The proven formula for success | TEDx talk

When I get in, I take a shower, read a book, and feel empowered. Smoking on that sour gummy, counting down the hours. What is going on, people? Welcome to Prague. This is my first time ever being in Prague. I'm here for a TEDx talk that I'll be giving. Theme of the whole event, the weekend, is Breaking Barriers. So my talk is on my 3 pillars of success. P.R.I., passion, resilience, and impact. So find your passion, stay resilient, keep at it, and then make an impact. I don't want to give too much away because I presume the talk is going to be on the TEDx channel. But basically today I'm going to go get some breakfast now in the hotel. We're staying at Stages Hotel, which is beside the O2 Arena where I'm speaking in. Like, how insane is that? Like, speaking in the O2 Arena. Yesterday when I was coming in with the taxi, I was like, I didn't know how big this event was. and like I saw loads of banners and everything for the TEDx talk, and I'm like, oh my God, this is, this is gonna be big. So I need to prepare, I need to kind of finalize and brush up on the slides that I will be covering. There's 7 slides in total. So today we have rehearsals, thank God. The best advice though that the organizer gave me though is instead of getting up there and giving like a motivational speech and telling people what to do and being holier than thou, is get up there and just have a nice fun conversation that will leave people feeling good when they walk away. So either way, we're spending the weekend in Prague. Let's get after it, let's have some fun. Just a solo trip, just me here, so let's see what we get up to. Hotel is super nice as well, modern, clean, good lighting. Also, I've been rocking a little Movember. Maybe we get rid of that for the talk and play it safe, but I do like it. Seabum inspired. Come on, facial hair. 32 years old, still can't grow full beard. What is going on? By the way, of course this whole Alphalete is joggers, even the long sleeve. The new pair of joggers that just launched, absolutely love this fit. Alphalete is made for in and outside the gym and just daily life and travel. It's the best. Code Lipsett for 10% off. Now let's get some breakfast. All right, so the hotel is there and the O2 Arena is there, so pretty easy commute. Just gonna walk in now, find the organizers. Looking forward to meeting some of the other speakers. I'm like the only person in the kind of like fitness social media industry, so it'd be nice to meet some people from different industries. So, all right, let me find the gang now and we'll get started on rehearsals. Here we go. All right, I'm here in the green room. Everyone's just kind of getting set up here. I'm gonna make myself a little mini office here as I've got to kind of finalize my slides. Of course, I leave at last minute and and then I'm going up on the stage. The stage looks like high production, so kind of freaking out a little bit now, but we'll get it done. Holy shit, it is the real deal!

Look at this, what the hell?

This is massive. Oh my God, look at the amount of seats, and they're all gonna be full tomorrow. So here we go, no pressure now. I'm gonna be up on this stage. Oh God.

Hey, what's up?

So we're getting our makeup done now. I didn't think we'd have to get makeup done for rehearsals, but we do. Can you contour my abs as well?

That would be fantastic.

So we're gonna do the makeup now, and then I've got my first rehearsal. Let's hope it goes well. So rehearsal's done. They went super well. It's actually kind of strange when there's like no one in the room. It's actually kind of harder because like you'll say something funny and there's no laughs. Or maybe it just— maybe it just wasn't funny. It's definitely important to do those rehearsals as it gets you kind of warmed up. And oh my God, the weather in Prague today. What the hell is with that weather? Unbelievable. So now we got the day to enjoy ourselves. So I'm gonna go do a little bit of laptop work and and hit the Old Town. Apparently you get that tram, it brings you straight to it. So we're going for dinner tonight, the speaker's dinner in the Old Town, but I want to see it during the day as well, and apparently it's not too far away. So let's go be tourists. We're just back in the hotel room now. I said I have a little bit of a chat just while the sun is out, while it's still bright, while everything is fresh in my head. Tomorrow we have the talk, gonna be on the go all day. TEDx will of course be recording the event in HD, but I'm not sure when they release it. So I said I'm gonna whip out the camera, go over my original TED Talk that I I did in 2017, so insane. So first of all, the title of the original talk was on why you need to do things that scare you and how that can be very different from each person. Like, you got like people going fighting wars and stuff, and then you got little old me starting a YouTube channel, worried about it. But either way, you know, everyone has their own battles. And for me, I was so afraid of what other people think, which I know is just hard to believe now, very ironic. But this was when I was in Dublin, no one was doing what I was doing, very gossipy place. And people, like, if I start recording myself in the gym and giving people fitness advice online, people would be like, and people were like, what the fuck is this guy doing? But either way, I just saw all the guys in America, Christian, Max, starting out on YouTube, and I just, I just knew this is what I had to do. I knew it was the thing I needed to do. And the day I clicked publish on my first ever YouTube video, I had an anxiety attack. I pressed publish and I like went underneath the desk.

