How to Create a Mainstream Miracle Movement with Hal Elrod

Hey.

This is Capability Amplifier. I am here today with my good friend Hal Elrod. Say hi, Hal.

Hey, everybody.

All right. And this episode is how to create a mainstream miracle movement. Why is this so important? It's because Hal has sold nearly 4 million copies of the Miracle Movement and some of the other books, and his coursework is actually inside over 200 schools. They're changing the way kids are thinking about and learning and behaving in schools in really profound ways. So you're going to learn a ton from this episode because I got into how did Hal create this movement in the first place? What motivated him? He's got a great, great hero's journey. How about you, Hal? What did you walk away with?

I think my biggest takeaway was the fact that you asking me the questions helped me to understand what were the steps that I used to launch a movement when and I had no audience. And then how do you sustain a movement 10 years after you launch it so that it continues to build beyond where it's ever been before?

So the bottom line is this, if you've ever wanted to create a movement of your own, you've ever wanted to create a message that would reach millions of people or just even understand how it happens, you're going to love this episode of Capability Amplif.

Hey, everyone, this is Mike Koenigs. I'm here today with my very good friend Hal Elrod. He's the author, creator of the Miracle Morning and all those products as well. And he's in today from Austin, Texas. He's here with some family and we got together and thought, man, let's spend some time together in the studio. So, Hal, it's always a pleasure to spend time with you.

It's an honor to be here in person, man. It's my first time in your home, in your studio. It's beautiful.

Thank you. Well, I'm going to just begin with why don't we do a mini commercial for Hell Elrod, if you're going to tell your, we'll call it your origin story, your hero's journey. In two minutes. That leads to Miracle Morning. Give us the basics. I haven't heard your evolved pitch in a while.

Yeah, that's because I'm long winded. So two minutes is going to be tough.

Creativity loves constraints.

There you go. Here we go. So I grew up very mediocre throughout my whole life.

Life.

Right. Really didn't get good grades, wasn't a great athlete, you name it. I really settled for mediocrity and didn't believe in myself. At 20, I met a mentor. So many of us at 20, I met a mentor who changed my life because he really believed in me and I believed in his belief in me and kind of started to fulfill my potential. A year and a half later, I was head on by a drunk driver at 80 miles an hour. I was found dead at the scene, broke 11 bones, came out of a coma six days later, told I would never walk again. And it became a shift in my life, where I went, what am I meant to do? I, I think I'm meant to overcome this and start helping other people overcome their limitations and their challenges. Seven years later, financial crisis happened. In 2008, I crashed with the economy, you know, lost over half of my income, depressed, in terrible physical shape. I was losing my house, I was in debt, and came up with a solution. And it was a morning ritual. It was that I figured out if I start my day in a peak physical, mental, emotional and spiritual state, I can become the person that I need to be to create what I want for my life. I started this little morning routine two months later. I had doubled my income during the 2008 financial crisis. And it felt like a miracle. I went to my wife, said, sweetheart, this morning ritual feels like a miracle. She goes, it's your miracle morning. I go, I like that. I love that. Wrote it in my schedule every day, started teaching it to my clients. And within a matter of months, every one of my clients was doing the Miracle Morning. And they were getting extraordinary results like I was. And that's when the light bulb went off and I went, if this changed my life and I wasn't a morning person, it's changing my clients lives. And they weren't morning people. This could change the world. Three years later, I self published the Miracle Morning and to crickets. I didn't have an audience, right, but I was committed for as long as it took to sell a million copies. That was the biggest I could think was change 1 million lives 1 morning at a time. I thought I went for it in a year. That year I sold 13,000 copies. So I was 98.7% short of my goal. Took six years. And you introducing me to our agent, Celeste Fine and getting this translated in 37 languages. Now the Miracle Morning has sold over 3 million copies. There was a documentary made called the Miracle Morning, which features our friends Joe Polish and Brendan Burchard and Leila Ali and Mel Robbins, you name it. And now it's a worldwide movement. It's practiced in over 200 schools. There are over 12 books in the Miracle Morning series. There's a Miracle Morning app. And on and on and off, on. And we're just continuing to. The mission is to elevate the consciousness of humanity one morning at a time. I love it.

Well, congratulations. All right, so I'm going to do one more little thing that I think is really interesting about you, because.

Not too long ago, you moved to Austin, but then moved onto a. You bought a plot of land. You're really close to Tucker Max. I know a lot of the people who listen to us know who Tucker Max is.

Who is a fascinating, fascinating guy.

As we were talking about earlier.

Yeah, it's really. I. I love Tucker. He. He's not for everyone, but, man, he's got an incredible, incredible brain. And you are raising turkeys and chickens. You just had them. Had them butchered. Your wife is now learned how to clean.

She prefers the word processed.

Processed, okay. Yeah.

I grew up, well, processing on a farm.

