How To SUCCEED And GET AHEAD In Life - Get Out Of Your Own Way! | Dave Hollis and Lewis Howes

I came out of a world where vulnerability and transparency were not necessarily something that I was, it wasn't, I didn't see this drink, I saw it actually as a liability. And the first time I was handed Girl Wash youh Face, it was terrifying to me. I panicked.

So you were telling me just a second ago that in your bio that I have here, it says Dave Hollis is the CEO of the Hollis Company, but you just told me that it's now COO.

That's right.

Is that. Now, why is that changing? And do you feel like you're getting demoted?

No. So it's an interesting thing. So I came Out of an organization, out of a corporate environment, out of status and stuff from having had a long career on this entertainment industry side of things.

Well, the whole point of the career was like, how do I increase in the ladder?

How do I grow on the ladder?

How do I get a better status, a better title?

My identity for so long was attached to what was on my business card, who was on my business card, what it said to other people. My value a lot of times was just really about here is this thing on this ground.

This is who I am.

Affirm me as having enough worthiness or whatever it might be. So as I decide, I am going to now push away from a thing that makes sense to other people for this thing I know I need, which is to leave certainty for uncertainty, to leave convention for unconvention. I was triggered like anybody might be about what other people would think of me making this choice that made sense to me but not them.

From leaving Disney to working with Rachel.

That's right. Your wife Rachel. That's right. And at the time, like we made this decision to leave before the thing that has the most success for her in her career came out. Right?

So the book.

Girl Wash youh Face.

Before the book you left.

We made this choice before that book came out. As much as she'd written previous books and worked for a decade and a half building a company, that book had not yet come out. I'd read the book, but it had not yet come out. And so my choice to go do this on the surface didn't make a lot of sense. And so one of the things that I, in having this conversation with her, needed was a title that would make me feel more comfortable through the lens of what they were thinking. And so even though she was a very proud female founder, even though we serve a primarily female audience, even though she'd spent 15 years of time, blood, sweat, and all the things of entrepreneurship, She was willing because of an acknowledgement of the tools that I might bring as an operator integrator to her being the visionary of this business to give me that title. And once we got into the work and as time passed and I realized how little a title actually meant, how few people were really actually watching, not because they're bad people, but because no one is actually watching. Nobody actually cares. There was this freedom in recognizing that titles truly mean very, very little. Unless the signal that we're sending to our team, the signal that I'm sending to my daughter or sons, the signal that we're sending to our primarily female audience is something that's important. Or if you've spent 15 years of time building something, right? And so Rachel has always been the leader of the organization and as much as I came in and I think served well as a partner to help Unpack the how we do the things that we do when she defines the what. Switching back into a COO role was something that truly is a recognition of the work that I've been doing and puts her back as a CEO of a company. She found it 15 years ago.

That's great. Now, I'm curious, there's essentially, from the outside looking in, I know it's much deeper than this, but essentially it looks like one piece of content changed both of your lives and the business. Because Rachel was building something for a long time and it was growing at a nice pace, right? Every year was increasing and building and she was growing and impacting more people. But I remember when the book came out, it's like everything shot up. The following, the engagement, the audience, the opportunities, the deals, the money, everything. Now, you knew You probably had belief that the business was going to be great with you coming in, but that one piece of content, if that didn't happen, that piece of content, where do you think the business would be today?

We'd still be successful. Of course.

Well, she was successful before.

I have so much confidence that we would have figured things out. But when you have the benefit of a single domino knocking down so many other dominoes, goodness gracious, then it became about the application of gas on fire.

Yeah, how do we amplify this?

How do we amplify this? How do we take it to another level faster? Are there other tools that we could supply that would supplement this thing that's working as well as it is? And if there's a thing in the two years now that we've been together in this partnership that, man, has been disruptive and destabilizing but super effective, I think it's the speed with which we've been able to hear from the audience, man, it would be amazing if you could go deeper in this thing, or extend the experience of this. And so taking the live event, as a for example, that was previously a two-day event into a three-day event. That was previously a smaller arena to 10,000 person arenas. Taking something that was happening in that arena and bringing it to a platform like a documentary, where now you're broadening the ability for an audience around the world to see something that previously was limited to just people who could afford it and make it inside the room. So if that book hadn't happened, I think we would have still cobbled things together. It just would have taken longer.

Longer to get there.

Right?

Yeah.

It's part of focusing on the one thing that will help you get further in your business. There is for anyone's business, even for anyone's life, a single thing that acts as this biggest domino that if this thing were to come to pass, it unlocks everything else. It's a linchpin of sorts. And this book was a linchpin for the business that man asked the question, where do you pour the gas? We just started pouring gas everywhere.

Everywhere. It's been a wild ride for the last couple of years.

It has. What's crazy too about the ride, I mean, I do need to say this because I came out of a world where vulnerability and transparency were not necessarily something that-- I didn't see it as strength. I saw it actually as a liability. And the first time I was handed, girl, wash your face, It was terrifying to me. I panicked because I saw for the first time in a draft that was just about to be turned in, eight and a half by 11 pieces of paper, binder clip, I'm reading it. It is triggering.

It's telling stories about your life. Telling stories about my life. Embarrassing stuff.

Why are you sharing these things? We don't need to share these things. And I actively petitioned to have her not release the book. Like, I use the voice that you use when you are with a partner, someone you love or crave love from. I knew we should not release this book, and I tried to actively convince her to not release it. And a credit to her, she knew, because of the 15 years of time she'd been in community with this audience, no, no, no, no. These are the things that they're also going through. No, no, no, no. Struggle is universal, and my vulnerability here will allow me to connect with this audience in a way that might afford them a way through that struggle for seeing themselves in my stories.