I like fell off the chair.

I like couldn't look at the laptop. I freaked out. Then after that, I realized, oh, no one really cares, you know. Yeah, some people talk shit. Yeah, some people make a little snide joke, but no one really actually cares. Like, people have so much going on in their own life that they may care, make fun of you for like a minute, but then they just go on with their life. And that should be very comforting. So not only is doing something that scares you, it's going to give you the most progress in life. You're probably afraid of something that isn't even going to happen. I didn't click publish on that first ever video. I would not be here right now. You would not be watching this video. I wouldn't be doing my second TEDx talk. And there's many cases like this throughout my whole life where doing the thing that you don't want to do is what is going to lead you to the best possible outcome. Which is funny, it's just like anything in life, choose your heart. Working out is hard, being fat and out of shape is harder. So you just got to choose your heart. Talk number 2 is titled My 3 Pillars of Success. I'm going to start off the talk with one of my favorite stories, the fisherman, the businessman. That's how I'm going to start the talk. And then we're going to go into the 3 core pillars of success. In my opinion, I think these are pretty fucking good. Like, I don't know how you can really argue with these. Pillar 1 is passion. What do you like? What gets you fired up in the morning? Go after that. So passion is what gets you started. Then resilience, that's what keeps you going. So there's going to be times in your journey where you feel like you're just getting no results. And I always love the diamond miner meme or the illustration. It defines it so well. There's a diamond miner and he's trying to get the gems and he's so close. To just cracking a wall open and getting everything he ever dreamed of, but he just quits. He's not resilient enough, and he turns around just before he strikes gold or strikes gems, whatever. So if you're resilient enough, that is what is going to lead to the last thing, which is making an impact. And that is the desired result. The best thing in the whole world you can do is to leave the world in a better place and have a positive impact on other people. The way I choose to do that is health, fitness, content. So that's why I know I'm on the right track. So that's my talk tomorrow, 3 Pillars Passion, resilience, and impact. So now I'm gonna go off, walk around Prague, get some steps in, eat some Prague food. Like, what is— what is Prague food? What language do they speak here? I'm joking, they speak Czech, I think. All right, I have decided I am just gonna get some food nearby, like just something standard, not very authentic. I think there's a taco place beside me. I'm just gonna grab something quick because I have dinner in like 3 hours, a speaker's dinner. Also want to hit the gym. The hotel gym is actually really good. I want to get a workout in, and then I'll be able to like look around the Old Town tonight before and after dinner. So there's no point like getting like a 30-minute taxi to the Old Town, coming back to the hotel to get ready, and then going back to the Old Town. So sorry to disappoint you, there's no Czech food just yet. All right, so end up going to this taco place just beside the hotel. Prague is such a good price for everything. This whole massive plate was €11, and a water as well. I'm in shock. And like Marbella or Ibiza, the water alone is €11. This looks insane. I know, like Prague, Mexican food, it doesn't usually go together, but this place is top rated. It's beside hotel. So let's go, let's do a little taste test. Let's squeeze the lime on, get some rice in on that. Probably good. All right, I'm gonna eat this now, try to get a workout in, and then Team dinner at Old Town.

Let's go.

What's going on, guys? We're here in the hotel gym. Actually pretty solid. Dumbbells go up to 40. Stairmaster, cables, got everything you need. So obviously we're just going to pick the heaviest weights we can and just do a shitload of reps and sets with them. High volume. When you got minimalist training equipment, that's just what you do. Alright, that's enough. Workout done. Let's go eat some Czech food. Hopefully it's Czech. I don't know what's on the menu. But either way, it's good to get a little bit of movement done, and now we finally get to explore the city. Alright guys, so just getting ready for dinner. We are doing all black tonight. Pretty sure tonight is a casual enough dinner just for everyone to meet each other. Black Alfie long sleeve, black suit trousers, these black Numerus shoes with white soles, and then I'm gonna put on a black puffer as well. Even though it's not as cold as I thought it would be, I thought it would be like, I thought it'd be like snowing, ice cold, but it's not too bad at all. I think the weather is particularly good at the moment. But anyways, let's make a move. Successful day one. I'm hungry. I think it's family style, so loads of sharing. So weird seeing me in a jacket on this channel. All right, let's make a move. We are here in the center of Prague. It is absolutely amazing. It's so nice. Like, it's quite late, everyone's still walking around. It's just a nice atmosphere in the place. So I'm gonna find the venue now. It's in one of these spots here, but I think we're on like the main square. It's super nice. And now we're gonna meet everyone as well.

