Life-Changing Books Podcast Episode 62. Todd Herman: Author of The Alter Ego Effect

Well, Todd, welcome to the Book Thinkers Life-Changing Books Podcast. How are you doing today?

I'm fantastic, man. There's a very nice yellow book right behind you if people are watching on video.

Yes, there is. And if they're not, I'll hint to what it is. It's called The Alter Ego Effect, and it's actually written by you. So, I'd love to have you introduce yourself to everybody in the audience.

Yeah, sure. So, hey, everyone that's listening, I am Todd Herman. I started out my career in 1997 when coaching wasn't the thing really. Working with young teenagers on the mental game. I was a college football player. I was a nationally ranked badminton player. I loved sport growing up on our farm and ranch in Western Canada. And I started this fledgling little business very much by accident. And over the course of many years of just really focusing on, on that world and me becoming more well-known, I ended up starting to work with more pro athletes and Olympic athletes. and built up this— built up actually the largest peak performance and mental game training company in the world, operating in 86 countries. And through that process, to get to kind of the conversation that we're going to have today about the book, what was starting to reveal itself was that the people that were consistently performing at peak levels, that were at the top of their different sports, because I didn't focus on just one sport, even though I kind of started in hockey in Canada and then I merged into or evolved into figure skating even, and tennis and football, American football, soccer, and on and on, was that they would talk about having this persona, this secret identity, this altered version of their persona that they would take out onto the court or the field. And for me, I was like, oh, that's fantastic, because I did the exact same thing when I played football. I'm not a physically gifted person, but I had a bunch of scholarships and It was more because I had a really great mental game that helped me get into the zone and the flow state, this kind of mythical place that a lot of people talk about wanting to get to. And the alter ego was all of a sudden this method that I started to use. I unpacked the way that other people were doing it and started to put it into a process and a method and became world known as being the guy who builds the alter egos of some of the biggest leaders and public figures and entertainers and athletes on the planet. Ergo, I wrote the damn book a couple of, a couple of years ago.

Well, it's a fantastic book. And I think most people are fascinated by world-class athletes because there's something special about those people. There are no gimmicks. You have to show up and you have to execute sort of like, like I just said, at peak performance levels. And so it's pretty cool to speak with you and to sort of pick your brain today. I want to start off with Uh, who's the target reader for this book? Because I think we've got a lot of different types of people in the audience and they're probably wondering who'd you write the book for.

Yeah, so it's definitely for people that are, um, striving to do ambitious things. Now, what does that mean? Does that mean that someone is trying to get onto a podium at the Olympics? Yeah, that's one sort of type of ambition. But another type of ambition is, is also someone who's trying to unshackle themselves from a very limiting narrative about what they think they can and cannot do. And the reality is, man, like life is hard. For as much as sometimes I kind of rail against the self-help world as being a little bit too bubblegum, cotton candy, and popsicle, it tastes sweet, but it's less filling, right? There's no meat on the bones sometimes. At the end of the day, I'm a practitioner. I still love to coach. I still do dedicate some of it, even though I'm growing lots of different companies. But the reality is that so many of these people that I've worked with over the years have had to overcome some very difficult things that they didn't choose to happen to them, maybe at a young age, or they just built up a really bad belief structure about what they think that they can and can't do. And that's an ambitious thing to want to try to break through that. So the very fact that people are listening to you and your podcast or that they read books is already a sign that they want to develop themselves. They want more. They see more of themselves that's capable, but they just can't seem to maybe get it out of themselves. That's sort of a bit about a lot of the target readers. But like some people have used it to finally lose weight. They've built an alter ego that loves the idea of fitness. A lady came up to me at an event that I spoke at a year and a half ago, and she said, hey, Todd, we've never met before, but I just want to let you know that I've read your Alter Ego book. And she got the title wrong because I'm like, it's The Alter Ego Effect. It's not The Alter Ego Book. And I said, oh, great. And she said, but I'd never worked out a day in my life. Always kind of hated the idea of gym, but I followed your process and I built out this alter ego that loves working out and I lost 36 pounds in 3 months. And that win ended up transforming my speaking career because I was trying to get out on stage. And now, listen, I have this like thriving speaking career as well. And all of it was because I built out this new identity. And so, you know, whatever your pursuit is, this is just a fantastic— another tool that you can put in your toolbox of life to help you navigate it with more grit and more grace.

Well, I've read hundreds of books in this space. Nonfiction is my thing, clearly. But I had never read a book dedicated to this concept before. So it's very original to me. And I had a lot of fun walking through the book. And we'll touch on some of those subjects during today's conversation. This book is for people who are ambitious and doing hard things, but it's also playful, which we'll touch on. So let's kick off. I see the Superman behind you. Let's kick off with the phone booth moment. So what is that all about?

