YouTube Channel: @dothethingformula

I do really believe 100% from every part of me that everyone has the capacity to be able to do the things that they want and not to be held back by the mental baggage that's in our head that we want to push through.

Welcome to the do the Thing podcast. In each episode, we get down and personal with people who go after the things they want to make all their wildest dreams come true. Join us as we unveil and dissect a formula for what it takes to do the thing. Here is your host, Stacy Lauren.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to the do the Thing podcast. This is your host, Stacy Lauren. You guys know how much I love having conversations with people. Really doing the thing. Today's guest is no exception. He's the head coach for a personal development app called Heroic. It's his goal to help members unlock the greatest versions of themselves. But like so many others, his life wasn't always perfect. To the outside, things seemed ideal. He had a degree from an Ivy League school, a well paying job and a beautiful family. Yet he still felt like something was missing. Meeting a mentor changed his life for the better. Now he wants to change the lives of as many people as possible. 51% of the world, to be precise. It is such a pleasure to welcome Michael to the show. Hey, Michael.

What's up, Stacy, It's a pleasure to be here. Fired up to connect today. I know listeners can't see us, but I can see you. And I just. You got such great energy, such great radiant vibrance. I'm just looking forward to it.

Radiant vibrance, I love that.

Also two of the virtues I commit to every day in my, in my energy protocol that we may or may not get into.

But yeah, well, I'm making a note because I definitely want to get into that for sure. So why don't we start off and have you tell everyone about you and your background.

So my background is somewhat interesting. Less interesting than what we're up to today, but I'm a Midwest man at heart. Born and raised in Ohio, went to school at Harvard, undergrad. Loved it. Didn't know that it was a thing. Common application. Checked the box, got in. That's fun. Graduated from there, went into finance. I was a commodity options trader. I live in Chicago. I was on the screens upstairs. Had a guy in the headset talk to all day long. In New York, he was in the pits. Traded gold and oil and natural gas and silver and just all sorts of fun stuff, derivatives of those things. And pretty early on in that, in that Journey of being a professional trader. I started to get really into personal development. I wanted to perform well at my job, but also be a good, at the time, boyfriend to my girlfriend, now wife, we have two daughters. Be a good father to my daughters, be a good partner to my wife. But just how do I handle the stress of finance and how do I handle the stress of all the things going on in my life with this kind of calm confidence? And how do I show up to my work at a high level and also to every other part of my life on a high level? And as part of that search, I found a teacher named Brian Johnson. Brian had taken at the time, I think, several hundred of some of the best books out there and distilled them in a 6 page PDF 20 minute MP3s called Philosopher's Notes. So I went from thinking I got to study all these books and it's taking me my entire lifetime to figure out what am I supposed to do? And we're all swimming in information overload to oh my gosh here. This guy has literally dedicated his life to reading great books, distilling them into their essence, and then teaching them, and got just so deeply in love with his work. And fast forward to on the end of my training career, launched a coaching practice, one on one coaching practice for executives, leaders, lead performers, et cetera. And then several years into that, connected with Brian at a live event that he hosted called Hero Training 101. Said, Your life has just changed my life many, many times over. I want to help you. I want to get this out into the world. I want to spread this. I believed back then, and I believe even more firmly today that if we take the wisdom that Brian is distilling for us and the practices that he's encouraging us to do, which are not his, he actually has a lot of unique ideas to him, but most of what he's sharing is, listen, this teacher says this and this teacher says this, and this teacher says this. And if all these teachers are saying the same thing, I'm pretty sure that's pretty important. So let's go ahead and follow them. But he had changed my life. And I thought if all we did was express the best versions of ourselves by learning this stuff that he's teaching and then putting it into practice in our own lives, the world would genuinely be a better place. So I partnered with him, worked behind the scenes for a while. We launched a coach certification program in 2019. Our inaugural class had a thousand coaches from over, I think 75 countries around the world. We've since trained almost 13,000 coaches from 115 countries around the world. Now it's a 300 day program. It's been research, research shown to change lives. So people, we have them come in, do a survey at the beginning, survey at the end, and their lives are generally changed by this program. And then in 2021, we launched crowdfunding for a new entity that we had formed called Heroic Public Benefit Corporation. Heroic was kind of born out of all the work that Brian had done that we had done over the years through his philosopher's notes, through the short form videos, plus one through one on one lessons, productivity, one on one leadership, one on one purpose, one on one, et cetera. And then through the coach program. And we really wanted to take what we were doing and help it be more mainstream, help it go bigger. There's a kind of a, a weird energy around a lot of personal development. People who are into it, are into it, but then they also don't necessarily always want to tell other people that they're into it. And there's this weird kind of, is it cool, Is it not cool? I don't know, we're not clear and how do you even do it? And there's so many things and I'm overwhelmed by all the things that I want to grow. So we want to take it and make it simple. Formed Heroic Public Benefit Corporation launches crowdfunding that we made history as the first company to raise 5 million via Reg CF, which is a regulation crowdfunding that the United States government passed to help startups raise from ordinary folks who might not otherwise have access to investments like that. And then we worked with one of the world's leading product design agencies who had a hand in building Slack and Tinder and Uber Eats to help us develop Heroic, the social training platform that's built to help you activate Heroic your best. We took all the content that we had from before we built a behavioral training tool. So taking the best of behavioral design and like habit formation and baking it into an app. And since we launched the app, like I thought it was dialed in before, since we've launched app and since I've actually been using it, my own life has gone next level. And since over the past couple of weeks, I'm now hitting even more targets. And it's insane to me just how setting an intention for living in a certain way, for being a certain kind of human being, and then returning to that intention, reminding myself of that attention moment to moment to moment, every 15 minutes or half hour, hour Every transition, right. Maybe I'm going from this conversation over to some deep work or going to have a conversation with my wife or my kids. Setting an intention for this is how I want to show up today. And we ask people to set that every single day. And then actually following through on that, it's. The energy is so palpable and powerful and infectious and addicting. It's literally addicting to be the best version of yourself. And we encourage people and we walk folks through a process to think about what that best version of yourself looks like, think about what that best version of yourself actually does, and then do those things on a day to day, day to day basis. Stepping back. The mission of heroic to help 51% of the world's population flourish by the year 2051. We borrowed that from positive psychology. We basically think the way that we do that is by helping one person. How do we help one person? That would be you or me or whoever's that. That one person. But we each have to take individual responsibility. Let's change the world one person at a time together, starting with you and me and us today. So if each of us take absolute radical responsibility for our own lives, for trying to show up the best that we can, not as a hypothetical best version of myself that I will someday actually be, but as this highest version of ourself that we will always move closer towards and closer towards and hopefully more and more consistently be that. And when we fall short and when we say things that we shouldn't have said to the people that we care about or we make a mistake and do the thing, oh, my gosh, I told myself I'd never eat that thing again. And here I go, doing it. Or. Perfect. Absolutely perfect. Loving ourselves in that moment, learning from that moment, and then stepping back into the next moment, back in the next moment, how can I show up more and more consistently as the best version of myself? So that was a little bit about me, a little bit about what we're up to, but it's all. It's all tied together and just really, really excited about the power of the platform. So far, we've done a research program on the new Heroic app crazy. Just three targets a day over 30 days on average. The sample size of the study was 1053 people. Okay, so it's a. It's a pretty solid. For anyone that's into, like, studies, like, that is a pretty solid. N equals 1053. That's a solid number. 40% more energized, 20% more productive. And 15% more connected as a result of essentially in the morning, committing to who you want to be at your best, and then throughout the day, actually doing at least three of those things that you said you wanted to do will encourage folks to go in energy and work and love. But it works. And of course it works, because this is what people have been teaching like the world's greatest teachers have been telling us to do this for literally thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of years. This is not a new challenge. We are seeing the world emerge in new, challenging ways with technology. Right? It's moving at faster and faster rates of speed. But guess what? People were overwhelmed 2,000 years ago about the challenges of life. Life will always be challenging. How can we show up? How can we respond to it and do our best to be our best, moment to moment to moment. I'll pause knowing I just dropped a ton.