You know, it's like, I didn't personally, but my dad did, and I spent a lot of time on a farm. So, yeah, I guess that's what I got used to hearing. That's interesting. I haven't revisited that in a long time. Oh, the politically correct version of murdering animals. But anyway. No, it's not. But if I'm just curious and get raw here, what compelled you to make that leap? What was the motivation? And what's the vision you have for this lifestyle that you've chosen for you, your wife, your children, and curious about where they came from?

Yeah. So, yeah, we had moved into a neighborhood and we bought the house next door to friends of ours. So it was like, know the dream, right? You're living next to your friends. Then another family that David Osborne and his wife Tracy said, I. I told David, we bought a house next door to Tim. And he goes, ah, I'm jealous. And then he buys a house in the neighborhood as well. Then our friend Mike McCarthy buys a house in the neighborhood. So we have four families living in this beautiful neighborhood in Austin and living what. What you'd imagine was the dream. And. And then some of the, you know, there's pros and cons to everything. Some of the cons started to emerge. And one of the cons was my kids never wanted to be home because they had, you know, a dozen friends all living, you know, each family had a few kids all living in the neighborhood. And I read a book called hold on to youo Kids, which was by Dr. Gabor Mate. And I forget the name of the other author. But it basically talked about how our children are being raised by each other and they're not qualified to raise each other and we need to hold on to our kids. We need to bring them back into the way it used to be, where kids were really raised by their parents, which you don't think we still do that. But again, they're spending so much time with other kids. And so then I started to go, gosh, this is really difficult. I'm fighting with the kids in the neighborhood. I mean, not literally, but. Right. I'm fighting with the attention from my children. And here's the thing is, if we say no, it's like, oh, now we're the only parents that are not letting them hang out with the other kids. So now they resent us. So that was part of where I thought, man, I love these families, I love these people. There's so many great things about it. But I kind of want some distance, I want some separation. So that was one of the factors. The other factor was watching society kind of break down during 2020 with, you know, the riots and all of these things. And as I looked more and more into the how.

Fragile our society is, my wife and I thought, let's be self sustainable. Let's make it so that our food isn't reliable on this fragile system. Let's grow our own food, let's raise our own food. And then we also like the idea of let's have our kids out in how fun would that be to live on land and for our kids also, I felt like they weren't working hard enough, right? Meaning like their life was way too easy. And I go, they're not learning any skills. Like, I have friends that grew up on farms. My buddy John Rulin, and he's the hardest working guy I know because he was up at 6am Feeding the animals and milking the cows and you know what I mean? And I thought, man, I want my kids to have to get dirty and work hard. And so my wife and I just started talking about what if we were to move out into the country? And we started looking at property and actually it's funny, Tucker Max, our buddy, he and I had a conversation and he said, yeah, we're looking for land in this one area and there's a bunch of families out there that are like minded that are all, you know, looking at this, creating a school and so on and so forth. And so that gave us direction of, ooh, let's look in that area. And so interestingly. Before Tucker found a spot, we actually moved first.

I did not know that. That's interesting.

Okay. Yeah. So I take credit. Tucker followed us out.

There you go.

Good job.

Good job.

I'm sure he would argue that, but no. And then he ended up moving 13 minutes from us. And so we're on 32 acres. We have 25 chickens, we have a 38 year old tortoise, we have two sheep. And, and we're just getting started, you know, we're, we're just getting started on the animals and we have, we're building gardens and, and there's pros and cons. There's a lot of days in full transparency where I miss my quarter acre lot. That was a hell of a lot easier to take care of, you know, But I go out there and I watch the sunset over the back of our 32 acres and it's just, it's our sl slice of heaven on earth. So. Yeah. So I love it. And the vision is that we are completely self sustainable and, and we've got a lot of other families out there that are all on the same path doing the same thing and we're all kind of supporting each other.

Yeah, no, it's. I went out and visited Tucker's property and I knew about this going on. I didn't know you were the first to go. Yeah, but I love the vision. I grew up in an environment like this and that part I miss. I really do. Like you say, there's pros and cons. It's one of the reasons it's motivated us to do what we're doing in Mexico. I told you about that today. So I think what I am next curious about. And by the way, that book, hold on to youo Kids, it's Gordon Neufeld in Gabor Mate, which I've got the link. I put it in the show notes already.

Such a good book.

There we go. It looks interesting. I really love Gabor. I just saw him actually at Joe's not long ago. So getting back on track here to your evolution, what I've always found fascinating about you is.

When I met you, you were coaching. You had just, I think maybe just written or was about to write the book. It was early on in your career and I can remember, man, this guy is so hungry. And you were just crazy enough to pull this off. You know, it was like to believe in yourself so much and hold onto this vision and figure out how to get there no matter what.