Right.

And I, in the resisting, was not a believer until after, of course, the book comes out.

Right.

Word of mouth is what it is. Four million copies later and all of the letters that come in telling us and me more than anything that, no, no, no, vulnerability is not a liability. Vulnerability is a superpower. Yeah. And her ability to trailblaze in that respect was part of how I've thought completely differently about almost every single aspect of our business and my stepping into something that is such a departure from managing expectations, making sure the optics look right. I mean, in my old job, I was the person convincing people at movie theaters that these movies are great or after they came out convincing the press that even if they flopped, that was exactly what we hoped they would do. And I was good at telling those stories. It was the thing that I could do well. And in the world that we all live in with curated Facebook and Instagram feeds, the idea of this kind of vulnerability felt so threatening to everything that we built and created. And now I lean fully in. Before we came on camera, you said, what's off limits? There's literally nothing off limits. Because the things that I struggled with and the things that I struggle with, those are universal things. And my willingness to now own the fact that I've struggled and how I've gotten through the struggle, is a confirmation of my humanity, but is also the chance to connect with the audience. Yeah.

What do you think was the biggest area of growth for you in two years? Was it confidence within yourself, Dave the person? Was it confidence in the relationship? Was it as a father, as a business leader, health? Because I feel like you've tackled so many different things in your life. Some things have gone up, some things have probably gone down. What do you feel like it's been for you?

It's been all the things, which is, I mean, like, The crazy thing is, I thought the hard choice was leaving certainty for growth, leaving a job for the opportunity, and that was a hard choice, right? Like every single day- Was a hard choice, actually. The repercussions of that choice, right? The decision to now having push away from a safe harbor, the choppy waters were the hard choice day after day. I definitely struggled with, identity. I definitely struggled with imposter syndrome at times. I came out of this environment where there were so many things that worked well because of a really accomplished team, super strong intellectual property, the greatest leadership in the world. And when I got into this small business, that there were things that went wrong all the time. Man, that was hard for me to process that I couldn't have preempted them from happening, that I didn't have the leadership skill that I thought I previously was exerting at Disney to extinguish things quickly before they became bigger problems. And so it took some time, certainly, to get into a rhythm in the small business, but some of that started to bleed into my habits.

Yeah.

Right? So I had a pretty casual relationship, I'd like to say, pretty casual relationship with drinking as a coping mechanism for most of my adult life.

Coping for anxiety, stress, overwhelm.

Yeah, it's the end of a long day. I'm gonna just go ahead and smooth off the rough edges by having a drink or two. I have four kids. I've got a busy job. I'm trying to like maintain a great relationship with my wife. Life. I'm gonna have a drink or two at the end of a day. And as this transition introduced identity crisis, working with my wife for the first time, small business ownership, scaling from five to 65 employees, there were there were things that as they stacked, just really now we're taking the rough edges of that long day and having me lean way too hard into alcohol.

And so, so this was a year ago.

This was a year and a half, year and a half, year and a half, year and a half year ago. And it was about a year ago where I got the edits back for the book. And so in the sea of all of this other disruption, I get these edits back and I felt like, oh, I've just spared my soul. I've gone so honest and transparent and vulnerable, and you sent me back all of these red lines. The criticism of my honesty, the truth that I had poured onto these pages was a thing that tipped me over the edge. And I had way too much to drink for a handful of days in the aftermath of getting these edits that it prompted a very hard conversation about whether or not I was going to choose to show up for my life in this new identity or not. And so I had to declare right there, all right, I will not have a drink for a year. I need to find something that I can substitute for my reaching for a drink when I feel triggered. And my substitute was running. I just had to put on shoes, right? And running for me became this therapeutic outlet to process the things that were otherwise triggering my anxiety that were making me feel the identity things that were my marriage, whatever it might be, and they were allowing me to actually feel the pangs of discomfort that come when you are doing something outside your comfort zone. Like I understood intellectually, I understood on like a basic thinking level that I had to leave something that was not as fulfilling because of it not really introducing growth in my life. But then when I got to a place where growth was being introduced on a regularity that triggered my insecurities, I muted it with alcohol in a way that eliminated the chance for growth, which is crazy.

So now you had to feel the pain.

So I had to feel the pain, right? Because I was trying to mute the anxiety, but it's, you know, alcohol or any coping mechanism, they tend to not be local anesthetics. You can't just take care of the anxiety without also destroying the opportunity for growth. You can't just take care of the imposter syndrome without also interrupting the way that you might learn to become something bigger. And so, man, I had to really connect with, do I really want to be fulfilled? If I had to leave what I knew, if I had to leave what I knew for what I need, if I had to leave this thing that was so certain that it was not producing growth, then I have to be comfortable letting the uncertainty just roll right in like the wave. I have to be able to sit in it. I have to be able to, like Brendan might say, honor the struggle. I have to like honor the fact that these Struggles, the hard things, the insecurity, the stuff that I'm feeling is actually for me if I can actually sit in it and experience it. It's not easy. -Not easy. Here's how easy it's not. I had to start running. I have run 1,000 miles in the last year. Since I stopped drinking, I have run a lot. Now, guess what?

I am... -You look great.

