170. Lloyed Lobo | Part 2 (From Grassroots to Greatness)

Hello, Book Thinkers family, and welcome to our personal development podcast, Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books. During each episode, we interview one of the world's top authors, and as a listener, you can expect to discover new books, new mentors, and new resources that you can use to achieve more and live better. In today's episode, we have the pleasure to interview for the second time Lloyd Lobo, author of From Grassroots to Greatness. Lloyd is a software engineer by education, community builder by passion. He has worked in startups, built companies worth millions, and is co-founder of Boast AI and Traction. In this episode, you'll learn about the importance of energy and how to create it, diet, exercise, why relationships can make you a rock star or a peasant, lessons on how to solve loneliness, creating a Wall Street Journal bestselling book, how to be the cool kid on the block, and of course, the importance of creating a Now get ready to learn and enjoy this incredible conversation with Lloyd Lobo. Lloyd, welcome back to the Book Thinkers Podcast. We are super pumped to have you back to dive a little bit deeper into some of the concepts that we missed from your book. And I'd love to start off with the beautiful design of your book. You mentioned how much intention went into it before we hit record the last time, but we never really got into it. So I'd love for you to talk about Why you went for the design you did and why it was so important to you.

I think one of the greatest things— thank you for sharing that. I can't take any credit. And I have a special edition version which is also like debossed, you can see. But I had nothing to do with it in the sense my publisher also had nothing to do with it. My brother happens to be a great brand designer. He's won awards at Cannes. right? I fondly call him and people in our circle call him the brand father. And my book was actually called Community-Led Growth. And he's like, bro, that's like saying your book is called marketing because it's about marketing. He's like, what is that? And he, I didn't want him involved. I didn't want to take a favor for him, but he's like, I am just going to design it. If you like it or not, it's up to you. And he named it From Grassroots to Greatness, given my backstory and the backstory of the people and the journeys in the book. And he designed the COVID and he called me and took shots of me. That's me with the hat right in there. And so he designed the book and I loved it, man. And, you know, one of the key elements that hits on to build a sustainable community, you need energy. And energy is my vibe, right? Energy is you guys' vibe. Energy is what builds sustainable communities and movements and cultures. Without energy, people just fall asleep. Look at the greatest movements of all time. They have energy. So he's like, we gotta infuse energy in this book. And when I saw the design, I just loved it so much that we had to roll with it. Like, I couldn't think of anything else. And so many people have complimented that it looks different. And he said, I'm gonna prove to you that the saying, don't judge a book by its cover, is bullshit. And so that's the story. The relationship I have with him is he, I respect him a lot and he always has a view that he's strongly opinionated on and you can't, like basically you can't win. And he does it for the good of everyone, right? So he went dictator on me and hence the design. But a lot of people liked it. I love the colors and it turned out good. I mean, it screams to my vibe because that's how I am. Like, that's how I dress. I'm always like, you know, very colorful clothing, high energy kind of vibe. So it picked up on that.

I love it, man. So the word energy, let's take that word but in a different direction. Before you press record, you said you've become interested in sort of the precision health longevity space, and so are we. Uh, we've interviewed Dr. David Sinclair, who wrote Lifespan, Dr. Peter Diamandis, who wrote Life Force with Tony Robbins, which is all about quantified health and precision medicine. We just had Dr. Christian, or Christian Drepeaux, who is all about stem cells. So tell me, why are you interested in that world and how do you optimize for your own personal energy?

Definitely.

