Speaking & Influence Summit 2026 — Day 1 LIVE with Vishen, Eric Edmeades & More (Free)

We're putting on a free summit this month. We're going to share some of the greatest principles we've found in terms of how great teachers, great authorities actually convey ideas truthfully with an impact.

Remember that every time you open your mouth, You are engaging in a dialogue, not a monologue. Find ways to get your audience involved with you.

When we're speaking with friends, we're not worried about being judged. We're natural and we're authentic. So what we're going to do is we're going to take the pleasure of speaking with friends and imagine that when we're speaking to people we don't know, or maybe in large groups.

Do something out of the box.

Because ultimately, if you want to be more confident, then you can't take life too seriously.

You are right now You are one well-constructed, one well-delivered talk away from the next huge breakthrough of your life.

You guys have good ideas. You're the people who need to be posting. So your visibility wound is actually your superpower. Waiting to feel confident is the wrong goal completely.

And it's a huge myth in our society that we need to shake out of people. Confidence actually comes after we take action.

When you can define that you do something special for a certain type of person and you've got unique intellectual property, people immediately assume that you're in the top 10% of that and that they plot you on the power law.

What does FEAR stand for? What is the acronym of FEAR? Face Everything and Rise.

Welcome everybody to Mindvalley Speaking and Influence Summit. It is so good to see all of you on these screens from around the world. Thank you, thank you, thank you so much for joining us. My name is Caitlin O'Toole and I'm so excited to be here with you. As you just saw, we have an unbelievable lineup of speakers, of storytellers, of master communicators here with you today and all weekend long. To help you really develop and find your voice so you can give that impact to the world. Because here's what I want you to understand: this is not just about getting on stages. Where you are today, whether you're a business owner, whether you're a creator, whether you're a leader in your space, where you are and where you want to go is defined by your voice and your ability to speak, to inspire, to communicate, to tell stories that move people and to help you truly make an impact on this planet. And that is what this weekend is all about. It is about helping you, teaching you, guiding you from the best in the world that have mastered this for decades, sharing secrets, wisdom, and strengths with all of you to help you truly find your voice and be an incredible communicator. And I can tell you firsthand, if you can communicate, you can do things like this. You can host, you can interact with others, you can network, and you can truly truly, truly make the impact that your soul came here to do. So I am so excited to be here with you, to learn with you, to grow with you, and to truly help, you know, refine myself as we grow together. So I'm so excited to see you. We have people joining us from all around the world. And as we kick off this event, I wanna leave you with this quote that I love so much. And it says, once you find your voice, your message becomes clear. Think about that. You've got your voice and now you've got a clear message. And once you are heard, that is truly when your ideas are able to take flight. And that is a beautiful quote from Vishen. And to segue into him, please everybody, welcome the first speaker of the summit. Just to help welcome you all to the stage, it is Mindvalley CEO and founder Vishen.

Hi everyone. So firstly, such an honor to be here. I'm so delighted that all of you could join us. We have, um, over, well, tens of thousands of people live with us right now, and there's a reason why. Communication and speaking is probably the most important skill that one can learn for growing in your success. In fact, LinkedIn did a survey sometime last year and Public speaking was ranked number 3 most important skill for career progression. But if you're a founder or CEO or coach or teacher, which is the most popular 4 job titles in our community, communication is even more important. So I wanna tell you a quick story. The reason you are sitting here, the reason Mindvalley exists is because many years ago, when I was first building a website to help sell meditation CDs, I happened to sit down with a guy who was an executive at a really major company back then. This was 22 years ago, and that company was eBay. And he said, Vishen, you know, if you want to really get people to understand why you're so passionate about meditation, stop trying to drop facts and numbers. Tell a story, communicate, speak from your heart. And he shared with me that eBay became eBay because Pierre Omidyar, the founder, when he was giving his talks to the press, he did not say, I built this website as an auction website where buyers and sellers can come together and we're optimizing in this way. He didn't. He told a story. He spoke about Pez dispensers. If you live in the US, a PEZ dispenser is a really cool little fun toy that dispenses candy. And he spoke about how his wife collects PEZ dispensers. And he was trying to find rare PEZ dispensers for his wife for her weird little, like, toy collection. And there was no website, so he decided to build one. That story is what connected with the press. You see, people remember a story 22 times better than they remember facts.. And that's one of the reasons why the ability to speak, to articulate your story, to, to hold an audience, to communicate with confidence, the nuances of body language, so much of which we're going to be covering over the next 3 days, is so important. It can make your business. Now, what did I do with that lesson? That executive from eBay asked me, why are you selling meditation CDs? And I told him, well, I was working in sales and I'd lost all my money. The dot-com bubble had burst. I lost my startup. I was broke. I was sleeping on a friend's couch. And I took this meditation class and it changed me. And I told a story of opening a yellow phone book and using altered states of mind to program myself before I went on the calls with the, the lawyers whom I had to call up and sell software to, and how that mental process changed me and made me the number one seller in the company. Now, I'm not going to share that story here. I'm going to come back later and I'm going to break that story down and show you how that story led to a company with over $100 million in revenue, how that story revived the Silva Method to the point where the course on the Silva Method, did $40 million in sales in one year. We're gonna break it down. But I share it because that advice from that executive in eBay was so counterintuitive. You don't— I didn't learn this in college. I learned about business plans. I learned about financial accounting, but I didn't learn about how to capture the imagination of my subject. Today, we know this is so important. Now, our teacher today, there are many incredible teachers from the legendary Paul McKenna, top hypnotherapist in the world, to Lisa Winkles, who's been called the modern-day Martin Luther King, to Prince EA, whose videos have had over a billion views, to Shadi Zarai, who helps people overcome their limiting blocks. But the main teacher is a man that I personally studied with, Eric Edmides. Last year, Eric Edmides was awarded a very special award at the Dubai Dome in Dubai by Mindvalley, and the award was Transformational Architect. And it's because of his ability to take a person from point A to point Z in the most incredible way where they transform as an individual. He did this through his WildFit program. Tens of thousands of people who were trying to lose weight for the longest period of time, suddenly in 90 days, their weight transformed, including me, because of WildFit. But WildFit worked because not just science, but Eric's ability to engage the audience and Shift behavior through storytelling. You're gonna learn from this man, the man who not only created WildFit, who won the Transformational Architect Award at Mindvalley, but is a master trainer of public speaking. His courses, his programs are consistently the highest rated in Mindvalley. Now, you know, the best evidence I can give for this is my son. So if someone is selling you something, A great way to ask them, do you really believe in this? Is to ask them, would you test this on your kids? Okay. Imagine someone selling you a unique type of supplement. Would they test it on their kids? Well, I tested Eric on my kid last year in November when Eric was giving a seminar, a 5-day speaking seminar in Florida. I flew with my son to Florida. That was a long flight. I took time away from work for 7 days to work from a hotel room while my son for 12 hours a day was learning from Eric. My son is 18. He's about to go study. He's about to go to uni in the US. And I wanted to give him that gift because I know that learning to communicate and speak will be one of the most powerful superpowers he will have as an adult. It will help him with confidence. It will help him make friends. It will help him share his ideas. It will help him build his first startup. It'll help him make that first sale. It'll help him ask that girl out. All of this from one powerful teacher. So I've tested out Eric on my kids, and I think that is the greatest testimony I can give this man. Now I'm gonna bring up the Eric Admetes to work with you, to teach you, and to take you on this journey. Thank you all for being here with us.

Vishen, thank you so very much. Welcome, everybody. I am absolutely thrilled to be doing this for you. In fact, I'm gonna spontaneously share another story with you because when WildFit did so well for Vishen and then for his community and then for Mindvalley, I went to Vishen one day and I said, there's this other thing that I really wanna share. I, I really wanna bring some storytelling. And he is like, no, no, no, you can't be good at two things. We have one author doing one thing. And so what did I do? I shared a story with him. And this was the story I shared. It was the story of a TV show being made by Netflix. And they were trying to figure out how to make this TV show. And they had new metrics I described that were very different than the old ratings that they used to use. And the new metrics were that they knew exactly whose faces got clicked on. And they knew what shows created the most content. So they identified that there was a particular actor that got clicked on quite a lot. And that political thrillers like West Wing created the longest-term addiction. And so they began to create the products in that same way. They, they recognized that they could create a show exactly like that, and they did, and it became one of the most successful shows in all of Netflix. And then Vishen goes, okay, we can talk about doing a new Quest on speaking, and we did really well with it. So storytelling is one of the most powerful things in the world, guys. I'm so, so excited that you're here. I, I, I really am. This is one of the things that I enjoy to deliver to people the absolute most. If you are ever feeling held back from communicating, if you ever don't really say what you want to say, or you feel like you didn't say it the best possible way, or you leave a meeting or a conversation and you think to yourself, I wish I had said that. If you ever feel constrained in that way, then you're not really free. I'll tell you that there's been lots of discussions about, you know, free speech, free speech. I, I want my free speech. Yeah. People want their free speech, but then they don't use it. The biggest threat to our own individual free speech is not the government. It's not social media platforms. It's our own fears, our own lack of confidence, our own lack of structure, our, our own getting in the way of ourselves. And so whenever I have the chance to jailbreak somebody, to help them find their voice, to help them be heard, I am unbelievably excited by that. And it started like this. I was at a conference many years ago and I had done a presentation. I was still very new, but I had really devoted myself to storytelling. And then this woman, Rochelle, came up to me and she goes, Eric, I need your help. I'm like, with what? She goes, I'm about to give a presentation to the board and I need your support because I'm terrified and I don't know how to do it. And if I do it right, it could be life-changing for me and my team, but I'm not gonna do it right. And I'm like, why are you asking me? And she goes, well, because when I see you and you, and you tell your stories, like, people sit at the edge of their chair and, and they don't leave the room, and you've got them engaged. I want to know how to do that. I was like, I didn't really notice it that way for me. It was like I was just doing my thing. But so we sat down on the floor, no kidding, on the floor. This picture is on Facebook somewhere. I can't find it. I have seen it once. One day it'll pop up in my memories again. But a much younger me sitting on the floor with Rochelle, and I just coached her through a method, a method I'm going to share with you. And she went in and she gave the presentation and she rocked it and she won the deal. And I walked away with a new realization. And that realization was jailbreaking people from their own fears or concerns of public speaking is one of my favorite things in the world. So that I get to be part of this and create this experience with you guys right now is just a complete honor and a privilege. And that I get to share this experience with all the, the, the teachers that we've brought to you. I, I'm, I'm blown away. I won't name them all at the moment. They, you, yeah, Vishen just went through some of them for you. But I, I will tell you that coming up after me is, is Paul McKenna, one of my favorite people. When I was early on studying speaking and influence, I went to a training course with him and Richard Bandler. It must be some 20 years ago. And so it's a real privilege for me now to invite him here to come and, and be with you guys and talk about confidence because that's a big part of what we need. Now, I, uh, I, I want to say this about, um, the changing world that we're in at the moment, and it's that change divides. Whenever big innovations have come up in, in history, big innovations have become a dividing line. Some people on one side that can't feed their families properly. And then other people on the other side that survive it and thrive. That's happened every time. You know, you can imagine the families who decided that fire was a fad that probably didn't go very well for them. But equally the same with the plow and, and the same with the internet. And we are now facing a level of innovation that has never been seen by any generations before. Not simply the intense innovation that we're facing relative to AI, but also the robotics, agentic AI, the incredible technological advancements that are happening around us faster than we've ever seen before, and the incredible changes to the workforce. I'm sitting in a house in Estonia right now. We have 2 robots. If you don't count the dishwasher, then we, you know, then we have 2. If you count the dishwasher, that's 3. But there's a robot that's mowing the lawn, and there's a robot that's doing the floor. And that's just the very beginning. The entire world is changing around us faster than it has ever changed before. And, well, we need to do something about that. We need to create our own identities. We need to create our own flexibilities. And so I wanna share with you that when massive innovation is happening like this, you get to choose which side of that line you're gonna be on. And you have made a step to be on the right side of that line by choosing to be here, investing your time and your resource to be here with us right now. That is a step in the right direction because we are going to be sharing with you tools and strategies to differentiate yourself. Because I can tell you right now that while there are gonna be jobs lost everywhere, the jobs that are going to replace them haven't even been invented yet. There's new businesses and new opportunities and new things happening all the time. And so what you wanna do is become the most attractive person in that marketplace to be able to make those things happen. So I'm glad you're here. Now, there is a phenomenal opportunity in front of all of us because of all this pace of change. And the opportunity comes down to some very basic biology, and that is this: stories and storytelling are the primary operating language of the brain. The best way to put information into a brain is through storytelling, and the best way to create attraction and influence is through storytelling. It is the single best way to do it. People that have those skills differentiate themselves significantly. And to give you an idea what I mean by differentiate yourself is In the day of metrics, in the day of measuring everything, do you know that in corporate America you make more money based on your height? Not— I'm not talking in the NBA and basketball. I'm talking in corporate America. You make more money based on how tall you are on the average. On the average, every couple centimeters taller you are, you make a tiny little bit more money on the average. Now, because of that, there's an entire industry around making people taller with shoes and lifts that make them taller. Not even just talking about high-heeled shoes, that's a fashion thing. I'm talking about— there are men out there that are buying shoes that are specifically designed to elevate them. They're called elevator shoes. They're designed not to look like they do that, to give them just an extra couple of centimeters, because we all know subconsciously and statistically that that creates a little differentiator for you. Now here's what I want you to know: there is a much bigger differentiator. It is a much more powerful differentiator than a couple of centimeters in height. I I am not so tall. I'm a good average height. But would I—