There's so much I want to explore with you because I want to get into heroic, for sure. Because I know that you guys are doing some, like, really extraordinary things. And the way that you're able to have that community based on such a wonderful mission, I think is just that synergy has to be just amazing to be a part of. So I want to go there, but I have to first ask because that's. This is like the most unique thing that I've heard so far is. So you went to. You were from the Midwest, then you go to Harvard, and then you become a commodity options trader. And then I love the fact that, I guess if you're going to have a perception of something, I would think you would think you knew a lot. And so the fact that you were able to open yourself up to Brian and say, oh, I actually want to be. Learn from you. I think that's really cool. What did. What was that like?

Yeah, so there's a couple pieces to also just, like, throw in there. So Socrates says, you know, you know a lot when you know, you know nothing. Right? And we want to acknowledge the more we think we know, the less we actually know. And no one knows how the grass grows or how our hearts beat or why we're here in the first place. And if you. The more that I dug into those big questions and in my electives at Harvard as an undergrad were, like, the philosophy of quantum mechanics and the science of time and ethics and, like, really, really big questions of what is going on with the world. Literally, my experience of that I'm having in the world and trying to approach it from a scientific Frame to see what does science say about the nature of things? And ultimately always arriving at this place in which we didn't have answers to the questions, and yet we have been navigating that again for a long, long time. And I want to know, okay, what does Christianity say about this? What does Buddhism say about this? What does Taoism say about this? What do all the ancient religions say about this? We're clearly still having wars between countries, but that seems kind of silly, right? We're all on the same planet. We got to make sure the planet's still around. Like, I. I didn't have kids at the time. I knew that I wanted to have kids and I thought I'd like for them to inherit an earth that is bountiful and beautiful and that people care about one another on. And so this deep curiosity for life in general, what is, what is the. The nature of beingness combined with this deep desire to see people get along and not even projecting outwards of, oh, that country shouldn't fight this country. I was getting in arguments with my coworkers and with my wife, with my parents. And I still do that. But there is a sense of there's got to be a better way to navigate this that will create a deep sense of joy and satisfaction for myself. And the other big factor there was that I had checked all these boxes and Brian came into this story previous to, like, all the boxes being checked. But without having a goal to go to this great school, I ended up going to this great school, right? And I get this sexy, cool job with a title and great money and all these things. And I owned my house and I had this beautiful partner that this relationship was really solid and both of our. We were in like great shape. I've done an iron man, so I was doing all these things right, that I thought growing up, I was told, do this and you'll be happy right there. Here's the goal. Go hit it. And I had hit most of the goals that I thought that I was responsible for hitting in order to be happy. And I wasn't happy. And I was mad. I was, come on, world society, I've done the things you've asked me to do. Where's my payout? Where's the reward of this happiness that I've been looking for and running for my entire life? And so it wasn't necessarily like an opening myself up to Brian's teachings per se, so much as I knew that I needed and wanted more. Both more knowledge, a deeper, more wisdom. Actually, I would say I wanted wisdom of how to navigate versus just like this, factual knowledge. And I wanted to know why are the things that I thought would bring me happiness not bringing me happiness and what's the alternate path? How do I, how do I find that? How do I create that in my own life? And again, Brian is a, is a brilliant teacher, brilliant human being. Dear, dear friend. Now there are a few people that I love more on the planet than Brian. And to emphasize this is not Brian's stuff. This is not him thinking this is the way to do it. This is him saying, hey, this book, the Bhagavad Gita, which was Gandhi's handbook, which is the spiritual manual for a ton of people, it says this about life. And this book, the way the Bodhisattva or the analytics of Confucius or the Tao Te Ching, it says this about, about life. And if all of these teachers are saying these things and then we bring the positive psychologist, the how of happiness, Sonia Lubomirsky, who ran that first study on the Coach program, or Happy Together, James and Susie Pawelski. It's like the best book on relationships if, if all these brilliant people are, are giving us these ideas and the gap is actually for some of us knowing them, oh, it's not actually the car and the job and the house and the partner and the whatever. It's, it's a deeper sense of, of meaning. But it's not Brian's teachings. Brian is, is distilling the, the teachings of our collective wisdom into bite sized chunks that make them accessible. And in that yearning for a better way to navigate consciousness, reality, existence and disillusionment at what I thought would bring me happiness. And look, I know there are people who are in that space because they have not checked the boxes right. And it is a very fortunate privileged position to be in to come to this realization on the other side of I've done all the things and I'm not happy. And I know people are like, well if I had those, like I would be happy. I don't know what this guy's talking about. So I'm conscious of, of that and also was like a deep yearning of, come on, like what, what else do I have to do here? And as a result of the work that, that I've done in studying Brian and then with Brian that we've done through our teachers together and then in heroic. I'm in a different place now, but I'm sure you want to pause and jump in there before I get into.

