AI Can't Copy This: Why Every Creator Needs an Origin Story in 2026

Sharing your story is not a burden. We use that as an excuse so we don't have to share our story.

My guest today is Philip McKernan, author of One Last Talk. He's helped Olympians, World Cup athletes, and even consulted with the US Army and the Pentagon. Philip explains that your origin story is your most compelling asset.

The most compelling way to connect authentically with people and help them feel something in themselves is to share a part of our origin story. And a lot of us leave those origin stories behind, and I think that's a mistake.

Philip walks us through the Soulset process, which breaks down the overlap of story, gift, My

experiences with creatives is that they don't put a value in what they do naturally. They're too busy trying to put a value in what they think the world wants from them.

I have to share this with other people. I felt like I had discovered something incredible. I'm like, do you know this? You'll see him do this exercise with me live, including a moment where he has me draw a picture of my ideal avatar.

Can we get a blank page?

Yeah. I was having this hangup where I needed to ask people for help with promoting my new book, and I was feeling anxious because I do not want to be a burden on them.

How selfish of you not to ask people for help because you are abandoning this poor man. How selfish of you. Selfish of you.

This is actually episode 150 on the show, and I couldn't think of a better episode to celebrate this milestone with.

There's a saying that I say: Your greatest gift lies right next to your deepest wound.

If you want to learn what it is you're put on this earth to do, this is the best episode on the show to watch. Philip, welcome to the show.

Thank you for having me.

It's basically impossible to describe what you do, but we've known each other for about eight years, and I think of you as someone that people come to when they need clarity.

And

we're gonna talk today about storytelling and how that matters so much as an entrepreneur. But let's dive in right there. Why does knowing your story and, and sharing your origin story matter so much as an entrepreneur?

I think it matters on so many levels when it comes to parenting, it comes to leadership, it comes to business. Um, if I may kick off with a story, I think that illustrates it best, is I was invited to be part of this Shark Tank Dragon's Den, uh, competition where entrepreneurs would come along, they'd pitch their business to 3 entrepreneurs at a table, and we would help critique their business pitch. And then the whole goal would be to get to the final. And if they got to the final, they get on the main stage, deliver their pitch one last time, and then they either win or they don't. And if they were picked and they'd win, they would get injection of capital, they got marketing support, mentorship, et cetera. Anyway, this poor—

There's a lot at stake.

There's a lot at stake. And this beautiful young man came up and he was petrified and he did this, he was shaking and it was his first time pitching and myself and 2 entrepreneurs to my right. And he pitched his business and the first entrepreneur entrepreneur said, listen, I loved your pitch. I just loved to have seen a few more numbers to really get a sense of the business and the projections. And he goes, oh, great. And he's making a note. And she was very gracious. The next one said, love, love the pitch. Well done. And I just loved to have seen more information on marketing and how you're gonna, you know, you know, put this out to the world and draw clients in. And then it came to me and I just looked at him and I said, I don't get it.

Hmm.

And this poor young man looked at me and said, uh, uh, what part? And I said, the whole thing. And he goes, but what do you mean? And I said, really? You want to build a gym and multiple gyms? Does the world really need another gym? And meanwhile, the 2 entrepreneurs were looking at me going, who is this ass? Right?

Right.

But I could feel something. My intuition was telling me there was a reason that he wanted to build a gym and create a franchise and bring this out to the world. And he looked at me and I said, but why you? And he goes, well, my personal story doesn't matter. And I said, well, it matters to me. And he paused for a moment, and then he looked at me with this combination of sadness, anger, and possibility. And then finally he said, my parents left when I was a baby, when I was a young boy, and I grew up with my grandmother, and she meant the world to me. And when she passed away from a disease related to obesity, my life fell apart so badly that I went to prison. And he, with tears rolling down his face, Nathan, he goes, and no one should lose somebody prematurely to something that can be prevented. I look over to my right and the first entrepreneur is just, just rolling. Yeah. The next entrepreneur is crying. I didn't start crying because I'd already been crying, and the guy himself was crying. And then he goes, but you're not suggesting that I bring that into my pitch? I went, oh no, don't do that. Why would you do that? It's the only most compelling reason that you are on this mission. Why on earth would you bring that into your pitch? And I won't tell you exactly the language I used. I said, you'll be an Effing idiot. He brought it into his pitch. He got to the final. And when he pitched his business next to the 2 entrepreneurs that were in the final alongside him, he was picked by every single judge. Some of the best entrepreneurs that have ever come out of America were sitting there judging this man. And when they were asked, why did you all pick him? They all said in one form or another, he had the most compelling reason to start this business. And he won the competition outright. So that's a practical example of why your origin story matters. And you may not think you have an origin story that is quite as dramatic like that, but we all have origin stories and a lot of us leave those origin stories behind. And I think that's a mistake.

I mean, it's so clear to me how much that matters, especially because I do cry easily, but it's one of those things, I am so emotionally invested in your retelling of his story. But especially for content creators, right? We are storytellers. We get up and we talk and everyone listening has businesses where they tell stories and often they'll say, oh no, I tell the stories of the transformations I create in my clients, or I do these other things. It's like, okay, but why do you do it? And so to dig into that is so important.

It is critical. And there's always a reason and there's always an opportunity to reorientate your business to connect it to the reason that you're doing it. You didn't just wake up and decide to be a creator one day. You were born a creator and you've become a creator and you're creating something and there's probably a meaning behind it that you have and you hold it secretly to yourself, or you have an opportunity to share with the world. And people, there's a saying, and forgive me, I can't remember who came up with this beautiful saying, and you may remember, but people will forget what you do. They'll even forget what you say, but they will never forget how you make them feel. And I think the most compelling way to connect authentically with people and help them feel something in themselves is to share a part of your origin story. to allow other people to see your humanity, but also experience and feel theirs.

Something that stands out to me that you said is, why you, right? You're saying this to that entrepreneur, and in every business there's a dozen people that we could hire, a dozen different businesses, you know, brands we could buy from and all of that. And I think everyone is asking like, okay, but why you over everyone else? Maybe the first question is like, why you? Right? You know, and putting it back on you of what's your origin story that brings you to wanting to do this work?

Yeah, I mean, I'll give you the short version of it. And I think that the shortest version I can give you is, you know, there's kind of, there's so many different nuances, but I remember sitting in classroom one day feeling incredibly isolated and lonely. And a teacher looked at me and she said, she asked me to read and I'm dyslexic, so reading was a challenge. And I said, miss, would rather not read. And I was actually— I remember being quite polite. I was actually quite a nice kid despite the rumors. And, um, she said, oh, another excuse. And she looked at me and she said, you know what, I don't even know why you come in here. And she pointed straight at my face. I don't know why you bother coming to school. And then she went over to the window and she says, you don't do anything in here and you're going to mean nothing out there.

Wow.

And even like, even as I say that, I can still feel the emotion because I absolutely believed every word that came out of her mouth, and I believed it for a very, very, very long time. And what I decided to do was I put on the burners, the jet burners, and I was going to make sure no matter what, I was going to prove her wrong. And the idea was I thought about meeting her on the street one day, and when I wasn't successful, I didn't want to bump into her. But when I started to have some success, Then I wanted to bump into her and I wanted to take her that finger that she was pointing at me. And I honestly wanted to flip the finger and you know what I wanted to do and point it back at her and say, fuck you. Look what I've done with my life. Until one day I remember waking up going, it was one of the most beautiful moments. And it was, you know, we say these things, I woke up one day and, and it's never really one day, but on this occasion it literally was one day. And I woke up and I just asked myself a different question. What was going on in her life that she had to take me out or knock me to the ground or grind me into dust? Because that's what it felt like at the time. Right. So my origin story was a lot of isolation, a lot of loneliness. And my mission, if you like, hidden, is I want to eradicate loneliness for as many people as I can before I die. And I do that through helping them connect to meaningful work that brings them alive, connecting to themselves through their origin story so they understand who they are and why they're on this planet. And connecting to the people around them. Because I don't think it's about deepening relationships in the traditional sense. I think a lot of us struggle with relationships because we don't allow people in. It's not about going out and finding someone to love. It's about allowing somebody to see you, all of you, and allowing them in. And to me, that is, if I can do that and help people do that, loneliness doesn't have the oxygen and the place to actually survive. And to me, that's why I'm on this earth and that's my mission.