would—

am I 6 foot 2 or whatever that counts in metric? No. But I've differentiated myself a different way. I've differentiated myself by working on becoming a great communicator and being able to connect with people out there in the world. And so I want to say that, first of all, I am not AI, and this is not prerecorded. I'm here live with you right now, and I will be with you through the entire summit. I will be with you now. I'll be with you again at the end tonight, and I'll be with you multiple times on every single day that we're here. And I'm live, and I'm committed, and we are going to make some magic together. The opportunity that is in front of us right now is absolutely magical, and I want you to know it's not about being a speaker necessarily. Some of you might want to be, but that's the the tiniest sliver of opportunity that comes from great communication. Tiniest. The real power is in attraction. Now, I want to, I want to just tell you something funny and interesting. I bet that many of you have seen The Secret. Yes, I'm sure you've seen it, right? Manifestation, attraction, vibration. Now, I just want to point something out to you. Can any of you tell me in the chat, what did all of the speakers of The Secret have in common? All of them What did they all have in common? They all had different messages. They all had different ideas. Can you tell me what was the one thing that was in common for all of them? Maybe we can ask Lisa Nichols when we see her a little bit later. But can we ask what was the one thing they all had in common? They, you know, some of them talked about meditation, some of them talked about visualization, some of them talked about— wait a minute, do you know what they all had in common? Speaking. That's what they all had in common. They were effective communicators. They could tell great stories. They created phenomenal manifestation and attraction by being able to get their message out into the world, and in their case, on video, and many of them also with live audiences. And I want to share a story with you that kind of underscores that this is basically nearly magical. And here, here, here's what I mean by that. When I say nearly magical, I'm acknowledging that it's not actual magic, but that sometimes things can happen that are so fantastic as to appear like magic. I will tell you that over the years I've written many books, and I've always enjoyed writing. And it's been a big part of my life, but I never bothered with publishing them because frankly, you have to write book proposals. You gotta talk to an agent. You gotta do— I just couldn't be bothered. It wasn't why I was doing it. I'd already made money. I didn't— it wasn't my biggest priority. But as a consequence of getting out there and sharing my message in events, social media, uh, in, in media generally, when a publisher wanted my book, they came to me. I didn't go to them. I didn't write a book proposal. They came to me. Six-figure advances. They came to me. I call that nearly magical because if I were to tell that to the 25-year-old me, he would never believe that. Not in a million years would he believe that. But they came to you and they gave you 6-figure advances for books and you didn't write a book proposal. Nearly magical. And I'm going to give you another example that is, I want you to know, completely accurate. This is what happened. My very good friend Gavin is a film producer and he's made about 20 feature films with everybody from Jason Statham to Charlize Theron. So there's quite a big mix in there. And at one point he asked me to come and help him with a project in Los Angeles. Happened to be in California, so I came to Los Angeles and I helped him with the project. It was super fun. At the end of the project, he goes, you know what, Eric, I'm going up to Northern California. Do you want to come with me? I'm like, what's going on up there? And he goes, well, he goes, I'm going to the old Industrial Light and Magic Studios. Now, some of you are old enough to know what I'm talking about here. Some of you maybe not so much. So let me explain. Industrial Light and Magic is the special effects shop that George Lucas created in order to create Star Wars., and it became one of the most revered, uh, uh, studios. You know, it's almost like the Mecca of entertainment in the buildings. Not only Star Wars, Empire, Indiana Jones, and all those things, 200 of the most well-loved movies in the world, but also Photoshop was invented there. THX Sound was invented there. Pixar was invented there. Like, this is a very— to go for a tour there, I mean, what a privilege. And it's not one of these studios where you can go on a tram tour. It's a private studio. So So, you know, I went, I was gonna go, of course. And I go to this thing and, and, and I get there and it's so magical. I walked in the, into one of the garage entry doors and somebody had written in a marker on the side. It said, remember to remove the mast from the Black Pearl before coming into the garage. The Black Pearl from Pirates of the Caribbean. Like I was, I was honored to be there. It was a special place. Now, while I was there, it turned out they were doing an investor pitch. So I sat in the George Lucas Theater. I sat in my red chair with everybody else, with the group of investors and the team, the owners of the studio that had bought it from George Lucas. They did a presentation, and I gotta tell you, it wasn't good. It wasn't a good presentation. And I turned to Gavin and I quietly said to him, they're never gonna raise money like that. It's never gonna happen. It's really bad. And he goes, really? Like, why? And I gave him some tips and I told him about storytelling. And I said, yeah, look, I, I, it's not my expertise raising money. It's not my, core thing, but presenting and communication is, and that's, that's not gonna work. And he goes, well, would you mind telling them that? What do you, what, what do you mean? Well, the studio execs, the owners, could you tell them that? No, Gavin, I'm on a tour. I am not telling them that. Now, I don't know if you've ever seen in the movies when you protest something heavily, like, I am not going skydiving, I'm not going, poof, cut to you're falling from a plane, right? Like, that's how movies are. Well, Gavin said, you gotta tell them. I'm like, no way, no way. Poof, cut to— I'm no kidding— sitting in the boardroom with whiteboards all around me, with the team in front of me, and Gavin says, well, Eric, go ahead and tell them.

Tell them what?

Tell them what you told me. I don't really— okay, I just mentioned to Gavin that I felt like the presentation wasn't maybe ideal for the circumstances and it could have been better. And so they started asking me questions, how could it be better, and I started getting more into it and I started sharing with them how it could be better and And then I got carried away and I really got excited and I showed them how it could be so much better. And then they told me how— great news, they have a group of investors coming in in the afternoon. I mean, great, you can try out everything I just told you. And they said, we have a better idea. You do? Yeah, you could do the presentation for us. I'm on a tour. I am on a tour. I am not doing the presentation. Cut to, I'm standing in the George Lucas Theater with the clicker in my hand.

I'm not kidding.

