The 10 STEPS To Become PRODUCTIVITY MASTER Today! | Lewis Howes

If you go up to what you're afraid of, but you know in your heart you have to do, that's where you will achieve greatness. High performers seek clarity more often than their peers. Every situation they go into, they're seeking clarity and setting intention. How do you strategize and plan for something that's been told is impossible? You're stepping into the unknown. It's by being. If you are struggling to master productivity in your life, then look no further. Because in this video, I bring you some of the most productive and successful people in the world to teach you how to master productivity. Make sure to like this video right now. Subscribe to the channel and leave a comment below on your biggest takeaway. Every time you do one of these experiences, you have a strategy. You don't just say, okay, I'm going to just push through until I'm dead. Yeah, you have a strategy. And it sounds like Jenna is really helping you craft this strategy. But how does someone, you know, for me, in this physical challenge, like, I got up and I did one lap, and I was like, okay, let me do one more. Yeah, and then one more. And I was like, okay, now we have two more to go. Yeah, we can finish this. How do people push through these mental or physical challenges? When it seems like, gosh, it's going to take me 10 years to launch a podcast like what Lewis has, or 10 years to build this business or to do this thing, how do people push through that barrier? And how do you do it? You know, for me, people love to ask me about my physical training. How do I get strong? There's some fun stories about the crazy training that I did to prepare for this and whatnot. But I believe that it's the muscle six inches between your ears. It's about flexing your mind is really what it comes down to. And I describe that moment of Jen and I writing our dreams onto this whiteboard. Sadly, as you know, that's where 99.9% of dreams die as an idea. Because all of a sudden, we have these doubts in our mind, oh, I can't, or it's going to take 10 years, or I could never catch up to this person or that person or this metric. Or that metric. But it's about showing up. It's about getting out there every single day. So in Antarctica. And it's also the ability to be able to adapt. So actually, my first day in Antarctica, I think is really emblemat of that. And to be fair about the 2929 event, you're like, Colin, what are you doing in a couple weeks? You seem like you're in pretty good shape. And I was like, well, I'm gonna try to cross Antarctica by myself in like two weeks. Like two weeks before I was leaving. So I was pretty well trained at that moment. But, you know, I get out there. We've been playing this project for well over a year. It's a world first. No one's ever done it. There's so many doubters and naysayers. Someone actually died 100 miles from the finish line three years ago trying this project. Another one of the best explorers in the world went out there the following year and after 52 days, ran out of food and had to be picked up and didn't make it. So there's a lot of people, there's a lot of print articles and big magazines saying it's physically impossible to do this thing. And so I know that going in. So we build this strategy and the unsupported nature means you can't take any extra supplies with you. Basically, what you have in your sled to start, no one can give you anything, essentially. So at that case, weight is of the essence. And so I pack my sled as much of food and as much fuel. The fuel, I melt the ice into water and I don't bring extra anything. I literally don't even have an extra pair of underwear with me for 54 days because, like, I can't. I'd rather have a hundred more calories in my sled of food. Same underwear. Same underwear. 54 days. That's straight. Oh, my God. Not fancy. Yeah, soggy underwear right there. Yeah, yeah, that's not. Oh, man. You clean it at least. You try to. No, not much. You can't. Yeah, you just kind of like ride it out. Wow, man. So no, not smelling one day of chafing and you're done too. Yeah. So you gotta look after your body. But I get out there, I fly this plane, lands me out on the edge of the Antarctic continent, takes. I'm all alone out there, right? Like I've dropped off alone and. Well, actually, you had mentioned before there was another guy out there, which is important to mention at this point because another British explorer, one of the actually the most experienced in the world in terms of the amount of miles traversing Antarctica on various other projects. He also decides that he wants to try to be the first. So not only am I now racing history, this guy's a British Navy SEAL equivalent, you know, Special forces guy. His name's Lou Rudd and he's like a badass. And he wants to do this as well. It was his friend who died three years ago. He's doing that to honor him. And I got a lot of respect for all. I mean, there's a camaraderie as well, of course, and we both know what we're going through, but we also both clearly want to be first. And he's looking at me like, who's this, you know, bit younger guy who doesn't have the real experience in Antarctica? Who does he think he is? And I'm kind of, like, trying to be, like, confident in my plan. And so plane drops us off. We're at a mile apart from each other, equidistant from the first waypoint, the first, like, GPS marker on the map. And I get out there and I've got this video of me being like, it's a blue sky day. It's great. After all year of planning, it's finally time for me to try to cross Antarctica. I'm taking the first step, and I bend down and I pull the strap on my sled to tighten it for the first time. And ping. The strap breaks. Literally, the strap breaks. It's minus 25, and the plastic can't handle it breaks. So right out of the gate, I'm like, wow, this is going to be a long journey. This is before the first step. So then I strap into my sled, and the sled's the heaviest on the first day. £375 to start was about the maximum I thought I could pull. So I put as much food as I could, even though I knew I was going to burn 10,000 calories per day, and I factored I could carry about 7,000 calories. So I was going to lose weight every single day straight from the get go. Even eating 7,000 calories. That's how intense and cold it is. And so I start pulling my sled and you asked me before about sweat. About one hour in, I'm sweating and I'm like, wait, this sled's so heavy. But I can't not pull it without sweating. And so I start sweating. Then I realize I actually don't think I can pull this sled. And I start crying. I literally start crying. But what happens when you cry when it's minus 25 degrees out? It freezes to your face. So I have frozen tears to my face, and I'm one hour, two hours into this journey. And so I do. The only thing I can think of is I call home to Jenna. Wow. And so I pick up the phone and I go, hey, babe. Yeah. We may have named our project the Right Thing. It appears to be impossible. Cause we had called it the impossible first. Wow. And she's like, oh. And so she tries to, you know, she's like, okay, well. And meanwhile, I'm seeing Lou disappear on the horizon with this beautiful, like, ski stroke. Like, totally knows what he's doing. Strong and steady out there. And, like, at this point, I can't even think about the fact that there's a race in place. I mean, I'm just trying to, like, get through the first day. And so she says to me, colin, how far are you from the first waypoint? Like, she knows the route. We've studied it. She knows everything. The first waypoint's only a few miles from the drop off point. And I'm like, I'm 0.63 miles from. You know. He says, if I'm saying it's a million miles. But she's like, okay, so you're half a mile from the first waypoint. Like, this goes back to your original question of strategy, right? And she's like, do me a favor. Like, whatever you do, I know it's heavy. I know you're sweating. I know you're exhausted and you're probably a little bit afraid, understandably, like, get to the first waypoint. Get to that first waypoint, and you'll have felt like you got somewhere on the first day. So for the next hour, I struggled and battled and get to that first waypoint, set up my tent, get inside my tent. And I say to Jenna, like, I call her again. It's kind of our safety check at night off this apple. She's like, how are you doing? I was like, obviously I'm stressed. Just look, I actually went out there intentionally with not a lot of music, not a lot of podcasts, because I wanted to explore the silence of these flow states that I hope to tap into in my mind. Something I'm very curious about, the sort of mental side of this. And she goes, tomorrow, do me a favor. Try to find the flow, even if just for a minute or two minutes. It's gonna be a hard day. So just those words, I went to sleep, and I was like, okay, I made it to the first waypoint. I'll get up tomorrow and kind of regroup. And then I woke up. And I'm big on mantras, but this mantra had never been with me before this and just came to me out loud as my alarm went off to wake Me up on my first real full day out. I said out loud to myself, I said, colin, you are strong, you are capable, you are strong, you are capable. And that ended up being my mantra every single day. Waking up for the rest of the entire 54 day journey. And sure enough, that next day, was it stupid? Challenging? Yes. But instead of two miles, I made it eight miles and I found that flow state for a minute. The next day was nine miles and I found that flow for two or three minutes. And so we had a strategy. It went out the window on day one. Had to refocus, refocus on the mind, adjust a few things with our strategy because I was hoping to go further distances in that she's like, well like maybe it's not shorter distances at this at first, but as it gets lighter maybe it'll go longer and all this kind of stuff. And so, you know, how do you strategize and plan for something that's been told is impossible? You're stepping into the unknown. It's by being adaptable and ultimately realizing that these things are happening in our minds. These doubts, these fears, that's a human thing. I don't care who you are, I still have them. I have four world records and I've had, you know, some a bit of success in my life through challenges, but like I wake up every day with doubts and fears and challenges, but it's being able to quiet that in my mind and continue to get to that first waypoint or get to that next step forwards. And whatever you're doing, man, what, what did you do to get into flow every day then besides the mantra, how did you get into flow and how did you stay into it? Yeah, so that's something that I've just been fascinated with. So I grew up as a kid as a swimmer and it's funny, I have five older sisters actually and I'm the baby boy and an older brother as well. But I'm a little boy of seven. Blended family, but a big family, a loving, supportive environment. And my sisters and my parents would always be like, you're always talking all the time, you're always this. I was trying to hang out with them, follow my sisters into their room, always chatting and all this kind of stuff. But what I realized is I spent four hours a day as a kid swimming. Two hours before school, two hours after school, putting in those reps of quiet. Swimming is this weird sport where you're staring at a black line like you can't talk, there's no eye contact there's no, you know, really can't really chat to your teammates even. You're kind of in this zone. And so before I knew the word flow state or high performance, this is me as a kid. I realized I was sort of tapping in and out of those states. And I became more conscious of that as I went through my life and became a professional triathlete after whole other crazy tangent of my life being severely burned in a fire in Thailand and being told I would never walk again. We can talk about that if you want. But the more. So what happened when I was racing triathlon is a friend of mine came to me and she said, I don't know much about sports. This is Turkish woman who's a wife of a good friend of mine named ece and she says, I don't know much about sports but just by observing this I see that like this is all in your guys minds out here. And I was like, yeah, absolutely, like going swimming or the. This was triathlon. So this is triathlon. And she, this one, I was raised in triathlon professional. And she said, you know, I'd recommend that you go to these meditation retreats. And I was like cool, I'm interested in meditation but I don't like know a lot about it. I haven't done this since 2011. And she's like, yeah, if you're heard of a pasta meditation it's these 10 day silent meditation retreats. 10 days, no reading, no writing, no eye contact, deep meditation. And she's like, you should try it. And I was like, well don't I need like a little background in meditation before this? Or she's like, no, like just, just do it. It's free, there's centers around the world, it's completely free to go. Like go. And so me being the kind of like jump in head first type of person as you can probably, I was like, great, I'll go. So my off season in triathlon that year I signed up for this meditation retreat and my stepdad, he drives me up the retreat and he goes, he goes hey Colin, like I've pretty much never heard you shut up for a minute in your life. And so I'm going to wait here in the parking lot for an hour because once you realize this is a terrible idea, I'll be here waiting to drive you home, you know, joking. He's my stepdad, this amazing mentor and influence in my life. Incredible man. But he's literally going like you're pretty extroverted and your time, you're going to Sit in silence by yourself for 10 days. Sure enough, I stayed for those 10 days and it had just a profound impact on my life of learning about that self awareness in my mind, in my brain, etc. And so what from that practice, which I've gone back to this 10 day retreat, I try to go every single year, if I can, done several, and as well as have a daily practice with it, I've kind of taken that into my canvas, into my artwork, into my sport and this curiosity of the mind and where we can go in our mind and brain. And so one of my deep curiosity about Antarctica honestly was yes, unlocking the physical potential inside of me, but as a gateway to do that, exploring the mind. And what better place to be alone in this endlessly white landscape. The sun never sets. There's no change of days, there's no dark, It's a blank white canvas. And like I said, I literally deleted almost all the media from my iPhone as to not. I actually had a couple school of greatness podcasts, a couple, a couple of rich roll podcasts, a couple few podcasts and a few albums out there. I listened to some Paul Simon, Graceland and a couple others, but there's very few. I spent 80, 90% of the time in complete silence. And it was a beautiful thing to explore that. So how did I tap into that flow? Like I said, some of these times it was 30 seconds, some of the times it was a minute or two. But as I kept on these repetition of days, exploring this place in my mind, sometimes it was days, two days, three days, where the sequence of days would come through in high performance and the stakes are high. It's 50, 60 mile per hour winds. If I let go of my tent, I have no shelter. It's gone. It's 80 degrees wind chill, minus 80 degrees wind chill. But I'm finding the space in my mind that is locked in and calm. And the most kind of, most profound experience of that was actually on my very last day. So it's worthy of mentioning, after the sixth day, I did catch up to Mr. Captain Lou Rudd and surpassed him and ended up in front of him the rest of the time. And on the 52nd day, I woke up and I'm 77 miles away from the finish. I'm thinking it's about three days, probably give or take that it's Christmas morning and I wake up and I get outside of my tent and the deepest flow state of my entire life just comes over me. I just realized, I recognize it. I say my mantra I tap in and I start exploring. When I'm in the deepest flow states, I'm also hyper aware. And so I start thinking, like, how many more miles do I have to go? How much time would that take? Oh, it's three days. But what if I did it back to back? What if I did it in one big final push? I'd never gone more than 33 miles in an individual day. And I average about 15 to 17 miles a day. So I'm 77 miles away from the finish, and I'm 53 days in this expedition. But I get into this place in my mind that's so deep, where I feel this strength and this power and this flow that I start to say to myself, whoa, we have this capacity as humans. Not me, not me, but as humans. And I'm tapped into the vibration of my family and friends and the school kids that are following along, and just this radiant positivity that I'm shining out but receiving back in such a significant way that I tap into this flow. And for the next 32 hours, I don't stop. Wow. I continue onwards. I have to stop at hour 18 to put up my tent, to melt a little bit of snow, to get some more water because I ran out of water. Call home to my family. It's Christmas night. It's 7pm for them on Christmas night. They're all gathered together. They're like, you did your best day ever. 18 miles, 18 hours. I can't believe it. You're almost a day or two from the finish. And I was like, I'm not stopping. I'm still going. And my mother, who's been a huge influence in my life, and certainly Jenna, my sister, these strong women who have just been, like, these amazingly positive influences on my life, they hear it in my voice. And of course, as a mother or as a wife or as a sister, you're a little bit worried your person is out there in this intense environment. But they reflect now as they've told me the story from their point of view. And they have it recorded on Christmas Day, you know, this conversation that we had. And they were like, we could hear it in your voice. You were more focused and more clear than you've ever been. And they just said, I can't wait to hear from you. In 12 hours, you're gonna cross this finish line and create history. Wow. Go live your destiny. And it was just this beautiful, beautiful moment of the mind. And I think, I mean, I'll say the, you know, coming back home and ask all These questions in the media and press, which is, you know, super humbling. And these questions that kept coming up and it keeps coming up, which is just, colin, are you superhuman? And my question is simple. It's like, yeah, I'm superhuman and so are you and so are you. Like, what I'm tapping into in my mind is accessible to all of us. And like, yes, you may not want to walk across Antarctica by yourself. In fact, I don't blame you for not wanting to do that for seriously. But like, whatever it is you talk about, business, entrepreneurship, innovation, music, art, love, creation, positivity, whatever that is, like, that is within us. And that's what I tapped into out there, which is the most special thing for me to come back and be able to share is that resonant positivity and the power that we all have within us. In one interview with one of the world's largest CTOs Chief Technology Officer, he said, brendan, you know, They're a top 10 brand in the world. We don't. He said, my team, he said, I'm not creative, my team's not creative. But we know how to execute and scale and execution. And scale is really important to long term. High performance creativity might get you in the game, but a lot of people are creative but can't work their way out of a bag. And I was like, I would argue that forever because I'm a creative writer and a coach. I would have never thought that. Age, nationality, ethnicity, and here's a big one compensation, here's a big one personality, here's a big one strengths. They are not correlated strongly with high performance. Some of them have weak correlations and all those things, by the way, because if academics are listening to that, they're like, no, he's wrong. And this is tied towards high performance. It's not that those aren't important. Those things can shape your mood. They can shape, you know, lots of important life outcomes. Well being, health, happiness. But when we're talking about high performance, those are less important than these six. And what I keep telling people is, I'm not saying those aren't important. These just happen to be more important. So the six habits, you want me to do those? Sure, yeah. Yeah. So the personal habits, and these are the ones that move the needle most. Number one, high performers. You like this one. High performers seek clarity more often than their peers. And what that means for them is every situation they go into, they're seeking clarity and setting intention. And it's not like once in a while they're doing it Way more often. It's like, you know, I've been blessed to work with Oprah Winfrey. When she has a meeting, at the start of every meeting, she asks what's our intention here? What's the intention of this meeting? Not what's the agenda, what do I do? What's the intention? That's every meeting. So she's seeking clarity at the beginning of every meeting. That's why she's so amazing, right? If you think about her whole career, she was always trying to have people seek clarity on who they were so they could be themselves. That's what high performers are doing. They just do it more often. They seek clarity before they shoot that video, before they have the podcast interview. But specifically, we found three practices help you get better at seeking clarity. Number one, they are seeking clarity in what we call the future. Four, so you've probably heard that successful people are more future minded. It's true. And specifically what they're looking at. If you talk to a high performer, they're more clear about who do I want to be in this upcoming situation. And by the way, it's not about who I am, it's about who do I want to be. They're more future oriented. They're more intentional about who they want to be in social situations. So it's like I want to have this type of interaction with Lewis to that, that that's intentional. They're more clear about what skills they need to develop to reach their next level of success. Right. Here's how you really know an underperformer. Open up their calendar and look for any evidence they have planned their own curriculum for greatness. If they don't have classes or courses, if they, if they're not actively skill building, there's no chance of high performance. I mean, maybe they can dumb luck into it for initial success, but high performance is long term success. You got to be building your skills, growing, constantly learning, constantly growing, being aware of that. And the Last of the Future 4 is I know the service I want to provide in the future. Talk to any high performers I'm sure you've interviewed. They kind of know the service and the difference they want to make. Maybe not precisely, but they're asking the question. So that's some of what we know. They seek clarity and that's kind of the first practice is asking questions in those areas. And the other two real fast is when you're seeking clarity, they're more clear about the feeling they want to have. Like an Olympic sprinter who's one gold is More likely to have said before he went or she went on the track, how do I want to feel out there? Not like, just the result. Like when I. When the foot's in the block and I'm arms down, like, what do I want to feel? Like they're very aware of the feeling they're trying to get. Yeah. I don't want to feel nervous and stressed. I want to feel calm and. Yes. Clear and smooth and. Yes. And they're doing that self talk, which is seeking clarity. And then the last one, which is really important. They're clear about what's meaningful to them now and what might be different in the future, which is something I didn't know until we did a lot of the interviews or the conversations is a lot of people kind of know what I like now. They know what their passion is, but it's like, what's going to be meaningful to you later? Like, in five years they've thought about that. You know, I would say, you know, they done the work. So that's just the first habit. And so the book kind of opens with. With that story of, like, finding what's. We all have to decide who we are and what we want and how to get it at this stage of our life. And when we don't know that, you know, reaching high performance can be really hard. Yeah. It's all about clear vision for me. It's. The first chapter in my book is, yes, the greatest leaders in the world have a clear vision. Love that. Yeah, that's it. And they got that vision by seeking clarity. Yes. That was the habit that gave them the vision they were consistently seeking. Like, how do I. What do I. I mean, they ask themselves more questions. That's one of our findings. They literally are doing more of the self talk, asking more of the questions, which is so important. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. And. And you. I love how you talked about this. You say the world cares less about your strengths and personality than about your service and meaningful contributions. Then why do so many of us focus on our strengths and personality? Yeah, that was a huge finding. And I would. That's another one. I would have completely freaked out on anybody. Strength finders, all these other books out there, you know, it's like, yes, focus on our strengths. And unfortunately, one that's in the history of personal development, that is the greatest false dichotomy that has ever been. Focus on your strengths. Or it's like, you have to do both. You have to do both. But what we found in our research, which surprised me. High performers do not report working on their strengths any more than regular people. So that's not what gives them the edge. One of the chapters opens up with this guy. He wrote this email, really highly successful guy. And he wrote this email. He says, you know, and I'd put him through all this. I put him through Strengthsfinder, the Berkman, the Colby, the Myers, Briggs. Put him after everything. This is one of my first coaching clients ever. I knew everything about him. We knew all his background. He did all the homework, had his peer review, you know, 366 assessments from work, and then I watched him fail for two years. And he wrote me this email and he said, brendan, stop telling me, like, what successful people are like, because we know my strengths. I'm not getting ahead and start telling me what they do. And that's what this book became about. It's like, what do you need to do? Because in this email, he wrote this, which is where that finding came from. He said, this was so good. Listen, this line. He said, as a leader, I have to be honest with myself, that my mission and vision should never be made to bow down to my limited human strengths. I should have to rise up to my mission or vision. The strengths aren't. The relevant thing is the question is, what is necessary for me to develop into to reach that mission. It's like, your strengths are great. And it's like, yes, of course, do your strengths. But that's kind of like what I tell people is like, if. Let's imagine you have a bear, and that bear wants to go on top of this cliff over here, and it's never been on the cliff, and he wants to get that new honey up there. Right? Telling the bear to focus on the strengths, to go somewhere it's never gone before and do something it's never done before is stupid. It's like saying, hey, you know what? Just try being more of a bear. Right? If I just. You say, brendan, I got this big new vision. I just say, just try being more of Lewis. I mean, it's a spiritual level that feels good, but you and I both know you're gonna develop far beyond your comfort zones. And strengths are typically comfort zones. Yeah. We got to overcome that and go next level and develop new skills and overcome certain fears and all these other things that are gonna help us get to the next level, Right? Yeah. Yeah. The whole conversation of beyond the comfort zone really requires us to go beyond our strengths. It really requires. That is our comfort zone. That is our comfort zone. We already know what we're good at and the problem with the strengths finder and all of the strengths based movement is the assumption and they're all written academically this way based on what are called innate strengths. And innate strength is the assumption that you had that from birth and that those innate strengths are what you focus on. And I'm like, well, if you had at birth, you probably had it when you were 15 years old too. So if it's innate, you had it at 15. Are the strengths you had at 15 sufficient to serve you at 50? Hell no. You need to develop beyond what's innate and go to a whole other level. And so I take on strengths in the book in that way because. But I also say it almost doesn't matter because a lot of people have strengths and they suck at work because they're not doing these habits. I mean, how many people do you. I know who are amazingly strong and their strengths finders are amazing and they don't do anything all day. That's it. Yeah. A lot of people, I mean, in the sports world, there's a lot of great talented people who had the greatest gifts, but they still weren't able to win. Yeah. Or they were lazy or they wouldn't, you know, hustle or sacrifice their body because they just relied on their talents, their strengths. Yeah. And so they were never able to get to the championship game or get on the best teams because. And they had all the talent in the world. And you're just like, if I was as gifted as this person, I would be incredible. You know, that's the whole thing about the talent code or a lot of new sort of newer research and performance. It just says what's more important is what you do with what you got to develop into the vision of the mission you need to serve. And so the book kind of lays out a lot of the science behind that and then goes into, you know, obviously most of us oriented towards the six habits. So in terms of clarity, what is that habit that you take on on a daily or monthly basis? With habit, with clarity, what do you think about. You're like every morning, what am I clear about? Or you know, how do you apply that habit to your life? I apply it in a couple ways. First for me, every situation I go into, I'm consistently asking like, what? What's the feeling I want to have here? If you ever see me teach, it's often I would say bring the joy. So I have joy triggers that I've set up in my mind that makes me more intentional about things. So for example, A door frame trigger. Whenever I walk through a door, I say, bring the joy. So when I walk through that door right there, it's like, bring the joy into this room. It's just. It's just a mental trigger that I've set up for myself. Every morning in the shower, I ask myself three questions. And not that I shower every morning, but the first question I say, what can I be excited about today? So it forces me to be clear about what's going to draw joy, enthusiasm from me. Number two, I say, what. What might trip me up today? Because usually I know what's going on today. I'm like, what might mess me up where might not perform well, what might bother me? And number three, I say, what can I do to surprise somebody today? To give a gift of appreciation or acknowledgement today? And so I think through that in the morning. So I think that helps me begin my day pretty clear. Then when I sit down before I do work, I literally look at my calendar of the day this morning, and I look at whatever's going on the day and I think about it for 20 minutes. It's one of my 20 minute routines in the morning. I literally think about my calendar for 20 minutes a day. People think that's crazy. But what I'm thinking through when I'm looking at the count, I'm like, okay, I'm gonna have that call. What do I want to happen on that call? You know, what's my intention for that call? What's my goal for that call? What's the feeling for that call? How do I want to end that call? You know, I'm gonna have that time with Lewis. Like, how do I want to be there? And. And how can I make sure I enjoy it? Because it's a big deal, you know, I love your show. I want to do a good job. I want to share something good for the people. Even though I have no idea what you're going to ask. Right? And I want to be present for that and, and make sure I'm. I'm really there. Even though maybe I have a head cold today. You know, it's like. It's like just thinking through it. I think that helps me. It keeps me asking questions. Every Sunday, I do a Life Arenas assessment. That just means I think there's 10 areas of our life and I score myself in them. And this is about my 11th year of doing this. Wow. So each area of my life, you know, from. From emotional quality to happiness to relationships to time to hobby, etc. I just give myself, a score of 1 to 10 and one means I suck. And I was horrible in the previous week on that. Ten means I did a good job. And then I asked, how can I do better? It's my Sunday routine. Yeah. And it just keeps me clear. And it's not like I don't sometimes like everyone else, you know, wonder what's going on or what I'm doing. Those habits. Those were my habits. What's the biggest lesson you've learned in the last decade for you? That things for of all keep getting better. I think in our society, especially as we're at least two, you know, as you get older, at least in my family, there was a lot of kind of cultural expectations, like, oh, over this age, it kind of starts going down, or, you know what I mean? You're kind of. You peak when you're young, and that's when all the good stuff happens. And for me, I feel like it keeps getting better. And I love that the best years are still ahead of me and that all the stuff that I've been through, there's like, all of these exciting new possibilities. So that's one of the biggest lessons. And I think the other one is that I don't have to stress as hard. Like, as a human being, I have a really strong work ethic, but I also tend to put a lot of pressure on myself. And the other lesson I've learned is that I don't need to do that, that the work actually gets done more joyfully and more creatively if I don't add on that additional layer of pressure and stress. Why do you pressure yourself? I have really high expectations. I want to take care of my team. I want to take care of my family. I want to do right by my customers. Like, with this book, I wanted to do right by my publishing partners. And I always feel a sense of responsibility to make sure that I'm taking care of people and embedded in that. I have historically put a ton of pressure on myself to make sure that the buck stocks were stops with me. But I think recently it's been really great to see how awesome it is to collaborate with people who are like, girl, I got this. Like, you're good. You go do your thing, I'll do my thing, and we'll create something together that's magic. And I've been like, this is amazing. Don't stress about it. Yeah, yeah. What's been the biggest challenge in the last 10 years? I think the biggest challenge for me in the past decade. That's a good question. You started MarieTV, what, eight, nine years? Eight years ago, yeah. So to put this all in context, so I've been doing what I've been doing for 20 years now, so creating free content via email back starting in, like, 2000, 2001, which seems like crazy insane. Then blogging. And then I got Kuma in 2009. Kuma's my dog, my toy. Australian shepherd. He's a sweet little pup. And here's the thing. When we first got him as a puppy and I was training him along with Josh, I didn't have time to write as many. Training Josh? No, training Kuma along with Josh. Josh knew what he was doing. I was just like, what do I do with a puppy? I didn't have as much time to write blog posts, and so I just started opening my Webcam on my MacBook Pro and talking right into the camera. Remember those early videos? Yeah. They're still on the site. And so MarieTV was actually started not because I had some big vision for, like, a show that I wanted to do. It was actually because I didn't have much time because I had a really cute new puppy and I needed to get consistent content out, and I felt much more comfortable. And it was faster to talk into my webcam than it was to construct a blog post. So that's how MarieTV started back in, like, 2009, 2010. It's been almost 10 years. It'd be 10 years. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think one of the challenges of the past decade has just been to continue to stay really present with all of the work while continuing to grow the company, like, making sure that folks on the team have the support that they need, making sure that we're attracting the right talent, people that have the right skills, the right culture, fit, and just, you know, keeping all those plates in the air. And then, of course, still having a life and making sure my relationship, you know, stays on track. How do you stay on track with a connected, loving relationship? As a female entrepreneur, when you're putting so much energy into your business and the culture and the team and your customers? I made so many mistakes. I mean, let's just be real. Like, I talk about this and I've told this story. Like, I worked so hard to get my business off the ground, and I was often working seven days a week. You know, not just coaching, like, that was a portion of what I did, but to keep a roof over my head. It was bartending, it was waiting tables. It was like. Like being a personal assistant, cleaning people's toilets, whatever I needed to do in order to pay my rent, you know, put food on the table and actually continue to grow the business. So I basically developed a habit of working nonstop. Performer etv. Oh yeah. Like getting the business off the ground. Like I worked side by side. You're like a fitness coach. You did like dance instruction. You did everything. I was a Nike elite dance athlete. I taught anywhere from like three to seven classes a week at Crunch Fitness. Some of them were choreographed, some, some of them were basic fitness. I had the coaching clients, I was doing the content and I was bartending and waiting table. So I had developed this habit of non stop work because that was what was necessary at that time. New York. Yes. But as Josh and I got together and eventually when I let go of the bartending and the waiting tables and even the dance and fitness as a revenue stream, I didn't let go of the habit of working non stop. And that created some real problems in the relationship where it was to the point that him and I had been together for seven years and never taken a vacation together. Like we had traveled because either he had something for his work or I had something for my work. But it was always work related. So it wasn't actual just together time, just him and I and our relationship was almost over. Like he was kind of done with me. Wow. Because you were just, I want to work, I gotta build my business. You don't understand me. This is my dream. I was operating too out of a lot of scarcity and a lot of just habit, like feeling like if I didn't work constantly, that it was all gonna fall apart. And so there were other things mixed in there as well. You know, there were other layers of just life, pressures from all these different ends. But that was like a definite, a critical piece. Yes. His son. Oh yeah. So my stepson Zane came into my life when he was seven. So the year that Josh and I kind of, you know, one of the times we've had many bumps along the road. We've been together for 16 years. Any couple that's been together that long, it's not all unicorns and rainbows. No, absolutely not. Relationships are so difficult. But at that particular juncture, Zane was going off to college, which that was a really big thing in terms of Josh processing that, you know, having your kid go off after you raise them and then me working all the time. There was this confluence of stressors that put us in couples therapy. And I had to really change a lot about how I was living what I Was believing and really putting things back into perspective, which, you know, saved our relationship. What were you believing? Well, I was believing that if I didn't work constantly, that I wasn't a worthy person, that I wasn't doing enough to make my business successful, that I was perhaps letting people down. And so I had to really shift that and understand that, you know, I come from a background. I don't come from a wealthy background. So the work ethic in my nuclear family is very strong. Like, my. My dad owned a small business. My mom, although she stayed home with us, she was constantly doing stuff, constantly working, constantly fixing things, constantly doing things that took care of the family. So that's the kind of DNA I grew up with was like, no, if something needs to get done, you get it done. It's not like you sit around all day and eating bonbons and watching tv. So, yeah, so that's kind of how I got there. But then I really. I had to readjust if I actually wanted to not only have a successful business, but have a successful life. Yeah. Well, how old were you when you came to this realization that, like, okay, I can take a day off a week, or I can take two weeks and go to Italy? Yes, yes, yes, yes. So that was probably. I may not get the dates right because time gets warped for me, but that was, I would say, well over, like, a decade ago, where I started making some changes and then really starting to see also how much more creative and productive I was when I scaled back a little bit. And that was a really powerful realization because I think often, and I understand this, and I think it's important to contextualize this, because at different stages of our life and at different stages of our creative process, we need to work in different rhythms. You know, often when you're getting something off the ground, it's kind of like a rocket ship leaving the atmosphere. It takes a lot of inertia to break free from gravity. Right. To get into that upper stratosphere. So there's a lot of work required in the. In the beginning, but then you have to adjust as you move on. And I just needed to learn that lesson. But you were just in, like, launch mode all the time. We got a launch, launch, launch, launch. I mean, not launching things, but the idea and the energy behind. Correct. Go, go, go. Yep. So, yeah, I think about a decade ago is when I really started making some good changes and putting boundaries and bumpers in place for myself. And what that means was that at the top of the year, what we do in terms of relationship, and even for the company, we do the same thing. So there's two points I want to make here in terms of my personal relationship. Josh and I look at the calendar at the top of the year and we set non negotiable adventure time. So my favorite place to go is Italy. That's my happy place. So we. And we don't always have to go there, but it's just been a habit for like the past four or five years. And we set two weeks in the calendar where it's like, he doesn't accept work. You know, I tell the team, like, this is the time we're gonna be away. No matter what's going on, we're just offline. That's it. And then there's other kind of smaller adventures that we plan, like adventures with friends, where have a bunch of friends up for a couple of days around a birthday or around a holiday and like, put these bumpers in place so that both him and I know that there are these solid connection moments throughout the year that no matter how busy everything else gets, that we have these things to look forward to. And that's been a game changer. Wow. And then in the company, I don't know if I've ever told you this story, but one day I was in New York and I was having, like a really bad PMS craving for carbs. I was just like, mama needs some carbs. And I was feeling like a croissant. And there was this great little French bakery around the corner that I'd never been to. And I'm like, I'm gonna go get my croissant right now. So I roll up to this little French bakery and on the window there was like this handmade sign that said, you know, off for vacation, back, you know, July 18th. And it was like this two week thing. Wow. You're like, what? And I was like, wait, wait, what? They're business. You need to be here. Yes. And yet there it was, empty. And this simple little, like, hand drawn sign. And in that moment, Louis, I had this notion. I was like, wait a minute, I'm running this digital company. I have all of these amazing, beautiful, gorgeous souls that I work with, and we're producing content once a week, every week, non stop. When do we ever take a break? And the advantage for me, like, Josh, who works in entertainment, like series, sometimes they'll have, you know, you watch your favorite series. Like, I love Handmaid's Tale. I love Stranger things. You see 11 or 12 episodes and wait a year and yes. And then they're off for a little while. Right. And I thought to myself, why do I not have downtime built into my business? And this was about the time when also there was just a cultural uprising with like, you know, hustle 247 and you have to work non stop and, like, never take a break and I'll sleep when I'm dead. And I'm like, those are horrible messages for your health. So we decided after I saw. So after I had my croissant craving, I told my director of operations, I said, starting right now, we're gonna close the company down for two weeks in the summer and two weeks in the winter. And in addition to people's already having their vacation time. Yes, Their vacation time. And we started that, I guess maybe, I don't know, five, six years ago. I might be wrong on those dates, but a good number of time ago. And so our company goes dark twice a year. And now the company's at a place where not everyone in customer service takes off those exact same two weeks. So they stagger so that we can take care of people, but everyone has two weeks of dark time. Two weeks of dark time. And what's great about that is that you don't get FOMO thinking that you're off and there's all these other things happening and there's