So, you know, I think I didn't share this the last time, but all my life I really had no money. I mean, growing up to sort of lower middle class parents, my parents grew up in the slums of Mumbai to being a Gulf War refugee, like never had any money. And then doing a startup which never made money for the longest time, failure after failure. My wife was paying the bills. The time I came into money when we sold half of Boast is coincidentally the time I ended depressed and I hit rock bottom because what happened was I optimized so much of my life around this outcome and I put everything on the back burner. I built my identity around the company. It was community-led. The community was— the company was my tribe. The community around the company was my tribe. I had no other vibe, right? And I, after the deal went through, I booked everyone to Bora Bora because my wife was like, man, you spend no time with us. The kids think you're an uncle. What's going on? And I'm like, I'll book everyone to our dream location, Bora Bora. And she would always say, nobody cares about that Bora Bora trip. We care about having dinner with you every day, phones down. The compound interest on that is huge. Not— nobody remembers the 1, 2 vacations a year. Nonetheless, the deal happened. I booked everyone to Bora Bora as promised. 2 days before the Bora Bora trip, I got hospitalized for bilateral COVID pneumonia. I was on oxygen and I almost died. And life lost its meaning for me because at that moment I thought to myself, what have I done? I literally neglected everything. And now what good is this money if it's of no good to me? I can't enjoy it. What followed thereafter was, you know, I think the investors freaked out, a number of people freaked out. I started to transition out of the company. We brought in senior leadership and one thing led to the other and I just lost, felt I lost my tribe. And, you know, I started to unpack after a while when I hit rock bottom and I was going crazy drinking. Now, what do you do, right? You didn't have a fit lifestyle. And you feel you lost your tribe, you resort to bad habits. And I blew up, my weight blew up. I just went crazy. And one day my wife looks at me, I'll tell you actually how crazy I got. I was speaking at a conference in Romania and at 2 in the morning, I'm frantically calling for an Uber and this is now 3, 4 hours from the Bucharest airport. And they tell me like, dude, where are you trying to go? And I'm like, don't worry about it. Finally, the Uber comes. They're like, you're not gonna find a car. But finally, the Uber comes after like 20, 30 minutes, goes cha-ching. And when the Uber comes, I pull out my laptop and I book a flight to Costa Rica because I had another set of friends call me from there and I went to Costa Rica. That's how crazy I got. I felt like I lost my tribe. So, I gotta go around the world catching up with people. And when I got back from that trip, my wife's like, look at you, you're overweight, you're insufferable, you're trying to hold on to something that you don't have and giving up all the good you have. You're in a position to do anything you want. The glass is always half full. If you die right now, you, if you get sick, you might not get a third chance. You got a second chance after COVID. And then I started to look and research and unpack like, why am I in this situation? And I started to then remove the things in my life that brought me negative energy. like negative news, negative media, negative people, then clean up my diet, clean up my morning routine. All of those things that bring you energy, positive energy is what I started to add. And I started to think about like, hey man, we're proactive with our work, but not with 2 things, the most important things, our health and our wealth. Why aren't we? And given my background in artificial intelligence and my wife's background in medicine, I thought it would be pretty cool given we're best friends for us to eventually work together and combine those 2. I think there's a lot of science and data out there on humans that you can leverage, that you can be proactive on your own body. So I use that to completely transform myself and I'll send you a video. I think you probably saw it on my Instagram where I transformed from being overweight to, to being in shape kind of thing.

Yeah, that was super inspirational, by the way. So you recently turned 40 and like you've also stated, and it may have been in that post that you're in the best shape that you've ever been in. So I'd love to maybe unpack a little bit of what the difference is between Lloyd when he was at rock bottom and Lloyd now. Like what's different? What do you do different? How do you approach your life and your day?

