How To COMMAND RESPECT If You're Quiet | Lewis Howes

Why do you think so many people care about power and respect so much?

People do that through fear, some people do that through violence, some people do that through success. It really just depends what vehicle you choose. But like, I feel like the deep need is, I think the things that we are, that were withheld from us are the things that usually we seek the most. I think, how many really successful guys have daddy issues? You know what I mean? So many. And so it's like, okay, well I didn't get his respect, so I'm gonna have to compensate with my circumstances. with my environment so that everyone respects me. And some people do that through fear, some people do that through violence, some people do that through success. It really just depends what vehicle you choose. But like, I feel like the deep need is the same.

Yeah, there's something like, I can't remember the statistic, but a number of US presidents, a big number of them like grew up without a father or their father died early in their life. And there was, I can't remember the stats, it's like 30 or 40% or something of like, the US presidents lost their father or didn't have a father, something like that early on. And it's like, well, you know, now they're going to go prove something or go to be something, you know, to. What about the, the habits that you learned of the wealthy people? Once you started to really earn and scale your wealth, were you studying wealth or were you just fixated on, like, how do I get one more customer and increase my prices, make better product? What did you learn about the habits of the rich?

I haven't learned much about the habits of the rich at all, to be very candid with you. I think that maybe there are some beliefs that, because like my dad was a doctor, I wouldn't say he was like, you know, ultra wealthy, but like we lived an upper middle class, you know, lifestyle. But in terms of like wealth as I think you and I would probably understand it, I didn't know anything about that. And I don't think I've ever really studied it very much.

I would say that my heroes now, like I started studying wealth after I became wealthy. So like, what did you learn about it afterwards? And what do wealthy people do that you think poor people don't do?

They pick higher leverage opportunities in a sentence. So like rich dad, poor dad, like poor dad says, get a job. Poor dad says, get a higher paying job. Like rich dad says, like, and the thing is, there's so many innate beliefs that seem commonplace. Like, well, of course, you know, I mean, like, well, of course, you know, you buy some real estate and, you know, it'll appreciate over time. Of course, you invest in some stocks. Like, yeah, of course. But like, poor dads just don't say that. And so you have to like learn that, I think. And I didn't, so I'm grateful in that I didn't have to learn that because I heard that just was of course, yeah, once you have some money, like of course you don't spend your whole income. Of course you don't. And so there's a lot of of course you don't's that I think I inherited just by being like a saving father. But there's also some upper middle class people who don't save anything. So like, but I think my dad did a lot of, I think he helped a lot with like money hygiene. I think I've had a lot of really good money hygiene from my dad. The big breakthrough that I had for me was when I stopped focusing on, and this is going to sound backwards, but when I started my gyms, I was all about building the business. And when I built the biggest companies that I've had and now recently sold, and now we have our portfolio, it was about how do we make the most money? And I know that sounds completely backwards, but the only way that you can make the most money is to provide an exceptional valued service and charge a ton of money for it. And because I optimized around making money, I started going for low capital expense businesses because I had lost everything after that five-year stint. And so I was like, never again am I going to reinvest every dollar from the business back into the business because I've lost it before. So when I started the next business and every business I've had thereafter, like we take dividends every month. And we do that because you don't.

Wait till there's an exit 10 years later. I mean, put all your money in.

I'd love to do both. Yeah, yeah.

Why not both? Sure.

Right?

And so that was-- Take a dividend and get a bigger return.

Of course. Yeah. But not just put money in and wait and get no money back. 100%. And the thing is, and this was a fallacy I had, because people always talk about reinvesting in their business, but I realized that that just meant that they weren't making profit. And so the vast majority of businesses, even the software world is somewhat shifting in this. but they want to see profit. And then even better is if you have net free cash flow, which is just a fancy word for the amount of money that you can take out every month after making necessary investments in the business. And so I wanted to have businesses that pumped cash flow because I had lost it all before. And so I think there's a lot of, like every one of my business seasons, I would say I've had three business seasons. I had my gym ownership period. I had my turnaround and early gym ownership period. and then I had Prestigious Labs, the licensing business in Allen.

That was like my last season.

Where you exited all of them. Yeah. And then I'd say like now we're in our third season, I guess. So brick and mortar gyms, licensing supplements and software. And then, you know, third season is what we have now. And each of those has a huge, huge magnitude of leverage that was added to it. And so, you know, this was like, gym launch was started on accident in that I was like, this might be.

A way that I could make money. because people were like, Hey, you're doing this pretty well for your own jibs. Can you help me turn it around?

Exactly what it was.

Yeah.

Like, can you teach me what you've done?

Exactly.

All right, let me go in here.

And, oh, I just helped them double their revenue in 60 days. Yeah, I'm good at this. I'll go. People pay me more for that than they'll pay me to help them lose £20. Right. And so that was the big, that was when I went from B to C to B to B. Yes. And then from there, to be honest, it was just going up another, another order of magnitude because now instead of just building the one business, now we're building lots of businesses at the same time. And so that's kind of like why acquisition.com, I think, has a much higher-- has bigger feet, for lack of a better term.

Right.

And so what do you look for when you're acquiring a business or investing in a business that has cash flow and what businesses have the best cash flow?

So this will be relevant for everybody in the audience and also hits on what we were talking about with the wealth thing, like wealthy people choose higher leverage opportunities. And we went over what leverage was earlier. The best businesses, especially in an inflationary period, are businesses that have low capital expenses.

Okay.

And that's because it's-- Examples? Yeah, so I'll give you opposite examples to make and then I'll drive it. So something that does have high capital expense, which is what you would not want to get into, would be like stuff that has lots of inventory, stuff that has lots of supply chain, lots of manufacturing, heavy equipment, things where you have to constantly buy more stuff in order to increase capacity, right? Low capital expense businesses are things like services, right? Services, you know, digital businesses, software is mixed because sometimes the development team can be considered-- That's a capital expense. It really depends on how you build the dev team. But the idea is that if you can produce 10 times more units without phenomenally changing the cost basis, then you will have a business that has lower capital expenses. And so that's what you like, and most of those types of businesses produce more cash flow, have more pricing power. And so, I mean, that's what Warren Buffett invests in. It's high cap, you know, like insurance, Geico. There's no capital.

It's risk.

They're literally assessing risk. It's math. Like the business is math. Like if you really think it's just math is the the entire business of insurance. And what's crazy, just as a side note, is that a great way of figuring out the highest leveraged businesses that exist is looking at the business that have been here the longest. Insurance has been here since before the World Wars. Banks have been around forever. JPMorgan was in the 1800s. The biggest insurance companies, they're all 100 plus years old. They're found in the 1800s. And so when you have a business that's lasted that long, to me, that's a great bread crumb of like, this thing has to print money. Because it means that they were able to still keep making money through wars, through famines, through depressions, all of it, and they were still able to keep going. And so I think that when people are like, when you look at all the, like many of the biggest businesses that exist, they have phenomenal gross margins. I don't want to get too like, you know, business terming here, but like the gross margin is how much incremental cost it is to make a new, an extra widget, right? And so like a pill, for example, costs $100 million to make the first pill. And then every pill after that costs a penny. Sure. And so the gross margin on the pill is very high because if they sell each pill for $10 and it costs them a penny, those are great margins. And most people who are small business owners are people who are trying to get into small business priced like small business owners. They say, well, it costs me a dollar, I'll sell it for three or I'll sell it for two. But if you're already starting on like a 50% gross margin, it's very, very hard to make money because think about it like that's at 100 you're already at half and then you have the rest of everyone else you have to pay off that extra 50. Very hard to do. And so like, I'll give a couple rules of thumb if anyone wants this, but like if you're building a service-based business for us, by all means I have to get gross margins above 80%, which means five times the cost of goods. So if it costs me $100 a month, the minimum I'll charge is 500, right? And so that also gets you to think about business differently, which is not necessarily even how much can I charge, but how can I provide value and make it cost as little to me? How can I be as efficient as possible? And if you think about what technology does over time, is technology takes something that's valuable and makes the cost of delivering it less. And so that's what happens is a lot of people are able to have access to things that were once only for the wealthy but now become for the common men because the cost basis decreases as a result of technology. And so technology, as we see it, we can create technology, but you can also have technological breakthroughs just through process in your own business. And that's where niching down and being very specific about the avatar becomes important, especially when you're starting, because then you can productize the service. Because if you're doing everything custom, which most people when they're starting out do, it becomes really difficult to become efficient. And it's really difficult to become efficient, you have very little margin, right? Or you have to charge huge fees, which most people are too afraid to do. And so the flip side is, if I do the same thing over and over and over again, I will get better and more efficient at it, and I'll know how to do it faster and quicker and cheaper. And I specifically choose this type of customer so that I can have more margin because there are millions of even this one specific type of avatar, And then from there, I can take the gross margin, the extra cash that I have, and I can hire the best people. I can invest in marketing. But when you have such little margin.

To work off of, it's very difficult to make money. Yeah, it's so hard to grow. That's interesting. Do you think it's going to be harder or easier to become wealthy and start businesses over the next few years with everything that's happened in the last couple of years and where this whole great 2030 agenda is coming and all these different things are happening, the war and all the, there might be another pandemic, whatever it might be. Do you think it's gonna be easier.

Or harder to make money? I think technology in general makes things easier for most people. I mean, 'cause at the end of the day, it's increased access for more people.

And so I think-- To reach more people at any moment.

Yeah.

If I were just to use history as a guide, business has only gotten easier to get into. It's gotten more competitive and easier to get into. And so I think that what happens is just the arena gets bigger. So you got more gladiators. So it's more competitive, but more people can walk in. And so I think, but for the world in general, the more people you have fighting to make amazing products and services, the better it is for society. But the downstream effect of that is that in a capitalist system, it is a win or take all for most, for many, not all, but for many businesses. And just by the nature of it, that does create social disarray. And it's just, but the thing is, it's still the best system that we have. We don't have a perfect system. 'Cause the other systems remove incentive and humans are driven by incentive. Even the survivorship bias, like every MLM in the world exists off the fact that there's that one guy who makes $500,000 a month selling Shake-Mix and the other 5 million Shake-Mix producers are like someday. One day, I'll get there, yeah. And it's just survivorship bias, right? But that's why the whole capitalist machine works. So I think they're like figuring out some sort of a creative way, like my, I put this in my on my YouTube channel. But like the idea of having 100% death tax, I thought was like, take down like the income taxes and all this stuff, but like the thing that creates the conglomerate at the top is that if, let's say I have a hundred billion dollars, right? That's interesting. And if I have 100 billion, I'm probably pretty good at managing it, because that's why I have 100 billion. So let's say I gain 15%.

