868 Brian Grazer: The Art of Human Connection

This is episode number 868 with Academy Award winning and New York Times best selling author, Brian Grazer. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Martin Luther King Jr. said, Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality. Welcome to this episode. I'm so happy that you are here because you are about to learn some powerful stories, some powerful techniques to help you Master the art of human connection to learn how to connect with other people, no matter where you're from, what type of experience, what type of education you have, how well you had it off as a kid, how much money your parents had or how little they had, it doesn't matter who you are. The art of human connection is something that I have learned to study my entire life. As a young kid, I felt like I had zero friends. I felt super alone. I felt very insecure, and I really didn't think I would ever have friends. Then I started to study the art of human connection myself as a very young kid, and Brian has mastered this. If you don't know who Brian is, he's an Academy Award, Golden Globe, Emmy and Grammy award-winning producer, New York Times bestselling author, and named one of Time Magazine's 100 most influential people in the world. yeah, he's that inspiring. His films and TV shows have been nominated for 43 Oscars, 195 enemies, and he won the best picture Oscar for a beautiful mind. He co-founded imagine entertainment in 1986 with longtime friend Ron Howard. The films they produce have grossed over 13 billion dollars. And his newest book, face to face, the art of human connection is out right now, and I highly recommend you get it. And in this interview, we talk about Brian's greatest lessons he learned in producing some of the biggest hits in Hollywood, how Brian built his self-confidence through unlikely odds in high school and college, the importance of looking people in the eye and being present, the inspiration behind his new book. A lot of people don't feel comfortable looking others in the eye, and we talk about how to do this. What happens when you actually face your fears? How to take advantage of what makes you unique to stand out in any industry and so many more powerful stories from some of the biggest actors he worked with in the world and other case studies that I think you're gonna really enjoy. I am so excited about this. For me, this has been the skill set that has differentiated me from the rest of people in my space and in my industry is the ability to connect, is the ability to listen. its ability to do the things that Brian's talking about here. He just does a much better job in explaining how he's done it and how he's created it in his book. So I really hope you get value out of this. Make sure to share it with one friend and ask a friend to connect with you and reflect on this episode as well. Say, Hey, let's go over some of this stuff together. Let's talk about this. Let's grow and become better people together. Just send them the link, lewishouse.com/868 or copy and paste the link in the podcast app on Apple Podcast or Spotify or wherever you are listening to this right now and have an accountability partner or be a champion to someone in your life, someone you care about, send them this link so you guys can both grow together.

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And I'm excited to bring you the one and only Brian Grazer.

Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness podcast. We've got the legendary producer Brian Grazer in the house. Good to see you, man. Thanks for being here. I was just talking about when you walked in here that you did three movies with Jim Carrey. And I said, I have a painting, an original painting of Jim Carrey, because I saw a video of his a couple years ago of him doing his painting that really inspired me because I didn't know he was a creative on that side of things as well. And I was curious what was it like, because all the movies you did with him were huge hits, but what was it like working with him as a creative?

Well, he's really brilliant, so he doesn't need much direction. He kind of knows what he's gonna do. He can improve upon what he's doing, but he can almost just self-improve. I mean, directors are imperative for staging and everything else, but he's pretty self-aware of what he's doing. So he's incredibly gifted, and I had three movies that were very successful, but each time I felt like, I don't know if I could do this again, because he's very intense and kind of challenging. But I think the first one was Liar Liar. It was, which was really successful. -You should it. -Legendary comedy. And then the second one was How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

Everyone watches every year.

And the third one, which I again, I thought, I just, this is so hard. I don't know if I could do this. We did what's called Fun with Dick and Jane. And it made $100 million, which was a threshold number, but I don't think we liked it very much.

Really? Yeah.

But on the Grinch, it was very interesting because he was the most perfect guy for it. And in fact, the Seuss estate, which was represented by Audrey Geisel, the widow of Theodore Geisel, so the only way I could have the rights is if I do it with Jim Carrey.

No way.

Yeah. And so I said, well, I had to do it. So I kind of had to, but I wanted to anyways. So that was fine, but he had to encase himself in a prosthetic so that all of his pores were essentially sealed off. It took five and a half hours to put on his hair and makeup and everything else and face. And the final straw that just made it unbearable for him was that was further suffocating to him were these huge contact lenses the size of Frisbees almost, you know, they were huge in his eyes. And he would go crazy. And he eventually said, it was a week before we were shooting, he's laying down, getting his prosthetics put all put on his, you know, epoxy all over his body. He says, I have to quit. I'm quitting.

Oh my gosh.

And so Ron and I go, well, you can't quit. We're starting next week. And he said, I'm going to quit. I'm going to pay you back the money. I'm going to pay you back the bonus and the money and the interest. I can't take it any longer.

And he got a big check for that.

He got a $20 million check plus a bonus plus at this point he'd received it. So it was interest on the money. He said, I can't take it any longer. I quit. and I tried along the way for the previous couple of weeks to like, you know, I got Don Rickles to come to the set. I got people to come to the set that he admired that would entertain him, you know, keep him off of the pain that he was suffering from. So none of that worked. So now it's again, I said Thursday and he's gonna quit. I said, look, would you meet somebody Friday and through the weekend. And if Monday you want to quit, you can quit. And what had happened is, because I had this discipline of doing curiosity conversations once a week with experts that were renowned for doing something that other people weren't succeeding at. It could be architecture, it could be science, medicine, politics, religion, government, you know, anything to the government. But I'd also met a guy that was that taught soldiers, CIA, FBI, and soldiers themselves, Black Ops, how to survive torture if they're being tortured. And it fascinated me, just like, how do people survive torture? And I thought, well, there was this guy who lived, you know, of course, right outside Langley, Virginia, where the CIA is. And I said, would you, I called him up and I said, would you meet Jim Carrey and spend a weekend, I'll pay for you to do that. To fly out, spend a weekend with him. Because he feels as though he's being tortured. That's so extreme. Monday.

They give away the money. He gives back the money.

Monday comes and Jim says, okay, I can make it. I can do it. Really? He made the whole movie. Because he, this guy, Dick, his name is Dick Richard. And Dick said, turned him onto certain mechanisms that he could put into place and issue himself when he felt tortured. And that would alleviate the torture and stabilize him. And so he would institute these methods upon himself, Jim.

Every day.

Every day, constantly throughout the day, unpredictably through the day, to get through each day. And the movie was hugely successful. and is a perennial and has generated over a long term, I think, the most amount of money, I think, of all my movies.

Really?

Well, over the long term. Right.

Over the long term. Yeah.