Yeah, yeah, no, it's cool. I like, was wondering too. I think this is a good time to talk about your energy protocol, because I'm curious what you did to then make that shift. And it sounds like before we go to there, what I wanted to mention is it's the philosopher notes. It sounds from my old days, Cliff Notes versions. Right. It was like almost he's aggregated all of the best stuff. And then these philosopher notes are Cliff Notes version of all that.

That's exactly. They're not book summaries, per se. So Brian doesn't try and take an entire book and say, here's all the things. You know, It's. He's got six pages in the PDF, roughly 20 minutes in the MP3s. What are some big ideas from this book that could change your life if you actually did them? So I just listened this morning to Living Untethered by Michael Singer. That's the newest philosopher's note. Last week we had two great ones from Brian Cain, 1% better and the 10 pillars of mental Toughness. We just did the Hero code by Admiral McRaven. I think courage Is Calling by Ryan Holiday. The Keto Diet. So they cross the spectrum, but it's. What are the big ideas? I don't want to read the book. I don't. Who has time to read books? Tell you what, Brian, you read the book for me. You tell me what I need to know, and I'll study that and learn that and do my best to apply that.

So did that philosophy for Notes, Is it merged into the app now? Is that embedded inside of it?

It's in Heroic. So Heroic actually bought Optimize. Optimize was the previous business. Heroic acquired Optimize. And we are, as we speak, in the process of integrating everything into just a single app that. So the notes are in there. We don't yet have Search. I don't know when this will air. Search might be in by the time this airs. The current date. It doesn't. It is not in, but it will be in soon. And yet integrates all. It's integrating all the content.

Yeah. And so. Okay. And then if we could go through. You mentioned your energy protocol, so. Because I know once we get into Heroic, I'm going to be lost with that.

Like, really.

But I definitely wanted to hear about what you're doing now.