You're just holding it.

Yeah, let's say I gain 15% on my assets. So I make $15 billion on my assets. It is so hard for anyone to make that up in a lifetime. With just the one, and like that might be my kid who gains 15 and the next year he gains 20. And so the compounding effect of the wealth is across generational is where I think it gets crazy. But if there were 100% death tax, because obviously this is aligned with my belief that all of it disappears anyways. So this is obviously Alex, there's two cents in the world. But it's just basically dramatically lower the income taxes. I think income taxes should be as close to zero as possible. And then make the capital gains taxes higher because that's only going to really affect the well if you really want to think about it. Because if you make with your hands, awesome. If you make on your assets, that's the stuff that has infinite leverage with time. So if you trade the most expensive thing for your money, then I feel like you should get taxed less. than if you trade no time for your money. Sure.

This is like a weird thought experiment. What do you think would happen if.

It was 100% death tax? I think that billionaires would become far more giving. And as they approach the end, they know they can't keep it.

And I also think it would change.

The way the game is played. Because if you know, because this is the analogy that I like, I haven't heard it anywhere else, I think it's mine. But if you were to imagine life as a poker game, right? And we, everybody, you know, grows up, they become 18 years old, they can go into the casino. they get a chip or 21, whatever age you can be. And then you get a chip and then you sit down at the table and you're dealt cards, right? There's all the other players around the table. And depending on the cards you're dealt and the skill you have, you begin to amass chips, right? And the difference between this fictitious, you know, casino and the casino of life is that in the real world, you can amass chips, you cash out, you have a big wad of money, you walk out the door. But in the casino of life, When the Grim Reaper taps you and tells you it's time, you have to get out from the table, but your chips stay on the table and they push them to the middle to be distributed by everybody else and continue to get played for. And that's when you realize that it was a fake game with rules that never mattered to begin with. And so I bought this piece of land in Austin. It was this huge, it was like.

A big, really, really nice lot.

And I remember thinking to myself, like, Got me some land. Yeah, got me some land, right? I own this. I have that trade to that thing on the rise. My yeah, right. and then I thought to myself, I was like, well, the guy before me thought the same thing, and the guy before him thought the same thing, and the guy before him thought the same thing. And I was like, and we've literally still been looking at the exact same piece of dirt, and it's just been cycled. Even if it was father to son, even if it was family to whatever, like, the, like, death taxes everyone 100%. Like, even if the government doesn't, death taxes everybody 100. And then time taxes your money. to infinity because people are like, I want to build a legacy. That's even just within Americana, you know what I mean, within the times of America. But you go a thousand years and there's never been the same superpower over a thousand year period. And so we're like, I'm going to leave a legacy. But that would be like, let's say an ancient Greek saying, I'm going to leave a legacy for my kids when they might change their currency by XYZ. And there's so many things and I've had real experience with this because my great great grandfather was a ruler in Iran, which is where we're from. We got kicked out because we were a lot of the Shah back in the day, which is why my dad came to the US. And so despite that, my great great grandfather had like 400 wives, ruler. Really? Yeah, very, very wealthy. Different time, different culture. Very, very well. He's a ruler, right?

Yeah, yeah.

All the money, all the women, all the everything. Literally a ruler, right? and it doesn't matter. And here I am, I'm not even that many generations separated from him, right? Even that- you- don't have all that wealth.

You don't have that land, yeah.

Right, and so like the idea that we're gonna somehow, because the desire for legacy is the desire to cheat death. Like that's what it stems from. It's like we don't wanna die, we wanna last forever, it's we wanna make something that is impermanent. And so we fool ourselves into thinking that the accolades and the material success and the books we write whatever, are going to last forever, and they're probably not.

Right?

And so, like, I mean, the sun's going to disappear at some point, right? So, like, if we don't do anything before then, like, at the very least, that's going to happen. And so if that is the inevitable outcome, I think it shifts the way people think. And I think that's when you start changing. I mean, Tony Robbins talks about, like, global, global belief systems. And that's why if someone, like, adopts a new religious belief, like, everything changes, because the reasons they do and the way they believe the world works changes. And so. I think that if they did do 100% death tax, it would be a really interesting way to see the downstream effects of how it would change the way the players played the game.

What do you think would happen if all the billionaires started distributing their wealth sooner? I think what would happen-- Or would they be as hungry to be and driven to push and build and innovate to generate the wealth if they knew, I gotta give this away anyways quickly. I think they would.

I think it's because it's-- I think it's-- I think-- I'm gonna say something that might sound bad, but-- I think winners win because of who they are. And so I think it's like sales guys, like you can have an incentive or a comp plan, they just want to win.

But they are salespeople.

And if I get on the phone, I want to sell because of who I am, not because the comp, the comp is the ticket to get me to say yes to the deal, but it will not change my activity. I will do it because I love to sell, right? And so I think billionaires get there because they love the game. Like you don't get to a billion without just, because you obviously don't need it for you. You stopped needing it for you millions and millions ago. Right? And so you do it just because you love the game. What I do think, and the reason that I like that solution is because Elon Musk said this, but private enterprise is 10 times as efficient at capital allocation compared to the government.

Right.

So every dollar that private enterprise spends, it's 10 times more efficient. And so it is like if we were to death tax 100%, so whatever you accumulate while you're alive, it just goes back. And the thing is, it's not that it would go back into the system through the government. It would if you were lazy. But most people, knowing the government was going to take it, the less efficient vehicle at the end of your life, you would then start thinking about how can I allocate this money efficiently? And so what I think would happen is you'd create far more ingenuity and innovation around social enterprise before they die.

Solving problems.

Knowing that the wealth would eventually disappear.

Should we be thinking about ourselves and saying, I trust myself enough where I can be vulnerable and open with people, no matter how they receive it, or should we hold back who we are or some things about us to protect ourselves or to feel if they're trustworthy enough to have that information?

Yes, to the latter.

Really? Interesting.

I hear this vulnerable, vulnerable. I mean, nobody, one, like nobody wants to see it all day long.

Right.

Yeah.

Everybody's got their own problems and their own stuff they're dealing with. I will tell you this though, When people feel too comfortable with you, they will challenge you more.

In what ways?

They will test you more. They will push back more. The more comfortable people feel with you. Think of it, the people that know you the best in life, they push you back. They push back the most. They'll call you out the most. And sometimes not in a healthy way, in an unpleasant way. But if you're, there's something powerful with keeping some things about you to you. You don't have to be an open book. And I know this goes against a lot of, be vulnerable, be vulnerable. I'm not telling you to be a jerk and I'm not telling you to conceal everything about you. But what I'm telling you is you need to have a filter. Nobody needs to know, people don't need to know everything about you. Keep that stuff to yourself.

When you were doing your interviews or interrogations, would you ever or did you ever become too vulnerable as a, I guess, strategy to try to get the other person to open up and share their vulnerabilities and kind of reveal that they did the thing they did. I think what I just did is.

I empathized the most. Okay. Because in truth, can I... I can see how you feel about this.

I had an experience, you know, I.

Had a... Well, if it's a criminal investigation, hopefully not. Oh, you killed her.

Oh, well, I could see why... Why I felt this in my life or.

Whatever it may be. No, because that would be disingenuous. So I'll give you an example. There's a difference between pretending, I understand, and understanding. Empathy is I've been there with you. So when I came in, I said, Louis, I'm really sorry about your dad. So I've also lost my dad. So if I said to you, Louis, I'm sorry about your dad, I understand how that feels. Can I say that to you? Do I understand? Because I lost my dad. You would say she lost her father too, so she understands. Now if I never lost my father...

You can't say that.

And I said that to you, you kind of be like, you don't really know.

Yeah.

You still have your dad.

Yeah.

So when you empathize with someone in a scenario where let's say you had just lost your dad and I didn't, I would try to empathize. That must be very difficult. I'm sorry to hear that. Now...

But not relating it to yourself.

Not relating to myself. So the only way you can relate it to yourself and it be genuine is is if you experienced the exact same thing the other person did. So in this scenario, yes, you lost your dad, I lost my dad. So then you would feel genuine. So it would be the same thing when you speak to people. So it's how you say it. So if you're not experienced the exact same thing, the best thing to do is say, I'm sorry to hear that. That must be so difficult. I can't imagine. I'm here for you if you need anything. you would do something along those lines. Instead of saying, I know how you feel, and trying to then, and this is what you don't want to do, because when you first told me, actually, I didn't say to you, I lost my dad. Because I would take away from what I was sharing with you, I made it now about me. Oh, you lost your dad. Let me tell you about my dad. And my dad died too. He died of cancer and all this stuff, and I would go into that story. It takes away. So it's your story, your narrative, and I'm gonna let you just Talk to me about it. And then if later mine comes up, fine.

Sure, sure.

So you don't want to make it about you. This is that me, me, me, me syndrome. When people are speaking to you, allow them to own their story. Don't feel that you have to be, oh yeah, I do the same thing. Oh yeah, this. They don't, one, they don't typically care. Unless you've been through the exact same thing and you feel that by bringing that up, that person needs that, Fine, right.

But don't do-- you- don't even need to, yeah.

If you don't need to, don't bring it in. Don't bring in the noise. Let that person's story be their story, 'cause what you're doing is you're bringing in your own stuff.

Give them that moment.

Yeah.

Let them have that moment.

I want to go back to something you mentioned briefly that I thought would be interesting for people. When you're asking someone, when you want to get information out of someone, boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever, interrogating a criminal, whatever it might be. Is it more- An employee. An employee, yes. Is it more effective to ask direct question, did you do this or you did this? Or is it better to ask an open-ended question and see what happens next?