I mean, of course, the Da Vinci Code was really huge. And some of these inexpensive movies, Liar Liar was inexpensive. And so therefore, I really made a lot of money. Or even Eight Mile was quite inexpensive and profited quite a bit. So. But the Grinch keeps going and going. And my closest friend, Bob Iger, who's CEO of Disney, said, I'm buying the Grinch for 10 years. And I thought, wow, and we got a really big check for that. And I thought, this is so lucky. But then the 10 years expired and they've continued to do that.

They bought it again.

Yeah.

It's amazing.

It's pretty phenomenal, yeah.

Doing incredible.

So anyway, what was the story of the Grinch and Jim Carrey?

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What was the techniques or any of the practices that he taught him on how to deal with those torturous feelings for an hour or two or 10 hours or days?

Yeah, I don't really wanna go through all those, quite frankly, but a couple of them were just bands, you know, bands that had some sharp, like a spike in them, and he'd pull the band and it would distract, it would inflict pain upon his, you know, right above his wrist or under his armpit. And then that would distract, the pain or it would relocate his mind. Feeling. Yeah, yeah.

Wow. What was the movie you worked on that you learned the most about yourself?

Eight Mile.

Really?

Well, Splash first. Because with Splash, for six years, I'd written the story, I wrote the script for Splash, but the script wasn't particularly good. I got great writers to write it. Lowell Ganz and Bob-Lewi-Mantel.

But, so you wrote a draft and they kind of helped flesh it out more.

I wrote two drafts. But I'm good at writing scenes, but not dialogue. Because the dialogue, well, first of all, it's a tremendous, to leave it, it's a skill. And Lowell and Bobalu are expert at that. They wrote also Night Shift and they worked on like six or seven movies that I produced. And they even worked on some Jim Carrey movies. Did some rewrites on the Grinch and on Liar Liar. So they were my go-to guys. But anyway, so on the movie Splash after the six-- I finally get Splash made, the mermaid movie. But I knew it was much more than a mermaid movie. It was a love story. And it was a heightened love story because it was essentially it was about me trying to find love in the city of Los Angeles, which I found would be impossible. So I would ask-- in writing, I assault, a question repeatedly over and over again to, you know, like, why do I need to fall in love? Then I have a reason for why I want to fall in love. And then where would that, how would I find love? And what does love do? You know, we just continue to ask these questions. And when you continually answer these questions that essentially are the heartbeat thesis of, in this case, this romantic comedy, you start creating scenes out of that. Sure. Okay. At some point, I thought, I have to make the girl even more unattainable, like in the third act. I have to accelerate our third act and make it so it's. So the scenes are not repetitive. And I thought it would also be interesting to make it a fantasy. And so I was able to achieve a lot by making her a mermaid. It made her unattainable, right? It gave a woman power, because I like, you see that the girl has power. She's like, when she jumps in the ocean, we sort of cut these scenes, but she's able to shoot out, we shot her out of a cannon out in the ocean. Wow. In the Bahamas. It showed that she could leap in the air and swim underwater and do things, you know, with power and agility. And so that was a great trait. So it was, Unattainability, a fantasy, because mermaids are always have a fantasy dimension. They always thought it was pretty, they're mythic, and she had power. And I eventually get her made, and John Candy's in it. He's really funny, super funny, and Tom is great, and Daryl. And so I started to think to myself, I started to assault the success of the movie. Similarly, I said, I started asking people, like, why is it successful? 'Cause I thought it was successful because it was funny. And somebody that knew me really well put their hand on my heart and said, Because it's about you. So I thought that was really revealing and it changed the way I approached storytelling. It made me feel like I have to constantly just inform myself with information, bombard myself with information of all types of information. but really rely upon informed intuition, the truth of that intuition to birth ideas for movies or television shows. And just definitely don't prognosticate with something, some new trend, or don't prognosticate with the audience. I don't ever go like, well, the audience will feel this, or I know the audience will do, I don't know the audience will do anything, but I do know how I will feel.

Right.

If I'm focused on the, if I have clarity on how I feel and what I think and my truths and my authenticity, I try to represent that. And that becomes the sort of metric for what I think is funny or real or emotional or has feeling. And so that trust is the thing that sort of, that's my compass to.

Everything, to all the things you work on from books to movies to any project.

Yeah. I mean, these books are, the two books, this one, Face to Face, the Art of Human Connection, is the second book to my first one, which was, you know, lived in the same space, but it was called A Curious Mind, the Secret to a Bigger Life. But they're both just basically about what I do for, in my life itself. You know, I execute with deliberation, militaristic deliberation. I go out and meet a new person every week for 35 years. years.

Really?

And then I learn a lot from it. And I have faith that I don't ask for anything. You can't have an ambition for, I'm going to try to get some secret thing from somebody, or I met Jeff Bezos 18 years ago, Reed Hastings 17 or 18 who created Netflix. And so I don't think, I don't go with a ask.

You just go with a curious mind to learn.

Yeah, just be pure about it. and good things usually come out of it.

Yeah.

Some insight that would be valuable to the next thing you're doing.

Sure.

Or to a life choice.

I've been doing that for about 11 years now, and for the past seven years, I decided a force inside and out.

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I start recording them and do the podcast, and it's been powerful for me, but also powerful to share this wisdom with an audience, which has been a lot of fun. To not just get it from me only, but to continue to share it to others. You said 8 Mile was another movie where you learned the most about yourself. what did you learn in that movie about yourself?

That identifying all of the things that you're afraid of, all of your weaknesses, that are usually your weaknesses, the things you are afraid of are usually kind of birthed out of the earliest part of your life that become kind of traumatic. And they live like somewhere in your subconscious or primitive brain. And those are the things that make you scared when you walk into a party or do public speaking or afraid of love or afraid of intimacy or whatever your things are or afraid of the way you grew up because you didn't grow up from a fancy family. In the case of Eminem, he grew up in a white trash trailer park. So when Eminem, it's not just succeeding at the rap battle. It's what happens after the rap battle. where he says, yeah, I am white trash. Yeah, you did fuck my girl. And he addresses those things that are embarrassing to him, those that cause him shame. But he liberates himself, and that's powerful. He's not, he's no longer, he's not hiding behind some thing that he thinks he's embarrassed of. He says to the rich kid that's good looking, rich, Black kid, he says, you went to that good school and I didn't, but the version of like, fuck you.

Right, right.

I'm still better than you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And what did you learn about yourself personally from that? Were you holding on to shame or embarrassment in your personal life that you hadn't let go of yet?

I didn't have a specific thing, but you definitely, we all have them. What's yours?