I have the clicker. Why do I have the clicker? I don't understand why I'm standing here. The investors are sitting in the chairs and I've got the slides and the clicker and I have to do the presentation. So I'm doing the presentation. I know, guys, this is 100% true. I'm doing the presentation, I kind of get into it, and then they start asking some questions and I answer the ones I can and I field the ones that I can't. And it went really well. And the lead investor, he owned like the— there's kind of a Whole Foods chain up in Northern California, a bit like Whole Foods, and he was the owner of the chain. And he, the lead investor, he asks the final question. And he goes, well, Eric, that's a very exciting opportunity that you've presented to us. My last question is that if we choose to make this investment, will you be staying on as CEO of the studio? I am on a tour. I am on a tour. No, I will not be staying on. No, I'm on a tour. Cut to. Cut to the investors didn't make the investment, but the owners came to me afterward and they made a proposal. A proposal that would let me, or have me, become the majority owner in the studio and the CEO. And immediately, the very first movie we worked on was Avatar. And then we worked on Pirates of the Caribbean and Iron Man, and we did some absolutely phenomenal projects. And I had to pinch myself every single day. One day, working on a movie called Red Tails with a full POW camp built in our main stage, I'm sitting in a director's chair beside George Lucas watching him direct a movie, and the 15-year-old in me says, this can't possibly be true. And I turn back and go, I'm glad you weren't in charge of our decisions for more than that one year that you were 15. Now, when I say nearly magical, would you agree that somebody with no real background in movies— I mean, I used to have a Blockbuster membership, but I mean, no real background in movies a, a solid background in entrepreneurship and marketing, walks in on a tour, ends up giving a presentation, and then becomes an executive of a majority owner and a CEO of a studio. Would you agree that that's nearly magical? What I want you to know right now is you are only ever one well-delivered, one well-constructed talk away from nearly magical. One of the things I'd love for you guys to do right now in the chat is tell me what do you think the nearly magical stuff is that might be on the other side for you. I want you to put in the chat. I wanna collect all this. Maybe we make a word cloud out of it, but I wanna know what it is. There's obviously obvious ones like you could deliver the right talk and it should go viral and you could pick up a million followers or you could get a book deal like I did. But there are much more fantastic things. How about a Netflix special? Would you like one of those? How about that you raise a bunch of money for the big social project that you're interested? How about— that you start a political campaign and you get elected? Because I can tell you, from what I can tell so far, as I look around the countries around the world, the wrong people are getting elected. I think that if some of these people in this room right now were the ones getting elected, things might start going a little better. And I can tell you right now that the person that holds the microphone and can deliver effectively gets access to that. They get access to those magical occurrences. So I want to know, if you were to deliver that one talk, well-constructed, well-delivered, and you delivered it with charisma, and you delivered it with confidence, you delivered it with all the tools and the resources that we're going to share with you over the 3 days, what is some of the magic that might happen for you? And I'm going to review that afterward. I want to take a look at, at, at what you guys think of that. Now, I hope at this point I've been able to convey to you that we are at a very interesting point in history at the moment, and there is going to be a level of change that we can barely comprehend and keep up with. And so what we have to do is we have to be flexible. We have to be attractive. We have to raise our market value. And you could either do that by getting shoes with slightly better lift in them, or you could become an unbelievable communicator. And that's what we're here to do. Now, I think I've made that point, but then I think I've also made another point, and that is that the opportunity is significant. This is not a 10x situation. I, this is not simply 10x. There are people that are live with us right now, both in terms of the teachers and some of you that are out there that won't simply 10x where you are. You may well 100 or more x what's going on for you. Incidentally, when I say this isn't about, say, becoming a speaker per se, some of you might want that path. Many of you don't. This is about being an effective founder. This is about being maybe an author. This is about being a social media influencer. This is about being a responsible politician. This is about being a leader. It's ultimately about being a great parent and a great husband and a great wife and great communicator. When you unlock that, when you jailbreak what holds you back from communicating your real truth, then your entire— you step into a new universe. You, you step into a new reality. So let's talk about what stops people from doing that. First, I want you to know we're going to unlock all of this. So I want to talk about what some of those blocks are.. But I wanna talk about it from the perspective of that we have constructed this 3 days to really be transformative for you. Vishen mentioned that I got the award for being Transformation Architect, and it was, it was a real honor for me. But I also know that it wasn't simply that programs were highly rated or what have you. It was that people will talk about programs I've created sometimes a year or 2, 3, 4 years later and say, I can't, it, it was un, it was unforgettable. I, I, I am transformed.. And so this 3 days is designed to do the same for you. So here, here, here are some of the blocks. And by the way, these blocks are known to me, but then they're also confirmed in the pre— in, in the registration surveys that many, many of you completed. So we know that this actually comes directly from you guys as well. So the first block that I want to address is the mindset block. I'm not a speaker. I don't have a lot of stories. I, I'm not very good at that. I'm afraid of public speaking. I'm just not that kind of person. I'm an introvert. So can anybody relate? Can anybody have any of those? All right. What we're gonna talk about here is how one works with that and creates phenomenal confidence. And I can tell you that we've brought quite possibly the single best person on the planet to support you in doing that because Paul McKenna has installed confidence into thousands of people. And so you are gonna learn some powerful things about how to create confidence and how to bring it back when it fades away. Cuz confidence is like that. And you don't want 100% confidence all the time. Then you'd end up, you know, making some big mistakes. What you want is a very healthy type of confidence where you can step up into action when you need to, and you can stop and self-reflect and guide your own personal self-development. Mindset is everything, and we're gonna show you how you can change that to really create a totally different set of confidence around your communication skills. It's gonna be incredible. Now, another thing that people seem to be missing quite often, and it really speaks also to confidence, is structure. I want you to think about this. Imagine that you're taking up a brand new sport. Do any of you guys play padel? I've taken up padel recently, and I can tell you that when you walk onto the court the first time, if you don't know the rules about the glass, and if you don't know the physics about the glass, and you don't really understand how the ball bounces because it's not as bouncy as a tennis ball, and you don't really understand how the paddle works because it's not as— a paddle is not as, as powerful as a tennis racket. There's all this stuff you don't know. There's all this structure you don't have. And so as a consequence, you walk in with a lack of confidence. But the minute somebody sits down and says, okay, here's the deal. This is the way that works. Let me show you how the ball bounces off the wall, that sometimes when the ball's coming toward you, you think you should back up, but you should actually run forward and catch the bounce. And they give you some of these structure things. You start experiencing a little more confidence. Then you try some of those things and your confidence grows, right? And so a big part of what's going to happen here is about providing you with real sense of structure. And by the way, the people that are here to give you structure, I mean, okay, I'm here. I invented story mapping. We're going to definitely talk about how to do that. How would you guys like to be able to design a talk where you never need to memorize it? You, you, you, it's completely time flexible. You always know where you are and, and, and you, you're, you're, you're, you never need your notes. You don't need your slides. You can use them, but you don't need them. But you like that. You're gonna have that. But you've also got Lisa Nichols. You've got Lisa Nichols. You, you, you've got Prince EA. You, you have an incredible lineup of people that are, are here giving you each of these pieces. So I wanna tell you that from a structure perspective, what I'll start with today now is what not to do with respect to structure. And I'd like to know in the chat if you do any of these, but these are some things not to do. The main two not to do: do not ever write out your talks. Don't do it. Don't write a script. Don't write them out. There is an exception. If you are delivering a very legally or politically sensitive talk and changing one word might start a war, okay, then you can write out the script and have somebody review it and read it off the teleprompter. But But the rest of the time, you don't want to write them out, and I'm gonna tell you why. If you write out your talks, then you will first of all change your language patterns. People don't speak the way we write. So if you try to speak written words, you will break authentic connection with the audience every single time. And the second problem is that when you write out your speech, you will be tempted to try to memorize the words. Memorizing the words is really hard. I mean, think about that. If you're gonna be speaking for an hour, how many words is that? It's thousands of words, and you're gonna to remember them in order? What if you simply just had to remember your experiences and deliver them from the heart? So we don't write out our talks. And here's another thing: you don't practice them word for word. I will practice my talks. I'll rehearse them, usually live in front of an audience, or live on social media or something like that, or sometimes when I'm just out for a run. But I'm not rehearsing the words, sentences, and phrases. I am experimenting with different ways to say it every single time so that it's fresh for me and it's fresh for the audience. We are gonna show you how to create the structure you need. So those are the not-to-do things. And then over the course of the 3 days, you're gonna learn the to-dos, what to do to create structure. Cuz I will tell you that when you are walking into the boardroom to give a presentation, when you are at a political rally trying to get the votes, when you are trying to sell your book, when you're trying to sell your digital program, you're trying to get coaching clients, maybe you're a speaker and you're walking out on a stage or you're stepping in front of a camera. If you have a clear structure, if you know really clearly how you're gonna start and where you're going from there, you'll be amazed at how confident you feel. And that will stack on top of the confidence strategies that you've learned here. So the next block is passion. Now, many people have a significant amount of passion, but it's unfocused and they don't really fully understand it. So that's something that we're gonna be talking a lot about here because When you really begin to understand your passion, something really truly amazing happens, and here it is. If you have a topic that you are unbelievably passionate about, that you cannot hold in, your fear of public speaking will actually fade away. Your confidence will begin to grow. And I'll give you a really great example. I want you to imagine you're in a restaurant with your friends, and you're a bit of an introvert. Maybe you've even got a little low-grade social anxiety.

I do.

So now, and by the way, I do, I'm not just throwing that away, but here's the deal. You see some water coming under the kitchen door, just water. Do you stand up and announce that to everyone in the restaurant? I don't think so. If you're at all like me, a little introverted, a little social, you know, you're not doing that. What you might do if you're lucky is tap your friend and go, there's water coming under the door. Or if the waiter was friendly enough, when the waiter— you'll wait for the waiter to come over, and when the waiter comes, you might be like, hey, there's some water coming under the door. But if you looked up and you saw fire in the kitchen, would you be more inclined to stand up and go, fire everybody? Your passion would become bigger than your fear of public speaking, right? Same thing happened to me. I discovered some things about nutritional anthropology, metabolic function, and food psychology. I discovered those things, and I got to a place where I'd shared them with a few people and transformed their lives so significantly that it became irresponsible for me not to learn to communicate those ideas in a bigger way. And it became, well, if I hadn't done it, I want you to think I could have spared myself a little discomfort. But at this point, we have helped. We've had something like several hundred thousand people go through our programs. We've helped people lose weight they never thought they could lose. We've reversed type 2 diabetes all over the planet. We've helped people get pregnant that were told they could never get pregnant again. There are literally babies alive today because I didn't let my fear hold me back. What is going to happen on the planet when you allow yourself to communicate your truth and your wisdom and your life experience?

Change.

When the right people have the microphones, we're going to see the change that we need to. We are the ones that we've been waiting for. You are the ones that we've been waiting for. Now, when you add all these things together, when you begin to realize that there is something inside you that you, you do have a mess, as Lisa says, that could become a really valuable message. You might run into the next little block, and that is, I don't have any stories. In fact, I'd love to know in the chat, are any of you having that? I just, I see you, Eric, you've got stories. Vishen's got stories. Everybody's got stories. I just don't have any stories. And I want you to know something about that. There's a really great way to think of it, but I'd like you to imagine that you are considering buying an old estate sale farmhouse. It's a farmhouse with property. It's got an old barn, and you, you're there, and it's an estate sale. You buy it, you get everything. You— there's an old rusted tractor, you get that, but anything else that's on the property you get. And you go into the attic, and you're walking along in the attic, and you see there's some old things leaning up against the wall, and you look through them— some old paintings, some old art— and all of a sudden You start to recognize that some of these paintings are masters. There's a Rembrandt there. Suddenly you begin to realize that the people who own that property had lost touch with the value of what was inside that property, and now you're here to take advantage of it. I hope you hear me, but you right now, wherever you are sitting in the world, whatever level of life experience you have currently, whatever you have been through in the world, you have life experiences that have infinite possibility of value to other people if you learn to package them and deliver them well. Infinite. You, you have no idea. There's this thing that happened to you once, and you think it's nothing. You don't think it's a big thing at all. But when you share it for the right person, that idea might be worth $10,000, $100,000, $1 million, $10 million to them. You have no idea. And I want you to know that that inventory is in there. If you have had— well, I could be wrong. You might not have any of these.

Let's just check.