You know, I think one of the key things I discovered was when that happened, when I went through depression after having hit my financial goals, financial freedom, is loneliness is the number one killer in America, apparently. And there's this thing about Blue Zones, which you guys may have heard of, where the 5 places around the world where people live functionally until 100. Functionally is important because if you're not functional, longevity has no meaning. And these communities have 9 traits, 4 or 5 of them have to do with human-to-human connection with community, right? And so, a lot of what I added in my life or, you know, write down the things that bring you joy and positive energy and anything that brings me closer to that, I do anything that takes me away from it, I say no to. So, one of the key things was being in a time zone where my days are free. So, I take 3 or 4 hours of meetings, podcasts, et cetera, at night here in Dubai. My mornings are free. I wake up, the first thing I do is I thank the good that happened in my day the previous day. A person, a thing, an activity, whatever it is, be thankful for it. Being thankful and gratitude is a great way to create abundance in your life, right? We complain so much about what we don't have. Then I play Eye of the Tiger and bang out max pushups. By then I'm warmed up and I have to hit the gym. And so I go work out and I do very various things, right? I Do push pull legs three times a week, three four times a week. Repeat that cycle. I do calisthenics one two times a week. I've always wanted to do things like human flag and handstand, and so I'm practicing that. I dance a couple times a week bachata with my wife. I live on the beach, so we're walking at least ten fifteen thousand steps every day. So it's little things. This Saturday, I'll go and with some friends and do like a full day. Like I think it's a berries. kind of activity, Barry's or Orangetheory kind of activity. So I switch it up, man. I just try to be active and I do not do any business activity without doing a physical activity. And there's some science to this as well. You guys may want to look up this Naperville High School zero-hour PE study where students, before they even opened a page of a book, were asked to work out first thing in the morning. They eventually ended up becoming some of the highest IQ and highest athletic ability students on the planet. There's no brain function that exercise doesn't improve. And I think that is a key thing, key thing for me. Now I get like, you know, I get irritated if I can't lift or I'm like, you know, like that there's this energy. And the, the other thing also What exercise does for you, it makes you feel like you're winning because a lot of the times in business, you're not winning every day, right? That's the reality. You're not. You're losing a lot more than you're winning. And then eventually you get to a point where you're winning more than you're losing, but it's ups and downs. The gym is one place where you can be up every day, right? You can get up and you can lift a little heavier or do more reps and you can feel like you completely crushed it. And then you go out feeling like a winner and that mindset carries through your workday and you just feel like you can take over, right? So I think that is really, really important. And it doesn't have to be the gym. It can be dance, it could be calisthenics, it could be playing basketball, whatever physical activity that brings you joy, do it.

I second all of those things. I'm curious, what's your diet look like today?

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So my diet was crap. And for others who wanna follow, so my wife after her, our third kid put on a lot of weight and she turns 40 in April, April 14th. So I'm training her and putting on her, my, putting her on my diet program for a 150-day challenge, right? Vivi's 40th birthday transformation challenge. And she's put on a lot of weight. I think she blew to over 90 kilos or, or like nearly 200 pounds. So We're not counting weight, we're taking measurements. And I think after a week she dropped something like 13 inches across. And so the diet, I was not very clean with my diet because Dubai is a very social place, okay? People socialize around food and drink. I don't— I stopped drinking a year and a half ago when I started this journey because I think after a certain age alcohol doesn't do good for your T levels and that and your energy and And so, I'm like, you know what? I'm an extreme personality being an entrepreneur. I can't have one drink and stop. So, I'm just going to not do it, right? And so nonetheless, my diet is like, if you have no vices, then your vice is like food. You're social, you're eating a lot of sugars. So, I try to clean that up as best as I can, but I fall off the wagon like 2, 3 times a week. But now, when I put my wife on this program, the only way to motivate her and make her stick is if I do the same thing. So my diet is 3 to 4 meals a day, high protein and greens. That's it. Low carbs. And, and because it'll take her getting some used to, so it's more like a carb cycling program where 2 days, 2, 3 days of no carb, 2, 3 days, 2 days of low carb, and then 2 days of regular carb. But generally like a chicken breast. or a fish with some green, whether it's spinach or kale or broccoli or green beans. Honestly, this is so easy to do, and you don't— it doesn't have to taste sucky because you get all these zero-calorie marinades or dry powders. You marinate it the night before and you throw it in the air fryer. It's literally like 10, 15 minutes of work. And then everything tastes good in the air fryer. You can make a steak better in the air fryer than, than the pan. So it's been great that way. Like wake up, make some eggs with some greens, then chicken and fish and keep repeating that honestly. And you guys know this, the path to success in anything is not new silver bullets and hacks, man. It's boring as hell. It's like showing up to do the same thing day in, day out. Then eventually you see results and you gotta find joy in doing that.