Biggest embarrassment or shame?

Yeah, what is yours? What are you sitting on that you don't talk about? now are willing to talk about.

Well, I used to be very shameful of being sexually abused as a kid. And then I opened up about it about five, six years ago.

Oh.

For the first time in 25 years to some friends, family members, and then I started actually sharing more publicly on my podcast. I wrote a book about masculine vulnerability and the power of being vulnerable as a man and how it brings us closer together as human beings. when we share those things that we're ashamed of. So that was something that I was ashamed of for a long time. That created a lot of-- How old were you? Five.

Yeah. Who did it?

A babysitter's son. He was about a 16-year-old boy.

And how did he do it or what happened?

Well, he kind of tricked me. He kind of tricked me. I was at the babysitter's house and he was playing video games and I wanted to play video games and he said, you,'ve got to do something for me first. first if you want to play games. And he took me in the bathroom and that's when it happened.

Did you know it was wrong?

I remember, I mean, I was five, so I didn't really know what was going on, but I knew it wasn't right. I knew it wasn't right, but I wasn't really sure.

Something weird, but you didn't realize something very weird. How serious the violation was.

Didn't realize and didn't realize how it actually shaped me in a lot of ways. I mean, that plus a number of other I guess traumatic experiences shaped.

That are in that same category?

Different stuff.

My brother went to prison for four and a half years when I was eight.

Wow.

I was in kind of the special needs classes all through elementary school, middle school, high school, college. I had a second grade reading level in eighth grade. So I was just kind of always felt picked on, made fun of for my ability in school.

Yeah. Were you big at the time like you are now?

I became bigger when I hit like 12, then I was almost this tall, but I was very skinny. So I was goofy looking and awkward and had a lot of acne and was awkward in class.

What city is that?

I was in Delaware, Ohio, small town in Ohio.

Interesting.

So when I started to finally open up about it is when I felt a lot of fear and terror, but then eventually more and more I felt like as people started to accept me, I started to feel at peace when I started to share that shame. So that was something that I held onto for a long time. Scary.

Yeah, that would be. I didn't have a thing like that.

But I think men in general, or at least from my perspective, there wasn't like a place to talk about it growing up as a kid. You know, in school, they never said, Hey, if someone ever does this to you, like, here's what you do.

Yeah.

My parents never really talked about it. so I never really knew it was safe to talk about it.

Yeah.

So not making an excuse, I just had no clue how to really process it. It wasn't until later in my life where I was like, I need to figure out what's holding me back emotionally. I still felt this sense of anger or resentment towards something and I didn't know what it was. And so I started going down a journey of self-discovery with that.

So, yeah. Wow.

Is there anything you're holding onto still?

No, not that I can think. Well, probably. But not really, nothing that's fun, not fun, nothing hooky.

Hooky.

That wasn't fun, but it's just because.

It'S hooky, it doesn't mean it's not valuable. Yeah.

Well, I just grew up in a very chaotic, kind of terrorizing household.

We the youngest or?

No, the oldest. But they fought, my parents fought every day. Same here. About like, we're getting divorced, we're screaming, it was always screaming, slamming doors, all that stuff. It was constant and it always went on late at night. So my dad was a criminal lawyer and you try to live the life of a criminal when you're a criminal lawyer. Hard to go to sleep at night probably. It's hard to go to sleep and he drank a lot and smoked a lot and caught the house on fire and Smoke seeped into my bedroom and a terror that scared everybody in the house because the house was burnt down. And it was like sort of endless stuff like that.

It's like a constant trauma.

Like, yeah, everyday little traumas. But I wasn't abused, you know, in a conventional way. It was just that. Just emotional. Ongoing. Just emotional state of uncertainty. That's a abuse. Unsafe.

That's a sense of abuse, right?

It is.

It's sort of, it is. who was more influential in your life growing up, your mom or your dad?

A grandmother.

What was the greatest lesson she taught you?

Think big, be big.

Really?

She was a, she's Jewish. My dad was, well, okay, my mom's Jewish, my dad was Catholic, the grandmother's Jewish. Sure. She was one of those classic Jewish grandmothers that are like, significantly under five feet tall. And but really tough, you know, really like, think big, be big. You're going all the way. You know, she had all these adages. Got any problems? Wash it down with a bowl of chicken soup. I mean, she had endless things like that. Actually, when I wrote Splash and created this funny, the funny brother that was later played by John Candy, I gave all the Jewish, those Jewish things, isms that my grandmother used to say, you, got a gift for gab, all those things. I gave them to John Candy. So I gave all the Jewish funny stuff to the, my grandmother called the goys, that's the Catholics. So the Jewish words with the goys. And I found, by the way, 'cause I wrote and produced comedies for 17 years, only comedies.

Wow.

You know, Night Shift, Splash, Parenthood, House Sitter, Liar Liar, Nutty Professor, 1 and 2, Kindergarten Cop. I could just name, well, I'm no I'm in life, a bunch of movies with Eddie Murphy. What I learned for sure that the ingredients are always counterpoint. The Jewish words with Tom Hanks. The Jewish words with Steve Martin. Jewish with John Candy. Jewish with Eddie. Always that. No Jew on Jew. Really? No Catholic on Catholic. So I'm not against anybody here. I love everybody.

Sure.

But it's just that that was the way to go.

Why did that work?

Well, why do you think it worked?

Not sure.

Well, Jewish writers are funnier than the other guys. They're just funnier. Jews are funny people.

Sure, sure.

They feel tortured, they're in pain, they got all those words for, you know, what's the word, famish? They got these words.

Sure, sure.

I don't even know them. My grandmother spoke them. She spoke Yiddish, not Hebrew, but Yiddish. and you'd get all that stuff. And she called me, which, Shayna Kindle, like, she could be the baby, you know, like that kind of stuff. All that stuff. It was very sweet.

Yeah.

But when I was getting straight Fs on my report card in elementary school because I couldn't read a word, not even a word, similarly to you, she'd look over the report card, see the straight Fs and go, you,'re going all the way.

Wow.

