The 9 BEST Habits Of RICH PEOPLE | Lewis Howes

The same way that compound interest accrues through finance, the effects of your habits multiply over time.

Two out of three things I try don't work out. But people just remember the successes. But I know what the failures are. I got confidence out of failing each time.

These ones are more important than everything else we measure.

Really?

Over a hundred different habits. These are the ones that move the needle.

If you want to be rich, you've got to develop strong habits. And in this video, we connect with the top entrepreneurs in the world about the habits they've developed to make them wealthy.

So the six habits, 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 for. 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 today. That's intentional. They're more clear about what skills they need to develop to reach their next level of success. 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're not actively skill building, there's no chance at high performance. I mean, maybe they can dumb luck into it for initial success, but high performance is long-term success. You gotta be building yourself.

Constantly growing, constantly learning, constantly growing.

Being aware of that. And the last of the future four is I know the service I want to provide in the future. Talk to any high performers, I'm sure you've interviewed them, 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 whose won 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 the foot's in the block and I'm arms down, 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 clear and smooth.

Yes. And they're doing that self-talk, which is seeking clarity. 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. I would say they've done the work. So that's just the first habit. And so the book kind of opens with that story of finding what's, we all have to decide who you are and what we want and how to get it at this stage of our life. And when we don't know that, 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 the greatest leaders in the world have a clear vision.

Love that. That's it. And they got that vision by seeking clarity. 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. And 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 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, we.

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 who wrote this email, really highly successful guy, and he wrote this email to me, 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 through everything. This is one of my first coaching clients ever. I knew everything about him. We knew all his background, we did all the homework, had his peer review, you know, his 360 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. 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 to 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 it wants to get that new honey up there, right? Telling the bear to focus on its 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, Brendon, I got this big new vision. I'd just say, just try being more of Lewis. I mean, at a spiritual level, that feels good. But you and I both know you're gonna have to develop far beyond your comfort zones. And strengths are typically comfort zones. We gotta overcome that and go to the 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, is that right? Yes. Yeah, the whole conversation of beyond the comfort zone really requires us to go beyond our strengths.

It really requires us to-- that is our comfort zone.

That is our comfort zone. Well, 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 it at birth, you probably had it when you were 15 years old too. So if it's innate, you had it at 15. Or 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. 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 and I know who are amazingly strong? Their strengths finders are amazing and they don't do anything all day.

That's it. Yeah. A lot of people, 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. Or they were lazy or they wouldn't hustle or sacrifice their body because they just relied on their talents, their strengths. 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. 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 it's 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 how it with clarity? What do you think about you're like, every morning, what am I clear about? Or how do you apply that habit to your life?

I apply it in a couple of ways. First, for me, every situation I go into, I'm consistently asking, 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 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 ones I do. The first question I say, what can I be excited about today? So it forces me to be clear about what's gonna draw joy and enthusiasm from me. Number two, I say, what might trip me up today. Because usually I know what's going on in the day. I'm like, what might mess me up? Where might I 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. I did this morning. and I look at whatever's going on in 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 calendar, I'm like, okay, I'm gonna have that call. What do I want to happen on that call? What's my intention for that call? What's my goal for that call? What's the feeling for that call? How do I wanna end that call? You know, I'm gonna have that time with Lewis. How do I want to be there? And how can I make sure I enjoy it? Because it's a big deal. 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. I want to be present for that and make sure I'm really there, even though maybe I have a head cold today. 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 emotional quality to happiness, to relationships, to time, to hobby, et cetera, I just give myself a score of one to 10. And one means I suck. And I was horrible in the previous week on that. 10 means I did a good job. And then I ask, how can I do better? It's my Sunday routine. And it just keeps me clear. And it's not like I don't sometimes, like everyone else, wonder what's going on or what I'm doing. But those habits, those were my habits. You have to establish your own for seeking clarity. But when you have them, you weaponize your life.

Absolutely, yeah. Clarity, powerful thing. Without clarity, it's hard to achieve a dream. Yeah. It's hard to get better, it's hard to grow and be a high performer.

Yeah, no clarity, no change.

That's it.

No goals, no growth.

That's it. The second one that I see here is energy.

Yeah.

What do you mean by energy?

So in the way we- Peak energy.

High energy all day long?

Yeah, no, it's not caffeinated energy, but the habit is generate energy.

Okay.

Not necessarily have energy.

Create energy.

Create energy. And what they do, the way we measure that was kind of academic, mental energy, which is tied to your focus and your stamina and your ability to manage complex tasks without too much mental stress. Number two is emotional energy, which is just the quality of your positive emotions. And number three is physical energy. High performers are 40% more likely to work out five times per week than the rest of their peers. That means the top 15% most high performing people in the world tend to work out five days per week. And that workout could be defined as 45 minute brisk walk or hit intensity or whatever it is, but 40% more likely. That's a huge finding. And what we found is high performers just have better wellbeing and happiness and physical conditioning than everybody else. One stunning finding was CEOs, senior executives and business owners, they report expending as much energy as athletes who are competitive now.

I can imagine. Yeah.

Yeah.

I was surprised by that. I would have thought athletes would be 10% more.

I mean, the emotional and mental energy.

Yeah.

They have to, the decision making, the conversations, the big deals, the stakeness. Yeah. It's a lot of energy.

It's a lot. That's why, I mean, if you really want to achieve your dreams, you have to care for your body, your mind. It's why all these things finally resonating in the marketplace because the science of meditation or taking a break or managing your own energy, sleep is everything. And I think all of that is really important. And we say generate energy because there's this myth that some people have happiness or they have, it's like, no, you generate it. You don't have happiness. You generate it. You create it. And so the quality of your energy you have to create. Like you and I both, I mean, if most of our audience knew our schedules, your schedule the last five days, it's like, how is Lewis even able to focus right now?

And how are you able to get here and do this as well?

Yeah, but it's because we said, well, this is our mission. Show up, man. Yeah, there's plenty of times I got to imagine you walked on the field and you were like, I'm spent.

Exhausted.

You know, I remember you flew down.

To compete in the USA team handball.

Yeah.

Team. And a year ago, I flew down to, I remember I did an interview in Miami and then flew out from Miami and then went and just went right into training camp and then played against Brazil, which is like, you know, Olympic, Olympic qualifiers and. Yeah.

Got our asses but.

But it was fun, you know? But I had to have clarity. Yeah. Show up. Even when I was like, oh, we're gonna lose. Yeah. Like, there's zero chance.

Yeah.

It was like the worst team in the NBA playing, like, the Warriors, and we were just like, We had no chance.

Yeah.

But I had to show up and give my best.

And you have to set all these routines. I mean, you know, the amount of routines Tom Brady has in his life so that he can generate energy. It's unbelievable. Stuns most people.