So direct questions are not good and this is why most people do this, you're going for the kill so to speak and they get garbage. You get nothing.

What do people say?

Bee, they shut you down. And especially if it's a sensitive topic, they're not gonna wanna tell you. It's like, did you do it? Yeah, hey, I did. Let me tell you, sit down. You wanna let people adjust. It's almost like you put their feet in the water, in the pool. Your feet, when you go into the ocean, you acclimate to the water. Some people dive in, you know.

Sometimes I jump in 'cause it's too.

Cold to just go in. But for the most part, the idea is you acclimate, and then by the time you get in, you're the same temperature. When you speak to people, then that's the way to do it. And you don't have to get the information in that moment. You want to work on people over time. So you want to get admissions, which is pieces of information, if we make it about a crime per se, right? Rather than going, Did you do this? Did you do this to this person? Did you rape this person, kill this person, steal this thing? And I would never say steal. Sounds ugly.

Did you take this?

Did you take this? Rape sounds ugly too. I would never say rape or kill. I would say, did you hurt this person? Did you lose yourself? I would use different terms. Sounds nicer. Even if somebody lies. Hey man, you're lying to me. Oh, Louis is like, what? No, Louis, there's something you're missing. There's something you didn't tell me. I feel there's a part of the story missing here. I want you to be comfortable enough to tell me.

So you would say that?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Sounds different. So that's one, think about the words coming out of your mouth. What do I sound like? And then more importantly, what do they hear when I speak? Not what do I think I'm saying? Because everyone's like, oh, I just said this. What did I say? It doesn't matter what you think you said. What matters is what they hear when you speak based off of their viewpoint, their biases, their DNA, their genetic makeup, their drama, their trauma, all their stuff because they bring that in when they communicate. So you have to keep that in mind.

Are you also thinking about, are you trying to learn about the background of the person before you have a connection or a conversation with them and get as much information on them before? Where they're from, who they are, you know.

Depends what you want. What is your goal? What are you looking to get? And obviously sometimes time's a factor if you're hiring somebody. I think when you, here's some tips. When you're doing your job interviews or you're bringing people on or you're working with people, you want to sit them down. You don't want to sit like the way we are here with a table between you and the person. You want an open space so you've got like two sofas, put them on the sofas, sit down. That's openness. This is a barrier. It's just, it causes a break between us. There's also formality with the table. I feel like I'm being a bit.

More professional than as opposed to relaxed.

And the thing is this, if you want to know who you're hiring, let's say, or who you're dealing with, or who you're bringing into your space, you want openness and you want them to speak to you in an open way.

Freely.

So you can get all the information. Tell me about yourself. How did you grow up? Where are you from? No kidding. What's about this? What about that? Now you get them and then you flow into the other questions. But if people feel like they're being interviewed, that they're going to bring that, bring that. So you want to get people to feel comfortable and you want to have that openness. Also, when you have a table, It cuts off the lower body.

You can't see their triggers.

There's toes. There's toes.

They're crossing their legs.

They're fidgety. They're fidgety. Maybe you asked me a question about, Abby, did you ever get fired from a job? And then I crossed my legs as soon as you asked me that question. You're not gonna say anything. You're gonna take a mental note. Oh, Abby just crossed her legs right when I asked her that question.

Why?

I need to, I need to, sorry, my son. I need to, I need to pay attention to that.

Yes.

Right?

So that you want to just take notice. The whole goal is to be curious. And so if we can give it a term, maybe you need to Lewis house yourself.

There you go.

Yeah.

When people come in, you are super curious about them.

What are the three most powerful cues, body language cues of leaders?

Okay, so this is the competence area of the spectrum, right? So when we talk about Charisma, we talk about warmth, competence. Charisma and danger. Okay, so three body languages of leaders. The example that I give that I really like to teach from is the Nixon Kennedy presidential debate. Okay. Have you ever heard of this historical debate?

We were not around this debate, so I'd be shocked if you'd seen it. So we want to be in the high charisma.

There you go. Yes, we want to be doing those cues all the time. That's right. We want to be in the star. So right now you're talking about competence.

You just asked me about leaders. So leaders typically are high competence and.

They can go into warmth when they want to.

High competence and charisma.

Right.

Or are they high competence and high warmth?

Yes, exactly. So highly competent cues, if you know that you're warm and you need to dial up competence to hit the sweet spot, these are some cues that will help you. And my favorite is from the Nixon Kennedy presidential debate. Have you heard about this debate before? It's kind of, Remind me. Okay.

Yes. You're like, actually yes, I watched it on the History Channel last night.

I mean, maybe you mentioned this before, but isn't one of them was angry or something? I can't remember what happened, but. So this is why I like this story, is because it created a puzzle. and I like puzzles. So here's what happened. During this part in US history, Nixon and Kennedy were running for president and about half the population watched the presidential debate on television and about half the population listened to the debate on the radio. Everyone who watched the debate was sure that Kennedy won and everyone who listened to the debate was sure that Nixon won. And it was the first time where there was a discrepancy between the winners.

The perceived winners, 'Cause one sounded competent.

The other one looked warm. One sounded like a leader and one.

Looked like a leader.

Ooh, you match them together, that's the sweet spot.

That's the star.

Okay. That's the star, exactly.

So one sounded like a leader. So Nixon sounded like a leader. He had really good vocal power, but he looked like a loser. And I hate to use that word, but he himself said in his memoirs he believes he lost that entire presidential election based on the first few seconds of that debate. First few seconds, he himself said that.

What happened? So he was kind of like the Shark Tank guy trying to buy back confidence and warmth at the same time.

He gave away his competence in the first few seconds of the debate. So anyone who saw it went, oh, no, no, no, no. This guy is not a winner. And this was before they even spoke. So in the first 30 seconds of the debate, neither of them speak. You see them on camera. And if you were watching, you saw, wow, Nixon looks so weak. And here's why. What most people don't know is that Nixon had just injured his knee on the campaign trail. He had been in the hospital for the week. So he came in with a bandaged knee and a fever. Kennedy had been tanning. Yeah, he was like, He was like.

A nice suit and everything.

He was ready to go. And also, a kind of funny thing is the debate was in black and white. And Nixon's suit was too brown. It blended into the background. So I talk about color psychology at the very end of the book, colors. And so that was an issue one that he didn't pop as much on the black and white. Okay, so he shows up and he's sitting in what's called the runner's stance. The runner's stance is when someone, so you know runners before they win a race, they like go into the crunch position, one leg back. We know this as a readiness position universally across cultures. If someone's about to run away from us, they will get into this position, right? Like they're literally about to run away. It's why sprinters start a race like that. Well, Nixon spent the first 30 seconds.

Of the debate in that position. 'Cause of his knee. He was in pain.

He was trying to like just. He was nursing it. But it made it look like he was about to run out on us. That's from just a quick nonverbal perspective. The first impression was, where's he going? Even though people didn't consciously realize it, he looked not planted and we don't like leaders who aren't gonna stay with us. Whereas Kennedy, on the other hand, he had a really nice relaxed cross and he used what's called humility hands. Research calls it humility hands. Humility hands are, When your hands are on your leg and they're resting, humility, humble. So he looked relaxed, calm, here to stay, you know, not tense, not rushing. I'm not in a rush, I'm here. I'm here, I'm your leader, right? So he looked quote unquote presidential.

So first the runner's stance.

Second is, this is in the first 10 seconds of the debate. They were sitting, they were sitting. They were sitting next to each other. They weren't on a podium. No, so here's your first snapshot of the debate and you see Kennedy, very humility hands, relaxed, sitting tall, and then you see Nixon who's like, chair arm, ready to leave. And we see these cues and people already made their decision. But people who were listening didn't see any of that.

Right. They heard the voice.

They heard the voice.

Interesting.

And so Nixon lost the debate to Kennedy. He lost the election to Kennedy. And he said in his Memoirs, that's why, is because of the cues I sent. And so for leaders, here's what we want to think about. One is relaxed here to stay. So the more you can settle into your place, the distance, this is such a weird measurement, I want to see the biggest distance between your earlobe and your shoulder.

The reason-- Not like this.

Yes, yes. Because why? When we are confident, when we are winners, we take up as much space as possible, right? We broaden our shoulders, we tilt our head towards the sky. Winners feel pride. So we look at the distance between someone's ear and shoulder, we're like, oh, she looks confident. When someone hops on a video call, this is the mistake I see. Hi everyone. Shoulders pinched up towards ears. And we wonder why people aren't taking us seriously. We wonder why people are interrupting us. It's because this distance, if I'm like this, Hey everyone, happy Monday.

Well, your tonality as well. Right?

Like if I start a video call like this. So today we're going to talk about some updates and I'm going to go over some different slides with you and we're going to wait a few minutes until people log on.

Right, like, so if I'm on your team, is everyone just like, yes, no one gets, are you just calling each other out on your social media?

Everyone's a winner on my team. They're amazing. Right, like we like play music, like, yeah, right? Of course you can lean in sometimes, but in that first impression especially, right? It's like, hey, good morning everyone, good to see you. So I want you to think about profile pictures. Videos. I love chairs with armrests. Why? It helps our shoulders stay grounded. So that's the biggest one is taking up space. The second thing that happens that also gives you more vocal power. So if I were to do this entire interview with my shoulders up, it would look bizarre, right? I would look scared.

You would be more closed.

Yeah, it would be. And so if I tense my vocal cords right now, I'll begin to go into vocal fry. So vocal fry, have you heard this before? It's when your voice sounds like sizzling bacon. I just don't know. not sure, but, like, I was just thinking about it. And if it's. Oh, my goodness, it's horrible. And the reason why we'll accidentally go into fry is because we're literally clenching our vocal cords, and they cannot get enough breath. Vocal fry. Not to be gross, but vocal fry happens when our vocal cords rattle together. And that's what we're hearing, is the rattling. That's why we don't like it. And so when you have space, you prevent vocal fry. If you hear yourself. In vocal fry, here's the quickest fix you have. Speak louder. Right. So the best way to get rid of vocal fry is to just up your volume. It will push more air through your vocal cords and it makes them hum. Yeah. If other people on your team are using vocal fry, just ask them to speak up.