Did it take you a long time to come to that? realization? Or was that early in your journey as an entrepreneur?

Nathan, I am incredibly slow. I am incredibly slow. So in a way, it feels like it took me a lifetime, and I could have gotten there sooner. But in another way, as cliché as it might sound, I honestly think that it wouldn't mean as much to me if I got there too soon. So I think I had to get there over a longer period of time. But no, I think, I think it was a pretty slow process for me.

Okay. So I want to fill in a few of these circles up on the board.

Yeah.

So Philip, the Dragon's Den story clearly shows like why sharing your story matters, but I feel like there's so much more to it than just, oh, this is my origin story. Like what is this framework and, and how do you dive into working through it?

Yeah. So at the top it's, it's your story, which we've, we've touched on. Maybe what I'll do is I'll walk you through a, a real-life example. You know, we're in the middle of the World Cup right now. It's coming to the end. It's in the United States and, and obviously in Mexico and Canada. And I'll give you a story from an athlete that I've worked with and gotten to know very, very well. And it's a beautiful story because it just shows what's possible for us. And I work with entrepreneurs and I work with athletes as well and the crossovers and really they're the same thing. But a young man walked into a room not dissimilar to this. And I was working with a club in Colorado, professional MLS club. He sits down in front of me and he said, so yeah, nice to meet you. And I said, Great. Why are you here? And he said, to my surprise, he said, I want to know about entrepreneurship. Now, this guy's not at the end of his career like Messi. This guy is just starting out. He's in his early 20s. And I'm thinking, you want to talk about entrepreneurship? And my intuition again was telling me, I got to call BS on this. And I said, you want to talk about entrepreneurship because you're interested in entrepreneurship, or you're afraid that you can't and will not quite make it as a soccer player? To which he kind of sat back and went, oh, that's the way it works in this room. You're actually going to challenge me.

Right.

And he said, well, look at my life right now. It's not exactly going very well. I've just been bought from a different club where I was ostracized and sitting in the stands. I wasn't even allowed to train with the team. I was brought to this club with promises of playing, and I haven't even got a minute, and I'm not even on the bench,

and

I'm not being picked. So I'm keeping my options open. And I said, why don't we forget about entrepreneurship and we just talk about football as we call it in Europe? And we did and we continued to talk about it. But I remember the first thing he said to me is when I finally got him to let go of this entrepreneurship thing, he said, okay, great. Let's do it your way. Where do we start? And he thought I was going to talk about psychology or performance or watch some of his videos of him playing. And I just said, tell me your story. And he goes, yeah. He says, well, I started playing soccer when I was like 8 and I went to this college. And I said, I'm not asking you about what you've done. I want to know who you are. And he said to me, you want me to start when I was a kid? I said, yeah. And he said, well, it was tough. I grew up in a really poor neighborhood in Philadelphia. We were poor and I Racism to deal with, and I had loneliness, and I had all this different stuff. And we started to build this story, and I started to get to know this young, beautiful human being. And I eventually said to him, what's the dream? And he said, well, now that I'm connecting with it, I suppose the dream would be to, in some way, shape, or form in the future, come back and help kids like myself in Philadelphia. Right. And I said, great. I said, why wait? He goes, what do you mean? I said, why wait? They're watching you now. So he started to play football. And the way I would interpret that is he started to play football with a reason to play more than just himself.

He was thinking about, once I achieve either my football career and aspirations, or if that doesn't work out, which is looking like it's not going to work out, then I'm going to become an entrepreneur. Somehow I'm going to make money. And then once I make money, I can go back and I can help 8-year-old me.

Yeah.

Back in my hometown.

And I honestly believe because the difference at that level between an athlete, one athlete and another, it's minuscule. I mean, tactically and technically and physically, there's an intuition and a freedom. And I think when I work with entrepreneurs or athletes, it's about helping them play with freedom is the big one. But ultimately his short-term goal was to get to Europe, which he finally achieved and he got to Europe and that was like the pinnacle. That was the biggest. But I kept harping on about what's the next one? What's the next one? What's the next one? And the next one was to play for his national team, the United States. But meanwhile, keep reminding him all of the time that people are watching, people are watching, people are watching. Not—

You're having your impact right now.

You're having the impact. And that is the power of connecting with your story, even the parts of your story, which we'll talk about later on, that you don't want to talk about, that you're ashamed of or you're embarrassed by, or they're painful. That's fuel that can drive you in a really positive way. And he has gone on to do extraordinary things. The dream became playing for the national team. And I remember the day that he was picked to play for the national team for the United States. And then it was announced that the World Cup was coming to America as one of the host nations. And the dream became, would that be a possibility? Like, what if I went to the World Cup in my own home country?

Right.

And he was picked for the team. And they're like, what if I play? And then what if I score? And it was about 10 days ago, he scored his first international goal for the United States. When he scored, it was such a stunning goal by anybody's standards, but he's a defender, so he's not like a goal scorer.

Yeah. That's not the group of people on the team that score goals usually.

And when he scored, apart from going absolutely ballistic myself, jumping up and down and screaming, It just didn't surprise me because this young man, he's got his own spiritual beliefs and things like that, which I won't get into right now, but he's playing for it. He's just playing for something that sits just beyond who he is. And therefore I think he possesses something that a lot of other people just don't. And I think that's available to all of us.

What's the contrast from when you saw him play when he was sitting across the table from you in a room To who you saw score a goal in the World Cup?

Playing with purpose. He's playing, he's on a, he's on a, he's on a mission, but, but not frenetic. He's not, he's not burning bridges and burning, burning his life to get to something. It's not like this insatiable drive. It's a calmness within. It's actually a knowing.

Okay.

It's a sense of knowing I'm good enough. I can do this. I will do this. And I think that comes from just a deep sense of trust, which a lot of, in my experience, a lot of creatives and a lot of entrepreneurs that I meet, they don't really back themselves. They'll back themselves intellectually, but emotionally they just don't trust who they are. But his story has created the fuel for so much of his surface success, but it's much more than that.

Okay. So to complete this framework here, what else do I write in here?

Yeah. So we've got story up here, which is kind of the top, which is the key. And then we have gift in here.

Okay. What do you mean by gift?

Well, I mean, a lot of people would write down talent, and I think for many people, I believe the example I use is my wife, because technically she's not here, so I can kind of use her story. But my wife was an accountant and she is the worst accountant in the world simply because, not because she doesn't understand spreadsheets and not because she doesn't understand numbers, but because she was never put on this planet to be an accountant. Like, trust me, that was just not her thing. But if you understand her origin story, you realize that she grew up in a pretty poor background. She wanted to escape where she was living. And I don't mean that in a negative way towards her family, which she wanted to get out of this rural environment. Her sister was an accountant and she was pretty decent with numbers. So she added it together and accountants get paid well. So your origin story can drive you in a really positive way, or it can drive you to achieve things that ultimately won't work and it won't matter in the future. So the gift, the difference between a talent and a gift is talent is something that can be learned, like the soccer player, like the young man we're speaking about. But the gift, there's a saying that I say, your greatest gift lies right next to your deepest wound. And his wound was, and my wound was loneliness. His wound was poverty, judgment, or whatever. But through the lens of shining a light on his story, the gift that emerged for him is his ability to affect change in people similar to him. in environments that he was stuck in so they can believe, if he can get out, I can get out too. If he can do something with his life, perhaps I can too. So I think a lot of us spend our lives executing our talents and never honoring our gifts. And to me, I think that's a tragedy. So he started to get in touch with this gift through the lens of some awkward conversations, and that's where purpose starts to come in. That's where aligning who you are and what you do every day towards something and then realizing that we're all stewards of something. We're stewards of something. We bought a medieval castle on the west coast of Ireland, random thing as it is. And people go, what's it like to own a castle? And I don't feel like we own a castle. I feel that we are stewards of a place for a very short space of time. And that energy, it feels so beautiful. It feels so abundant. So he feels that he's a steward of the talent that he has and he's created, But the giftedness that he also has inside of him and to use that for good.