Yeah. So setting some quick context. We encourage folks to simplify life and we encourage you to simplify life into three things. Energy, work, and love. Skipping over the origin story, there's a lot of different things we can focus on. Let's just pick three. Energy, work, and love. And if you literally take out your calendar and you look event by event by event by event, my hunch is almost every single thing that you do will fit into energy, work or love. Whether that's a workout or a meditation or sleeping or eating. Those would all be energy things. Whether that's writing or having a podcast or calling a client or having a meeting. Those are all work things. Or taking your kids to school or cooking dinner or whatever. Love things. So energy, work and love. Simplify that. And then we in the app encourage everybody to create a protocol. So when you think about your best self in energy, or your best self in work, or your best self in love, what are the things that you do to be at your best? Those specific behaviors? We call that your protocol. Right. So what's your protocol for being radiantly alive and energized? And it all starts with energy. The science on this is unequivocal and crazy. If you're not energized, that leads to depression, anxiety, fear, regret, disillusionment, all of those things. We, we have to honor our physical bodies, our physical energy. And if your mental energy is off, if your psychology is off, I'd actually offer that it's. It doesn't start with your psychology. It starts with your physiology. I know myself when I'm tired, when I'm hungry, I can tell you I've got the 20 month old and a 4 year old. You want to know when they're the worst behaved, when they're tired and when they're hungry. It's not a psychology thing with the asterisk of unless it's a psychology thing and I'm not a licensed, etc. Etc. Etc. And so disclaimers, it's a physiology thing. So we start all of our work together in our Coach program in the Heroic app, encouraging folks to get their energy dialed in and encouraging them to start with what's the number one thing that you could start doing that would have a positive impact on your energy? We all know what it is. I'm not going to. Nothing that I say today will impact the fact that there's somewhere in your brain when you're like, yeah, I know, I really haven't. I said I want to do this thing for like the past three years and I still haven't done it, or I haven't been getting my workouts in, or I haven't been going to bed early, I've been on Instagram late at night or TikTok or haven't been doing my meditation. We all know what we could be doing. So what's that one thing for you that if you started doing or to have the biggest positive impact, your energy. And then if you want to go a step further, what's one thing that if you stopped doing it would have the biggest positive impact on your energy? So that could be removing sugar or removing late at night technology or whatever it happens to be for you. So with that context that we are, we are all going to have a personal energy protocol, we offer that there are also some fundamentals that are universal. Eating, moving, sleeping, breathing, focusing would be, would be key pillars of health. What's your nutrition? Are you following your nutritional philosophy? Are you getting the recommended seven to eight hours of sleep, which means you need to be in bed eight to nine hours. Most people think that's crazy. It is crazy. It'll change your life if you do it. Matthew Walker says most of us are well adjusted sleepwalking zombies. Like, we just, we're so sleep deprived we don't even realize that we're sleep deprived. And then moving your body every single day, every single one of our cells is designed to move. Check out Katie Bowman, Move youe DNA. She's a NASA scientist, has great, great research on this. We feel better when we move. There's a threshold for depression. If you get fewer than 5,649 steps a day, you increase your risk of depression. They literally found people who walked, forced them to, to hold their step count below that threshold and watch the rates of depression decline. And they had a hard time finding people for this study that were exercisers because they're, no, you can't pay me to not exercise. I know what a terrible human being I am when I not exercise. No, thank you. So eating, moving, sleeping. Tom Rath got great work on that as well. Literally eat, move, Sleep is the book. We've got philosopher's notes on it along with all the, all the books that I've referenced so far, which is how I can remember all these things because Brian has distilled it and I have checked out the notes. So eating, moving and sleeping are universal fundamentals. There's actually a proper way to breathe in and out through the nose, deeply, using the diaphragm, back out through the nose, extending that exhalation. If you are a mouth breather, you're doing yourself a disservice. There's a crazy hack for taping your mouth shut at night to force yourself to breathe through your nose. Just crazy benefits on resting heart rate or heart rate variability, long term health, all these crazy things. So each of us has a unique protocol, a unique set of things that we do that help us stay plugged in. Most of us will also have at least one or two or three things related to those universals of eating, moving, sleeping, breathing, properly focusing our mind via meditation practice. I'll read you my personal energy protocol. So I'm opening up the app here. I'm looking at literally this is the checklist that I go through every single day and I check off at least once. Meditate 10 minutes, exercise 11 burpees, express the best version of myself, Row a thousand meters, do my 10th burpee set, do a 13 hour fasting window, do more than 5,650 steps. Again, that threshold is 5,649. Survey says 8,000 steps a day. I'm going to cross that one off. In bed and eyes closed at 9pm, drink a bottle of water, train my breath, do breath work, do a cold submersion, do a dance party, turn off electronics by 8pm, follow my nutritional protocol, last bite of food by 6:30pm, Nanov and Pemf, which are kind of recovery tools. Aura readiness at 85 plus or a sleep at 85 plus. Take a walk, take breaks and do yoga. Some of those targets I'll hit more than once. For example, 11 burpees targets, I want to hit that 10 times a day. I've currently meditated for 30 minutes. I like hitting that 5,000 steps one twice. So I like getting to like, was it 11,300 steps so I can hit that one two times? Bottle of water, I hit that every time I drink a bit of water. And again, that's my protocol. I ran through it. What's less important than my protocol is each of us getting clear on what do we do to stay plugged in, energy wise. And then very importantly, celebrating that actually doing it. So what we tried to build in the app was this dopamine inducing target swipe gesture where if I actually do this thing and then I come to the app and say, yes, I did that thing, I feel stoked. Our brain is the most beautiful piece of machinery, I think, on the planet for sure, if not in the known universe. And there are a couple ways that we can hijack our brain. For us, our brain loves feeling good. Dopamine is this neurotransmitter that gets emitted when your brain feels good and then your brain wants to find more opportunities to get more dopamine and serotonin. So when you do an act of kindness, for example, your brain squirts feel good hormones. It's, oh, this is fun. When you. There are substances that you can take which create fake hormones and. Or create a release of hormones. So a lot of addicting substances, you wonder, why do I keep doing this? Well, because your brain feels really, really good when it does that. So your brain's like, hey, do more and more and more of that thing, please. You want to hijack that in service of our greatest selves? I'll tell you another social media has hijacked this. So traditional social media has hijacked the brain's reward systems to direct your attention where they want your attention to be directed. We want to hijack those reward system, direct your attention where you want your attention directed and where you want your behaviors directed. So when I do a set of 11 burpees and I come back and I swipe in the. In the app. Yep, I just did a set of 11 burpees. My brain's like, yeah, awesome. I love that. And then the next time I get an opportunity, it's like, hey, do a burpee set. That felt really, really good. Drink that water. That felt really, really good. Go do that workout. That felt really, really good. So my brain starts and my mind starts looking for opportunities to do the things that I said that I wanted to do. To do the things that I said were in align with the best version of myself. I've got a love target. Respond to a bid, right? If my daughter comes in here, hey, Dada. That's a bid. It's a bid for my attention. I can choose to ignore her and stay focused on whatever I'm doing, or turn towards her, respond to her, give her, hey, sweetie, what's going on? Or, hey, sweetie, I'm really busy right now. Can I come out there in 15 minutes? Which is a proper response. And then my brain is like, yeah, you did that thing that you said you wanted to do. And so I'm looking for. Looking for opportunities to do this. So we're using technology to not. Not even trick our brains, but to train our brains to love doing the things that we. We say are best for us, that we say we want to be at our best. Not only does that help us with the individual skills of whatever's in our protocol. The water, the steps, the workout, the meditation, the going to sleep, whatever it is, but this meta skill of I do what I say I'm going to do, I can in the moment where I have a choice. Do I want to do A or do I want to do B? And I know that doing A is in alignment with my best and doing B is not as aligned with my best. I'm more and more consistently choosing A. I'm more and more consistently choosing to do those behaviors that are me as the best version of myself and having this, this celebration moment, which you don't have to use the app for. BJ Fogg, world leading behavioral design scientist out of Stanford. He says celebration will be as. As big as gratitude is. Everyone's like, oh yeah, gratitude's big and gratitude is big. One of the top two most highly correlated virtues with well being. It's important to be grateful. But celebration is this, this kind of habit. You do something that you want to see more of, celebrate it. If your kids do something you want to see them do more of, celebrate it. If your spouse does something that you want to see them do more of, celebrate it. Try for a week. Zero complaining, zero criticizing. Zero blaming. Do nothing. Nothing but celebrate the behaviors you want to see more of. And you will be blown away. You'll be like, oh my gosh, I have an entirely different partner. Where is the person? Like, this is incredible. They're doing all the things I wanted because they're being we puppy dogs, right? Like, give me a treat, celebrate me. We are those things. And so celebration is so huge. We want to get really good at celebrating ourselves when we do the things that are in alignment with our best, celebrating one another in the same way.

You guys basically took something that so many people complain about, right? With the addiction of social media and computers and technology in general, as far as how our minds can get so obsessed with looking at all this stuff and instead of the language that a lot of people have, which is just turn it off or let it go, you've just completely disrupted the whole industry. And you're making it into something that, like a strength that you can use to, to develop it, which I really.