Speak a little louder.

Yeah. That usually gets them out of vocal fry. Oh, okay. Little secret. Don't blame it on me, but that's a really easy way to, if you're interviewing someone and they're in vocal fry and you know it's going to drive.

Your listeners crazy, just be like, you know, the audio, they just can't hear you. Could you speak a little bit louder?

It will work.

Now, what's the difference between the humble hands on a knees or on a table, I guess right here? Does this work on a table as well?

Yes, yes.

Versus hand over top of the other hand, which is relaxed but also is closed body.

Yes.

Versus two hands side by side, relaxed, not like intense, but relaxed side by side. What's the difference between these two?

Perfect question. So your book cover. Your book cover is hand over hand. And they're relaxed. And it's a closed posture, but it works. And so it's okay to me. As long as your hands are relaxed, I don't care if they're closed or open. Now, I do care about this. So when we protect our arms, arms crossed. Yes, I do care about this. And why is because when we are crossing like this, I know it's comfortable for some people. What research finds is two things. One is we look more closed off. So we'd never want to look clothes off. But second, they found that when people are trying to be creative or strategic, they literally cannot generate as much ideas when they are like this. What's the alternative? Humility hands, open posture, holding a drink, typing at a computer, taking notes. Anything else but that. Anything else, but that. Anything else. So I love props. So the way that I don't cross my arms, because I actually like to cross my arms. It's kind of relaxing, you know, it's kind of like, I know. But actually, if you're thinking or processing, cross a way, right? If you need to like take a minute, take a step back, it's a great way to break. So I hold a clicker for presentations and a pen, you know, like for slides. Because every time I think about crossing my arms, I remember, oh, I have the clicker. When we think about getting rid of, I call them like bad nonverbal habits, right? So ticks, so ums, crossing arms, those are all bad nonverbal habits. Slouching, yeah. It's really hard to just say, don't do that. So what I'd rather you do is replace it. Displacement tactics. Okay, so you know you cross your arms. Can you hold a coffee mug? Can you hold a pen? Can you hold a clicker? Can you always have a Moleskine notebook?

I have a student of mine who.

Always has a Moleskine. He doesn't need it. He just holds it. He has it. He opens it up and he'll write the date and the meeting name and what he had for breakfast, but that's it. He literally used it because if he doesn't, he puts his hands in his pocket or crosses his arms. So he has it in front of him because it helps him feel very grounded. Replacement tool. It's a replacement tool. So I would think about what are some tools you can use that will help you do that.

What about the finger crossing? So look at the difference.

Like this, when I'm white knuckling, you can see that I am tense. I'm trying to keep it together, Vanessa. Right? This is called a steeple.

The fingertip.

Oh, I love a steeple. Yeah, so it steeples when your tips of your fingers touch and like a church steeple.

It's like Mr.

Wonderful just does this the whole time. Exactly. You will notice that when- Yes, when Mr. Wonderful is contemplating a deal, he'll go like this.

Why?

Doesn't it make you feel like you're just in control? It's like, and so this is a really good power gesture. It's one of our competence cues. That's why I have it on the COVID of the book, is to show high competence, because it's about getting in control. The steeple, we love it, because it.

Shows our palms, which shows we're not concealing anything. Do you want the steeple pointed at.

Someone or- Any of those, any and all. Whatever.

Yeah, up here like the diamond.

I wouldn't do this.

I wouldn't be like, hello everyone, good morning. Yeah, yeah.

So here or pointed out then with fun. Right, totally fine. You'll notice that Mr. Wonderful does it perfectly. He'll go like this, he'll tap it. The only thing I would be careful of is drumming fingers that looks like Mr. Burns' evil, right? Evil, yeah. I don't love that one. Okay, so don't look like you're scheming, right? That can look a little bit crazy. But if you're like, oh yes, I'm thinking about it. Now, I want to give a caveat. Please only use cues that you've tried on a few times and feel natural. There are some cues in the book where there's 96 cues in the book that I still don't like.

I've tried them every which way and I do not like them. What's the most powerful cue that you don't like, but you know is extremely effective in charisma or connection or trust or leadership?

Probably volume. So research shows that people who speak in louder volumes literally are taking more Seriously, but that makes me a little bit uncomfortable. And so even on stage when I'm like really excited, I still don't want to be like, let me tell you about something very... Oh god, that's horrible. I don't like it. But volume dynamism is a cue I teach in the book that I have trouble with.

But the research shows that people are more trustworthy or more competent.

Competent.

It is a competent cue.

Because if you're soft, it's like you don't believe in your words. It's actually volume dynamism. So it's Being able to use your volume to match your intention.

So for example, let's say-- so tonality and fluctuation at the right moment.

Yes, yes, yes. So for example, I feel a little ridiculous when I do this. This is why this is the most cue that I struggle with, which is like, let me tell you about something. Super important. Yeah. I just feel ridiculous. But some people do it so well.

It works.

Oh, it works so well.

When someone is, their people are so charismatic when you can get the tonality, the inflection, is that what it is, of the tonality. They taught this to us in Toastmasters.

As one of the 10-- oh.

Initial lessons of being a competent communicator. One of the exercises is to give a five minute speech using tonality. It's very, you have to like find the cues of when you like pause and slow and then you bring it out. It's like how do you make it authentic? Yeah.

So some people do it naturally. They're so good at it. That is not me. That is why I don't have a podcast. That's why I have a YouTube channel. Yeah, yeah.

Right?

Like on YouTube, I can use my gestures and my facial expressions. It's why I don't have a podcast. I feel I am not dynamic enough in my vocal power. And so that's one cue that I work on, but I have a hard time being in control of my volume. Okay, so we have that, these hand gestures. This is fine on the table also.

Yep, all good. Relax and go. What about hands open on the table?

Okay, so let's talk about palm up versus palm down. Okay, so when I was researching for the book, I was looking for my favorite are cues hiding in plain sight. Those are my favorite. Oh, I just used it. Those are my favorites.

Yeah, you did. That was very organic.

I did.

Very natural.

I'm really happy right now.

It's like you're speaking to a girlfriend.

Just naturally flowing through. Let me tell you something. Yeah, okay. So that was great. That was very exciting. I feel very excited. Okay. So I love Cues hiding in plain sight. And so I had a lot of political examples, a lot of celebrity examples, and Britney and Lance Armstrong. But I wanted historical examples. And so I was looking at famous paintings. and I notice the Last Supper, painted by Leonardo da Vinci, has hidden cues in it. You'll notice that the way that it's positioned, Christ is positioned in the middle. So da Vinci positioned in the middle. Okay. Most people do not realize in that picture Christ is doing this. He has one palm up and one palm down. It's hard to see it in that.

Oh, yeah. His left palm is up. Yeah.

Right palm is down on the table, right? Now, this is very interesting because, like, most people don't. Look at this right away, but why? Why is he doing that?

Why would he put his hand like that?

Why would he put his hand like that? And what do those mean? So let's look at the research. Palms open are universal gestures of openness. When we want something, what do we do?

We hold open our hand.

Give it to me.

Yeah.

When we're offering something, what do we do? We hold open our hands. When we are open to suggestion, we show our palm and we have it visible. A palm down gesture is a high competence cue. It shows dominance. It shows directiveness. You might think of, I won't mention them by name, some famous dictators of the past who did palm down gestures. Why? That is a very dominant gesture. When you are giving, people are giving directives, they often say, Be quiet. Sit down. Right, I don't want to hear from you right now.

It's a very direct, Dismissive too, in a sense, right?

Especially if you shake it at someone. So, why would we have these two cues? They perfectly balance each other out. Christ is depicted as the highest, most charismatic person in the painting. And so what does he do? He literally balances warmth and competence. He's showing the universal gesture of openness and giving, while at the same time a universal gesture of direct authority.

When was this painting made?

1498.

Wow. Yeah.

So Da Vinci, I think, hid cues that signaled the viewer, wow, he's charismatic. The takeaway from this, by the way, is if you're giving a directive and you don't want it to be questioned, you're better off giving palms down. You're better off saying, Listen, team, we've got to get this done. We've got to be efficient.

We've got to be streamlined.

I need you to do it for me. Just go. Yeah. Just go. Just do it. If you want feedback, like when I take Q&A, I'm like, what can I do? What questions can I answer? I'm giving open. That's a very, very subtle but very powerful cue. Okay, so that's how Christ has depicted balancing. The other thing that he does is if you measure the amount of space that Christ takes up in the painting, you'll notice he takes up the most space. He literally has the most distance between his shoulder and his earlobe. Yes, because he's tilting. So tilting is a warmth gesture. And so he's the only pictured person who is head tilt with also expansive posture. So there's all these hidden cues that I think paint this picture behind what's happening. Now, if you look at Judas, if you didn't know anything about this history, Judas would be the character painted with the most intrigue. If you notice, he's also holding a clenched fist. He's the only character in the picture who has a clenched fist and is distancing. He's literally turning his body away from us. And we know that we already talked about that distancing is a danger zone cue. So here is the person who is later about to betray Christ, and how does Da Vinci signal that? He hides cues. He shows a clenched fist, which shows withholding and anger, and then he shows that he's about to lie, that he literally turns his body away. The reason I show this is because I think that we don't realize there's these cues being sent to us all the time. You know, I do a lot of breakdowns on my YouTube channel of politicians, and we don't realize even when we look at political campaigns, in one picture, there's thousands of cues being sent to.

Us, and we should know what's being sent to us. The thumb pinch.

Oh, the thumb pinch. This is Obama, right? Okay. He did this all the time, didn't he? So here's what's funny is, Obama used to be a pointer. We don't like being pointed at. So there's something about it as humans, it's like, let me tell you what to do. It's kind of a better than. So I think he was coached because all of a sudden he never pointed again and he only used the thumb pinch. The thumb pinch is a very clever gesture because in Western cultures, this means good job, thumbs up.

Thumbs up.

Good job. Or like me, like literally social media, like, right? This is what we see. Like, like, like, like, give me a like. And so the thumb pinch is a very subtle thumbs up gesture. So every time he does it, it makes you think, oh, first of all.