Is there anybody who can hand on heart tell me that they've lived their entire life so far having had no emotional responses? You've never been sad. You've never felt a little depressed. You've never been deeply hurt. You've never been betrayed. You've never betrayed. You've never been jealous. You've never been angry. You've never been ecstatic. You've never felt joy. If you've never had those things, then you're right, you don't have any life experiences. But If you have had those emotional experiences, then you have life experience, and your life experience is a value. And a big part of what we're gonna go through over these couple of days together is how to, how to find that value and how to develop the ways that it can be delivered into the world. And then the last block that we're gonna talk about now, which is one of the biggest, and it works like this. People come to me all the time. And they say, Eric, you got to help me. I've got this message, I've got this passion, I've got this change I want to create in the world. And, and then they go, and I don't, I don't care about the money. And I'm like, you what? I don't care about the money, I just want to help. That's sweet, it's really sweet. But I want you to hear me, you need money to create real effective change. The more successful you become, the more impact you have, the more staff you're going to need around you, the more resources you're going to need around you. And frankly, if you've got something really worth offering the world, you're going to want to have money for marketing. You can't tell me you don't care about the money. You can tell me you don't care about personal riches. I'm all down for that. I don't need to have billions of dollars to feel happier or certified, you know, happier or complete or successful. But I do want a nice base level of financial freedom in my life, and I think you all do too. So I want you to let go of that whole idea of, I, I have this thing that I have in the world, I don't care about the money. I want you to care about the money a little, at least. And the reason for that is that when you understand that money is part of the whole game, I can hand on heart tell you nothing has attracted more wealth in my life than my ability to speak. Nothing. You heard Vishen talking about WildFit. I'll tell you right now, when I created WildFit, it had nothing to do with money.. I was teaching business and entrepreneurship all around the world, making good money, enjoying myself, having fun, feeling fulfilled. But my clients kept asking me about energy. They kept saying, where do you get all this energy from? How come you don't do jet lag? Why don't you get sick? Like, why, how do you do all this? And so I started sharing stories about what I'd learned about health. I started sharing stories about my time with the Hadza people in East Africa. And as I shared these stories, I began to realize that maybe I should create a health program for people. People aren't prepared to pay very much for health programs. They're not. I mean, the exact same business program, people pay me $10,000, $20,000 for, but for a health program, they're like, well, I don't know, $800 seems pretty expensive. This is your health. How could that be expensive? But I didn't care. And so I created the program knowing it would be one of our lowest price point things and it wouldn't be a big market. And I used a lot of storytelling in there. Any of you have done WildFit, you probably remember some of my stories, right? And, and, um, and then our clients started telling their friends and they started repeating the stories they heard. And then they told 2 friends and they told 2 friends and they told 2 friends. At one point, a good friend of mine, Paul Sheely, did the program and he then said to me, hey, I'm going to tell my network about you. And about a week later, he got us a year worth of clients in a few days. An entire year worth of clients in a few days. And then shortly after that, Vishen did the program and Vishen, Vishen, like he goes out and tells everybody, he puts before, after pictures and then he tells his story. And then we go from a few hundred clients a year to a few thousand clients a year to several thousand clients a year. My life has been completely changed. I, I've been given a medal by the Canadian government for my work in improving the quality of lives, the, the, the quality of people's lives around the world. I've been invited to address an audience in the House of Lords in the United Kingdom to speak on obesity and diabetes and, and what could be changed in that world. I am blown away at the magic that communication has created in my life. And I wanted to share something with you about this. Some of you are thinking, yeah, but you're Eric. Yeah, but he's Vishen Lakhiani. Okay. Listen carefully to me. Before I was Eric, I, okay, well, like strictly speaking, I was still Eric back then, but I was just Eric. I was terrified of public speaking. I have a story I'm gonna be sharing with you in a couple of days later on in the summit about my fear of public speaking and one of the ways I helped overcome it. As I share that with you, I, you'll, you'll begin to realize I wasn't just afraid, I was phobic of public speaking. So the person that you see now, and if you've known me from before, if you've seen me on stage or you've seen me on social media, whatever, I might look to you extroverted. I might look to you comfortable. Well, I'm not, I'm introverted, but I am comfortable. And I, I want you to know that I have been at every stage of progression through this, and I can assure you that we've assembled the right team to guide you through that process, to get you to a place where you can feel comfortable and confident to really get your message to the world. So what I want to do, uh, to make sure we stay integral with time and, and everything else here is I want to share with you some strategies for getting the very most that you can out of this program. And, um, I wanna first of all say, I hope that you have the idea that this is not something that you simply pop in and out of. I hope that you get that this is commitment. You should be here. This is going to be life-changing. You are quite possibly going to mark your career or the opportunities in your life as before and after this summit. It's totally possible. I know there are people who have told me that about last year's summit, and this one, in my opinion, is even better. So with that in mind, here's how you can maximize it. Maximize it by really showing up as best you can. I know you have a life, but if this was a live event and you had to fly to it, I want you to treat it that way. I want you to wake up every day with the excitement of joining tens of thousands of people for a phenomenal live event with some of the best teachers in the world. Show up like that. The big mistake that we make by offering summits like this for free is that people feel like, well, it's free. It's not that big a deal. I can tell you this summit, it should be $2,500 minimum. It's a minimum. When you, when you get what you get, you'll understand it. In fact, I think that's one of the questions I'm gonna ask you on the last day. How much should it have been worth? That's what I wanna know from you. I want you to start tallying that value up as we go through each segment. How much was that segment worth for you? Because if you treat it like it's free, then you won't get much out of it. But if you recognize the value proposition that's here and you really focus on it, you're gonna get a lot more. So here's what else I want you to think about. I want you to not to worry so much about taking notes and stuff. You guys all have, you know, AI note-takers or all that sort of stuff. But I want you to think about being interactive. So if I ask you a question, I want you to respond. So I'm gonna test that with you right now. Okay? Do you guys all get it that if I ask you a question that you should respond? So I'm gonna ask you, do you know how to raise your hand? Show me if you know how to raise your hand. Show me. I wanna see if you know how to raise your hand. Now, if you are raising your hand right now, you are engaging a part of your physiology that is going to help your memory grab a hold of the incredible value that we've created for you here. If you don't raise your hand, then you may as well go and watch Netflix. So when the speakers speak to you, I want you to speak back to them. Like, even if I can't hear you, you can shout back to me. The more interactive you treat this, the right part of your brain will be engaged in the process. And that's really what you want. And then here's the big one, and I really hope you get this from me. This is the big one right here. I want you to learn in order to pass on what you learned. I want you to know something about your brain. When you learn something selfishly, you learn it just for you, you might remember it. But when you have in mind who you plan to share this with, if you have in mind who needs to know this nugget of information, It stores it differently in your head. So if you think right now, oh, I want to share this with my kids, what happens is when you learn a fact from me or from Paul or from Lisa or from, from any of, any of the greats, from Vishen Lakhiani, whoever, when you learn that fact, you think, ah, I know who needs that fact. Then you create a different filing cabinet in your brain to put that data in and you lock it better. It's called hyperlearning and it's unbelievably effective. I will tell you that I used it once and I might share this story with you later in the, uh, in, in the summit. But I will tell you that I once went for a flying lesson, just that one singular flying lesson. And while I was on the flying lesson, I used exactly this technique because I just learned it, which means that I listened to everything the instructor said and I walked through everything he said. And so when we were up in the sky and he told me to do stuff, I just did it. I did it so effectively that he thought I was a plant. He really thought that I was a pilot that was just there testing him as an instructor. The story is hilarious, and I might get to share it with you later on in a couple of days. But for now, I want you to embody this idea. In fact, I'd love for you to think right now. Think of 3, 4, 5 people that might get value from learning this that you might pass it on to and put it in the chat. You, you, you can put names if you like, but just put how many people can you think of? I want— if you have them in your head, your dad, your, your kid, your coworkers, your business partner, whoever it is. If you have them in your brain, then your brain will store this information significantly better than if you don't. It's unselfish learning and it's the most powerful kind. With that, I wanna tell you, I am absolutely thrilled to be sharing this experience with you. I'm honored to be here. I will see you repeatedly every single day of the summit. And I know for many of us, this will be the beginning of a long and beautiful relationship together. Thank you guys all so very much. Welcome for being here. And by the way, if you thought about the people that you would share this with, I suggest you invite them. Invite them to come and share it together. It'll be even more powerful. Caitlin, thank you so very much. Over to you guys.

Eric, I love you. Oh my gosh. Do you guys see what Eric does so beautifully? He not only tried to tell us how speaking could change your life, he told us a story about how being a great speaker Speaker got him next to George Lucas. He not only told us that you don't have to be passionate about speaking, he showed us that, hey, if there was water under a door, you might not say something, but if it was fire, if you're passionate, you would tell everybody. He taught us our brain, and I saw so many of you in the chat say, I have 50 people I want to tell, my son, 100 people I want to tell, and As Eric said, invite them. Let's all grow together. Let's learn together. I want to say thank you to everybody in the chat who is with us, who is so engaged, who is contributing to this, who is making declarations of why they are here and what they're going to do with these skills. And that is so incredible. And I saw a couple of you guys too that were being really vulnerable. I saw somebody say, you know, I would love to learn this, I just have fear. I saw somebody else say that You know, I, I'm attracting these, these situations in my life and they're, and they're negative and I'm attracting more and I wanna move beyond the fear. And so that's why I'm so excited for you guys because we are about to do that right here, right now with one of the best teachers on this planet. London just called him one of the gurus alongside Nelson Mandela. He is truly the best hypnotist in the world and he will teach you that confidence is not something you have to, that has to take time. It's a shift. It is a psychological shift and he's gonna help you do that. Right here, right now by overcoming fear. Everybody, please welcome the great, the great and talented Paul McKenna.

Thank you.