-You'Re great shape, man. -I am strong. Move your body, change your mind is a thing that Rachel and I say all all the time. And it is man been the capital T truth of truths. Because in pushing myself to do things physically that go beyond what I thought I was capable of, I have reframed in both what I can do physically, mentally, emotionally, I have reframed what I believe my capacity to be in any capacity, in any arena, right? And so running for me, I just ran a marathon, I'm training for an Ironman, I mean, I am going to continue to push myself beyond the limits of what I believe I can do as a positive coping mechanism for stress, so that when stresses come, I am reminded immediately, oh, I can handle this. Thank you very much. Bring it on. Yeah.

What's the greatest lesson running a thousand miles has taught you in the last year?

Well, I mean, one of them for sure is that there is something in clarity. There is something in space and time for yourself. Right? And as a person-- Not being on.

Your phone, not working, not doing something.

My ability to get clear has afforded me more breakthroughs in this last year, year and a half, than any other time in my life because of life becoming more complicated. And so many times, I think you find yourself thinking if you could just get to all the things, if you could just show up for everyone on your team, if you could just spend time-- and every once in a while we forget that if we are not first putting the oxygen mask on ourselves when it drops, we will not be able to care for the people that are around us. I cannot pour out of an empty pitcher for those who have a cup with their hand out. And so running for me and that clarity, the ability to get clear has been one of the purest forms of self-care. So that's one. Two, I grew up having been told a story about what I could or couldn't do because of my height when it comes to running. Really? Oh, when it comes to running, right?

Clydesdale, yeah.

Right, Clydesdale.

And I was told-- Just what?

6'4, 6'5? 6'4? Yeah, yeah. Just shorter than you.

I mean, I spike my hair sometimes I can get there, but-- I've got.

A long neck, so it's not fair. You got taller shoulders than me. They're all right. But I had been told, I had just been told this story through the lens of someone else's worry of what running on a frame like mine might do to my neck, my hips, my back, my knees. They had every reason why. And I had just accepted what they were telling me as a truth of my experience, but it wasn't. I had not yet actually tested their fear as being true or not for me. And getting out and pushing myself to do things has actually not only shown that I'm a runner, I mean, I'm a tall runner, I'm a fast runner, I'm a far runner. It's allowed me because of disproving their hypothesis, it's pushed me into asking which other stories that I believe come from uncredible sources, right? Are there other stories, other limiting beliefs that I've attached myself to that I need to examine the credibility of the source?

Like what stories? Like I can never work with my wife or I can never do this.

Or Well, I mean, there was a story that I've had to unpack in the last two years about what kind of value I have as a person who provides for my family or not. I was the provider for our family as much as Rachel was scaling a business. My career in entertainment for those 20 years had me, I'm eight years older than her, it was starting a little bit farther along because of just our age difference.

So you had more financial.

I was the president of distribution. I had a job that paid well. I was the head of household providing for our family as the breadwinner. And then my wife has had a career that has taken off in a way that makes all of my career, the 20 years of my career, pale in comparison. Well, if you have identity that's connected to provision as a value that affirms you as being good, worthy enough, Careful, careful when it's gone, right? And so that story through the lens of traditional masculinity or that story through the lens of the way my parents raised me in a household that was great, by the way, but that also signaled from family of origin, hey, dad does this, mom does this, and I had to ask, okay, those stories were amazing for my childhood. Do they still have application in my life in 2020? And the answer ends up being I can respect and honor the people and stories in the time that they happened without actually having to take them as my own. There's nothing in disrespecting the fact that now we are doing things differently here. Thank you very much, but appreciate and honor the fact that it worked well then. Yeah.

So what has been the biggest challenge that you still have unresolved in your marriage since this kind of, I guess shift where you had this, you said you had this big career for 20 years and you said in two years she's kind of blown that out of the park, I guess. Is there anything that you have unresolved that you're like still working through?

Let's put it this way, the last two years have singularly been the two best and hardest years of our marriage.

Because you guys are nonstop.

For sure been the best and hardest. The change is we went from being people who I would say were a little more codependent in the way that we were not really willing to push into hard conversations that in us working together as much as we do, as often as we do, have had to fundamentally change our willingness to bring it up respectfully but bring it up.

What are the two hardest conversations you've had in the last two years that you resisted having for the longest time?

Well, I mean, we have committed, I will say this, we have committed as accountability partners to truly holding each other accountable. And so there are times where our ambition needs to be, at least we at least need to have a conversation about the trade-offs, right? Hey, if we pursue all of these things, what are the potential trade-offs?

I mean, we never see our kids, we don't hang out at the beach.

Yeah, the way that I tend to talk about it, just because you can build a nuclear weapon, Should you build a nuclear weapon? I mean, man, I want to have maximum impact, but I also want to be able to sit at a dinner table with my kids 20 years from now and have them raising a glass, still loving you, toasting the fact that we were close. But we've actually, we've adopted a practice of not only having hard conversations, but if they're really hard, writing them down. Because we found, that there was a hard time sometimes in us not taking some of our traditional roles. I tend to be more of a debater. She tends to shut down a bit more when we start getting into confrontation. Which by the way, if you're a person who tends to be a stronger debater and you're partnered with somebody who tends to shut down, then you start to display a bully.

You look like a bully.

You look like a bully. It is the worst version of me and that's like the thing I want the least.

And you want to win, you want to be right.

Yeah, I mean, winning and being right and all of that, man, it goes so contrary to what I'm truly hoping for, which is a more exceptional relationship tomorrow than today. So we've had to get to a point of sometimes laying it on a piece of paper, being really, really clear. The hardest conversations that we've had to have have tended to be the ones that require one or the other of us to put it in paper and send it.