It'S not, he never clenches.

It's relaxed. It's relaxed. It's kind of like an open thumb. It's an open thumb because he's saying A-OK, A-OK, like, like, like. And he's also saying, this is a point I want you to remember. It literally looks like a bullet point.

Right, right.

I'm gonna give you a point that you should remember. Yes. And Obama, I'm gonna do an Obama impression. It's gonna embarrass us both. Okay.

Okay.

I'm not very good at impressions. Okay. Obama does this thing that I just, I find so interesting. So Obama uses a downward inflection. So we talked about the question inflection, right? So when we go up at the end of our sentences, Obama goes down at the end of his sentences. He literally slings down his words. And downward inflection we hear is very authoritative. So I'm going to do an Obama impression. Okay. So this is him slinging down his words. He goes, Sasha, Malia, it's very important that what we do today is going to be remembered forever. And if we don't do those things, we are going to be in deep trouble. That's a terrible Obama presidency. You can hear what I'm saying, right?

Of course.

He slings his words down and that is very authoritative. So even that vocal cue makes us think, well, he knows what he's talking about.

Right. It's more authoritative, more competent.

It's more authoritative versus if he were to say, Sasha, Malia, I have something really important to tell you. It's really important we do this for our future. Could you imagine? If he gave speeches like that. And so even that vocal inflection worked for him because he also creates a lot of space in his mouth. He has a lot of space in the middle part of his mouth. So he talks very deeply in his mouth. And that helps keep his resonance really low because he's houses space in the back of his mouth. And that creates a lot of resonance.

That's a good. Thank you. That's a good impression.

I like it.

Yeah, it was good.

You're not embarrassed for me, good. No, it's great. It's because he creates this low resonance point and we like it.

So that's that downward inflection is really important. So many great cues in here.

The power of the pause, the pause for power. So a mistake that I used to make is I would pause the end of my sentence before continuing on to my next sentence and I would get interrupted.

Right?

So a mistake that people will make is they'll give a thought, pause, and then keep speaking. Now, pauses are quite powerful. Powerful people typically use pauses in their speech. But if you pause in between your sentences, people will interrupt you because they think you're done. You're actually better off using what I call a power pause. A power pause is when you pause right before you give something away.

So now the end of a sentence. Right. In the middle of a sentence before you're gonna share something.

Really important.

So let me tell you something really important.

Exactly. So here's the mistake that people make is they'll say, Something really important happened in my childhood that I wanna tell you about. Pause. It was when I was, okay? People are like, Should I talk to you? Should I ask you another question? What should I say? It actually creates conversational confusion, which is the last thing you want. Versus, I wanna share a really important story. from my childhood. That creates a lot more intrigue because like a story, oh, from your childhood. And I have no desire to interrupt. So that's a very advanced tip. That's towards the end of the book. It's a very advanced tip because if you have trouble with people interrupting you, I would practice switching your pauses and think about that. What's the drama you can get?

Drama.

Create the drama. Volume pauses. And by the way, Obama did that very well. He would, deliver a point, right? He would go in his residence and he would say, what this country needs is better systems. I'm saying nothing, but you're like, what's better? What is it? What is the thing that we need?

It's not what you say, it's how you say it.

That's it.

Although how you say it is important too.

That's the confidence.

That's the last chapter.

The book that I wrote, Follow On to Extreme Ownership, the book is called the Dichotomy of Leadership. And what's interesting about this book, so the Dichotomy of Leadership is like, You can't be extreme in one direction or the other, right? You can't be, if you're in a leadership position, you can't talk all the time, right? Obviously as a boss, you need to communicate, you need to talk to your people. But if you talk too much, guess what happens? People start to stop listening to you. You're putting out too much information. They don't know what's important and what's not. So that's bad. You can't go too far in that direction. The other direction is you can't not talk enough and now no one knows what's going on, no one knows what's happening. So you have to be balanced and that's the whole idea of the dichotomy of leadership. But probably the first dichotomy in leadership that I had to say to myself, you know what? There's another side to this is I used to tell the young SEAL officers that you have to be aggressive. You got to be default aggressive. That's how you got to be. Because when something's going on, you got to be aggressive to make that, get that problem solved. And if you're not being aggressive, then you're hesitating. Well, then you can get killed. Okay, so there you go.

And that's what I used to tell.

Guys. And as a machine gun nest over there, let's attack it. So you charge up the hill and everyone dies. You've been too aggressive. So what you have to do is you have to be balanced. And that's probably so even as I had these kind of mantras like default aggressive, can you do too much of that? Yes, you can. So you end up with this, what do you end up with? Can you be too passive?

Absolutely.

Oh yeah, absolutely. Well now we're not making any progress, now we're getting crushed by the enemy because we didn't maneuver. Okay, so that's bad. So where do you want to be? You want to be balanced. Even the idea of extreme ownership, can.

You take too much ownership? Yes. Yes you can.

Really? Yes you can. But I thought you said you need to take ownership of everything. Two different things. Listen to this. If you're working for me, and I say, okay, here's the mission that I want you to accomplish tonight. Here's the people I want you to take, here's the weapons I want you to bring, here's the vehicles I want you to bring, here's the route I want you to use to get to the target, here's the method I want you to use to secure the target, here's the route I want you to do to get back. So that's the plan. Now you take ownership and go execute.

Now, can you really take ownership of that plan?

If someone else gave you the whole thing? I mean, I gave you the whole thing, right? Is that your plan?

No, no. It's my plan.

So when you go in the field and now you come up against an obstacle and you're executing my plan, what's your attitude?

Well, it's not my plan. It's... Yeah.

And you're at an obstacle now and you're like, Hey, Jocko didn't think of this. Right, right. So now you just back away and you come back and you say, Hey, we failed the mission because you didn't think of this. You didn't think of this option. Yeah, yeah.

Right.

So that's me taking too much ownership. So what I need to do is I say, Hey, Here's the plan or here's the mission. How do you want to do it? And now if you're a good leader, you'll go get with your people and you'll say, oh, hey guys, here's the plan or here's the mission that we have to accomplish. How do you guys want to do it? Now you all come up with a good plan. You come back to me and you say, here's the plan. And I say, that looks pretty good. Go execute.

And now when you hit an obstacle in the field, what's your attitude?

I need to adapt and adjust. What's your plan? You'll make it work. You came up with this. Yes. So can you take too much ownership? The answer is yes you can. So with just about every, you can name a trait, right? You can name a trait from a leadership perspective that you think is a positive trait and you'll immediately see that if you go too far with it, it'll become bad. It'll become bad. So you have to be balanced. So even as I came up with the dichotomy of leadership, I had to be humble enough to say to myself, you know what? Being aggressive is really, really good most of the time, but if you're too aggressive, that's not good. So like you said earlier, you're constantly questioning everything. And to me, what that is, that's humility. That's you being humble enough to say, you know what? I really don't understand this that well. And there's some things in my life that I don't get. Whereas as opposed to you walking around saying, I already got this figured out. I already know what I'm doing. I already know where I'm going. I already know what God is specifically. I already know what's gonna happen to I mean, when I die, all those things. But instead, you're questioning everything, which in my mind is a positive thing.

Yeah, that's good to know. Is there anything that is missing in your life? You feel like something's missing?

I know. I feel like I'm living a pretty good life right now. I mean, I'm totally blessed. I mean, I got a great family. I got great kids. I got a great company. I got working with great people.

Yeah.

No, healthy. Healthy, you know, I get to work out, train, I'm feeling good. Living the dream, man. Yeah, living the dream. So you never feel like there's something.

Missing for you right now? If there is, you're working towards it, you're working on the next book, you're building the business.

Yeah, there's a difference between something missing and am I satisfied? Yeah, right? Because I'm not satisfied. I mean, I always want to go, like I never get done with the end of the day and go, Cool. Mission accomplished. Like it's not gonna be close.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So you're not satisfied but you feel like nothing's missing.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'd say that's a fair statement.

What brings you the most joy in your life and makes you smile the most?

Oh, I mean my kids. My kids are cool.

They're funny.

You know, my wife and kids. Yeah. My wife and kids are cool and funny and we have a good time and lots of inside jokes and all that. Yeah. you know, and I trained Jiu Jitsu and that that's very fun and surf, that's fun.

Yeah.

Play guitar, that's fun.

How old are your kids again?

20, 18, 16 and 10.

And what's the biggest lesson you learned about being a about yourself being a father to them?

Your kids are not going to be who you want them to be.

You can't train them to be.

They're gonna be who they are. and you can give them some course corrections a little bit, but they're going to be who they are. And the more you try and force them into what you want them to be, the harder they're going to push back and rebel.

Wow.

Yep.

Did you learn that the hard way.

Or did you get.

Yep.

So you tried to train them in a certain way or.

Yeah, somewhat. And it's pretty obvious, like. from my perspective, I was having a similar conversation with a bunch of executives and they were, we were talking, we went down the road because we're having dinner now, so we're done talking about work, but now everyone wants to ask me about parenting and everything else and I said at the table, I'm like, hey, who here ended up doing exactly what their parents wanted them to do? And there's like one guy out of ten, right? Because most people, your parents are wanting you to do this thing and you do something else. I joined the Navy when I was 18 years old. Like that's... That probably wasn't even on the checklist of top 20 things that my parents wanted me to do. -Right.

-Not even in the same ballpark, right?

-Yeah. -They didn't want you to go to war? -Yeah. They didn't want that. So here you go.

Yeah.

See ya. That's... So the more you try and kind of pigeonhole your kids into being something that you want them to be, the worse off it's going to be. It's the same thing with leadership. It's the same thing with leadership. If I'm trying to force my plan down my team's throat, the more resistance I'm going to get from it. Whereas if I plant the seed and I allow that plan to grow with them, the better it's going to be received. Like when people ask me, how do you get people to buy in? Well, you allow them to come up with a plan yourself.

What if in your mind you're like, you really know that plan is not that good.