projects moving ahead and there's these things that you want to be in on, but you're like, feeling that tension because the rest of the company is moving ahead and you're trying to relax. So it's been a game changer for us. Wow. As a team, five years ago, Roughly. Yeah. Interesting. Have you felt any negative effects to that? Not one. What if you took a month off in the winter and a month off, is there like too much time where you're like, okay, now people are just. That's a great question. We haven't tested that. So I don't know, two weeks for us has felt like a really beautiful amount of space. So over the past couple years, the feedback. And we all talk about what we do when we come back, and we also share very openly about how it feels. And this is. This is no bullshit too. This is one of the things I'm most proud of. When everyone comes back from break, they're a so excited to get back from work. It's almost like a little joke. They're like, oh, my God, I missed you guys so much. Like, and they talk about how they spent time with their families, like the adventures that they had, how they Got a chance to refresh and renew themselves and they come in with all these ideas. They didn't work on those ideas while they were away. It's just this came to them. It came to them because they had a chance to step away. Yeah. And this is the other cool thing. This. I'm really proud of this. Oftentimes and I don't find out about this until after a fact, they come back and I see these photos uploaded into Slack. They went to hang out with each other. Oh, wow. And I was like, that's cool. Amazing. That's great. Yeah. Wow. Now those four weeks, are those paid or is it just we're off and you guys take your time off? No, they're paid. That's great. Yeah. So they have. We have pretty good benefits because I feel like in our culture, I was just talking about this last night with my creative director. We were at dinner and you know, it's such a strange environment that so many people that work for companies feel afraid. Like they feel afraid of what? Expendable. Like there's no sense of loyalty. And we were talking about someone that we know collectively who's like super talented. But in an industry where things are shifting fast and this person, you know, there's always this undercurrent of not knowing whether or not they're going to be let go because budgets or this, that or the other thing. And there's not necessarily a connection between employee and employer. And granted, many people may. Well, that's just the way that business works. That's, that's how it must be. And I don't agree with that. Like, I want the people that work for me and with me to feel a sense of safety and security. I mean, nothing is guaranteed. I get hit by a bus. You know, we don't know, something may happen, but that's all outside of all of our control. But on a day to day basis, for someone to feel like if they're contributing their top gifts and their talents and their time to an organization, that that organization is also as equally invested in their health and well being, their sanity, their ability to show up fully for their family, to have time, to have flexibility, I just think that's where we need to go if we want to create real change in our culture. I mean, there's that statistic that's been around for a while now. It hangs out that about 70% of people here in the United States are actively disengaged from their work. Right. You know, I'm sorry, for like two hours actually. You Know, maybe there's two hours of work a day, Right? Yeah. Or. But just even the sentiment that they have towards their work, like, they're not satisfied with it. They're, you know, going through the motions, just showing up. They're doing it only because they get a paycheck. They feel no sense of meaning or purpose. And the economic repercussions of having 70% of our workforce disengaged at work or not liking their work or not feeling satisfied with it is enormous. Which speaks nothing of the emotional or the psychological or the spiritual cost of having that proportion of our workforce unhappy. Yeah, that's true. Wow. Yeah. That's good. Yeah. What are the things you think you're not doing well in your business? I think a lot of these have started to shift with this book project. So I tend to be a person. This comes from two places. I like to be involved in things because I'm very collaborative. So I love to see how things are turning out, and I love to, like, put my spin on them or at least have my input. But at the same time, you know, that can be overbearing. I don't want folks to feel like they constantly have to run things past me. My team definitely knows I trust them. So the thing that I haven't done well in the past is delegating enough, letting go, even enough control. And particularly with this project, it's pushed us all so far outside of our collective comfort zones that it's been a joy to be like, you guys make the decision. You're amazing. You're intelligent, you're smart. Whatever you choose, I'm gonna be happy with. Wow. Yeah, that's been good. It's hard to do, to let go of that. Right? It's been great. It's been good. It's been really great. Like, the fact that I'm this, like, awake and happy and, like, in it right now speaks to my, you know, kind of let go and let Jesus take the wheel. And in this case, Jesus manifests as my team. Let people make decisions and move on. Yes. You do what you need to do and let everyone else do what they need to do. Yeah. It's the only way to sanity. What do you think is missing in your life? I honestly, I'm gonna sound like probably such a butthole saying this. I don't feel like anything's missing. Like, I feel really. First of all, I feel really appreciative of everything. The fact that I have my health, the fact that I have a team and people that I love and People that love me. And I don't feel like there's a hole, if that makes sense. What do you feel like you'll regret if you don't do something in the next 10 years? So you've had 10 years now kind of launching this version two of your business, I would say, right? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And now the next decades coming up. What will you regret if it's 2030 we're doing this again sitting here and you're like, I'm really upset at myself because I didn't do this in my personal life, in my business, my health, my family, the world. Yes. I would say the only thing I could foresee at this moment not regretting is not continuing to take that quality time with people I love. That would be the thing that it. For whatever reason, I started making justifications to, well, this opportunity is so amazing. So I gotta go here and do this. That would be the only thing to be super transparent with you. Yeah. Because looking back on these past 10 years, the quality time with people that I love is everything. And I know that so viscerally in my body is that we're not gonna be here forever and we never know when the people that we love gone. And so for me, there is nothing more important than maintaining and enriching and deepening those personal, like, friend relationships, Josh, my family, like, making sure that I show up as fully as possible and not letting anything take me off track from that. Because it's, you know, having not had money and, you know, starting with like tons of debt and building everything from the ground up and now being in a different position. It's like I can see so clearly the success on an exterior level. Like that's amazing and I'm grateful for it. But nothing can make up for not having a sense of love in your life and not having people that you care about and that you're invested in. So there's nothing that I could strive for or reach for that's going to be more important than this, if that makes sense. Yeah, of course. Yeah. The idea is that we need to be more and let the doing flow from there. Be yourself, be your authenticity, authentic self. Be here now, you know, be grateful, be present and let the doing flow from those. That orientation is a completely different model that, you know, it's like I'm spending my life efforts, I think, working to share that and to help the some of the best doers and thinkers in the world to reorientate what got them good but is slowing them down from Being their absolute personal best. What's slowing them down? Fear and fatigue still. Yeah. Well the idea, the framework, the psychological framework that I need to do more to be more. And that's born out of anxiety. Right? Not doing enough. Yeah, could be doing more. And the trick, stressing about. Yeah, flat out. And the trick though there is that, that that'll get people good. I need to do more. Damn, I missed that jumper. How am I gonna miss that jumper? Let's keep like you drive them to be practice more to. Yeah, yeah. So that's this, you know, it's like just enough anxiety will get you good, but it will slow you down for being your absolute best at some point. Why do we fear so much about what could go wrong, what other people think about us, who we're going to let down, that we're not worthy enough, good enough. Why do we fear that? It's a great question. So much. Yeah, it's a really great question my whole life. Yeah. Is that. So there's some biological things we can take a look at and then there's also psychological. Right. And then. So it's the interaction of those two biologically our brain as best as we think. And it's three pounds of silly putty that sits in our skull that's more complicated than, you know, like the brightest minds in neuroscience are still amazed by how our brain works. And so. But we think that our brain is designed to scan the world and find what's dangerous. Right. And so our ancestors passed that gift on to us. Your lineage passed that gift on to you. That they were able to survive. And so how survive way back in ancient times that they could scan the world and easily discern how to be ready between. Now let me say it more, more eloquently. They could scan the world and find what was dangerous or what was threatening so that they wouldn't be eaten. Eaten by the saber toothed tiger, as the story goes. Right. Or they want to eat something bad or they want whatever protect themselves. That's right. So, and then, so then not only was nature dangerous and all the elements in nature, but other humans became dangerous to each other. So now what we've created is the ability, the heightened ability to read micro expressions. And micro expressions are the small squinting of the eyes, the frontalis muscles between the eyes and when those squint or don't move, it's a sense of threat. Right. Because we don't know what's happening to that from that person. And so if you got this ancient brain that's Programmed beautifully to find what's dangerous. And we scanned in an undisciplined way. Our environment around us. We're going to find dangerous things. Yeah. And in modern times, we're not chased by sabertooths anymore. The new modern saber tooth are other people's opinions. And so we're well conditioned from an early age. And this next generation is going to be even more well conditioned, you know, with insta highlight reels for everything. My life is better than yours, I'm gonna show you via a snap picture. Is that. You know. So we've got this real challenge that to pursue a path of our personal best, we have to override our DNA. That's. That's hard to do. That's really hard to do. It requires deep commitment to training. Yeah. And that's a psych. That's what psychology. The optimal opportunities that psychology offers us is just that. How to train our minds to override our DNA and to use the smaller parts of our brain to scan the world and find opportunity. How can we train our minds every single day, throughout the day to do that? Yeah. Overcome this fear. What are the things that we could be doing? I will not. I could. I will rattle off as many as you want to hear. Like tactics. And then I also want to put a small little asterisk next to this. Is that the tactic alone is not enough. Right. It's the stitching of the tactics. It's the stitching of the mental skills training to each other and to one's personal philosophy. So without a personal philosophy, it's like you. We end up just trying all these different things to get better. But what are we getting better at? What other people want us to be. So there's a fundamental piece of work first. Got it. What would be your personal philosophy? I'll share mine. Cool it. I've spent a lot of time with it and I'll tell. If I could tell a story of how it worked, I think it will harden a little bit. Is that so? I needed a mentor when I was growing up, and I'm thankful. What's up, Gary? Like, I'm thankful for Gary. He helped me out in so many different ways, even currently today. And so one day he says, hey, Mike, I want to introduce you to my mentor. Great. I didn't know there was such a thing as like a grand mentor. Like, am I ready? And so, you know, it's this moment. I said, okay, here we go. And it was this. But to my surprise, it was this small, you know, two, three bedroom, two Bedroom, three bedroom, two bath home. And it was well manicured and it was this pleasant like 78, 82 year old woman comes out and I was just so pleasantly surprised. Like, okay, this is going to get good. Because she just had that sense of wise woman. And it's the setting that you would imagine. The shag carpet was a little bit long. The drapes were just a little bit, you know, you know, outdated. And so we sat at the table and she's pouring me tea and she says, you know, welcome and so interested to meet you. Then we sat down and she said, so tell me what you're about. I said, okay, well, what? Well, the things that I'm most interested. Well, okay, let me start this way. And she looked at me and she looked at my mentor and she said, I thought you said he was ready. I am, I am ready. Wait, wait, no, no, no, I want to answer that. And she grabbed my tea and she said, you know, when you're ready, sweetie, I'd like to share this tea with you. Yeah. So I was like super embarrassed in that moment. Like I thought I let my, my mentor down. And you know, it was like this really intense experience. Wow. How old were you? I was at that point right after. It was like 26, 27, somewhere in that range. And so I didn't know what to do. And so it was this awkward moment. But I knew that I was not prepared to even answer the most basic question. Who are you? And so that's where I just want to anchor that because I think that that captures what most of us feel like a lot. Most people don't feel like they know who they are. Yeah. And so I had this dramatic moment for me, but, you know, I think it's a really important process to go through. So let's call it a personal philosophy. But then let's extract one, one level out from that. The greatest and the most influential people across the globe are very clear about their philosophy. The greatest movers and shakers and change makers are spiritual leaders and political leaders for the most part. And now we're starting to see business leaders, you know, to do that. What was Confucius philosophy? What was Buddha's philosophy? What was Jesus philosophy? They're really clear. Jesus was, and I want to oversimplify a beautiful set of traditions, but Jesus was more about love and service. Buddha was more about, you know, that all people are suffering and then so let's work through compassion to live with loving kindness. What was Martin Luther King Jr. S? Dr. King Jr. S was about Equality, you know, Malcolm X, equality. Totally different tone, totally different approach. Mother Teresa, Helen Keller. What was Helen Keller's? Like, okay, I'm gonna go for it. And, like, I deserve to be educated as well. She changed the educational system. So the most influential people were very clear. Why? Because they lined up their thoughts, their words and actions to the thing that matters most to them. And that's what a philosophy is about. Everybody already has one. You have one, I have one. Whether we could articulate it at knifepoint in a dark alley, totally different element, Right? And so I think that that's a nice litmus test. Like, could you get it out in front of a deranged person who's got a knife to your throat? Like, could you. Do you. Are you that clear what you stand for? And do you have your personal philosophy? So that's the litmus test for folks I work with, and I'll share mine. It's every day is an opportunity to create a living masterpiece. And so there's. There's optimism embedded in there. There's creative juices embedded in there, and then there's, you know, this idea of a living masterpiece. And so when I met Coach Carroll, head coach of the Seattle Seahawks, about six years ago, Six, seven years ago, one of our first conversations, it was. It was over dinner. A mutual friend put us together, and we had this really wonderful conversation. And it was born out of like, what is your philosophy? So he had been on the same similar journey, I should say, where he was fired from two head coach jobs in the NFL. And on the second time, he was fired. So from. Pain creates change. Uncomfortableness is how we grow, but change is how we. I'm sorry, uncomfortable. And this is how we grow. But pain is why we change. So he experienced pain and said, if I get another chance, I'm going to do it exactly the way that is authentic to me. But I got to figure out what that is. Yeah. So he just went and scratched down on, you know, multiple pads, spiral, you know, old school spiral notebooks. Just wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote. Took a second pass at it and said, what are the words that keep showing up? Circled those words, wrote more about those words, and that's how it eventually spilled out of him. His philosophy is always compete. How do we learn how to learn something that we want? But it's really challenging. Let's deconstruct this. Okay. So this is the key. I remember years ago, I get a call on a Friday evening, and I don't know the guy's voice. I Didn't know to see the number, and I recognize it, so I pick it up. And he was like, you got, you got to help me. We have this mutual friend and this my speaker tomorrow in New York City canceled because of an emergency and I need a speaker, please. And I'm like, well, this is not usually how the night before. Exactly. This is usually like a six month in advance process. But the mutual friend was a very close friend friend. And I was like, look, maybe I could help you, but what's the topic? And he tells me what the topic is, and I'm like, I don't know anything about that topic. Why are you calling me? He was like, well, he wrote a book. I'm like, so he was like, well, my friend says you're a speed reader. And I'm like, okay. He's like, well, can you come a little early and I'll give you his book? And then. Oh my gosh. And I was like, I was like, this is gonna completely crazy. I have to do this. But this is gonna, this is gonna cost you, but this is gonna make a great story. And what ended up happening was I show up at 10 o', clock, I read his book and I give the keynote that afternoon. And humbly, it was the highest rated talk of the event. And I don't take credit for that because I've never had training in public speaking, but when you understand how people learn, you could present it. And so I read the book, I remembered everything that I needed to say because I train a lot of TED speakers how to memorize their speech. And I know how to be able to present in a way that, that's interesting and also sticks with people. But I say that because that's what I mean about I don't have to, you know, just like Will Smith, I know I don't have to get ready, I stay ready. And that's the power of skill development. And if there's one skill to master, it's our ability to learn. It's called meta learning. This book fundamentally was going to be called Meta Learning, but people are like, oh no, they're not gonna buy it if it's learning. And you know the type of title, right? And the meta learning is learning how to learn. And that's a meta skill. And it helps you to learn salsa or Spanish or anything else better. And so let's deconstruct how to do that confidently. The limit. We'll start with the limitless model. All right, so this book used to be a book completely on skill Development, which was all methodology. It was everything that I teach about. How to read three times faster, how to learn a language, how to remember names, how to, to do the things that, how to get to inbox zero, how to do the things, how to be focused, concentrate, critical, think, solve problems, all the important things. That really is our life, right? But then when I finished it, you know, I talked to friends like you and every and everybody else and it's like this is a really good self help book. But if somebody found it just on the street, they still, even they know what to do, they still wouldn't do it. Like how come you want to learn Spanish or something else and you put it off or it takes longer than you should because method is only one of the three parts. And so this is the limitless model. And I want everybody to think about a subject or some area of your life where you're feeling held back. It could be your relationship, it could be you're not making progress in your career. It could be make maybe in your physical performance or wellness. Think about one area where you're stuck in a box. All right? Now box is like a cage. 3D box. And 3D is three dimensional. What keeps you in the box? Three forces. And these are the three M's. And I want everyone to draw a circle. And in that circle we're going to draw a Venn diagram. You know what a Venn diagram is? Three intersecting circles. And the first circle is your mindset. Three M's. And I always alliterate everything because it helps you to be able to remember it better. First one is your mindset. Now your mindset are your assumptions and your attitudes about something. Now let's break that down for me functionally. What your mindset is about this subject. And I want people to make this very personal think about something, an area. You're held back. This is what you believe is possible is your mindset. It is what you believe you are capable of. It is what you believe you deserve is your part of your mindset. Because that's a big thing. That's your thermostat. Right? If somebody has a mindset of like I could teach someone the method of how to remember names. But their mindset is I'm stupid, I don't deserve to remember names or I'm not capable of it. Exactly. Or exactly. Or I'm too old or whatever it is, that's their mindset. Brain doesn't work that way. Exactly. Then the method won't take hold. It won't matter. Exactly so this is, this is the formula here. I've learned. How do you learn to believe that you are capable? So we'll go into this. That's exactly what the book does. I take people through a new process called unlimiting. It's a word that I coined years ago. Unlimiting is different than unlimited. Unlimiting is like the process of removing limits. Limited beliefs. Exactly. Or behaviors or habits. Right. So unlimiting is an active word where it's. You're redrawing