It's unbelievable. And that's just, that's what it takes.

If you want to be at that level. If you don't want to be at that level, you don't have to do it. Yeah, you don't have to do it. I mean, everybody can just like, well, I'm gonna go, you know, hit the.

Cinnabon, but it's like, it's pretty good. How do you want to feel at three o'clock? If you want to feel amazing at three o'clock, don't end lunch with a Cinnabon. You know, it's crazy. Gosh, it's crazy. crazy. Like, I'm 34 now, and I could eat, like, sugar and bad food for all my 20s, right? And now when I go off of sugar for, like, a month, and then I just binge for a day, it's like, I literally can't walk. My back is, like, so sugar. Hang on.

Oh, my gosh.

Like, my whole body is exhausted. Inflammation.

So much inflammation. Once I cut it out and then I bring it back, I'm like, yeah. Oh, I feel so old.

Yeah.

Well, dude, I'm the same way. My seminars, like, I, you know, we do four day event and it's just me. I usually have one or two big names come in, but it's me 12 hours a day, four days, and I never sit down.

High energy.

I never sit down on stage and super high energy. I mean, really going for it. Not just the clapping and the jumping, but really just expending heart. You know how hard it is. Of course. And I had to about the same time. I was 35. I had a famous strength and conditioning coach backstage. He works with me and Usher and. And he. He's like, what do you eat back here? and another guy came in and strapped the heart rate monitor machine. He goes, I'm equivalently burning, equivalently working out at the marathon level every day for four days. They're like, you,'re not eating. I was losing on average 11 pounds in my seminars. And I do eight events a year, so I was losing 88 pounds a year. It was horrible for your health. So I had to learn how to eat. I had to learn to, I do ice baths every night at my events.

Which smart.

No one loves to do that.

Here's the thing. I used to do it every day in football, like during the season. Yeah. And we, it sucks for the first month, but then you start to love it.

Yes.

Yeah. I have to do it. You know what I mean?

It's like you just start to, ah, I feel so good. Feels so good. After stage, you know, it's the best. 12 hours. So those are, no one says, I want a habit of taking an ice bath at the end of the day. But if I want to be high performing on stage, that's the choice.

Yeah.

Now, obviously, people listening consult your doctor. Of course. And only do it for 10 minutes. Don't stand for a half hour. Yeah. Right, right. So, but all those things you have to, what are your habits for energy? And the funny thing is, you sit down with high performers, they know them. They can tell you, I do this, this, this, this. And you're like, man, you're on your game. You got it down. Yeah. And they're always probably looking to improve it. Yeah, totally. Yeah, they're always, but they're very aware of it.

And they, and they, what I found was they get pissy if they're off it. Yeah, of course. I didn't meditate this morning and I was like, you know, I was kind of frustrated a little bit. Someone asked me when we were at our meeting today at the Soho House, he was like, how was your meditation? Because he knows I like to meditate. I was like, you know, I missed this morning.

I did yesterday, but I missed this morning. It's agitating when I miss my habits. Yes. It's like, ugh, I need to get up earlier. That is exactly what you just said. It just, it really agitates high performers when they're off, they're energetic. Absolutely. The third big personal habit, which by the way, I've been teaching high performance for a decade. We have the number one seminar on that and the number one online course and I was wrong. I never knew this was a thing and you're gonna laugh because you're like, duh, dude, I could have sat you down. But I just didn't know. I knew, I taught it as subtext, but I didn't know it was the thing and that is high performers raise necessity. And what that means is they raise the necessity of performance in their mind before each performance. They say, I gotta do great. And they give themselves reasons why. So they're connected to their why. But it's different than just giving, like, know your why is nice. Know your why and give yourself Edge for it.

What do you mean?

Give me an example. Two guys walking out on the track field. Who's gonna win? Well, equal quality of experience, similar times, maybe they've raced before. The guy at the blocks who I'm gonna bet on is the guy who came out and said, Gotta do this for my mom. They have a reason to perform at heightened levels, and they have connected to that over and over. Now, again, some of this Duh, Brendan. But the finding, the research is they just do that more often than under performers or even, you know, good performers. They're more connected to their reasons why and they're stirring it, man. It's like, and they do it from two angles. One angle is your internal standards. Like my values or my self-expectations say, I gotta crush this 'cause that's who I freaking am. Like when you walk out, you're like, you're not gonna you know, screw around on when you're playing handball, you're like, this is who I'm Louis, I'm an athlete. I'm gonna kick some ass here. It's that self expectation. Then though, they pair it with external obligation. Like, my team needs me to do this. The deadline says this time. There's some kind of external, they don't call it pressure.

My family, something bigger than themselves.

Something bigger than themselves. And that was another thing I was surprised by. They don't say, they rarely use the word pressure because they want it. Like people who use pressure, they don't want it. But high performers, I found they're connected. I'm doing this for a bigger cause, a bigger reason, a team. Or yeah, they're sometimes just like deadline. Like I'm an unbelievably high performing writer when there's a deadline. I'm a weapon. Before that, you know, I'm not always on my game. if you have those reasons, so you gotta have your internal reasons and your external reasons, and then your job is remind yourself of that more often. That's what's called raising necessity. And we were the first ones to try to prove that with the data. And I was pretty stunned that, remember, these three aren't like my opinion. You might say, yeah, yeah, these are whatever. I'm like, but these ones are more important than everything else we measure. Really? Over a hundred different habits. These are the ones that move the needle. So if you wanna move the needle in your personal life, Number one, seek clarity more often. Number two, generate energy with more consistency and will. And number three, raise necessity, raise the stakes before you go into any performance situation.

One of the phrases I use and I have this in the book is that habits are the compound interest of self-improvement. So it's like the same way that compound interest, you know, accrues through finance, the effects of your your habits multiply over time. And so often these choices that you make, they're these little 1% improvements for you or against you each day, and they're very easy to overlook on a daily basis. What really is the difference between eating a burger and fries or a salad and chicken for lunch? You don't really see a lot better.

It tastes a little better.

That's actually a crucial point that I cover in the book, which is that habits that are immediately satisfying more likely to be repeated. And so pretty much any behavior produces multiple outcomes across time, right? Like if you eat a donut right now, it's tasty and sugar good. But in the long run, you gain weight. And so the immediate outcome is favorable. The long-term outcome is unfavorable. With good habits, it's often the reverse, right? Like you go to the gym right now and it takes effort, you sweat.

You have to work hard. It's a sacrifice your time for Netflix.

And chill to go train. the immediate outcome is unfavorable, but the ultimate outcome, you're in shape and in a year or a month or whatever is favorable. And so the challenge for building good habits and breaking bad ones is often finding a way to pull the long-term consequences of your bad habits into the immediate moment so you feel a little bit of the pain right now and want to avoid it and the long-term rewards of your good habits into the.

