The Art of Networking: Building Authentic Connections—StoryPod Ep 04

It's been a long time.

And we still don't have a name for this podcast, but it's always good to see you, man.

We'll think of it. Don't worry, we'll get there. We're imagining it. We're telling our stories. So for the Imaginarium of Storytelling and such.

Everybody, welcome back. Episode number 4. The only reason why we're actually recording this is because they say that most podcasts die before the 6th episode. Some survived the 13th, so we decided we'll record 14 and then we're out.

And so the reason we're doing this right now is because we said that when we reach that goal, we'll create a joint workshop for both of us, bringing both of our good things together and then opening up to the masses. So stay tuned for that one, it's gonna be cool.

So for those of you who are new here, why, why are you new here? This has been going on for weeks. Nir Zavaro, your host. Thank you so much. And Yoav Meir, my dear friend. I wanted to share with you something that I don't know if you remember, but when we recorded the first episode, no matter what we did, it said our names wrong. And I felt, oh, I said your name wrong. And then I went again and again. I was like, but I also said my name wrong, which is weird, right? And I've been doing the YouTube podcasts, or sorry, the YouTube episodes the last 3 weeks. The AI has never understood how to pronounce my surname.

Never.

No matter what I did, the accent or something like, it doesn't know that this is a name.

But this is a compliment, you know, because AI is sort of the collective knowledge of everything that exists there. It really means that your name is super unique and what you do is unique. So it actually, I take this as a very nice compliment.

Or maybe I don't exist.

Perhaps, but your avatar does. So at least that, maybe they're gonna do that.

At least that. So you've been, you've had quite a busy couple of weeks and that's why we didn't have time to record. And now I'm about to embark on a couple of busy weeks. We decided to do this episode talking a little bit about what we're learning from all the events and the conferences that you and I are attending or have attended. So take us a little bit through it.

You only, I think, discover now how super important that is. That's the first thing, the ability to touch people, to exchange ideas, to not have conversation like on exactly what you're selling and for the outcome, but really to create that psychological safety, trust, the show of empathy, then the emergence of opportunities goes. So I think one thing I'm learning is how to speak to people at conferences in a way that, of course you wanna do business, of course you wanna collaborate and all that, But it comes from a very friendly type of interface, that the exchange of knowledge comes first and then the exchange of opportunities that comes second. So I think that that is amazing. And right now you see my— this is my— what I usually wear where I go to conferences, you know, the formal casual kind of thing.

Like, I have this, my Fuck the Slides t-shirt. I was riding my motorcycle today and a guy was yelling at me, fuck the what? Oh, this is great! And he kept riding. Which is funny. So I'm becoming well known here in Northern Thailand because there's stickers all over. And if you go to the coworking, you see a lot of people with stickers on the laptop. So I'm doing a lot of marketing.

I love that you're becoming that, that they know you for this. And, and it's interesting that, that in going back to this networking in the conferences, I keep being introduced as the Imagination Guy, which is for me fabulous because, you know, you get to, to own this amazing thing that I'm passionate about and you get to own that. So, I think we're doing a good job of being ourselves and being very authentic, which I think we'll later on talk about developing the confidence and resilience sort of to talk that with the conference that you're going to. So, we'll touch upon that, which I'd love to hear as well. But just maybe on a note, I talk a lot about intention and choice. So, understanding this is actually very interesting to go into tomorrow to this TechChill in Riga, another big startup conference here in the Baltics. And then already coming with this mindset of what I intend to do, how I intend to be, something very important. People just go there and float. And even if you don't have like specific schedules, I find that sort of being in this intention and really being there to reach out and to listen to people and to talk to them, to approach them, not to sort of wait for things sort of to happen to you is super important. And often people, they don't work at it. And I think I'm learning how important it is to just sort of work at it, to let people talk to you, to bring them in and then create a conversation. This is very interesting.

You know, yeah, go, go, go. And then I'll share a little bit about networking at events if you want.