And then as I watched you evolve, I'd see you Speak. And I saw a big improvement and change your speaking ability. Now you make a great living speaking and presenting. And what you were doing today, I was listening to what you were doing and you just like, you've really grown into this. So I'm curious right now.

What'S your current business look like? Like if you broke it down, what's the.

You know, where's the revenue come from? How's it structured? Where is it right now? What do you imagine it to become given the fact that your kids are how old right now?

My daughter is 13, my son is 10.

Okay. Yeah. These are such great years. Such great years. Yeah, said the guy with the 20 year old.

So, yeah, I'm really curious what your vision of the next 10 years looks like if you think that far into the future.

Yeah, yeah. So when I wrote the Miracle Morning and I wrote it out of a sense of responsibility, it was like this changed my life so dramatically and it's changing all of my coaching clients lives. I have a responsibility to share this with the world. It was not, I think this will be a bestselling book idea. Not at all. And then when I started, before I published the book, it took me three years to write it. And before I published it, I was teaching the Miracle Morning in interviews and I was giving speeches on it and I was coaching people on it and all this. And so I had so much social proof of, wow, this really helps people. Like I had, you know, I had a gout. This saved my marriage. I had a 19 year old kid that's got me off my depression meds that I've been on for six years and now I'm not taking him anymore after doing the Miracle Morning for three months. And I'm like, that's profound. You know, I had one gal who, her dad had committed suicide and she said, I've spent 10 years depressed. I started doing the Miracle Morning a few months ago and I'm, I'm like, I've made peace with it. So. Right. So I was like, I have to share this with the world. And the biggest I could say or think, as I mentioned, was a mil, you know, change 1 million lives, right? Because that's like the big number and then you choose the arbitrary timeframe, which is one year, you know, and that year, by the way, I did 152 podcast interviews. I launched my own podcast and did 52 weekly episodes. I gave 36 speeches around America. I was on 13 morning talk shows, including some national NBC talk shows. I engaged on social media. I did Everything in my power to change 1 million lives 1 morning at a time. And as I mentioned, we sold 13,000 copies. But I was so committed because of the impact it had made for all the reviews I was getting on Amazon and how it was changing these lives. I, I thought it doesn't matter how long it takes, I will spend the rest of my life to reach a million people, right? And it took six years and six years. After six years we surpassed a million copies sold. And now it's been three or four years since then and we're at almost 4 million copies, right? And so the way that I look at it is 3 million lives have been impacted and not to mention by the way, the lives of everyone that they impact. Because I hear that, I hear the ripple effect of I'm now such a better mom because of my miracle morning. I'm so much more patient with my kids, right? I'm such a better CEO because of my miracle morning, right? So, so the impact is, I mean 3,000 or 3 million books, but who knows how many, you know, millions upon millions of lives have been impacted as a result. The way I look at it though is 3 million copies sold, 8 billion people need to hear about the miracle morning. In 2016 I wrote a 10 year vision. And one of the pieces of that vision was the miracle morning is practiced by every school in America. And as a result bullying is almost non existent. How are you gonna bully with the kid that you just meditated with and you listen to him be vulnerable and share his affirmations and so on and so forth. Mental health issues for kids are at a minimum. And again that was come seeing it happen from these other teens and so on and so forth. Kids ability to focus, you know, like I was diagnosed with ADHD when I was younger on Adderall for many felt like it was, did very detrimental in a lot of ways to me and, and I thought, you know, the ability to now I use my miracle morning to focus. So I thought wow, if kids could learn that and not be on, you know, medicated, so on and so forth. So I set that goal and it's amazing how sometimes the idea of manifesting right, you, you know, you, you write something down and then you don't even know how it's going to happen. Sometimes it's great to make plans and have step by step by step, here's how I'm going to get there, which a lot of my goals I've done, but a lot of them it's like I don't exactly Know how I'm gonna get there. And now Brianna Greenspan, who is the co author of one of the books in the Miracle Morning series. There's about a dozen or so books. She wrote the Miracle Morning Art of Affirmations, which is a coloring book with affirmations for adults and kids. Brianna has single handedly created a position for herself as the director of education for the Miracle Morning. And she has single handedly gotten the Miracle morning in over 200 schools just in the state of New York. That's our test state. And the results are profound. The first school that ever implemented it, they had a huge problem with detention and suspensions. They've been doing the miracle warning for roughly nine months. They went from it being one of the worst schools in their district in terms of suspensions to zero. Mike, it doesn't even make sense. If I hadn't gone, I went there two weeks ago, met with the principal, went and saw the students and showed me their affirmations. And if I hadn't seen it firsthand, and her explaining, no, Hal, we're at zero. We've been at zero since we began implementing the Miracle Morning in our schools. So the mission of the Miracle Morning, once we reached a million people, it had to change, right? Okay, we've now changed a million lives one morning at a time. Now what? Now it's to elevate the consciousness of humanity one morning at a time. And that's not just a cute, fancy inspiring sounding tagline. It's literally what happens when a human being, right, when you dedicate time every morning to your personal evolution, to your personal growth and development, when you become more aware of how your thoughts, your words, your actions are impacting your life, yourself and the people that you reach and that you impact, you are elevating your own consciousness. And now that we have millions of people doing that and it's spreading to millions more and eventually billions of people, it's literally elevating the consciousness of humanity one morning, or one miracle morning at a time, if you will. And so the vision now is to continue the movement, to continue to reach more people. Like I said, Number one, 3 million people have read the book and begin the practice. So I have 8 billion people to reach. And I'll spend the rest of my life doing everything in my power to reach those people. And then, you know, one of those initiatives that I'm so excited about is the Miracle Morning in Schools. Because to learn the, you know, meditation, affirmations, visualization, exercise, reading, journaling, to practice this as an elementary School student or a high school student. Right. The impact, the way that's going to elevate your consciousness as your brain is still developing. I can't even imagine if we had these tools, Mike, when we were that age.