Yeah.

What does you guys, what does your diet look like, Nick?

I practice intermittent fasting, so that's number one. I only eat between 12 and 7 generally. Sometimes it's even more of a condensed window. I meal prep my lunches on Sundays, so I do a week of Greek salads, but my Greek salads have 7 or 8 or 9 or 10 different ingredients depending on the week. And they're all focused around greens and healthy fats. So there are some plant-based proteins in there, like I'll add chickpeas or something like that, but it's a lot of greens. So I do that every day for lunch. And then dinner is just like you're talking about. It's low carb, heavy protein with some greens. So my wife will make like a, a primary meat. So we'll do steak or pork or chicken or fish. And then we'll do some greens on the side. We've tried to remove all of the, the grains, right? The rices and the pastas as like the side dish. And now we're doing a lot of broccoli and onions or something like that. And yeah, I'm very strict with the intermittent fasting and I also have a crazy supplement routine. So I take, let's see, I have 'em right here. So this is an example of what one day would look like. I have my AMs and my PMs. So what is it?

What is in there?

Oh, there's 15 or 20 different things. Yeah. But so methylated multivitamins so they're easier to digest and then a ton of like magnesium L-threonate, 2 in the morning, 2 in the evening. It's great for cognitive function. Memory retention, organization, but also sleep. And there's tons of other stuff like that. I'll send you the list.

I gotta, I gotta fix my sleep. That's the one thing I'm not really good at. I drink a ton of water. I, you know, if you see my Instagram post, which I, which I, I think pinned, I dropped a lot of weight and just body fat in general. I think the weight's maybe 50 pounds, a lot of body fat. My face shrunk and all of that. The bulk of that since '21 was through intermittent fasting and it was more like OMAD intermittent fasting. So one meal a day, one big heavy carnivore meal a day. I did that and, and, and I love doing that. I love intermittent fasting and I love carnivore. I'm, I can eat steak every single freaking day.

Yeah.

I mean, the thing is it doesn't suit my wife and I gotta, if I want her to stay motivated, then I gotta follow something that fits her. So for the first time in a long time, since, since the last 10 days, I've been doing 3, 4 meals a day, the small meals a day. And honestly, man, I didn't realize your body gets so adaptive to it because now if I, I would be able to fast, like I've done 72-hour fasts without a flinch, but now if I don't have breakfast within an hour, my stomach is gassy and growling. That's how quickly you adapt. Like it's just one week. One week of not fasting.

Yeah, you can become familiar with anything. That's a line that Marissa Peer has. Yeah, Luke and I both did a 72-hour fast this year too. We really enjoy it. Oh, I had a follow-up question for you, but I forget what it was. I've just, like you, I've tried carnivore. I did carnivore, primarily carnivore, once for 75 Hard. So for the majority of that. And yeah, I really enjoyed it too. But Luke, you're, you're a little bit different than I am. So what's your diet looking like these days?

Well, it's similar in that intermittent fasting is something that I do and I currently, I'm working on getting rid of most refined carbs. Like that's a big, big thing that I'm doing cuz it just, you feel better. Like I love sweets and pastries and cakes and sugars, but at the end of the day, like I just feel better, feel better not on them. So I try to keep a healthy diet as well, but You're super— going back to you, Lloyd, like you're super inspiring. I was just, I was watching before we got on, I was just watching all your, your before and after pictures and it was really cool to see that you're involving your wife in it now. I know that's something that I wanna do too as well with my wife. We're not, we don't, although we overall eat healthy, we don't involve each other in our diets. And I've noticed that, you know, she loves to bake, so it's like she'll do bake those goods and I'm like, oh, I can't have those things and makes it really difficult. So I'm trying to get her on board. As well. So my question like to you is how did you get your wife kind of on board with the, the whole, your whole health kick? Like what was your, what did you do?