No, no, I was going to share something about the Lindstrom hosting event that I did and how, but—

So I want to share something that's important. Most people forget that when you go to events, true, you want to make a sale. But when you go with an intention, what we call going in with a club in your hand, and every person you see, you're like, Bat them on the— what? You have this? Here's a club on the head and let's take you back to the cave. I want to make a sale. And I think that's where people make the biggest mistake. Second mistake what people do, and by the way, that's in my book and fuck the slides where I explain about the blurb, the idea of what the blurb is, where the word came from and everything. But in a nutshell, what if every single person listening to this podcast right now would sit down and write 70 words? It's about 30 seconds and I just did a YouTube about it. 30 seconds. And when people ask you, hey, so who are you? Usually we'll be like, you know, I am— and we don't know what to say. Write down, memorize 30 seconds about who you are. By the way, try and avoid talking about the business or the job. It doesn't necessarily mean who you are. It's something you do. If you own a company, TechScene and stuff like that, try and have another 30 seconds to explain what your company does. The reason is this will solve every problem you have in a social event when you go to these things. So when people ask you, hey, so what's your story? What's your spiel? What's your deal? Whatever. You can say, so hi, this is my name. This is what I do. For me, by the way, the fact that I'm able to travel the world teaching people how to become better storytellers, and for the last 2 years I've been in over 40 countries, usually is a great opener for people to go like, what? What do you mean? I said, oh yeah, I wrote a book called Fuck. So it becomes an extension. The good thing about it is after about a minute, if they ask me about who I am in the business, I'm done. And then I can go to them. First of all, they will feel very open, vulnerable. They'll be ready to share. And then I let them jump into the talk and into the whole thing. And you learn that then. They're interested. Once they start asking questions, they're interested.

It's interesting to say that because I provide like another approach to this, which is similar to the mindset. But I found that the 2 things I started to understand, if I wanted to, if people are ready for that conversation and then where to start from. So In what you said of making them feel sort of seeing that their vulnerability and sharing in a good way, in a powerfully vulnerable way of shit that you share, and then they share back, and then you sort of ease the, you know, the whole setting so they can share more of themselves. I find that two things, as I said. One is when they hear that I'm an imagination coach, there are two main ways to react to this. One would be interesting, yeah, and then going on to speaking about, well, how many people have been to this event? This thing, or they start talking about whatever they do. And then I know that's a clear indication that this person is not in the open mind of conversation. They're very much just driven, and there's not much curiosity then to go into any conversation. That would be the prerequisite to anything that I do, because you would have to sort of go into that to understand, to accept it, to be open-minded. That's the one thing. Second thing, I find that empathy and practicing empathy is a very, very powerful tool. And I say that especially to founders that I coach that are very introverts, you know, the ones that are super, super smart, but they're socially awkward, or so they think, or so they say. So they go there and they stand in the corner or they don't join conversations and so on. So one of the key things that I said to do is just sort of practice this thing called empathy. And if you don't know how to practice empathy, simply walk up to a person and say, hi, my name is, I'd love to know about what you do. I'd love to know what it says on— what's that name on the badge? Tell me about this. And when you start that, they actually give you a lot, a lot of information. And what I also get is a lot of information. And that blurb is very important what you say, but then I am able to then build or rebuild that blurb according to the input that they got. So then it really ties into what they said. They feel seen, heard, and that actually I really tailored it specifically to them.

Amazing.

And I find that really opens people up and then they get curious and then I can actually build on the things that they said and they go, oh, I said that.

So let's play an exercise. This is a very interesting conversation. One, 99% of people should not be allowed to improvise. They have no such ability or skill. Definitely most of them are not at your level. Now, talking about branding, which is my next book, one of the key things I'm saying is we made the mistake when we think we present ourselves according to our audience. We do not change. The story we tell them might change. So if I ask someone, what's your spiel? It needs to be good enough and interesting enough to make sure that they lean in and want to know more. What we might call in storytelling a good hook. Here's the exercise. When you say, I'm a story, an imagination coach, that's what we call it. Not an open-ended thing. It's closed. This is who you are. This is what you do. Okay. I help people like you unlock their imagination to achieve everything they might want. Now the person on the other side wants to think, they have to think about what they would like, what they want.

Mm-hmm.

So if now they say, nice, then I know they're not relevant at all. 99% of them will be, what, how, what does it mean? You can unlock anything. All I need them is to guess, doubt. I need something to work with.

Yeah, that's true.