Immediate moment so that you have a reason to repeat it again in the future. So is it kind of like, okay, I'm going to go to the gym and eat donuts at the gym. So I feel good, but also realize this is going to help me long term. So in the book, I talk about.

This concept I call identity-based habits. And essentially, what you're the ultimate form of immediate gratification is the reinforcement of your desired identity. So you go to the gym and you're reinforcing the identity of I'm the type of person who doesn't miss workouts. Or you show up to write and you're reinforcing the identity of I'm someone who writes every day. And so you get a little bit of immediate satisfaction for being that person and being aligned with your identity, your values, your principles. But you also get the long-term rewards from showing up every day. And so what you don't want is some kind of immediate reinforcement, like eating a donut at the gym, where you're casting votes for two different identities, right? It's like, I showed up at the gym. I'm casting a vote for being the type of person who doesn't miss workouts, type person who's healthy. But then I eat a donut. So now I'm casting a vote. being an unhealthy person. So, it kind of washes out, right? So, you want reinforcements that align with your principles and values.

So, you essentially have to form your identity first. Is that what I'm hearing?

So, who you want to be? I think that your habits are the way that you embody an identity, right? So, like each time you make your bed, you embody the identity of someone who is clean and organized. Each time you go to the gym, you embody the identity of someone who's fit. each time you sit down to write, you embody the identity of a writer. So you can sort of think of it as like each behavior casts a vote for the type of person that you want to become. And if you cast enough votes for that type of identity, you start to believe that about yourself, right? Like if you go to church for 20 years, you believe that you're religious. You study Spanish every Tuesday for 30 minutes, you believe that you are studious. So in that way, your habits provide evidence of your desired identity. And I think that that is probably the ultimate reason that habits are so important. It's true, like habits can help you earn more money or be more productive or lose weight and all that stuff is great. But in addition to the external results that habits provide, they also shape your sense of self. They like are the engine or the avenue through which you learn to believe things about yourself. Like sometimes people will say stuff like fake it till you make it. But fake it till you make it asking yourself to believe something without evidence for it. And you can do that for a little while, you can do it for a day or a week, but eventually, I mean, there's a word for beliefs that don't have evidence behind them, delusion, right? And if you're deluding yourself, then eventually you give up on that. But the power of doing a better habit each day or casting a little vote for that type of person is that now you have evidence to root your belief in. Yeah, so now I've done it for six months.

Yeah.

Right?

Like, I mean, now you have a lot of evidence that you're a podcaster or a good interviewer. You do this over and over again, each time you cast a vote for believing that about yourself. You aren't delusionally believing that you're a good interviewer. It's because you've shown up and done it hundreds of times. I think that that's true for any habit, large or small, that they provide evidence of the desired identity or the.

Type of person that you are. What are the five non-negotiable habits for.

You on a daily basis? Oh, that's a good question. obviously this is going to depend on your goals. For me specifically, I think there are a few core habits that are going to serve everybody and certainly serve me well. So exercise is a huge one. I don't do it daily, but I exercise, I train four times a week. And I feel like if I didn't exercise, I don't know that I would be an entrepreneur. Like I don't know if I could handle the psychological roller coaster without the physical outlet. Yeah, the release, the... You probably feel that as like an athlete too, you know? Like I, for, Being an athlete for so many years, I feel like I need to push myself physically in addition to mentally. If it's just mental, it doesn't do it for me. I need to have a physical outlet. So exercise. Exercise is one. The other, the ultimate meta-habit is reading. Because if you build a habit of reading, you can solve pretty much any other problem. You wanna learn how to be a better podcaster, you can read about that. You wanna learn how to meditate, you can read about that. You wanna learn how to make more money, you can read about that. And so what you need is to develop a habit of reading. and then whatever problem you're facing at the time, you can, you have a method for solving that.

Okay.

Writing for me is huge. I don't actually know what I think about something until I write about it. I find that if you get your.

Ideas that you get it out.

If you ask me something right now that I haven't written about before, what is really happening is I'm just talking my emotions. So, what I mean is that you'll ask me something and I'll get an implicit feeling about what that topic I'll have some intuition, a gut feeling about it and I'll say whatever that feeling is driving me to say. But I don't actually know if that's what I really think, what I deeply think until I have the time to sit down, to research, logically go through it. Because a lot of the time, you know, if you would ask me the same question next week, I might have a different feeling at that time. So, I'm talking different emotions. So, I think I actually need to have time to sit with it a little bit and write it through. through to learn what I actually think.

Writing's third.

Exercise, reading, writing.

I don't know.

I would say that those are probably my main three. If I was going to pick five and the other two that I would add, going for a daily walk would be a huge one. That's one that like I kind of aspire to because I don't do that every day. But anytime I do, it really benefits me.

In what ways?

Well, you see this with a lot of anybody who does creative work in particular, that something about getting outside and walking, I think there's, this is just me spitballing, I don't actually have science behind this idea, but when your body is moving, it's very hard for you, one, to not be active mentally. Like if you think about someone who's shut down mentally, what does their body language look like? They're usually closed off, their arms like they're sitting, they're not moving very much. Try to be closed off mentally and be dancing physically. It's very hard to do. If your body is moving like that, it's really hard for your mind to be shut down. So that's one thing. It kind of gets like the juices flowing. The second thing, and this is where I'm spitballing, I don't know if this is actually true, but I wonder about your non-conscious mind being like a bottleneck sometimes. And so if you're, if you're moving, if you're walking, it gives your non-conscious mind something to do. So you're like, it gets out of the way. and now you can actually have this stuff arise or think in a different way than if you're sitting. So, I don't know. I think that those are two different things. Yeah, that's cool.

Okay, so that'd be the fourth thing. Sleep is the fifth one.

And this is one that I actually am pretty good about. So, my cardinal rule is that I don't cheat myself on sleep. So, if I stay up late and work till midnight, I'm gonna sleep till eight or nine. Sleeping in. Yeah, like I'm not gonna get up early because I don't want to cheat myself on that. But yeah, I think that those are kind of the core things. It's funny, sometimes people ask like, oh, how can I double my productivity or something like that? And you'll see articles like that all the time, like follow this one five-minute trick to double your productivity. But the real answer to most of that stuff is like, get eight hours of sleep a night, exercise, don't eat like crap, and then instantly you have this boost of productivity and motivation.

Yeah, the fundamentals cover 90% of it. Yeah. Exactly. You said this, you said you did not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems. What are the systems you created to be successful beyond those kind of core habits right there?