You know, so here's what used to happen, right? And, and I truly believe this, your companions, your community, the people you surround yourself with matter the most, right? They could turn you into a peasant or a rockstar. And my wife's been a huge motivation for where I am today. But nonetheless, our pantry is always stocked with garbage and I have a sugar addiction. It's very, very hard. So, I always tell her like, why do you have this? She's like, it's just there. Like, have some self-control. I'm like, dude, one, self-control is not a thing, right? The environment matters more. But if you really want to test my self-control, why don't you just invite some strippers rather than putting candy in there as a joke? Anyway, we'd have this ongoing joke, but then what started to happen is I get a lot of freaking compliments now, right? Like people look at me, friends like, oh man, like, you know, on the beach and I used to never wear sleeveless stuff. Now I do and everyone's like complimenting me. So I just, you know, as you grow older and do you guys have kids? No, right?

I have 3.

You do?

Yes.

How old are they?

7, 5, and 2.

Oh, similar ages. I have 9, 5, and 2. All of my wife's time between like, she teaches medicine at Stanford and the kids is between them. And so I'm like, man, my wife and I were dating since our teens. That was her prom date. We're best friends. Like, how do I spend more time with you? The only way to spend more time with you is figure out how to do stuff together. And so I said, you know what, you're turning 40. That's a great goal. I want you to feel the same way I do, like, you know, and I'll— let's do this together. And I think, you know, we're on day 9 or 10 and it's great because we eat together because otherwise it's like you're fighting to spend time with each other because she's like, oh, I feel bad for the kids. I gotta do this for the kids or that, pick, drop, whatever it is, or, you know, some activity or work. So it's like, okay.

We—

how are the— what are the things we can do together? We can eat together. And so, if I'm cooking, then, you know, I'm making it easy. I'm putting it in front of you. We're eating together. We're working out together. And so, I think that 40th birthday goal was easy to put in front of because I was getting complimented as a function of my routine. So, that was an inspiration in a bit. And then the lure of spending time together. I literally told her, I'm not gonna put work on you. I know you're busy. I'm not doing anything. I don't have the— the book is done. You are teaching, you're running the family, you're doing all kinds of stuff. I'm gonna cook for you. I'm gonna take you to the gym. I'm gonna train you. I am literally gonna make this easy for you. All I want is to spend time with you. And I put it in that we don't get to spend time together, and this will enable us to do something productive. And that's it. Like, I positioned as that I want to spend more time with you. And so when I made it easy and I'm doing this stuff, then it's like, how are you going to say no to that?

I love that. I mean, that's just such great advice to anybody listening out there to do with your spouse. Like, that's, it's so important to spend time with each other. And you're right, it can be so hard when you have all these different responsibilities going on. Like, it can be difficult to set aside that time, but What's better than sitting down and having a great meal with your wife? I mean, not much.

Exactly. Exactly. Right. And I think—

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A couple that spends time together to do stuff together, work out together, will stay together long-term, right?

Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Well, I know we're kind of getting close to time here, but I have a few more questions. And this maybe is a little bit left field, but You're— since we talked last time, you were just— your book was just coming out and now it's a Wall Street Journal bestseller. So I'm curious as to how that made you feel when it hit that list and how you're feeling about your book moving forward.