It depends on how bad it is. How bad is it? what's at stake? If you're working for me and you're going to meet with a client and you have a bad pitch that you're going to give them and the client is some tiny client that I think is a low probability of us working with and the contract doesn't really matter, I'd be like, Hey, hey, give it a shot. Here's a couple, I might give you a couple adjustments and give you some coaching on it and then you go and you do your thing and you come back and you're like, oh no, we didn't land it. and I say, well, what do you think? Let's debrief. And now we talk about it. I said, you, know, you said this and you said that. Here's some other ways to go about it. I might even actually have you do it to me. So then I could sit there and take some notes and say, Hey, here's some other things that might have worked. Now, if you were going to meet with a big client that really was going to add value to our company, I'm going to either-- Yeah, I'm going to step in and be like, okay, let's think about that. What's their reaction going to be? And by the way, that's what I'm going to say, no, don't do it that way. I'm gonna say, tell me that again and let me give you some objections that you might hear from them. And all of a sudden, I'll let you come up with the solutions. Even though I'm sitting there going, yeah, what he needs to say is this. No, I'll let you come up with the solution. So then you're kind of going in there like you got this dialed and.

Then you're gonna feel like you won, which you did. That's great. Which is great. It gives you more ownership, more respect in yourself, competence, belief. How important is feedback for leaders? Getting feedback from peers, coaches or employees, team members.

Feedback is how you get better. No feedback, no improvement. And if you're not humble, you're not looking for feedback and you're not listening to it. So if you think you know everything, you're not listening, you're definitely not asking for it. Even when it gets told to you, you don't listen to it. So feedback is built upon being humble.

What would you say is in your way to getting to the next level? what feedback do you think you need to hear or receive from your team or people in order to reach the next goals that you have?

I mean, the weird thing about me is even though you might think, look at me and think, oh, who's gonna tell this guy anything, right? The reality is if anyone of my friends, my team, anyone that works for me up and down the chain of command, if they think I'm wrong, everyone will say, hey, I don't know if that's a good plan. So even when I was a task unit commander, so I'm in charge and I'm the head seal for this 40 seals, I'm the main guy. Anyone in that chain of command, those guys would all come to me and say, Hey, I don't know if this is a good way to do it. And you know what I'd say? Why not? What do you think? What are you thinking? How do you think we should do it? My mind is open. If my plan is bad, please tell me. They would know that.

So.

My friends, my family, they'll tell me when I'm doing something wrong all day long.

They're not intimidated or scared of you. No, that's good. No. So how does a leader cultivate that with his family, friends, team in order to welcome the feedback of the information?

Yeah, what you do is when somebody gives you feedback, you listen to it. This is like, you know, just the other day we have a leadership event that we do two or three times a year, but the thing that I was telling this group of people was, as a leader, you should be listening 98% of the time and talking 2% of the time. So, every time you come to me and you say, Hey, Jocko, I don't like this plan. I don't say shut up and do it my way. I say, how would you want to do it? Tell me what you don't like about it and then tell me how you want to do it. So, therefore, the next time you have an objection, you're like, you know the door is open, you know that I'm.

Going.

Actually are creating a negative environment where you're not going to get the feedback and if there's no feedback as we just said, you're not going to improve.

What are two things that any leader could do to improve their leadership skills right off the bat? Two things you can think of and what are two things that wannabe leaders do that hold them back from being great leaders. So what are the two things they could add?

Yeah, two things that you have. Number one is listen, which we just talked about. So that's fresh on my mind. And you'd be surprised about how many leaders are thinking that because they're in a leadership position, they should be talking all the time.

Wrong answer.

Wrong answer. I'll sit through a meeting with a client or with one of my companies and I'll listen for 38 minutes. And at the end of those 38 minutes, I'll have already thought through every discussion that's been had. You know, you want to argue with him and he's arguing with her, and guess what? I get to sit there and assess those arguments and see which one is the most important. Meanwhile, you're expending all your ammunition, she's expending all her ammunition, he's giving up everything he's got. I'm learning all their thought patterns, I'm learning the pros and cons of each one of their arguments, and I do that for 38 minutes. And in the 39th minute, I say, Hey, here's what I think we should do. And guess what? Because I've done an accurate assessment and listened, I'm actually gonna be able to make the best decision. It wasn't because I was smarter, it wasn't because I had better tactical understanding, it's because I actually shut my mouth, listened to everyone spill their guts, learned everything that they knew, and did a good detached assessment of what the right thing to do was. So listen, and the other one is the word that I just used, which is detached, which is not getting emotional, not getting into the weeds about stuff that doesn't matter. If you can take a step back and look around, you're going to see infinitely more than you can when you're in the weeds staring the firefight in the face, looking down the sights of your weapon shooting. If you're doing that, you can't see anything else. Just think about that metaphor right there. If I'm looking down the sights of my weapon, and I'm shooting, my world is this big. The minute that I stop shooting, point my weapon at high port, take a step back and actually look around, I can see infinitely more. So apply that to a meet. This is the meeting that we just talked about, a 38 minute meeting. All this chaos is happening. Sure, I'm the boss. I could jump in there and start arguing and giving my opinion, but what am I really doing then? What I'm really doing then is in the weeds. and I'm not able to assess what is actually happening. So there you apply it there to your personal life. If you and I are arguing, you're my friend and you did something and now we're starting to escalate an argument and I'm starting to get emotional, am I able to listen to you anymore? Am I able to logically figure out what's going on? If I'm talking to my wife and she did something that made me mad and now I'm starting to raise my voice, is that whole situation going in the right direction? No. It's not. It's not. So what I need to do is take a step back, detach, calm down, listen to what she's saying, and then try and assemble a logical thing to say back without saying youg need to calm down or you're too emotional. No, no, no, no, no. Because if you come to me and you're mad about something, you come to me whether it's whether it's my wife or whether you're a business partner, you come to me and you say, the dang supply department didn't give me the stuff I needed. If I say, hey, calm down, right? If that's my reaction, then you realize that I'm against you, right? I don't get it. And so now it's me and the supply department against you.

No one understands.

No one understands.

So.

I do a little technique.

What is that?

I call it reflect and diminish. So I'm gonna reflect your emotions back to you, but I'm gonna diminish them a little bit so that we're not escalating the situation. How would you do this with your wife?

So if you come to me and.

You go, the supply department's been late for two weeks. They're two weeks late on this stuff. I don't say, Calm down. I say, oh, you gotta be kidding me.

Two weeks?

And you go, yeah, can you believe it? Ah, that's horrible. We got to put a solution. We got to get that figured out. In the meantime, what do we need to do right now to get the problem solved? Right? So we already, now we're on the same team so we can work together to find a solution.

We bonded on the pain. Yes. You felt the pain.

Yes. We're on the same team.

Where's your biggest insecurity in your life? Whether it be when you first started writing books, you know, 20 years ago to where it is now.

Well, I'm very insecure. Like, yeah, but I try and turn it into something positive. meaning when I finish a book I don't really know if it's that good or if it's going to be successful. I'm very worried that I'm not connecting to the reader, to the audience. And so what that does for me is I never kind of rest. I'm never comfortable. I never assume, wow, this is a masterpiece, it's going to do really well. And so when I'm writing the book, and it's been in all my books, I'm thinking very, very deeply about the reader. How's the reader going to assimilate this information? Will it help him or her? Will it strike a chord? Will it resonate with their life? What they think of people that they know? So I'm trying to connect very, very deeply to the reader because I'm insecure, because I don't take them for granted. I think where a lot of writers and people go wrong is they believe in their own myth. They believe that what they've written is so good, or that they don't have to make that effort to connect to people. A lot of professors or experts or people who are in a very specific field, they assume that their knowledge is, that other people know what they know, and they kind of talk down to the reader. And I never try to talk down to the reader. I try to elevate the conversation.

Right. And what would you say is your main insecurity? Is it a fear of judgment that people may not like your writing or they may not like you or that you're not good enough or what's the...

Probably all of it.

Yeah.

You know, I kind of grew up that way. My parents were not the type to coddle me. or to say youy're great, Robert, or if it came home with straight A's, it's like, so what?

They didn't do better than that much. Oh, wow.

Even if you got a 4.0. They cared, but oh, you can always do better.

Even if you got a perfect score.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Okay. Could have done it faster. You could have done it, yeah.

Yeah, it's kind of a Jewish thing, I have to say. But so I never felt secure about my work. Maybe when I was younger, I tried many different forms of writing. I tried writing novels. And I think in my 20s I was a little more grandiose. I believed that what I was writing was really great, and it wasn't. It kind of sucked. So it's been a process of also getting over that kind of youthful exuberance and taking more time and thinking more deeply about what you're doing. But I have a lot of insecurities. I mean, that's one of them.

And you talk about detaching from our emotions. Is there more value in detaching from our emotions or because we are emotional and insecure, we create better work by holding on to those emotions?

That's a great question.

If you didn't care, do you think these books would be as good as they are.

Well, probably the source, to get back to your first question, the source of my insecurity is I kind of have a desire to please people, to impress them. I'm just being very honest here. And this probably went back to very early on, so I've always wanted to get the best grades and be the best pupil in the class. But there's a there's a weakness in that. It seems great, you're getting straight A's, you're doing well in sports, etc. But there's actually an insecurity of a self-doubt where you're trying to please people and maybe you go a little extra hard. So in that sense, compensating for your insecurities in that way can be a positive thing. So my insecurity by itself could destroy me in that I would never get the effort up to write a book or do something.

-It would hold them back from putting it out.

-Yeah, because if I doubt myself, maybe it's better never to try anything. A lot of young people have this problem. They have a negative attitude where they think that, well, if I don't do anything, if I just be a slacker, at least I won't fail and I can kind of make myself feel better that I'm the best slacker that there is. If you don't try too hard, you're never going to fail, you're never going to have the pain of failure. So that's the negative side of insecurity. But it can also motivate you to try even harder to actually get work done and to make it something really great and to doubt yourself constantly, which is how I kind of use that.

Right. Using the doubt to push yourself to put out better work.

Yeah, I mean it probably, you know, I had a, we can get to this, I had a stroke a couple of months ago. Probably is what led to this. And it is not a necessarily good thing. But I worked so hard on this book.

Five years.

Five years.