So I mean, we all have these, you know, there's that, there's that scene in You know, the original Superman series where when Superman needed to, or when Clark Kent needed to finally get back into his Superman ways, he would pop inside the phone booth and he would make that shift and all of a sudden come out as this superhero to come and save the day. And in our lives, there's all sorts of these different phone booth moments. It's these what I call moments of impact.

Yeah.

that are critical to the success of your career, possibly. It could be you going out on stage and doing a presentation or a speech, or it could be the moment that you sit down even to just focus on the work you need to do. It's a moment of impact. Are you going to commit to it? It's that moment when your kids are screaming at home, possibly, and if you're a parent, and how do you respond and react in that moment? That's a moment of impact because moments of impact are typically fueled by either a lot of pressure, so there's outside pressure, people watching you, expectations that might be there, or they're emotionally volatile. It's very easy for people to respond in a very emotional way. And that's a big thing that I've just witnessed over the years is it's in those moments of impact, those phone booth moments, as how do you end up showing up in those moments? Because Most people will end up under-indexing, or they'll hide, or they won't speak up. They won't say the things that they wanted to say. They won't give their idea in the board meeting or in the team meeting because of whatever. They say, I'm introverted, or I'm shy, or they're just scared of conflict or something like that. And what that does is it starts to eat away at your own self-efficacy, your own confidence, because that isn't you. Like, that's you denying something about yourself in that moment and it's what I call in Chapter 3 of the book, I have this model that I kind of reveal where I talk about it creates what's called the trapped self and it's not there because it's a cute term. It's just literally the number one way that people will articulate the feeling that they have when they know that they've got more inside of themselves but it's not getting out onto that what I call a field of play. You're not taking the action. It makes you feel trapped. And then what happens is you're trying to put your finger on like, what's trapping me? So you pick up all these books and the problem that I have with a lot of the personal development world or the leadership world or the world of spirituality as well is that they make everyone believe that everything is a belief that you need to— that's a belief that you have or you have a lack of belief in yourself. And the problem with that is fundamentally, we as human beings have been indoctrinated to think that when something's a belief, what does that mean? hard to change. So, when you think that something's a belief, that you've got terrible beliefs about yourself, what you think you can and can't do, everything has to be hard now to go and do it. It's what I call, you know, the tangled web of beliefs. You get trapped in it and conversely, there's many other tools that you can use to help you overcome some of these things and the Alter Ego Effect, the reason it's the effect is because it says it in the subheadline. you know, the power of secret identities to transform your life. It's so transformative because we as human beings, everything gets stacked on top of our identity. So when you change your identity, when you change the way that you associate with yourself, all the other stuff changes with it— beliefs, attitudes, habits, behaviors, and your actions. So, um, you know, that's to kind of wrap up a little bit of like that phone booth moment and why it's there.

Yeah, no, I think it's an important clarification to make. And, and you're totally right. I think sometimes people, uh, the self-help world can overemphasize how difficult things are, and it can actually push people down into submission. And so what you're saying is that this alter ego effect is a tool that you can take out and use whenever you want. It doesn't need to be something that you build up for the next 2 years, and then finally you can step into your Superman outfit. It's there, it's sitting underneath, you know, maybe your t-shirt right now, and all you have to do is rip it open.

Well, Nick, like, the other side, the other side of this too is that The great thing about this concept and my favorite thing that I get pinged on from Instagram to LinkedIn to Facebook when people DM you, and then I go into my other folder on Instagram and I'm like, oh crap, there's like 50 messages here that I've missed here, is that one of the most common responses people go like, oh my God, I think I've actually been doing this in my life, or I used to do this. I feel like— and I'm like, absolutely. Every human being, every single person that's listening to this right now, the great thing about this concept is you already know it. Because you did it as a kid very naturally. And scientifically, because I run a science-based company, the reason is because from the age of 6 months to around 7 years of age, our brain is operating in what's called the theta brainwave state. So, there's 4 sort of identified brainwave states that we operate through. Beta is the highest level. Beta is the sort of the waking mind. It's the very— it's reasoning, it's judgment, very much your frontal lobe is very activated when you're in beta. Alpha is when you get into like more of a focused state, like you're kind of locked into an activity and you're focusing. That's the alpha. The brainwaves start to elongate a little bit more, they slow down. And then you get into theta. Theta is creative imagination. It's where the zone in the flow state sits. And then the very bottom one is delta, and delta is very much the restful sleeping state that we go into, especially when we're sleeping. Now, going back into this whole 6 months to 7 years. So children are locked into the theta brainwave state. Now, biologically, an evolutionary reason why is because we need to learn a whole bunch about how the world works in a very short— in that window of time in our lives, right? You know, a giraffe when it's born, it has to be able to get up and run right away to get away from predators. Human beings aren't quite like that, but—

Yeah.