Hey, this is Mike Koenigs. Sorry to interrupt the podcast, but if you're an action taker and ready to transform and reinvent yourself and your business, go to connecttomike.com to learn more and book a conversation with me right now. All right, back to the episode. Wow. Okay. There's a lot to unpack here. While you were going through that, I realized the name of this episode is called how to Create a Mainstream Miracle Movement.

Okay.

And what I'm hearing and what I'm super curious about, because I'm very much like, how, how, how. I want to go into how mode.

So I want to deconstruct. First of all, congratulations on that. I had no, no idea that. First of all, I didn't realize you're up to almost 4 million books, and I didn't know about the school thing, so congratulations. Thank you. Beautiful. There was something to celebrate. I am with you. I think.

Ignorance is forgivable. Stupid isn't.

Sure.

And one of the things that you have the ability to do here, you're clearly doing is bringing a way of thinking.

To kids. And if you want to change a society, we've got to change our children. And you've got to give them a reason to think differently. And we talked about this in the previous episode we recorded, which is create a new identity, a compelling future. And that's a big part of what A Miracle Morning is all about. So here is the question. Earlier, I had asked you, like, what is it.

That have made the biggest impact so far in creating your movement? So here you are. You've got a miracle topic, A Miracle Morning. It's something that could appeal and apply to anyone no matter where you are. You've created a franchise of books and allowed other authors to write like you. Very similar to what Jack Canfield did.

Sure.

With Chicken Soup. And I'm curious about.

The domino movers, the things that have made the biggest difference. So you did a bunch of stuff when you got started to create the movement, which was you spoke everywhere. You said yes to everything. You got on a bunch of podcasts, you did a lot of media, and you wrote your book and you. And you were a grinder.

Yep.

And then, boom.

You started creating that movement. And there was no boom there. It was just like. But I know there are things that made the biggest differences, if you're going to sort by most effective, looking down, what were the most effective domino movers then and looking at what you have right now, what are the most effective domino movers now? So if you had to pick from three multipliers that, like, if you had to do three things that made the biggest impact, what are they? What would they be? So go to the then and do the now.

Yeah, yeah. So first and foremost, I think writing the book, right, that, that, that, that allows you to solidify your ideas, you know, and it forces you to figure them out. Right. You know, it's one thing to talk about something, and every time you talk about it might be a little different when you actually have to write it. But I'm going through the process right now. I'm writing a book called the Miracle Life, and I've been talking about these concepts in my podcast for two years. But having to write it in a coherent flow forces you to really get clear on the message that you're trying to share.

Yep.

So writing the book was a big, you know, was, Was monumental for a lot of reasons. One is obviously that's how the movement has been created and spread and so on and so forth. Here's the piece, though, about the book. You know, the Miracle Morning book. Yes, I did a lot to promote it, but it then became a word of mouth phenomenon. An example of that is the year that I had cancer. Well, yeah, basically the year that I was in the hospital fighting cancer. I went from promoting all the time to zero. I mean, to zero. I was in the hospital for most of eight months, doing 700 hours of chemotherapy, fighting for my life. And so I wasn't doing interviews, I wasn't doing speeches, I wasn't doing any of that. That year we sold more books than any year before. And that was the. What was that, the fifth, sixth year since the book published. So it was strictly people reading the book, telling other people to buy the book. Right. Not me driving it. So I've been asked a lot, like, how do you create? How did you create a book that made it go so viral? Right. This is my theory, if you will. My educated theory is most books shift your thinking, right? You read a book, and as you're reading it, there's a quote, an idea concept, and you go, boom, mind blown. Oh, my God, I've never looked at the world that way. And if anybody's in earshot that day, you might say, oh, my God, you gotta read this book. You gotta. Man, I read this thing this Morning he talked about how the way we communicate with people, whatever it is, right. It's like. And it just, it was a total paradigm shift for me and now I see the world differently. Right. Here's the problem. Most books, because they only shift your thinking. It's very short lived, right? Because as you're reading a book, it might be the best book you've ever read while you're reading it. And so you tell other people they should read it. But as soon as you're done reading that book and you're on to the next book, now that new book's shifting your thinking and now that's all you're talking about.