What was the last thing you wrote down on paper? that you wrote down and the last thing she wrote down?

The conversation that we had about me hanging on to how I led the teams at Disney, not being applicable for the way I lead the team at the Hollis Company, was an amazing exchange.

So she wrote that down?

She wrote that to me. And by the way, receiving it, it hurts my feelings. I am punctured.

You're like, this is my identity. I did this for 20 years.

She has been an entrepreneur for 15 years. I've been an entrepreneur for a year and a half, two years. I still do have, as much as it's harder sometimes for my ego to confess it, things to learn about this small business startup kind of space because all of my experience for 20 plus years happened in big conglomerate environments. And so I made the mistake of thinking that what worked in these old environments would work in this new one and they are not directly transferable. They just aren't. Emotion, shame, anger, but because I'm reading it and our agreement is like read it and process it and come back in an objective way to have a conversation about it that is less emotional, right? It's impossible to be emotional. Still be emotional. Impossible to be unemotional, but less emotional. And we've been able to have wildly more productive conversations because of that. It doesn't mean that it's easy necessarily, but it's easier because now the frequency of us having hard conversations is such a normal thing.

Easier. The more you do it, it's going to become like second nature. Of course. You're not going to be scared and trembling for months thinking how is my partner going to react, how are they going to be hurt, or is this going to be a thing that we have to go to therapy for or whatever it is. You just start doing it more and more and you lean into that pain and you really start to find relief once you do it more and more. And what's the thing that you wrote down last you sent to her? You said nothing's off limits.

Nothing's off limits. Most of the conversations that we've been having that I am starting are really around where to create guardrails, as it were, for not overextending.

Not just saying yes to all the big opportunities.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, here's the thing, I definitely made some mistakes at the beginning of us jumping into this venture together as the book had not yet come out. Man, I had a scarcity mindset and.

Said yes to every- Every speaking gig, every money opportunity. Every speaking gig, every money opportunity.

And saying yes to everything is good till it's not because man, we hit places where there was absolute fatigue and you start asking some questions about like, oh my goodness, is this really what we want out of all of this work? We've had to have some hard and interesting conversations about where the lines exist for sharing every single part of our life. Because what works and what has been unbelievably productive in being a tool for people is us sharing everything.

Everything.

But at a certain point.

Every morning and the books.

Every morning on the books, right? And so.

There's no privacy then.

There's no privacy, but there's also like there have to be some lines. And we've recognized, man there have to be some lines. We threw a couples conference and it was a wild success and it was the hardest thing that we've ever done. Because you're just like... Because we were trying to a very broad spectrum of people, some that were in amazing marriages and of the couples that were assembled, there were five in the pre-event survey that had already filed for divorce. Who came. Who came, as like, this is the last ditch effort, right? And so the weight on our shoulders to try and potentially be the thing that might help them reconcile a marriage that is down a path of irreconcilable differences. That felt like something that was a little more than we could carry. Wow. And it required us to be so, so vulnerable in a way that didn't feel like we were protecting some of what needs to be sacred.

Like sacred. Yeah, just like what are some of the things? Is that public information?

Oh yeah, yeah, no.

Like what was some of the things.

We were talking about on stage? We were talking about our sex life. We were talking about the way that we fight and how we fight. I mean, all of it, there truly were no limits. And as much as I believe it man afforded the audience unbelievable breakthroughs, there was a fetal position that we found ourselves in for days after the event because it felt like, oh, we have crossed the line in things that are healthy for our relationship.

Kind of like a vulnerability hangover probably for us.

Oh, completely.

What's the thing you shared that crossed the biggest line in your mind? For you, maybe not for Rachel, but for you, it was like, ah, I wish we wouldn't have said that thing.

You know, it's tough because in retrospect, the feedback was so positive that I have a hard time disassociating it, like being an okay thing to have some collateral damage to some of what we feel for the benefit of the audience getting great value, right? But I also appreciate that this is a long game. We are running a marathon here.

You're gonna just reveal it all right now in one moment?

Well, it's that, but it's also like if I feel shredded, if I get emotionally fatigued in a way that doesn't afford me a chance to still show up for this audience five and 10 years from now, then helping those people in the short term came at the expense of helping all of the people in the long term. And so, I don't even know that there was a single thing. Truly, it was all like the combination of everything. And in some of the environments that we're creating, you have people that are not sure that they are ready for some of the work that you are trying to break through and pulling somebody into a super vulnerable environment where you're saying, it's time to get to work, but they've got their arms folded, but they aren't sure that they can really get as emotional as you need them to. That felt like a heavy, heavy lift as well.

Because you can't force someone to do the work if they're not fully willing. You need to be willing first. You can set the stage, you can be vulnerable, you can teach, you can share. But I've been to a lot of stuff in the past when I wasn't willing to do the work, I would only go so far. I would take the things I really liked and not dive into the things that were scary to me.

Yeah. What's interesting is I will say like the biggest question that we get in our audience tends to be around the idea of, Hey, I am already on a journey of growth. I have in a partner someone who has not yet woken up.

How do you get them? Kind of like you.

How do I get them?

So Rachel was on the growth.