Technology is neutral. Broader philosophy. Everything is neutral of meaning, right? Rorschblot? Everything is neutral and technology is neutral. Technology is a tool. A hammer is a tool. A hammer is a great tool for putting nails in things. Don't try and use a hammer to injure someone, right? That becomes a really terrible use of the tool. Technology is a tool. You can use it for not so great things, or you can use it for amazing things. And we gotta be aware that it's a really powerful tool. And when someone else is choosing how that tool is going to impact our life that can be potentially dangerous for us. So we want to be in control of how we are using that tool and as a tool. And check out Cal Newport's work on digital minimalism. He's got a great book. He actually taught a one on one class for us that you can get digital minimalism 101 on how to use technology wisely in alignment with what's most meaningful and important to you. We've had Near Eyal in our coach program. Cal's been our coach program too. But near y' all wrote indistractable and then hooked great books on technology usage, how to optimize our technology usage. Technology is amazing. And right now I've got a. What do you call it? A wallpaper that just has the virtues of our. Of our virtue compass of the heroic app. Wisdom, self mastery, courage, love, hope, gratitude, curiosity, zest. And it's got the little declarations next to the virtues. And this is our entire app is built on living with virtue and actually doing these things. But that's my wallpaper. And then I've got the heroic app and I've got my camera. Then I've got meditation apps in a little folder. So I'm holding it up. No one can see it. I know, but it's a very, very simple, very clean, minimalist kind of home screen. And every single time that I pick up my phone, the first thing that I see is those virtues, that reminder to live with virtue. And then I've trained myself so the first thing I do is open the heroic app. And so every touch point on my phone becomes an opportunity to remind myself of how I want to live, what I want to prioritize in my life, who I am as the best version of myself, what's actually important for me to achieve that deep sense of happiness that I now call flourishing or eudaimonia. Flourishing is. Would be the modern positive psychology word, comes from Martin and Seligman. Eudaimonia would be the ancient Greek word, comes from Aristotle. Essentially means the same thing, expressing the best version of yourself moment to moment, moment. Every single time I touch my phone now, it's this reminder of what actually matters and how I can do my best. So I've taken this trigger, reach for my phone. And then whatever happens on the other side of that and I've turned it from reach for my phone express the best version of myself. Reach for my phone, set my intention for how I want to show up as a leader in our business, as a partner to my wife, as A father to my kids as an energized human being. And we've taken that trigger, that cue, that thing that we do that led to a previous behavior of checking Instagram or Facebook or TikTok or my messages or Slack or whatever the thing is, right, that espn, fantasy football or the news, whatever your thing is that you open the phone, you do this, you take that same trigger, and instead of allowing it to push your attention in the direction of somewhere that doesn't ultimately serve you, you put it in the direction of something that does. And It's Behavioral Design 101. You don't try and eliminate something, you replace it. It's much easier to have a new behavior on the old trigger than to just do something different. So, yes, I love technology. We love technology. We're a technology company. Technology is not going away. Technologies has what is, what has allowed. What do we have 7 billion people now on the planet? It's what, it's what has allowed our planet to sustain that number of people and to provide a quality of life for that number of people that is far and above what it was 200 years ago, 500 years ago. Technology is literally creating some version of a utopia for many of us and a higher quality of life for those of us who are not in that than used to be around. And technology, which is a result of human ingenuity will provide a future that we hope is one that's flourishing, is one in which which more and more people are feeling the best version of themselves being the best version of themselves and giving that best in service to something else.

Yeah, I'm curious, when someone goes on your app, do they have the opportunity to identify why they want to use the app or they want to be the best version of themselves?

So we are rolling out a new onboarding process as we speak. We do not currently have a long form kind of question of why. It's an interesting. It's an interesting piece that we have thought about and have considered adding to this onboarding process. How Instant Influence is a great, great book. They have questions and it starts with why might you want to change? You want to create instant influence for someone else or for yourself? Why might you want to change? Question number one, and I will not remember, I think there's seven questions. I will not remember them all. But question one is why might you want to change? And it's not, this is why Stacy says you should change, or this is why Michael says you should, or this is why Brian is why do you and why might you you don't even have to. But, like, why might you want to change?

It's meeting you at the access point of where you are. You're not even saying you have to change at that point. It's just a consideration. Yeah, I really like that.

Scale of 1 to 10, how excited are you to make that change?

That's cool.

Pick a number. And then here's the curveball. Why didn't you choose a lower number? So rather than someone says five, and you're like, oh, how can we make it a six? How do we make that even more? You say, well, why didn't you choose a 4? And then that gets us to start thinking about the reasons that we are excited. Well, I'm really excited to do this and this and this and this and this and this. And so it reinforces that. Those. Those. Those first couple steps. So anyway, instant influence. Check it out. It's brilliant.

So cool. Well, I. I think we're ready. I'm gonna go through the do the thing formula that has been dissected from all the interviews that I've done so far, and we're gonna put heroic through the test. I think that you're hitting it, though. So the first one, it sounds like you're working on with identifying the why. So basically, the do the thing formula, I haven't announced it publicly yet, but by the time this episode, so dares, it will be. But through all the interviews, it basically comes down to I'm game is the acronym and starts with the I, which is identify the why. So I'm looking at a lot of different programs, gyms, and 12 step programs, a program cures, online programs, to see who's using the same formula that the people that I've met have been able to do the thing. And I've kind of found all these, like, common patterns. So that's the first one, which is that what is the catalyst to get you to want to do the thing? So identifying your why. The second one is mindset. So I was wondering what would be something that you're doing inside the app to get people to have the right mindset to be able to do the things that they want to do.

Can you give me the rest of them first and I'll come back?

Oh, yeah, for sure. So it's I identify the why, M is mindset, G in game is goals, A is accountability, M is my people, and then E is education or really educate.

Perfect.

Yeah.