Yeah, so this is a really good question. I think first I just want to talk a little bit about that point that you do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems. What do I mean by that? So often when we set about to change something or to achieve something. The first step is almost always setting a goal. And this is coming from someone like I was very goal oriented for a long time, right? Like an athlete. Yeah, I was like goals for the things I wanted to do in sports, the goals for grades I wanted in class, the goals for how much money I wanted to make in my business. And sometimes I would achieve those, but then sometimes I wouldn't. And so I had this question like, well, clearly I'm setting goals for both. So like that can't be the thing that determines it. And you see this a lot. that the winners and losers in a particular domain often have the same goals. Like every Olympian wants to win a gold medal. Sure. Every job candidate wants to get the job. So if the winners and the losers have the same goal, then the goal cannot be the thing that distinguishes the two. And the thing that distinguishes them is the process, the system behind the goal. This is also important because achieving a goal often only changes your life for the moment. It's like, you know, say you're, just take like a simple example. Say you have a messy room, you know, and you set, you get motivated, you set the goal to clean your room. Well, you can do that in an hour and then you have a clean room. But if you don't change the sloppy habits that led to a messy room in the first place, then you just end up with a dirty room again.

Yeah.

So, it's like treating a symptom without treating the cause. And habits are a better solution in that case because if you fix the inputs, the outputs, that fix themselves automatically. You don't have to fight to have a clean room if you have clean habits. I think that that's true in a larger sense as well. People want outcomes. They want to earn more money or lose weight or be more productive or reduce stress. But the outcome is not the thing that needs to change. It's the system that precedes it.

So give me the, let's bust the myth of how many days it takes to set a habit. 14 days, 28 days, 60 days a year. If you do something every single day and maybe it changes for each person but what's the science or the statistics say about how long it takes to form a positive or negative habit?

So, 21 days is the thing you hear all the time, 30 days, 100 days, whatever. Right now, 66 days is making the rounds. It was the latest...

I saw that in another book. What was that book?

Well, there was one study done that found that 66 days was the average for how long it takes. And as a rule of thumb, I don't think it's terrible. Like you should remind yourself, yeah, this is gonna be months of work. It's not just gonna be something quick. But even within that study, the range was quite wide. So if you did something simple, like drink a glass of water at lunch each day, it would take like three weeks. If you did something more difficult, like go for a run after work every day, that would be like seven or eight months. But I think actually that question to begin with is sort of a... There's like a broken mentality. -The wrong question. -Yeah, it is. Because if you ask that question, the implicit assumption is, when do I have to stop working?

Or when is this done? And is it automatic after a certain period of time?

-Well, the honest answer to how long it takes to build a new habit is forever.

Because if you stop, then it's no longer a habit.

-It'S a constant choice and a decision, right? I think people often look at habits as as like a finish line to be crossed, but it's actually a lifestyle to be lived. And if you look at it as a lifestyle change, then you're saying, okay, what's something small and sustainable I can stick to? What's something that can actually last over time? So it is true that, and you can actually map this through research, that a habit will become more automatic with practice. But this reveals another important point, which is that there's nothing about the amount of time elapsed that leads to habits being built. You could practice something once in 30 days or you could practice it a thousand times. What actually leads to a habit becoming automatic and becoming learned and ingrained is repetition. So, the phrase that I like to use is not 21 days or 30 days but put in your reps. I mean, that's the real thing is you need to practice and if you put in your reps then your brain.

Starts to automate how that process works. Yeah. What makes you an expert on habits? Oh, man. Based on Lots of other people that are talking about habits. Why are you talking about it differently and what have you discovered that's different than everyone else?

Okay, so 2 questions there. So, the first one is expertise and I think that and I've said this many times before, I'm just going through this with everybody else. I consider my readers my peers in the sense that we're all just trying things out. The only difference is I write about what I learn and share it each week but we're all just learning along the way. Early on, I had a feeling like that. I was like, who am I to, you know, I'm just a guy. Who am I to write about this? And I had a friend tell me, the way you develop expertise is by writing about it every week. So, I wrote a new article about habits every Monday and Thursday for three years. And that was how I developed the.

Expertise on the topic by writing about it. You did research.

And you said, here's what I found, here's what I tried, here's what worked, what didn't work. It's a combination of me reading the scientific literature and reading the research and then trying to still practical insights from that and testing things out in my own life as a weightlifter, a travel photographer, a writer, an entrepreneur, and seeing what that looks like and then the two together. I think you need both. Like, I don't want to be some new age version of an academic who's in an ivory tower just like theorizing about ideas. It's different what it looks like to put ideas into practice, right? Like, imagine you're a peak performance coach and you show up to a coach like an NBA team. These guys are like, dude, you need to step on the court to see what it's actually like. So, you need to have both to have a firm understanding of that.

So, you were researching and you were applying it into your life. And what was the second part of that?

The second question, which I think is probably the more interesting one, which is what makes my angle different and what makes this different than every other book.

Out there about habits?

So, you can broadly put books about habits into two categories. the first book, the first category is what I'll call motivation models. So motivation models are about what sparks a behavior. How do you get started? How do you get motivated? The second category is what I'll call reinforcement models. So how does a habit stick? How does it last? Why do certain behaviors get reinforced? And sometimes books will touch on one but focus primarily on the other. A lot of the time they'll just kind of live in separate worlds. that's what I would say is happening in like the self-improvement space. Then you have the academic space, so psychology or neuroscience or whatever. And a lot of those books are focused on the why but not the how. They'll tell you why something happens, why a particular neuron fires, why a particular biological process works the way it does, but they don't tell you how to implement it in your daily life. And so what I wanted to do was try to combine the two.

Why and how?

Yes, a book that is both why and how. Why do habits form the way they do? Why are they important? And then how do they actually work? And my hope is that Atomic Habits was able to do that largely because of the framework that I put together. So in the book, I lay out these four stages that all habits go through. And I felt like we needed a new model because most of the models right now are either a motivation model or a reinforcement model, but not both. Okay. And you need to understand what both sparks a habit and what makes a habit stick. Maintains it, yes. If you want to be able to.

Understand how they work and how to make them last.

And what are those four frameworks? So, the first stage of every habit is a cue. The second stage is a craving or some kind of prediction that your brain makes. I'll give you an example of these in a second. The third stage is response and then the fourth stage is the reward. So you walk into a... the question I had that no model I could find could solve in any good way or explain in any good way was why can the same person respond to the same cue in a different way? So let's say you get into the habit of going to the gym at five o'clock every day but then sometimes work gets busy and you don't go to the gym at five o'clock. Current models don't explain that very well because it's like, well, the queue is five. You should be going to the gym right now. It says the routine follows automatically after the queue. Or why does someone walk into the kitchen and see a plate of cookies and then they automatically want to eat it? But you could just as easily imagine that you just got done eating dinner in the other room and you're stuffed and you're full and you walk in and you see a plate of cookies and you're like, I'm stuffed. I don't want to eat anything. so what's going on there? And I think these four stages explain it, which is you see the cue or you experience a cue and then your craving or your prediction differs based on your current state. So the way that you interpret the cues in your life is contingent upon the current state that you're in.

