What Success Actually Looks Like When Nobody's Watching | Jason Ballard x Tony Robbins

There's lots of people we can interview that have been very successful in life, but real success, I think, is how do you discipline your disappointment? How do you find something that keeps you driven no matter what comes at you? How do you become relentless doing it along the way with joy, not just someday when you get there? I was struck from the very first time I met you was the level of joy you bring to things.

There are people who are like default positive and default happy. Doesn't mean you're always happy or always positive. It means something has to happen to make you unhappy or unpositive. If you're the kind of person who, like, needs positive things to happen before you can be positive, like, this is just too hard. Just having that, like, like a joyful grit. Ultramarathons are one of my hobbies, and which sounds like such terrible suffering to most people. When you're out in ultramarathons, there will literally be people puking or peeling, like, blisters off the bottom of their feet, and you're like, "You doing good?" And they will always turn to you and smile. And there's somehow, if you can transform suffering into smiling and positive motion, like, like, that is the way.

I know recently you've gone through some really tough stretches. I know you lost your wife to a 13-year battle with cancer last December, and you're a dad of 4. I can only imagine going through all of that. You know, it's not like you're just a businessman or on a mission. I— nobody escapes in life. I always show people, it doesn't matter who you are, how successful you are, how good you are, how spiritual you are, we all will experience extraordinary stress, extraordinary pain at times, and it defines us, how we deal with it. But this man's had massive vision, but even better, he has that rare ability to execute. And he's formed a company called ICON based in Austin, Texas. It is the leader in global standards for 3D printing construction. I know you're working with NASA on the moon, you're working with the military. I know, I think in Boston I read you're now doing some sustainable housing for the homeless out there.

You know, I think everybody's lives truthfully are a bit of a winding path and you try to tell the story in a straight line, but maybe the easiest way is to connect the dots about how I got here. You know, I grew up in small-town Southeast Texas, and Southeast Texas is the most biodiverse region of all of America. But then also my hometown is like the largest concentration of petrochemical refineries in America. So even in my small, my small-town graduating class, I had friends that had cancer. There's signs up around town that say, "Don't eat the fish in this water." My hometown is destroyed multiple times by hurricanes and has to get sort of rebuilt with the same sort of sticks and drywall they had been built with in the first place. So it's sort of making me asking questions even further about the way we build. We should be doing better than we were. So got to work in the sustainable building industry, building homes. And then while doing that, also got a master's degree in space resources, like aerospace engineering. And so the ultimate sort of punchline is like, if you think about houses all day and space robots all night, you end up starting a company like ICON that uses robots to build better buildings.

Wow. How much of humanity doesn't have a home? So people understand how important it is to find a way to be able to do this at scale with speed. Cheaper.

There are between 1.5 and 2 billion people who have a housing situation that if they were people you loved, you could not stand it. You could not stand it. The real competitor is the way things are done.

Yeah.

Which are so obviously not delivering the value and goods that society needs out of its construction and housing stock. The challenge, though, is, is like, this is a very old industry and it has very well-established network effects. I already know my framer. I know my paint supplier. Like, very established building codes and regulations, very established ways of insuring and financing. And then you're trying to challenge a very powerful adversary at the same moment where housing is under immense pressure from like macroeconomic forces, right? Inflation, high mortgage rates. And so it's just like a very difficult moment to like to go fight an 800-pound gorilla in a thunderstorm, right? But like We have to be brave and we have to try.

What's your mission in terms of the world? What's driven you in that area? I just think that at the top, people should understand that because it's an incredible breakthrough. I don't think most people have any clue.

Company— there's like a problem side of the coin and there's an opportunity side of the coin. The problem side is like, we need to solve the global housing crisis. Like, it's hard, very hard to imagine the future being as incredible as I think, uh, you two gentlemen believe it can be if we don't get the basics right. And so that's like the problem. But then there's like the the opportunity, uh, so it's like solving big problems but also like creating massive potential opportunities, including reimagining architecture. You can only get so much motivation from problem solving. There has to be like some like better, higher vision that also inspires you. And luckily at ICON, we sort of get both of those things.

What's helped you to pull through all this, uh, as a dad, as a human being, as a businessman in the midst of all this? Is it the sense of mission that Is it you're trusting God? What is it that's pulled you through? Because you've managed through these experiences incredibly well for someone who's dealt with so much pressure and so much challenge.