So I'll actually step back then for the why piece. Everyone's going to have Their own personal why. We think there are a couple universal whys that, again, are not unique to us. But activate your best is kind of our. I think people who are attracted to something heroic feel like there's always another best available to them and they feel like they want to show up as again, the mother, the father, the. The. The leader, the employee, the whatever it is that. That motivation of I want to be the best version of myself. And again, ancient wisdom, they tell us that's actually the purpose of life. Positive psychology say, like, yes, you want to leave a happy life, do that. So our collective why is that sense of activating the best version of ourself? It's all there already. It's latent in us. We just need to activate. We need to bring it out on an ongoing basis. Mindset. So we would approach mindset in a couple of different ways. First, we have basic training, which is seven objectives that Brian walks through educationally. Walking through. How to actually approach this from a mindset point of view. How do Objective 2 deals with this? Anti fragile confidence and heroic courage and responsibility. So from a mindset point of view, I think we want people to know two things at a minimum. One, stress and challenges are not bad, right? Failure is not bad. That's actually how we grow. So we don't win or lose. We win or learn. We don't face the challenge and see that as a sign that something's wrong with us, that we're not doing well enough. We see that as, oh, this is an opportunity for me to learn, to grow, to get better. You don't go to the gym and lift styrofoam weights. You go to the gym if you want to get stronger and lift heavy weights that you can't even lift. And then, guess what, you're stronger the next time you come up. So antifragility is a concept from Nassim Taleb that literally means the opposite of fragile, right? Antifragile. And it's not just being resilient. It's not just like, oh, yeah, I'm not fragile. I don't break, I can stick around. But it's, I grow stronger. Every time that I encounter a challenge, I emerge on the other side stronger. And if you want to grow, you have to get uncomfortable. You have to go outside of your comfort zone. By definition, that feels uncomfortable, not good. And so we want to help people shift their frame. There's a lot of apps out there that can help you reduce your stress. But I say, look, stress is not going away. You don't actually want to reduce your stress. Stress goes with meaning. If you are feeling stressed, it's a sign that you are doing something meaningful. So let's learn how to use that stress as fuel for our growth. And then these failures when we fall short of something again, it's not, oh, I failed, I'm not good enough. It's perfect. This is another opportunity for me to learn, for me to grow. So the mindset is I have a hundred percent confidence in my ability to show up to whatever life throws at me no matter what happens. I'm so focused on the process, I'm unattached to the outcome. I'm willing to get back day in, day out and give it my best and continue growing growth, mindset versus fixed mindset, Carol Dweck, et cetera. I'll tie mindset right into goals and right into accountability. So the practice in heroic has two steps. In the morning, you commit to who you are at your best. Well, we break that down in three ways, twice. Energy, work and love. And then identity, virtues and behaviors. So that identity is kind of this alter ego or this name that captures who are you at your best. My current identities are radiant, exemplar for energy, heroic leader for work, and alchemist, father for love. Those mean something to me. They don't have to mean anything to you. They're my identities. Your identities could be super mom or mom of the year or world class, athlete or dancer or creator or whatever it is, whatever has meaning for you as like, you see that as an identity. Like, yeah, if I, if I lived as that person, I'd be showing up at my best. So we have to be able to commit to their identities and then their virtues, the qualities that they would embody as that best version of themselves. So do you want to be kind and curious and positive and outgoing and open and connected and creative and resilient. What are the virtues? What are those qualities that when you think about you at your best, you're displaying? We encourage folks to take the Via virtues and Actions test that University of Pennsylvania Martin Seligman developed literally, scientifically demonstrated where, like, people are happy when they learn their unique strengths and they work to put those in practice day in and day out. So in energy and work and love, we have people commit to their identities, their virtues, and then those behaviors. This is like setting goals for your day every single day. And if you've got a long term goal that's 100, 200, 300 days away, publish the book, start the business, whatever it is, we Want you to break that down into like, what can you do today to make forward progress towards that thing? And maybe it's a 90 minute deep work block before you get online in the morning. Maybe it's writing that email, writing 250 words, whatever the thing is. So starting in the morning, by committing to who you are at your best, basically setting your mind, setting your intention for the day, setting your goals for the day of how are you going to show up, what are those specific behaviors that you're going to do, and then throughout the course of the day coming back and actually hitting those targets. So I do a burpee set, I come swipe the target that says do a burpee set. I'm talking about burpees a lot. One, because burpees are a phenomenal strength and fitness exercise. It's like pound for pound, one of the best body weight things that you can do. Two, we've got a Spartan race coming up in December. Heroic is the official wellness app of Spartan. We also, I think, hold the record for the largest team in history to complete a spartan course. It was part of our coach class one graduation. We've got an event this December, Heroic 2022, which will have a Spartan as part of the event. We love Spartan races as a demonstration that obstacles make us stronger. And doing burpees is part of Spartan races. If you miss one of the obstacles, you got to do 30 burpees. So I've been working on my burpees and then part three, I can never remember how many sets of burpees I've done. Like, oh, was that my fifth set or my sixth set? Unless I'm actually coming back to the app and saying like, yep, I did a set. Yep, I did a set. So having this target that I have to hit 10 times a day forces me to get into the app, which is reminding me every single time that I go back to the app. Oh, these are the goals that I set for myself. These are the things that I said I wanted to do today. And then holding me accountable to actually hitting those targets on a day to day basis. We've got something called a soul Force score, which basically is a reflection of how often are you actually doing the things that you said you were going to do. If you hit your top three targets in energy, work and love, you get a soul force point plus one. Do it for 21 days in a row, you'll have a soul force of 101. You lose that point, go back to 100, you got to re earn it every single day. So there's. If you want to cultivate your soul force, which is a phrase that we Gandhi coined satyagraha, truth force, life force. Soul force essentially means a human being who is living in integrity with their highest ideals. And when someone is doing that, you can feel it. You can think about the people in your life who are just. They've got it right. They're living in integrity with what's true for them, which probably feels also true for you. They've got that soul force. It's palpable. So when you in the morning commit to who I am at my best, how I show up, what I'm actually going to do today, and then you live in alignment with that, your soul force goes up. Your soul force score in the app goes up +1 +1 +1. So you're setting this intention in the morning. You've got clear goals for the day. You're holding yourself accountable to those goals by checking in. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And I can just keep on rolling through.

You're wondering.

I love it.

I know. This is great. This is the first time I've actually said the I'm game. But I have to now make sure I'm announcing it before I publish it. But it's funny.

Hey, it can be. It's so what a perfect thing to hold you accountable. One of the best ways to make sure you make progress is to make a public commitment. Oh, I gotta make that thing live. All right. So that's actually.

Yeah, something I've said I'm doing. You know that 75 hard challenge.

I've heard of it. I haven't done it.

I'm doing that right now. And that was like the. The group of people that I was gonna do it with, they ended up not doing it. And the only reason why I kept with it is caus announce it on the podcast. So. But it's been great. I'm on day 65 or 66 now, so nice work. Thank you.