You brought up a quote which is in your book, uh, One Last Talk, and it's the quote that you have on the inside cover, which is, your greatest gift lies next to your deepest wound. And this is a quote that I have thought about really a lot in my life. And it, it took me through a lot of times of trying to find purpose. Why do I do what I do? Mm-hmm. And coming back to my story, I was realizing, you know, a lot of entrepreneurs have this of like growing up in an environment where Money is very scarce. And my biggest thing is I always felt like I was a burden on other people. And so when I learned that making money is a skill or a collection of skills that can be learned, it was like this incredible unlock. And I was like, oh wow, I can, you know, I have to share this with other people. I felt like I had discovered something incredible. I was like, do you know this? And then, you know, when you learn about how an audience can give you this incredible leverage that like, I just became so, so excited. But in order to find it, I like, it was that quote of, you know, your greatest gift lies next to your deepest wound. And it was all of the, the pain from childhood of just feeling like, oh man, if I wasn't here, then my family could afford these things. They could have these different experiences. That's where like, I am just a burden. And I think old me would have run away from that and hidden it and not even ever uncovered that.

Yeah.

Uh, but really in digging it out. Then as you know, you said like the purpose and alignment, um, and even the stewardship, right? It's something where I feel like so many of the ideas in my life and work, it's like they're not even mine. I'm just a, I'm just a steward of, you know, and that's how I feel about, you know, people would say, oh, when are you gonna sell the company? I'm like, I don't, there's an element of me that I don't even feel like it's mine to sell. I'm just like a steward of the impact that we have with it. Yeah. For this period of time.

Well, it's clear to me that you've clearly done work. How you've done the work, where you've done the work, whether it's self-directed or otherwise, is, it's not relevant for today. But what I kudos on you, because there's an energy that you talk about your background that it's integrated. And I often find that people are either in reaction to their past or in relationship to it. And I work with a lot of entrepreneurs who just are, they've come from poverty. I've worked with athletes who come from poverty.

Yep.

And there is no greater drive than the fear of going back.

Right.

But what I would say, there's a caveat, to a point. So running from what you don't want is great, but here's the absolute reality of it, is that that energy runs out. That energy takes too much from you. That energy is exhausting. And that there is a point in life where you can just pause and say, okay, I've outrun the monster, the fear of going back to poverty, whatever it is. How do I reorientate towards something that I want to build? And that is one of the most courageous moments in an entrepreneur's or a creative's journey is to stop running what you don't want and moving towards what you do want. And the way I would contextualize that is you're running on diesel fumes or diesel fuel, and the idea is to move to hybrid and then to move on to electric, a cleaner fuel. And the reason that most people don't make that transition when I get close to their origin story and we start working on this is they go, don't take my story away. Don't get near my story. This story has driven me. Look at all the data. Look what I've created in my life.

It's served me very, very well.

It's served me beautifully. If you take this away, you're taking away my drive. And in my experience, it is the opposite. When you start to orientate towards something that's cleaner, purer, you play with freedom as a soccer player. You play with freedom as an entrepreneur. You play with freedom as a parent. And you start making decisions that feel truly and deeply aligned to who you are. And you become unapologetic as a leader, and you become deeply, deeply focused. And invariably, in my experiences, impact starts to creep in in a different way.

Mm-hmm.

So it's the opposite of what most people think.

And that's the last circle there is impact.

Is impact.

There's something, I'll write this and then talk about it. Uh, there's a freedom with it that I think sometimes scares me and, uh, scares people on my team, if I'm being honest. So we're in a period of massive change, right? With AI and every, every business and industry is being shaken up in a big way. People have said it's like the Industrial Revolution times the invention of the internet, like happening right now. And so we're watching new businesses spring up and just as many die off and cease to exist. And so there's an incredible amount of fear around it. And I had conversations with a few people on my team and they're like, you're not, you don't seem afraid at all. And what I, and so we've had a lot of conversations about it and part of it is I feel like we have a really clear plan. Or we're very clear on what the impact we're going to have in the world and how our adoption of AI is going to further that. But I had this realization through these conversations that it could all disappear and I would be just fine. Like I actually don't fear going back because I know that even if, you know, a company doing tens of millions of dollars a year in revenue, like disappeared overnight, I don't think I'd have any regrets over not selling it or not taking money out or that sort of thing. Like, I know at a basic level, why not? I know that my family's taken care of, but I know that building the company is not my work. My work is helping creators earn a living and no longer be a burden and showing them that there's these skills and tools out there. And I know that if my current vessel for that disappears,

yeah,

there'll be another one.

So that's the key. there'll be another vessel. There'll be another way to do the same thing where I think a lot of people, and that's why I said, why not? Why are you not afraid? Why are you not afraid? And a lot of people watching this, listening to this in the future might make an assumption. They go, oh, well, it's easy for you to say. You've got millions in the bank. You have this, this, and this. Right. I don't. People have said to me, oh, it's easy for you to do what you do. I started doing this work when I had $200 in the bank account. We were completely and utterly wiped out and we were underwater to hundreds of thousands of euros. And I decided to start a business in a foreign country in Canada. And we bought a medieval castle when the middle of COVID when our business just slightly affected, it was only down 95%.

Only slightly.

Only 95%. And we have a very modest boutique coaching business. But what you're sharing there is so beautiful and so fascinating that even if this is taken away, your identity is not locked and attached to it, which most of us get sucked into that. Could you just elaborate a little bit more if you don't mind? Because what you're sharing, you're sharing it so simply, but I think it's so profound. It's more profound than anything I'll share here today, genuinely. How do you, and how have you gotten to a point where there's, you care, but you're detached to some extent that if this goes away, which it most likely won't because you have a plan and you know the impact you're going to make, but there's going to be another vessel. Like, how do you get to that place? What have you, what process, what, how do you think like that?

Well, I think if you go back to more things as a kid. Uh, a, a, a like recurring nightmare that I had as a kid was always seeing myself in third person, like from an altitude in some way, and then bad things happening in some way. You know, it could be like chased by a wild animal or whatever. Yeah. But that was always the format of the nightmares that I had. And to the point where I would, you know, if I sensed like starting to view things from a, a third-party lens, That was scary. I had to be in it. Otherwise it was a scary thing. Now I feel like I can, like that is a tool that I can use and I can step outside of whatever is happening and observe it from the third party and go, oh, however that plays out. Like, I don't know exactly how to describe it, but it, um, detached is the wrong word, but it's very much, it's like a different altitude. And so. The thing that I feel is like being able to play with this relaxed feeling. And I heard Jason Fried talk about this of like when he was learning to play the drums, he's gripping the drumsticks and his instructor's like, you're never going to be good until you learn to hold them loosely. Now I struggle with this all the time where I end up in this other world where it's easy to fall into the, oh, if we do this and a competitor does it better, and what if we don't win? this customer and, you know, you're in a competitive landscape and all of that. And I have to keep reminding myself like, that's okay. Actually, I think the clearest example of this is, is actually Elon Musk, where he, which he, as far as clean fuel, dirty fuel, like you get into a whole thing of how he fuels himself as an entrepreneur. And I, I don't think a lot of it is healthy, but something that he says, he's like, look, Our mission is around clean energy, around electric cars, around all this. People are like, what if Toyota or Mercedes comes in and does this? And he's like, okay, they're just furthering our mission. You know, he is like, we don't have patents for anything. Yeah. You know, like it's all open source. And so I try to stay in this place and I'm not always there of when, uh, a content creator that we serve is on our platform versus someone else's. to be able to say whatever makes them most successful. And so long as they're, if they're really, really successful on a competitor, that's great. Like that competitor is helping us achieve our mission.

And that's what I want to come back to in a minute. Before I do, what you're describing to me is, as I stand here listening to you, and it's not, you're right, it's not detached because detached makes it feel and sound like you just don't care where it's actually the opposite. You care deeply, And you care enough, but it's almost like you hold it. So there's this, there's this, there was a, I think it was a therapist showed me this the first time. I can't remember, but this is as AI comes into the world, this is what it feels like. It's like, hold on tight, grip as tight as you can, no matter what. We're going to burst through this and we're going to just, as AI comes into the world, we're going to double down and we're going to, and as I hold that, imagine that's a seed or whatever. Yeah, you might get some moisture in there, but there's no light.

Mm-hmm.

And what most people think is when they, when we ask them to let go is they think like this, well, I need to, I need to let it go. And what I'm thinking is, no, it's like this. You hold what you do in your hand, you hold the possibility, but you let go of the grip and the tightness attached to it, which is back to the drumsticks as you talked about.