And I'd go, Grandma, there's like no evidence that suggests that, you know, like, And so, but I, you know, things worked because I employed the skill of curiosity. Actually, I should bring this up. Both books, and particularly Face to Face, has all these techniques, these micro techniques to succeed, to connect with people, to evangelize your startup or my case, a story or you know, you have to connect to people's hearts to give them, or they're gonna give you hundreds of millions of dollars, which I'm asking for. Some of my movies cost, you know, well over a hundred million dollars. And it's an idea, so you have to evangelize your idea and mission. And to do that, you have to look at people. You can't be looking at your phone. You can't be, you can't fractionalize your attention at all. People have to feel your sincerity, that to feel your heart, they have to be captivated by you in a real way. And the way to do that is you have to actually look at them. The whole book is basically, I mean, one aspect of the book is just that face to face, eyeball to eyeball connection is the Wi-Fi to human connection. It's the Wi-Fi to human connection. Then you're on Wi-Fi, Then you can really move. Speed. Yeah, then you can communicate. Then they're in with you and you're in with them. And they don't like your idea. They do like your idea, but at least you're expressing it with clarity and authenticity and with heart. Why do so many people, why are they afraid to look?

Why are they blowing it?

Look in the eyes with someone.

A lot of people are just, you go to an event, I'm assuming here in Hollywood, you see it all the time where someone just looks at you for a second and they're always looking around, why do people not have the ability or the skill set to just connect and stare, not stare in a weird creepy way, but to really look at someone's eyes?

Currently, this moment where they're just losing the habit. I mean, it's hard for people to look at people right in the eyes anyway. Probably if you split the population in half, half people can and half people can't. Now, because of smartphones and our addiction to social media and smartphones, Every social media site is gamified. It makes you want to be on that game every second. I want to be. So I discipline myself. Actually, I'm already making a mistake. I never use my look at my phone, you know, when I'm with somebody, but you shouldn't even have your phone out because as you know, just the basic physics of that, yeah, it's living some, it's eating up energy. It's occupying energy in your in your brain seeing the phone, because you have to exercise some discipline. And if you think you're not, you are. So there is no condition that it's not occupying some space and deflecting your communication. So why do people do it? They do it for multiple reasons, but that is the biggest reason is that the phones are just, there's so much going on on your phone, your whole life is on the phone, but you're not When you're not looking at people and you're not connecting with people and you're not reaching out to them, you're not gonna get, you're gonna lose insights, you're gonna lose moments, you're not, we're living in a culture where it's kind of symptomatic to not have empathy now. I mean, like young kids, I have young kids and you're young yourself, but like kids just date, they date, then they ghost the chick or they ghost the guy, it's like they don't even care to say bye. But there's way worse than that, of course. It's just like no one is really thinking about, seldom are people really thinking about your feelings, and they're probably not even thinking about their feelings.

What are they thinking about?

They're thinking about their phone, and how many likes they got on their Instagram. And I care about it too, but I don't want it to overpower human connection.

It's obsessed, yeah.

Well, because it's not getting me anywhere, really. I do these fun videos. My eating breakfast burrito. I love breakfast burritos. Me too. I have all my little food videos. I mean, that was like most of the things that I start doing, they're accidents. I did one and my kids go, oh, that's so funny, Dad. I thought, oh, really? It's funny. So I just keep doing them until they're not funny.

You said maybe there's half the people that are good at looking in the eye, half the people maybe aren't, and then less now because everyone's on their phone. For the people who say they don't have phones, but they aren't good at looking people in the eyes. What do you think it is that holds them back from that face-to-face connection? Is it their own insecurities? Is it shame? Is it a lack of confidence? Is it skill? What do you think it is?

Well, those would be sort of all. I can only pick, like, a surface reason because I'm not, you know, I'm not equipped to diagnose that.

Right.

But probably some form of insecurity or lack of confidence that you matter, and that it would matter for you to look at someone. In other words, when I look at you, I'm telling you, that's like saying, I see you as a human being, you matter. But if you don't feel it yourself, have the confidence to feel it, you're not gonna look at you. So if I don't feel really confident like that even really means anything, then I'm not going to choose to do it because I don't put it very high on the value system. Wow. You might think a good handshake is plenty, or you might think if I'm really smart, or, you know, there was a moment that I thought I was so smart, you know, and I guess I did look at people in the eyes, but I was, there was a moment and there was, I think in, I forget which My first or second book, one of them, but where I was working with Lolly and Bobalu and Ron Howard. And Ron Howard said, you, know, you don't look at the guys when we're doing the story meetings. And I said, well, I thought I did. He said, no, no, you really don't. And I said, but I've gotten, I've got all the answers. I mean, I'm like right there with you guys. He said, yeah, but it makes them feel bad.

Wow.

Just the simplicity of that was, I had a gravitational force that made me change.

Huh. Did you always have a sense of confidence in yourself or belief in yourself? No. When did you learn how to have confidence and belief in yourself? When...

I started, my first win in life basically was there was a bully in my elementary school, Riverside Drive Elementary School, which I'm going to be like three blocks from later today to watch my kid play at Notre Dame High School football. So, I'm Patrick, his name is. Shout out to Patrick.

The bully or the Patrick?

No, Patrick's my kid. Playing another name. No, the bully was Richard Gaynor. So Richard Gaynor was three years older than me and he just beat everybody up all the time. He'd pick somebody to beat up. But he's never really picked on me. But then one day he decided to. It was, it's so classic. I was at the jungle gym. It was our little jungle gym that had a padding under the jungle gym. and he threw me down, and I somehow, like, came alive and got him in a headlock and got on top of him, started beating the out of him. Yeah. And it changed my whole life because I didn't know I. I could. I was a good wrestler, you know, I. There's a few things that I was just inherently good at, but I didn't think of them as superpowers at all. You know, I didn't. Whereas, like, I think my skill in cur, you know, I am curious, and I think it is a superpower, you know, I think i've honed it to become a superpower and. that gives me a competitive advantage over others. But going back to Richard Gaynor and beating him up, all of a sudden I'm on top of him and I'm realizing, wow, this is amazing. I'm beating up the bully.

You have this realization.

Yeah, it was just like totally-- what are you doing this guy's ass? And also there was a chorus of kids around me going, yay, you know, like just little kids cheering.

Cheering sections.

They'd all been beaten up or bullied by him or certainly intimidated by Richard Gaynor. And actually Richard Gaynor kind of was mean to my sister, Nora, in fact, once. But he didn't hit her, but he was like really disrespectful. And nonetheless, and I beat him up. And then I became like Robin Hood in the school. Like he was scared of me. There was no more bullies.

You were the hero.

I was kind of the hero of the elementary school. No, there was it was like, you know, I'm the law of the land now I didn't say that, but it was kinda like I was the I.

Must get the ta a little more.

You have you just felt like I won it something and people were, like, re extremely respectful, like, Hey, Go are? you know, like little angel on Yeah. yeah, yeah, yeah. So that that was good.

That was the start of yourself That.