The science is pretty clear on that. Make a public commitment. For anyone who hasn't heard of the eyeball study, just putting up pairs of eyeballs. They would like put pay for your own coffee kind of things. Right. Where it's like you. It's not monitored. And if they put eyeballs up on the cabinet, more people paid.

That is not true.

What it is 100% true. It's like if you. If you put jar of cookies in a jar of fruit and you just literally have like eyeballs, more people will choose the fruit versus the cookies. It's called the eyeball effect or the bystander effect.

I had a question too. Is there anything social in the app where there other people are seeing if you're doing stuff? Is that a level of accountability that you have too?

So yes. Which is perfect segue to my people. Right. I'm game. Identify the why, Mindset, goals, accountability, my people. And educate. You're good. So we set out to build a social training platform. We have built the training platform. We started with training because we. We wanted to have a foundation of kind of single player mode and also actually doing the things that are important to us that actually help us show up at our best. There's two ways to change your life. One is inside out and the other one is outside in. Inside out would be learning something and then putting it into practice. This, this training aspect of outside in would be surrounding yourself by a community of people who are doing the same kind of thing, which then influences you to do that. So we've always known we wanted to have a social component to the platform. In year one, we worked with Metalab to design and build the training side of things, integrating all the wisdom from Optimize. So the educate. We'll check that box. Now, I can say this because I didn't make it. It's the world's greatest collection of wisdom and you can get through it in less time than it would take you to actually read all the books, watch little videos like it's sick. We have that. Thank you, Brian, and bless you, Brian. You've done phenomenal work over decades. We worked this year to design social. So we're going to be adding in late 2022 or early 2023, depending on when it gets officially dropped into the product pipeline, a full suite of social features so you'll be able to find other people, connect with them, share pictures, share videos, share updates on your targets. You'll be able to control your privacy so you don't have to share things. You can use social almost as your own personal journal, right? Oh, I want to capture this highlight of yesterday. I read 10 books to my youngest daughter. She picked 10. She's crazy. We normally like two. I was like, I'm taking a picture of this. This is nuts. So then I can in the future go and look back and see all my highlights of my best moments in energy and work and in love. So we're adding social features that will have opportunities to connect with a coach or buddies or followers or different kind of connection pieces. And so let's say you've got a coach and he's looking at your protocol and says hey Stacy, haven't done that thing you said you're going to do yet today. Like what's going on? Or hey Stacy, you're checking on. On a week to week basis. I don't know how some coaches do frequencies change but like let's say you're having conversations 20 minutes once a week. I don't know that it's worth having the conversation. You haven't hit any of your targets any day. You haven't been following your protocol. Like how can we have this conversation when you haven't been doing the things that you said were important to you? So my people are coming in the app. You can currently see kind of the community targets that are hit on a day to day basis as well as the. Actually let's look how many people on heroic so far. I've been going to burpees a lot. We'll stick with burpees. There have been 105 sets of burpees hit today. 24,000 hit this year. Meditate's pretty. Yeah. So 465 people have meditated today. 345 people have exercised today. Let's see on the steps. So you can see in the app the number of people who are diff. Who are doing these different targets.

That's cool.

Journal's a big one. How many people have journaled today? 183 people have journaled today. So there's a little bit of social features now, but we're excited to add the full suite coming soon with Heroic Social. Yeah.

Yeah. And then the other part of educate is educating yourself, which you guys have totally covered. Is there an opportunity where they can also educate others too? Like just as an app user or would you need to be an actual coach?

Both. So on social, you know, you can share all the content you would on any other social platform, but you know, it, it sits behind the paywall. So hopefully there will be fewer trolls. We're going to have a very strict usage policy. Don't be a insert expletive. Be a good human being. And if you're not cool, we'll have a conversation. If you do it two or three times and enough people say, hey, this person's not cool. Thank you. Not allowed to use the platform. We're also not. Our goal is not to get. Keep your eyeballs on the phone for as long, as much time as possible. Right. Attention Economy is what finances social platforms most social platforms today so if you're not paying them, if you are not the customer, someone else is the customer and you are likely the product. Your attention is likely the product. So with our model and without being in that attention economics model, we're more excited to help you actually live in your life, do the things that are important to you in your life versus keeping you on the platform. And share videos, teach people, teach pictures, both on our social platform and other social platforms. My daughter is on the app. She's learning. She has talked to some friends about the app and how it's helping her to show up a little bit better. So I think this education piece around educating others, with a huge jumbo red font asterisk around unsolicited advice is never received and basically never followed, right? So make sure that you're attending your own lectures. Anytime you're pointing a finger at someone else, remember, there's three fingers pointing back at you. And anytime you want to change someone else's behavior, to quote some biblical passages, like remove the log from your own eye before the moat or the speck in your neighbor's eye and perfect, like, educate, help, support, encourage, right, like to achieve the mission that we're setting out to achieve.51% of the world's population flourishing by the year 2051. Change in the world, one person at a time, together, starting with you and me and us today. It requires starting with yourself and then going beyond yourself. And the final thing I'll say on that, knowing that I'm just doing my thing. Again, the best way to educate is to demonstrate. We don't need more education, we need more demonstration. You want to teach your partner or your kids or your colleagues or your family or your friends how to live well, then you live well. And when you're committed to doing that and when you're willing to stick with that, not needing them to change, but committed to your own actualization, committed to your own being the best father, mother, partner, leader, whatever it is, people will see it and they feel it and it makes them want to show up and do more. And that is how we think we can best educate one another. Best educate the world. Always coming back to, how can I show up a little bit more powerfully here? How can I be the best version of myself just a little bit more? In this moment, in this moment. In this moment. In this moment.

Okay, the time is here, Brian. So tell me for the listeners, what is your number one piece of advice for doing the thing?