I wish I knew about the Prague hype sooner.

Like, it's like Paris, it's insane.

All right guys, so basically what is the plan for tonight?

We have a menu, it's a mystery menu, it's a surprise, and we have to all taste it and then guess what it is. And there's even a little space on the back to write down your guess. So I have a clue. This is the thing on the left. It's giving salmon, okay?

It's giving salmon.

So that's gonna be my first guess. I've never— I've never done this before. So it's the end of the meal. It was all absolutely delicious, but this thing, okay, I don't know how to describe this. This is the dessert. It looks like egg on toast, but apparently it's sweet. So we're gonna go— we're gonna penetrate it. We're gonna go right in there.

I'm like, do I eat Do you eat this with a knife and fork or this little spoon fork combo?

Like, what is going on here?

Oh my God, okay, okay, it's leaking a lot, it's leaking a lot.

Okay, it is also crackling. It's multi-sensory dessert. Absolutely fantastic. Really good. All right team, day 1 complete. Back at the hotel now, actually scooted home on one of those Bolt scooter things. I don't have them in Marbella, so like I saw it and I was like, "Let's just do it for the fun." So just gliding through Prague, having a good time, good feels. Home now, gonna watch some American Dad, get an early night, and then wake up nice and fresh and just smash this talk tomorrow. So epic weekend in Prague, like what a fun side quest. Like I only kind of got the heads up on this about 6 weeks ago, and so yeah, it's kind of a cool way to finish off the year. Can't believe it is November already, but I'll see you guys tomorrow. This is probably going to be all one big vlog, so catch you in the morning. What is going on, team? Today is the big day. We're all dressed, ready to go, looking sharp if I say so myself. Better head across now to the stadium, the arena, whatever you want to call it, the auditorium. We're gonna hype everyone up, we're gonna talk about success. I'm very excited, but I'm also trying to stay calm. And one huge benefit of YouTube Talking to the camera, it gets you warmed up. It makes you a much better public speaker. So we're gonna go now, cross the road, get our makeup done again. Can't wait.

And then knock this out the park. Let's do it. Oh, let's do this.

Come on, psych myself up. Just walk straight across the road, in, and boom. I'm nervous.

Into a global movement. Rob Lipsett is a famous entrepreneur, content creator, and author, empowering millions around the world to reach their health goals and brand fitness with mental resilience. From YouTube to his Game Time podcast, Rob's journey from Dublin to global recognition shows how mindset fuels success. Here to share his journey with us, please welcome Rob Lipsett.

We're gonna be talking about success. Success. It's just a buzzword. What's successful for one person is very different from someone else. So today we're gonna define success and then we're gonna go into my 3 pillars for success. And there's passion, resilience, and impact. Passion is what gets you started. Resilience is what keeps you going. And impact is the desired result. One of my favorite stories, it's about the fisherman and the businessman. So one day there's a fisherman in a beautiful small village.

He's catching all this fish and he comes in. He's had a really good day.