Thank you, Caitlin. Thank you very much. Yes, and welcome to what is going to be a dynamic 45 minutes. This is not a lecture. It's not a talk. This is a dynamic, immersive coaching experience. And so nobody has to do anything they don't want to, but I'm going to be inviting you to take part in some psychological processes, some thought experiments, and I am a hypnotist, so absolutely I'm going to be hypnotizing you with everything that I say. So for me, when it comes to speaking and influencing people, the cornerstone is confidence and also authenticity. And whether that's speaking to 1,000 people or one person, whether it's speaking in a corporate environment or in a social environment or romantic environment, confidence is the difference that makes a difference. Now, I wrote a book about confidence about 25 years ago, and I remember when I was writing it, I mentioned to somebody that I was writing a book on confidence, and they said to me, "Oh great, a training manual for assholes." And I said, "Excuse me?" And they said, "Those confident people." They're always in your face, aren't they? They're like full-on. I went, oh no, no, no, those people are very unconfident, you know, that's why they try too hard. They're, you know, they're actually overcompensating because they don't feel comfortable in their own skin. And it's really interesting to me that the largest fear in the world right now is the fear of public speaking, and this is often learned learned. You know, early on, say in school, you stand up and you speak in front of the class and someone points out your mistakes and people giggle, and that gets installed. So basically, if you've learned to be unconfident— because, you know, you were born naturally confident, that's how baby is, yeah, just natural— if you were— if you learn to be unconfident, it can be unlearned. And if you're already a fairly confident person, well, I'd like to introduce you to even greater confidence. But as well as it being, you know, the cornerstone to speaking influentially, a large part of that is, is the authenticity, which is feeling natural. And so what we're going to do is we're going to get very much in touch with that. And we get— wherever you are right now, my job over the next 45 minutes is to shift you into greater confidence and authenticity. I'm also going to introduce you to some of the secret language of influence, and then also crank up your charisma. So if any of that appeals to you, just give me 45 minutes and let's go make some magic happen. So confidence is a neurophysiological state, a brain-body state, right? And all day long we move from different states, from one state to another. You know, the state of mind and body that you're in when you wake up in the morning is different to when you're giving a presentation, or you're sitting relaxing having some lunch, or you're concentrating on some work that needs to be done. So confidence is just a state, just as love, anger, apathy, fear, motivation, etc., optimism— they're all states of mind and body. And our states of mind and body are created by 3 things. Firstly, the sound we hear inside our mind, our internal dialogue. Yeah, everybody uses a voice that they talk to themselves with. They, you know, they all day long they're saying things like, "Oh, I must talk to that person, remember to ring them," etc. And, you know, sometimes that commentary can be encouraging, and sometimes it can be harsh and critical and can make us feel bad, even though the intention is to help us improve. But let's try our very first thought experiment, and this is an easy one. I'd like you to locate where your internal dialogue is. Is it the front of your head? Head, the back, or the sides? Where do you talk to yourself? That's right. Now, of course, some people go, "I don't think I talk to myself. Do I talk to myself?" Yeah, that voice, that one there, right? Now, very simple, right? We're going to start simple and we're going to try even greater and greater things. With your voice inside your mind, in this tone of voice, I'd like you to say these words and just notice the impact it has on your state. In other words, the way you feel. So inside your mind, not out loud, say these words in this tone: All is well. All is well. All is well. All is well. Hey, There you go. Feels nice, doesn't it? So that's one of the 3 elements we use to influence our state. Now, the other is the pictures or the movies that we make inside our mind all day long. You know, we're imagining different things, we're preparing for things by imagining what could go right or wrong, or thinking through how we want to, to do something. And one of the things I found where people are nervous about speaking in public or in in different situations is they make little movies of themselves failing, right? Now sure, you want to know what it is that you don't want so you can head that off at the pass, but you know, the important thing is to think about what you do want to have happen as well, because we get more of what we focus on in life, you know. So I meet people all the time, I say, what is it you want? And they'll say, oh, I don't want to be overweight, I don't want to be shy, I don't want to be single, I don't— whatever. And they'll tell me what it is they don't want, and they're putting all their energy into that. But when you think about what you do want, because, you know, when you make pictures and movies of yourself succeeding and you do that over and over again— we're going to do it in just a moment— you're programming the unconscious mind, the larger mind, the mind that drives all your habits, all your wisdom, all your creativity, to give you more of that. So in a moment, I'm going to ask you to close your eyes, if it's safe to do so, and to imagine something. Now, some people say to me, I'm not very good at visualizing or imagining. Sure, some people are better at it than others, but if I say to you right now, what color is your front door? In order to answer that question, you have to picture it. Which side is the handle on? Is it that side, or is it that side? So when you do that, of course, you're creating, you're creating from your memory visualization. So what I'd like you to do is to close your eyes, and we're going to do this in two stages. I'd like you to think about somebody who you know who loves and respects you. Somebody who you know loves and respects you, and imagine they're standing in front of you right now. Now float out of your body in your imagination imagination and float into them and look at yourself through the eyes of love and respect. Notice all the things that they really appreciate about you. Maybe you knew what they were, and maybe you haven't yet discovered them. And as you look at yourself through the eyes of love and respect, Feels good. But also, they really love you, they respect you, and it feels good to look at yourself from this perspective and see the best in you. And then when you're ready, take a picture and float back into yourself and put that picture of you in front of you so that when you think about yourself yourself in future, you see yourself in this way. Okay, keep your eyes closed because we're going to do the next part of this process, and I'm going to ask you to imagine that you can see a big cinema screen in front of you. Just imagine a huge cinema screen, and on that screen I'd I'd like you to see a little movie of a you that's really confident, or just more confident than you are right now. A you that's very comfortable in your own skin. A you that's natural and authentic. Look at the expression on your face, the light behind your eyes. Look at your posture. The way that you gesture, the way you connect with other people, and listen to the sound of your voice.

That's it.

A you that's strong and positive, full of self-belief. And when you're ready, float over and into the screen and float into this more confident you. See through the eyes of your more confident self. Hear your internal voice inside your mind, strong and positive, saying, "All is well." That's right. And notice where you feel these positive feelings strongest in your body. And now I'd like you to give those feelings a color. Any color that you like, and move that color up through your chest into your neck. Imagine in your mind now moving that color up into your head and all the way around your head. That's right, so you're surrounded by that color. And then imagine moving that color down through your shoulders into your arms and hands and fingers.

That's right.

Then move it down through your chest into your legs, all the way to the tips of your toes, and double the brightness, and double it again until you're glowing with this really amazing feeling.

That's right.

And while you feel this good, I'd like you to imagine taking this feeling with you and taking it into later today, taking it into tomorrow, Imagine taking this great state of confidence into next week, taking it into next month and next year. Imagine taking this feeling with you— that's it, in your mind now— into your home life, feeling this good, into your social life, feeling this good. Take it with you into your work life, maybe dealing with a few challenging people or situations, but feeling this good. Because as you do this, you are programming your unconscious mind. We're saying to the unconscious mind, I want to feel this good in all the areas of my life. So you're going to be feeling more of this confident feeling more often because this is One of the ways we program the unconscious mind. And when you're ready, open your eyes, come on back out feeling good. Wow! Now that took just a few moments to do, and look how it influenced your state of mind and body. And so if you were to do these things regularly, like, you know, I, I take a few minutes every day just to get myself in an optimized state. And what's really interesting is when I feel good, the world looks different to me. And you know, when we talk about speaking and influence, one of the ways that you're going to influence people is through your state of mind and body, right? There's, you know, there's, there's more to just imparting information in communicating. There's a saying which is, you know, people may or may not remember what you said to them, but they'll remember how you made them feel. Now, the other component in creating a state is your physiology. Now, you know what it's like when you're slumped? You feel different to when you're upright. I was friends with the late Roger Moore, you know, the wonderful actor who played James Bond. He was great, he was funny and kind, and I used to ask him all sorts of things. And, you know, I I was asking him about some of the moments where he had a life-changing— he was telling me when he went to acting school, his mentor said to him, 'How tall are you?' He went, in that rich voice of his, 'I'm 6 foot 2.' And he went, 'Well, why don't you stand like you're 6 foot 2?' 'What do you mean?' And he imagined a thread pulling him up like that, and he said as soon as he he stood taller, he felt different. He felt empowered. And so because the mind and body are in this, what we call, cybernetic loop— one is always influencing the other— when you're tensing your body, it affects the quality of thoughts you have. The same when your mind is, you know, racing, it affects your physiology. So what happens is when we adopt the posture— this is something we're going to do in a little bit later, of someone who's more confident, we can borrow from their confidence and their charisma. And equally, when we stand with that physiology or sit with that physiology, we are communicating to our mind and body simultaneously, "I feel confident." Now, the thing about authenticity is, well, that it's something that everybody knows how to do, but some people forget. And, you know, when it comes to people who speak publicly, because I've watched some really polished people over the years, but I didn't think they were authentic. And to me, the authenticity, when somebody's being genuine, you know, sometimes they're speaking from their heart, is the thing that really grabs my attention. And also it makes the person more likable to me. You know, I remember years ago I was at a wedding, straight a friend of mine, he's a radio producer, and there was like the good and the great of radio in the UK were there. And his best man was a terrific guy, and he was polished, and he got up and he told some jokes and all this sort of stuff, and it was fine, you know, it was good. And then my friend who's a producer, he's, you know, not so quite so confident at public speaking. And it was really simple, he got up and he said, you know, I gotta tell you, I find this I find this a bit overwhelming, but I love everyone in this room. I wish my mother was here alive today to see this because this is the greatest day of my life. Thank you. And that was it. And so, you know, didn't say much, but it came from the heart and it was authentic. And the fact that he said, I find this a bit overwhelming, made him vulnerable and instantly likable. So coming back to how I started this, confidence is not just all being in your face. Confidence is about being natural, about being authentic. You know, it's really interesting. Athletes, when they're in a peak of— a state of peak performance, they call it being in the zone. Musicians call it being in the groove. Psychologists call it being in flow. When you're in that state of mind where you just do and say all the right things, you know, the rest of the world kind of disappears appears, oh, you're, you're in the, in the zone, in the flow, in the groove. And again, this is something that we are going to be practicing as we do some more psychological techniques over the next few minutes, because my wish for you is that you get some takeaway from today, that you go, hang on, okay, I mean, as well as getting a shift going, yeah, yeah, I feel more confident, I mean, I'm thinking about things more confidently. I feel like my voice could be heard. I've got something of a passion to speak now. As well as that, that also you practice it, and when next time you feel a bit overwhelmed, you go, "Hey, I got to give a presentation here. One minute. All is well. All is well." Close your eyes and you look at a movie of yourself. And you're saying the right things, you're moving the right way, you're in the groove, in the flow, and you step into it and you amplify that feeling by giving it a color and moving that color around your whole body and making it bright. And then you go about presenting, because, you know, there are lots of things to know about speaking, whether it's speaking, you know, in a corporate situation, in business, whether it's social or romantic or whatever. In some ways, the principles really remain the same. That when you're in a great place, when you're in an authentic place, in other words, you're not scared of being judged. Now, this is one of the things that I find interesting. When I talk to people who are frightened of public speaking, they'll say, well, I'm worried that I'm going to make a mistake and people will judge me. I say, how is it when you're speaking with friends? And they go, oh, I'm not frightened of being judged. I can, I can be myself, right? So what we're going to do is we're going to create a little switch for those authentic feelings, right? This— what we're going to do is squeeze our thumb and middle finger together and create an associational link between good feelings and that motion. Now, the most famous experiment involving associational links is Pavlov's dogs, the Russian scientist. So every time he'd feed his dogs, ring a bell, feed the dogs, ring the bell, feed the dogs, ring the bell. And then eventually he'd just ring a bell and their mouths would salivate because there wasn't a link before he created it, but as soon as he'd repeated the two things at the same time, there became a link. So once again, I'm going to ask you to close your eyes if it's safe to do so, and I would like you to remember a time that you felt really relaxed and authentic, talking with friends or a friend, when you were really natural and being yourself. That's right. And return to it like you're back there again now. See what you saw, hear what you heard, and just feel how good it feels to feel natural and authentic. Make the colors in this memory rich and bright and bold, the sounds crisp. And the feeling's strong. That's right. Just keep going through the memory. We're going to put it on a loop and go through it several times. And as you go through this memory, I'd like you to squeeze your thumb and middle finger together, because we're going to put these good feelings on the tips of your fingers. So keep going through this memory, and as you do, notice where the feelings are strongest of all. And once again, give them that same color and move that color up through your chest into your neck and head. Head, still squeezing your thumb and middle finger together. Move it down through your shoulders into your arms and hands and fingers. That's great. That's it, move it down through your legs to the tips of your toes. Keep going through this memory. You feel natural, you're authentic, you're not concerned about being judged, you can be yourself, you feel good. Squeeze your thumb and middle finger together, that's right, surrounded by this great color. There you go. And go through it again and go through it again. Again. That's right, keep going through this memory because we're creating an anchor, a strong associational link between this good feeling and the squeeze of your thumb and middle finger. That's right, just go through one more time, and then when you're ready, stop, open your eyes, come on back out, and then squeeze your thumb and middle finger. Bam! And remember the good feelings. We're stacking good feelings together here to create confidence and authenticity. So that when you think about having to go and speak at a— maybe a presentation, or in a social situation, or a romantic situation— bam! Squeeze your thumb and middle finger together and summon the good feelings so that you enter that environment and that situation already feeling good about yourself. And when you feel so good about about yourself, the words naturally flow. Now, speaking of words, people who are professional communicators, like a hypnotist like myself, or say a salesman or politician, or, you know, anyone who's a sort of a leader, they usually tend to use a particular structure of language. And there's plenty to tell you about, but I'm just gonna tell you about one tiny element government today, and that is they're usually really good at building agreement, certainly before they ask for something. You know, I mean, salespeople do this all the time. They go, you know, would you like a product that you can depend on, that's reasonably priced, that you feel happy about using? Yeah, you said yes to the first 3 things, then maybe you want the Okie Kokie 2000. You know, when I am When I write a book, and I've written quite a few bestselling books, I always put— it's called a yes set— on the back, you know, I always build agreement because again, I don't want to sell my book to somebody who doesn't want it. But I'll say, say it's a book on sleep, right, which I, I've written about and had great success internationally with. So I start off by saying, would you like deep nights of refreshing sleep? Well, that's a yes. Would you like to stop your mind racing so you feel calm? That's a yes. Would you like to be able to get back to sleep if you wake in the middle of the night? Yes. Okay, would you like to feel refreshed when you wake up?