Yeah. And I think about, I don't know if it's a timeline or how you would express it, but you know, if you think about, I don't know, there's, there's, uh, this line here and it's like we have a customer and they're right here and our product is going to get them to here, right? And we're trying to achieve this goal. And it really matters that we win the sale and this happens, but we can forget about the fact that the goal is to make it like somewhere along here is the goal of not helping this customer, but helping creators earn a living and helping anybody that we could serve. Right. And then if you go even further, the goal is making sure that, you know, the, the equivalent of the, the kid back in Philadelphia, right. Or in my case, the, you know, the 10-year-old up at living up in the mountains, watching his parents fight about money again, like that he feels like he's not a burden.

Mm-hmm.

And so then you start to think, you know what, if like I'm very attached to, I'm gonna help this person in this way and all of that.

Yeah.

And if someone else is like, no, we're actually helping this person over here. And then it ultimately gets, it's like, I don't have to be the one to achieve that for people. Mm-hmm. Uh, if I get to, that's a huge privilege. But it's, it's zooming out at a different altitude and seeing it for the big picture instead of the very specific outcome of like, did we win this deal or build this feature or something?

What would a 10-year-old back then think about who you are today?

Oh, he'd be, he'd be blown away. Like he would not, I mean, there are so many days you, we, we can get into this later, but right. The happiest days are all about the number of times now that I go, I cannot believe my life is just wild. Yeah.

Before we get onto, and we're going to be moving on to this, but I think a lot of us struggle with that. And I'm guilty with this. I'm not great at stopping and appreciating. But yeah, so the last couple of days, you know, we're in Boise, Idaho. I'm staying with you. I was in the gym with you this morning and your son. Last week I was, Mike Reed and Daniel Priestley invited me into their organization to work with a big cohort of people on origin story. And then in between, I'm driving through the mountains of Montana in Yellowknife, and then I'm here. And I found myself on occasion just driving through the mountains, just smiling, going, is this the life that I get to live and have created and everything else? And I look back and I think about my 10-year-old often. I used to, because I would've thought it was just fluff and bullshit. But I think about my 10-year-old often, and particularly the young boy that was pointed out in the classroom, And the teacher that made me feel like I was a piece of shit and I was worth nothing and would amount to nothing. And I'm thinking, you know what? I've done okay. I've done okay. Yeah. How important is it for you to be clear with all the changes that are happening? Because you said earlier on, we're really clear on the impact we want to make. I don't need to necessarily hear what the details are unless you want to share parts of it, but how important is that to have that as a North Star to orientate towards that amongst all of the change that's going on?

I think it's incredibly important. And every time I lose sight of this and I start to, to think about a short-term timeline,

Yeah.

then I get stressed, I get anxious, I start to grip the drumsticks and I'm like, okay, what if this happens? What if someone invents a better way of achieving this goal than we do? And, you know, and, and all of that. And, uh, it's not that I want my business to disappear in any way, you know, but that gets me You know, okay, talking about kids, uh, my oldest is 14 and a half, and in Idaho you get to get your driver's permit at 14 and a half, which is wild.

That's scary. Okay.

So he has his permit, he's driving now. He's actually like really a good driver. I'm quite impressed. But one of the things that you have to work with all new drivers on is they want to stay in the lanes, right? And so they look right here in front of the car.

Yeah.

Right? They're looking at the next deal they're trying to close or whatever else. And what happens when you do that is you're like doing this and it's terrifying as a passenger because you're like, okay, I need you to look way down the road. I need you to look as far as you can see down the road practically. You know, I need you to look through the curves. Don't look at the curve. Like you're going to drive right into a barrier if you do that. Like I need you to look through the curves. And so I think that being really clear on these things, your story, your gift, And then ultimately your impact, why you're doing it, is what allows you to look far down the road, see through the curves. And as things come up, you're like, you can start to, you have a different perspective. You can start to see, oh, that is something that I need to address in the process of where we're going. Or you're like, that's not even going to matter. Like we're driving 50 miles an hour. That's, I'm not even going to think about that again in about 3 seconds. Um, it's going to pass right by.

What's coming up for me is, is about about 7 years ago, we came across this medieval castle in Ireland in an area I'd been running retreats in for forever. And this little castle buried in the mountain, which has the most extraordinary origin story, which maybe is not for today, became— came up for sale. And it was the middle of COVID Our business was down 95%. And I looked at it online and I shut down the computer and said, that's ridiculous. And then I looked at it again. I said, that's ridiculous. And then about a month later, I opened it up and I called my wife and she walked into the room and I said, Can you imagine? And I turned my laptop towards her and instantaneously she said, yeah. And long story short, we flew back to Ireland, we had our masks on, we walked into the castle. Right. There was rats and bats and mold and shit and everything. It was just horrendous. The grounds were in bits. And we just, I made an offer. I just, it was instantaneous. I had to make an offer and I didn't know how I was going to figure it out and how I was going to pay for it. And I knew it was going to take a ton of time and a ton of energy. And if you want to lean over and touch my soft hands. These hands had never seen a hard day's labor in their life. So I have no idea what to do. But I became obsessed with creating a safe place for people to come from all over the world to heal, to grow, and to go back out into the world and make the biggest impact they can make in the world. And I remember one of the greatest moments of doubt, and there were many, but there was a moment of doubt. And I have a kind of slogan, if you want to call it, be brave, you matter.

And

I think courageousness, I think being courageous is one of the most beautiful things that we can give our children or inspire our children to believe. I think courage is the gateway to clarity. It's not clarity and then courage, it's courage always first. And I remember looking at my now 14, 15-year-old, which I can't imagine her driving, by the way. No disrespect to her if she listens to this or watches. But I remember looking at her and she said, Daddy, you okay? And I said, Maggie, I'm really— I just don't know if I can complete this project. I'm so out of my depth. And she would've been probably 11. And she said, Dad, is this place going to be important to people? And I said, yeah. And then she looked me in the eyes and she said, Dad, be brave. This matters. And

I

just started crying. And I stood up and I said, I said, it does and it will, and we're going to finish this off. And it took us 6 years to restore this place. Wow. But because it was for other people, That's what drove me every day. And when I tried to impart my vision of what this place needed to be onto it too deep, too aggressively, the castle and the grounds would push back and say, no, thank you very much. But when we would stand back and go, what do you need to create this as the most beautiful place in the world for people to come and grow and for leaders to come and grow? And then we would just get ideas and people would say to me, God, you're so amazing. Look what you've done. I go, I love to take credit, but honestly, I think this place was guiding us.

Yeah. And that's an example of like in the timeline, right? If you're thinking about, okay, how are we going to get this done? What decision do I make right here? But then if you're just thinking about, okay, how is this, these grounds, this castle, this thing that we're creating going to serve people? And then like let it come from that.

Yeah, totally.

Now you have these other, you have overlaps in the circles. Let's talk about that.

Really the, the, the this is really about self. This is about you as an individual. And this is about, you know, the work that we do in the world. And this is about others. This is about relationships, essentially. This is about the relationship to yourself. And I think a lot of us forget that. I believe leaving, you know, spirituality aside, even though I think, you know, relationships are very spiritual by nature, I think the relationship with ourselves, a lot of entrepreneurs, don't really like who they are. They're very harsh on themselves. They punish themselves, they berate themselves. And again, they have this narrative that that pushes them to get them so far. And I would argue that it'll get you so far, but I think to build a healthy relationship where you're comfortable in your own skin, that you can sit in the car without the radio on, that you can be on your own and eat in a restaurant without feeling awkward, I think is a representation of a journey to build a relationship with yourself that's important. And then the invitation is to bring your gift into the essentially into the work you do and create an impact. And I think that's the holy grail for a lot of people, is that how do you do work in the world that makes an impact? And rather than waiting like this adult— sorry, excuse me, this athlete did— how do you bring this in sooner to bring impact into your work every single day? And I think when you have a bad day, in my experience, when you have a bad day, a bad week, or a bad month, or even a bad year, you've got to be able to access a deeper well. You've got to be able to access something that is deeper and beyond you. And I think for me is that when the work you do in the world has impact buried into it, you're actually doing it for somebody else. I'm not very good at asking for help, but when we built an orphanage in Peru many years ago, I was the best asker on the planet for about 6 months until we raised the money we needed.

