behind because at the end of the day, no matter where someone's at, they're still bored as shit. I mean, they really are. I mean, a lot of people— and I say bored as shit. It's not like they're sitting around looking for things to do. Meaning mountain climbers like climbing mountains, right? And just because they are some of the— they've climbed some of the highest mountains, what do they want to do? They want to climb bigger mountains. So he presents to them a way to, uh, do bigger, bigger mountains. I mean, or tackle mountains that no one's ever tackled before. And I tend to look at everything in my world from my frame of references a genius network. I think any problem in the world can be solved with the right genius network. And so, I think what he's put together is a form of a genius network. And what I mean by that is people that have capabilities and genius and you put them together and together, any problem in the world can be solved. Any opportunity can be reached. Any challenge can be overcome. And even if you can't fully solve a problem, solve a challenge, you're going to at least make progress on it. And so, I look at it as as a form of making progress. And Peter has this great line, you know, the day before a breakthrough, it was a crazy idea. And so part of it is come up with all the crazy ideas and let's figure out how to break through them. Let's figure out how to solve them. And yeah, and I mean, all of this to me is just another way to stir your brain, get your creativity going. And because there's competition, attached to it because I've done lots of competitions in my life. I mean, the beauty of what I like of incentivized competitions is, as you know, I would run those Better Your Best contests for years, gave away cars. This first started my learning on it in physique transformations when I was a consultant for a guy named Bill Phillips who wrote a book in the late '90s called— Body for Life. Body for Life, yeah. Yeah, you know, and so Peter's just applied incentivized competitions to the world's problems. And so for anyone listening or watching or however they're going to hear this thing, they should think about how their intensity and their passion and their excitement and their engagement in anything will increase if there is a reason for them to do it. You know, there would— think about the Olympics or the Super Bowl or any sports game or anything. If no one could win, if there were no gold medals, I mean, you just have a bunch of people running around like doing sports and doing activities and stuff. But the moment you tie something into it. So what he's developed is a way for anyone that has an area of life that they are interested in, a problem they'd like to solve, where they can literally be incentivized in huge ways to do it. And frankly, a lot of this shit's never going to happen, you know, but it's— you got to have a lot of silly thoughts in order to get to the great thoughts.

Yeah, no, I— that's one thing I definitely liked was the iteration.