Man, I'm super excited because it created a world of opportunities, right? So one, to make the book a bestseller, I did a couple hacks, right? I, like friends like you guys promoted it. A lot of people that I knew that were influencers, number one, put it at the top of their newsletter, like folks like Neil Patel with a million subscribers. So that was a huge bump. Then I ran like a podcast marathon, I think 80-some-odd podcasts. But the key was not doing that many podcasts, but getting them to release mostly the week of launch. So that was 2. And then 3, just emailing my email list regularly and my friend circle. But now that the book's a bestseller, that's turned into opportunity for speaking a lot of conferences. Are reaching out. Right before this, I did a talk for LinkedIn Premium. Like LinkedIn reached out. Now that is huge when LinkedIn reaches out and says, can you give a talk to our paid members? So, I just came from there. So, it's turned into speaking opportunities and I think that is a big one because you guys know, right? The book in and of itself is not a moneymaker given what the publisher and Amazon and all of this takes, but it creates opportunities, speaking engagements, consulting gigs. If you run a business leads for your business. Like inadvertently, people are linking not to my book but to my company because they associate me with both. And so that drives leads. So all of that, I had to turn down a lot of speaking engagements because I just wanted to take a break and not travel. But I can see a world where between board seats and speaking engagements, like it's a self-sustaining income on its own.

Right.

I love that. Do you have any plans for what's next for you?

I don't know, man. Like the one thing I do know is I would love to do something with my wife. You spend so much time with your co-founder and I'm more in our 40s right now, right? And so the next startup I do, I would wanna find something that we can work on together so we spend more time together. I don't wanna roll into my 50s with somebody that I'm not super close to, right? And I think if we can run a family together, we can build a business together. So that is my goal and I would love for that to be at the intersection of my background and her background. I think, and then that's what you do in life is like you pick what you love and you pick your skills and then you find the overlap in that. And for me, it's AI and community And for her, it's healthcare. And I think we can build a nice product, a business around that. And I think it starts with that same framework that I talked about the last time is, you know, every small idea that eventually became a global enduring phenomenon from Christ to CrossFit went through 4 stages. You start with an audience, people are listening to you, then you bring that audience together to congregate on a cadence, it becomes a community. Then you bring that community to create impact towards a purpose that's beyond your profit and it becomes a movement. And then through sustained rituals over time, you turn it into a cult. So that is the plan. I think we gotta find the right niche, but the skill sets are all there. I think for me, honestly, I draw great energy from the people I work with and the people I serve. Not so much, it's never the money or it's never the idea. And so that is really, really important.

I'll let Nick ask his final question in just a minute, but I just, I want to tie in because we talked, you talked a little bit about loneliness and I'd be curious to know, like loneliness is an epidemic. Like it's everywhere. So many people are sad and depressed and going through all kinds of problems. Do you have any advice for those people that feel lonely as to how they can find a community that they can fit into?

You know, I think what's really important is to identify what you love or draw joy from, whatever it is. Doesn't have to be work. And it could be work. Maybe you wanna learn a particular skill, or maybe you always wanted to learn calisthenics, or you always wanted to learn to play the guitar, whatever it is. Or you draw joy from, I don't know, playing padel, whatever it is. Just find that and find people who do that and go and hang out there. On day one, you might not have any friends, but keep doing it and keep going and keep showing up and keep giving your time, keep helping, keep volunteering, and you'll build real friendships. You'll build credibility. That's what I did to start, went in the community and people are like, ah, who is this guy? And I just started to give time. How can I be helpful? Everything I have, is reaching out to people and just being helpful to them. Like Jason Lemkin, I invited him to speak at a conference and I teed that up by lining up a big speaker alongside him who sold a company for $8 billion, Ryan Smith at Qualtrics. Then when he was doing a conference, he had somebody hosting the marketing party that fell through last minute. And I took it on and 800 people showed up. I raised sponsorships. I didn't take— need anything from his team because I knew he had a big conference to run. And then we became lifelong friends. Right now, he put me on the board of one of his companies, the big-time SaaS VC. So the net-net of this is if you're the new kid on the block, the only way to be the cool kid is to be the kid that hosts the cool parties like in college, right? And it doesn't cost a lot. Just host a party around the people you want to congregate with, send 100 invites, maybe 10 will show up and give them a good experience, food and drink. And when people laugh together, hang out together, they're like-minded, then they feel obligated to invite you to the next thing and you have some friends. And everywhere I've gone, literally everywhere I've gone, that's what I've done. I know so many people in Dubai, but the first thing I came here was figure out who are all the key people. And I hosted a dinner and most people came and then I got invited to dinners and now all of a sudden a year later they're friends and we're, I'm getting invited to everything and we're hanging out and whatnot. If you sit in a cocoon, you're not gonna get to meet anyone, right? You can join groups, but if you wanna take that a step further, go out there and help others. And if you wanna take that even a step further, then host your own stuff.