Was the start of self confidence. And then I had this very this fascinating moment when I went I went up for high school football at Chatsworth High Schol. 'Cause I was also like Patrick, my young 16-year-old, I was a really tough kid. I mean, 'cause I was able to win that fight.

That's what I tell my friends.

They gave me a lot of confidence and I learned to, I really learned to fight. I became pretty good martial artist, actually, in high school. All my friends, I had a group of five or six guys, but they all, like you, popped well above six feet. I mean, one guy was named Chris Parkinson. We called him Gramps. He went to 6'5. Richard Cox was 6'3. He became the quarterback and the pitcher. You know, I mean, he was that guy. He was everything. Perry Shellmeyer was the cool guy. He went to 6'2. He was the wide receiver. You know, there was-- anyway, so the point is they all got really big. And I stayed at five-- jeez. I mean, I was like 5'5, but popped to 5'8. But that wasn't 6'2. Anyway, I went out for football. Now, I do the Hell Week, which I just hated Hell Week in the San Fernando Valley.

Really, three days? Yeah, no.

It's five days. No, it's five days a week.

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Should it stay or should it go? What if I mess it up?

What if I have to pay taxes now?

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Three a day.

Oh, yeah. Sorry. I'm sorry. Yes. Because you play football. So yeah, but so. It's miserable.

Yeah.

It's really hot out in the San Fernando Valley. I'm doing hell week. I get through it. Now we're all supposed to go to the auditorium. Everybody in Chatsworth High, all the football players. So you had freshmen, sophomore, juniors, seniors. The whole auditorium is filled with like 200 of these kids that got through Hell Week. And so Coach Ogawa is right there. And Coach Ogawa says, okay, name and status. I wasn't sure what he meant, but then there were people that preceded me. Perry Shellmire, wide receiver. Richard Cox, quarterback. Tony Couviler, wide receiver. Brian Grazer, tailback. Incorrect, he says, screams in front of everybody. He goes, says, incorrect. He looks at me in the eyes, he goes, cut. So he cut me in front of 200 kids. What? So I thought, wow, that was really brutal. And it was super embarrassing, like super, super, super embarrassing. And I really examined that moment. I brought it down to, like, I was once a human being. And then it got to me, I was no longer a human being anymore. I was out of a room.

-Yeah.

And so it actually gave me that-- I was able to isolate the micro moments of that and transported that feeling into what became the movie Friday Night Lights in the series.

-Wow.

-'Cause I could have made those movies, the movie and TV show, about small town living, or I could have made it solely about football, but really it was focused on kids' identities and how they get formed. Wow. So that was the primary focus. And when directors didn't want to do that, I would ding them out. I mean, nicely. I'd just go like, I don't think so, you know? But because a lot of guys just wanted to relive their high school career. But when people were-- so when Pete Berg came along, he was sensitive to the thing I was sensitive to, like these imperceptible moments that become seismic to that one kid in forming their identity. And so that became the essence of what Friday Night Lights was, the movie and the TV show, and that's why it exists. And so I get fired, they kick me out of the football team in front of everybody's embarrassing, and I don't know what to do. I go out for track, and I can only do one thing, but I do it well. I can sprint, I can do a 100-yard dash.

What was your best time, do you remember?

I don't remember. But then more importantly, what happened to me was, well, being under 10 seconds then was good. So I was under 10 seconds.

Okay. Wow.

I'm sure you have a time.

I was 11:03.

Oh, really?

Yeah. Oh, 100 meters? Yeah.

Oh, this was 100 yards.

Okay, different.

Yes, it is different.

Well, I think I said, what, 10 more yards or something?

Yeah, but that makes it different. Okay, so anyway, so we were on the yards, not on the metric system. But the, like, You know, the private schools are a metric system here in LA district. There's 65 high schools in the Los Angeles City District. So I then thought, I don't know. Yeah, I'm just feeling really bad about myself. So someone says, why don't you go out for swimming? It's really easy and you can get out of first period. So I go out for swimming. And to make a long story short, I'm not a very good swimmer. I'm just mostly goofing off. I'm holding onto the side and stuff. bouncing around, splashing. So we have a pre-meet at Granada Hills High School. And it's a LA City meet, but it's a pre-meet. And the coach Wiley says, Grazer, lane eight. So lane eight's the shittiest lane. Did you swim two or no? Okay, so you know that the outside lanes are the shittiest? Because, you know, all the, you know, you get a little bit of water. Yeah, all the water's slopping into your mouth and everything from all the Anyway.

Waves are coming over there.

The whole thing. So I go in lane eight to swim a hundred yard butterfly, which I hadn't done.

That's hard. You're freaking out.

But I watch it. And the point-- and I go, I swim this hundred yard butterfly, and I look behind me right before I touch down, and Wiley's there with his stopwatch. And I look behind me, I don't see anybody. I'm thinking everyone's out of the pool. This is again embarrassing. Well, what happened was I beat everybody. I couldn't see them.

They're so far behind you? Yes.

Wow. So, I know it's actually very emotional to me because it was palpable. So I ended up breaking the LA City record.

What?

That moment.

The first time you tried it?

The first time I tried it. And I know your machine. So it was just that I just had this weird knack. And as you know, the butterfly, you either have that or you don't.

So hard, yeah.

And if you have it, you can get better at it and or not. But I mean, if you, it's just that, it's, it's, your body has to contort like that. And my body naturally contorted like that when I threw myself into the water. Wow. And I was really, like a machine. I was really good at it. And I broke the city record right that moment. And, you know, and-- How old were you? I guess 16.

So you had a moment where you thought to yourself, wow, this is really embarrassing because everyone's already out of the pool. I'm that slow.

But then-- I popped out.

You're like, well, I'm the man.

I was.

You're like, actually now I have a lot of confidence in myself.

Yeah.

Wow.

So it was really amazing. And so, and then I got a nickname immediately that morning.

What was that?

It was just like, where's the great grazer?

Oh, good day.

Everybody would just go like, where's the great grazer? Because I was like the famous kid in the Chestworth High now.

Wow.

It was the schools, the big schools, like 2,000 kids.

That's a big deal.

Hey, great. I actually, I'm just thinking on your own show, I had a nickname at USC too.

What was that?

Nicknames are great. They propel you.

They do.

My nickname at USC, and I got it very quickly, was 26. Because I took 26 units my first semester because I had to catch up. So I didn't think I was doing something phenomenal. I mean, it was hard because you're supposed to take- 15 or something.

Well, I used to take 12 or.

14, as I remember. 12 or 16, I'm sorry.

So we're doubling up.

So I was kind of doubling up, but I didn't realize. And so what happened is, Lynn, this is the day, the superstar athlete, wide receiver Lynn Swann.