Obsessing over it, every word, every sentence.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I was thinking, you know, how can I make this more accessible? Because a lot of the information I had was from kind of heavy sources, like psychologists, people who were psychoanalysts who've studied human nature very deeply. and they use a lot of jargon and you can't really figure out exactly what they're saying. And I want to make it readable for the average reader out there. So, the effort of constantly trying to connect to people, I think comes from an insecurity but it's turned into something positive.

-Yeah.

-This is a great question. I've never been asked this before.

-Do you feel like it's worth putting out these books? that reach millions of people at the detriment of potential health challenges? Yeah.

I mean, if you asked me, if I could have a choice of not writing the book and never having this physical problem, I would have chosen writing the book.

Really?

For sure.

Why is that?

Because I may be physically crippled a little bit and I'll get over it. But I have this for the rest of my life. I can feel really good about myself. I could die tomorrow and I know that I wrote what I wanted to create. I expressed what my life was meant to express. So that's a great feeling that even in the worst depression I could have with my body not responding the way I want, I can feel a great deal of pride that I actually got this thing done and it didn't kill me.

Is there a way to create masterpieces Without doing that. -And staying healthy and peaceful in your mind.

-Well, you know, you'd think I would have because I exercise every day.

-You swim?

-I swim. I mean, I'm a fanatic. Even now with my stroke, I'm exercising every day aerobically and eat well and I meditate.

-Wow.

-And I do everything right. But it still led to this. Yeah, it's a good question. I think my next book because I am getting older and this happened. I'm gonna have to kind of find a better way to do it a little bit. To still write something shorter with a lot of work but not maybe take five years.

Take a year and a half, two years, maybe three years.

Three years. Maybe two, three years.

Yeah. Wow. So you're already thinking about the next book? Yeah.

In the ambulance on the way home from the hospital, I had an idea for my next Really?

What was that?

Well, it's very primitive. I've not really totally developed it. But it's about how the bad things in life, how negative things are actually, I mean, it's similar to Ryan's book, but it's a different spin on it. You actually learn more from negative than the positive. Like you learn, this is, I thought in the ambulance back home, I thought of all of the people I knew who handle adversity terribly. I'm not going to name names. Some of them are related to me. Who handle adversity really badly. And I thought, I don't want to be them. And as I thought about that, I thought, there's something interesting in that thought, like who I don't want to be. We never think like that. But it's actually very interesting. And it's also getting in touch with learning from your bad experiences. But also, it's kind of a book about negativity. And I know that sounds really bad and negative.

Sure, sure.

But how we're so attached to what we see in life, to what's in front of us, to what the appearances people have to their masks they wear. And I want you to think of what isn't there, what you're not seeing, what's invisible. I kind of go into it in the chapter about generations and trends in society. And all my books I'm trying to tell people, don't accept what you see with your eyes. Look for something deeper. What is the meaning behind this? If you're planning a strategy or making a big decision in your life, What is it that you're not considering? So it's kind of about negative space. I know it's very primitive, but I can promise you I'll turn it into something beautiful. It should be beautiful.

Yeah.

Well, in sports, they always talk about, you know, you learn more from your.

Losses than your wins.

That's right. You're not, everything's fine when you win. You're like, ah, everything's forgiven. That's right. Like, let's just keep doing it. That's right.

When you're losing, that's when you're like, okay, we evaluate everything. That's right. Well, some people don't, so we will know how to do that. but that's how you have to profit from your losses. I do that with things I've written that didn't quite work out. I've written books that I had to completely rewrite that were dead ends. Like the 50-Cent Book, I had a version of that book that we did together that wasn't working at all. And I learned a lot from what I did wrong there. I learned, for instance, the problem of that book in its first version was that I wasn't being myself. I was trying to please him more. I've learned to always sort of be myself, but I had to learn that by trying to be someone else.

What is Maslow's hierarchy of needs for people that don't understand it fully? What does that process and framework look like? And then what is your Kaufman sail belt in order for us to learn what that is too?

So a lot of people might not have heard of like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, but surely they've you've seen the meme on the internet with maybe toilet paper at the bottom. It's a pyramid, you know, with various levels of needs that one needs to fulfill in order to be able to focus your attention on self-actualization, which is becoming all that you're uniquely capable of becoming. So the needs for connection, the needs for self-esteem, the need for safety, and all these things that clearly, if your mind's preoccupied, you're hungry, Right? Like you're not focused on self-actualization, you know, so it's contextual as well throughout the course of our day, you know, if you feel very lonely, your mind is preoccupied with the deprivation of your loneliness, you know? If you don't feel like you're getting any respect, you know, your whole consciousness is directed towards respecting me, and you're kind of in part onto the world, you know, you want the world to kind of bend to your will in a way.

Where is respect on that? On that chain.

In Maslow's original, it was the highest up before self-actualization.

Respect.

Esteem.

Esteem.

He calls it esteem.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we want, we need, we can't eat, the only thing we're thinking about is food. Yes. If we're sick, the only thing we're thinking about is getting healthy. If we have nowhere to sleep, the only thing we're thinking about is shelter. Yeah.

And then once we have that foundation.

It'S the next level of- Loneliness, then loneliness, social connection. And then esteem.

Then esteem, which is respect.

Credibility, I guess, or being respected within your community.

Respecting yourself and then getting respect from others. Yeah, so he had both of those forms of esteem he talked about.

Okay, and the next one is-- so.

The connection comes before belonging and connection, the need to belong, the need to make connections with others, and then esteem was higher in his original model.

And then the top is-- Then you self-actualize. And it's- what does self-actualization mean?

You know, Maslow, here's some like cheeky, not cheeky things, but things that like reveals, grand reveals. First of all, Maslow never drew a pyramid.

Oh.

You know, people don't know that. It's in all the textbooks and it's like management text, all these management business schools, they learn it. There's no pyramid. Also, he didn't like the term self-actualization. I found in an unpublished essay, because I read all of his unpublished stuff, like just researching, I found in a footnote, he said, I hate that damn word self-actualization. Oh my God! I should send you a copy. Take a picture of it because it's like when I discovered that I almost fell off my chair.

He actually never said the words.

He did.

He definitely used the term self-actualization, but towards the end of his life, he started to think of it more. He preferred the term fully human. Ooh, I like that. Yeah, yeah. And that's how he started talking about it later in his life. his life. He just didn't use the term as much.

What does fully human mean in your mind?

Sure. I'll tell you in his earliest years what he meant by self-actualization first, he thought of self-actualization as becoming your unique creative potential. What is the thing within you? What's the song within you? That's definitely how he viewed it in his early life. Becoming fully human as he started to think about this concept more broadly was how can you bring your whole self to the table, you know, not just like your talent, you know, you can become self-actualized and not be very transcendent, not be very, you know, not give back to others, not kind of get outside yourself. And towards the end of his life, he started to distinguish between self-actualizing non-transcenders and self-actualizing transcenders, two different classes of self-actualizers, you know, the self-actualizing non-transcenders, the person who goes to work, you know, like, They clock in, they do their job, maybe their job isn't something that necessarily contributes much to society, but they're good and they go home.

It's not fulfilling to them personally.

It might even be a little bit fulfilling, but it's not something that's really getting outside of themselves and doesn't be in line with what Maslow called the B values.

The B values.

The B values, the values of being itself. So, these are values that you don't need to do them for any other reason. Truth, justice, beauty, meaningfulness. He has a long list of the B values. He calls them B values.

Perfection.

Excellence. Excellence is one of his B values. You strive for excellence for excellence sake. You strive for beauty for beauty's sake. You strive for truth for truth's sake.

Not to get likes, not to get followers, not for accomplishments. That's exactly right.

Just to be. To be in that state. To be. you want more meaning in your life, not so that you get famous.

You want meaning.

Right.

Yeah.

Okay.

So self-actualization and then self-actualization plus.

Transcendence.

Transcendence. And what's transcendence mean?

Well, I wish I had a really pithy def... Well, actually I do have a pithy def... I have a definition, but it ain't pithy. I have a complicated definition because I just want to distinguish between, as I do in my book, between healthy transcendence and unhealthy transcendence. So you see a lot of these gurus who preach transcendence and then they kind of molest everyone, you know, in their parish or whatever, you know, and it's like, oh, you really transcend, like really, you know, you know, there, it's built on a very faulty foundation, as Maslow put it, you know, he called it pseudo growth, growth built on a faulty foundation, and I call it pseudo transcendence. Yeah, it's transcendence built on, really, you're trying to get your esteem needs self esteem needs met, you know, you're really trying to get, you know, you're lonely, so you, you know, you've built all this stuff to have connections with others. But healthy transcendence, this is a viewpoint of, I didn't even get to my sailboat model, so maybe we're going to.

We'Re skipping ahead, but yeah, it's the.

View of the sea bird.

Yeah.

A bird that's looking above your life.

You know what I love about you.

I love that we just like jumped transcendence. We're like, you know, all the other. Let's get there. Let's just like go right to transcendence. Well, this is what everyone wants, right?

Everyone want, well, you want safety, you.

Want connection, you want to feel loved, you want to feel purpose but ultimately want to feel like what's the connection.

To the rest of humanity?

Yeah, what's the greatest potential for my life? What's the meaning of my life? Why am I here? How can I serve my purpose and do it fully?

That's right.

And so what is healthy?

Healthy transcendence is an emergent phenomenon, and I'll explain every part of this. Healthy transcendence is an emergent phenomenon resulting from the harmonious integration of one's whole self in the service of cultivating the good society. I can break that down.

For me, that's kind of like my definition of greatness. I always tell people that.

Isn't that interesting?

The way that I view greatness is it's discovering your unique talents and gifts that are inside of you and pursuing your dreams using those gifts and making an impact on the most people you can. In the pursuit of those dreams. So it's figuring out who you are.

To pursue the things.

Yours is pithier. And then helping as many people as you can along the way. Maybe helping as many people as 10 people. Maybe it's 100 people. Maybe it's your whole community, it's your city or your country. Maybe it is, but maybe it's just your family and that's fine too.

But helping as many people along the way that you're capable of helping. And yeah, I love that. And the key thing I try to point out there is also that it's important to be have integration there of all the various sides of yourself. And I feel like you, I don't know, can we get personal about you for a second?