I love how it starts with service to others. Like, find the community, find the thing that you love and enjoy, and then just serve in that community. That is amazing. Such great advice. All right, Nick, I'll kick it over to you. I'll keep talking.

Well, I also love that you said, you know, it's not the idea, it's not the money, but it's the people that you're doing something with. And I've found that community for me is the primary driver. And I think at Book Thinkers, You know, it's community over profit, and that enables us to grow and have fun rather than just like me as a business owner grabbing all the money that I can out of the business. It's like, no, let's reinvest and build. And that's what's important to me. Okay. I wanted to make mention of this before, but if you don't wear an Oura Ring for sleep, I highly recommend it.

I'm going to do that. I'm going to do that.

Little wearable device that measures your sleep. And then once you have a good baseline, When you implement a change, you know whether or not it's positively impacting your sleep rather than just guessing based on how you feel. And so I also really, really, really recommend the Eight Sleep mattress pad. I don't know if you—

I have that. I already have that. Yeah, I have that.

It's great. Crank it all the way down to 55 degrees and, and sleep in the cold, man. It's so good for you.

I, I do that. I think the Eight Sleep is the only mattress I can sleep on. It's, it's so bad that I, I don't want to travel anywhere because I can't sleep without it. So I have the Eight Sleep. I'm going to get the Oura Ring, but I, I really need to fix Fix the sleep. And I think if I fix the sleep, I'll be near superhuman in the next 8 months.

Sounds like it, man. All right. Other than your book, maybe I asked you this before, I don't remember. I think I started asking you after we recorded your— asking this question after we recorded your show. But what book have you gifted the most to friends, family, business partners over the last couple of years other than yours?

Yeah. So I love this book, How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. It's a good book. I can't, yeah. And also Influence by Robert Cialdini. A lot of what I read is just around human-to-human connections or listen to thereof. And I should pop my Kindle maybe because it'll show me which other books. I like The Art of Not Giving an F. I think, I think that was the name of the book. The Subtle Art.

Yeah. Yeah.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. I think that's the one I recently listened to. And there was the book, what is it? Peter Attia's book. Yeah. Outlive.

Yeah.

Outlive. Peter Attia's Outlive. Outlive is a great book. Outlive is a great book.

Yeah, I agree. All 4, all 4. 4 awesome recommendations.

Yeah, I don't, I honestly don't read as much as I should. I'm like a just-in-time reader. I have a situation, then I reference and I read it.

That's good.

Right? And so that way I retain a lot more and usually I'm in a situation that requires me to look up or read something.

Yeah, that's an interesting way to put it, just-in-time reading, but reading to solve problems. So you're emotionally connected to it and you have a deadline for execution. It forces you to take action. So, you know, that's my subject for Rise of the Reader. It's all about how do we use books to solve problems and take better action. So I like how you use kind of just-in-time, you know, management or manufacturing or fulfillment, you know, those kind of concepts with reading. That's cool.

Awesome, man. Awesome. Wishing you, wishing you great success. You've got great reviews on the book as well. And yeah, looking forward to diving into that one.

Yeah, man. All right, Luke, I know you asked your famous last question probably last time, but you have a new one that you're trialing out.

Yeah, I do. And I'm actually excited to ask this one. I've been asking this one of my friends too, and it's been fun getting their answers. So it's this, you're magically 18 today. I love these hypothetical questions. You start with all the knowledge you've accumulated, but none of the money or connections. What are the 3 to 5 things you would do to get the level of success you're at now within like 2 to 5 years?