She was on the growth and I was not. So I can speak from actually having had the experience myself of being, what is this woman doing? What Kool-Aid is she drinking? Why does she continue to become a better version of herself? Well, I feel like I am stuck in descending into a lesser version of myself. And I was so skeptical of the tools that were working well for her. that I, you know, if she had tried to push them on me, if she had tried to like twist my arm into reaching for growth, forget it, I would have absolutely 100% rejected the serum. But because she left a trail of breadcrumbs that said, hey, I'm gonna just go be me, I'm gonna go be great, if you want to watch me continue to grow into this better version of myself and wonder what is it that's behind this ascent to my greater self, I'm happy to let you know, but you have to have the curiosity to ask the question. And so she just kept showing up for herself. She just kept putting herself into personal development conferences, reading books, getting up early to spend time for herself. She was doing the things. And I went through a long season of being resentful of her becoming better, which is terrible because the resent was not truly a reflection of me having any reaction to her. It was really an insecurity of if she were to continue to grow, might she outgrow me? It was this worry of maybe being left behind. And it really ended up coming to a head where we had to have a very, very hard conversation about the trajectory of our lives. She knew that growth is the single greatest commodity in her life, and that she is going to pursue it every single day, regardless of how uncomfortable it makes me. And so as I was stuck, and even at that, I wasn't stuck. I was descending truly. We were on a divergent path that trajectory wise begged a question that she asked and pierced my soul with. A year from now, if we continue on this path, will we still go on dates? In two years, will we still be making out? In three years, will we still be married? And I already knew the questions and I knew the answers. But until she said them out loud, it had not hit me yet. And I realized in real time, oh, we're on the path of irreconcilable differences. We're actually walking down this path. So now, Dave, you get a choice. Do you want to imagine a future version of yourself that shares custody of your children, has a drinking problem, doesn't have an accountability partner, and isn't married to your best friend? Or do you want to do a little bit of work to find out what tools she's been using to see if maybe they have application in your life? and I did. And I started in therapy, sat in a personal development conference, started reading the books, started moving my body, and as much as I'd had, man, I'd had a good life. I fell into a rut and any of us can I think fall into a rut at any time and feel like, oh, it's all downhill from here. And I truly was telling myself a story that like, oh, I had 40 good years and now this is where it just turns and that crossroads between 30 to 40, I just figured it's downhill. Which is crazy, like I am just now at 45.

When you started.

Riding the legacy of the rest of my life.

Yeah. You ever find it interesting that you were at a company for 20 years, it was all about imagination and yet you were lacking it in your own life at times.

Yeah. Well, what's interesting is I, what I'm like stunned by now, The object, the clarity I have in looking back now at the end of my time at Disney. I had seven years as this sales head of 17 while I was there. And those last like three years were truly, I was not feeling challenged or fulfilled because of how great my surroundings were, right? Credit to my team.

And you were launching the biggest movie, Star Wars.

It was Marvel, Lucas, Pixar, Disney, you.

Were launching them all.

All the records. It was the greatest year in the history of cinema, by a stretch, the second greatest year, by a stretch. It was everything.

And you were unfulfilled.

And I was unfulfilled because my team was so good, the leadership was so great, and the intellectual property, these films were the best. And so because I was getting high marks without having to study for tests, it truly was just debilitating for me because of it feeling like an underutilization, no utilization of potential. Right? It was playing into one of my greatest fears in life that I wouldn't actually be asked to use the gifts I've been afforded. And so what I realize now with so much clarity is I was waiting for someone else to create the thing that would challenge me instead of taking the initiative and chasing the challenge myself. And boy, if I had just decided to do that three or four years before I ended my time there, I wouldn't even have gotten into the pit. I wouldn't have gotten stuck. I wouldn't have found, because I was so in that place where the challenge didn't exist and growth wasn't happening that I allowed myself to slowly, slowly, slowly, until I was in this self-inflicted ditch wondering what the heck was going on and begging for a way to get out. My wife, of course, at the top of that ditch shining a light like, here's the way. Here's the way. I'm not going to tell you to do it, but But I'm going to show you that this is the way if you want to do it.

This is what I'm doing.

This is what I'm doing.

I'm already on the path. You can come along with me, come beside me, you can go behind, in front. But this is the path I'm taking.

Yeah. I had assigned so much value in my life. The biggest commodity of my entire life was certainty. If I could control the variables and minimize the risk and have a certain amount of money in accounts and have a title, build a house that has a fence that's high enough, Then, then I will be happy. And what I didn't realize until I sat in the chair of a therapist's office, went to the personal development conference, was this crazy, strongest, potentially tie of the entire universe, and that is that tie between growth and fulfillment. That if I wasn't in an environment where I was being challenged with the possibility of failure, so that I would fail, so that I would, in failing, learn something new, apply that learning and become a better version of myself. If I wasn't in a place where I could fail, I would not grow. And in the absence of growth, you can't be fulfilled. And so I just, I didn't understand it. I was like, well, then maybe I'm just broken. Maybe there's something just wrong with my wiring that I can have these things that make other people happy, but they don't make me happy. No, no, no. There is just a universal tie. You need to be in a position where you can fail. Now, look, I'm not I don't like failure. I'm not interested necessarily in failing, but I also now can see failure as the thing in the last two years that has fundamentally changed the way that I think about fulfillment in my life, because it exists now. -Yeah. -Because you never failed before.

-I was winning all the time.