Yes.

Well then, let me help you. So I build agreement and create rapport. All professional speakers do this before they then state a direction in which they want things to go. Now, years ago, I had Actually, I'm going to give you a good example of a professional communicator. In fact, if you think about somebody like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama and Tony Blair, they're all trained in something called Neuro Linguistic Programming, NLP, which is partly an advanced communication technology. And of course, they're naturally charismatic people, but when you listen to their language patterns, they use similar language patterns. They build build agreement first. Now, I had to introduce Tony Blair about 25 years ago when he was the Prime Minister of the UK, and politics aside, this guy is a very skilled communicator. And I sort of appreciate, you know, just how he started off this talk. No script, right? He walked out and he said something like, um, you know, one of the things that I've always loved about the people from part of the world is they're not looking for a handout, you know, they like to work hard for what they achieve, right? That's your first yes. He said, but I know what frustrates people is when they think they're not getting a fair deal. Yeah, that's a yes. And I know that, you know, people want the best for their children, they want opportunities so that they can succeed. Yep. He said, everywhere where I go in Britain, I hear people say, look, you know, I don't expect miracles, but I don't want empty promises. I want a system that works. And I could see people nodding in agreement. Now, when you think about it, that's very artfully vague, which is how all politicians speak. But he built agreement like this by saying, you know, 4 different things in a row. That people say yes to. Now, as a professional speaker, I do that too. You know, I might start with, look, everybody wants to feel good, you know, or are you interested in feeling more confident, more authentic, and being able to succeed more in life?

Yes.

I build agreement before I do anything. And you know, this is just one of the language patterns because there is like a secret language of influence that all professional communicators use. And I just wanted to touch upon that because this is more than just about confidence. It's also about techniques that you can begin to notice that, that will, will also move you on in your communication. You know, also one of the things that is the stock-in-trade of all professional communicators is stories. You know, there's a famous saying in sales which is, "Facts tell, but stories sell." Now, if you think about about it, as a hypnotist, I definitely use stories to change people because, you know, powerful stories are things that shape people, certainly in the early part of their life. You know, fable stories, or like the Ugly Duckling, is an overcoming adversity story. The story about the Good Samaritan is one about kindness, and that acts as software in the mind for children. But in the same way, You know, stories can empower us. They can, they can, they can move us. They can motivate us. They can get us to do and see things in different ways. And so, you know, one of the reasons I tell stories whenever I'm talking to somebody one-to-one, or even with a group of thousands of people right now, is that stories are a really great way of talking to the right brain as well as the left brain. The left brain is logical. Logic and linear. The right brain likes metaphor, likes symbols, likes abstract. And so when you're talking in simple process instructions and with stories, you're talking to the whole brain. So what we're going to do next is talk about charisma, right? So I lived in Hollywood for about 10 years, and I had the opportunity to work with quite a lot of actors. And it's really interesting because there's a saying in Hollywood which is there's a difference between an actor and a movie star. You know, actor is somebody who very professionally does a great performance, etc. But a movie star is somebody that the moment they come on screen, you can't take your eyes off them. So it might be a Tom Cruise, you know, it might be a Brad Pitt or George Clooney, or it might be John Wayne or Steve McQueen, but also might be a Sean Stone or Elizabeth Taylor, you know, or a Margot Robbie or someone like that. The moment they come on the screen, you're captivated because there's something about them. And, you know, I used to, I used to watch and think, what is the difference here that makes the difference? Now, what's really interesting is there's a, there's a famous story about Marilyn Monroe, and that she's walking through Central Park and she's with a friend of hers, and her friend says, you know, I just can't believe no one's recognized you and they're not, you know, coming up to you and want your autograph, things like that. And she said, oh, she said, I can tell you why that is. That's because, um, I'm, I'm Norma Jean, which is her real name, by the way. I, I'm not Marilyn Monroe. And she said, "Hang on a sec." She changed her posture, tilted her chin up, softened her eyes, you know, and she walked in a different way. And immediately she got recognized and people were all around her. That's really interesting, isn't it? So that shift was something that made a really significant difference. And, um, years ago when I wrote a book on Charisma. And I did a really interesting experiment with my friend Michael Neal. He's a brilliant life coach. And at the time, the iPhone had just come out, and we did an experiment in my, in my home where I would go to the room next door and I would think about somebody who I thought of as charismatic, and I would step into them like a method actor, you know. I try and become them. I I would borrow from their charisma, and then I'd walk into the room next door and Michael would take a photograph of me. Now, the really neat thing was he went, 'You stepped into Sean Connery, didn't you?' Yeah, how'd you know? He goes, 'I don't know, you just— that's it.' Anyway, we did about 5 different people and he got every single one right. Now, what was really weird in a good way was when I look back at all 5 photographs, I look different in each one. I still look like me, but it's like a different version of me. And that's when I thought, wow, you can borrow from the charisma of somebody else, which is what we're going to do next as our next process. This is a dynamic coaching experience, right? It's not just an intellectual sort of talk on confidence and stuff like that. This is actually a process whereby you shift your perspective, you shift your state of mind and body. And also, as I believe, you know, give someone a fish, they eat for a day; teach someone to fish, they eat for life. So my hope for you is that you're able to take away some of this and use these techniques in your everyday life. And so when you, you use them in your everyday life, you start to notice differences. And by the way, those differences might be small at first, but they knock on to bigger and bigger, bigger, bigger differences. It's interesting, because I got interviewed a couple of years ago by a radio broadcaster radio broadcaster in the UK, and he said, you know, just before we start, I want to tell you that I read that book that you wrote on confidence years ago. And I said, oh, I said, did you find it helpful? He goes, oh yes, the stuff about the internal dialogue. You know, I used to be highly critical of myself and I'd make myself nervous and make myself feel unconfident. He said, and there was a girl at the radio station I really liked. And I changed my internal dialogue. And I said, what happened? He said, well, I asked her out. I said, how'd it go? He said, we've been married for 15 years. So one seemingly small thing can make a big difference in the long game. Yeah, just as you know, when an aircraft takes off, you know, if it's 1 or 2 degrees off course, course, it'll end up in a different country. I mean, it's always adjusting course because of wind direction and other air traffic, etc. And in the same way, you can do that in life. You know, once you begin to take notice of the internal dialogue and the pictures of the movies you're making for yourself, succeeding or failing, and you start to make more movies of you succeeding and you step into them, you you change your state, you program your unconscious mind to change your behaviors, and then what happens is you get different results in the world. So let's do something to boost your charisma, shall we? So, um, I'd like you to think about, or to borrow from, the confidence of someone else. You know, I'd like you to think about somebody who you think, I'd like to be more like them. When I think about them, you know, they seem so confident, you know, they're full of natural ease, or maybe they're just very charismatic. They don't have to do much and people feel drawn to them because they have some sort of, I know, energy about them. So it can be a famous person or it can be a relative or friend, but somebody you go, I like to just have a bit more of what they've got, right? Okay, so once again, if it's safe to do So close your eyes, and I'd like you to imagine your role model is standing there in front of you. Now just watch the way that they move, look at the expression on their face, and listen to the sound of their voice. And What I'd like you to do is, when you're ready, float over and into your role model. Step into them and look at the world through their eyes. Copy their physiology. That's it. How do they stand or sit? Hear their internal dialogue Their voice. How do they talk to themselves? Hear it now. Stand the way they stand. Breathe the way they breathe. Smile the way they smile. That's it. You're inside your role model. How does it feel to have their confidence and their charisma?

That's right.

And then notice once again where they feel this feeling strongest of all, and give it a color. And move that color up through your chest into your neck and around your head. Move that color down through your shoulders into your arms and hands and fingers. In your imagination now, move that color down through your chest into your legs and to the tips of your toes, and double the brightness and double it again. That's right. And then squeeze squeeze your thumb and middle finger together because right now you're feeling confident, you're feeling charismatic, you're feeling authentic and good.

That's right.

And then take this feeling with you into the rest of the day. Imagine feeling this good for the rest of the day. That's right, squeezing your thumb and middle finger together. And then take this feeling with you into tomorrow. Waking up feeling this good, and tomorrow goes so great because you feel so good. And then take it into next week. That's right, we're saying to the unconscious mind, generalize this good feeling into my future. That's it. Imagine events next week, squeezing your thumb and finger together, and see things going perfectly the way you'd like them to. Or imagine a challenge, but you have handle it really well because you're in this confident, charismatic, authentic, beautiful place. And then squeeze your thumb and middle finger together again, keep squeezing it, and take these feelings into next month, 6 months from now. Imagine you're a year in the future and it's a great year. Things are really good in your health, your relationships, your career, your finances, and your general levels of happiness. Squeezing your thumb and middle finger together.

That's great, isn't it?

And then imagine taking these good feelings into your home life. Imagine being at home and you feel so good, all is well. You feel so naturally really good great about life for no particular reason other than we've programmed it into your unconscious mind. Then imagine taking these good feelings with you into your work life. Yeah, what do you see, hear, and feel as you feel this good, this confident, this, this great feeling of being in the zone, in the flow, in the groove?

Yeah.