You know, I've come to realize as I decode looking back, because when you're in it, it's always spaghetti on the wall. It's 4 things. Number one, your community, your companions matter the most. So surround yourself with the right people. You become the average of the 5 people you surround yourself with. Your community is your currency. My first job out of college was working for a startup founder and my last job before I started a company was working for a startup founder. If I hadn't, I wouldn't have the risk appetite to jump headfirst, right? And I became like the average of those people. And so your community matters the most. Even the people who bought the company, half of Boast came to a community event we hosted and they're like, wow, this is great and expressed interest in investing. And then it led to them buying half the company. I'm everything I am because of this community, the companions I surround myself with. And so take stock of who you surround yourself with because it'll determine your life. If you hang out with fit people, I'm in good shape because now in Dubai I hang around with fit people. I live on the beach. Your environment, your community, your companions matter so much. I step out of the house, maybe 2 or 3 days I can ignore the beach, but every day it's a track on the beach and lots of fit people are there. So then you'll walk and you'll keep walking and you get motivated. The second thing is communication is everything. Without communication, you don't have an audience, you have an empty room. Everything from convincing your spouse you can't bring any money for a few years to convincing early customers that you don't have a product but buy your stuff to convincing employees to work on low pay. It's all communication, evangelizing investors, media, podcasters. It's all communication. The third thing is your ability to create, whether you're creating products, content, or playbooks to scale a company. You have to create. And this 4th C, without this you have nothing. You may have the best community and the best communication and the best creations, but without consistency you will never be successful. Compound interest on consistency is what we call overnight success. From MrBeast to Warren Buffett to Elon Musk, they just never stop and keep going and going. Everything great is on the other side of risk and pain. It's a marathon, it's not a sprint. And so make sure you take care of yourself mentally to play the long game and focus on that community, communication, creation, and consistency.

Beautiful. Oh man, such great advice. Thank you so much for your time. You give so much value in these, these conversations, and I really appreciate it. I know it'll change a lot of people's lives. Where can people go to further connect with you?

Definitely. I've usually active on LinkedIn. Last 2 months after the book launch and the bestseller, I've taken a LinkedIn break because I'm saying, you know what, I'm gonna try a new format. I started an Instagram account this year. It's Lloyd Lobo, L-L-O-Y-E-D. And I didn't really have an Instagram account or it was there and dead. And my cousin's sister, she's a radio jockey in India and she's quite famous. She's got millions of followers across channels and she came to visit me and she's like, where can I tag you? I'm like, tag me on LinkedIn. And she's like, the hell is LinkedIn? And then I'm like, where do you want to tag me? And she starts talking about Instagram. So she forced me to create an Instagram account. So now I said, I'll take a LinkedIn break for a little while because I'm liking this video creation format. And so you can find me on Instagram. I've committed to posting something or the other every day for the next several months, at least for the next, at least until April. I'll post every day on the 150-day weight loss transformation challenge and some business tips. So follow me on Instagram, Lloyd, L-O-Y-E-D Lobo, and my website is lloydlobo.com. In the next month or so, we'll post all the podcasts I've appeared on and more resources about the book. And yeah, that's it.

Perfect. Super exciting. All right, we'll link all that stuff below. Appreciate your time. Thanks.

All right. Thanks guys. Thanks so much. Hey, yeah, take care. Have a good one.

That is a wrap. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode of Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books. It would mean the world to us if you could write a review and share this episode with a few of your friends. I mean, these books truly have the power to change people's lives and By reviewing or sharing our podcast, you're helping us make an impact. If you have any recommendations for future guests or any constructive feedback for us on how we can improve our show, please feel free to submit a form on our website, www.bookthinkers.com, or send us a direct message on Instagram @bookthinkers. With that, I am signing off, and I hope you have a wonderful day. Don't forget, go read something.