Yep.

What's unique about the miracle morning that any author or any creator of a movement can, can duplicate is it changes not people's, yes, people's thinking, but more importantly, it changes their behavior, it changes their daily behavior. And it changes their behavior in a way that perpetually adds value to their life, enriches their life every single day. And it's a ritual that they install in their life so that long after they're done reading the book, they're still talking about it. I've had people tell me all the time, they go, man, you know, now that I'm a, you know, miracle morning person, I'm a mediocre evening person, you know, they go, I'm in bed by, you know, nine o' clock every night, right? And they said, so I'm leaving dinner parties early all the time, for example. And it comes up, it's only 8:30. Why are you leaving? I gotta get home so I can get in bed because I gotta do my miracle morning tomorrow. What? You're.

What, What's a miracle?

What's a miracle morning? Oh, well, it's this book that I read four years ago, six years ago, and I'm on my thousandth mirror. I mean, we have a, the miracle morning. Well, this is actually a good, a good segue into another, another one of these pieces.

When I was finished with the rough draft of the book, right, so, but the first. But before I transition to the community, I want to just make sure I emphasize this changing behavior. And if you're listening and you go, okay, that makes sense. If I could share content with people that actually change their daily behavior in a way that perpetually added value to their life. So much so that they'd want to tell other people, God, that makes sense. But hell, if you know, you, your book is changing behavior. It's literally you're giving them a morning routine. I'm writing a book for couples, right? Or my content on how to grow a business or whatever it is. How do I apply that? How do I transfer that to what I talk about? Here's an example. Let's say you're writing a book on improving a marriage, right? You just have to ask yourself, what are the rituals and or routines? What are the daily behavior changes that I can give to that couple that enables them to do something every day that maybe enhances their communication or their romance or helps them feel more connected? Whatever it is, right? Maybe it's a daily gratitude practice at the end of the day, but what can you get? Maybe it's something they do every. You know, your habit stack, and you tie it into there, hey, before dinner every day, start doing this ritual where you share gratitude, whatever it is, right? You can integrate behavior change in any topic. And if you can make it daily, that's ideal because it really becomes a part of their everyday life. And then now they're going, oh, my gosh, you got me and my spouse. We're doing so good. Think about that. Someone's gonna ask, how are you and not Mary doing? Oh, we're doing great, actually. We started doing this thing last year, and we're still doing it. And, man, we learned it in this book. It has just been a total game changer for us. What's that book again? Right. So Changing Behavior is arguably the most important piece. And then I'd love to shift to community, but I want to pause and see if there's anything you want to follow up on.

No, I got a ton of notes here, which I'm putting in the show notes, ladies and gentlemen, because I think the biggest, biggest takeaway is.

What'S unique about the Miracle Morning is it changes daily behavior in a way that perpetually changes and improves their life or the reader's life every day. So they keep talking about it. That is, if there was a massively beneficial takeaway.

So I'm going to just. I'm not going to interrupt you right now. I know what I'm going to ask next. But I want you to stay on your flow. Thanks for asking for a little break there.

Go for it. So when I wrote the rough draft of the Miracle Morning, I sent it to a handful of people in my world. I sent it to my sister because she's brilliant, and I sent it to my buddy John Vroman, founder of Front Row Dads. John Berghoff, founder of Exchange. Right. Handful of different friends and family members. And I said, I want your Feedback. And John Vroman came back and he said, hey, one thing I want to ask. Do you have any kind of online forum or community where people that are reading your book can go and connect to support each other and share ideas? Because he goes, I'd imagine that Miracle Morning is a pretty lonely thing, right? You're up before the rest of your family, possibly you're doing it on your own. There's nobody holding you accountable. And it can be real easy to fall back into your old pattern of just snoozing, you know, through the morning. And I said, oh, that's a great idea. I said, what? Do you have any recommendations? He said, I would just use a Facebook group, you know, and Again, this is 2012. I mean Facebook groups were, you're probably pretty new. But he said, you know, don't, don't create somewhere new that people have to log into. They already got to log into enough places every day. Just go, they're already on Facebook every day. Just put it there. I go, all right, great idea. So I start the Miracle Morning community Facebook group and I add the five people that read the first draft of the book. Right. I'll fast forward that book. That group now has 338,000 members. And I've never like those. That's organic, that's people that have read the book and then joined the community and they wake up every day and support each other. And they're from over, you know, well over 100 countries.