And then imagine a challenging situation, one that would normally be a bit overwhelming, but you feel this good. And see it all go the way you want to, even though it's a challenge. You're able to handle it. That's right. That's beautiful. And then When you're ready, open your eyes and come on back out feeling good. And just squeeze your thumb and middle finger together and remember the good feelings. Yeah, because as I mentioned, you get more of what you focus on. So as you focus on the things that you want to have happen, you're programming your unconscious mind, which controls all of your wisdom, all of your creativity, all your energy, and all your behaviors to direct your life in that way. Now, let's just do a little recap on what we've covered so far. So, we talked about confidence being a state of mind and body, and it's natural. But sometimes we've learned to doubt ourselves or feel frightened or whatever, or, you know, rehearsed failing over and over again inside our minds until it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And we can change that. We can change our internal dialogue. Because the 3 things that create the neurophysiological states are: the sound, the pictures or movies we make, and our physiology. So remember, when you talk to yourself, like, say you've got something that you've got to present, it could be to a lot of people, it could be in a social situation, or it could be romantic or something else. When you you hear your voice inside your mind say, "All is well. All is well. All is well," notice how that changes your state. When you picture yourself succeeding and achieving, and you look really great, and you step into the movie— and we'll do it one more time before we finish— and you notice where the feeling feel good, and you give them a color and you amplify that, that state by moving the color all the way around your, your body. And again, you've created an association or link with this. You're gonna feel really good. And then the other thing we talked about was physiology. There's something about confident people who stand in a comfortable way, usually upright. People slouch, hunch sitting like that, they're transmitting a different set of feelings through their physiology. You know, it's a really interesting study. It's Harvard study where people are asked to pull— it's 3 poses before a job interview, and it's this one, this one, and arms on, on the hips like this. So Wonder Woman, staying alive, and this, right? What's really interesting is the people who pull these poses— not in public, by the way, they do them in private before they actually go into an interview— they actually, they're in a different state of mind and body. So physiology is really important. Now, the other thing I touched upon was building agreement, and I gave examples of yes sets, how salespeople do that, also how professional communicators like politicians do it. You know, another example, another story of how years ago I was in business with somebody, and unfortunately I found they were— they were stealing, they were committing fraud. And I, I really was looking forward to my day in court, you know, but we had to go to arbitration. It was, you know, what the judge had ordered. And I was determined, I had nothing was going to make me settle. But the guy guy doing this arbitration, he was a wily old guy, and he started out by building agreement, right, between the two of us. And he said, look, um, we're sitting there like, yeah, he said, look, you've both come here today for a reason. Yeah, he said. And, uh, you know, you, um, you want what's fair, don't you?

Yeah, yeah.

'And you know, you both have— you have a particular point of view on this, and you know, you know you're right about that, don't you?' 'Yeah.' And he said, 'And of course, during the course of arbitration, you have to consider things from different perspectives.' 'Yeah.' 'You might even have to make a compromise.' And this was the really clever bit. He went, 'In order to be able to go home tonight and just put this thing behind you and feel good about it all and not stress and worry about it anymore. I went, yeah, damn, that was good. He'd shifted me already at the very beginning to find focus on similarities instead of differences. Okay, so just before we finish, because I like to finish on high, if it's safe to do so, close your eyes and once again imagine that you— now by now this you is going to be even more optimized than when we started. A you that's on a cinema screen, a big cinema screen in front of you, a you that's even more confident than you were when we started. A you that's authentic, that's comfortable in their own skin. A you that's natural and authentic. Look at the way you stand. Look at the expression on your face, the light behind your eyes. Eyes, the way you exude confidence and happiness. That's right, charisma and joy. Look at that you that connects with other people, listen to the sound of your voice, and then float over into the movie screen and step into this optimized you. See through the eyes of your more confident self. Hear your internal dialogue inside your mind say, "I am confident." And squeeze your thumb and middle fingers together. Notice where the good feelings are strongest of all and give them a color and spread that color up through your body. That color once again that we did earlier, all the way up through your chest into your head.

That's right.

The more you do this, the easier it becomes. Down through your shoulders into your arms and hands and fingers, down to the very tips of your toes and double the brightness and double it again and squeeze your thumb and middle finger together. That's right. And take this feeling with you. Into tomorrow, into next week, into next month, into next year. That's right, into your home life and work life. And then open your eyes and come on back out feeling good. Well, I do hope you feel really good, and bam, you've got some good feelings at your fingertips. It's such a pleasure to be part of this phenomenal summit. You know, there's some truly amazing people that you're going to meet over the next 3 days. Eric is, for me, the gold standard of public speakers. I mean, you know, I have to say to him, please don't be so good, you know, give the rest of us a chance, because he's just— he's so good. And also a phenomenal trainer. He gets phenomenal results in teaching people how to be amazing presenters, how to speak with influence. You've got the extraordinary Vishen Lakhiani, who is aptly named Vishen because he has vision. He's really one of the most most important thinkers in personal development. He's going to be joining you, and you've got Daniel Priestley coming up next, who's an entrepreneur. He's also got some really innovative and amazing ideas about speaking and influence in business. So, you know, you're set for, for a great 3 days. I do hope we meet in future, maybe at the Mastery. Thank you for participating in the last 45 minutes. Be safe, be well, be lucky. And I'm going to throw back to Caitlin. Back to you, Caitlin.

Paul, thank you so much. You're right. They're all incredible. But I just want to commend you too because, you know, life is so much of how we feel and how we feel is what we see. It's the state that we're in. And I think every single one of us on here has either just jumped into the future version of ourselves or somebody that we admire and we are feeling taller and more magnetic and more charismatic. And that is thanks to you. And so thank you so much for spending this time with us, for your wisdom, for just helping us to reach these optimal states, because they truly do make a difference. So thank you, Paul. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It's such a, such a privilege to always have you on with us. And as you mentioned, we're going to move on to our next speaker, who is incredible, an incredible entrepreneur. And I love him so much. He's an entrepreneur. He's an author. If you haven't read his book, keep, key person of influence, oversubscribed. I recommend them. I love him so much because he is on a mission not just to be his own entrepreneur, right? That in and of itself is a feat, and he's so successful, but he's here to empower other entrepreneurs. And, you know, I, I've been out in Cannes. There's a big event called Cannes Lions, and this is where, this is the mecca of marketing and advertising and entrepreneurs and creators, and people come. But what happens here is deals are done.. And it is the people that know their origin. It is, it is the entrepreneurs that know their mission. It is the entrepreneurs that have a vision. It is the entrepreneurs that can actually speak about what they're doing in the world and the impact that they wanna have. So if you are an entrepreneur, incredible. If, if you're not and you're like, okay, maybe this isn't for me, it is for you. I am telling you, all of us can do a better job in life, in business, in leadership, in relationships if we can understand this is clarity. And when you have clarity on what it is you are doing and you have this, this courage to really speak about it— and what I want you to know is every single one of you have this because you all have a story. And so how do you combine that? How do you express that? And how do you use that to really create and do good in this world? And he is an absolute master at this. I'm so happy to have him here with us. Everybody, please, please, please welcome the incredible Daniel Priestley.