So the businessman walks up to him and goes, "Ah, that's a lot of fish you got there. What's your day look like? How many hours do you spend fishing per day?" And so the fisherman replies, he said, "Ah, usually I wake up in the morning, I go out for a few hours, I catch some fish, just enough to feed my family. I come home, I relax, I go for a nap, hang out with my wife, and then I go down to the village and I meet some of my buddies. We have a few drinks, we watch the sunset, and that's my day." The businessman says, no, no, no, this is all wrong. You need to be out fishing, working for much more than 3 hours. You need to be spending your whole day out there. And once you get the fish, you need to put them all together and sell them for an even higher price. So the fisherman replies, okay, and then what? And then you hire some more boats, catch even more fish, and you put them in tin cans and you sell them for even more profit. And then You make a HQ in the nearest city and you move to that city. You work hard and you grow your company. The fisherman replies, and then what? The businessman says, well, we can float it on the stock exchange and you'll be rich beyond your wildest dreams. The fisherman says, and then what? The businessman says, well, then you can relax on the beach all day. You can go fishing. You can meet your buddies for a drink at sunset. And the fisherman, of course, said, thanks for the input. But I think I'm okay. So the take-home point here is success is so different for each individual. Oftentimes success is a lot closer than you think. We're gonna go in on passion now. The first thing you need to do is you need to try a lot of things and you need to understand you're gonna suck at a lot of things. That's just part of the game. And failure for any entrepreneur or anyone who wants to go to that next level, get comfortable with the feeling of failure. So for me, I was the Worst in my year academically. I was always led to believe that I was a failure and I perceived myself as the class clown in school. I perceived myself as someone that was just gonna go nowhere in their life. In school, I was being pushed to the wrong direction. I was being pushed to do the wrong things. I wasn't being pushed to do my passion. Oh, lifting weights, going to the gym, you can't make a living out of that. If there's one takeaway point I want you guys to realize today, you can make a living out of anything. Today's day and age, there's endless opportunity out there. Social media, the digital world. Honestly, you can make a job out of anything. YouTube will tell you that as well. There's some crazy channels out there. So my passion was fitness. When I tried to get into college, I got into a course that I wasn't too happy with. I failed all my exams and I went to repeat the year. Lo and behold, failed all my exams again. So instead of repeating the year and looking like Billy Madison being the oldest kid in the class, I said, you know what, it's time to go all in on my passion. It's time to start talking about fitness and health, training, nutrition. And to this day, that still gets me so fired up. So I started documenting my progress online. I started writing online content about fitness. At the start, no one's even watching. And sometimes it feels like you're putting in all this work and it's not taking off. And that's when you gotta keep pushing through. And that brings me on to resilience. Resilience is when you're putting in the work and no one's watching. And this is what separates winners from the losers. Resilience is what is going to give you the desired outcome. And it's going to teach you to never give up. So, bit of a story time here. As you can see on the left, you have an empty room. And on the right, we've a sold-out room, bit like today. My first experience with public speaking was not a good one. I organized a fitness event, a fitness seminar in Dublin. I said, you know, I'm going to talk about training, nutrition, what I'm passionate about. I'll have some snacks there and I'll sell tickets for €50. The day came when I went to put it live. I got the website ready and everything. And I said, oh my God, I can't wait for everyone to sign up.

I put it live.

So guys, my fitness event, my seminar in Dublin, it just went live. Zero sales. The website must be working or something. I don't know why anyone's signing up. So I gave it some time. Zero sales came in. And then some other guys in the fitness industry caught wind of it. I was quite new in the scene at this stage, and they said, who does this kid think he is charging people to go listen to his advice? He needs to quit. He needs to stop. I really regret this, but I listened to their advice and I stopped and I got so embarrassed and I took the whole event down and I canceled it and I took it all down offline and everything. I said the event's canceled. And a few days went by and more people came up to me and they said, hey Rob, where's the event? Me and all my friends want to get tickets. Where's it gone? I said, I took it down. I got so embarrassed of what other people said. And I realized in hindsight, if I just stayed resilient and kept going, kept promoting the event, it probably would have sold. But I cared so much about what other people thought. I was lacking that resilience and I took it down. Fast forward a couple of years when I worked on my resilience, I worked on my grit. Not only was I charging a lot more than €50, the events were selling out in I didn't sleep a day. And now we're here in front of an amazing crowd in Prague.

Let's keep going! There we go!

Every single successful person, there is a cemetery of failures behind them. You need to get used to that feeling of failure. This brings me on to impact. Over the years, I've achieved what I define as success. I get to do what I'm passionate about, which is fitness. I get to travel the world. I have an amazing business, an app, a podcast. A pancake company as well. A protein pancake company. They're healthy. That's a bit of fun, isn't it? I wanted to figure out, I was like, how do I eat pancakes every day and stay in shape? But I've done all this cool stuff. I've traveled the world and I will honestly look you in the eye and tell you today.

People say, oh yeah, sure.