-I was winning. I was winning. And the thing is, I definitely at Disney had plenty of opportunities to fail in the beginning of my career because I'd had this crazy great opportunity of 10 different jobs in 10 years. I was always in like this holy cow, pushing against the friction of my discomfort and knowledge acquisition and asking them questions. That was amazing. It was when I wasn't in the position to still have questions that were left unanswered, when I didn't have to try as hard because of the leverage that Star Wars and Avengers movies afforded selling them to movie studios, right? So in the absence of that, now, I had to get used to the fact that in this small business, in this decision to pursue this pursuit of failure, that careful what you wish for, it comes, right? We're having the most success, way more success than I could have ever expected. And what people probably don't appreciate is we have unbelievably more failure every single day than I have ever experienced in my life.

Like what's the biggest failure in the last couple of years?

Here's the thing, they're not big failures, right?

It's little stuff here and there.

It's little failures that stack on top of each other. It's, oh, we have a logistics partner that didn't ship journals to people. Oh, we made a mistake in putting something on sale that didn't work. Like, we just, I mean, in real time, this happened this week. We listened to the audience and they said, you, know what? We would love for you to have an event in London. Oh, yes, we would love to have an event in London. So, of the Rise events that are planned for 2020, one of the stops is going to be London. So we put the tickets on sale and we create the Facebook group and there's so much enthusiasm and it's going to be amazing. We got a 5,000 person auditorium in London. This is going to be amazing.

We're going to sell out quick.

And in two months we sold 386 tickets.

No.

386 tickets.

In three months?

So we had to make a decision as a business.

Did you cancel it?

Of course. Wow. Now here's the thing, it's hard. Oh, it's impossibly hard.

We crushed it in the US.

We got to the moon. It's impossibly hard to have to admit that the market is not yet ready for us to come. Wow. But man, we learned a lot in the failure to have understood how much more work it might take to actually be able to have an event of that size in that market. Now, guess what? We did everything we could to all of those 386 people, take care of them, not just refund, but give them free tickets to another event. Wow. Like we're gonna make sure that they're taking care take care of. But we had to learn, oh, this market is not yet ready. Okay, what else do we have to learn? We're in real time experiencing with a retail partnership we have with Target and a manufacturer who helps make our journals in China, what happens when a virus shuts down a warehouse. We've had to in real time. Find alternative sourcing. But guess what? The blessing in this, we found a US manufacturer who can actually make it very, very near the cost of what we were previously paying. Chipper, cheaper, yeah, yeah, yeah. There are things that are coming out of the failures that end up being massive, massive gifts for where the business is going. One of the hardest questions that are questions, one of the hardest conversations that we've had to have with the team on a pretty regular basis, sit them around a table, cast a vision for where the business is going five years from now, and then very honestly tell each of them the business that we will have five years from now. is so different, bigger, and reaches people in different ways than it does today that not one of you sitting around the table will be sitting at the leadership table unless you fortify the skills that you have to actually have the competencies to be at that table. And that includes me, right? Because none of us have the kind of experience, we haven't processed the failures, we haven't learned enough about all of the ambitious things that we're planning for, to actually sit there and do the work in the way that it will require. And that for some people can be disheartening, like what? You don't want me at the table? No, no, no, no. I do want you at the table. I just don't want you to think that you're going to get a seat at the table unless you acknowledge that you're gonna have to take one step every day into something that's uncomfortable for you. That is outside of the scope of what you currently understand. That is gonna And maybe making a mistake or a hundred mistakes give you the rich data from those mistakes to now make you smart enough to be at that table. And that's, man, we're trying to model in real time not having problems in any way leave a stain or indict you as not being good or worthy. It's like, nope, you for having made a mistake were trying something that we never had experience with. What did we learn? Apply those learnings and let's go.

Yeah. What has been the thing, the common theme that you've learned about women over the last two years and what holds them back from their greatness?

Women.

Because you guys predominantly work with women. Yeah.

Yeah.

Probably, what, 80% of the audience is women.

At least.

At least women who come to the events, who read the books, who watch on social media, who listen to your podcasts, what are the two or three things that hold them back? in general from them achieving fulfillment and their greatness, what it means to them.

That's a great question. So, I mean, one thing I will say that has been like a hard and we've had to really walk the community through this conversation over and over and over. I never get this question. Rachel always gets this question. This question of what will this do to your kids? What will this do to our kids? Right? People, in some ways having a set of stories told to them about the inability for women to both be great moms and chase dreams. Like it's, you know, like, and so like I've never rarely ever had people ask questions, what will this do to your kids? Now, my wife gets this question all the time, what, Rachel, will the pursuit of these dreams and the travel you do and the work that you do on stages and all of these things, what will this do to your kids? And I will argue, and I have offered to our audience every time they will listen, you're asking the question in the wrong tone of voice. What will this do to our kids? Right? I have three sons. My three sons will never one time in their life question whether a woman can write two number one New York Times bestselling books, fill an auditorium of 10,000 people, lead a group inside of a boardroom, or have a product line at Target, They know that from having watched what their mother does every single day. And I have a daughter who turns three tomorrow, congratulations Noah, but she hopefully will never need to read a book called Girls Stop Apologizing because she's never one time seen modeled a posture of needing to apologize for who she is. If there was a gift in Rachel's journey from who she was to who she is, It was sitting in an environment that afforded her the clarity that she was made this way. That she was given these gifts. That she was in having given these gifts, given a responsibility to use these gifts. And so, you know, if anything, there are some limiting beliefs around the worry of what people might think or how it might, you know, say something about you against the backdrop of traditional gender norms. And those are stories that are true if you decide to believe them.

Yeah, I think the question should be, what would this do to your kids if you don't pursue your dreams?

Yeah, absolutely.