Right.

And then we built it. So if I was to ask for somebody else, no problem, as long as I believe in the mission. But to ask for me, it's really, really difficult. And the same principle applies is that building impact in really gives us an opportunity to dig into something else and to drive and to move through difficult situations. Um, and access some sort of, you know, momentum.

I'm glad that you brought that up because something that I'm working on right now is I have my first book that I've written in more than a decade coming out in 6 months. And so I'm at this place where, as an author, you need to ask for help, right? And I have lots of friends, you know, who would love to help. And I feel really, really awkward about asking. It feels like I'm asking for a favor and all this, like, will you help promote your book, my book? Can I come on your podcast? You know, any of those things. And I'm just like, each time I think about it, I cringe. I'm like, what if they think of me as needy? What if they think about me as taking? What if they think about me as a burden? And I'm like, oh, I—

Which comes back to the story.

Which comes back to the story. You're just like, ooh, nope. Can't do that. Can't do that. And I had a friend who I was talking through this with and he said, okay, well, why'd you write the book? Did you write it for you? And I was like, no, I know these things, you know? And I, I wrote it because I deeply believe in the impact that this book will have and how, you know, the book is The Ladders of Wealth, how to master the skill of making money. And that, 'cause money is the goal, it's because this freedom is the goal. And, and this feeling of like, oh, I can actually achieve what I want to achieve. And I'm trying to give people that roadmap. Hmm. And he was like, so are you asking for you or are you asking for someone else?

Hmm.

I'm like, oh, okay. I'm asking for their help in order to help, like in order to have this impact on the world. And it completely reframed everything. I went from a spreadsheet of people I knew I had relationships with that gave me anxiety. I would look at that and I'd be like, okay, I hope this doesn't feel like calling in a favor or asking, or they don't think of me as a burden to, oh man, what a privilege.

Yeah.

That I get to bring my friends along in this thing that I think is wildly important.

There was a beautiful clip of Gene Hackman, the actor.

Yeah.

And someone asked him a question about his father leaving, and his father left in this really unusual way where his father got in the car, drove down the road, waved to him or gave him a nod, and then just drove and he was gone.

He

never saw him again. And Gene Hackman was asked this question. It's the most beautiful— he was an incredible actor, in my opinion, but just beautiful moment, tender moment. And he just connected with this The interviewer asked him about this moment that his dad waved or acknowledged him and then disappeared. And Gene just starts breaking down. And then he just lifts himself up and he says, it's only been 65 years. And everyone laughed or whatever. But I bring that up because again, the sense of being a burden keeps reemerging. It doesn't go away. And that's the problem. People say, oh no, I've dealt with my story.

I've done my work.

I did 6 therapy sessions. I wrote a letter to forgive somebody and I'm done. And it doesn't. It never goes away. It's how do you learn to integrate something and journey with the pain, not to try to run from the pain. I'd love to do something with you.

Okay.

Can we get a blank page?

Yeah.

So with the anxiousness of asking, let's just say that the anxiousness and the sense of being a burden was a 10, and then your friend helped you reframe it. How far down on a scale of 1 to 10 has the scale dropped?

5.5.

5.5. So we're at 4.5? Okay.

Just— No, I was thinking we're at 5.5, right?

Oh, you're at 5.5. Okay. So let's imagine that we could I want to drop that even further. How many more interviews, how many more email lists, how many more people could help you? And I've got an exercise with you that I would love people to play with. So again, this is not rehearsed. We haven't planned this. I definitely hadn't planned this, but we're going to have a go. I want you to imagine somebody who is struggling in life. Okay. But it's a fictional character. It's not a real person. It's not your family member. It's not a friend, a buddy. I want you just to kind of think, just connect with the world and just think about and connect as best you can. We're doing this in real time, so it's not going to be perfect, but I want you, when you're ready, I want you to begin to draw that person. I don't want you to write any words or numbers. I just want you to draw, and this is going to be a stick figure. It's not about apologizing about your art. I just want you to draw this person. This is a human being that is somewhere in the world. You have not met them yet. But they're struggling in one form or another.

Okay.

Can you just start, just start drawing? This is either gonna work really well or it's gonna go south. I don't know. So this is your person here?

Yeah.

Give them, give them hair. Give them, are they a man or a woman?

Uh, they're a man. Got some hair.

Do they have kids?

Uh, no, no, they're not very happy.

Give them a name.

Uh, their name is Andy.

Okay. How old is Andy? 20. And what is Andy struggling with right now?

He's on the outside.

Outside of whom?

Community. Uh, I mean, I drew other people.

Yeah.

Because he's separate from that. He's sitting and he's watching from a distance.

Okay. So what does he feel? What is he feeling?

He feels alone and lost.

Alone and lost. Okay. Anything else?

I think hopeful.

So there is some hope.

There's something there.

Yeah.

Yeah. There's a little bit of hope and Like determined.

Yeah. What's inside? As in what, what gift, if we go back to the analogy of here, we don't want to get into a story necessarily, but what gift might he have that he's unaware of? He maybe has a sense of it, but he's not entirely sure what it is.

Yeah. Like a capability or a purpose or being meant for more, capable of more.

So a sense of being destined for more, capable of more. Um, but just not knowing maybe how to get there.

Yeah.

Okay. Does this relate to you at all?

I think so. Yeah.

Okay. So, so I would invite people to do, if, if you're watching this, it's pretty self-explanatory what's emerging. If you're not watching this, Nathan has drawn a, a person sitting on a chair, um, and has written down the words and so on and so forth. And this person is, is on the outside of, of the community, so to speak, et cetera. And I'm just curious, your book, how could your book help Andy?

Yeah, I mean, I think about a lot of the people that I'm trying to reach would be someone who I'm not trying to convince anyone to build wealth or— But let's

just stick to Andy. Forget about people just for a moment. Just take, how can, how can your book and your message in the book, maybe not every, every chapter, every, every word, but how could your book specifically help Andy?

Just give them the path and the roadmap.

Oh, just the path. Oh, sorry. Just the path and the roadmap. Oh my God. That was going to be something more profound, to be honest with you. Can you write roadmap and the path and the roadmap? And can you write the word just? Because that's really relevant here.

Can I cross it out now?

No, no, no. You're not ready to do that yet. You haven't done the work. So here's a really interesting thing. And this is where either one, the podcast is never produced and never edited and it never sees the light of day. And even if it does, I'm never coming back. I can guarantee you that. And my family have to move out of the house tonight because we're going to

say,

is how selfish of you not to ask people for help because you are abandoning this poor man.

Yeah.

How selfish of you. You are abandoning this man. And what's also fascinating, if I may be a real asshole, Is when it comes to the things that we are about to gift the world of or give to the world, we use increasingly diminishing language. And yes, it's just a word, but it's not just a word. It's the word just. I'm just a mom. Good God.

Yeah.

I brought a human into this world. I carried them for 9 months and I brought them into this world and I'm just a mother? We use diminishing, increasingly diminishing language to describe the things that we do so naturally. And one of the challenges, my experiences with creatives, which I know you serve a lot of, is that they don't put a value in what they do naturally. They're too busy trying to put a value on what they think the world wants from them. What the world wants from them is the thing that they do most naturally, but we don't put a value on that. When I was, my mother met a group of my clients once. I said, what do you think of what your son does? And she goes, I have no idea. Well, he's a coach. She goes, what's that? He's a speaker. She says, what do you mean he speaks? What does he speak about? She goes, but what do you mean? And one of them just said, he sits down with people and he asks them really simple, challenging questions. He listens deeply. He doesn't even listen. He hears them and he sees what's possible for them. Ah, he's been doing that his whole life. When I was 12, I was doing this work. People would come to me with all their challenges. You think I honored that? You think I honored the 12-year-old? No, I spent the next 30 years running around the world trying to make money because my story was when I make enough money, then I'll give myself the freedom to go what I wanted and do what I want to do. So here's my challenge to you and anyone else who's watching this is do this, create this little avatar. I think an avatar is even too cold a word to use to describe Andy because it's so much more depth to it. And then ask yourself, when you were afraid to produce that podcast, when you were afraid to deliver that talk, when you were afraid to take up that little camera and record a video and share a message, here's the question you ask yourself. Am I turning my back on Andy? Am I abandoning Andy or am I serving him? And that detachment— sorry, it's not detachment, but that separation. There's that moment of separation that allows you to make a decision so you can be brave. Because what you're going to say matters. And it may not matter to you, but it matters to him. And there are millions of Andys all over the world that you haven't even met yet. So my invitation is stop being selfish because it's not about you and make it— print this off and put this on your desk. Look at this image and then make the call. Look at this image and send the email. Look at this image and put your book out into the world because your book, now you can draw a line through just. Your book will show Andy the path and the roadmap.