Number one piece of advice for doing the thing? Energy. Energy. Energy, energy, energy. So I'll unpack that a little bit and say prioritize your energy. I, my, my wife loves. That's my alarm to manage my energy. My wife loves Emily Oster. I love Emily Oster too. She's great economist, University of Chicago professor. I don't know if she's still teaching there, but she wrote like Expecting Better and Crib Sheet. She's got this great newsletter. She has a, a membership group and the question was, what's the number one piece of advice that you have for parents? This was a couple weeks ago. We were talking about this and I thought about that and I said be aware of and prioritize everyone's energy. That includes your kids energy, that includes your energy. We're also big fans of Brene Brown. She just released part one of a podcast of a chat with Adam Grant and Simon Sinek. They're talking about leadership. They're all leadership organizational pieces. And one of the things that they talked about was number one thing that you can do as a leader always is to manage your energy. How are you energetically showing up to life? Are you taking care of yourself? If you are not, you are going to be more reactive. You are, you are just. It is harder to show up to life the way that you want to when you are tired or when you are hungry or when you haven't been getting your workouts in or when you haven't been training your mind via meditation. It genuinely blows my mind. I can with 100 correlation look back over the past 3, 4, 5, 10 years and every single low point, every single biggest conflict that I had was in direct correlation to not having gotten good sleep, not having worked out for a small eating or drinking. Things that I know are not good for me and you might not notice it one day or two days. You do that for a week, all of a sudden you're having arguments with everybody and the entire world is against you. And woe is me and the sky is falling. Plug yourself in for a couple of days. Just dial it in your sleep, your movement, your nutrition, your meditation practice. Do that for a week. Problems just aren't problems anymore that they just, they. You are a different person. You're a better person. You're. You have the resources that you need. Your nervous system is regulated for anyone who's who who loves the nervous system work. A big fan of nervous system work. So you want to do the thing, make sure it's fueled by energy.

Well, tell everybody where they can download the app.

So heroic us is the Main URL you can search Heroic the Training platform on iOS or Android. We currently have a promotion for a lifetime premium membership on a pretty cool lifetime promotion. But Heroic us is home base for all things. I don't even know our social handles. I think it's heroic 512051 across all platforms or heroic PBC. But then Brian Johnson. I think it's Heroic Brian. And then mine. I don't even know my own but Embolshan on some of them I don't know.

So awesome. Well, I can't wait to download it. I'm excited. I actually had this thing that I was going to watch it, start watching a TED talk a day just to kind of get into the groove of just hearing something really powerful every day. But it sounds, sounds like this will kind of solve that for me. That same idea.

So we have every single day Brian releases a new plus one. So this is like a three to five minute, basically a big idea but in three to five minutes instead of like the 15 and 20 minutes less storytelling, you know, it's always connected to a book. So it's every single day there's a new plus one. Then we also feature a philosopher's note a day. Those are between 15 and 25 minutes if you listen to the MP3 version. And I'll do that. We've got a pond here. I just walked around the pond, listened to a philosopher's nose. A great little midday break. And I highlight new stuff every day that you'll be able to get access to. But more importantly for me, one things that I loved about Brian's work and I was like an Internet course junkie. I probably spent like $30,000 total on courses on the Internet. I had spreadsheets to manage all the courses I was taking. I did like 100 courses, like 25 courses in a year on everything from like spreadsheet management to a four part astronomy series by like the University of Australia. And like productivity, like all the courses and I was following so many different podcasts and like just a sense of oh my gosh, even, even ted. It's like there's so many amazing TED talks, how do I possibly choose which one? And like they weren't always the same quality. So sometimes you get a TED Talk that was, well, that felt like a waste of 20 minutes. But thank you. Next. And not despairing on it, most of them are great. What I loved about Brian is he was filtering it for me. I knew that no matter what philosopher's note I opened up to listen to I was going to get some content that would genuinely be impactful that I could apply to my own life. Even if it was something I didn't think I would have any connection to. Like this piece of content. Like, oh, wow, that's an amazing idea. The plus ones, there's always something in there that's going to be powerful and resonant. So rather than trying to have offloaded two things to Brian, one of which is reading books. And I still read books, I still love books. But I can read so many more books by having Brian read the books first and then distill them into PDFs. So one of and two is filtering what information is most important. And in a cacophony of information, offloading that task to somebody else and just trusting that I'm going to get something that will help point me in the direction of that best version of myself every day is the cognitive space that is freed up as a result of that is magic. So yes, we can support. And if you wanted to watch a TED Talk, you could also set a watch a TED Talk target in your work protocol.

There you go.

How many times? I'll give you one more story. And I know we're running long here. I didn't used to floss my teeth. I was like a once every two weeks kind of teeth flosser. Even though it was teeth flossing is like one of those early habits. So I went to the dentist and he, you know, my teeth are always pretty good. I brush twice a day but don't floss. And so, doc, I gotta tell you, I'm probably like a C minus, C plus on flossing. It's non zero. But he's like, oh, that surprises me. You're dialed in on everything else. And I thought, you know what, he's right. So I set a target in heroic floss. Custom love target. My dentist appointment. I could look up on my calendar to find the exact day that it was. Or I could tell you it was probably roughly four months ago. I've hit this target 130 times.

Wow.

So I've probably missed it two or three every single day. Floss. The power of setting an intention. I'm gonna do this and then, oh, shoot. My floss target. I haven't hit that today. My TED Talk target. Shoot, I haven't hit that today. If I want to hit that, that means I gotta end this meeting at this time or do this thing this way or prioritize it. It's just crazy. So you can set that TED Talk target. I love TED Talk.

Thank you so much for coming on. It's been amazing getting a chance to talk to you and hear about this company and just everything that you've done. It's super cool. I think you guys are up to great things and I'm excited to. To watch it prosper and continue to use that formula.

Yeah, there you go. Let's see if I can remember. Identify was Identify your why. Identify your mission. Something like that. Identify the mindset, Goals, accountability, my people. Educate.

Yep, you got it.

Acronyms, mnemonics. Gotta love them.

It's great. Thank you so much. It's been great chatting with you.

All right, cheers. Stacy.

Thanks for listening to the do the Thing podcast. We hope you enjoyed the show. But even more, we hope you'll be inspired. Inspired to do the Thing. Do you have a burning question on Doing the Thing that you'd like answered? How about an inspiring do the Thing story of your own that you'd like to share? We'd love to hear all about it. Just leave us a voice message atdothething.callcast co or email us at hello do the Thing podcast dot com.