Then I can explain how I can achieve it. So for most people, it is easier to categorize me under storytelling because it just— that's the way they're wired. And then you say, ah, another person doing storytelling.

That's the fear a lot of times, right? That's the fear that they'll categorize you.

I know, but you know, over the last 2 years I've been traveling the world. I'm currently staying in Northern Thailand where I'm working on my 4th book. It's my 2nd self-help because the other ones, the 2 other ones were novels. I love storytelling. And after 14 years in marketing, I said, what if I want to do everything else? If I want to do things differently? So I'm traveling the world and teaching people how to become better storytellers. Now everybody's like, I want to have your life. They didn't talk to me about another storyteller. So 2 things. One is we need to be very clear on our blurb presented in a social environment. And I need to be very clear on how can I adjust the topics according to what they might talk or might say. A great book that I recommend a lot in my talks and workshops Who Is Michael Ovitz is the name of the book. Michael Ovitz became from a guy who left CAA. He started the biggest, biggest agency, talent agency in the world. At some point, they had 70% of every actor, actress, producer, director that you can imagine. They had everyone. He went on to become one of the biggest investors. He knows everyone on the planet. Highly recommend the book. It's a great read. He talks there about how people would say that he's always so interesting. And one of the things was he would get all the magazines sent to his office, right? And then he would meet at a social event, someone like Paul Newman, who at 49 started racing cars. And he would tell him, so what do you think about the race last week? Paul Newman would go on talking for 15 minutes, talking about the race. And then at the end he'd say, Michael, it's always so good to talk to you. I'm sorry, I have to go now. He let them talk about golf, oops, it didn't matter.

It's interesting, by the way, on the flip side of that, that I discovered for myself is because perhaps people could resonate with this, that are very passionate about what they do. Like, I think you're passionate about what you do. I'm passionate about what I do. I mean, who— I wouldn't have ever imagined that what I do is go around, you know, countries and accelerators and teach people to use their imagination. What the hell is— what does that even mean, right? The fact that they— that I come to talk about imagination, right? Even that. So similarly to that, it's a great opener. And then with each people, it gets into this conversation, it gets long. Like, I just got out of a conversation with a guy who Approached me outside the hotel last week, and he said, "Hey, I remember your keynote from last year," and he started telling me everything about my keynote. This is a year ago, and I'm like, "Wow!" So then he came into Helsinki. Okay, I gotta sit with the guy. You know, he's he's from Dubai. He's an investor and everything. So you know, it's interesting now. I can already see these opportunities in my mind, right? But but I'm putting them aside right now because we we want to form that conversation, that trust, and it's really interesting to hear about that person. What what my point is here that I often get so involved in these conversations and the want to give and and get and. That I run out of time and at the end I had to remember, wait, wait, wait, we have to have some action items, we have to have some plans, or otherwise it would just be a nice conversation. So I do though understand that there's this thing that there's, you know, distance between wanting to talk and then needing some action points, but I try to hold it off until the end because I remember in the back of my mind. So then we end up though at least touching it. 5, 10 minutes talking about sort of opportunities and what we can exchange. Sometimes I think it's a little too late perhaps, but, you know, what do you think of people who get so involved in their story that they forget that they came there with a club that's like in the back of their— they need to pull that club out sometime, right?

I— not necessarily, by the way. I don't think you must take out the club at the end of that session. That was a schmoozing part. First date. So people would love the calling card I used to give because my calling card, I would give it and people would say, no, I don't need a calling card. I'll find your details. Or there's no, I don't save them. I don't need them. I remember I take a look at the card and they'll take the card and, oh, this is nice. And they'll flip it. Sometimes I had to tell them to flip it. And then it says my name and the title, Chief of Happiness. And they'll smile. They're clever. I'm like, that's why I'm good at this. And when I give people a sticker now, and think about it, how many people have you seen walking around with the sticker of their book? And I go up to people, they laugh at me here because I go up to anyone and I go up to people at events. I'm like, hey, you don't look so happy. I think you need a sticker. And I give them a sticker. Okay. We went to the night market here in Lampoon. It's about 40-minute drive. And we go and there's a night market, there's a lot of small, um, stores, places you can buy different things. And one of the guys, he sells stickers for like, I don't know, 30 cents. And I go and I give him a bunch of stickers. I'm like, sell these, sell these. And he's like laughing. So I'll do it with anyone. But the idea of a sticker was that if I see stickers on a laptop, if I see stickers on a bottle, if I see on something, that is my opportunity to interact. I'm not selling them anything. Note, I'm not telling them this is my event. Most people will go to the club.