The way you're feeling. Right.

And also other things like your beliefs or your identity, the social group that you're part of, right? So like if you're in a different group than maybe you interpret things in a different way. You know, you can imagine one group, they practice a particular religion, they walk into a butcher shop and see pork and they're like, oh, we can't eat that. Another person walks in and they're like, oh yeah, I'll have a pork sandwich because it's obvious and easy and right there. So what you choose is contingent upon how you interpret the cues in your life.

I don't think I'm the type of person that is brave enough to admit I've made a mistake, honestly, because I think things have not worked out along the way where things just didn't work out as I had hoped or dreamed them to be. But I don't see them as a mistake because as quick as you were thinking, oh, poor me, you start to see the light of the door that is opening that couldn't have opened without it. So I don't have a regret of this was a big mistake, that was a big mistake. But I have to also say I have my whole life been very cognizant of doing anything and exposing myself to anything even when I didn't want to do it because I'm deathly afraid of feeling like I would regret. Like what if I don't do it? That's more of a motivation for me than doing. Me too. Just like, well, I look back, you know, like for example with Dancing with the Stars, I did not want to do do it. I'm an old babe. The last thing I want to do is practice four hours a day. You were great. You think I was so great? Not the judges. They didn't think so. I was the number one person on Dancing with the Stars last season. Number one rejected. Now there's a record. Okay. But so you might say that was a mistake with all the work that that led up to, and it was a social embarrassment. I thought I'd be rejected maybe number three or five or six, but number one, I never saw it coming. and so I was kind of a little mortified on that one. But you know what? I'm so thankful I did it. And the minute I recovered by the next morning, I'm like, thank God I did it. Thank God it's over. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of work. Because I didn't want to. I said yes because I didn't want to wonder what it would have been like, you know?

So what did you learn from the experience about yourself?

I learned I'm not a good dancer. I swear. I've looked at the tapes now. One year later, When I thought, same tapes I looked at a year ago, I thought, you know, I really got this. But I look at the one year later, I'm like, I'm stiff as a board. What was I thinking? Missing steps. So what I learned from that is that I can't dance well, but inside my body I feel like I'm a good dancer. And I'll get out on any dance floor and do my own makeup steps, and people really smile as I'm dancing because I don't really give a crap. and I look like it, you know? Yeah, but what did I learn? I learned that I learned the same lesson I learned again and again, which is thank God I did it. Thank God. And the injury of oh God, you did so poorly, dissipates quickly, but there's an echo to not trying something that's going to sting you, I think. Not that I know that, because I really don't do that, but I'm afraid of it. It's like, It's like fear of a nightmare that might happen. I don't know why because I don't really have that in my life, but I'm fearful of it.

Yeah, I think that'll sting you for a long time too. That fear of regret of like, oh, I had the opportunity to do this dance with the stars and I didn't do it. How many years would you think about.

Not, you know, what could have been? Maybe a year, but still a bad year. You know what regret does, I think, and why I've been able to build up my my personality and whatever I can get out of and give to life as best I could. What regret does is it quietly takes down your confidence a notch. Because in short, you're a coward. You shied away, even if the right decision is to shy away. Once you shy away, you quietly, without even consciously thinking, think a little less of yourself. Now, I say that from experience because I've watched many people get stronger or people where life makes them weaker. And there's a lot that goes into that. But I really believe that that regret piece is not given enough due. You really have to try everything and try your best. Because even, and listen, two out of three things I try don't work out. But people just remember the successes. That's what I remember. But I know what the failures are. But still, I got confidence out of failing each time. A little notch up, a little notch up. so then you conduct yourself with more power in life because you feel better about yourself and ironically you have more to give. You're a better package to give more because you've put a lot into that basket by just trying, trying, trying, trying.

Do you feel like you're more confident even though you're the first one out of Dancing with the Stars that you did it and you had a lot of success?

Absolutely. Absolutely, I'm more confident. I got a lot of confidence out of that because Every female friend and male friend I had that was even close to my age, they were like, I can't believe you even went for it. They said, you're out of your mind, but I won all their respect. And they constantly say, that was amazing. That was amazing. So even my friends that kind of took me for granted think better of me. I went up a notch in their head.

It takes a lot of courage to do that.

It takes a lot of courage to publicly fail, but I happen to be very good at public public failure. Really? Because I've done it my whole life. That doesn't bother me. I think what I didn't want to happen was that I would look foolish or old dancing with a 24-year-old ripped stud on the floor until I realized it feels really good to lean in on that guy and let him spin you around that floor and have my girlfriends or having a dance with anybody like that lately. There you go.

That's a good way of looking at it.

Yeah.

What would you say? Why are you not afraid to fail publicly?

Because you know what I've learned? Nobody's really watching. Nobody gives a shit.

Yeah. Everybody's got about it the next year or whatever.

Or no, maybe even in the moment. Because the truth is that people, most of all, are thinking about themselves. So just when you think the limelight's on you and everybody's going to say, God, is she stupid? God, why would she say that or do that. The minute they've given you that one moment of attention, they back onto their own problems, their own cells. So it's like overstatement of your ego to think you're really that important. You know, you could just move right on. We could distract people. You try the next thing in their eyes on that if you're lucky. So, no, it doesn't really amount to anything. It doesn't really amount to anything. Yeah, it's self ego. That is not really true.

That's interesting. because you say that most people are focused on themselves. So when you mess up publicly or you fail publicly, they'll think about it for a moment, but then they're onto their own thing.

If you're lucky and they notice.

If you're lucky and they notice.

Most people won't notice.

It just feels like everyone notices.

Yeah, definitely. For shame. Right, exactly. What about when you want people to have the attention on you for the things you're doing good? How do you keep the attention on you, the relevancy of yourself as an entrepreneur or an individual, when people are focused on themselves so much, how do you keep them thinking about you, your brand, your business, your work, your mission?

You have to think of a way to grandstand. What do you mean by that? Good old-fashioned grandstanding. Like I built my Corcoran Group brand on the backs of the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post, without a doubt. I would think of all kinds of crap to get media attention, okay, as long as my brand name was in there.

Really?

The single best thing I thought of, which was really just an attempt to get publicity when I couldn't afford advertising, because it was a bad market, was my Corcoran report. And all that was, was a one-page report giving the average sale price of apartments in Manhattan is how I labeled it. I was too stupid to know that that was the wrong label. It was just my 11th sales. But it was on the front page of the real estate section and I was quoted on the first line. And boy, that was an eye-opener. That's how I learned that publicity can build a brand. Today's version of publicity that I look for in all the entrepreneurs I invest in is how good are you at social media? I don't care if you're in the sock business, if you're in hardware, what's going on, how good are your social media, what's your following? Those are the key questions now. How well, how good are you at building attention through social media. Because that's the new free ride, not really free, but to a large degree free, just like the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, my free ride. So you have to be creative, I think, in thinking of how you can grandstand. And so what's, I don't know, I'm thinking, what's a business right today? Well, I don't want to use cousins, we already talked about cousins, like Grayson Lake. which is a start out as a baby sock company. Phenomenal entrepreneurs I have. Is this the long, like the long-- Lady stocking?