The thing that stands out to me so much is you asked about the, our scale, right? The, uh, you know, the anxiety of, you know, we're at a 10 versus a 1 of making that ask.

Mm-hmm.

And, you know, thinking about the impact and all of that, you know, I said you got me down to like a 5.5 or something in that. That's where we're hanging out on the scale. 'Cause I'm thinking about this reframe of what is selfish, right? 'Cause if there was a selfishness scale, or maybe it's a teeter-totter or seaside, I don't know what the analogy is, but I think where I got to was back to neutral.

Hmm.

Where like, oh, because the self-promotion of promoting my book and my ideas and all of that, because it's about impact. It's not a bad thing and maybe even it's a good thing. But in what you're saying, what I hear is it tips the other way.

Yes.

Where it's like, it would be selfish not to.

Absolutely. 100%.

And that's such a huge difference, right?

Yeah.

And so, yeah, I'm going to write that down. It'd be selfish not to ask.

100%.

Okay. If we go back to the entrepreneur on Dragonstone, Right? He wants to build his gym. He has his goals. He has his short-term financial goals that he is trying to achieve. He has these other things and he is like, ah, should I go? Should I pitch? If I were to pitch, I'm taking up space. I'm doing this thing. Maybe I'm taking a spot that another entrepreneur could have. Is my ideas, is it worthy of the time or all of that? And those are all like, I think, very valid questions.

Hmm.

When you're focused around The short-term outcomes.

Yes.

But then when you go all the way to like, okay, what is your story? What is your gift? And how do you bring that impact through to the world? Then, you know, somebody, he's like, ah, should I go on Dragon's Den or not? It's like, it would be selfish not to.

Absolutely. The way I often think about evolution for people and definitely my own evolution is the idea of mountains. I'm a big mountain analogy guy. I love mountains. I love hiking. I've been using it forever. And Mountain 1 is really about, it was all about me. It was all about Philip McKernan. And then Mountain 2 was about us. It was about creating a family and building something with a team. And a lot of entrepreneurs get stuck on that second mountain. They just, they overstay their welcome often. And then Mountain 3 is about them. It's about how do I impact the world? It's almost suspending a little bit of my self-interest or redirecting my self-interest and saying, how do I make the rest of my life about other people, about the impact that I want to make? How do I help the Andys of the world? And while I, like you talked about earlier on, that you oscillate in and out sometimes of this connected sense and sense of trust, when I'm in that them sense, it's almost like, and it sounds so arrogant, it's almost like everything I put my hand to seems to kind of work. There's an effortless, or it just feels effortless and then it feels simple. And then when I get scarce and I come back into the kind of the me and us energy, Things become arduous again. And as soon as I put myself back into the them energy, it is, it is unbelievable the shift that happens and this sense of courage that emerges in my body because it's not about me anymore.

I'm thinking about sports again and thinking about the player that you were coaching and working with. And, you know, we just watched a World Cup game and we're talking about, you know, the flopping that happens or, you know, it's always entertaining to see something happen and not get called and then like 7 players come over to the ref and it's amazing that they're allowed to yell at the ref as much as they do. And, you know, sometimes there's a card for it or whatever, but there's like, you see teams play to win, you see teams play to not lose, and you can see like those dynamics change so much. And I'm imagining if you were playing just to play, and so you're in the game and the flow of the moment, and what you're imagining is you think about, okay, how Do I want to show up for the kid in Philadelphia who's watching? Am I going to go yell at the ref the fact that my ankle got clipped and he didn't get a— no, I'm not going to do that. That's not who I'm going to model. If I get fouled and I'm onto the next thing, I'm not thinking about how unfair that is. I'm thinking about how I want to press forward and play. I can let go of all of those things because I'm thinking about something entirely different.

I worked with a gentleman from who played in the UK, played in England. And I remember having a deep, rich conversation with him. And something else that will relate to a lot of your listeners and people who watch is the idea of becoming visible. And visibility, I think for a lot of people, I think we want to be visible, but it scares the shit out of us. And visibility for me is like having a foot on the accelerator and there's one just resting on the brake. And I think visibility, we'll all kind of the bravado and we'll say, oh yeah, I want to be more visible. But actually deep down we're really scared or we want to be visible in a very controlled way. I want you to see me in a way that I portray rather than, all of me. And I'll never forget talking to this amazing young man, and we talked about hiding and where you hide in life. And he said, I used to hide in the pitch. And I went— and I've heard a lot of things. I've volunteered in maximum security prisons. I've consulted and had conversations in the Pentagon. I've worked with some of the most successful entrepreneurs. I've worked with amazing athletes. And I said, excuse me, what do you mean you hide in the pitch?

In front of tens of thousands of people.

He said, I would put my hand up to receive the ball, And I would stand a yard to the left or a yard to the right and make sure that I was in a position where I couldn't receive the ball. I wanted to be seen to wanting the ball, but I didn't want to receive it because I was afraid that I would make a mistake in front of 60,000 people in the stadium and maybe whatever X amount of millions of people watching, hundreds of thousands, et cetera, that you can hide in the most public place. And I thought that was absolutely and utterly extraordinary. That he was so scared of making a mistake that he would hide in such a profound way.

Okay. So if I were listening to this, there might be someone listening, and maybe this is just a story that I'm telling myself is like, ooh, how do I make sure this is the most value for the listener or whatever else of like, 2 things come to mind. One would be, okay, but how does this directly help me? I'm a content creator. How does this directly achieve my goals? And then the second one would be like, if someone's on board with us, they're like, okay, but how do I actually do it? Like, how do I uncover the story and dig deeper, right? If they're not at a place where they're like, oh, I clearly know my story and gift and impact.

Yeah. Well, I think, I think there's a very simple exercise that I do, which, you know, I would encourage everybody to sit down and, and write out their story, um, with the view that it's never going to be read by anybody else and it's never going to be published, but just write your story. And your story is not, as I said, the soccer player, the highlight reel of his, of his, of his, of his career. It is your story is about, oh, I was 6 or I was 8, and I remember growing up in whatever city it was, and I had 2 brothers and 2 sisters, and I remember feeling like this, and giving yourself permission to write your story and remember your story through the lens of your story. But there's another exercise which we'll get onto right now, and this is a kind of a, maybe a fast-track way of looking at your story. And one is to write down the 3 happiest days of your life. So the 3 happiest days is an exercise I've done. You can expand it to about 5, but the whole idea is just to kind of get it to look back over your life. Now, this instruction is really, really critical.

Okay.

This is not about finding days that are euphorically happy from 9 o'clock in the morning till 9 o'clock at night, because you probably won't find those anyway. Number one. Number 2 is it's not about feeling the societal pressure to write down the days that society tells you should have been the happiest. So for example, the wedding day, the birth of your child. It could be, but it doesn't have to be.

Let go of all that.

And in fact, I would almost encourage you not to. And write down these days. And it could have been a fleeting moment, it could have been an hour, it could have been an afternoon, it could have been something. And to write down 3 of the happiest days.

Should I write down not a full day?

Yeah. Or we could do it differently is you could write down your 3 happiest days.

Ooh, okay.

Which might be a bit more fun.

Let's do both. So let's go, I'll go here. This is like the, our rules. Not a full day, or does it have to be a full day?

Yeah, it could have been a moment in that day. It could have been an hour. It doesn't have to be a full day.

And then you said skip the clichés. That's how I would phrase it.

100%. They're not as relevant as you might think they are in the context of understanding. Because what we're looking for is life leaves clues. We're looking for the clues. So if you're okay with it, just what are a couple of days and you reflect over your life.