Because we have this phenomenal power of our brain on this planet, it's structurally built for theta brainwave states so that you can absorb like a sponge all the stuff that's happening around you. I've got 3 little kids and you can see it happening, just their development, how fast they grow. So, it's there so that you don't have a reasoning brain to stop you from thinking about this stuff. So, you get embedded with these ideas whether you choose them or not, right? Like, that's why going back to what we were saying before about You know, a lot of us, we didn't choose the experiences that we had as young kids. Um, and so a lot of those things end up stopping us, um, trapping us because we have a bad association with it, a bad narrative. There's traumas that might be there for some people. But, um, that creative imagination— what are kids doing at that age? They're playing with different ideas about themselves. I'm LeBron James, or I'm Superman, I'm Batman.

I'm—

you know, you wouldn't know this yet, but Paw Patrol is a huge cartoon that's out there, and they love, you know, um, Chase and Marshall and all these little pups that are there but they play with these ideas— nurse, teacher things. They're just trying on these different identities to just step into something. It's very natural for them and then our frontal lobe starts to kick in and develop at 8, 9, 10 and then we develop reasoning skills and we take a look at the stuff that we used to do when we were 5 and 6 and go, oh! Like, that was so childish! Or whatever and yet we're missing out on what you were doing was leveraging your creative imagination which is for me, when I'm working with whether it's one-on-one or in our, you know, global training programs that we have with developing leaders and entrepreneurs and athletes and stuff is no, that's the actual thing that you need to re-find and redevelop because that creative imagination is the backdoor into peak performance. It is the way to get into zone and flow state because without that creative imagination, you're leveraging too much of the processing power of your frontal lobe. And so that's just some of the fundamental reasons why it works so well. And, and why it's so important to sort of refine this idea, which is what I get pinged on on social media so often. Like, I've been doing this, and I'm like, yeah, you've already been doing it. You did it as a kid.

Yeah, it's funny to think about that because I, I got trapped for a while when I was a lot younger. I used to be focused more on impact and other people, and then— Nice.

When I was a lot younger, when I'm like, oh, what was it? Because what are you right now? What are you?

I'm 27.

27. I was gonna say 28. Yeah, because you remind me a bit of me at that age. So anyway, sorry to interrupt you.

Well, I appreciate that, by the way. I feel really young all the time because I spend most of my time interviewing people that are older and reading books and mentors that are a lot older than I am. But when I was really young, I was focused a lot on impact. I think I was more free and expressive. And then from the ages of probably like middle school, through the beginning of college, I got rid of all of that. I was, I was dealing with a lot of ego and uncertainty, which created insecurity in my life. And then with Book Thinkers, as it started to grow, I started to realize, wow, I'm super fulfilled by impacting the lives of other people. But anybody who knew me back then probably would say, nah, that's not really you if you started to come out and talk about impact all the time. So I left it trapped for a long time. Until one time I had an author on who just said, dude, stop pretending. Impact is one of your core values. I see it in everything that you do. Why are you so scared? And it clicked for me. Like, I've, I've got to release it. It's trapped inside. So it certainly happened for me. And I love the idea of play because I think it's comforting for people who take some of these books too seriously. We're just trying to get back to the basics. And I think when we talk about some examples, which we can touch on some now, then go into more of the characteristics of the alter ego effect.

Yeah.

people will see sort of how this works. And so I love the idea of Jason and Bo Jackson. I'd love to have you tell that one.