Yeah, with a little lace on top.

I bought some of those for a girl before, yeah. And they make girls look sexy.

And they're well priced and they're beautifully made.

Really nice. They're elegant, they're sexy. Well now it's a full fashion line and it's, I think, $17 million in sales this year. But what are they particularly good at? There's a husband and a wife team, Melissa, the wife of the team, has gorgeous long legs. You may remember her from Shark Tank. Her husband's more of a nuts and bolts guy, but great at business. What she does is she constantly models and talks directly to the camera. She has so many people that love her. She has limited edition, she sells out constantly, constantly. She's great at social media. She knows how to primp herself, look sexy, talk to the ladies, and get sales.

She uses her assets, her skills.

But she does on social media and that's built their entire business social media. And did I answer your question? Because I feel like I somehow got.

Lost in my... How do you stay relevant when things are going good? Because when things are going bad, they'll look at you for a moment, maybe, where it seems like everyone's looking at you, but then they forget. How do you stay relevant while you're growing or while Things are kind of going the same.

I'll give you another example. I have a company I just bought in this past season. I was out of my mind to buy into them. It was two guys with a product called Comfy. It was a sweatshirt blanket. You slip into it, it's like a sweatshirt, but it's actually a blanket. Okay. Why I say it was crazy to buy into it, none of the Sharks, they were smart enough not to, is because they're two loudmouth guys having a good time, pitching their product, and they had no inventory. They had handmade their own product. Two prototypes, had no idea what it would cost to make, what they'd sell for, who they'd sell to. They had none of the answers, but they're great salesmen. And I said, ah, I'll take 15 or 40% whenever I got it. Boom. Just because they're great salespeople. And what they have done is they've done in their first year $11 million in sales. They found a way to produce and sell it. But a couple of weeks ago, it was very quiet. They have had social media coverage to the moon and back, but it was very quiet and they hand-delivered and I wish I could remember the famous actress name. Sexy, cool, long-legged actress. I'm so bad with names. Whoever she was, I think she was the same actress who closed the Oscars the other night. I might be telling.

I didn't watch it.

Ah, shame on you, my man. Oh my God. Come on. All right. Well, anyway.

I saw your little party, watch party on Instagram.

That's so lonely, man. But anyway, they sent hand-delivered to her front door how they found it in Hollywood, the package, and she put on video her jumping on her bed in it. They quicker than a second start a social media campaign, people competing with the jumps. They're Johnny on the spot. That's smart business. Okay, they're causing attention. They made it happen, and then they're gonna write it again, and it's gonna be all over social media all over. They're annoyed with me that I'm here because I don't have their product, because they want me jumping on the beds. You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna put the hood on. I have one girlfriend that has gorgeous long legs. I'm gonna Photoshop my head in to.

Her long legs, and I'm gonna win the contest. Perfect. I like that.

So grandstanding now is like more influencer marketing. if you can find creative ways to.

Put it with an audience, maybe it's a micro audience or a large audience.

Or create an audience of your own one by one, but you really have to be able to grandstand.

I know you talk about the keys to entrepreneurial success a lot, but for those who haven't heard you talk about it, what are you think some of the smart ideas in business right now? The smart industries to go into if someone's maybe talented, maybe they sold a company or they're trying to start as an entrepreneur. What's an industry you really like? A product section you really like? You know, software, is it coaching, is it consulting, is it an agency, is it physical goods, food? What's the type of category you really think?

You know, really none of the above. Okay, it's not my cup of tea to think of an industry that's that you can this certainly leading industries. I don't believe that's where your head should be. If you're thinking of going into business, I think your head should be is what do you enjoy? What are you naturally inclined to be good at? What were you always good at? Things these disabilities don't change much. Whatever you're, you know, if you're gregarious as a young kid, you generally don't wind up as a bookworm. You know, when you get older and get a head on your shoulders, you're still gregarious. So I think what you have to do is what would suit me? What could I visualize myself doing where I could picture a happy picture of myself? And I think most people are capable of dreaming that up. I don't think it's an analytical kind of left brain kind of thing where you apply yourself to your best shot like going and playing blackjack and putting your chips on the right thing. No, I think you have to figure out you are the table. Where should you put your chips? What's on you? What's true to you? Okay? And so for me, it took me 22 jobs to find real estate, but the minute I was out opening keys, you know, opening the doors and chatting people up and it didn't feel like work and I was the boss, I knew I was going to be the queen of New York real estate. I knew it as sure as I knew my middle name was Anne. I just could see it in my mind's eye. I never had that vision when I worked my other 22 jobs. And the other thing, it's sort of related to what you ask. I think it's such a, it's such wrong thinking that you have to choose your spot. I think it's like finding out what clothing you look good in. You got to go try a lot of on the rack and see what works with you. And then you kind of, little by little, kind of get your look on what looks well with on your body type, your personality, the colors that are good. I think you find yourself little by little, it's very hard to sharpshoot. It's not that kind of a thing. And you know, often the people, I know so many entrepreneurs well beyond or well before Shark Tank, peers of mine in many industries that have succeeded, no one ever went out for that industry. And so that's what I want to do. But you know what made the biggest difference in a myriad of those, if that's a word, selection one of those people that made the biggest difference was they came along someone they worked for who believed in them. Getting one good boss that gives you an opportunity is worth a million intellectual thoughts and Harvard MBAs grouped up in a pile. Because you kind of can sometimes need somebody else to see that light or you get into something you never thought you'd be interested in and you really love your job. And then that winds up being what you do for a lifetime. And so I don't believe that you've named the big industries. That's more of Mark Cuban stuff. He's like high level investment strategy stuff. But I'll put my businesses against his any day, one to one, because I think I'm so good at seeing who's got that talent that matches where they are.

If someone's approaching you for investment or to partner with you, And you could choose only three qualities that you would dream that they would have. That's, you know, never giving up a grid, a positive energy, whatever the quality might be. And you could say if they had these three qualities, it doesn't matter what business they're in, maybe timing and the economy might play a little bit of part here and there, but like if they had these three qualities, they're most like I would bet on them any day.