So in the last couple decades, there's been a really important transformation, or I would say expansion, in how entrepreneurs think of themselves. We've always thought of ourselves as ambitious businessmen, individuals who want to make a transformative contribution to our fields. But increasingly, and I think this really started with the Gates Foundation, there's been this conception of the entrepreneur as an ambitious citizen, someone who wants to make a transformative contribution to human flourishing more broadly. Now, this is something that is definitely necessary. If you look at the state of the world, it's no surprise there are a lot of problems, or we can call them challenges. Just in my field, which is the field of energy, there are one— there are over 1 billion people who do not have electricity. So we throw these numbers around around. But think about this for a second. 1 billion people don't have electricity. So that's like saying if there was some completely evil person who went through every single town in every single city in every single state and province of North America and Europe and cut off the power and it never came on again. That's the world that we live in. There are over 1 billion people who live like that. And as you know, there are many other problems in it. Education and technology and healthcare and issues like that. And entrepreneurs have taken an interest in that, most recently Mark Zuckerberg, but you hear Bill Gates, the most successful people in the world. And I think that's a good thing if— and this is a big if— if we know what we're doing, if we know what's actually going to make a transformative contribution to human flourishing. And I think that if we want to we want to do that, actually I'll say I know if we want to do that, there is one word, one word that we must know and understand and promote above all. Because this is the one word, and I mean this literally, this is the one word that is the fundamental solution to every problem that I mentioned and every problem you can think of. When people understand and apply this word, it solves education. Education, it solves healthcare, it progresses technology, it makes energy available to people. Just one word. And here's the interesting thing about this word. This word is something people are terrified of. How do I know they're terrified of it? Well, I first noticed this actually last year at Genius Network, and this is going to be a little mean to some people, but it's necessary. Everyone Everybody was talking about their different philanthropic causes, and I don't remember one person using this word. And then I read last year's letter by Mark Zuckerberg, and it was over 2,000 words, and he was telling, here's how I'm going to spend $45 billion and improve humanity in all these ways. And yet this word didn't come up once, nor did any synonym. And it doesn't come up with Warren Buffett. It doesn't come up with Bill Gates. It's almost as if its profanity because people are unwilling to say it. And that's why I call it the F word. And the F word is— shout it out— freedom, flourishing. Very good. We'll get to that too. But freedom. Now, why is that the one thing? Well, before we know what it is, it's important to know what freedom is, and particularly I mean individual freedom or political freedom. So this, it's really important to know exactly what we mean by freedom. So freedom is the ability to act without forcible restraint by others. It's the ability to act without forcible restraint by others, and that absolutely includes the government. Now, why is this so important? It's because our fundamental nature as human beings is that first we need to think of an idea of how to create value in the world, and then we have to be able to act on it. And life and human survival and flourishing are really that simple. We need to be able to think about an idea about how to create value in the world, and then we need to be able to act on it. And when we can do that, like in the United States the United States of America for the most part. Unfortunately, it's disappearing in many ways. But when we can do that, we get amazing results. And when we can't do that, we get concentration camps. So to just give you one example of China, which is still a place that has massive problems with freedom, but under Mao Zedong, farmers were not allowed to think and act freely in terms of how they use their farms. And so what happened? The government got to dictate to them what they would do, and the government dictated really irrational things, and it was the biggest starvation in history. 40 million people died. 40 million people. That's bigger than most states in the US. Then what happened? Well, the government certainly didn't become totally free, but it started liberating people and it allowed individuals to start thinking and acting about how to use their own property. And suddenly, the starvation almost completely ended. It helped China become much more wealthy, and the poverty rate around the world got driven down dramatically because of China's situation. So this one thing, this simple thing, freedom, is at the root of everything if we understand it in that precise way. And you can take any field, and this is how it works. So if we're serious about being ambitious citizens, if as entrepreneurs we want to be ambitious as citizens, we should be talking about freedom all the time. So that's what freedom is. Now the question is, why don't we talk about it? It's not an accident. I didn't just reveal something that's never been discovered in history, right? The connection between freedom and human flourishing is absolute. It's been demonstrated many times. Why don't we talk about it? Well, I think there are two basic reasons. Lack of study and lack of courage. Lack of study and lack of courage. If we have a goal as entrepreneurs, let's say we want to sell more of our product, what do we do? We study the science of business. For instance, we'll study the science of marketing. But often when we get into the realm of promoting human flourishing around the world, we don't take it seriously as a science. Just somebody has a good idea we give them money or we join a cause. That's complete BS. You can't accomplish anything that way. If you have a goal in life, you need to study what are the root causes of achieving this goal. And there are several fundamental root causes of mass human flourishing. And the one I'm focusing on today is freedom, because that's the ultimate condition that's necessary. So as entrepreneurs, if we want to make this kind of impact, we need to commit to studying studying the root causes, the fundamentals of human flourishing. We can't just do things and think that we're— because we're so smart, we can make a big difference. And this is particularly true with freedom. And here's a fact about history that's amazing and scary. Never in the history of the world, to my knowledge, has any country ever become prosperous through the philanthropy of wealthy people. Never has a country not become prosperous philanthropists when it has significantly expanded individual freedom. So all the philanthropy in the world won't help people, and freedom will absolutely help them. So if you want to be the best philanthropist, be a freedom fighter. But you need, you need to study it. And the other thing you need to do is have courage. Why do you need to have courage to be a freedom fighter? Because freedom is unpopular. It is not popular as a word, right? People smile when you say freedom. Because they're vague about it. But if it really means the ability to act without forcible restraint by others, guess what? Guess what? The vast majority of people in the world believe that they have a right to forcibly restrain others. I'm going to bring up some controversial examples. Some of you will get uncomfortable, and this will prove my point about courage. At different points in history, every major religion has had massive violations of freedom. Right now, The leading violator of freedom in the world in terms of a religion is Islam. There are people, there are many people, it's a religion of 1.6 billion people, not anywhere near that violent, but a huge percentage who believe that we should be enslaved to a particular religion. Many other religions believe that. Here's a more controversial example if you think there is one. In my field, energy, I believe that an incredibly destructive movement that that is harming billions of lives is the movement that calls itself the environmental movement. This movement opposes— they say they're in favor of solar and whatnot. You may be in favor of anything you want as long as you leave me free to do what I want. But they're against the 3 most effective sources of power for human flourishing, and that would be fossil fuels, nuclear, and hydro. The second 2 have nothing to do with CO2, so it's not about CO2. They're against every practical form of power So why aren't Zuckerberg and Gates and Buffett, why aren't they opposing these people, the environmentalists, the Islamic totalitarians? Because it's scary. Because it's scary to have courage. It's a hell of a lot easier if you're a billionaire to give away billions of dollars to politically correct charities than to take a real stand for the issues that matter most. So what do we do about it? Last time I talked about this issue at a Genius Network meeting, people understandably said to me, "OK, great. I'm excited. What do I do?" And what I said was, "Well, there are a bunch of good pro—" They're not really that good, but they're OK. "Some pro-freedom organizations, and go find them." And people understandably found this not very motivating. And I thought about this, and I realized, well, what needs to happen is there needs to be a new organization, but really a new movement. And this movement needs to be a movement of people absolutely 100% care about human flourishing above all. They care about it more than they care about human approval. And so I call this the Human Flourishing Movement, and I just posted the link where people can learn about it today at humanflourishingmovement.com. So you can check that out. But the idea is we are a group of people who take human flourishing seriously, and that means we study the root causes of it. We don't just blindly act, and it means we have the courage to act when we discover what the right root causes are. And I think this movement absolutely needs to be led by entrepreneurs. The last year has convinced me of this because what are entrepreneurs? We're people who believe passionately in the right goal, which in this case is human flourishing. We're willing to learn whatever we need to accomplish it. That's studying. And when it comes down to it, if we're right, we don't really care what people think. So you should join the human flourishing movement, and as a first step, I want to hear F-bombs dropped all over this conference.

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