If you model them that you're gonna play smaller than what you could be playing.

Yeah.

Or you're gonna not take the risk.

Yeah.

That model scares me more than I had to be gone an extra couple of weekends a year to go chase my dream. And had to have a sit, you know, it's like there's a balance obviously for everything.

And by the way, this is another one, but this is not exclusive to women, because man as a man, I also have struggled with the worry of what other people think. But the worry of other people weighing in with their opinions of you living or doing your life, I mean it kind of ties back into that idea of what will this do to my kids, but helping people become free by helping them see that truly people are not thinking about you. I mean, like have a gift. People are not thinking about you. There's a very, there might be a.

Couple people gossiping behind your back for a few minutes and then they move on to the next thing.

I mean, if someone, what I found, I mean, I got such a gift in leaving Disney where for so long I didn't leave because of what it might mean to them for me to leave something that made sense to them.

So, you didn't leave because of The opinions of what they actually believe.

100%. I was worried about inside of a construct that all of us had agreed, these are the rules, this is what happens inside of, right? If I were to leave there, what would they say was a barrier for me taking action that could have helped me get unstuck faster? Cuckoo now, because once I left, the gift was they are not thinking about you, it is not an indictment on them as being bad people, it is a signal of their humanity, They, like anyone who's listening right now, are primarily concerned with themselves. Their life, their family, we're humans. It is. Now, there are some people, for sure, that are paying attention and focused on you, but so often their focus is through the lens of their fear. Not of your truth, but of their fear. And so you have to decide, are you gonna let someone else's stories, as informed by their fear, dictate whether or not you have the life that you want, whether your kids have the life that you want, whether you as you fall asleep at the end of night can do so with a peace knowing that there is a reconciliation between who you say you want to be and who you actually are showing up as. That distance, that dissonance, that space that exists between who we say we are, who we say we want to be, and who we actually are, that's pain, that's regret, that's shame. And so often that distance is created because of wanting to keep other people happy who normally aren't actually paying attention to us, but if they are, paying attention through the lens of fear.

So you jumped into this thing two years ago, not knowing how big it could be and it exceeded your expectation from my understanding. You knew it'd be great, but you didn't know how big it could be. What's the biggest fear going into the next five years since you have these talks with your team? What's your biggest fear and insecurity about the next five years?

Well, the biggest fear truly is I can look back in the last one year and realize there were so many things that I didn't even think were possible in a 12-month window that if that's the truth, then five years of time, holy cow. And the question, I mean it comes back to kind of that more general, just because you can build the nuclear weapon, should you? I know that we are on a mission for good. I know that the impact that we are having has generational ripples. I have so much confidence in it. And yet, the practical, pragmatic person in me, because of what it means to have the gas pouring as effective as it has been in the accelerating of our scale, It still triggers some of that pragmatic part of me of, oh my goodness, if we truly believe we're going where we say we're going five years from now, we have to start planting seeds today. We have to start doing things today and that, because it requires a faith. Rachel and I have this conversation. We have it with our senior leaders. It's binary. Do you believe that we're gonna go here or not? Yes or no? If the answer is yes, here are the things we have to go do right now to chase it. If you don't believe it, please explain why you don't, but then we have to stop doing those things. And when we say we're gonna go do these things, the answer is yes. But it doesn't mean that you've got to go do it scared. You've got to go do it even though it triggers some of the insecurity or anxiety of like, what if we're not onto something in this new business venture? Our plans aren't so much a linear idea. It's this exponential thing that starts branching into some spaces that we've never been. We're launching an app this year. We've never launched an app this year. I think the app is going to be a tremendous asset to the people who decide to use the app. But because of it being a thing that we don't have expertise in, I don't know. We have a run that's happening this year. Half Marathon 5K. It is going to be the singular most amazing thing to stand at the finish line watching people do 13 miles when they are right now coming off the couch and have never run one mile. But guess what? We've never done a run before. We're doing a tour with USO this year. Never done that. Every time Rachel utters these words, I have an idea.

You brace yourself like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Usually, by the way, at 5 o'clock in the morning, I'm like, uh-oh, okay. At least I've now become a little bit better in listening to the full thought process.

Not just saying.

And not just because she's the what person, I'm the how person, right? She's the visionary, I am the operator, I'm the integrator, I'm the how person, right? So the what person and the how person are an awesome combination. Holy cow, superpowers come together. It's an Avengers kind of situation. But as the integrator, as the operator, I have definitely stepped on it in cutting her off before she's even breathed life into what the what is. And so letting her have her vision, right?

And if someone would have done that to Disney when he was building it, you wouldn't have what Disney is today.

Absolutely. So she's got ideas in '21 and '22 that she's already breathed out. And the thing is, I know that they will happen because I have been witness to what's happened in the last handful of years, when she's had these ideas. where I start to get, you know, like my anxiety is in like the practical blocking and tackling of like knowledge acquisition to figure out how. So I have to push into new tables with new people who have more expertise in fields that we do not currently have expertise in so that I can become smarter, so that I know how to find the right people to get at our table to really reinforce the existing troop set that we have to go chase the dream.

What is the vision five years if everything works out? with what you guys have planned right now.

Total global domination.

Exactly.