The importance of that, of creating a community where people could support each other. And in the beginning, I engaged daily, right, because there was nobody else. I mean there were just a few people, it was me adding value, so on and so forth. Now it's self perpetual. I go in there almost every day and I check, I comment, I love and like posts. Of course, I can't nearly keep up. You know, I just try to, I just want to keep my pulse on how's this community going. But it's become one of the most support, supportive, loving, non judgmental, accepting online communities that I've ever seen. And here's, you know, it really goes back to the mission of the Miracle Morning. Mission now is to elevate the consciousness of humanity one morning at a time. If you want to see what that looks like, go log into the Miracle Morning community Facebook group and you'll see this. It's. To me, it's one of the finest examples of humanity. People just loving each other and support, supporting each other. And not even just with the Miracle Morning. I had a Gal, she shared, hey, my husband just got a diagnosis. It doesn't look good. I think it was cancer or something. And she said, I know this isn't quite, you know, it's not Miracle morning related, but I just, this is the most positive group of people that I know and I don't know where else to turn. I would appreciate, you know, any thoughts or prayers. And within 24 hours there were 3,000 comments on that post of people. And I go, where else are you going to go to get 3,000 people praying for your, your spouse? You know, and so, yeah, so just the, the power of, and the optimism of like, hey, the majority of people are still good hearted people right now. Ever since 2020, with the political climate and the division that's been perpetuated by politicians, the media, you name it. I think that we are all living in an illusion. That's, pardon my French, it's effed up, right? Meaning we actually believe that these people are wrong and we're right and that these people are so different from us. Right? No, that's an illusion. Every single human on the planet has far more in common than we will ever have different. The differences are superficial. You think or believe one thing because you're watching one news station and I thank or believe something, but, but that's all an illusion. Right? So again, I just, it's a reminder, I feel like the one word, if there's one thing we need and this came to me in like a meditation prayer session, it's unity right now is to remember that we're all brothers and sisters. We're members of the human family. And to me the miracle morning is really just a, you know, it's among many things, but it's a shared practice that every day we can all get quiet and remember what really matters and remember that we all should be loving and supporting each other and accepting of each other's differences and realizing that we all have far more in common than we will ever have different.

Well done, sir. So a positive community in unity, which involves creating a shared practice. It's just a place to go to church.

Yeah. Yeah. There you go.

Yeah. All right, so let's, let's move to.

The now. Like what's, what do you believe is propelling this now? So that's clearly a great stack. It's working without you necessarily.

Yeah.

And you did mention early on what Brianna Greenspran did with the morning money. Miracle morning art and putting that into schools.

You've got partner books which you've been able to leverage Other people's communities, connections, relationships, followings. But let's say you were going to focus on three things that are keeping this in motion right now. If you're going to focus on three multipliers, what would they be?

Yeah. One, it's nurturing the community. And that's always been, I think, a big part of it is people feeling like Hal really cares and he's showing up for us and he's adding value. For example, when I launched my podcast, when the book came out, I didn't take a sponsor on for like, five years, and I turned him down one after another because I thought. And I finally had to get over, like, the reason I didn't take any on is because I thought I launched this podcast to serve my community, and I don't want to taint that with, oh, now I'm making money from the podcast.

Yeah.

And I finally had, you know, friend that was like, dude, you can, you can do both. Like, there's no, there's no reason. Donate all the money to charity if you want, but, like, there's no reason that if sponsors want to pay you and these are products that you use. Right. But, but anyway, the point.

And I'm curious, how many sponsors, how many commercials per episode? And what do you charge? Like, what's the. I'm just.

Yeah, I do. I have two sponsors right now. And I went. So it was hard for me to go from zero to one. When I finally did that, then go to one to two. I'm like, oh, now I'm getting greedy, you know, And. But then I found two that are very aligned. So my two sponsors, the only two I've ever had. First is Organifi. And, you know, this will be our fourth year together or something. And then more recently is a company that's kind of affiliated called Cured Nutrition. And, and, and I take both, you know, I won't take on a sponsor unless I have tried their products, love their products, you know, and so those are my only two sponsors.

And, you know, one pays 6,000amonth, one pays 4,000amonth, you know, and that kind of thing. So, but, but in terms of nurturing the community. So I.

Four months ago, three or four months ago, my team and I were meeting, going, how can we better serve our community? And, and we said, people are craving connect. We surveyed our audience, and one was, I'm lonely. I'm craving connection. I love the Miracle morning community on Facebook, but I. It's just a Facebook group, right? I, I comment. I love seeing posts. They light Me up. I. I want to find a way to connect with Miracle Morning Community members more intimately. And so we, at the last Wednesday of every month, we just launched the Miracle Morning. It was called the Miracle Morning Community Gathering. This month will be the first. We're renaming it the Miracle Morning Elevating Consciousness Experience. I wanted to really.