Yeah, I mean, just to honor her a bit, my wife's name was Jenny, and we were together for 20 years, and she was the first lady of Icon. And so she was all in for Icon. She was my partner and my friend, and it's a loss. It's like an amputation. But you are so correct to say that like no one escapes. There is no escaping suffering.

Yes.

It is sort of the nature of our situation that there is, that there is, that there is like loss and grief in life. And I don't know how everyone handles it, but I can say what has helped me is you're one of them. You said, was really like, I am a man of faith. I'm a Christian in my my Christian faith, which is a faith that has suffering in view, right? Sort of like the suffering savior, right? It's like I had some sort of moral and ethical and spiritual, uh, foundation for receiving suffering and transforming, transfiguring it into something positive. I learned that watching my wife suffer. And so to sort of redirect the suffering into perhaps like awareness of like what a gift life is, what a gift these opportunities are, and just like into, into to use these spiritual resources to transform it from toxic to fertilizer for positive activity. Deep friendships that I've already made. I am surrounded by people who love and support me, including the people here at Icon who like went with me on this journey. And so faith, friendships, and then what I couldn't have asked for or hoped for is like, I still open my eyes to things I'm remarkably grateful for. I think a lot of people who grieve and suffering you can drown in it. And I open my eyes today and I have the exact two jobs I want. I get to be a father to those four kids. And if I had a billion dollars, I would start Icon. Like, this is the work I want to be doing. And so even in the midst of my grief, I get to open my eyes to like these very positive propulsive forces. I took like a six-week leave after, after Jenny died. And that last week, like once the kids were back in school and I was still like sitting at home, I was like, I don't know what I'm doing on Monday, but I cannot just sit at home again. And so movement was good. Like, get— like, somehow, like, crawling back in the saddle, even when you don't know how you're going to quite get through the day, is the right instinct. And so those are the things that have helped me.

I appreciate you sharing that. I hesitate to ask you because I don't want to create pain, real pain for you, but I think the lessons you have in life are as important or more important than lessons in business. And when you deal with life well, you can easily deal with business by contrast. No comparison what you face there. So thank you for sharing that, because I hope it'll touch people, remind people that we all go through it and that there is a way through it. And it's not just to stay in suffering, as you said. I've been in that home with you, as you know, it's magnificent. And seeing the kinds of construction you could do that you would normally see like in a church or a mosque or something that you could never do at a cost-effective place. But you're doing that now.

This home I'm sitting right here is called House Zero, and it was the first house we ever designed specifically to be 3D printed. And so this house was designed by one of the very best architects in Texas, Lake Flato. And the challenge was like, I don't want there to be a straight line anywhere in the print, like, like really turn up organic form and curvature and these things that look very fancy, but to a 3D printer, the same price as a straight line, right? Like really show off a little bit with what 3D printing could mean. And as I watched people come to this house, when we opened it up to the public and saw how bowled over and excited and motivated and happy and optimistic Conversations about housing are often like so damn depressing. And how much this, this house inspired people, even as the first one of its kind, made me feel like, all right, I'm not just telling myself stories here. Like, this really could be the most incredible way to build. But as an entrepreneur, you actually like never take anything for granted. Like in a sense, like I almost am still living and behaving like this is not guaranteed.

That hunger is what makes somebody stay successful, not just for the day or the week or the month or the year, but decade after decade. And you clearly have that.

I work really hard to like surface during interviews to the degree I can. How do you manage stress? How do you stay healthy? How do you stay positive? Tell me the biggest problem you've ever had to overcome. Tell me problems you've solved in the past. Like, these are the kind of ways I try to like surface this in conversation because like so many other things you can learn. I can help add fuel to your fire as the CEO, but I can't create the fire. You have to have that fire within yourself, that sort of positive, propulsive optimistic fire in your belly.

And I think that that's a missing ingredient for most people in life. It's one thing to have grit. It's another thing to have grit with joy. That's a unique combination that you embody. And I'm super grateful that we are willing to share your story and a little bit of you today. And I just want to thank you for being who you are, brother. What do you want your legacy to be? How do you want to be remembered? And what do you want to be remembered most for?

What a dangerously self-serving and potentially ego-inflating question. I'll try to be honest. I think I want to be known as a man who faced trials and difficulty bravely and joyfully, but like, but in service, in service of making, of reducing suffering in the world and of making the world more beautiful and of maybe like being just like one among many who like held open the door to a more incredible future.