Yeah. So it's the, it's the story that leads off the book. It's also the story that ended up having— I was blessed to have 19 different publishers want the book. So I met with 19 publishers. And if you know anything about writing books, that's just an obscene number. And I'm not saying it because Um, of Todd. It wasn't because, you know, Todd Ullman had this big profile and, you know, you know, I've got a good following and stuff, but it was because every publisher was like, we kind of— every book that's ever could have been written has been written under the sun topic-wise, but this book has never been written. And then they were like, like, why is that? And I said, because most of the people that write books, they're not practitioners. Like, sure, they're not actually as close to the battlefield as you can get. So, sometimes they're researchers and so they're observing things. There's only so much that you can get, especially about the human experience from observing or interviewing people because the reality is what people are actually thinking in their head when they're competing in the Olympics or pro sports or when they're out there and they're trying to build a career in Hollywood or Broadway or now entrepreneurs as well, what's actually going on and what they're saying in their head and what they tell other people, very different things. Well, that's where I live is the 6 inches between people's ears. I know what people are actually thinking and it looks very different than what's typically written about. And so, that was sort of the fascinating reason why is like, why hadn't this book been written? Because fundamentally most people aren't practitioners. They're not kind of working so close. But that story of Bo Jackson helped me get a lot of book deals or book offers because they were fascinated with this story. And what happened was, if you don't know who Bo Jackson is, He's the only 2-sport All-Star athlete in American sports. He was an All-Star in the NFL, an All-Star in Major League Baseball as well. Just an absolute phenom athlete that was coming out in the 1980s. And I was speaking at this event in Georgia, and I was in the green room area, pacing back and forth, thinking about my talk. And when I say green room, Let's just sort of wax away and erase away all people's glorious ideas of what that's like. It was basically a cafeteria is what it was at a school. But as I'm kind of going back and forth and I was in there by myself and then in through the doors comes this physical specimen and a bit of a hero of mine from the past. I was like, wait a second, that's Bo Jackson. He walked over and said, hey, I'm Bo Jackson. I said, yeah, I know who you are. You won me a lot of games on Tecmo Bowl as a kid. So Tecmo Bowl was the football game on Nintendo. Bo Jackson was the cheat code. You could hand the ball off to Bo Jackson and no one could tackle him. So that's why I always chose the Oakland Raiders. And he laughed and he said, yeah, I've heard that a lot. And he said, so are you talking today? And I said, yeah, I'm about to go do a speech. But I said, I might've got just got bumped for you. And he said, no, you're good. I'm just meeting a friend. And he's like, what are you going to talk to everyone about? And it was a sports conference. There's a bunch of coaches there and a bunch of athletes and some parents as well. And I said, well, I'm going to go out there and talk to them about really developing their mental toughness skill sets, but specifically I'm going to talk to them about really developing a performance identity, an alter ego that they take out onto the court, the field, whatever, to help them really untap all their capabilities. And he just stopped and he kind of cocked his head to the side and he's like, Bo Jackson never played a down of football his entire life. I love that line. Interesting. Tell me more. It was such a great line. And he said, well, if anyone knows my story, they know that, you know, I was a bit of an angry kid growing up, kind of battled some anger issues. And while that sounds like that would be really good for a running back. It was in some ways, but it also got me in trouble because I'd take penalties or I wasn't very coachable. And then one day I was watching a movie and on the screen comes this cold, calculating, methodical, and unemotional character. And I thought to myself, wait a second, what if I took him out onto the football field? And it was Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th. So Jason. And this is where everyone goes, wait, Here's someone who's battling anger issues and he chooses a serial killer with a hockey mask to go out and play football through? And he said, he's like, what I was attaching to in that was he was methodical, but he was unemotional. And here I was, I was methodical, but I was emotional and I was emotionally responding. And so his mission then, and I talk about in the book the importance of a mission. When you have a role in life that's important to you, like your role right now is that of a curious and inquisitive interviewer, right? To pull the best content out for everyone that's here. That's still different than the guy who ends up going out and promoting on Instagram. That's the promoter side of, you know, the CEO of Book Thinkers or the promoter of Book Thinkers. So you have these different roles. And when you start to see how this all plays out in life, we can start to become way more intentional. With how I want to show up. Like, you want to show up in the world with impact, and then you honor that. And when you feel like you do that every day, and all the actions that you took, it makes you feel really good about how you operated in your day. I nailed it. I am, I am who I wanted to be today. And if there's anything that I could leave an impact for myself, because I'm very much driven by impact as well, Is that if I can leave people with more streaks, more back-to-back days where they felt like I left it all out on the field as me, as I, as I want to, then that's important. So for Bo, it was, you know, not being emotional. I wanted to be unemotional. That was his mission, was to basically destroy everything in my path with no emotion. That became his mission. And, um, you know, it's pretty hard to argue with his career. Now, was his alter ego the thing that— like, he already had skill. He already had this amazing physical body that he could work with. But who knows what would've happened if he didn't build out this super self for himself? And anyways, that was the experience. And he was just fascinated that he's like, I thought I was the only one. Like, I thought that was a— because no one knew. And I just did a documentary with NFL Films, the great documentary film company. And when they would when they were interviewing other football players and they said, did you know that Bo Jackson had an alter ego? It's hilarious to watch some of the reactions because they're like, wait, no. And then they said, yeah, it was Jason Voorhees. And he was like, whoa. Nate Burleson, one of the former, um, great, great careers in the NFL, he's like, whoa, Voorhees, that's intense. But, um, it was personal to him, but it allowed him to, to really show up and perform like he wanted to.