At USC.

At USC, who, you know, won the Super Bowl as a playing for the Pittsburgh Steelers, I think twice. He's amazing. We knew each other independent of school. We were both extras on a TV show called Room 222. and my cousin Fran, who's still my, I love my cousin Fran, who's just a year older than me, she said, you can work on room 222 and make some money, Brian. I go, great, I'd love that. So now I was on room 222 with three of the biggest superstars at USC, Pat Hayden, John McKay, and Lynn Swann. So now I'm at USC and Lynn learns, he goes, hey Grazer, and I can't even believe he's a football player. He's not that big, he's like 5'11. And anyway, the point is, I start telling him, I go, at 26, he goes, oh, 26! And he tells someone, who tells someone, who tells someone, every day I walk past Tommy Trojan or in the thing, hey, there's 26! Hey, 26! So I had this nickname, which got me a long way. Like it made me popular. Really? Yeah, because I played with it. I, you know, it ignited my personality. And so, at Chatsworth High, I had a nickname. And then the irony was, is then I won, you know, again, I won the city record. I played right here at Beverly Hills. I swam it right here, Beverly Hills High. Right that way. And then the coach, oddly, Coach Ogawa was asked to speak to me, 'cause he was like the head coach, but not of swimming. They wanted me to win the state championship. And in order to do that, they thought I should shave my body and head again.

Jeez.

'Cause I shaved my head and body, you know, early on. Then he says, Brian, hey, God, you're a good kid, man. You're, you know, he schmoozed me up. And I thought, like, you. You know, and, and, but I didn't say that, of course, he's the head coach.

Sure, sure.

And I'm respectful to people. I just thought it, you know, like, and he tried, he lobbied me to shave my head again.

Did you do it?

No.

No.

I still swam really well. I didn't win the state championship, but I swam really well. I wasn't gonna shave my head for it. Also, girls didn't like the shaved head because even though I was the Great Grazer, I remember one hot girl like go, Karen Flair goes, Hey, Baldy. She said to me like, Hey, Baldy. I go, Baldy. And then, oh my God. That's not a good nickname. That wasn't a good nickname. No, no.

The Great Grazer to Baldy.

So I alluded that, you know, I wasn't gonna go back to that. I wanted Karen Flaherty's attention again. And so, anyway, and then oddly, as I'm sitting here talking to you, this is actually kind of fun for me now. Sure.

Sure.

When I started my career, I was a law clerk, and then I went, I was a law clerk at Warner Brothers, It was always used to be a summer job. I decided not to go to law school. I stayed for a year and a half. Then they fired me. I thought I was a genius because I did curiosity conversations then, every day.

And I became pretty smart.

Within the company or everywhere. I used the company Warner Brothers. I used the Warner Brothers thing.

To meet people.

To meet people. I'd say, Hey, my name is Brian Grazer. I work at Warner Brothers Business Affairs. This is not associated with studio business. and I do not want a job from your boss. And I worked that so hard and every day, every day everybody said yes. I mean, they didn't say yes that day, but it became a rotation system I could get. Anyway, bottom line is they eventually just fired me for misallocation of Warner Brothers assets. And so that made sense. I was like 23 and a half, and then I thought I learned I should write to survive. So I started writing and I wrote a bunch of ideas, and I met the woman that became my mentor. She was the most powerful woman in show business. Her name was Deanne Barkley. And Deanne Barkley ran all of NBC Entertainment. And I went in to picture two of my ideas at 24. And she had a she would smoke pot every day. And she she made her office like a New Orleans style office because she was like the queen of show business. She could do what she wanted. And she was New Orleans girl.

Wow.

And so she has a southern office and in the southern office is a bird cage behind her with two parakeets.

Speaking.

No, they weren't speaking, just two little parakeets. And I pitched these ideas and it goes great. She loves them. And all of a sudden there's like a thump. One of the birds had a, Heart attack. No way. Died.

Right then.

Right then, as I was leaving, like as she was basically saying, oh wait.

Was that a sign to not to do the idea?

Well, I thought it could be, but she started laughing hysterically. First she was like in shock, and then she didn't know what her emotions were, and she started laughing. Well, she was smoking weed all day too. So anyway, so she starts laughing, and then she goes, this is Kismet. And she said, I want to be your mentor as well. So she bought my two ideas and she became my mentor. No way. Yeah. And she decided, well, first of all, buying these two ideas from NBC was a very good thing, 'cause I could barter them to get an office and everything from actually, ironically, Warner Brothers again. Warner Brothers TV. But she did say, you, need a nickname. You need a nickname. And I said, well, why? She goes, Look at Swifty Lazar, the most famous guy in show business. Swifty. Do you know who that is?

No. No.

He was the most famous, he was an agent.

Okay.

He was the most famous, but he had a nickname, Swifty Lazar. And he was known as Swifty because he got these deals, he could make them happen fast, Swifty. So we got a nickname, and there's a few other nickname people. And she said, you gotta do it. And she gave me a couple nicknames, which I'm not gonna share, don't even ask. And I said, I have, Swifty Lazar, right? No, they weren't baldy. That's funny. No, they weren't kind of equally as not flattering. And so I said, no, I'm not doing an idea. I'm not doing those nicknames. No. So I banned the idea of a nickname. So you didn't have a nickname? I had no nickname.

What about the Great?

Nope, no, no, no, no. I didn't have any nicknames. And then I started to become successful. I made Splash, and I made some other hits. And then I started to sort of be one of those big Hollywood producers, like-- the hit maker. Yeah, I was a hit maker. But in comedy, and there was also those action hit makers with the beards and throwing stuff and bad tempers. And I thought, and they're well known because they have bad tempers. I didn't have a bad temper, so I couldn't-- and I tried it, and I couldn't grow a beard, actually. Either I thought about that. And then we're- what's a cool mustache? I can't grow a mustache that would be cool. No, no, no, I don't look good. And then by accident, I popped my hair up. Oh. And, but much higher than it is here actually. If you look at that previous Instagram thing with me and Russell Crowe from Beautiful Mind. My hair is pretty spiked up. I didn't realize it was so crazy. But the point is, my daughter liked it. We were in a swimming pool. I popped it up. She goes, Do it that way, Dad, Sage. And who's now a psychotherapist in the city of Los Angeles.

Sage Gray.

Is he?

Yeah.

Shout out. She is. She's got a lot of work in this city. Flooding over with work. So she said, Keep it up.

I like it. She liked it.

And I thought, I'm gonna do it. It was kind of, and that became kind of a signature thing.