Bring that concept to the forefront because that to me is what it's doing and I'm trying to normalize elevating consciousness. I feel like it's what the world needs right now, but it's a very foreign concept. Like, if you said somebody, you talk about elevating consciousness, like, I don't know what that means. What is consciousness? What context are you using that in terms of? So the point is, we now do this free event online for the Miracle Morning Community. We use Zoom. It's a two hour experience. It includes a live guided Savers. There's a gal named Lucy Osborne who is the voice of the Miracle Morning app. We launched an app in January and she leads people through Guided Savers. So we do meditation and affirmations and visualization and exercise, all live on Zoom. And then I'll come on and I'll do like a 30 minute keynote, if you will. And then we have this whole orchestrated into breakout rooms where Miracle Morning Community members activate what they learn from me. They set their vision and they support each other and they connect and it's really a lot of. And then they come back and share, you know, who wants to share what. What worked for you, what didn't? So that's been a really powerful way to really serve the community. And so many have said, like, you're not selling. What are you going to. Like, I totally thought you were going to. It was supposed to sell something. This isn't like a webinar to sell something. This is literally there's nothing being sold and none of us are being paid. It's this huge investment of our time, money and energy strictly to authentically serve the community. Kind of back to my initial podcast, Intention, which is like, I really do want to selflessly serve people and not serve people so that I can get something out of it. And it's a real significant shift in intention. Right. And then again the problem becomes, well, how do you get over that to actually go, okay, you can serve and monetize your service. Right. And so I've had to wrestle with how do I keep my intention pure of selflessly adding value and also support my family, you know? Right.

So the, the nurturing of the community is A big piece. Another piece is you've part of nurturing, or not even nurturing, but part of serving is. Is adding new value. Right. It's just a reality where even if you know the most important things that we can do or support each other in doing or the things that have worked for centuries.

Unfortunately or fortunately, our society's been conditioned to want new. Oh, I need the new app, I need the new and we discount the old. I've heard of that before.

But are you doing it? Well, no, but I'm not interested in it because I've heard about it. It's old, Right. In fact, I'm guilty. I almost dismissed the Savers because when I was trying to figure out what the world's most successful people do for personal development and I found meditation, affirmations, visualization, exercise, reading and journaling, I went, all right, well, I guess I didn't find what I was looking for. This is all. Nothing's new. This is nothing new. And then I finally the paradigm was shift was, oh, wait a minute. The world's most successful people have sworn by these practices for centuries. Maybe I should actually do them instead of dismissing them because I've heard of them. Right?

Right.

So to that point, the 10 year anniversary of the Miracle Morning book comes out is next month. It published on 1212 12, December 12, 2012. So you and I, right now, we're about a month away from December actually. Are we almost exact. That's tomorrow. I think it'll be a month from tomorrow. Yeah, December 12th, 2022 is the ten year anniversary. Oh, it is, yeah. Okay, so we're a month away. And so I ever since the book published, right around the time the book published, Tim Ferriss had just come out with the four Hour Workweek Updated and Expanded edition. And I was a big fan of both books, bought both books and I thought one day I'm going to write the Miracle Morning Updated and Expanded edition. And the 10 year anniversary always felt like the time. So for the last six months I have been completely rewriting the Miracle Morning from the place of consciousness that I'm at now versus where I was 10, 11, 12 years ago when I was first writing the book and adding two bonus chapters, the Miracle Evening and the Miracle Life, which is basically my next book, but trying to get into a chapter and, and so that probably won't be out until like mid to late 2023. I was trying to get it done on time for the anniversary, but we're going with a major publisher. That's another piece of this right now the Miracle Morning is still self published in the US and it's traditionally published, thanks to you and your introduction to my agent, in 37 other languages. So I'm hybrid. Right. I got self published US well, now we're going to be. We're missing out on the retail market. And so I've always thought that to reach the masses in the U.S. i need to find a major publisher that will go big and put this in displays in Walmart and Target and Costco and every bookstore. And so we finally found that publisher and they're looking at September 2023, I think as the release date. But anyway, that's an important piece is adding new value, creating new content, keeping it fresh so people stay interested and you can, can still add value to their lives.

Okay, that was a lot. It was really good. But what I really hear here is.

You know, nurture the community, that's momentum building.

And then continue to build on the brand. I had two reactions. So if I may, can I give you just some thoughts that I got as a marketer when I heard something?

Yeah, please.

So here's what it was when you mentioned the name. I'm a big naming guy and you basically just said, I want to create. We call it the Miracle Morning Elevating Consciousness Experience. And I'm a big believer in sell them what they want, give them what they need. So the, if someone has to say what is that? And what does it mean?

And my, my meter, like it sounds neat, but it'd be like, yeah, I don't know if I need that versus.

You know, it's like meet the community or meet new friend. It's like, you know, and part of it is I'm lonely, I'm craving community and connection. And, and it'd be like if the Miracle Morning connection creator or something like that, if the word or description was what you're doing. So give them what they want. If there's a lot of demand for that.