This is beautiful because what you're creating, basically, to bring it down to things that, you know, people can pick up on, it's like you're creating this experience, this emotional experience that is there, that it's more than just the details. And I think this is why, like, even I think you do that in your talk, you do that in my keynotes and stuff. And so it's like, I can't just come there and give you something. I have to have you experience it. I have to have you get emotionally connected. Oh, even, you know, last week we had— I was talking to people at this club, but then we had this karaoke night. I can sing. I can pull a few Elvises and some Aerosmith out, you know. So it's interesting because when you go there and so I went up to sing, there's a few ways that you can sing. Okay, so this is not just to say that exact thing, but the point is, it's like I went there and I wanted to give myself an opportunity to put on a show that I wanted and give others the opportunity to do this. So not judging myself, but anybody else, which of course correlates also to the story that you said. Do you define yourself by your audience? No, but you do shift yourself. So, but going up there, I involved the entire crowd. Like I opened it with the song Imagine.

Duh.

That's what I did, right? And then I got the whole crowd to sing and wave their hands and move around. And so it was this big experience that happened and I really enjoyed it and they really enjoyed it. And whoever participated is good. Whoever didn't want to do it, that's fine. That's a good answer too. Both of them are amazing 'cause I offered the opportunity, but I do tailor it to the audience because I'm driven to also create this experience with them. And also afterwards it created this very, because it was in this emotional connection, people actually came to talk and then we got to talk about business as well and things. You know, because we're all there for the conference. But this created such a safe space to come and share and talk and, you know, comment and then give, you know, it created a very nice opening because there was, like you said, you give the stickers, you give the song, you give something that is not expected and you create this excitement, opportunity, happiness. And then there's so much easier to go into anything because now I trust you. Now there's something connected.

Wrapping up with the globe. One of the biggest problems we see is people go in to introduce themselves about them and not how the other side will feel when they introduce themselves. Now I wanna understand, oh, if I keep talking to this person, I might learn something. I might find something. This is interesting to me. It is not about me. It is about them, which is the basic to every good story, right? It's not about the storyteller.

Right.

It's about the listener.

It's exactly that. Also because then they find their own selves in your story. That's like the collective imagination that, yes, you're telling the story, but they're imagining the story. And the way they're imagining it is not perhaps your way, but you're sort of crafting that together with them. And then they can add a detail and you build up on that. And there's something very, very collective that is there that you both own it. And therefore, then you create that emotional connection that could be then— It is the basis of all business that you do, of any You know, the psychological safety and trust we go— we keep going back to. And I think for the— to jump to the next thing in the conference that's coming up for you, it also leads to you having confidence and resilience yourself because they're sort of a byproduct of you giving yourself the opportunity. And from that, give others that opportunity. And you understand that you have no impact whether they choose it or not. So therefore you can be intentional about choosing the ones who choose you, and therefore you don't focus on the ones who don't, but rather on the ones who you do. So it sounds like a no-brainer, but that's a lot of times what we do is focus on the ones who don't want us because we think that we need to convince them. No, no, no, no. Then you just leave all the ones that do want you. They're just left aside. You don't give them the attention, and they do want to converse with you. So I found that interesting.

So what are the next events? So what's one thing you learned from one of the last events you went to?