Yeah, it's, it's a really mind-blowing example. And I'm happy that you also explained how unique it was when you were pitching the book, because that's also something I'm always really interested in as I begin the first stages of writing my first book.

Yeah.

And Bo Jackson, I mean, such a legend. And it's cool to understand the psychology of why he chose Jason and how it worked. And then when you were younger and playing football, you used to tuck trading cards In your pads and you visualize this tribe of warriors coming out with you. So that's another really cool example.

Yeah. So where I grew up in Western Canada on a farm and ranch in Southern Alberta, it was, you know, there's the classic great American story of the Battle of Little Bighorn, right? Where Custer fights Sitting Bull. And when Sitting Bull fled America, he came into Canada. And they were on our family's farm and ranch for a bit. So I used to go around on my horse Crackerjack as a kid, and I'd go around and find old fire rings and stuff, and I'd dig around and try to find artifacts and arrowheads and stuff. So I've always been extremely enamored with the Native American cultures. Still to this day, I've got work that I do in that world. So when I was playing high school football, you know, an intense game. And I was never big. Like, I was 6 feet, but I was 159 pounds. Like, I was—

Same size as I was in high school.

Yeah. I had no meat on my bones, even though I tried to put meat on my bones. My metabolism would just ate it all up and, you know, chewed it out kind of thing. So I had this ritual that I would go into right before, uh, as I was getting changed, where I had these 5 trading cards sitting next to me on my bench. 3 were of Walter Payton, my football hero and 2 of Ronnie Lott, one of the great defensive players of all time. And then I would go into my mind and close my eyes and I'd go into this— it was a mental movie theater. It's one of the strategies that I train people on is developing this mental movie theater. And I would walk into it and there's 2 doors at the other end of this room. And through one room would walk Walter Payton and Ronnie Lott towards me. And through the other door would walk 5 Native American warriors led by Geronimo. And as they would approach me, I'd notice that Geronimo had these 5 trading cards in his hand, these 5 cards. And Walter Payton would say, he said, and Geronimo would reach out to hand me these cards, and Walter Payton would say, we want you to take these cards as a representation of all of us when you go out there with— go out there so we can be with you. And, um, and I would reach up and I'd grab them. And as I grabbed them, Geronimo would pull them back towards himself, and Walter Payton would lean into me and say, but don't you for one second dishonor our memory and our methods by not imbuing your play with the way that we would. Don't dishonor us. And, and that was like that sort of moment of impact for me where I'd be like, okay, like I am committing to you. And, and, and so then I'd take the cards and I'd open my eyes, and then I would take these 3 of Walter Payton. I'd put one in my helmet because I wanted to think like him out there. Super smart. His vision was amazing. And I put his other 2 in my thigh pads, each of my thigh pads, because I wanted to run like him. And then I'd put Ronnie Lott's in one of my shoulder pads and one in the other shoulder because I wanted to hit like him. And then Once I put on my helmet and I put the chin strap on and I snapped it, that's when the 5 Native American warriors would come inside my heart because I wanted to take the heart of the warrior mentality out there— warrior spirit, sorry— with me out there. And so you thought that you were playing against number 17, this like skinny little kid where the football equipment looked like he was swimming inside of it, but you weren't. You were playing against 7 others. And it allowed me— I mean, there was one game where I broke 2 helmets in half, like the shell of the helmet cracked down the middle. It makes no sense. It makes no— I mean, I've seen so many experiences in sport now after coaching hundreds and thousands of athletes where it makes no sense how physically this person could go and do this. Makes no sense whatsoever. But there's a mystery to how, like, once you're committed to something and you've got all of your alignment between the physical, emotional, and mental side of you in alignment. That's where just peak state can sit. And that's where it's— my favorite thing is to be a part of this world and being able to help people find these gears that they didn't even know that they had yet. It's so fun to twist the dials, so to speak, and all of a sudden the safe opens and all this potential comes out. But that was me. That was mine. And so the name I had was for my alter ego was Geronimo. He sort of encompassed everybody.

Such a cool representation of what you talk about in the book. When I was in high school, I also played football and I was 6 feet, 160 pounds because I also wrestled.

You had that extra pound on me.

I did. I had one extra pound because I wrestled at 160. So I knew that when football season ended, I needed to walk into wrestling without having to cut weight. But I also couldn't add any weight on my body either. I had protein shakes and everything back in the day, but I just, my metabolism burned it off too. I grew up in the same neighborhood as Mike who's now the head coach of the Tennessee Titans, but was formerly a Patriot. And so, he grew up in the same neighborhood. Well, I grew up in the neighborhood that he lived when he was playing on the Pats. And that gave me a lot of confidence. It took me from where I was and it added a little bit more confidence because I used to visualize myself as Mike when I was in practice playing defense.