the boundaries and borders of your life. Limitless is not about being perfect. Limitless is about advancing and progressing beyond what you believe is possible. That's what this book is about. Now I apply that towards accelerated learning. So you can learn your languages and, you know, give speeches without notes and all that stuff. But really it's a process of liberating yourself out of that box. So one of the dimensions that keep you in that box is your mindset. Yep. All right. And we can go deep into how to change negative beliefs. And everything I talk about the seven lies. Lies for me, again is an acronym. LIE is a limited idea. Entertained, entertainment. Because it's not true. It's not true that you don't deserve it. It's not necessarily true that you're stupid. But it's an idea we're giving energy to. We're entertaining that idea in that moment. I show people how to unravel it in the three step process. But that's the mindset. Now the second M, you can have the greatest mindset and believe everything is possible. You're capable, you deserve it. But if you don't have the second M, which is motivation, you're not getting out of that box right in your career. I believe I can do it, but I'm going to sit here and eat chips on the couch. Exactly. And so your motivation for me is your drive, it's your purpose, it's the vitality that you bring to something. Now most people think motivation, they'll say motivation is a lie. And in some respects it is. Because the way a lot of people perceive motivation is just rah, rah, get excited, get hyped up, and next day nothing changes. So my evidence, the evidence of motivation is something is happening. There's an action, there's a new action taking place. And if you're not doing that action, you're not motivated. No matter what you say, if you're not doing it, it's better well done than well said. Even like a lot of people on social media, they promise things but prove it right? Don't say it, show it right? You take it to action. Because knowledge is not power, it's potential power. Applying it makes it powerful. So motivation for me is a three step formula. And here's the formula and I go deep in this book because there's a chapter on each part. The key to success, Sustainable motivation. How to overcome procrastination. If you're putting things off, this is the key. It's this P times, times S3. Now this is a formula for sustainable, not just a surge of motivation, right? We've all watched a limitless movie where he takes a pill and he can learn languages and read really fast and remember everything. And Dr. Mark Hyman, who wrote the forward of the book, who's mutual friend of both of ours and I know he's been on your show, he says that there is no genius pill. But Jim gives you the process for a brighter brain, right? Like it's the process and there's no side effects, right? Yeah, it's good. But going back to this, you know, when he had a surge of motivation, but then when the pill wore off, it goes back to no motivation. But this is the key. There's no pill, there's a process. And these three things, P times E times S3 is sustainable for the rest of your life. Because I've lived on no sleep for over a decade, right? My sleep has gotten much better since of recent, you know, just some, some breakthroughs this in, in medicine and everything else like that. But you know, I had sustainable motivation. I was still doing all the conferences, still doing my podcast every week, still speaking and traveling and doing all this stuff because I had these three things. Number one, so the P stands for purpose. Now again, if you feel not motivated in any area of your life, some people can have motivation. Now some people are very motivated to sit on the couch and binge watch Netflix. They're highly motivated to do that, right? But if you're lacking motivation to work out consistently, and now here's another lie, limited idea entertained is that you have to enjoy the activity, right? Like, you know, it doesn't mean that you have to do that. Like I was having this conversation with Tom Bilyeu, right? And he was like, I work out 4 o', clock, 5 o' clock every morning. I was like, do you enjoy it? He's like, no, I don't like working out at all. You know, but he's motivated, doesn't miss a day. So he has the motivation. So motivation doesn't mean you enjoy it like every morning I do my cold showers, you know, like Wim Hof, right? Not fun all the time, but Exactly. I grew up in Northeast. I hate the cold, right? But I do my cold showers or my ice baths, you know, I post all the time on Instagram about doing it because I know I have a purpose, right? So I don't enjoy it. But the P in the formula is purpose. Reasons reap results. And if you get the reason. So even if I'm not getting my sleep, I have a purpose. I have a reason to help people every single day. I want every single person that comes in contact with me, whether it's on my podcast or a video or a book. Their brain is better off because of it. And so that's my reason. And really, you know, my story. Like, my first student, three decades ago almost, she read 30 books in 30 days. And what was her purpose? Her mother was dying of terminal cancer. Two months to live 60 days. And the book she was reading, health, wellness, energy, right? And she ended up saving her mom's life. And that's when I realized that if knowledge is power, learning is her superpower. I dedicated my life to make that kind of difference. And that's what. That's what. So I have my reasons to do something so I don't have to pump myself up. So P is purpose. Tap into your reasons. And it can't be intellectual. You know, you have to feel it, right? And even you could even feel the pain. Like, who's counting on you to do this activity? You know, who's watching you? Who's role modeling you, right? Who's counting on you to show up today? You know, it could be painful, too, but if it gets you to move, that's what's important. Have that reason, the purpose. This E. Now I now here, my mind does this thought experiment, scientific experimentations, right? If somebody just has a reason, are they always motivated? Are there any cases where they're not motivated? And I said yes, if they're lacking the E energy. So somebody could have a reason to work out, or they could have a reason to read, you know, or learn Spanish. But if they're trying to do it late at night and they didn't sleep the way before, or they had a big processed meal, it's hard to have the motivation. Exactly. They're a food coma. They can't be motivated because they lack energy. So in the book, I talk about 10 keys for brain energy, the 10 things that I do to light up my brain. And one of them is our Brain foods. Another one is optimizing your sleep. So I do a whole area of what I've learned really moves the needle for maximizing your sleep. Because how's your thought process if you don't sleep? How's your focus? How's your memory? You know, how are you making good decisions? Right. I heard that that was the advice presidents give other presidents is like, don't make a big decision if you didn't get a good night's sleep. Right? So I talk about sleep. So in the book in Motivation, we do a whole section on finding your purpose and even life purpose and passion and a whole area on optimizing your energy. Now you have energy to do it. I asked myself, okay, you have a purpose for something, to work, to work out or whatever you have, or to start this business. You have the energy. In what case, if you're like doing this critical thinking, in what case won't you be motivated? Let's say you want to start a business or whatever. You're just procrastinating on starting that business. Number one, you have the motivation, you really need it. And you know why you have the energy? Because you're eating the right foods, you're maximizing your sleep. You're with not energy. Vampires. Yes, there is. S3. What the problem is, is you're making it too big in your mind. That will keep you from being motivated, starting a business like where do you even start? Or getting that perfect relationship or having perfect health. That's way, way too big. So what do you do? Small simple steps. That's what keep will keep people unmotivated. They could have the reasons and purpose, they could have the energy, unlimited energy. But they don't know where to start. And because they make it too big in their mind. And a confused mind doesn't do anything. Confused mind doesn't do anything. So clarity is power. I like that. So small, simple step, all you have to do is ask a magic question. What is the smallest action I could take where I can't fail? It allows me, give me some progress, but I can't fail. What's the smallest step? And I cite the work in here of the habit experts that you and I have interviewed, you know, Dr. B.J. foggs or the James Clears atomic habits. And really my take on how to make sustainable habits. Because what you do repeatedly becomes that habit. But it starts with a small simple step. What's an example of that? I want people to read a book a week. It will change their life. I think if there's one Thing people could that would change their life immediately. Long term, it's just read every day. Reading is to your mind what exercises your body. Even more than audio. And my podcast and I do everything on audio, I still encourage people to read because it activates a different part of your brain also. And I listen to audios when I drive, when I work out. But when people are tested in terms of what they read, in terms of comprehension, what they listen to, reading the actual more and they'll understand more. You know, why is not only does it activate a different part of your brain because it's active, because listening can be passive. Like watching a movie or anything can be very passive. You don't have to get involved, but reading forces you to get involved. But the second reason why is because usually when someone's listening to something, they're doing something else and they're trying to multitask. They're cleaning their house, they're working out, they're driving, so their attention is not fully on what they're listening to. So that's why comprehension is down. But reading every single day is a great activity. But I don't tell people, you know, read an hour a day. A small, simple step to get someone reading is read one sentence. That's a small, simple step. Open up the book. That's a small, simple step that you can't fail, right? And nobody's gonna stop at one sentence. You know, the example Dr. BJ Fogg talks about with tiny habits is, hey, we know flossing is good for your longevity. Just do one tooth. One tooth. And who's gonna stop at one tooth, right? So how do you break it down? And really, motivation is energy management. It's really about energy management, meaning when you have clarity and purpose, it gives you energy, right? When you have energy, like if you activate, you eat the right foods and everything else, vitality, you have energy. And small, simple steps requires very little energy, requires very little effort output. And there's something in memory called the Zeigarnik effect. It's by a psychologist, a woman who in Europe noticed that at the cafe she frequents that the waitstaff would remember all the orders until they were delivered, and once they were delivered, they would forget it. And the Zeigarnik effect, which is her last name, means that the mind doesn't like open loops. So, like, oh, and all of the series on that you binge watch knows this because at the end, they open up a loop and you're like, one more. Who does that? Like, one more. And you end up watching until like 2am, 3am because it doesn't like the open loops. Well, starting something like an order, remembering someone's order, and then it delivered it closes the loop. Well, when you start something anywhere, your mind still keeps an open loop about it, so it's more likely to finish. And that's another way to overcome procrastination. Break it down into small, simple steps where you can't fail. That's the three step formula. How do you manage your own ego with the success you get? You know, you've had success in multiple areas of your career, from a seal to an author, to a business leader, to an executive coach, a leadership coach. How do you manage it? When you are training CEOs from companies that have a hundred thousand plus employees and you're number one on the list and top podcast, how do you manage it daily? Because I've seen over and over again through my own experiences, through the books that I cover on my podcast, the books I've read in my life. If you want to open yourself up for a massive downfall, just let your ego get out of control. Really? If you want to let that happen, yeah, let your ego get out of control. So every single day for me, it starts, you know, ground zero. I've got to go forward with an open mind, with a humble mind looking at the world. You know, it's classic. Like when I get asked a question, I don't think to myself, oh, I know the answer to this. And I get asked questions all the time. Yeah. And generally when I HEAR A question, 99% of the questions that I hear, I've heard in some form before. But I don't go, I've heard this before. I don't know the answer. I say, okay, well let me, let me hear this. What detail is this person talking about? What angle is this person coming at it from? What can I learn from this question? How can I assess this question? So everything that I look at, I try and look at from a humble perspective. And if you don't do that, it's going to be a problem. I mean, even when you're asking me questions about God, right? You're asking me questions about my beliefs, it's like, hey, here's my beliefs. I'm humble and I'm listening and my mind is open and this is what I've seen and this is what I can tell you about it. I'm not sitting here jumping up and down saying you should or you should believe that. I'm saying you should stay humble, you should keep an Open mind about what's going on in the world. I am. I think you should do the same thing. Wow. How do you. How do you. So it's a. It's a mindset. Every morning you wake up with an open mind. Yeah. And I don't want to get in this whole, like, morning routine where I go and look in the mirror and say, be humble. No, I don't do that. Like, I'm not. That's not. That's not me. But when, you know, you wake up. And I'm just saying that the way I go about my business and my life is to say. Say to myself, okay, well, I could be wrong about that. I could be wrong about this. You know, it's. I mean, even. Even the. 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. 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. Stop listening to you. You're putting out too much information. They don't know what's important, 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, 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? I'm. 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 that's extreme. That's an extreme. Yes. That's the problem with it. And so the question is, can you be too aggressive? Yes, absolutely. You can. Hey, there's a machine gun nest over there. Let's attack it. So you charge up the hill and everyone dies. Yeah, you've. You've been too aggressive. So what you have to do is you have to be balanced. And that's probably so. 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. Can you be too passive? 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. Prabha, 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. 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 your plan. Yeah, 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. So now you just back away and you come back and you say, hey, we failed the mission because you didn't think. 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, 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 and 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. I need to adjust. What's your plan? You'll make it. Came up with this. Yeah. 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. Yeah. So like you said earlier, you're constantly questioning everything. And to me, what that is, that's. 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 going to happen to me 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? No, 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, or get to work out, train. I'm feeling good in 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. Well, 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. I never get done with the end of the day and go, cool, mission accomplished. Like, it's like, 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. You know, my, My wife and kids. Yeah, my. My wife and kids are cool and funny and. And we have a good time and lots of inside jokes and all that. Yeah. You know, and I, and I trained jiu jitsu and that. That's very fun. And surf. That's fun. Yeah. Guitar. That's fun. How old are your kids again? Age? 20, 18, 16 and 10. And what's the biggest lesson you learned about being 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 going to be who they are. And you can give them some course corrections a little bit, but they're going to be who they. 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, and they were. We were taught. We, you know, 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, you know, parenting and everything else. And, 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 10, right. Because most people, you know, your parents are wanting you to do this thing, then you do something else. I mean, I joined the Navy when I was 18 years old. Like, that's that. What? Probably wasn't even on the checklist of top 20 things that my parents wanted me to do. Not even in the same ballpark. Right. 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. 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. You allow them to come up with. Come up with a plan yourself. What if. 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? Or what's at stake. If you're, 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, you're like, I don't know, 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. I'm going to either step in. 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 not going to say. No, don't do it that way. I'm gonna say, give me that. Tell me that again. And let me hear you. 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 a 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 respecting yourself, confidence, belief. How important is feedback for leadership? Getting feedback from peers, coaches or employees, team members. Feedback is how you get better. No feedback, no improvement. So. 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, you don't listen to it. Yeah. So feedback is built upon being humble. What would you say is in your way to getting to the next level? 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 going to 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, you know, when I was a task unit commander in, so I'm in charge and I'm the head seal for this 40 seals, I'm the main guy. Yeah. 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, we have a, a leadership event that we do two or three times a year. But, 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's open. You know that I'm going to be open minded and listen to you. And that's how you build it. Every time you shut someone down from, list from. From speaking their mind, you 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 want to be leaders do that hold them back from being great leaders? So what are two things they could add? Yeah, number one is listen, which. 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 given 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 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 going to be able to make the best decision. Yeah. 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 detach, 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 firefighter 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 I'm in the weeds and I'm not able to assess what is actually happening. So that. 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. 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. Without saying, you need to calm down or you're too emotional. No, no, no, no, no. Because if. 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, the 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. 