It wasn't a nickname.

It was-- I couldn't grow hair on.

My face, but I could grow it on my head. It was a look. It was an image.

It was like my way of finding a signature.

That's cool.

Accidentally.

Did you ever get a nickname over the last 20 plus years?

No, no nickname. I try to live a, I mean, I live a really good life, but I try to, in order to survive in this, it's like, you know, it's like platoon, you know, here. It's like living in a war zone here in Los Angeles.

What's some of the greatest lessons you've learned of just being in Be humble.

It would be humble. Don't be a show off. Speaking of show, I mean you have to promote yourself. Like I'm promoting myself being on your show. I'm promoting my book because I want people to buy the book because I think it's really a helpful tool and I know it works. I know that if I can do it with the straight Fs and only do one person, Grandma Sonia, I know that it could work for anybody. I know these techniques will 100% work. Or your money back, ladies and gentlemen. So, anyway, so Hollywood, well, I guess my secret, well, I think the secrets or techniques would be in this book, quite frankly. You do have to look at people. You have to be present. Be present. The other thing that you really have to be, which I don't, I say it in certain, you have to be interesting.

You have to be interesting.

Interesting. You have to be interested, of course, but more importantly, you have to be interesting.

How do you become interesting if you're not?

Get out of this.

I always say.

You have to be interesting because you can't captivate people by just asking questions. That's dopey. I mean, no, when people just go, I want to meet you and they just ask questions, I go, no, it's not going to, it's a conversation. Right. We're hanging out, we're knowing each other, we're sharing, we're building to our best date.

Collaborating together.

Yeah, it's like, I'm not gonna just like sit and, I mean, I'm on your show right now, but I wouldn't normally do that. You know, I want other people to talk. I want people to be, people have to be interesting. Writers have to, when I'm high, well, I'm in the story business, so for writers not interesting, It's scary a little bit, you know? Or if they don't say one interesting thing or they don't have one original article of clothing on, you know, like if no choice is original, I don't do it. When directors, by the way, I had this early thing at 25, during Splash. I had many directors that preceded Ron. Any director that is too concerned with how they look, meaning they dress really impeccably, I don't hire them. The director's job is to be the ultimate empathist. The director's job is to think about how everybody else feels and how everybody else looks. And if they're self consumed with how they look, it scares me.

Wow. That's good.

It's not 1000% true or, you know, there's exceptions of course, but it's just a, you know, it's an easy convenient metric if you're busy.

What's the partnership with Ron been like for you? What changed when you started to partner with him more than having a lot of different people working with before?

Well, he's very compassionate. he's very easy to be with. He's, although these characteristics, he embodies them all. He's very present. He's not fidgety. He's with you. He's listening. He's very unpretentious, but equally smart. He's incredibly smart. He has so much kind of cinematic wisdom because he was incredibly attentive to what was going on his whole life. But, you know, he is an early actor, you know, playing, working with John Wayne and Henry Fonda and all these greats. Met Jack Lemmon. I might have worked with him. I'm not sure I remember that, but. But he, he was, he asked questions. He was, he's dialed in. He's a, and he's talented, really special in that way.

And what actors that you worked with were, in your mind, who were the top two or three that you were just like, I can't believe what they're creating right now. They're so brilliant, they're so talented that just wowed you.

I have a lot. I, I, well, I don't wanna, I have so many. I don't know if I, I don't wanna say the most.

Say a few.

But a couple, I have Denzel Washington.

Oh, he's amazing.

Well, Eddie Murphy is probably, he's just magical, really. He's a magical, he reads a script, by the way, one time, never reads it again. What? He reads it, not just remembers it, but processes it. He knows exactly how he's gonna play it from one reading. And it could be like six months ago.

He remembers it?

He remembers it, more than remembers that he's integrated it.

He embodied it, yeah.

Yeah, he integrated it. He can do it.

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He surprises people periodically because he's a classical pianist, and it's beautiful. He's not Rachmaninoff, but he's amazing. He's amazing. And he, I love him. I respect him. I think he's magical as an artist and I, you know, love him. We still text each other and, you know, we still talk. You know, he spoke at my wedding, you know, like he's, I think he's a standup guy. So I love him. Tom Hanks, I think I've worked with eight times. That guy's brilliant. He delivers every single time. He is brilliant. Yeah, he's brilliant.

He's got-- He just seems like a good guy.

He is a good guy, but he's an incredibly smart guy and doesn't show that off. I would put him in terms of just overall intelligence, you know, like fielding hitting pitching. He's that guy.

Wow.

He can do everything. He can pick the right things. He's got incredible intuition on choice, on learning, on public speaking, what to say, what not to say, where to say it, what to do. you know, somebody said, put him up to like, my partner, Ron Howard says, run for president, you'll win. And, you know, he's probably could. He's pretty amazing. He's very smart and tough and buoyant, and he can do it all. He says to Ron, you, you run. Which I think is funny and appropriate. He doesn't want to ruin his life. He's got a good life. What do you want to do that for? But we all started thinking, I mean, he's saying, Run, you and Oprah!

You!

Know, he can do everything. And then, so I said, Denzel, I mean, he's just Denzel. He can unbelievably intense, doesn't have to say a lot of words. You're always interested in what he's thinking, what he's gonna do. You're captivated by him. Russell Crowe has that too, by the way.

Really?

Russell Crowe is very, like, you never want to say the most, but he's so well researched. So any of the two movies, or three movies I made with him, actually, Beautiful Mind, Robin Hood, and American Gangster, he just reads thousands of pages. He can ingest thousands of pages of information.

On the character, or the time, everything.

All of that stuff, and the environment, everything to do with it. history. So he's pretty, he's very gifted. Steve Martin is, he's a, he makes, he teaches himself mastery. The banjo. He didn't wake up in the morning and go like, I can play the banjo. He just made it happen. He's a brilliant art collector. He's an unbelievable writer, wrote a couple novels that were very engaging. He wrote the script for Bowfinger for me, sorry. I did Boomerang too. I produced Boomerang with Eddie Murphy. But he did Bowfinger with Eddie Murphy that Eddie Murphy was in, and he was the lead. They're both leads together. And so he can do-- and he's a comedian. I just saw him the other-- I saw him two months ago at that Aspen Conference. He and Marty Short, they're hilarious. I sat in the front row because I was at a table that was in the front. and I couldn't stop laughing.

They're hilarious, yeah.

They're just both of them gifted. So I've worked with really great people in my life, and I feel really lucky. There's some great women. I mean, I love Jodie Foster. I worked with her back to back.

I.