Sure.

And Randy Moss had just done a year in New England at the time as I was going into high school. And I was a wide receiver. So I used to just always think of myself as Randy Moss. And again, it's a representation of what you're talking about. I wish I had access to a book like this when I was that young, though, because, man, I missed out on a lot of what you talk about in this book. I mean, it would have been so cool to put trading cards in my football uniform and to understand why I was visualizing the people that I was visualizing. So thank you for telling that story.

Well, it's just like, you know, What's funny is the experience I have with so many people when they listen to podcasts like this or when they read the book is they're like, I was doing bits of this. But the way that I wrote the book, A, it's modeling as well one of my heroes and one of my influences for one of my next alter egos, Joseph Campbell, who came up with the hero's journey and the power of myth.

There it is. Yeah.

One of the great human beings to ever live. Like, I mean, just, I'm, I'm in love with Joseph. And so the book follows a very hero's journey model for like how you're building out this super self, right?

Yeah, I've got a lot of Joseph Campbell back here.

Yeah, I know, you just— he's just so good because that's what you're doing. Like, you know, I, I referenced chapter 3 before where I kind of get into the model of like why this is, how we develop our identities in the first place, and, and kind of how they're structured to begin with. Um, And, you know, most people's experiences of life is they kind of walk around with this trapped self. It's just— there's— they have a lot more horsepower, but it's not getting out there. And it's frustrating because they're reading books and they're consuming things or they're being inspired, but they just can't find what that is. And that's because they're trying to fundamentally fix something that was broken from the beginning, which is this current self, which you didn't choose. I mean, when you really think about it— because people will try to argue with me on this and I'm like, listen, like— You didn't get— you didn't choose a lot of how you think right now. And you think that because it is your experience that this is actually you, but what I'm telling you is it's not you. There's so many— there's so much more of you that's available. And our job in life is to not accept this current version of ourselves and start to create the person that we want. Now, all these things sound like great platitudes. You've heard them before. They're on freaking Instagram quotes. And but me as a practitioner, I want to give you tools to actually do this.

Yeah.

And so, the ultimate trump card tool that I can play with people is the alter ego because now it's— we're disassociating from you, we're unshackling from your story, and we're now getting you to live through a different story inspired by a model of someone or something else that is maybe you see as already being able to do it.

Yeah, it's a great, it's a great perspective shift. There's a TED Talk that I watched years and years ago, and the host of the TED Talk is somebody that the reading community kind of makes fun of. It's Tai Lopez. I'm not sure if you're familiar with his work.

I know Tai very well.

All right, cool. So I love Tai, and Tai's one of the reasons I got into this space. And in that TED Talk, he says basically, if, if you read a book like Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson and you study Jobs, you can filter your decision-making at a specific inflection point through his thought process. And you can act as if you were Steve Jobs, or maybe you walk into the gym. And after finishing Total Recall, Arnold Schwarzenegger's autobiography, you can approach your workout like Arnold would. And that's another form of this alter ego effect, because you're assuming the identity of somebody else to make a decision or to approach a situation. Same exact thing. And it doesn't need to be an alter ego that reoccurs every Friday night when you step out onto the football field. It can be once every couple of months when you need to make a management decision or something like that.