One of the events that was interesting last week with this big company here based in Finland, but it's actually located in 24 countries around the world. It's called Lindström and they do everything from the carpets, the uniforms, to everything to make hotels and places and functions. And they're a very circular company. So, this entire growth forum that they had, they brought 9, you know, about almost 100 executives from all those 24 countries there, and I was hosting it, and I was doing exercises with them to reach this 2x that they want to have in 2030, which, understand, a company that is like a billion-dollar company, x is like, it's like a huge thing. But they understand that in talking about this strategy, what was beautiful about this is why I was there in the first place, which they're open enough to have it, Is that they understood that it is first and foremost about how you include the people in the story, how you create the psychological safety and the trust among the executives to be together, to talk about this, to bring the crazy ideas, to imagine and believe in a future that really brings a lot of change, but understand that it's a possibility that is not defined by the existing limitations of 2025 right now. 2030 is a completely different time. So really to They understood that they can't just tell them, all right, flip a switch, and they have to bring them there. And especially, I love the CEO that he went up and his— the entire beginning of the talk was about creating, and you'll love this, about creating happy executives and then happy teams that can communicate well and then bring up the good and the bad. And from all that can actually help themselves do this. And how do you include the stakeholders and the customers and make everyone Feel this psychological safety and trust. And then we can start talking about the ideas and opportunities to reach the 2x because it has so many implications. And, you know, the last thing is like I say in one of these talks that I've worked with a lot of KPIs, right? But the key KPI that drove all other ones was understanding that performance is people and therefore keeping people imagining. I understood that they may seen, heard, create the ownership, and then they will do this with you. They will go through the changes that are very, very scary. For an executive, 2x seems like, oh, what a goal, excitement. For the end worker, it's holy shit, how much change is going to happen? I'm threatened. I don't want this. I will do everything in my power to just not stop the change from happening. So, they spent the entire first day of a very expensive 2-day program only about bringing them to that place and how to communicate this and how to communicate to each other and then how to tell That to their teams back home. So it was beautiful, and to seeing a CEO of this size of company stress it in his talk about how important that is. And then the last point on this is that at the end of the Q&A, at the end of the forum, I asked him, "Listen, put yourself now in 2030. Imagine that everything is reached. It's amazing. What are three things that you're super proud of? Like proud is you know sense of the emotional and logical component put together. That's why pride is such a powerful thing." And then. He talked about not just the numbers or the strategy or this. He talked about that the people did it together, that we went there, that we brought our customers along, that we brought this. So a very human aspect. And I said, you know, that is a beautiful, beautiful example of powerfully vulnerable servant leadership. That is a confident one. That's a resilient one that I will continue this path even though I should be about numbers, right?

I love it. You said resilience because you want to move to the next part?

First of all, because I believe in resilience. And I think the next— of course, I know you have the upcoming conference that you're going to talk about resilience. And I think one of the things we discussed is, and that I'm very— especially from our— from my experience, I understood that confidence and resilience are a byproduct or an outcome of something, of something else. For example, for me, it's like if you focus on trusting your own imagination and understanding that you have this uniqueness and you don't need to Apologize for it, and you don't need to judge yourself, and so on and so on. The result of that, of giving yourself that opportunity, and from that giving others, is confidence in this, in my story, confidence in the way that I want to tell this. And then also resilience to do this over and over again, whether people accept it or not. I'm not defined by that, but I'm driven by the need, by the want to give myself the opportunity again to succeed. That is actually something that I'm discovering over and over again in talking to people that then that allows you to care about them enough and to be empathetic and open to then shift your message like we talked before from different points because there's a different person in front of you and what is relevant to them and what pain points do they have and so on. It doesn't define your message, but you are able to be very calm about it and confident and then start to find the way that this person will find it relevant to their life. And if at the end of the day they say that it's not, That's a perfectly good answer as well. It doesn't define you. You know, your story, to your point, stays your story. And I will continue to say it. And I will continue to hand out these stickers, even though everybody can laugh at me. I don't care. It's my truth. This is what I want to give people. You don't define yourself by whether they accept the sticker or not. You continue to offer, which is beautiful.

First of all, thank you. I agree. I love these stickers. There's always something about it. I'll share with you something that is interesting. I don't know if you know this. I have t-shirts with my surname. I walk around with t-shirts with my surname. I remember the first time I went with one of my shirts. It says Zavaroness, like happiness. It means something, right? The first time I went with a t-shirt like that, one afternoon I met a friend of mine, a childhood friend. I met him in the street and he goes like, dude, you can't walk around with a t-shirt with your name on it? I said, why can you walk around with underwear with some other guy's name on them?

True that.

I, yeah, that first t-shirt was created, I think, in 2016. It says, Zavaroness, a feeling, a state of mind, a contagious sense you can accomplish anything.

I love that.