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? Yeah, I call. I call it reflect and diminish. So I'm going to reflect your emotions back to you, but I'm going to diminish them a little bit so that we're not escalating the situation. How would you do this with your wife? So if you. Well, if you come to me and you go, the supply department's been laid for. There are two weeks late on this stuff. I don't say calm down, I say. I said, oh, you got to 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. We bonded on the pain. Yes. You felt the pain. Yes, we're on the same team. Okay. My wife. What's going to make my wife mad? The ice machine's not working right? The ice machine's not working. It's your fault. Whether it's my fault, but we don't know the ice machine's not working, by the way, this is a real story. This is happening today. The ice machine's not working, and she didn't get mad about it, but the ice machine's not working. If I go, hey, chill out. You have a refrigerator and a house, and, you know, you can just calm down. Right? How's that going to go? It's not gonna go good. Now she's gonna get mad. Now it's me against her, you know? So instead, the ice machine's not working. Ah, man, that thing is junk. Have you called the repair guy? You know what I mean? And then all of a sudden, we're on the same team and she's like, well, no, I haven't, but I'm about to. Okay, cool. As opposed to the ice machine's not working well. Okay, do you want me to have ice shipped in from Alaska there, princess? Right. That's not gonna go over well. So. So what did you call it? Reflect and diminish. You might be dreaming. Like I was dreaming. I've always dreamed. For me, ambition was never the problem. I was the most ambitious, laziest person you're ever gonna meet 15 years ago. And it was realizing, wait, just because I'm lazy by nature doesn't mean I have to be lazy in actuality. Like, I can actually get the discipline to develop real drive to acquire those skills. So when I met the guys that are now my partners, they put me into a scenario where there was a very real world consequence, both positive and negative, for living up to the acquisition of skills. So. And that environment, that gladiator pit that I ended up stepping into, is the business world. And the great thing is when you're no longer an employee and it's your business and everything you have is on the line, and if the business fails, you lose your house. Like, that's real. It's real to you in a way that it's not to an employee. Right. Because now there's a real consequence that goes beyond, well, I have to look for another job, right? This goes into. I could lose everything if I can't solve this problem now. That can scare you away and keep you wanting to be an employee where it's a little bit safer or that can be wildly motivating to you. And that was interesting to me. So I wanted to be able to say, the harder I work, the better result I get. And they gave me the opportunity to plug into business where that became true. If I could solve these problems, if I could build a better product, if I could market it better, whatever that better results came. And so there was like now a connection between how hard I work, the skills I acquire, and the reward I get. And that that was all I needed. And then for me, being in that loop allowed me to do things like the gym. Sure. So when did you discover your new values? And what are those values? Personal and then business. And they intertwine. Yeah, yeah. For me, they're totally connected, 100%. And that's by choice, because for a long time they weren't connected. The way that I got the value system was truly looking at what works. Right. And so I believe that I'm going to give away my answer to something you can ask me later. But I believe that the purpose in life to be great, you have to acquire as many skills as you can that have utility and then put that utility to the test. Because now you can see, did I actually get the skill that I thought I got? Did I get the result from that skill that I wanted? And you can judge both what skills you need to acquire and whether you have effectively required them. And business like that is the closest thing to say, MMA fighting, Right, mma is you want real time feedback on whether you're learning and getting good at something. Let someone whose sole intent is to take your head off come in and test whether you can defend a choke or defend an armbar. It's so real and so visceral. There's, you know, you can think of it. There's. Either it's pure metaphor or there's no metaphor. Right. Like you were in that moment. So finding ways that business can. Can be like that for me, allowed me to create a set of values out of pure efficiency. So when for me, I. The one thing I can't. I can't give you ambition. I can't make you want something. Right. I can't want it for you. But once you want something, now you plug into something very real. And if you accept. So the I talk about there's 25 bullet points is the quest belief system. And that was me trying to give people the Thing that they needed to escape the matrix. And in that is the belief that you can acquire skills, that the human mind, human potential is nearly limitless, right? So you start putting all this stuff together, and it's like, okay, essentially everything falls on my shoulders. If. If I want to be great, it's all down to me. And whether I execute on that or not, it's all down to my ability to say, this is the thing I want. This is the gap in skill set between who I am today and who I need to become in order to acquire that thing that I want. Like, for me, I want to end metabolic disease globally. Right? So now I know what set of skills I need, right? I'm gonna have to understand nutrition really well. I'm gonna have to understand psychology really well in order to build this business, I'm gonna have to understand just business in general, to get the metrics right so that people can afford to buy these products on and on and on. So you can identify the skill sets that you need, and then you get to test them. Right. Because if I have learned the wrong skills or failed to learn a skill that I thought I had, the business doesn't grow. Right? So you have this feedback loop. And really, my value system was born out of that. I was so, so clear about what I wanted to accomplish that I could just test, you know, the skills that I was getting. And that sort of desire to accurately assess and acquire skills really is my value system. Right. But I think you started Quest when you're 34, is that right? When did we start Quest? Started Quest five years ago. I'm 39. Yes. Well done. You know me better than I do. So how long did it take you to, I mean, get clear on what you wanted? Did it take 35 years, 34 years for you to get clear on what you wanted? And what was that process of actually figuring it out that you got clear? Yeah, that's. It's so tempting to mythologize everything and to tell you the concise story, which is maybe more useful, but is a little misleading. So the truth went something like this. We're miserable building this company that's a product we don't care about. Step one, what do we love? What do we care about? And what would we do and love doing even if we were failing? And that was the question that we asked ourselves. Okay. The thing that we would do for three very different reasons is to make this food that people choose based on taste, and it happens to be good for them. And I've already Explained my reasons. And so then, as you know, we're starting to do the company honestly, you're looking at what's working and what's not working, and you're relentlessly self assessing. So it was just clear to me that people didn't think the way that we thought. So the three of my partners and I, Ron and Mike and myself, we think a very certain way, right? What we call the Quest Way. And because they had developed that over the school of hard knocks and starting businesses and failing, they were able to bring me along much later in the process. But because I knew nothing about what they had learned up to that point, and they weren't teaching me, they just drug me into deep waters. I had to learn. And because the way my mind works, I was processing that into basically a list of, okay, here are the lessons I've learned. I was codifying it, right? Turning it into a map for success that I could hand other people. And that ultimately became the 25 bullet points that are the Quest belief system. So as we're going, and I realize in my head I've got these. What I didn't know at the time was 25 bullet points. But anyway, I've got this way of thinking, and I'm encountering these employees that don't think like that. And so accepting that there's a. That was really when I started to realize there's a gap between who people are and what they tell you they want to accomplish. Because in the beginning, I hired everyone. Everyone, right? Not because I'm super smart and thought, hey, I should. There was no one else, right? Like we had the smallest handful of people ever. And so I started doing the interviewing. As I was doing it, I start realizing, God, these guys tell me they want to do something amazing with their lives, and if you just listen like, wow, yeah, like, I want to be on your team, dude. You're gonna do amazing stuff. And then you realize they can't execute on that dream. So why can't they? They don't have the mindset yet. Like, there's a. You could do an entire podcast series on how to get the mindset, but I'll just use Carol Dweck and her amazing book mindset, I'm sure. Such a good book. I see Simon Sinek up there, who is also very influential in us, and she says some people either believe they're as smart as they're ever going to be and that's that. So they're going to be ego protective and they're going to, you know, Try to thwart anything that makes them feel like they're not the smartest person or whatever. And then there's people with a growth mindset, and they realize, I'm not the smartest person, and I'm certainly not as smart as I could be. So even if I am the smartest person ever lived, I could get a little bit smarter. And so when they're confronted with contradictory information, they learn and they soak it up like a spot. Whereas other people are. Fixed mindset, right? Correct. Fixed on like, no, this is the way, and I'm right, and that's wrong. Yes. And I would say the world. Everyone's on a spectrum. Right. Even I, as much as I believe in it and work my ass off to be a growth mindset, I still have, let's call it 10%, where I catch myself. I'm like, come on, dude, you know better than that. Yeah, but so people that fall in, let's say, sub 50% spectrum of the growth mindset, it's got to be 98. So what's the question you ask people now when you hire them to know if they have a growth mindset or a fixed mindset? You ready? Ready. It's a weird thing. People. Actually, I don't let them do it anymore, but people actually used to ask if they could come in and sit in on the interviews because they were so weird. Not intentionally. So it was just to really get to a human being and who they are, it requires some weird stuff. So it goes like this. You walk in the door, There's a couple bad things happening. One, your anxiety levels are through the roof because you're in this weird setting. You're on my turf. You're sitting across from me. They built me up. Oh, it's the president of the company. So people come in, and if you like Billion Dollar brand. Yeah. Put. Put their fingers. Put your fingers on their aorta, their arteries, and you're gonna. You know, the heart's gonna be just racing out of control. So that's problem number one. The blood is literally leaving the prefrontal cortex, and they're just in a bad state. They probably want to say anything to get the job. And that takes us to the tyranny of being chosen. Well said, my friend. So people come in, they want to be picked, right? Being picked is accepted, acknowledged, chosen. Yes. Hell, yeah. We all want that. I teach people about the tyranny of being chosen, and I still have to check myself because it's just rad to be picked. Like, there's no two ways about it. So they walk in, they're nervous as hell. They've got the tyranny of being chosen. They want to win the job. They're not trying to assess the opportunity. They're not asking, is this job right for me? They're merely trying to be selected. So step one is, hey, welcome. I understand this is a very weird situation, so I want to bring your anxiety levels down as much as possible. You should be interviewing me. You should be kicking my tires and figuring out if I'm right for you. You're offering to give me 50% of your waking hours. You better love this job. Like, for some reason, this job better be moving you towards what you want for selfish reasons. So literally, I open the interview by saying that and then saying, I'm here to answer one question and one question question only. When you're at your most selfish, are you good for me. And when I'm at my most selfish, am I good for you? And when you see an alignment of selfish desires, it really is beautiful. And I'll give you an example. My chief marketing officer, Nick Robinson, really, really sharp kid. He wants to build a media empire. He's not so worried about obesity. He struggled himself a little bit. So I think it resonated with him. But that wasn't a stated thing for him. He's got much bigger goals that he needs to build a media empire to do it. Now, I need a media empire in order to get this brand to mean something to people so it can bring kind of value to their lives that I wanted to bring. So here I need somebody that has. When they're at their most selfish, they are learning about building a media empire. And he's thinking, I need somebody to fund this whole thing while I learn how to build a media empire and try that, because I can't pay it all myself. Exactly. So that's. That's the alignment of selfish desires. So I'm trying to put people in that position where they're just trying to figure out if this is right for them, which hopefully lowers their anxiety levels and they're no longer worried about being picked up. And then the sort of Trojan horses, I'm trying to get them outside of the interview answers because I'm not going to see the real them. I'm going to see the representative that they send. And when you were on Inside Quest, there was a moment on the show, and that's why I stopped. And I was like, the way this dude is looking at me, like, I wish everybody could see because you weren't there to give me pat answers. You were actually engaged. I mean, I was almost crying at a couple points. Points. I was like, I wanted to be as real as possible and be engaged as possible. And I think you got to allow yourself to go anywhere and everywhere to get that truth. For sure. Yeah. And when you. And it was like a beautiful moment. Right. It was really. It was so cool to share that and to have been able to create an environment like that where you could be so raw, so real. We had an audience. I mean, it was just like. So it created this whole vibe in the room. It's like one of those late night where it's dark and everybody can like let their guard down. If you can get that to happen in an interview, as uneasy as that is, then you get to the real person. So the technique I use for that is a confession. So I tell them, look, I'm gonna try and get you to lower your guard and reveal yourself as quickly to me as possible so that I can judge you. And I'm gonna reciprocate and I'm gonna lower my guard and reveal myself as quickly to you as possible so that you can figure out whether this is what you want. Yeah, exactly. If it's what you want and the confession is really simple and what I'm about to say is actually true. I want to be a Jedi first of all. I think in movies almost at all times. So the Matrix is the perfect example of my life and comics. Yes, 100%. So I have no interest in wielding a lightsaber. That's not interesting to me. But the ability to influence. These are not the droids you're looking for. That is so meaningful to me. One, because it allows you to control your own mind. Right. There's no more powerful mind control than control over one's own mind. And then being. Because I believe that I use it not only for the good of that person. Right. You should be a quest for the exact number of days that it's the most selfish thing you can do. So I'm already thinking of you. And then we've got. You don't want them to stay forever if it's not selfish for them anymore. No way you want them to get out as quickly as possible. 100% Interesting, dude. Nothing terrifies me because I lost eight and a half years of my life place in being safe because it was comfortable. Good money, good, you know? Exactly. And it really felt like I lost them. And I was like, time is the most precious commodity you have. And I mean, look, I reframed it. So it doesn't do me any good to sit there and say, I lost eight and a half years of my life. I learned a lot, but it was like it. It was unnecessary the way that I went about. Like, I learned every lesson the hardest way possible with the most pain and suffering possible. So I'm emotionally just keenly aware of what it means to service someone else's dream rather than your own. And I think so. Elon Musk inspires the life out of me. Like that guy just dreaming the way that he dreams is so incredible to me. I want to find the next Elon Musk, light them on fire, and get them to believe that they can do that and they can execute on that level. And so the sort of background thing that's. Even if they leave you 100%, so help you get to the next level while cultivating that within them. And then when they're ready to leave and it no longer serves them or you, then you want them to go out and be happy for sure. And we've had. I've taught two people to be direct competitors, and they've gone on to launch nutrition companies, their own bars or. Yep, 100%. And to me, that's the. If you take it out to the natural conclusion. So we make a promise to our employees, and I'm going to try to set you free. That I think of it in matrix terms. Right. So I'm going to try and free you from the Matrix. As someone helped free me from the Matrix, I feel obligated to pay that back. And getting free of the Matrix is shorthand for learning to think like an entrepreneur. Right. You hit an obstacle, you don't stop, you find a way around it. You have a growth mindset instead of a fixed mindset. I want to do that for people and I want Quest to be that environment. Whether you meet me, spend time with me should be irrelevant. Just the quest environment is going to provide that to you. So to that end, we tell people, I will teach you anything you want to know. I will give you the list of books in order that I think you should read. To be able to take my job from me, I will, at every corner encourage or every turn encourage. If you have an entrepreneurial spark and you want to chase it, I will encourage that. I will never ask you to hide your passions from me. The only catch is your tuition. You have to be killer at your job. Yeah, Right. If you're killing it at your job, whatever you want, Right. Then your Reward is Quest University. And our goal is to teach you all those things. And some of it's formalized, teaching people basic finance and things like that. The whole show inside Quest was meant to be us paying that forward and teaching people that mindset, bringing on people like yourself to come on and just show people how far you can take that mindset. You know, how you can go from injury to just massive accomplishment in a ridiculously short period of time. People are super inspired by that. So that kind of thing is our promise. But if you follow that out to its natural conclusion, ultimately someone comes and says, yeah, you'll teach me anything. You'll encourage me entrepreneurial, teach me how to build a nutrition company, and we'll do it. And the reason we do it isn't because I'm eager to build my next competitor. It's really because it's a value system that I believe in, and so I don't want to artificially limit it. Also, to be honest, I believe that the. The juice is always in the execution, and if they can out execute me, that's bad on me. Right. Or it's something you can learn about what they have and for sure. Interesting. Now, I saw. This is all great stuff. And I saw a somewhere online that when you launched Quest, there were 1600 other protein bar companies that launched in 2010. Flavors or companies. Yeah, Flavors are companies. Yep. What gave you the audacious mindset to think that you could compete against all Those, plus the 10, 20 years of other nutrition companies out there and beat them? Yeah. It's. Without having any experience in this. Yeah. I'm gonna give you a phrase that I play in my own head that I know when I say out loud, 50% of people love it and 50% of people hate me for it, but it's true. So, hey, here we go. I have the arrogance of belief. I believe in myself now. I believe in one thing about me. I am not the smartest guy. I got a 990 on my SATs. I took it twice. That's my combined score. Better than me. That's bad for both of us. I always joke with people. A monkey smearing feces on the test could score higher than I did. Literally terrible. But I always believed that I could do whatever I set my mind to. Right. So that's the only. The only credit I will give myself is when other people break and give up and stop. I just don't. Right. And it comes down to the story you tell yourself about yourself, and that's the story I tell Myself, I was just this last weekend, I was at an entrepreneurial organization and they brought a world class mountain biker in and said, hey, anybody that wants to go for a ride with her, go. And I thought, okay, you know, I'll go. And because she's saying we can do a beginner course or whatever, I thought, that's perfect. Jump on the bike and go. I've never been on a mountain bike before, ever in my life. I haven't been on a bike of any kind probably in 15 years. That was probably stupid. And we're in. Oh, God. Sun Valley, Idaho. So it's not exactly flatland. And we go mountain biking and I'm dying. I'm like, I'm just done. It's at like 6,000ft, first of all. So I cannot catch my breath. And I keep stopping and everyone's like, oh, you know, it's okay, man. Like, go ahead and turn back. It's all good, it's all good. And I'm like, I don't think you know the story I tell myself. Like, there's no universe. Universe in which I stop. So I keep going. Finally, they've done the loop, right? Some people have turned back, whatever. They've done the loop and now they're coming back and they're passing me, I'm still headed out. And they're like, you need to turn around. And I'm like, I'm so sorry, but I'm not going to turn around. And they said, okay, but then we're no longer responsible for you. And I was like, okay. I'm like, it is what it is, man. I appreciate that. No worries. I'm a big boy. Like, go. And I just kept going. And I must have come in an hour and 20 minutes or something after everybody else, but I finished. And that meant so much to me. I was like, I'm gonna ignore the fact I got my ass handed to me and I came in dead last. Yeah, yeah. But I'm gonna be proud that I didn't quit. Interesting. Did you say arrogance of belief? Is that what you said, the arrogance of belief? You know, it's interesting. When I study champion athletes, there's one thing that they have over everyone else, one of two things, and it's a belief in themselves or the beliefs in something higher, giving them, them that strength, courage, athleticism. Whenever I listen to champions on interviews, after the super bowl, whatever it may be, the first thing they say is, you know, how do you feel that the broadcaster is going to say, you know, I want to say, you Know, thanks to God, who gives me all the glory, who gives me all my strength, my courage, everything. I believe 100% in him and his power and in that power or the other athletes, like, I believe in myself so much. I'm the best, I'm the greatest. I believe I will do whatever it takes. I believe that I can go through any adversity me. It's that belief, that arrogance of belief either way that I believe makes people great or not great. Yeah. And even if you're, you know, the other person may have a lot of belief as well, and sometimes it just doesn't fall your way. You know, Tom Brady has been. And who's lost a number of Super Bowls, also won a number of them. But it's getting to that opportunity. I think you got to have that belief either way. So no, it's point right there. What makes you guys different than more or less? There's really two things. One, the product is just different. So we were the first ones. In fact, I never really answered your question. So there's 1600 bars products into a declining market. Everyone told us we were crazy, but there was nothing in the market that we would eat. So we knew there was at least a market of 3. Too much stuff in it, too much chemicals. And we just thought, look, man, if we can deliver this product that's real, people will respond. And wanting to build a company of value so that people could love it in two ways. So one was just we created a better product. And then two, we said right from the beginning, there's two things that we export our product and our philosophy. And that made us weird right out of the gate. And we said, look, but different is good. Yeah, right. And this was really different in a positive way because we wanted to own up this. There's two things going on with the company. There's the ability to make this superior product and get it out into the market and all that. And then there's the mentality that we have that has allowed us to do this and we want to share that mentality with other people. And we have a similar global desire by exporting that mentality, which