Yeah. You've got your sources of inspiration. I mean, one of the things that I teach inside of our alter ego online course that we have for people is that building of this roundtable of advisors that you go to, you sit down. It's just like the roundtable of King Arthur's court back in the day where everyone has the equal say no matter where they sat inside of their own crew. And so that's where Walter Payton and Ronnie Lott in the sporting sense, but then in my business sense, I mean, Benjamin Franklin is a huge kind of hero as well. But this idea, so yeah, that's why the thing I love about this concept of an alter ego, and again, I didn't invent the idea of an alter ego. It was first coined by Cicero back in 44 BC. who's widely known as the greatest Roman statesman and philosopher to kind of ever live. That dual statesman and philosopher. I have kind of an issue with some Stoicism and philosopher stuff because it sounds really beautiful when you're standing on top of the mount waxing philosophical about life, but does it actually execute itself on the field of play? Some of these ideas that are out there that people try to adhere to, they break under the weight of just the pressure of the, of the moment. And that's where I live, is I love living where the mouth of the volcano is. Like, I love being close to the pressure. I love having the pressure on me when, you know, I've got clients going into the, um, Euro Cup right now, right over in, um, Europe. And I love being there because I love having the white-hot light of performance on me and not just a book that people have to— and like, no, no, hire me. And, you know, because I love living there. But what I love about this idea is that there's no real rules around it. And when Cicero first coined it back in 44 BC, he said it's the other I or trusted friend within. However you want to use it, whether you want to use it just like you said as a source of inspiration to kind of filter your thoughts through like, hey, what would Steve Jobs do? Or how would he go with this? Or Bill Gates or Oprah Winfrey or, you know, Laila Ali or Muhammad Ali. Like insert whoever it is, how would they respond? That's one way to get to it. Then there's the other end of the spectrum, which is the way that I've used it in the past and other successful people. We talked about Halsey before we got on, the current superstar in pop. And Halsey, she has this quote where she says, me wanting to do this was so far-fetched. And the fact that I changed my name in the process, I think I had the foresight to know that being me wasn't enough. I had to become somebody completely different. At the time, I felt that Ashley didn't deserve to be famous and successful because she wasn't that special. But if I made Halsey, maybe she could be. So I don't know all of Ash— because her real name is Ashley. I don't know all of Ashley's history, but what I know is there's probably some trauma that sits there which caused her to believe that Ashley isn't all that special, but Halsey is because she built a brand new story and a brand new narrative. Um, and it's hard to argue with that success then. And if it helped her then go out there and lead the life that she wanted, which is to be an artist and perform and be creative, beautiful. Like, what a great gift to other people then. You know, some people try to poo-poo the idea and say, you know, like say Beyoncé and Sasha Fierce. When Beyoncé revealed Sasha Fierce back in 2008 to everybody And then she famously retired Sasha Fierce. People were trying to throw rocks and say, "Oh, look at how fake she was being then!" And it's like you don't get it. Like you're not getting the purpose here. This was someone who had a difficult time seeing Beyoncé do it, but Sasha Fierce could go and dance provocatively, sing provocatively, you know, on that stage with the white-hot light of performance when she had a very very traditional gospel singing, churchgoing background. When that becomes your identity growing up, because it's the formative years of our development, we start to see ourselves in that view of gospel singing, churchgoer. And all of a sudden, I'm dancing in this troupe, Destiny's Child, and it's— it can be conflicting to the self. That's the realities of life. And so she just built this fantastic alter ego to help her navigate that, just like Ashley did. And if you actually look at the Halsey and Ashley, all she did was just flipped around a couple of letters. Because it's the same, same, same letters in the name. She just flipped it around a little bit.

Yeah, 2 fascinating stories. And again, it always forces me to think back to my own life. And I've gone through that transition a few times. And the core lesson, sort of to summarize from what you just said, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that what gets you here won't get you there. Sometimes you need to shift, you need to alter, you need to move and change and evolve. into something else in order to achieve the next milestone.

It's such a healthy mindset when you realize you're never baked. There's never— you're never done. Like, I was talking to my 8-year-old Molly the other day, and she was saying how she's looking forward to when school is done. And I said, school's never done, honey, because you're never done improving. We have this thing in our family where we say, what would a Herman do? And when you understand what I talk about in chapter 3, how we as human beings, one of the kind of layers that really affects how we view the world, how we see and how we behave in the world is what I call the core drivers layer. And it's we as human beings will attach ourselves with labels of, you know, I'm an American, or I'm a Canadian, or I'm a Jew, or I'm a Muslim, I'm a police officer, I'm a teacher. And what happens is, depending on your story about what it means to be a police officer, what it means to be a Catholic, or what it means to be any one of these things, we'll adopt the traits of them unconsciously. Okay, that's, that's a natural human experience. We all do that. But now that we know that it's there, we can start plucking the strings in a way that we can play our own music. So, one of the things that we do in our family is we talk about what it means to be a Herman. So, we already know— so, I know that this layer is there anyway. Well, I want to use it in a way that's empowering to my kids, not disempowering. So, we talk about what it means to be a Herman. Hermans are kind. Hermans help other people. Hermans don't quit. Hermans love to do tough stuff. That's one of the things. And Hermans seek out failure. Like if my daughter Molly, she'll ask you this if she ever meets you face to face, she'll say, did you fail at anything today, Nick? And if you said, geez, I don't know if I did, she's like, well, today was a wasted day, wasn't it?

I love that.