And it's been with me for years. And the last 4 or 5 weeks, I went on 35 different calls helping founders around the world. That are struggling with marketing, branding, and sales. I gave everyone the same thing, 25 minutes recorded session. I'll help you. And I'm taking a lot of it and I will use some of it into the new book. Some of it I'm using as content and other stuff. It was so humbling to see the difference between companies and how much value can we bring in 25 minutes. One thing that was interesting out of all of this is a guy that went on a call with me, has a couple of companies, very successful, and he started to follow my journey online. So a bit about social media, he went on, he saw some stuff on YouTube, the newsletter, and so on. And then he sent me an email that they're organizing a session, uh, one day about resilience. Half of the speakers are from India because the event is in India. I think half of the speakers get, uh, are not from India, flown in. And I think they get like 15 or 20 minutes. And they said, hey, maybe you wanna apply and you have a good story. The event concept is about resilience and how do you get up? How do you keep going? How do you continue? A couple of days ago they asked me if I'll do the, I think it's the, the 1-hour keynote at the end, I think. And I said, yeah, sure. What's interesting is it's a one-off. I won't do it again, right? Like, it's not my usual talks. And then last week, I was invited to talk a little bit about how to change your mindset using storytelling at an event here in Chiang Mai in Thailand in front of 40 people. Most of them are digital nomads with good businesses, interesting things. The conversation was really interesting. I'll send it to you if you want to see. But what was interesting is most of the talk went about when to resilience and how do you make it and how, what are the stories you tell yourselves and everything around that. I wanna create a talk when we go to India next month that is about the blueprint, taking everything I've learned from all the fails I've had and what is the blueprint? How did I improve every time a little bit going into the next round? Success, fail, going into the next round. And one of the things that without noticing, I started to create what we might call as a habit or force of nature, right? It happened. I know what to do now. And then why is it becoming better and better every time? And that's the concept of what I'm working on.

But there's, there's one, I think there's one thing right in the middle there between the, the, the failures and the doing it again and what the learnings that there's one small thing that I keep talking to people about this. We forget that we, that we, we step very quickly over. It is the fact that That every time that we go to do something again, right, which is with the repetition of things and giving you the opportunity to do it again and again and again and again and again, not being defined by the outcome but driven by that, that's, that's what creates resilience. You get knocked down, you get knocked down, you get knocked down, right? This is why you remember Rocky. This is why you remember all the underdogs that kept getting hit, came back up. That's resilience, right? Now the question is, they were getting hit and got back up. So let's just pause on that for a second. That's something I would add into the talk because They were not defined by getting knocked down, but at the end of getting back up, right? But they were knocked down again. So now they remember what it was like to get knocked down. So now they're again into the resistance of doing this again and the pain. Before they stand up again, they have to now get up, right? So they already remember what it is. The first time they got knocked down, they didn't know much, so they went into it again. The second time, they know. The third time, oh, they really know. Fourth and fifth and sixth, they really, really, really know. And it's really hard at that point not to define yourself by getting knocked down again and again and again. The reason to get up, the choice to go into the resistance and really go for it, it becomes harder and harder and harder and harder the more— the less proof you have that you won't get knocked down again, right? So resilience really comes along at that point where now you're really being tested, right? Are you resilient? Will you give yourself the opportunity again? Will you not define yourself and give yourself— so that's the last question I always ask them. Great. Are you defined by the outcome? They said, no, I'm driven by it. I said, great. And here's one question to call bullshit on that. Will you give yourself the opportunity to being knocked down again? Will you give yourself the opportunity to do this again? Or would you now change it because you say, ah, I've been knocked down too many times? And that's where resilience comes in. That's where it really forms and it becomes a behavior. But that behavior is continuously challenged. Every time, but because you really want that good result.