Yeah, well that's what I do every day on Shark Tank. And I've gotten better at it because I've learned to hone in on those. I could think of two, maybe I'll come up with a third if I keep talking. All right. Number one is salesmanship. I have never succeeded with any business where the principal didn't know how to sell. I mean sales is the guts of every business. If you don't have sales you're not in business, any business applies to everything, okay? so, okay, if you're a technology nerd and really are in a technology space, but you better have a partner who could sell the out of it or it ain't gonna go anywhere. Okay, so selling is number one. The other thing I look for, and maybe it sounds weird to you, but I've learned it to be a great almost insurance policy. I look for injury. I look for anger in the individual. If I could find someone, and this is true of all my successful business, interestingly enough. If I could find someone who had injury at an early age and has something to prove, I got myself a winner. It's like insurance, okay? So when I say injury, meaning they were at Dunstan School, like three out of four, three out of five sharks were dunces at school. They're out to prove, you know. I don't want to out them, so I won't use them. I'm inclined to use the names, but I won't. I have entrepreneurs hugely successful, never had a father. And then when they went on Shark Tank, their father, after 35 years, was back in town. How insulting, enraged them. I have entrepreneurs who were sports figures, almost going to be professional sports people, had an injury, but were fiercely competitive with someone who wound up in their space. They hate that person. Because they played against them in ice hockey. Crazy! All I have to do is name the other person, their sales go up.

Wow.

So I think anger and proving is very much part of a lot of successful stories out there. It's an overcompensation, over proving, overdriving, like, I'll show you. Give me the I show you something that went wrong earlier, and you've got a motivated person, and it gets you through hard times really well. And then I'm coming up with a third. There's a million other ones, but none of them as serious as that. It's those two. You have to be able to sell, and if you have injury to prove something, it's a wonderful insurance policy.

How important is a positive attitude with those two things? Well, that's a given.

Oh, you don't, let me tell you. You're not even gonna get out of the gate. Well, there's negative people. All right, you know what's- you- might.

Be trying to prove people wrong and.

Always nasty at about it.

Forget it. Let me tell you what's true about a negative person. You won't meet them in the entrepreneurial space. You know why? Because they are far more comfortable criticizing the next guy than doing negative people. A bloodsuckers. They just suck your energy away. You know, the nicest thing I did for all the people that worked with me over the years was get rid of negative people. The minute I spotted them, I didn't care if I had cause, they were out. You know why? Because it's like. It's like letting the enemy. quietly into your camp and giving them free reign. Negative energy is the enemy of all business. Especially, I've always been in sales related businesses. You let a negative person into a sales force, they have a pity party, all of a sudden they need one more person to feel sorry for them or point out what's wrong. It's terrible. I would spot them a mile away. I feel their vibe. Do you have a few minutes on Friday? I'd love to have a chat with you. Because I felt like I was saving my good good people. You know, they were good, positive people. I don't mean criticism. It's invaluable in business. You need to have your criticsizers to let you know when you're off and what you could do better. But I'm just talking about real bloodsuckers, you know? You know, everybody's met a few. I hear you.

I hear you. Now, sales is number one for you. If they were a great salesman, you would bet on them. If they were a great salesman with something to prove, that's like the golden ticket. It was like, so how does someone train to be a great salesman if they don't know how to? Is it something they can learn or is it something you just have to be a part of your energy?

Well, you had question about positive. That's the blood that goes through a great salesman. Seeing the positive side of anything. A lot of people see that as baloney. I don't. It's just like, you show me a negative and I'll say, you know, you're right. It's a negative. But I can tell you what the upside of that negative is. So you have a bend toward being positive. So you must have that, okay, to be a salesman. If you don't, you'll never become a salesman. I don't care how hard you try. I think it's an intrinsic quality of personality trait. I know you're not supposed to say that everybody's supposed to believe you could become a salesman. I think if you're inclined to be outgoing and positive, you can become a better salesperson. But the real phenomenal sales people that I have worked with and I've made my living, my whole life in different venues with phenomenal sales people, I am telling you they come out of the gate, maybe not out of the womb, but they come out of the adolescent gate as sales people. It's very hard to teach that. It's a artistic gift to be able to sell really well. because think of how complicated it is. You have to read the situation accurately. You have to read the person and think of how you could use them in the way that they want to use themselves and thank you in a thank you note 12 hours later thinking it was their idea. That's a complicated little thing, right? And you need to think of how that person could be used for your long term goal of the picture you want to create. So that's very complicated math in the head. And that's what great sales people do.

I want to dive into morning routine at the start because you're a huge advocate of a very specific morning routine. And, you know, morning routines are talked about a lot on success minded podcasts and high achiever podcast these days, but you have a different approach to it. Yours is the 5:00 a.m. morning routine, which is the 2020-20 plan. First, I want to ask if you can talk a little bit about what that plan is, why it's more powerful than other morning routines that people might talk about. Then I want to ask you a follow-up question on it after that.

Louis, I've been teaching morning routine for 24 years. I wrote a book years ago called the Monk who Sold His Ferrari, where I talked about the ritual of early awakening, and I talked about the 5 a.m. Club. You know, the Spartan warriors, I learned a lot from them. These are human beings that were fierce in their resolve to do amazing things. The Spartan warriors had nobility and honor. Look at the world we're in right now. We need to do what it takes to become stronger as well as more compassionate. The Spartan warriors mothers used to actually say to them, Come back on your shield, come back victorious, or don't come back at all.

Wow.

And the Spartan warriors also used to say, Sweat more in training and you'll bleed less in war. And so, We live in a world, obviously, there's COVID, but I think this is a time of incredible unrest. We've got social unrest for all of the unjust injustice that has been out there for so many years. We've also got a financial crisis, which I believe is going to get much worse. And we've got, for sure, I'm no financial expert or an economist, but I mean, if you look at all the quantitative easing happening right now, and if you look at the low interest rates and all the encouragement that we buy more and spend more right now to jumpstart the economy, we're just pushing.

The.