Here's the thing, it depends on what part of the business, right? Like there are pieces inside the product, there are pieces inside of the live event, there's pieces inside of the digital education space. They all have a little bit of a different intent or mission, but as a blanket, it's how do we find ways to get tools into people's hands on a broader scale, like just at scale, right? If you can make it into the room, man, we're gonna create the greatest live event experience, period. I'll put it up against anything. But if you can't get in the room, how can we offer you something that will get you close to feeling like you're in the room, still serve you in a way that helps you understand a little bit of where your blocks are, unlocks for you a trail of breadcrumbs for yourself to help you find a way out. You know, all of the different pieces of business they'll come back to that central unifying idea of giving people the tools to change their lives.

I love it, man. It's amazing. And the book that you have, you're stepping into your own path right now. You've got this new book, Get Out of youf Own Way, a skeptic's guide to growth and fulfillment. Why did you decide to step out and be your own personal brand in a sense and write your own book when Rachel's been doing this and doing her thing and it's been successful?

Why do you do it now? Well, I was not someone who thought that they would write a book.

You gotta change the bio in the back.

I do need to change the bio in the back. Dang it.

I just saw that I was like, I know. The CEO.

I know.

It's all good.

I saw the book.

You didn't think you were gonna write a book.

I didn't think I was gonna write a book, but I saw the power in her owning her struggle as a source of power and in that affording people a chance to see themselves in her stories. And so I asked, hey, is there the possibility of someone who's been successful but ultimately got stuck to, in sharing stories, potentially have people see themselves in mine and in giving practical advice on how I got out of my own way, give them a roadmap for staying out of theirs? And the format of this is similar, frankly, to what Girl, Wash youh Face ended up being written as. It's 20 lies that I once believed that kept me in my own way. But I wrote it through the lens of someone who is wired completely opposite of Rachel, right? She has been a believer of tools like this from the word go. And I've been a pessimist. I've been skeptical of just like anything inside of development, anything inside of growth. I've just been a skeptic. I have always been more fixed mindset oriented than her having a growth. She was born with a growth mindset. She's just always run towards every single thing that you might find inside of the definition of growth mindset. And motivationally speaking, as much as I've had success, I am wired way more for external extrinsic motivation than she with an internal furnace. She wakes up in the morning, her belly is glowing, she is ready to go chase the day. So if you're a person who can identify in any way with skepticism of tools, with having had a fixed mindset, with struggling with motivation in a way that's disconnected and different respectfully than my wife's writing. Rad. I've got a great book for you. These stories are as much for women as they are men. For people who stay home and work as they are for CEOs in a boardroom. I talk through the lens of having developed a great big career through the lens of father of four kids, father at one point of four foster kids, our pursuit of an exceptional marriage. All of it's in there. Every story. Even some of the letters that Rachel and I wrote back and forth to each other are included in the book because In sharing honestly and vulnerably these things that when I once read Girl Wash youh Face made me want to have her not release it. In having come full circle to appreciating the value of vulnerability as a superpower, it's all in it. All there.

I love it, man. Make sure you guys pick this up, get out of your own way. I think it's gonna really be powerful for you, so make sure you check this out right now, pick it up. Couple questions left for you. This one's called the Three Truths. Imagine it's your last day many years from now on this earth. You've achieved everything you can imagine. World domination is at your fingertips. All the impact, all the fulfillment, love, everything has happened. But everything you've created has got to go with you. All of your work, apps, books, gone. It goes with you to the next world. But you get to leave behind three things you know to be true about everything you've learned, three lessons that all of us would have. to be remembered by you. What would you say are your three lessons for us or your three truths?

The first one is that growth is the key to fulfillment. I've got this tattoo here on my forearm that says, A ship is safe in harbor, but that's not what ships were built for. I got it as a reminder to my kids that they need to push themselves into places that do not always feel comfortable that are beyond things that they are familiar with for the benefit of growth. I got it as a reminder to my wife or promise to my wife that I will every day show up and push myself into a posture of growth by chasing the uncomfortable. And I got it as a reminder for myself that on the days I don't feel like it, on the days when I am struggling to believe that I am in a position to go do the work, that is required on the choppy waters that I was built for this.

That's good. Okay, so that's number one.

That's number one. Number two, I would leave people with the gift of freedom that comes in knowing that other people are not thinking about them. I know we talked about it, but so many of the things that we are held back by are associated to wanting to keep and please the masses of people who are not actually thinking about us and being free from that holy cow would be the most incredible and amazing thing. And then, and also what's so bad.

About people thinking about you? It means you're gaining attention.

Yeah, no, no, absolutely for sure. And then the last one for me would be that you are worthy in enough today as you are. That no matter what your business card says, what your bank account says, what your relationship status says, the family of origin that you've come from, you are worthy and enough as you are. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. Dave, I gotta acknowledge you, man, for the growth I've seen in you in the last couple of years. I think we met like five years ago when you were at Disney, briefly, and then to shoot some shotguns with you a couple of years ago in Wyoming, and to see you from being this even more skeptical to your health is transformed, your intimacy, your ability to connect with people, it's amazing to watch the growth, man. Thank you. So I can acknowledge you for constantly doing the uncomfortable. And I see it all the time. Everything you post on Instagram, I see you being very uncomfortable and it inspires me. for one day when I'm a dad to be able to do that as well. So, I acknowledge you for that man. Final question for you. What's your definition of greatness?

My definition of greatness is better tomorrow. It is a simple concept but I am in pursuit of a thing that does not have a finish line. I am interested in just becoming a better version of myself, a better father to my kids, a better husband to my wife, a better leader for my teams tomorrow than today. That is greatness. Get out of your own way. Make sure you guys get the book right now.

Dave Hollis, my man.

Thank you, brother. I appreciate you, too.

Good times, man.