is, we shorthand it to Elon Musk, but I mean, the next Bill Gates, people doing big things, world changing things, right? We want to find those people. We want to give them the arrogance of belief in themselves or a less controversial way of saying we want to give people the confidence of belief so that they can be confident that they can believe in themselves enough to take a risk and quite frankly survive. Failing. And a lot of people, I think, get eaten up by failure, which is not useful. So helping people develop a mentality that inoculates them from the pain of failing, from the pain of not being chosen, all those things that really knock people back, we want to support that philosophy. And that certainly plays well for the brand because the brand was always meant to be empowering. Right. We had to make a decision early on. Is a Quest bar what you give to somebody who has six pack abs and you say, well done, son. You get to eat one of these. So is it a trophy or is it a catalyst for change? Hey, I see somebody, this guy, this gal, they're struggling and I want to give them an inclusive community. I want to give them a product that feels good, that they can celebrate with, that they can reconnect to joy. And that's what we want to be. We don't want to be a trophy. I want to be a catalyst for change. So when you're already just in the mindset, we want to be a catalyst for change and you're trying to put that out into the world in ways that, by the way, do not serve you from a financial standpoint in any way, shape or form. It actually allows you to create an authentic connection with the consumer and being real and really connecting with them that does serve you from integrity of the brand. Sure. Yeah. You said eight and a half years of your life you feel like was taken from you. I sold it cheaply. Wasn't. I won't allow myself to say it was taken from me. You sold it cheaply. I sold it cheaply. I'm curious, what were the biggest lessons you learned about yourself in those eight and a half years that you apply now to your business? And also, do you feel like you would have such a big company and mission and purpose with Quest without those eight and a half years? I definitely wouldn't. And is it the. Yeah. Is it the classic case of I wouldn't change anything because it brought me to where I am sure. That's not an interesting mindset to me. Right. Because I don't want to sit here and fumble for the next eight and a half years. I want now I want to be deadly efficient. Yeah. So that is the. It's a better framing device for me to say that that was time sold cheaply to remind me not to make the same mistakes again. But. But I have reframed it in my mind as well and I understand. I learned very powerful lessons. So what lessons did I learn? I learned that you really have to set your mind to acquiring a certain set of skills with all the efficiency in the world that you can acquire those skills. First of all, that anything is possible as long as you set your mind to it. And that the most. And this is probably the most important lesson that I learned, that what is working against you is your own mind. Now, if you stop there, you're in trouble because it's not specific. So we all have insecurities that get triggered, and then we start acting foolishly as a result of that trigger. Now, the one. So we all have a superpower. I'm sure you've heard that before. We all have a superpower. Mine is the ability to understand my own emotions and drivers, even when they're petty and ugly. And I just admit to them, and I'm talking within seconds. Seconds. Like, if I have just a horrible, petty thought feeling driver, I'm like, okay, I'm doing this for a really stupid reason. And because I'm aware of it, I can't always stop it. So this is not like, yay, me. I can't always stop it. But because I at least recognize it, I can then train it out of myself over time. Because it's like, okay, when you do that, it's because this person triggered that insecurity, and you're dealing with it this way. And that also lets me then teach other people. So if you walked into a meeting at Quest, it would be really weird because we're talking vulnerable. Like, we're being totally vulnerable with each other. We're being really honest about what insecurities are being triggered. And if somebody makes a weird face when somebody else says something, I'll just be like, you made a weird face. Let's talk about the weird face. Because I know that weird face is because some insecurity is being triggered. Right? And what happens when people's insecurity is triggered? They'll fight for a dumb idea just because it's theirs. Right? And they don't want to feel stupid, so they want to win the argument. And the thing that I think I learned over the eight and a half years that a lot of people don't really understand. And if I could give this gift to people, it'd be very powerful for them that everyone is going to build a massive ego. Everyone. Everyone in this room right now, the three of us, we all have big egos. I promise you. It's only a question of what did you build your ego around? Did you build it around something that's positive and empowering, or did you build it around being perfect, something that's very fragile, something that you could never uphold. So you're going to end up fighting to prot your ego to what may be essentially a really bad idea, but because it was your idea and it made you feel good, you're going to fight for it. So I realized very early on, because I'm not as bright as my partners, and intelligence is not a predictor of success. That's not a big thing for me. But I'm really not just on a raw IQ level. I'm not as bright as my partners, so they can process data much more quickly than I can. And in the beginning, it made me feel very inferior. And so that triggered an insecurity. And so I would fight for dumb ideas because they were mine. And sometimes I could actually convince them. And it was one day realizing I actually won that argument. And now I'm terrified because I've convinced them the right thing or not. Only what if I know it's not. I know it's the worst idea, but I've just out argued them, right? Like I've fatigued them. They no longer wanted to fight over it. So. And I thought, wow, that's really dumb. Because if I'm goal oriented, if my goal really is xyz, right, I want to end metabolic disease, then, you know, you're either moving towards that goal or you're not. And so having that realization made me go, I need to build my self esteem around something that is at all times empowering. So rather than building my self esteem around being right, which is what I've been doing up to that moment, and being right still feels good, right? Everybody loves it. But there's a more powerful one, which is to identify the right answer faster than anyone else. Which means you may have the right answer. And then I'll be like, lewis has the right answer. That idea is so badass. And then I'm gonna get so hardcore behind your idea and be the driving energy behind it that people will. Yeah. And the whole time I'm gonna be screaming, this is Louis's idea. Louis is a genius. This man did it. But everyone is getting behind me because I'm running harder and faster than anyone else. And because I'm bringing so much energy to the right answer, it makes me feel good. Like I feel rad. I feel as rad as I would have if it actually had been my own idea. Let's talk about self awareness, because it sounds like you have a lot of self awareness. How important is it for everyone to have self awareness. And how do you cultivate that understanding, that skill set? It absolutely is critical. I think it's probably the most important skill that you can develop. And here's how I train people to do it. At Quest, I'll give you one specific application. There's many obviously, so this will be very, very specific. In interviewing, the first thing you need to do, you need to keep a seven second journal. In the first seven seconds of meeting somebody, you have a feeling. And that feeling usually emanates from your gut, right? You're either drawn to that person, you want to hang out, they make you feel uneasy, whatever. You probably don't understand why you like them. You may not understand why you don't like them, but you have a reaction and it comes way too quickly for them to talk you out of it. So just take note. Then what I do is once I recognize, oh, I have a positive or ooh, I have a negative feeling for this person, person, I then open my mind up. If I love them, I open my mind up to they may be terrible here, or if I really don't like them, I open my mind up to they may be the best thing ever. And so I go through the rest of the interview simply remembering what the first seven seconds told me. Then I get to spend, let's say 15 minutes, 30 minutes, sometimes up to an hour with that person just trying to find out who they are, revealing myself, getting them to reveal themselves. And through that I will form a new opinion. And it may be the same as my first seven seconds, it may be wildly different. And then if I hire them, I get to test was I right and which one was right. If I initially reacted poorly but then ended up hiring them, was I right the first time or the second time? So you just over the repetition of going through the I have an emotion that I don't understand, but I'm going to make mental note of it and I actually tell people to write it down. Going through that process and then later identifying it, that becomes really, really useful because you can start to test the hypothesis. I feel this way, and I think it's because of this. And then you see over time if it was or not. How many people do you stick around more than six months once you hire them, do I hang around? How many people stay at the company for more than six months is like a quick decision. If you know in the first 30 days is like a marker where they either make it or they don't. And you're like, okay, it's probably not the best, best fit. How do you judge that? You know, that's actually something that I struggle with because I would say we have a relatively high turnover rate. And the reason is we're a really, really particular flavor. And for people that have a growth mindset, you will not find a better place to work. But if you have a fixed mindset, we sound like lunatics, right? Like, imagine you walk in with a fixed mindset. You actually believe you're as smart as you're ever going to be, and that's that some people are born with more than others, and that's just the way it is. You think of yourself as very bright, very intelligent person, thank God. Right. And to you, it's like height. You either have it or you don't. Yeah. And you walk into a meeting and somebody makes a funny face, and I can tell they're shaking their head because there's some historical disagreement between these two. And I say, literally just today, by the way, this is a real example. I'm like, you're shaking your head because you believe you've told somebody something and they haven't listened. Right. To somebody with a fixed mindset, that, that's like, this isn't a therapy session, dude. Like, what are you doing? But to me, knowing how people entrench themselves into bad behaviors that they can free themselves from. And that's all judged by efficiency, by the way. So it's not like Frou Frou Tom thinks this. It's, we have a goal, and I judge every behavior, every smile, frown, whatever against. Does it move us towards where we're going or away from where we're going? So, yeah, for the people that stay, they stay for a very long time. For the people that leave, they leave fast. I believe that we can't achieve our goals without a great team. And it sounds like you're building a great team. But with everyone turning over quickly, how does that dynamic fit in with creating connection with people if their office mate right next to them is gone within a month and they're being vulnerable and opening up and sharing and connecting and being honest and sticking to these 25 bullet points, these values? How does someone fully open up and express themselves and trust that they can if they're gonna leave and go do something else and be gone? Yeah. So the way that, that we have it, I would say probably about it's gonna be north of 90% of the people that, that once they're in, they're in. So there's this ever building snowball of people that have been working together now for years. So there's like a cultural lexicon. So the way that we refer to it is the island has voted you off. So it, it, it really becomes that collective of people who make up the core of the company are like this guy just, he's not having fun. We call him clock punchers. He's a clock puncher. He's a nine to fiver. Right. He's not, he hasn't bought into the brand. Yeah, not even, not even that. Because we don't think like that. Like, I don't want people. The dream to end metabolic disease is my dream. If you happen to share that dream, wow, that's fantastic. But if we're not serving something that's intimately personal for you, you shouldn't be here. Right. And when someone is serving themselves, everything about them is different. They've got more ideas, more energy, they put more time into it with a bigger smile. They're just more energetic. So when people walk into Quest, the first thing they say, almost without exception, is, whoa, there's a real energy here. Because that's people, that's whatever 1300 people that are there for their own selfish reasons. Right, right. So while, while I say we have a high turnover, it's high by my standards because I want everybody to have a growth mindset and to really fall in love. But yeah, I mean, how we compare to other companies, I don't know. Sure. What do you think is the number one skill or asset that some, that everyone should have that will always further them in life if they could, if you could say there's one asset and skill that you need to have in your life for business relationships, whatever it may be. Being a good writer, good communicator in the written word. Yep. And I don't think it's hard to improve that. I think that a regular practice of writing, it could be journaling in the morning for five to ten minutes with something like morning pages. People can Google that. You can actually Google what my journal looks like. So what my journal looks like, literally. And then my name and, and some examples will pop up. But having a regular writing practice, and it could be just an assignment that you give yourself once a week and you're gonna write three to five pages and then you're going to pay someone to edit it or to review it. And that could be a teacher at a local college who does say creative writing classes. Or it could be a friend who's a lawyer or a lawyer. Lawyers are very good at not, not all of them. But they're very good at spotting sloppy language language or sloppy thinking, words that are unnecessary, words that are easily confused. And just that practice of tightening up your writing will tighten up your thinking. And so if you want to improve your thinking, the most concrete, tangible way to do that, that is easy to manage is having a regular writing practice of some type. And the goal isn't to become a better writer. The goal is to become a clearer thinker. And no matter what you are doing in life, you are going to have to, especially in a digital world where email is going to remain king for the foreseeable future. And if not email, it's going to be text. There will be a text component because people can answer it asynchronously. Then you need to be a compelling communicator. And there's a book called On Writing well that I think is a very good investment for people. There is a book called Bird by Bird which is hilarious and very, very good for dealing with some of the neuroses that writers have, particularly if you're interested in fiction, which is an area I want to get into. And then I would suggest very closely related to that is getting good at negotiating. So communicating, negotiating. There are two reasons. And then verbal communicating, written and verbal. There's a program called Secrets of Power Negotiating by, I think it's Roger Dawson. And the audio version is exceptional to listen to because you, you are able to pick up the nuance of the intonation and the delivery and then you role play that. And I mean really, you blanking my quotes here. Archilochus, I think was a. Must have been a Greek of some type. General, perhaps? Let's just say it's a general. But his quote, and I'm paraphrasing this, was something along the lines of we do not rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training. And you have to practice. You can't expect to read a book on negotiating. Walk into a huge negotiation that you're nervous about and knock it out of the park. You have to role play it. You have to practice. So I think with the one asset would be honing your clarity of thought by some type of regular writing practice. Sure, I like that. As you know, two guys sitting here, former bullied elementary school kids here, what do you think are some good ways to increase confidence for anyone or what are some ways that you did to increase confidence along the way? And what are some things other people can do? Increase confidence for people in general or for kids or in general? Let's say adults, people listening 18 and 19. I really think that, I think that positive thinking is overrated. So what I mean by that is, or let me rephrase that a different way. I think positive thinking is necessary but not sufficient. So what I've noticed, and this is very common, for instance, in the meditation world. You'll see people, I mean I've met some tremendous meditations teachers and some of them defy this, this, this description. But they're, they're outside of the action. Right. So they're at a monastery. They're somewhere very. With minimal inputs. And they're the, the picture of patience and calm and so on. But I've seen some of those traffic all day long. Exactly. When you throw them into the front, you know, onto the front lines and people are telling them to fuck off and they're honking behind them, they lose their shit. And I think that you need to make yourself uncomfortable. So if you have a. And that's why in the four hour work week, these comfort challenges are so important. I mean, and they seem silly, but there's a point, there's a very, there's a very transcendent or important benefit that you get from say going into a Starbucks and laying down on the floor for 20 seconds and not saying anything to someone and then just getting back up. And that's a comfort challenge. Most people do not want to do it. And they'll do that and they'll get up and be like, wow, I was so nervous about that. And nothing bad happened. Nothing happened. Exactly. And when you expand your sphere of comfortable action by doing things that make you marginally uncomfortable, you get better at asking yourself and answering the question, what's the worst that could happen? Yeah. And you realize not much like really, I've done all these other things I thought were going to be these horrible experiences and I was totally fine. Sure. Great. So let me try A, B or C that I was, that I am worried about. Right. Or was previously worried about. So I think that you, you have to inoculate yourself against fear by exposing yourself to fear. It's the only way. It's the only way you can do it. Yeah. When I was, I think I was 15 or 16 in the summer going to like junior year of high school. I was really, I was starting to like get into my body and I was terrified of women still. Like, I could talk to them, but I couldn't go up to strangers. Right. I'm still terrified of women. And I remember being like, I'm sick and tired of not being able to talk to girls, because this is pissing me off when all these other guys are, like, able to talk and just go up and have fun. I couldn't do it. So I gave myself this challenge. And I wish I would have read the book. The book would have come out, you know, 15 years ago. I could have done it. But I gave myself the challenge of every time I see a girl that makes my heart flutter or that I'm, like, nervous by, I have to go up to her and ask her for a number and start a conversation with the intent of asking her for a number. Yeah. And I'll tell you what, man, at the end of the summer, I was really good. It was so terrifying the first week because I was like, what's. You know, what's gonna happen? They're gonna reject me, they're gonna laugh at me, they're gonna talk about me. But it wasn't that bad. Even when I did fail, I was like, oh, well, onto the next girl. Right? Exactly. And I really believe in that. It's a practice. It's a practice. You can't. I don't think you can. Your subconscious is really, really on point and honest in a lot of ways. And you can't fool yourself into being confident just by repeatedly telling yourself to be confident. You've got this. You have to go. You have to incrementally do things that make you routinely uncomfortable. Yeah. So it's like one that actually in the TV show, in the Tim Ferriss experiment. So one of the episodes is on building a business, and we. So Noah Kagan and I. Appsumo. Appsumo. Love Noah. Yeah. Tutored this woman. I'm not gonna spoil all the details, but he was building a business, and one of the things he had her do, like, right on the spot, she had no prompting for it. He was like, all right, go inside and get a coffee and ask for 20% off. Off. And see if you can get 20% off your coffee. Download the episode to see what happens. Yeah, exactly. There's a lot more. Yeah. You want to talk about comfort challenges. There's a lot in that episode, but just the act of doing these little things that make you uncomfortable. Hugely, hugely valuable. I like that. Very cool. I want to get to a few last questions. One that you ask, I think. I think sometimes I've heard you ask this at the end of your episodes is. I think you say the question like, I'm going to ask you something, and then you just give me the first response. And one of them is punching someone in the face. I think that's a question you asked, right? Yeah. Whose face comes to mind when you think of the word punchable? So who is that for you right now? Oh, man. You know, and I realize why this is a tough one to answer because people don't. You don't. There's another expression. Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate. And let me think about that. I'll give you a real answer. So I'll give a general answer, but it's true. And this, this is. I've really. I feel like I've aged 10 years just fighting this battle internally. Pretty much every kind of mid level big company bureaucrat who's tried to veto creative decision makes me so furious. It's hard to even verbalize how angry that makes me. Wow. Because they've never had their own skin in the game. They've never had. They've never had to stand on stage and risk getting booed. They've never had to put out something and risk not even getting booed, but just getting crickets. They've never had to like stare down the barrel of the gun and potentially bite that bullet. They've never had to do it. And so for them to veto or interfere with any creative decision, my part just makes me fume. And I'm not saying it's helpful for me to fume, but that's my response. So definitely makes me want to punch and kick and elbow and knee and stomp and the whole nine yards so far. Haven't acted it out. Another question. If you were given, let's say $50 billion right now handed to you, and someone said the only thing you can do is use this to help the world, what would you do to help the world with that money? You couldn't use it for yourself, but you had to use it for 50 billion. First thing that comes to mind is focusing on the global literacy xprize or something very closely aligned with that. So determining how to create a software program that is open source, that can be put onto smartphones, any type of, say, Android device and beyond, that allows children in any country in the world to develop basic literacy and numeracy skills without a teacher. So software that they can pick up, figure out, that will take them through the teaching of these things in some type of compelling way that competes well against all the other things they can access. I think that that would be the first place I would focus, but quite frankly, I would get a bunch of people in the room who are smarter than I am, who have had to make decisions like this, Maybe not with 50 billion, but with billions certainly. And I would sit down and be like, okay, what are the biggest mistakes that people make when they're put into this situation? And, but I think the building. I would basically take my goals that I have already with the books and Four Hour Chef and with the Tim Ferriss experiment, the TV show. All of these are aimed at providing people with a superior toolkit that makes them world class innovators and problem solvers. And if you can take hundreds of thousands, millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions of people who currently do not have the capability to be far reaching problem solvers because they don't have basic literacy and numeracy and you provide that to them, it also helps prevent, I think a very large percentage of them from becoming problems and they become contributors instead of just pure consumers. So that, that would be where I would focus, at least offhand. That's the first thing that comes to mind. Okay. I consider you probably one of the most elite problem solvers out there. Thank you. Yeah. And besides the not having the solution of living forever, what's the one problem you have yet to solve that eats you the most? Eats at you the most? How to do side splits like Van Damme between two chairs. That is pretty sweet. Although I don't think it could do that anymore. It's been on my to do list for 30 years, but I think I may just have to give up on that. I. There isn't really any pragmatic benefit to me doing that, but I've always fantasized about being able to do it bloodsport style. But the other problem that I haven't been able to solve, well, I'm working on it, but quite frankly, and this is not something I expect people to sympathize much with, but I'm good at saying no. I have to get a hundred times better. I mean, I say no to 99 out of 100 things that come my way, but I have to get to the point where I'm saying no to 999 out of of a thousand things. Yeah, I mean, I saw your email backlog is just. Even with all the filters, all the structures, the assistants, the gatekeepers, even with all of that, the volume is incredible. And I think that. So how do you solve that? I have to create systems and I also have to, I think ultimately upset a lot of people and I'm not used to that. I'm accustomed to being able to sort of politely decline a lot of things and some people will take it personally. But it's going to have to get to a point where nobody on my team even acknowledges receipt of 99% of what we get. And people will get very upset by that. And it's an interesting transition for me. I mean, there's a great book written by Derek Sivers. I think it's Anything youg Want. I could be blanking on title. It's very, very short. Derek Sivers is a fascinating guy who built up a company called CD Baby. Sold it for, I think it was 24, 27 million. Gave most of it to charity, as I understand. And just like a philosopher, king of the first class, a really fascinating guy. And one of his chapters, which I think started as a blog post, but he talks about, he talks about the few situations he's been in and then saying no, if it's not a hell yes. So if it's not a hell, like an enthusiastic hell yes, it's a no. I like that there's nothing in between. It's not, okay, ping me in two minutes, months. It's not maybe, why don't we talk about it next quarter? If it's not like, oh my God, I have to do this right now. It's a no. It's a no. And that's interesting that you end up having to throw out a lot of very cool opportunities if you take that lens. It's not a hell yes. Right. And particularly when, let's say I get a cool opportunity to come to me or even an email introduction from somebody I know. But it's one of 999 other such introductions, if I even reply, oh my gosh, it'll turn into another two or three emails. Yeah. Very oftentimes because people have been taught to be persistent. And I will tell you, with busy people, being overly persistent is not a good thing. You have to hear the message. Yes. And retail, location, location, location. With reaching out to busy people, it's timing, timing, timing. Like, wait until the timing is right. And how is the timing right? For instance, like if I want to reach out to a list celebrity to be on my podcast, I am going to try to figure out through back channels or their managers or whatever when they are going to be doing press junkets to promote something they're doing. Because that is when they'll be scheduling all of this stuff. And I will not waste my breath and infuriate the team by trying to be insistent outside of those pockets of time. Sure. Because they are just as busy, if not more busy than I am. Yeah. So that was a long, long answer. But this saying no, I have to get much better at. And I think I'm going to have to publish pretty soon a couple of sort of public declarations of manifesto email, bankruptcy. I'm taking a startup vacation for the next six months. Like, don't send me any email intros, etc. And if you emailed me in the last six months, I'm not getting back to you. Sorry, I can't get back to you. Yeah, amazing. And it's gonna piss off a lot of people. But I think at the end of the day, there is a point where you have to choose between your own sanity and pleasing everyone else. And pleasing everyone else. And even if you try to please everyone else, you can't. So it's really no choice at all. Please yourself. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Or just save yourself as a starting point. Yeah, I think. But was it Warren Buffett who said the difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no? Almost 100%. Yeah, he said that. And then also, I think it was Steve Jobs who said, oh, God, and I'm misquoting. But it's something along the lines of, you know, to do anything great, you have to say no to a thousand things and say no. Say yes to one thing. Yeah, exactly. So that's something that I think I'm very good at. I'm better than. I think the vast majority of people I've bumped into generally, and that's by training, not by any innate ability. It's just through training. But I have to get better. Yeah. Okay. All right, a couple quick questions left. One is if all of your books and all of your writings were deleted, everything you've ever put out there on a blog post, it's the last day of your life 150 years from now, because you've extended it, everything's deleted. And you had three truths about life to write down and pass on to your family into the world. What were those three? Jesus, man. All the information you've learned, all the stuff you've written, you know, the millions of books you've sold. What are the three things that you would say are true about life as you know it? Yeah. That is a very large question. I said it was a quick answer. Yeah, long pause followed by short answer. It doesn't have to be perfect, but what comes up? I'll give you two. So the first two that come to mind are you're the average of the five people you associate with, most like that, you know, financially Physically, emotionally. And if someone tells you you have to do something or should do something, ask them, ask them for the evidence. Ask them what evidence suggests that. And the underlying theme being test assumptions. You have to test assumptions. I have to do this or this. Really like what evidence do you have that suggests that. That I'm limited to those two options. And if they can't answer you? They don't. Then you shouldn't take that advice. There's a lot of speculation and just. Just making up of the rules as we go along. And I think that people, people get trapped in prisons of their own making because they accept limitations that other people place on them or that they place on themselves just as often. So if you or someone else says you have to do X or you should do Y, ask what evidence is there to support this? Okay, those are great. Do you have one more that came off the top of your mind? One more truth treat. Health is number one because without it, everything else will fall apart. And with it that everything else becomes easier. I like that. Very cool. Three books you would leave behind. If you could only leave three besides your own. What would the three books that you would recommend if you couldn't even have three truths and no writings, but you're just like here, family and friends. Three books is all you get. What would that message be? It's toughie. The first three that come to mind. I'm a book lover. There are many, many books that I love. But the first would be letters from a Stoic by Seneca. The second would be Zorba and the Greek or I'm sorry, Zorba the Greek. Excuse me. Zorba the Greek, which is a novel with a lot of similar messages. I feel a close cousin to that would be vagabonding. But so I'll give one what you gave to me. I have over here somewhere up on the shelf. Vagabonding. That's a great book. So, so Letters from Stoic by Lucius seneca, which is 2,000 plus years old. Then Zorba the Greek and then last, just one for I suppose, business career purposes. The 22 immutable laws of marketing. That's a good one. Yeah. Very cool. I think those will take people pretty far. Very cool. I like it. Well, okay, let's wrap it up again. Make sure to go to your site but also to itunes and get the show coming out. Definitely, definitely. So the Tim Ferriss experiment, you can search for it on itunes or it should be available if you go to itunes.com Tim Ferriss. Also very cool. When in doubt, you can just search the Tim Ferriss experiment. It should pop up somewhere. And it's on your blog as well. Yeah. And what is a question you want to ask for the listeners that they will answer on the comments of just about any question you may have? Yeah, for sure. Well, sort of in the. In the spirit of the show, trying to show people that they can do a lot more and much in very short periods of time than they ever thought possible. You know, if you could become world class at any skill in the next six months, what would that skill be? And particularly if it's something that you dreamed of and dreamed of and put up on a shelf and gave up on, what is one skill you'd like to become world class at in the next six months? Which means top 5% in the general population in the world. So if it's tennis, you don't have to win the. You don't have to win Wimbledon. Right. It's not don't measure yourself against professionals, but the top 5% in the general population. What is one skill in the next six months? Because I think that's plenty of time. How do you get connected to the heart after that in an industry that is all about ego? Well, I think sometimes, at least for me, and you've probably noticed this more than me, because you've been at this game where you're interviewing these movers and shakers, majority of people, they have that story of just depression, that story of like, it all went to for me and where, you know, you stop believing in yourself and you suck and you're just not good, where it can bring you to your knees, you know. Yeah. And that's what happened to me. I was brought to my knees where I was on the bottom, figuratively, literally, where. I mean, there's clips of me dropping another ball and just hitting the earth, the grass, out of frustration. And I would go home that night and I would be crying in my room, drinking a bunch of alcohol and crying and just spiraling out of control. And a lot of people, maybe they don't. They go through it differently, but I think that's. That's part of the process. I mean, that's part of you coming face to face with who you really are and what is it? What are you going to do about it now? And I think from there, that's how you learn. At least that created a real hunger for me to go out and actually study the great ones, you know, study the people that have had great success, because it leaves clues. That's True. You know, I don't know who quoted that. That's not my original. Success leaves clues. But whoever said that it's wise because the formula for success is there. But we all have these stories that you can. I'll come in here and I can tell you my story. There's underline, like there's always stories of jealousy. There's stories of, okay, I'm not good enough. There's stories of. Of I don't have what it takes on you. And the self doubt and all that envy and all that stuff wrapped up in different stories. And that's just mine. And I was able to start reading books, reading about people's lives, biographies. Then you start reading Mind, Body and Spirit, those type of books I like to read. And then learn from that. And then you start learning how to use vision, you know, close your eyes. That's really been. That helped me a lot. Yeah. Was just getting to where every morning and every night, kind of the first thought on my brain was, okay, how am I going to get better at what I do? I maybe that's a feeling of love too. Of like, I love playing football. I don't love practicing per se, but I love catching footballs. And I fell in love with that. And I fell in love with the process of what it takes to be great. And I came up with this routine of success. I called it that. I was my routine of success. And I did the numbers, I wish I had them. I should have brought them. But just to put it in perspective, because I fell in love with the sport. Because if you're not in love with what you do, you're gonna have to use a lot of discipline. And I always say, if you love what you do, the need for discipline will disappear. Discipline is great in a lot of areas of life and you need it. But when it comes to what you are doing for a living, you're excited to go. You want to be excited. You want to be like, okay, yeah, it's a grind and I'm working my ass off. But. But where else would I rather be? And so I went from catching maybe 30 balls of practice, which as a receiver, you know this. Most guys go out there, they'll catch about 10 balls to warm up. And then throughout practice, as a starter, if you're one of the main guys who catches balls on the team, you'll catch seven balls at the most. During practice, at the most, the play doesn't fall apart, everything goes your way. We're talking seven on seven. You're not catching Anything nine on seven. Seven. Like really, you don't catch that many ball and then after practice everybody goes in. So I'm catching maybe 30 balls like the rest of the NFL does. Believe it or not, that's all they catch a day where I said, you know what? I got to come up with a different routine because Michael Jordan does this. Michael Jordan gets a thousand shots. Like I said this, those. You want to be like Jerry Rice. This is what I started studying Jerry Rice's routine. It's like, freak. I'm like, holy, these guys are putting in overtime. Yeah. And. But you have to love what you do in order to do that. Otherwise you'll quit. Quit. You'll do it. I've had guys that watch me and they're like, oh, I want to do what you do. And they quit. They'll do it for about two, three weeks. It's because they haven't fallen in love with some aspect of the game. And if you don't do that, you won't, you won't do it. So I caught 30 balls. I went from catching 30 balls a day to now catching probably 300 balls a practice. And you add that up and the difference. I did it over my career. I remember this number. It's somewhere around this number. If after that third year, so 15 years, I played 17 years after that. That going from my third year to the end of my career. If I would have kept doing the routine that I did before, I would have caught 20, 000 balls over my career. That's including practice and then games or whatever. Who knows 30 balls a day at 30 balls a day the way I did it. Now since I'm catching 300 over the four days a week or whatever it is. And don't do I have the numbers. So people out there like, all right, that math doesn't add up at. Math's not my strong success. Shoot. But I did it. It was like 245, 000 balls. So you just do the math. 20,000 to $240,000 balls caught over an a 15 year span. That's what will make you a hall of Famer, you know, but let's not just. Let's not fool ourselves. You won't do that if you're not in love with your sport and you're not doing the vision, the, the confidence, closing your eyes, putting yourself in that game, speed, that, that smell of the grass, looking up at the crowd, seeing the happiness for my coaches. Like I would do this before I even played the game. Yeah, I do this with my kids now. I have four kids and I do guided meditations. And I've seen a result, like, amazing. It changes everything when you play the game in your head before you go out there, but it has to come from your heart. And I try to open my heart when I do these visionary exercises or meditations or whatever you want to call it, it. Because that's the most powerful thing on your body. That's what your coach always says. Get your, get your, get your head out of your ass and get your head out. Like get out of your mind. You're two in your mind and play with heart. And that's what that means. And that's, that's when you can get to that point. And there's plenty of ways to do it. I have my ways. And it like, everything takes off. Yeah, everything takes off. Do you think you'd been a Hall of Famer if you just stuck to 30 balls a day? No, because. No, because people say, well, you're so talented. You're 6 5, you're £250. You've got the natural athletic ability. You don't think you would have made it? No, I. Well, judging off that year, I mean, I dropped all those balls doing it that way, right? And like I said, let's not mistake. Don't act like I wasn't that guy who was out partying and, and chasing girls and stuff like that. I mean, I did a little bit of that, but I was in control. It was, it wasn't. You were disciplined. You were showing up. It wasn't hard. It wasn't because I was, I wasn't working hard. I worked hard. As soon as practice started, you know, for that two hours, I'd go out there and bust my ass just like the rest of the guys on the team. But I didn't do anything before that and I didn't do anything after that. It was like, that was it. And then I'd go home and I'd be back in my regular, regular space where you can't do that. It doesn't, it doesn't work that way. It might get you in the league. It's not going to help you excel in your league. Whatever industry you're. Or business you're in. Whatever industry or business talent is. They say talent is overrated, and it really is. Don't get me wrong, you need some talent and pick what you're good at. But if you want to be an excellent, you want to be a mover and shaker, you Want to be somebody that, that has a legacy at what you do. If that's important to you, you, this, this is the way to do it. When, after that third year, when did you face the most self doubt? Honest, Honestly, after that it self doubt never got in again. Wow. Really? Never on the football field. Like I said I was gonna, I was gonna go out there. It was all, it was all routine now. Big games, Monday night games, playoff, nothing. Never ever, ever. In fact, the bigger the game, the more honed in I got. My better games came when the stage got brighter and bigger. In fact, you'll go from a point where now when the, when the, the games you're supposed to win the level the competition is not as high. That's, that's what you have to concentrate on. Oh yeah, because you bring your, your game down. Yeah, you want, you don't want to bring your game down. You have to excel. And I think it's all, it's all routine and, and just that. Michael Jordan, Kobe, Richard Branson, Michael Jackson, he was another. I mean I could, I could show you clips from Michael Jackson where he's like, I don't know where it comes from. He'll tell you. And that's how it is. You feel like that as an athlete. Like you're just out there in that flow. It's just flowing through you. And I remember Michael Jackson, they were interviewing some of his dancers and, and they were talking about Michael's, how he prepares for each show. And they were saying how Mike at two they would rehearse until two and three o' clock in the morning. They start around six o' clock at night and go till two, three in the morning. The same routine, the same routine over and over. And then they know they got it. And then Michael back, come on man, let's just do one more, let's just do one more. And I remember going, wow. And Michael even explained it. He's all, you just, you love it. Like this is now you are where. And, and the hard part is finding that, is finding that passion, finding that love. But I believe especially for young people, if you just, you just got to keep putting your head out there and be willing to get it chopped off because it's going to come. Yeah, I wrote a letter to my kids at the hall of Fame that, that the critics are coming, the pain is coming. There's no, you have to go through that. That's where beauty is or the fear. And I always talk about that like life takes off on the other side of fear. And you have to be able to, willing to sit there in it and ride that wave. Yeah. When you started to get it criticized a lot for maybe those first few years and I'm sure you got criticized from the next 15 years after that for certain things. How did you face the judgment, the critiques, the, you know, he's washed up or whatever. They, you know, different ages, you know, I love it. I mean, that's all fuel. When people tell you that you can't do something for me, the way you take that and say, okay, well I guess I got to show you that I can't do it. And, and, and when that self doubt comes, you, you. I got into a, a good place, a good rhythm where for football. That doesn't matter now. And I'm sure we'll get to it now. The transition after I get done playing. Yeah, that's where all that, all that self doubt comes back and that fear comes back and the anxiety, it all come, it came back