Um, oh, I'd have to think about this more. Um, okay. So we're, I first, I appreciate the, well, the first thing I would say is like, if you're writing it out, when you said write your story, like it doesn't have to be in public and all of that. And that gives a lot of freedom. And then also the skip the clichés, you know? And so in this case, since we're doing it in public, we're very clearly skipping the clichés that we've already named. So I don't know if this gets at what you're trying to get to. We'll do it and then we'll see. Last week I was flying at sunset over the Sawtooth Mountains, which you got a chance to see Redfish Lake and all of that. Yeah. And I just had this like, how is this my life moment where, you know, I'm flying a plane I own with skills that I learned myself, you know, and all of this. And it's like just kind of a casual after-work Like I planned that I was going to do that like 3 hours earlier, you know?

Yeah.

Um, I think another one, uh, we've talked about this one because I made, I made an Instagram reel about it, but I just a few months ago or a month ago delivered my keynote at Craft and Commerce. It was a culmination of things I worked on You know, for the— to be able to talk about for a full year. Mm-hmm. And all of this. And I was so proud of how it went and we, the team nailed every part of it and I was proud of my delivery and, and everything else. And I didn't see this in real time because of the stage lights on me and all of that. But afterwards, 2 friends, Barrett and Kara, texted me photos. Mm-hmm. One from across, like the front of, front of house shots. And it was me on stage and then Oliver, my 14-year-old, off to the side because he was volunteering at the conference, just watching me. And like, he's, he's fully involved in the— like, he's not sitting in the audience. He's like standing off to the side, kind of leaning against the railing. And then the other photo was the same shot, but from behind, looking over his shoulder to me on stage. Uh, and that was something where I was like, oh wow, it was so incredible to have him be a part of my world. To not just think, oh, dad just spends all his time sitting on a computer. Like to see, for him to be able to see what we're building, the hundreds of people impacted by it, maybe get some ideas for what he's doing himself. And like, it was such a, like, those are 2 photos that I will cherish forever.

Beautiful. If you, if I may, maybe one from—

Further back.

Further back. Yeah.

Because these are all very recent. How far back are we going here?

As far back as you can.

I have a bunch of different examples of this, but we had a shop growing up. My dad built the house that we grew up in. I have a lot of very fond memories of building projects there, doing things with my dad. And yeah, so I'd go back to when I was—

And what were you, what were you building? Give us an exact, can you gimme an example?

I think about like building a deck. And actually another example is I've always loved landscaping. And so there's an area by the house, like in the corner of the house growing up of like landscaping, like putting rocks and boulders in there and—

With your dad?

With my dad.

Yeah. Yeah. And did you help out?

Uh-huh. Yeah.

Were you in the way?

No, I was quite useful.

Yeah. So you weren't necessarily a burden.

Yeah, exactly.

So it's, what's interesting is to remind ourselves that while we have evidence to prove in ourselves and a story to say we were a burden. We also— Right. When we look at our 5 happiest days or 3 happiest days or 10 happiest days, we also begin to find evidence that we weren't necessarily a burden. The idea behind the happiest days is to remind us of the things. And the next part of this is we talked about they don't have to be full days. We talked about that they don't have to be clichés. And the next part of it is that we pick one. We can identify one. We don't have to do it right now, but pick one. And then pick another, but do the same thing is why was it the most important day or why was it one of the happiest days? Like, what was it? Because when you look at it and say flying, I was in an airplane, whatever, but what was it?

Like,

what was it? What was the deeper emotional reason or rationale behind it that made it a day that you would write it up there? What did it represent to you?

I mean, running with that as an example, it's the culmination of so many things and Coming back to my roots. So I think as an adult, you don't learn a lot of new skills very deliberately. And, you know, like out of college, you don't take tests, you don't do these things. And like getting your pilot's license and an instrument rating and everything out from there, like you, it's, it's a lot and it's like concerted effort. And so this idea that I can always learn new skills, everything that I want is, you know, I can learn a skill to achieve it. Flying has been a great example of that.

Everything I want, I can learn a skill to achieve. You say these sentences and you kind of skip over them as if, what ice cream did you order? Oh, well, it was vanilla and maybe it was chocolate. And you just land these fucking truth bombs and yet they're so extraordinary. Like, that's not everyday thinking.

Right.

So the whole idea is to identify the days, pick the day, and then ask yourself, why was it? What did it represent? And then the final phase is, how do I create more of those days?

Yeah. So actually there's 2 other parts of this. So one is the skill and being really proud of that and the world that it unlocked. The second is the, honestly, the money of being able to afford that and getting to a point where like, I can just do that. Mm-hmm. And it's a plane that I own and all of that. But the third thing is when I landed at this little grass runway, uh, up in the Sawtooth Mountains, there's someone who works there from the Idaho Transportation Department who maintains this runway. That's his And they have cars that as a pilot you can just check out and take. We were saying, we're going to Redfish Lake. And he is like, oh, have you been there before? And I said, yeah, I think I've been there. And I'm like running through it in my head. I think I've been there 32 of the last 36 years. Even in all of this like crazy world and doing all of these things, it was still grounded in like my childhood, like who I am, the Idaho mountains. You know, I've backpacked all over those mountains. I've been, you know, all of those things and And so like the culmination of all of those together is what made it really, really special.

What a lot of people do is they get stuck in the money piece in the middle. And it's great to be abundant. It's great to be a capitalist. It's great to bring money into your life and be abundant with it and help other people and help yourself, et cetera. But the piece I loved is when you linked it back to childhood is that people get obsessed with making enough money so I can buy a plane. What I hear from you is, yeah, I've earned this. I've used this to buy a piece of equipment. I've learned the skill. It gives me the freedom to go to a place that means something And I'm imagining when you landed there and you spent the day, the afternoon, the morning, you got back on the plane as a better human being. You got back on that plane having kind of just recommitted or reconnected with a part of yourself. And I think that's the point. So the exercise in itself is about reminding you of what is important. Why was it important? And then the simple flip is how do you create more of those days? Love it. And for me, when I did this exercise years ago with my wife, Her first one was her wedding day. And my first one was my stag party or my bucks party, which might sound kind of unusual, but I brought 25 guys to the west coast of Ireland to where we now are stewards of this castle. And we did a workshop and we did a hike. And I remember looking back over the landscape on this 5,000-year-old green road. And I got a friend of mine come in and do like a personal growth workshop. And some of these guys were walking this green road, this ancient road, like 5,500 years ago, people would walk this road or maybe be on horses. And they were having conversations about leaving relationships that were dysfunctional. One guy stopped smoking, one guy left his job that he hated. And I remember thinking just for a fleeting moment, wow, I helped create this container. Yeah. The next happiest day was a day I spent in the orphanage. And when myself and my wife came together and shared our lists, hers was the second happiest day. For her, it was the day in the orphanage. It's like, I didn't know that that meant so much to her. She had no idea that meant so much to me. We talked about it and we set out and we created a mission that we were going to build an orphanage in a place that we love, which is the Sacred Valley in Peru. And we did. And with the help of other people and your friend Dan Martell and myself, he was down on the trip with us and that. And this is such a simple exercise. It's so simple. There'll be people listening and watching this going, come on guys, surely you can give me something more sophisticated. This is a reminder, like you going back to the lake, of what is important to you and why it's important to you. But it also can inform who you want to be and the things you want to do in the world. And for me, the first time I created a body of work in Ireland, was inspired by my happiest day, which was my book's party, the 25 guys walking across this road. I brought them to the exact same road. I told them the story and I said, you decide what your green road for your life is going to be. So it always leaves clues. We don't need to get into the darkest days, but essentially the flip is the same thing. The way I describe this is that when I walk into my wife's family home, And I walk into the living room and there's photographs and there's maybe a couple of certificates of maybe becoming an accountant, and there's photographs of all the girls that went to college on their graduation day. And that's a big thing in their home, and it's a big thing in many people's homes. But how many of us have a photograph or an image of a catastrophe, of a failure, of something that went south, a broken heart, a shitty business, a business that fell apart? I'm not asking to literally go and create photographs and images for But I think we learn more, as much, if not more, from some of the tougher times than we do from some of the happiest days. And the same principle is identify the darkest days, the most unhappiest days, whatever it is. Why were they unhappy? And how do we not create more of those days, but how do we eliminate those days for more people in the world?

Oh, that's quite the reframe.

Yes. How do we send the elevator down and help someone move through the same darkness that we And/or avoid it altogether.