And I'm not exactly sure what that word should be right now versus I like connection. Yeah. And I think connection is one of the words. But if you were going to answer this question.

So you know what they want and I would actually survey that. What's the name number one thing you want more than anything in your life right now and what's the number one thing you wish the Miracle Morning could give you and find out what all those words are? I think the answer would show up from that and then maybe you'd do another survey question which is what is the number one thing you've gotten from being a member of the Miracle Morning community?

But if you have that.

And again, what you want to help them do is imagine a bigger future and have the experience of receiving whatever that desire is up front. Give them the result, outcome, benefit right away. And if you can deliver that in what it is called, I'm telling you, I think this will grow five or ten times faster and you'll get a lot more engagement a lot quicker. And then you can always give them what they need by telling them, and I'll do this all the time, I'll say, okay, I got you here because I promise you're going to make more money. Okay?

Yeah.

And achieve greater status and improve your health and well being. The truth is that's not really what you need.

Yeah, yeah.

What you need is.

A new identity, you know, that's what you seek. Yes. So anyway, just to bring this around, I love the miracle life as well. And I think the other thing that I want to commend you on is the fact that.

You'Re not monetizing. So I have a tendency to monetize too quickly. I'll be like, I'm just going to do it because. Because this way I only get buyers showing up and non buyers sometimes are the first to complain and whine and not see value 100% see. So I don't want the unwashed masses. You're in a different space, but at the same time, pigs get fat, hogs go to slaughter. By building this massive goodwill and then saying, and you can create an event where you've genuinely said, a lot of people are asking for X and we want to deliver that, but we also want to make sure that the people who show up are the ones who are going to have the highest degree of implementation. So you can frame it as the reason why this is an investment is because if you want a miracle, you got to show up and invest like it's a miracle or whatever your language patterns are. But let's wrap this up because I could go on and on and on. But for you, if you are going to.

You know, end with a miracle movement, word of mouth phenomenon, if anything else about creating a miracle movement.

What.

Would.

Your advice be?

Stick with it.

Okay.

You know, it's often said it takes 10 years to be an overnight success. Actually, you said this when I was interviewing. You know, you said that begs the question, what, what are you willing to commit 10 years of your life to, to make it an overnight success then?

Right, Right.

Yeah. It's funny, I just, I didn't realize until I said it that you told me. I forgot that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're just so much wisdom out there. No, but, but here's the thing. So it, you know, again, my goal was to sell a million books in a year. And it took me six. Right. And I could have given up. I mean, 13,000 copies of the first year. I'm 98.7% short of the goal. That's pretty discouraging, you know? Yeah. And by the way, I pulled out a calculator and if you. 13,000, I believe a million divided by 30, I think it was 107. It would take me 117 years at that pace. Yeah. You can run the numbers. I'm like, I'm gonna be dead. But, but what I've. Here's what I've realized.

76 years.

76.

Okay.

What I've realized. For anybody listening, I want you to think about this, right? Human beings, we're very impatient. We want what we want. We want it now. We look at other people that are succeeding at a higher level and we're jealous, we're envious. We want to be where they are now, right? And here's what I've realized. When you finally get to the point in your life or in your business that you've been working so hard for, for so long, you almost never wish it would have happened any sooner. Instead you get there, you look back, you're like, oh, it had to take six years. I had to go through the ups and downs. I had to meet person A, year three, that led to person B, year four, right? And so, damn, I wasted so much time being insecure, upset, depressed, scared, worried. What a waste of energy. And that to me is a. It's true for life. At the end of our life, I think we're going to look back and go, everything happened as it happened. And every moment I spent in a suboptimal mental and emotional state was a waste of the gift of the life that I was blessed to live. So if you're listening to this right now.

Yes.

Wake up every day and maintain a healthy sense of urgency to put one foot in front of the other, keep moving forward, keep moving forward, keep moving forward. But know that when you finally get to the point you've been working so long, hard for, for so long, the timing is always perfect. So be at peace with where you are on this journey and enjoy every frickin moment of this one life. You've been blessed to live. Well.

I can't put a cherry on top of that so I won't. So here's what I will say. First of all, thank you so much for being here and this was fascinating. Really great. I've wanted to talk to you about this for a long time so it's a great excuse.

Nice.

And for you watching, listening, make sure you follow hell elrod@hell elrod.com where else you can can we send them?

Miracle Morning.com is probably the best place. From there you can get the book, the movie, the app, the community, all of it. Boom.

And definitely study what he's doing, study what he's doing. Next buy all his stuff and join his community if you want to study it or enjoy it as well. This is capability amplifier. Hopefully your capabilities have been amplified just listening to this. Now go out and multiply. All right, let's say goodbye.

Bye everybody. Sa.