But yeah, I agree. You know, I've started life 4 times, built different things. I've done different things. Um, last week someone referred to me on a podcast as, um, guru storyteller, extraordinary entrepreneur. There was something else. And I said, whoa, whoa, whoa. What is all this bullshit? What, what are these words? What do they mean? What is it? Do I have $50 million in my bank account on a yacht? Did I tell the best story ever told? Why do we need all these superlatives about nothing? And the conversation very quickly went into what is an entrepreneur? What is a digital nomad, right? What is success? We use words a certain way to describe a lot of things. In business, I always say people use the word strategy for everything, storytelling for everything. Branding could mean a lot of things. And I think resilience now needs to mean, if we want to go into it, as you said, how you become something, but what is the process in between? In my last newsletter, I wrote that I'm learning as I'm working on the 4th book that life happens in between the gaps. You weigh a certain, I don't know, 80 kilograms. You want to get to 70. That's it. That was easy. That's your origin story and that's your vision. Life happens in between the gaps. What are the things you're going to do from 18 to 70? That's where life is. And most of us define the origin story and the vision, and then we hope that the 90% in the middle works. So are we resilient? No, because it's too far. I have plans for things I want to achieve when I'm 50 and 60. Now it's a game. I don't know if I'll make it that far, but fuck it, I'm gonna try. And I think that's what I wanna show people about resilience. It's a game.

And then how do I think— But, but also what you say in, in the, the resilience is also to, to me and for, again, through, through my experiences, it's the, it's dividing it between the subjective reality that happened with the details of that specific time, place, people, and so on. And when you divide that, there's an experience. So there's 2 components to that. And when you understand that experience replicates itself and your own self and the way you perceive things, they tend to replicate over and you'll see this with different events. You feel the same thing, you experience the same thing, you're proud of the same thing, your body regurgitates your own emotions and experiences. So when you understand, truly understand that, you understand therefore that looking back at that time that you restarted your life in those 4 times, the proof point was that you experienced this uncertainness, But you went over it and you, so you have this experience, you go, okay, I did it once, I did it twice. So these are proof points that I collect that make me really resilient to have that next time, the next time. So the next time I'm facing this thing, it will still be uncomfortable, it'll still be unknown, it'll still be uncertain and so on. But you'll have that confidence that, but I have this experience, I know this, I felt this, and I did succeed at the end, or I did pull through and it did create something else. And that is also resilience to me. Because it's remembering what that experience was. And this is why I focus on training the experience, because that's replicable. You can't replicate events. Things will never be the same. Past is in the past, and so on. All these clichés. But the more you pay attention to what the experience was that you did, the more you'll be able to say, that's what I want to have. That's what I want to feel. I remember I was able to do that. I remember I had this resistance. I remember it.

I will leave you with this as we're wrapping up. There's so many podcasts and shows and stuff where people talk This is what you should do. This is how you reach 7 figures. This is how you succeed. These are the courses. I'll teach you everything. If you want to talk about resilience, and that's, I think, one of the biggest reasons why I am going to go to this event is I'm starting from scratch. My newsletter, my YouTube, my— I don't know if you've seen my spreadsheet where I update about everything. Did I go to the gym? Did I drink milk like I said I would? Or wouldn't the tasks I'm doing, the things I'm working on. So I'm building in public because I think resilience means being uncomfortable. More than that, I think it's being comfortable with being uncomfortable. It's being out there. So building in public for me means that if we want to talk about resilience, let me show you life that happens between the gaps. And that's why I'm documenting everything now. And people can see and people can call my bullshit if I didn't do it. You know what happened? I'm doing more. I'm doing more than I did before because everyone can see.

But you're also observing those gaps. And that's another thing, the observation of it, the understanding, the not just considering that there's nothing. So we'll get into this next time about the concept of, I call this the imagination gap. How do you really stop and widen and not just assume, assume, assume, assume, assume that there's nothing to change, there's nothing new, there's nothing this, nothing that. And it connects to what you talk about, living in the guess. But if you can't See them. You can widen them. There's no living them. You you don't see what's inside. You don't value what's inside. You don't have gratitude for that. You don't appreciate it. You don't use that for your resilience. Oh, we can talk about it just for like four hours, I think.

We'll do we'll do another one more specifically about that. Thank you very much, man. Good luck at your next event.

Yep.

This is my last day in Thailand, and tomorrow I'm flying out. Next stop is Vietnam for a month.

Amazing. And then, by the way, I do invite— it's going to be amazing, I'm sure. And I do invite, you know, people who are listening, first of all, pass it on. And if you have questions or topics that interest you that we can take a look at through our prisms, uh, go ahead, reach out. Choose, be intentional.

And so intentional is the thing we need to do in the next show. Guys, stay epic. See you next time. This was the show. See ya.