Yeah, of course.

I mean, I feel like you've really, your whole growth process has really been a process of integration. You had certain sides of yourself you weren't proud of at certain points in your life, and you brought it into the rest of you. You started to have acceptance, right?

Yeah, absolutely. and, and, and I was very shameful for most of my childhood. I mean, most of my adulthood. I was shameful of things that had happened or things that I had done happen to me or things that I created in the world. And I, I hid those shames. Yeah, I didn't talk about them, which made me suffer. So when I started to talk about them and forgive myself and forgive others and heal, yeah, then allowed me to go beyond that state of being that I was in. I was able to create and accomplish a lot, but I still wasn't feeling connected. I wasn't feeling like things mattered as much. I was still suffering. So I was wondering why am I...

You felt a disconnection between self and world.

Absolutely. And I was like, why am I feeling this? Let me just do more and work harder and win more, but it wasn't supporting my overall growth.

Yeah, and see now you're very comfortable in your own body. It's obvious to me. You're very at ease with your being. Absolutely. Is the phrase LIT is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, transcendence, healthy transcendence is essentially the definition of greatness. And we're all trying to get there essentially. Is that what I'm hearing you say? We should all be striving to get there, but it's going to take safety, connection, self-esteem first before we can really get to those levels.

So, I'll explain my new revised model. Yes, Kaufman's sailboat model. So, my revised hierarchy needs There's no longer a higher, like a pyramid, you know, because Maslow never even drew a pyramid. We're a whole vehicle that needs to be integrated. That's why a sailboat works. You know, all the parts have to work together optimally in order for that sailboat to really move in its most purposeful direction, you know.

I'll put up a graphic or something here as well for people so they can see.

Wow, that can zoom in or something. We can do that, yeah.

You've got mad-- We've got technology here, you know. So how is yours different than his? What is-- well, it keeps the spirit.

Of what Maslow-- see, remember there was no Maslow's pyramid. He never drew a pyramid. If you actually-- people betrayed the spirit of his original theory. So I'm trying to bring in the original spirit with my own flavor. So in his original theory, he distinguished between the being realm of human existence and the deficiency realm. D versus B realm of human existence. for instance. When we're in the deficiency realm or we're deficiency motivated, so another way of saying is deficiency motivation versus growth motivation. When we're in the realm of deficiency motivation, we're motivated by what we are lacking. And like I said earlier, we basically are screaming for the things we're lacking in the world. Like if we're hungry, feed me, if we're lonely, be my friend. which paradoxically makes people not want to be friends with you because you come across as needy, and that's really an interesting paradox. But if you're really low in respect, you demand respect.

You need to respect me.

Yeah, demand it. You demand it. But the growth realm of human existence is a whole different realm. If you can get to the growth realm of being, you no longer want the world to conform to you. You actually start admiring the world on its own terms. You start to admire people on their own terms and that's called B-love, love for the being of others. That's what Maslow called it. So in the D realm you have the need for connection, but in the B realm you have B-love, which is just love for the being of others, not for what they offer to you. Maybe someone doesn't even offer you connection, but you can still admire them. You can still love them. You can still be curious about them.

Right.

So the B-love is a whole different realm. So what I did with the sailboat is the boat itself is the D, is the D realm, right? You need, if you have too many holes in the boat, you know, the boat's gonna sink, right? The water's gonna come in and sink. If you're too deficient in the needs for safety, the need for connection, the need for self-esteem, and they all work together as a system is another point I want to make. They all, it's a feedback loop. I call it the insecurity cycle. People who are deficient in any one of those three tend to start quickly becoming deficient in the other two, right? So if safety is deficient, then your.

Self-Esteem and your connection are only... If your connection is low, then you don't have self-esteem. You don't have confidence. You don't feel safe.

That's exactly right.

And if you have low self-esteem, then.

You feel disconnected and lack of safety as well. That's right. Wow.

Yeah.

You feel like nobody respects me, nobody cares about me. you know, so it's a cycle. So that's the boat. But if the boat is safe and secure, you're still not going to go anywhere unless you open up the sail, right? So it's not enough to just be safe and secure. Some people are acting these days like the ultimate is just to be the lack of what they have, you know, no longer lack what they have and then they're going to be happy. It's like, no, no, no, there needs to be something above zero, right? You can't just get from negative 50 to zero, right? You don't go to a psychologist and you're anxious, you have generalized anxiety disorder. A lot of people, are you dissatisfied if you leave the psychologist no longer being anxious in the world? There's still nothing added to that. So once you can open the sail and move with a vulnerability against the inevitable winds and waves of the sea, you move in a purposeful direction with a spirit of exploration, be love and purpose. despite knowing that the waves could come crashing down on us at any time. And even though we're all in our own boat, we're moving the same sea together. So that wave can come crashing on many boats at the same time. So we need to be connected to rest of humanity and also still have that bravery and exploration drive to just go despite our fears. I was nervous today. I was nervous this morning. This is the first time I've put on a suit in a year. this is the farthest I've driven in over a year.

Five miles.

Yeah.

Six miles. You know, it's like I was a little nerd. But the thing is, you just, you have to move in life. You have to keep moving, you know? And, and that's the, that's the sell boat metaphor, is you have to open that cell ultimately or else you're not going to grow.

You know, you have to get outside your comfort zone. And when you open the sale, there's.

Exploration, love and purpose.

Yeah.

Yeah. So another way of putting that is, whereas Security is, the base of security is safety. The base of growth is exploration. Does that make sense?

So safety and exploration. Because you could have safety, connection, self-esteem, but if you don't have exploration, if you're not growing, then you feel stagnant, you feel disconnected, you probably feel less safe than also, right?

Yeah, that's exactly right.

Something's missing, I gotta shake something up in my life.

Yeah, and sometimes we might not even feel safe and still say, fuck it, I'm gonna choose exploration. Sometimes we don't want to wait till we're fully safe in order to explore.

Why is that?

Why are some people, take two people, some people have the fear and they don't grow, and some people have the fear and they do, is that kind of the question? That's a great question.

Yeah, I like that.

You guys want to be close and just zoom in on the question. Because it's like, I wish I knew the precise answer. Some have done personality differences. Maslow did write that the self-actualizers he studied seemed to, as opposed to being frightened by the unknown, they were turned on by the unknown. Yeah, excited. He used the word excited.

I get excited. I get excited because I don't know if there's ever been a bad moment when something didn't work out or I failed or I was humiliated. I can't look back and say that ruined my life. It might have been a moment of embarrassment and might have affected me earlier in my life when I didn't know how to use those emotions for good or didn't know how to transcend the feeling of embarrassment or loneliness or rejection. But as I look back at my life, and you talk about this in your book about the history of looking back, we should look back at the history of our life like a historian. I think you mentioned that. And, as we looked back like a historian, like, okay, look at all these different moments and years and timelines and chapters and pages that we turned. And if I look back, I'm like, every decision I made that had a risk that was scary turned out for the better. Yeah. Like, even if it turned out for the worst, it eventually, it built some, a foundation of like, I can do this. I can go after what I want, and I'm still gonna be alive.

Yeah.

And my family's still there for me, my friends, you know, it's going to be okay. And I think a lot of people live in a state of deficiency realm or the state of fear that they don't want to go after what they could be or what they are interested in doing because that risk is too big and they're too afraid of, I guess, feeling a lack of safety connection and self-esteem. If I risk and I fail, then I'm gonna lose my house, no one's gonna be my friend, and I'm gonna have zero confidence in myself. Which makes it very, then there's no foundation to the sailboat.

You got it, you nailed it. A lot of people who fear their self-esteem need is so important to them. What's really going on with them underneath it is they have a fear of shame.

In terms of what?

Like if I fail, they'll fail, they'll be shame, you know, they'll be like, revealed as not as smart as they thought they were or not as great as they thought they were. I mean, you've interviewed so many great people and do you find a common theme in terms of like there are many moments in their life where they definitely weren't great. Absolutely. And they were okay with that. It didn't put them in a downward spiral of depression where they were no longer able to pick themselves up again, right?

Free frame life in a way so we can actually take on risks, take on growth, take on challenges, and it not hurt our self-esteem when we do fail. Because we're all going to be failing in order to grow. It's not going to be like, I'm going to win at everything and be perfect, and it's always going to be a New York Time bestseller, and everyone's got to praise every decision I make. So how do we build our self-esteem foundation so that no matter what happens, and the results of our life, we're still confident and esteemed in who we are.

I think the best way to look at self-esteem and the healthiest form of self-esteem is, again, I'm going to use the phrase emergent phenomenon. I'm a really big fan of that phrase. It's not something that you shoot for. The problem with people who show mental health issues is that they have made self-esteem itself the goal, as opposed to the outgrowth of a natural outgrowth of pride healthy pride in something you built, some form of mastery, as well as your social relationships. Psychologists distinguish between hubristic pride and authentic pride. And I think the healthiest route to self-esteem, the kind of self-esteem that will really lead to growth is authentic pride. What's the difference? Authentic pride versus? Hubristic pride is driven by the path of the need for dominance, the need for power, the self-esteem becomes the goal in itself.

Being confident, commanding respect is the goal.

It's the goal, yeah. It's having the accolades as much as possible so that it reflects on your ego.

Why do people live in that state? What do you call that?

The hubristic pride?

Hubristic pride. Why do people and what happens when we come from that place if that is our goal.

You know, both evolutionary psychologists have studied this because both evolve, and there's a reason why it exists in the human gene pool. Both paths evolved over the course of human history for different purposes. They both served its function. Dominance, being able to be the top person in your clan on the savannah certainly had its meeting benefits, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, of course. But that wasn't the only pathway to meeting. See, the thing is, there was also people in the tribe who were the experts, the professors, who were getting laid just as much. The wise men. Yeah, the wise, yeah, exactly. And both pathways evolved and still exist in our gene pool. There also are some genetic factors here. Some people are actually more predisposed to one path or the other. you know. But it doesn't mean we can't change or can't grow in our life and we can't kind of shift our pathway.

Yeah.

Okay. So the authentic product. So what happens when we live from that state of hubristic? Hubristic? Yeah.