Because I was thinking about— I didn't know where you're going with this because you're like, okay, yeah, how do we have fewer dark days? And then that's like, that feels like something that you're holding tight to and you're like, how do we make less bad things, fewer bad things happen to us? And you're like, you can't control that.

Yeah.

But this, I think we eliminate these days for more people in the world.

So something I don't share very likely, and I've shared it rarely, is I want to build a safe place for teenagers to come and to know who they are and to understand their story and to understand their gifts and to contemplate impact in the future at a stage when that's the conversation I needed. I don't know what school you went to, but when I walked down the corridors in my school, there wasn't a single door that had a little sign on saying, come in and get to know who you are. There wasn't a single door that said, understand the difference between your talents and your gifts. There wasn't a single door that said, come in here and just imagine what's possible for you and for the world that you're going to enter into. And I want to create a safe space that young men and women can understand who they are at an earlier stage so that I'm essentially creating the opposite of the lady pointing the finger at me going, I don't know why you come here and you're going to amount to nothing out there. So I would not have known that unless I got to this body of work here and these questions, like, what are some of the most painful days that I have had in my life? Because they can inform who I want to become in the future.

If you were to list out 3 or 5 darkest days, there's some that you can really control and then others that you can't at all. Are you looking for things where you're like, oh, this one I could actually— sorry, control's the wrong word. You could help eliminate for other people. Mm-hmm. And some you're just like, oh, I, I can't, like, I guess I'll share you a couple of mine. 'Cause actually my friend Lars asked me a similar question as like just a couple weeks ago, uh, when we were together. And I was like, so I had to think about it a bunch. But I, I think about a time that I got very sick and like lost the ability to work. And I, so much of my sense of purpose or my essential sense of self-worth came from what I accomplished.

Mm-hmm.

Right. And so that resulted in a whole bunch of depression. Um, another one is sometimes people will joke or all of that about like the age gap between our kids. You know, we have a 14-year-old, a 12-year-old, and a 6-year-old. And they're like, oh, you know, a surprise baby or something like that. And most times I'll just laugh it off. Sometimes if you really irritate me with that, then I will make you feel horrible about like losing a child, you know? Mm-hmm. And, uh, I feel like if, you know, you give enough rope and then I'm like, oh, Oh, I will, you know, so you think about like the child that we lost and then another one would be, there's some moments in the company, right? Of people leaving and feeling like, oh, this is all falling apart. But like losing a child, whether through a miscarriage or later on, like that's something you can't eliminate for other people. Whereas the, the being a 10-year-old listening to my parents fight about money and feeling like I'm entirely helpless in that is much more similar to your example. Yeah.

Yeah.

And so how do you filter between those?

Yeah, it's a brilliant question and I'm not even sure I can answer

it,

but I'm going to do my best. For me, my deeper purpose in the world, my deeper why is to eradicate loneliness for as many people as I can before I die. And you probably figure out based on this conversation so far that, you know, I'm a pretty deep thinker, a deeper human being in that sense, that there's a correlation between why that's important to me and my own experience in life. Because really, if I had to sum it up, I think loneliness was The thing that permeated most of my early life. And I think loneliness is one of those really unnecessary feelings in life, and it's also incredibly isolating. And I noticed Andy was over here and the community was here. So isolation, and isolation is not eradicated through Facebook followers or Twitter followers or even an office that's full of people or even sleeping next to somebody at night. It is about something that's much richer and much deeper. But when I think about eradicating loneliness for people, maybe eradicating is not even the right word. It doesn't mean I create a dating app. So we're not correlating like for like. It's about creating environments where people can connect to themselves or something deeper. So it mightn't be about the loss of a child, but it's about the sense of loss, the sense of mourning, the sense of whatever. So imagining just hypothetically, you're at your next company retreat. And you decide for the first time, maybe, maybe it's the second, maybe it's the fifth, maybe you've never shared this. You decide, I'm going to integrate this into my talk. I'm going to open up and I'm going to share this story at some point in the conference. And people say, well, what's the purpose of that? That's just a moment of selfishness. No, it's not. Because where I go with that is, how many people might be at a conference that you speak at?

A few hundred or 1,000 or somewhere around 5,000.

Okay. There might be one person.

Right.

In the back corner who lost a child and has never talked about it, has never opened up about it, is ashamed about it, is embarrassed by it, whatever the story is, I don't know. And then the next minute they hear you share the story and they go, oh my God, I'm not alone. And then maybe as tears flow down their face, they turn to somebody in accounting next to them and they go, what's wrong with you? And she goes, I lost a baby. And that's the first time they shared it because you're not meant to share this stuff in a corporate setting or in a business setting or in a company setting. And that person then sees them and they see seen, they feel seen and heard and complete. When I wrote the One Last Talk book, it wasn't for speakers. It was for people who don't believe they have a story. And my Andy is Peggy from Yellowknife. I've never met Peggy and I've never been to Yellowknife. And don't ask me where she came from and why Yellowknife. The reason that that was so important to me was that I wanted Peggy to be able to watch a YouTube video or read a book and to hear a story and go, oh my God, that story matters. If that story matters, is there a possibility that maybe my story matters? And if my story matters, then I matter. And then I wanted to create an environment for Peggy to be able to share that with one other person in her To be brave because she matters. That's how you give the gift through the pain that you went through to alleviate somebody else so they can feel seen and feel heard and they can allow that to move through them to some extent.

I'm realizing that the idea of your greatest gift lying next to your deepest wound, you can't even explore if that's true for you if you don't— the first step in exploring if it's true for you is to dive into what What are these darkest days? It's a very, I mean, it's a gentle, a gentler way of asking like, what are your deepest wounds?

And in a corporate setting, we've literally brought it into a company setting. I mean, Robert Glaser, who you and I both know, brought me into his company. I basically facilitated the process, coached everybody. And we have heard situations, let's just use Peggy and Andy. Let's say they work together, but they don't like each other. Peggy's in sales and Andy's in accounting. just bounce off each other. They hear each other's stories and Peggy goes up to Andy and go, Andy, honestly, I've literally heard this. Andy, I've got to be honest with you. I've actually always thought you were an asshole, but is there any chance you and I could go for a cup of coffee next week? Because I'd love to get to know you a little bit more. And that's the power of sharing your story. Sharing your story is not a burden. We use that as an excuse so we don't have to share our story. The reason that we do that is because we don't want to be seen. And yet we deep down desperately need and want to be seen and to be heard truly at a very deep level. And when you do that, people see the humanity in you. And as I said earlier on, they see the humanity in themselves and that's what creates connection.

And I think even taking it further and going to the world that we're in of working with content creators and knowing so many of them and all of that is you have the gift of being able to do this at scale.

Yeah.

Where it's not just the 100 people in the room. Like if you were to tell these stories, then maybe it gets watched by 100 people and one of them is touched by it. Or maybe it's 10,000. Maybe it's so many more who say, oh, I'm not alone. I can act in this way. And then the crazy thing is these stories spread.

Of course.

And everyone can see through the AI-written content of the 4 ways to do X or that sort of thing. Someone told me once that if you want someone to really believe a lesson that you're sharing, start with the painful time that you learned that lesson.

Yeah.

You know, and it makes it so much more applicable. And so not only is it a way to have an impact in the world, but it, it's a, it's a way to stand out and it's a way to actually spread the message. So this is amazing. Cool. I'm so thrilled that we threw up some random pieces of paper and said, let's, let's draw this out. Well,

thank you for having me, but also thank you for sharing your wisdom and allowing us to get a sense into your life. And like I said, to me, that's the most important thing here today. So thank you for that.

People want to follow any more of your stuff? What do you have out there? Where else do they go?

Yeah, well, we do immersive retreats. We don't do a lot of them. As I said, we're a small boutique company, but if people want to understand who they are in the world and what they've been put on this planned to do beyond what they can imagine for themselves, they can come to a retreat in a castle in Ireland as an example, or come on an adventure somewhere in the world and follow along, philipmckernan.com.

Sounds good. Amazing. Thank you so much, Philip.

Thank you. Appreciate it.

That was good. I got to give you a hug.

I did too.

If you enjoyed this episode, check out episode 115 with Justin Sua. He's another incredible guest who's worked with pro athletes and the military, and it's a Great practical episode on what separates people who operate at the highest level. Like the video if you enjoyed it, hit subscribe on YouTube or wherever you're listening, and I will see you next week.