I will tell you this with full honesty. The best feeling in the world is when someone messages me or comes up to me in person and says, hey Rob, your fitness advice changed my life. I've got so many messages. I don't want to go too deep here, but people will say, hey, I lost 20, 30, 40 pounds and therefore my confidence improved. I got that raise at work. I finally talked to the girl that I wanted to ask out. This huge knock-on effect. And not only this individual, their life improves, but the people around them, their life improves as well. And that is the best feeling in the world. And that is impact. Impact is the real definition of success. So forget the watches, forget the cars, forget the fancy holidays, and think impact. How am I gonna positively impact the world and leave it in a better way? It doesn't have to be through fitness, through anything. And that goes back to passion. Because the way you're gonna be truly good at something is if you're passionate about it. Look at anyone at the top of their field. They live and breathe what they're doing. They have passion, they have resilience, and they make an impact. Guys, thank you so much for today. Hope you guys got some good energy. And remember, I want you to leave this room, figure out your passion, stay resilient, and go make an impact. Peace.

So happy with how that went. Oh my God, I'm buzzing! Oh my God, what a feeling. Like, that is such a rush with the red lighting and everything around you. The crowd was so nice, really responsive. Thank God, thank God. Now let's go enjoy Prague. All right, people, that is a wrap. One of the best feelings ever is when you do any talk, coming off stage. It's just like, it's such a relief it's an adrenaline rush, and it's just so nice. It's just an all-around good feeling. And something I'm very grateful for there, when I was going on stage, I kind of thought the crowd would be a little bit unresponsive because we're in Prague, and sometimes people cannot understand Irish humor or sarcasm. But everyone in Prague speaks perfect English. It's seriously impressive. And the crowd was just so nice, really responsive. So now I'm gonna go back to the hotel We've got a little after-party speakers dinner type thing in the hotel. I'm probably gonna stay in this, pretty nice I think. After I do like a big kind of talk like that, or if I'm in a big crowd, I always like to just decompress, be on my own for like an hour or so. What is going on guys, it is day 3 in Prague and we are with a local here. Introduce yourself, my man.

I'm Sam, nice to meet you.

And so Sam's been following the channel for a good few years. Sam was at the event yesterday. He said, hey, do you want to train tomorrow? I've got like my flight at like, I think it's like 3 or 4 PM. So I said hell yes. And that is like the beauty of YouTube. You got, you got friends everywhere you go. So we're gonna go into this gym now. It's a Hammerstrand certified gym. It's actually right beside the hotel, so it looks really good. And for it to be Hammerstrand certified, that means it's got to be legit as well. So it's a beautiful day in Prague. Let's go lift some weights. Finally, I'm getting like some autumn winter vibes.

Cheers! Cheers! Bottoms up!

That's good. Yeah, it tastes nice. Yeah, they need to get some ghosts in here. But this is the gym, guys. So Hammer Strength certified in Sparta, I believe that's the name of the place. Sparta looks really nice, good color as well. It's kind of like a long narrow gym, which I really like as well. Simple layout. So we're gonna do some upper body today. Let's kill it! All right, starting off with some shoulder press. We're gonna do shoulder press, lat pull-down chest movement and an isolation work, pull-upper. And we're going to finish this trip off. So even like, even the bench is here, really good, really solid.

So let's do a little, little warm-up.

Feeling good. So I'm gonna try to get up to like past 35, maybe 40, see how we're feeling. All right, so this is 34. I'm gonna go for 6-8 reps and then see if we can hit 40 today.

Yeah, alright, let's move love.

All right, lads, it's the end of the road. Productive trip. Just getting nice and fresh for the airport using some matte clay for my hair. I think I'm about 1 year out from a hair transplant. Matte clay for the hair. I got this vitamin D tree oil that I'm going to use on my chest and shoulders. This was actually given out in our TEDx goodie bags. This is just some Nivea moisturizer I use, and that's my, that's my beauty routine That's my skincare routine.

Anything else?

No, that's literally it. What a trip. Just all I can say is thank you. Surreal weekend. To be able to say like I've done 2 TEDx Talks, I'm like, how does anyone even want to listen to me? It's crazy. The whole reason I'm able to do stuff like this is because of YouTube. YouTube in particular, not just social media. YouTube, that is what completely changed the game for me. And it's just, it builds so much more connection than just like posting a picture. Like, I'm not hating on Instagram. I value Instagram a lot, you know, it's been amazing for me as well. But YouTube in particular is my favorite social media platform. It allows me to do stuff like this. So if you're watching this, get on YouTube. There is still so little Irish YouTubers. It is there for the taking. That's always been my message for years and it still is. But guys, I'm gonna go to the airport now. I'm gonna just have a nice little trip home on my own, back to Linda, back to the villa, and then I'll see you guys in Marbella. But what a weekend, feeling amazing. See you in the next one.

Keep it real.

Peace. Prague completed it.