Had a role in a movie. The lead in this movie was a guy. It was supposed to be a guy called Flightplan. It was like Ransom in the Sky. I had produced Ransom, too, with Mel Gibson. And I told the studio, I said, I'm gonna make it a woman that's gonna make it, she's more powerful than any dude. And impactful, you know what I mean? That way. And they didn't like that idea, but I did it anyway, and made it Jodie Foster, and it was a huge hit, flight plan. And then she was in Inside Man, Spike Lee's Inside Man, with Denzel and Jodie and Clive Owen, and we had some great actors in that. I've worked with really good actors. I feel really fortunate. I really think a lot of it's due, I think I have a competitive advantage by being, I hope, interesting. Well, I think they think this guy knows a lot about a lot of things. He's pretty resourceful. There's always foxholes when you make a movie or TV show. There's always a problem.

And a breakdown.

And someone's gotta get us out of that foxhole alive, and I'm pretty good at that.

The great grazer. He's pretty good at that.

I wouldn't say I'm the great grazer, but I would say I'm good at solving problems. I'm really good at solving creative puzzles.

Yeah. You've had so much success with all these movies. What's something you're most proud of that most people maybe don't know about you?

Well, some people know this. I'm a pretty good dad. I really, really, really care a lot, and I don't know if you can do much more than that. Once in a while I have to do tough love, which is really hard for me. But I know it's right. I mean, I just know it's right. And it's been great on my daughter Sage, because she had a jiu-jitsu injury, and I kept telling her, you,'ll get through it. And she got through it much sooner than she would have normally. 'cause she was like really feeling bad about herself, you know? And then she just toughed it out and started doing, went back to jiu-jitsu one on one after she had a very bad neck injury. And she's like, she's tough, she stays on it. She always had a really good work ethic. Anyway, I think, I think, 'cause you back your question, I think I'm a good dad.

Yeah.

Could I be better? Sure. Could I be worse? Definitely. But I think I'm good. I care a lot. It means a lot to me and I think they feel that I love a lot. And so that. And then it's very easy for me to be a good husband to Veronica, because she's amazing.

Yeah. That's powerful. I've got a final question for you. Make sure you guys get the book, Face to Face: the Art of Human Connection. Gonna be powerful for you to help you have a competitive advantage in your life and your career and everything. So make sure to check this out. very powerful. This question is called the Three Truths.

Okay, let's give it a shot. So it's not a question, it's three.

It's one question, three responses. Oh boy.

Three responses.

All right, fire it up. So imagine it's your last day on earth, many years from now, and you've.

Achieved all of your dreams.

Yeah. But for whatever reason, you've got to take your entire body of work with you. All the movies you've made, all the books you've written, they've got to go with you to the next world or wherever you go after you pass away.

Okay.

But you get to leave behind three things you know to be true about your life and all of the experiences you've had, the lessons you would leave behind to the rest of the world. If you could only choose three things to share with us, what would those three things be?

Don't worry. Stop worrying. It's a huge waste of time. It doesn't improve results. Don't worry. Find your truth. That's your most valuable component. Is that locating your authentic self, be in some way spiritual. It enriches your conscience, sense of conscience.

Powerful.

Okay, those are the three.

Thank you so much.

All right, thanks. I appreciate you. That was a hard, good, fun, interesting, challenging question.

Thank you. All right.

For sure.

I hope you enjoyed this interview. I'm so passionate about this topic, the art of human connection, really learning about what makes people think, how to really connect with people, how to help and serve people at a greater level. And when you learn about people, when you learn about others and have compassion and understanding for their needs. Not yours, but theirs. You can truly make an impact in their life. And when you make an impact in their life, you have a deeper bond in relationship, and you can do magical things together with that bond and relationship. When you don't have a relationship, you're disconnected. You're unable to really move ideas forward together. I'm not talking about influencing someone. You get everything you want and they suffer. This is about doing things together, creating a collaborative experience and environment so all parties win together, all parties move their dreams forward. And that's what this interview is all about. If you enjoyed this, do me a favor and message Brian on Instagram, message Brian Grazer and share this with one friend. Text a friend today, lewishouse.com/868 you can copy and paste the link on Apple Podcast or Spotify and send it to one friend today and say, Hey, I was thinking about you. I know how much you're trying to grow right now. I really think this episode with Bryant Grazer will inspire you to connect deeper in relationships and really take your career or your ideas or your business or your invention to a new height. So send this to them. Be a hero, be a champion in a friend's life today. reach out to someone new. You can message a friend who's been commenting on your social media and send them a direct message or a WhatsApp group message, Facebook group message, whatever it is, reach out to someone new and build a relationship through this episode. And with this interview, I think that'd be really powerful. Let me know what you think about it. I'm Lewis Howes on Instagram. You can message me there. You can put it in your Instagram stories and tag me and tag Brian, I like to reshare a lot of those. And as always, if this is your first time here, please subscribe to the School of Greatness on Apple podcast and leave us a review. I don't care if you leave a one star or five star review, I just want to hear from you. I want to hear how this impacted you. We like to share this with our internal team because our team works so hard to impact people in the world and those reviews really mean a lot to us. to share them with our community as well. So please leave a review over on Apple Podcasts. Let us know what you think. Click the subscribe button because every week we're bringing you some of the most inspirational leaders and figures in the world to reveal their secrets, stories, and open their heart to share with you exactly how they got to where they are. I'm so grateful for you. You have no idea how grateful I am that you take time to show up every single day to listen, to improve your mind, to go back to school in the way that I wish I had school growing up. I wish I would have had this type of information. That's why I created it, because there was such a need for me. And I'm just so grateful that you continue to show up every single week to learn with me, because I'm learning with you. You were born to do amazing things. But sometimes situations, experiences, people, environments limit us, hold us back to believing we aren't capable of doing those great things. And Martin Luther King Jr. said, Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be. This is the interrelatedness structure of reality. We create our own reality, but sometimes other people's opinions, words, energy, lack of connection and human interaction affects us deeper and deeper and traumatizes over the years. And it's unfortunate, but it's our responsibility to notice it and consistently consistently do the work to think about the things we say, think about the things we think about and the things we act on and make sure we're protecting our mind and standing portal at the door of thought as consistently as possible to reject any negativity that comes our way and lift ourselves with positive, loving energy because you are the light, my friend. You are born with a golden light that should radiate and be felt by the world. But it's your responsibility to make sure you take care of that inner light and let it shine. I love you so very much. I'm so grateful that you're here. I hope to see you very soon on the next episode of the School of Greatness podcast. And as always, you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do Something great.

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