to me. Did you feel that right after you retired? You feel that? Yeah, right after you retire. And I, and I had a job. I had it. I mean, I went straight into working for cbs. Yeah. Being on national television, the main desk that every job job that every player who wants to do television wants. But I had to go through the same thing again. I got beat to my knees again. Really, huh? Yeah. How so? I remember I was after my third year working for CBS and I loved it over there. Seeing a theme here. Three years. Yeah, it's funny. Three. It's funny the same thing when I was younger too. Two years of Pop Warner football and finally took off my third year in freshman year three. But I was, I was, I made the transition. I'm working for cbs. I'm on the main desk, my contract is coming up and I loved, I loved working there. It was shot out in New York. But I did not like getting on the plane, going back and forth. And even more than that, I wasn't giving them everything that I could give them. Not because I wasn't trying either either. I was trying working my ass off. What weren't you meaning? I wasn't coming from a place of, of in my heart. I wasn't like on the football field. That flow never happened for me when I was over at cbs. It was kind of a little bit forced here and there. Oh. I was in my head the whole time like, hey, well if I, if I say this joke here and I punch it with this word, then it's going to get a laugh. Or when I am talking about, you know, Rob Gronkowski running his routes, I'm going to talk about it from this angle and you can do all that, that. But if it's not here, it comes off as rehearsed. It's, it's, it's not a good performance. Yeah, you're perform, but it's just not good. And it doesn't feel good to me. That sucks. I was having anxiety before shows. Nervous. And I don't, like, I don't want to feel that way. Yeah, I mean, don't get me wrong, you're gonna have that, that excitedness. I mean, you need to have a little bit. It helps you run faster, that helps you perform better. You want, you want a little butterflies. But mine was from fear. I was, I was so scared that I was going to screw up every time and scared of showing who I really am, because what if that's not good enough? And so you work your ass off trying to, to, to do it funny or to do it with. Without stuttering or whatever it is. I mean, a lot of guys struggle. Just watch players that make that transition to tv. It is hard because you have to show who you are. You have to put everything out there just like you're on a football field. Just like I'm talking to you right now. Whatever. I don't care if you're a doctor, you're a lawyer or you're, you're a construction worker. It's, it's hard to let everybody see who you really are. It's even harder because it's your singular voice. And you on camera, maybe with one or two other guys or girls, as opposed to a whole team, you know, 20 something people on a field being criticized. You can't hide as much. Can't on camera right now you can hide at all. They're picking voice. Yeah, you can't, you don't have to speak on the field, but you just, you know, you just use your talents. And that's where a lot of people. It's like, well, on the football field I can do, I can just be physical. But here I gotta use my mind now. And I got. You want it to be entertaining and you want to say something good and something profound. But that talk right there, it's like, shut up. Just shut up and go and just, just speak, just talk. You know, this game, game. And that's what I would tell all these guys. And they gave me this guy that I had to work with. I'm not going to say his name, but it just wasn't for me because it just puts you more in your head, and maybe you have to go through that. But I remember it hit me. I was sitting. We're on vacation in Spain, just me and my wife sitting in a courtyard in a cafe, and she starts talking about the contract negotiations with cbs. And I'm almost done with my contract negotiation, and I'm going to negotiate another three years, but I kind of don't want to be there. And I never told her. I never told my management team or anybody else. And I'm sitting there and the wife's all, yeah, so you got to be pretty happy with. It was a good deal they offered me. And I'm like, yeah, yeah. And then good money, great deal. Yeah. And all of a sudden, this wave of just fear came over me. Like, my body started getting cold and I start sweating, but at the same time, I'm sweating. And I had like a. I don't know if it's a nervous breakdown, but I was like, oh, shit. And it was the feeling of fear, just like absolute fear. And the thought came into my head that, what if. What if I peaked? What if the best of me is over? And that's a scary feeling to be in. Yeah. I didn't. I did not like that. And I started. I started crying. And she's like, what's wrong with you? In the middle of this Spain? I mean. And when I'm not balling or anything like that, but I. I started tearing up, and I'm like. And she's all, I just don't know. I, I. Over the last three years, I have not felt how I felt that aliveness, that excitement. I haven't felt it, Felt it in three years. Wow. For what I do. Because. And this is. A lot of football players go through this. A lot of pro athletes, people transitioning into the next stage of life. Life. Yeah. Anybody transitioning. And. Because I've. I've talked about that. I've told that story before in front of groups and after the show. I've had men come up to me with tears in their eyes, and they're like, I felt that same way. I had a company that it was successful for 10 years, and then I made the transition out because I wanted something new. Even if you sell a company for 100 million or whatever, it's like, now what. Where do you. And how do you get back? And then you doubt yourself. You're like, I'll never. I'll never be great again. Like, I was on the football and Obviously, I had a great career. It's like a Hall of Fame career. And you're like, so now I never get to experience that again. Wow. And I'm 40 years old at this time, and I'm like, I got 40 more years to live, 50 more years to live. And I'm going to be talking about football games, talking about old, like 30 years from now. Yeah, it was glory days. It was. It was a scary feeling. And. But I'm glad that that happened. Happen, because off of that, I called up my. My manager, Constance Schwartz, and I called up my agent, my television agent, Jim Ornstein, and I said, hey, guys, I. I think I don't want to. They're like, yeah, it's a good deal. Good. We're almost been negotiating back and forth. It's over. And they're like, I think I'm. I think I'm having second thoughts. I don't want to do it. And they were both like, shut up. Yeah, right, right. And then, you know, my. My agent was like, like, this is a mistake. I mean, these jobs don't come along, and you're. You're not gonna. You're not gonna get a job at Fox. I mean, that's Terry Bradshaw, Howie Long, and Jimmy and Strahan. And Strahan. Like, it's. There's no room over there. And I mean, what are you going to do? And I said, I don't know, but I can't. I can't not do this. I cannot live like this. I'm so tired of being afraid, being afraid when I'm on air. I'm tired of being away from my kids. Because that was getting to me, you know, flying back and forth to New York for 26 weeks a year from LA, that's. That's a long hike. And I was. I was like, I'm. I'm out. I don't know what we're gonna do, but I gotta. Something's gonna work. And that. That really changed my life. That was like another pinnacle moment in my life that I could either go this way or I can go that way. Yeah. And I was like, I'm going that way. I'm gonna go to the road that I don't want the sure thing. You know, I had people close to me that loved ones are like, you're. Are you a fool? Like, you can't. You can't walk away from that. I'm like, well, something's gonna work. And that's what. That's where the phrase life takes off on the other side of fear. I was like, I am afraid right now. There's no doubt about it. This is scary. But I believe that's where the good stuff is. That's where the gold is. That's where the diamonds are made. That's where. That's where you will achieve greatness. If you go up to what you're afraid of, but you know in your heart you have to do, but you go anyway. I'm not talking about skydiving. If that scares the out of you and you're like, I don't want it, but that's not in your heart anyway, you don't want to do that and it scares you. I'm talking about the stuff that you want to do, but you're scared to do, but you feel it. That's where you got to go. And that's where you got to have the. The cojones or whatever you want to call it, the matzi, the balls, whatever you want to call it. You got to have that and go through that. And there's steps out there and there's people that will help you if you just ask for help. And there's books and there's school of greatness podcast, there's wide open video. My podcast, there's. It's all over the place. It's all around you. And the only thing that's stopping you is that fear. And just go for it. Before we continue this video, make sure to subscribe below and turn on the notification bell right now so you don't miss out on these great videos every single day. You think that you need to feel confident or courageous in order to get started. You don't. You actually just have to start. And that's the riddle of life, that lying in bed hoping that you wake up some morning motivated to change. That's not the answer. You actually have to learn how to push yourself. You have to learn how to. How to leverage the power of your decisions. And you've got to learn how to take action when you don't feel like it. Because every morning when I woke up, I did not feel confident. I felt like a loser. I felt like the world's worst parent. I felt like I had failed at every single turn. I did not know if Chris and I could pull out of the spiral. I did not know if we were going to go bankrupt and lose the house and move from our community. I did not know if our marriage would survive. I knew I wanted it to. And see, this is the knowledge action gap. You can know what you want. You can know what you should be doing. But how do you make yourself do it when the feelings and the motivation isn't there, when all you got is fear? And so every night, I would. I would lie in bed and I would say to myself, all right, that's it, Mel. Tomorrow, it's the new you. Tomorrow, you're gonna wake up and be motivated. You're gonna. You're gonna get up, you're gonna exercise like everybody says you should. You're gonna meditate, you're gonna get those kids on the bus. You're gonna screw Fox, you're gonna look for a job. You're gonna cold call Cox Media and you're gonna. You're gonna do auditions. Come on, girl. Let's go, let's go, let's go. You're gonna take a cold shower. Whoa. You know, here we go. And I meant it when I was saying it. Maybe it was the alcohol that was talking, but. But then I would wake up and I didn't feel any of those things. So I would hit the snooze. And I would hit the snooze. Now, why was I hitting the snooze when I knew it wasn't the right decision? I'm going to tell you why. And this is something that I was blown away by when I discovered. You don't make decisions with your goals. You don't make decisions with your prefrontal cortex. You don't make decisions with logic. Do you know how we make decisions? I didn't invent this. A neuroscientist by the name of Damasio, who does his research in Brazil, who gave an incredible TED Talk and wrote about this forever and ever and ever, we make decisions with feelings. 95% of our decisions are made by how you feel in the moment. And that is the problem. You need to take control of the moment and leverage the power of your decisions and make them up here. Because when I was lying in bed, I wasn't saying to myself, I should get up because that's going to help me start my day, right? I was saying, do I feel like getting up? No, you don't know. Do you feel like making that cold call? No, you don't. Do you feel like doing that third set of reps? No, you don't. Do you feel like having that hard conversation. No, you don't. Do you feel like ending this relationship, whether it's in business or in your life, that is sucking you dry? No, you don't. We make decisions based on our feelings, and that is robbing you of joy and opportunity. And it is blinding you from the fact that all how you change your life is 15 second decision at a time, one push at a time. And if you, if you accept the fact that you may never feel ready and you may never feel motivated, and you may never feel confident, you may never feel courageous, and that's okay, but you can still push yourself forward. What happens over time is as you start to see yourself becoming the person that takes action, that you start to see yourself becoming the kind of person that speaks even though your voice is shaking, you're the kind of person that, that. That has a bias toward moving instead of a bias toward thinking. Guess what happens? You build the skill of confidence and courage. And so what happened for me is I was stuck, Louis. I mean, I was so stuck. I was on. I mean, we were heading straight for divorce, we were heading for bankruptcy. I knew I wanted to change things. And so one night, I see this commercial. This is the stupidest story on the planet, but this is what happened. I see this commercial and you know, again, I also was drinking too much. I mean, I probably had a couple Manhattans in me. That's my drink. I'm from the Midwest, just like you. All right, Little Manhattan there, Little bourbon. And there was a rocket ship launching on a commercial. Yeah. And I had this instinct, this innovation, this disruptive idea, right? Oh, my God, Mel. That's the answer. Tomorrow morning, you're gonna launch your ass out of bed like a rocket ship. You're gonna move so fast you can't even think about your problems. Dumb, right? Totally dumb. Sees like, this is the dumbest idea I've ever heard. I cannot believe I have this chick on my podcast. I understand it. You got to get moving first. Yes, that's the thing. You just gotta wake up at 6am or whenever it is and go into the gym. When you're in the gym, you're gonna start moving the first weight and then you'll start moving the second weight. Yes. Actually, people. People use the five second rule at the gym. Because you know how much time people waste at the gym standing around thinking about the next thing probably 70% of the time. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. So. So the next morning, the alarm goes off and nothing had changed in my life. Life. I woke up to the lean on the house, the fighting with Chris, the unemployment, the lack of confidence, the lack of courage that, like, the whole thing. But I did something I had never done before. I went 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. Just like NASA. I actually counted and then I stood up and I was like, what the hell just happened? Uh huh. What? What? That is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. The next morning I used it again. It worked. The next morning I used it again. It worked. And then I started to notice something. And this is, this is one of those things. So we have a, we have an 11 year old son who has dyslexia. And when they finally diagnosed him, it was as if. Of course it was as if. Like, how could we have possibly missed this? Are we the worst parents in the world? I mean, the kid can barely write, he can't cut his food, he doesn't read. Like, no wonder he doesn't do team sports. It was right under our nose. And what I'm about to tell you is right under everybody's nose. There's a five second window between the instincts, the shoulds, the urges, the inner wisdom, the things that can change your life. If you listen to it. Got a 5 second window from the moment you feel that instinct to move. And if you don't, your brain is actually designed to kill it. Five seconds is all you have. The second you hesitate, it's actually. And you feel yourself hesitating. That is a moment of huge power. Because what's happened is you've just started to pull back from something that you need to lean into. And if you count backwards. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. And this is the neuroscience behind why this stupid little trick works. Counting is an action. Counting backwards requires focus. It's also not a habit for you yet. So when you feel yourself hesitate, you're triggering your mind that something's up. Like Lewis didn't hesitate when he pulled on his pants. He didn't hesitate when he's drinking his coffee. Didn't hesitate when he walked out the door to the gym. But now he's hesitating to make that call. Your mind now goes into a cognitive bias called the spotlight effect. It magnifies whatever it was that you hesitated doing the moment. The moment? Yeah. Like all of a sudden you're like, I don't feel like it. Like, I don't, I don't know, maybe I'll do it later. And your mind is doing it because your mind's trying to protect you. Hesitation signals a red flag to your mind that something's up. Just that small hesitation. It's a habit that we all have. Should you hesitate if you're getting a tattoo? Yes. Should you hesitate if you're gambling? Yes. Should you hesitate if you are signing a legal document? Yes. You need your prefrontal cortex for those things. You need to interrupt it. Make a power, make a decision. Should you hesitate on making a phone call? No. Should you hesitate on speaking up in a meeting? No. Should you hesitate when you feel yourself starting to procrastinate and you know you got work that you should get done? No, you shouldn't hesitate at all. Should you hesitate in saying the thing that you really feel in your heart? No, you shouldn't. Should you hesitate and edit yourself when you're talking? No, you shouldn't. But we've all trained ourselves too, so it's actually this habit of hesitating. You start catching yourself. It's a huge moment of power because you have a decision to make and you got to make it. In the next five seconds, are you going to go on autopilot and get trapped in your mind or are you going to. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. And awaken your prefrontal cortex and drive forward. So I started to use this rule as I noticed that every day, all day long, I had these moments of inner wisdom where I would know that I needed to pick up the phone and stop isolating myself. I would know that I needed to call a bunch of media companies and start auditioning for radio show hosting gigs. I knew that I should get on, get out of bed on time. I knew I should stop myself before I snapped at Chris. Right. Self monitor. I knew I should not feel, let the frustration be the things that was driving me. And so I started to use the rule all day long whenever I felt this, I should do this. Five, four, three, two, one. And I would make myself do it. And slowly, five seconds at a time, my entire life start started to change. And my husband used it in his business. And he and his business partner dove in. They went on to open seven more restaurants. I went on to launch and sell two businesses and get recruited by CNN and join their team. I had a syndicated radio show that, that ended up winning the Gracie Award, which is kind of the Female Media awards, for the number one talk show in the country. And I never intended to tell Anybody about the 5 second rule, first of all, because it's stupid. I mean, come on, count backwards as the dumbest thing. That's stupid to me, though. Anything that works, works for me. That's true. You know what I mean? I'll take any stupid thing. That's true. But I also was like, how do you start talking about something like that? Right? Yeah. So I was asked to give a TED Talk like six years ago. And TED Six years ago, not the brand that it was today. They weren't even putting the talks online yet. Really? Yeah, the TEDx talks are not online yet. And so that was the first speech I'd ever given in my life. If you want to see what somebody looks like having a panic attack for 21 minutes straight, watch that speech. I was backstage and it was like one PhD after another going out there. I'm like, scientists. How have I gotten myself into this? Stop, I say. And so at the very end, I wasn't even planning on talking about it. I say, oh, by the way, there's this thing I do. That's it. I don't even explain it. And you know why I didn't explain it, Louis? I didn't know why it worked. So you don't have the science or the research. You're just like, zero, zero. And then something crazy happened. They put that talk online a year later, and people started to write. We've heard from more than 100,000 people in 90 countries that have written to us that are using the rule in ways big and small to change their lives, to change their marriages, to change their thinking patterns, to grow their businesses. We know of 11 people that have stopped themselves from killing themselves in the moment. There's a gentleman that we talk about in the book, and you can see his social media posts in London. He was a veteran and he was suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. And he boarded a ferry with the intention of jumping overboard. And he got to the railing and he was standing there and his inner wisdom kicked in. And this is another thing I want everybody watching to understand. I don't care what you're facing or how low you get, your inner wisdom is always there. It is. And the thing is, is that we often don't listen to it. And so he's standing there intending to kill himself, and that inner wisdom kicks in and he remembers the five second rule, and he goes, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1. And he turns and physically moves away from the railing and finds the first person working on the ferry and tells him that he's suicidal. Saved his life. He saved his life because he listened to the inner wisdom. And this is the other thing I love about this rule. It's not something to think about. It's a tool to use. So the part of the problem with a lot of the advice that I've found for me personally is that a lot of advice is all about kind of doing mental battle. And if I go upstairs, I'm behind enemy lines, and I tend to get hijacked. So I love this tool because 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 interrupts those patterns. It actually prompts the part of the brain that I need in order to change. And it makes changing easier because I've now got my mind working for me instead of against me, and it gets me out of my head. And so I'm super excited to share this rule with people because I now know not only that it's working, just not for me, it's working for people around the world. If you're looking for more greatness in your life, make sure to check out this video right here and I and also check out our free PDF, the three secrets to unlock the power of your mind to help you change your life. Download it right here. Skip a meal, but don't skip reading. Read something a biography. Read something that's a strategy. Read something that's going to change your life.