I want to anesthetize my kids to the idea of failure. I don't want them to have any association with it where they think it's a negative thing because when you— because one of the questions I ask them before bedtime is, what did you fail at today? Because what's on the other side of that story is what? Rebirth! Because they said, remember when I was on the monkey bars today and I slipped off? I failed it but I got back and I did it again! There's always this feedback loop of rebirth and so what they're learning right now is that failure just means learning. Just means that— and I'm building up self-efficacy with them because they can see themselves as someone who can what? Handle some sort of failure! So, it's not a negative thing. It's a very positive thing! And so my point about that is we live through labels and I talk about it in the book. I just wanted to find a more empowering one. And just like Bo Jackson used an empowering label of kind of showing up as Jason Voorhees or Ashley built out Halsey or Beyoncé built out Sasha Fierce or the inspiration for the glasses that are on the book, it's not because I wear glasses and it's kind of what I used to develop my alter ego. In business, and it's not because of Clark Kent and Superman, because I tell that story in the book either. It's actually paying homage to someone who wore glasses to step into what he called his distinguished self, his secret identity, to write speeches and books to empower a group of people to nonviolent action, because he didn't want his own ego to get in the way of this important movement that he was a part of. So he put on these glasses to write his speeches, but he never wore the glasses in public. It was only when he went into his. Private office. Very rarely did anyone know that he actually had these things, but they were non-prescription glasses just like mine were non-prescription glasses. Who was it? And who told me that story originally? And it was Coretta Scott King. Martin Luther King's wife told me the story. But MLK wore glasses to write his speeches because again, he was leading an important movement and he didn't want to get in the way of it. And now at the Atlanta Hartsfield Airport, and when I do my keynote speeches on it, I show the pictures of it of me standing next to it and everything. There's a shrine area to With his glasses sitting inside of it, saying that he didn't need to wear glasses. He wore fake glasses to step into what he called his distinguished self. So there's like— once you hear about this concept, and I like— that's what I love about this, is reintroducing this to people. Because like I said, you already know about this. It's embedded in you. It's a part of the human experience. We play with identities all the time. Now I just want to give people the method to just— that maps perfectly to psychologically how we're built anyway. And just topple the dominoes in a powerful method to help you overcome difficult things. And like you had said at the very beginning, be far more playful at life because life can be serious, life can be hard. But if we can bring more of an attitude of playfulness to things, it can relax us more. And when we relax more, just like I try to do with my athletes when they're competing, if they're overly tense, there's friction. But when you're relaxed, you can just— you just step into it. more you— it's easy for this capability that you have to come out of you.

Amazing. Todd, thank you for today's conversation. I think this was the perfect blend of content from the book, but, but not giving away too much, right? It was a preview for what's—

No, I need everyone to damn well go and buy the damn book.

Exactly. Because this was a preview for what you're going to get, right? Because the book, it— as you walk through the book step by step, you're exploring different areas of the alter ego effect, your superpowers, the field of play, your core self, etc. And you're building and you give examples and you give different words that you might be able to use and you approach things from different angles. So I would encourage anybody that's listening, if this is an exciting conversation or not, go get the book because it will improve your performance. And I think you did a great job at highlighting that.

Well, and the other thing too is all these other books that you might have read, it's one of my favorite compliments I've gotten and it's happened a few times, but when I did the interview with Entertainment Tonight, the interviewer the lady who interviewed me said, I've read a lot of books on personal leadership or self-help or developing myself or behavior. She's like, this book became like a container that now can hold all these other ideas inside it. Because habits, when you think about your habits now through the use of your identity, that's where James Clear in his book Atomic Habits, who's a good friend, had come up with that concept of you know, building habits through identity. It's the thing I've been talking about for a long time because identity is the ultimate trump card when you know how to like really reinforce it that way. So, the great thing about the concept is it becomes this great container that holds so many other ideas inside of it and becomes a very usable form so you can get results far more quickly than if you just tried to do it on your own. Because again, you're battling against sometimes your own identity and your own self and your own concepts of what you think you can and can't do. But when you can step inside of an identity that is free from all those things, your ability to get results just changes so much more faster.

Yeah, I would second that comment. Because if, if you read this book, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell, you have 2 options. You can move on, or you can turn it into a tool and wear it on your belt, and you can use it when you need it. And so your book does help reframe that. Where should people go? What should people do if they want to learn a little bit more about you and what you do?

Yeah, so my home base on, uh, the internet is toddherman.me, and, you know, links to like all the stuff that we do is there. alteregoeffect.com if they want to see more stuff about the book, and there's a companion guide that we have that goes along with it for more exercises, more things that they can do to kind of make it easier on themselves, and videos and examples that are there. And then of course on like, you know, all the social media stuff. If you get the book, like, I'm super active. Like, I love getting feedback or questions that people have, and, um, I try to respond as fast as I possibly can, but, you know, ping me. I'm, uh, I think I'm a friendly guy, so you can interact with me. And I can attest to that. Instagram, Todd Herman, todd_herman. Um, and same thing on LinkedIn and elsewhere. So.

Amazing. Well, thank you for coming on the show today. I really appreciate it.

Thanks, Hutch.