Inevitable collapse further down the road, I believe. So I think we have the coronavirus and we have some early optimistic trials on the vaccine, which I'm very encouraged about. And then we've got all these other things, including an environmental catastrophe in the making. So with that context, I think one of the most important things a human being can do is press the pause button each morning while the rest of the world is asleep and ask yourself, how can I fortify my mindset? How can I insulate my heart set? How can I optimize my health set? How can I escalate my soul set? The four interior empires that I've introduced in the 5 a.m. Club so that when I walk out in the world, I'm creative, I'm productive, I'm compassionate, I radiate positivity, and I have resilience in case I get knocked out. And so I think one of the best ways you can do that is this 2020-20 formula that I've been teaching to the billionaires, the NBA stars, the film icons, and many of the most successful people on the planet for, as I say, 24 years. and very high level, Louis, the 2020-20 formula is simply this. You get up at 5:00 a.m. and anyone can get up at 5:00 a.m. One of the gifts of a human being is neuroplasticity. We are built to change. So please, I would encourage, you know, if we recite our excuses long enough, we actually believe they're true. We are built to change. We are built to grow. We are built to own our heroic nature. And so according to University College London, if we do any practice or habit for 66 days, we reach a point of automaticity where it becomes easier to do that new habit than not do the new habit. Once you wire in the new habit for the first 20 minutes, 5 to 5:20, you move because you can release BDNF, brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which promotes neurogenesis. It optimizes your brain. If you move first thing in the morning, you release serotonin which makes you feel good. You release dopamine which sets you up for inspiration. Second, we can get into it more deeply, but second pocket from 5:20 to 5:40 is reflect. While the rest of the world is asleep, there's such quietude in the air. This is where you can pray, you can meditate, write in a journal, sit in quietude. so that you're focused and living your life and your priorities through the day. And then the final pocket of the 2020-20 formula that I talked about in the 5am Club is grow. You'll never get old if you grow. You'll never become obsolete in your business, even in a time of great volatility, if you're growing. You'll always stay happy if you grow. So 20 minutes at the end of this victory hour, that's what I call it, you spend some time listening to a podcast like Lewis Howes on A school of greatness, a man adored by the majority of humanity. You listen to an audiobook, you read a book, you study your battle charts. Anyway, that's a really rough, general way to explain the 2020 formula that is currently helping millions of people navigate this hard time.

Does it matter the sequencing of 2020-20? Do you need to move first? Can you meditate first? Do you grow a lot, you know, or is that a process that is proven scientifically?

The process has been proven in the trenches of elite performance for a long time with my clients.

Yeah.

And having said that, you know, I would say the 20, 20, 20 formula is minimum viable morning routine. And you're a biohacker. I'm a biohacker. I'm a productivity hacker. I'm a life hacker. And so I would say, do what's right for you. You know, it's like this whole field of personal mastery and leadership that we inhabit. I'm not one to say, you must do this because we all have different learning types. We're all on different journeys. Someone might be right now upgrading their spirituality so they connect with their crusade and their higher power in this time of house arrest. other people are creating their masterwork right now. So I think we have to find the routine, the morning routine that works best for us.

What about people that say, you know what, I'm just a night person, you know? I think at night, I work out at night. That's when I meditate. You know, I strategize the next day at night and I've tried the morning, it just doesn't work for me. What would you say to that?

I've had a lot of night owls.

That's a great excuse, isn't it, to be a night owl?

I've had a lot of great A lot of night owls who have said, you know, I could never be a morning person. I've had a lot of people who've said, you know, Grandma couldn't get up early, Grandpa couldn't get up early, my parents couldn't get up early, I don't have early rising genes, you know. And what I would say is, if you don't read that book you've been resisting because you don't think it's for you, you might just miss your new favorite book. If you, fall in love with your most closely cherished beliefs and you're not open to trying new things, you might miss trying your new favorite food. If you say, well, here's the kind of friends that I hang out with and I'm not open to anyone else, you might miss that new friend or that new mentor who will transform the way you run your craft and live your life. And it's the same for the morning routine, the 5 a.m. Club, I mean, It's just, I've had so many people read the book, run the models in the book, live the message, and achieve what they never thought they'd achieve. And so what I would say to a night owl, or a lot of people say shift workers or whatever, I would say give it a try. Don't just give it a try for a week, you know, give it a try for three weeks, four weeks, the 66 day minimum. And then judge by your results.

Hey, it's Louis here and I would love to connect directly with you. Text me the word YouTube to my.

Number.

614-350-3960 to receive weekly inspirational messages from me. I did this for, I was getting up at not that I was in competition, but I was getting up at 4:50 a.m., Robin, for a few months, a couple of years ago and I was doing a 5:00 a.m. workout and that's how I do it. So I was spending an hour in the morning working out at 5:00 a.m. then I was coming back and meditating and strategizing for the day. And it was extremely challenging for me for the first month. But then it got better and better, and I started to make it a, you know, something I was proud of, you know, or I would call it beating the sun. I was like, I'm gonna beat the sun tomorrow, and I'm gonna wake up, and the first 20 minutes are not fun for at least a month, and. Maybe it's never fun in the first few minutes because you could, it always feels more comfortable to sleep until your body really starts to find a routine and a rhythm that, okay, you're just going to bed by eight or nine and you start to appreciate that process in a different way. You might have loved being up late before in its own way, but this is a new way to find appreciation. So I'm not in that space right now. My My girlfriend moved in and I said, you know what? I'm going to allow myself to sleep in a little bit with her and experience something different. But I tell you what, I always feel more productive when I'm consistently waking up earlier, even if it's uncomfortable.

Well, there's a line in the 5 AM Club, which is all changes hard at first, messy in the middle, and gorgeous at the end.

Yeah.

And so you were telling me, I don't think you'd mind, but before we started recording, you were sharing how you're running more. And it's like the first time you run, it's like the first time you ski, it's like the first time you fall in love, it's like the first time you play chess. I mean, we stumble before we walk and then on shaky legs we embrace the new habit. And that's the very nature of personal transformation. I mean, every Master was once a beginner, every professional was once an amateur. And so this idea that we need to be masters right out of the gate, that we need to get up at 5:00 a.m. And instantly it should be easy. Well, falling like a great relationship isn't easy. Building a world-class business that stands the test of time isn't easy. Becoming a maestro or any kind of a virtuoso, It's always a process. I mean, I know you interviewed Kobe. Well, I think what made Kobe Kobe was his intense, rigorous practice over many, many years.

Yeah.

You know, he just out practiced everyone around him. And I think, you know, we live in a world of easy. We want the easy morning routine versus the morning routine that'll give us the greatest payoff. And I just, there's a reason, Louis, that a lot of the great saints, sages, poets, military leaders, world changers got up at 5 a.m. and before the sun. I think it's the quietest time of the day. If you look at willpower researchers, we wake up with the most willpower when we first wake up. You have the most mental focus before the phenomena of attention residue takes over and cognitive bandwidth is high. And you know, it's It's been profound for me.

How does someone be consistent in their discipline? You know, when most people say, I'm going to do this for three months or six months, but then, interruption, COVID, I got sick, someone in the family needs me, and I'm up all night. And what's the difference between what Kobe did for two decades in the NBA where he was disciplined, How is he able to stay motivated and how are the greatest able to stay motivated where others seem to lack the motivation and discipline to be consistent? Because anyone can do it for a few weeks, but how do you do it for years and decades? What's the difference between that?

It's an excellent question and I would say first of all, in COVID right now, may we give ourselves permission to be gentle with ourselves? I think, you know, even this whole idea that we must be machines in terms of our morning routine or even our pre-sleep rituals. These messages that are out there that we must be monomaniacally consistent and flawless human beings for us to wear our badges of honor in society.