Caitlin, thank you very, very much, Caitlin. It is so wonderful to get an introduction like that. It's so wonderful to go after Paul and to have that amazing visualization that he just did where he just lifted everybody's spirits, including mine. Um, so I'm feeling extra charisma points, uh, today, uh, and I'm, I'm thrilled to be here with Mindvalley. I just absolutely love doing Mindvalley events. Because of the people that we attract onto these calls. And for the next 3 days, you are going to have a life-changing experience with Eric and all the other speakers. It's a great privilege and a great honor to, uh, to be sharing, uh, the stage and to be with you today. I want you to imagine that you get a letter in the mail, and you have this situation where the— a law firm sends you this letter and it says, uh, we want you to come down to the law firm because there's something important that you need to come and look at. You think, oh my goodness, okay, I'll come on, come and have a look at doing that. So you step into the lawyer's office and the lawyer says, look, somebody has left you a beautiful, massive property in their will. And all you have to do is do the documentation. And if you do the documentation, you will have the opportunity to have a brand new asset and you'll own that asset and you just need to document it. That's all you need to do. And once you fill in the paperwork, you've got this brand new asset. Asset that you've never had before. And, and you just need to formalize that, and then we'll hand you the keys. Wouldn't that be exciting? Wouldn't it be amazing just to be— just to discover that there's this wonderful asset that you've got, and all you have to do is just document it? Well, what we're going to talk about today is called your origin, mission, and vision. We're going to talk about this asset that you do have, something that will empower you in your business, in your speaking, in your influencing. It's a very, very powerful asset. It's a very valuable asset. It's a life-changing asset, and all we have to do is document it and formalize it. And that's what we're going to have. And if we, if we do the work of documenting and formalizing this asset, we're going to have more clarity about what are the opportunities we should be going after. We're going to have a real sense of direction, and we're going to have some magnetism. We're going to be able to attract the right things into our lives as well. And I know this because I did the work a little while ago where I formalized my origin, mission, and vision. And ever since then, I have been able to build a massive group of companies that are very aligned to who I am, and I've been able to hire hundreds of people to come and join a team who are also aligned to my origin, mission, and vision. Uh, I've been incredibly fortunate to be invited to be the number one guest on Diary of a CEO, the biggest podcast in the world, where they've invited me back 8 times to be on Diary of a CEO. Because they enjoy having me come along, because I feel energized to talk about my origin, mission, and vision. And actually, the first time I had an experience with this asset was many, many years ago, uh, in 2010. I wrote this book called Key Person of Influence, and in the opening I said, when you discover the story behind the story, life will never be the same again. I said, there's a hidden theme, and you need to discover the hidden theme 'And when you do discover the hidden theme, you're going to sit up late at night and you're going to have energy and you're going to have creativity because the hidden theme will give you all of that.' And the hidden theme was not in the book. The hidden theme was in your life. And the theme is your origin, mission, and vision, right? So your origin, mission, and vision is your past, your present, and your future. Your origin story is your past, your vision is your future, and your mission is your present. And what we want to do is document those and we wanna write down key sentences that help you to be aligned and connected to your origin, mission, and vision statement. The favorite characters that we see in the movies, we love certain characters because they have a very powerful origin, mission, and vision statement. So we love Moana because Moana starts out as a princess. She's meant to go along with playing it safe in the village. She's not meant to rattle any, to change anything. Um, but unfortunately that's not her destiny. Her destiny is to go on a mission, to go on an adventure over the horizon, um, and she's going to restore her connection with nature and her connection to her adventurous spirit. And then she comes back in the future in the vision where she restores her tribe, uh, to reconnect with their adventurous spirit and become voyagers again. And we love that story because it's very clear origin, mission, and vision. We love Batman because Batman, uh, when Batman is a little kid, he's the victim of crime, and then he has a vision that Gotham City could be free from crime, and then he becomes a bat and strikes fear into the heart of baddies. It's not just characters in movies. We love people who embody it. I, I love the entrepreneur Dolly Parton, the entrepreneur, the entertainer. She was born into poverty. She was the fourth child out of 12. In a one-room cabin in Tennessee, and she discovers that she's got this power of singing and entertaining, and she uses that power to go on a mission to entertain people. And she goes on this incredible mission to entertain regular folks, and then she goes on this vision of making sure every single child feels seen and feels recognized and can read. And she creates a, a billion-dollar, uh, foundation where she gives books away and she creates theme parks and she helps young entertainers to get, to get seen. A little bit about my background. When I was 10 years old, my mum had a, um, a house fire. She was cooking fish and chips and the chips caught fire and set fire to the curtains, and there was this fire and it burnt all through the house, and we had to throw all of this stuff away. And we were loading all the stuff into the the trailer to take it to the tip. And when we did that, I had this idea. I was only 10 years old at the time, but I had this idea: what if this horrible thing that had happened, what if it could be something good? What if I could sell all of the stuff that got damaged? So I got it in my head that I'm going to run a, a, a garage sale. And I thought to myself, I'm going to clean this stuff and I'm going to sell it. And no sooner had I started doing this, I went around to the neighbor's house and I said, look, I'm going to be running a garage sale, do you want to put anything in my garage sale and it's going to be a 50/50 deal. Whatever I sell, I get 50%, you get 50%. And they put all sorts of things in the garage sale. And I went to all the neighbors and next thing you know, I've got this huge garage sale and I felt pretty cool that this bad thing that had happened had suddenly been made into an exciting thing. And throughout the day we were selling so many things and I was making all this money and this guy comes up to me and he says, How much for this microphone— uh, microwave? And I said, the microwave's $20. And he said, oh, $20 is much too much. He says, uh, can I speak to your father? So I go inside and I get my dad, and my dad walks out and he says, um, how can I help you? And he says, look, your son says the microwave's $20, will you take $10 for it? And my dad looks at him indignantly and says, um, I'm sorry, it's my son's business, you'll have to negotiate with him, he's the boss. And it was amazing. I was a 10-year-old kid and I'm sitting there, uh, with this adult saying, uh, okay, I'm the boss. And I said, it's going to be $20, and he ends up paying the $20. And I felt this incredible sense of power and achievement and empowerment, and I felt like I'd turned a bad thing into a good thing. I didn't have a word for this thing called entrepreneurship. I didn't have a word for this thing called business, but I certainly felt the feeling of what it felt like to be an entrepreneur who had turned an idea into something that was commercially successful. Um, and that was me at age 10. And then I ended up, uh, having the opportunity one day to build a, a big business and to use my business to help build schools in Uganda. And I went out to see the schools that we'd created, and I had never really been all that emotionally connected to those schools, but I went out there and I saw what we were doing in Uganda, but I also met these incredible entrepreneurs all through Uganda, these farmers and these people setting up microloans. And I saw that the spirit of entrepreneurship was really elevating and lifting up the communities in Uganda. And I felt that this thing called entrepreneurship had really been able to transform things. And I felt like I was most on mission when I started sharing that entrepreneurial spirit, when I started to go out there and talk about the power of entrepreneurship to do that. And I discovered that there was this point in my life where there was an alignment between my past, my present, my future. That my past was about seeing opportunities, sorry, my past was about seeing opportunities that bad things could become good things through entrepreneurship. And my future was about entrepreneurs solving the world's most meaningful problems. And my present was all about developing entrepreneurs who could stand out, scale up, and make a positive impact in, in their lives. And I felt that, uh, I felt a real sense of energy and alignment when I, uh, connected those dots. And it was the connection of the dots between past, present, and future that gave me the energy. And that energy has allowed me to write 7 books on entrepreneurship and speak all over the world, and to be invited to, to be a paid speaker in different places, and to get paid to do what I love. It's helped me to set up businesses where we build all sorts of tools for entrepreneurs, right? So it's been a wonderful experience to have that alignment between origin, mission, and vision. So what I want to do today is I want you to explore your origin, mission, and vision. I want, I want you to explore your origin story, and we're going to go through some activities to help you to do that. So the first part is the origin story, right? So here's Batman, and he's the victim of crime, age 10. Um, or young Bruce Wayne, right? That's the origin story. And in the same way that Batman has an origin story, you've also got an origin story. So here's something pretty exciting, something strange. Between the ages of 9 and 13, something happened in your life that made you feel a sense of empowerment. Now there's two stories that, that probably happened. One of two stories probably happened around age 9 to 13 in your life, and I want you to start to drift shift back to that time in your life. Start thinking back to around age 10. Something happened where you discovered that you were powerful outside of your parents, that you could do something powerful and your parents didn't even need to be involved. And up until that moment, everything that you had done had involved Mum and Dad. Everything that you'd done, there was an adult in the room. Someone was basically guiding you and controlling you and telling you what to do. But then there was this moment where you did something, and as a result of doing that, you felt an incredible sense of self-empowerment. And it happened around age 9 to 13. And when that happened, it imprinted something on your, on your brain or in your psyche. And there was a set of ingredients, and whenever you see those set of ingredients come together, it makes you feel that way again. It makes you feel that level of empowerment again. So for me, it was all about running this business. It was all about turning something negative into a positive. It was actually about selling stuff, and it was about cleaning stuff up and improving things, and it was about innovating and marketing and doing the handing out the flyers and all of those sorts of things. Whenever those ingredients come to, come to fruition, we feel that sense of empowerment. So one of the experiences that you may have had is an experience where you did something on your own and you achieved something on your own without your parents, and it was an early stage feeling of an empowerment. The second thing that happened, it could happen for some of you, is that there was an injustice. Something went wrong, something happened that shouldn't have happened, and you made a decision at that time that one day you're going to be big and strong, and one day you're going to fix it, that you are going to fix this injustice. So very similar to young Bruce Wayne, who's the victim of crime, he says, I'm a little kid right now, but you watch, I'm going to grow up and become Batman, right? I'm going to grow up and I'm going to change things. I'm going to, I'm going to be the one who you're afraid of. So he says, I'm going to turn this thing around. So the other feeling of empowerment is the decision to right a wrong. It's the decision that you are not going to take this injustice sitting down, right? You're going to go, you're going to wait your turn, and you're going to fix things when you've got the chance to fix things. So I want you to keep this in mind, that there was this time where you did something empowering and it didn't involve your parents, and that was a set of ingredients, or an injustice happened, and as a result of that injustice, you felt empowered that one day you would fix that. And that is part of your origin story, right? So your origin story involves that. So I want you to think about when did you first discover your power? When did you achieve something without your parents? When did you feel a sense of injustice that you had fixed? When did you overcome a big obstacle? When did you realize you had a superpower? Now, if you can think of a memory— you don't have to share the memory, But if you can think of a memory, just say yes in the chat. Yes, I've got one, right? Say yeah, I've got it. Um, that, that like, let, let people know that you can think of a memory. Something comes to mind as to where that empowerment comes from. Now, if you want some help with this, what you may want to do is use ChatGPT or, or Claude. And this is a prompt that I find pretty useful, and you may want to screenshot this prompt. It says, I'm going to be sharing my origin story with an audience. And to give— and it's going to give context to my passion and my mission today. Based on what you know about me, help me to develop a powerful origin story. I want to craft it so that it's punchy and it makes key points about what's shaped me. I want the origin story to center on an experience I had about age 10 to 13. In that experience, I discovered one of my powers. Ask me questions and help me to craft this story. So that would be a way of using, uh, Claude, to help you to do that. Now, Steve Jobs gave a talk at Stanford University, and he said that he had connected the dots looking backwards. He discovered that there was some things about his past where he had actually connected dots, and he talked about the power of discovering the liberal arts, and he talked about the power of discovering technology, and he said it was the liberal arts when it— liberal arts and technology that made a difference, and it was the ability to get creators to do things that they didn't know that they could possibly do. And he said— he talks about all the dots that were there looking backwards. Now the same thing is true for you. You've got a timeline going backwards, right? There was the first decade and the second decade, third decade, fourth decade, right? And, and so on and so forth. And what you will discover is that you can start to connect the dots. There are all sorts of dots that are moments of empowerment, right? These are the moments where you go actually the winning formula showed up again and again and again. I can identify at least a dozen times where I felt that same sense of empowerment. It might have been when I was running nightclub parties in my teenage years or when I was selling flowers door-to-door on Valentine's Day when I was 20. Or it might have been when I was launching my first company at age 22 and, you know, seeing people showing up and, and the experience of that. Right. So these moments of empowerment are all there in the origin story. See, over the last several decades you've accumulated baggage, and inside the baggage is these amazing stories that you've got, your origin stories. And if you can formalize them into great stories, they become assets for you as a speaker and an influencer. In a very busy world that is full of social media and AI and algorithms and noise and messages and emails and news feeds and all of that sort of stuff, One of the most powerful things you can do is to quietly disappear into nature and do something called pause, reflect, and document. Pause, reflect, and document means that you go thinking about those decades and you go looking for those origin stories. You're looking for those moments of empowerment or those moments of injustice, and you look at the story as to how it happened, and you turn them into stories. And sometimes you can just simply go looking and say, when did I do something special that would be of interest to certain types of people? I can quantify the results and I can, can explain how I did that step by step, right? So you can actually start going looking for some of those stories. That, that actually becomes your intellectual capital. Um, there was a guy called Matt Pitcher who did this activity, and he realized that over the course of several decades, he'd actually had the opportunity to sit down with, uh, about 100 people who had won the lottery and to find out what it was like to win the lotto. And he sat down and he captured all of the emotions and all the stories from lottery winners that he'd met with over the years, and he crafted it into a TED Talk. And he put together a TED Talk on what it feels like to win the lottery, and he found something that only he could say. In the age of AI, AI knows everything, but it doesn't have any experiences. So he shared something that was part of his experience And he shared that story on the TED stage, and in the first month, over 600,000 people watched it. And so many people got in touch with him, and he— just that one speaking engagement, that one time on a stage, ended up being seen by 600,000 people. And by sharing his stories from his past, he was able to blow up his business, right? It turned into really tangible results where his business absolutely exploded as a result. So even though it seems pretty soft and fluffy to have origin stories and to go looking through your past, uh, and looking at your experiences, this stuff turns into big business. This stuff turns into lots of clients. When people resonate with what you say, when they resonate with your origin story, they want to work with you. They want to hear you speak. They want to buy your book. They want to join your membership or your community, right? They want to have more. Because they align to your energy. So that's the past. Let's have a look into the future. See, we want to connect the dots and we want to have the situation where we've got your past, your present, your future, your origin, your mission, and your vision. So rather than going to today, which is the present, let's go forward into the future and let's have a look at vision, right? Let's have a look at what, uh, what we want to see. So Bruce Wayne, that little boy, that 10-year-old, his past, his, his origin story is that he was a victim of crime. And of course, his vision for the future is that he wants to see Gotham City free from crime. He wants to see the Joker behind bars. He wants to see a city that's working, and he wants to clean up Gotham City, right? So he's got a very clear vision. He doesn't want to actually be Batman. What he wants is Gotham City free from crime. So he's got a vision of what he would love to see in the future. He doesn't even care whether he gets the credit or not. He just wants to see this happening. Now, I believe the same thing is true about you. There's something that you want to see happening in the future and you don't even care who gets the credit. You want to see this change happen in the world. So I want you to imagine that we fast forward 10 years into the future and in the future there's some breaking news. Let's call it 2036, right? So 10 years from now. And I want you to imagine that there is breaking news that's happening in the future, and you open up a news website and you look at the headline and you get a smile on your face and you feel wonderful and you get this really like feeling of calm and alignment and just like, um, energy. And you think to yourself, I'm so glad that that has happened, and I know that I did my bit towards that. I know that I was part of that. No one will ever know, but I did something about that. That was something that I was involved in. For me, I have a headline in my mind that entrepreneurs are solving the world's most meaningful problems, that it's the entrepreneurs who are using the entrepreneurial method to really identify big meaningful problems in the world, and they're using the entrepreneurial method, they're using their businesses to solve meaningful problems in the world. That's the headline that I want to see. I don't really care if it says Daniel Priestley was involved in this I just care that it's happening, right? I want— I just want to see that it's happening. I will quietly know that I played my role in that. I don't need anyone to tell me I played a role. I will know that I played a role. So I think the same is true for you. I think there's something that you want to see happen in the world. You want to see this thing that's getting— going to get done in the world. You want a future that you feel excited about. You want to prevent something bad from happening. You want people's lives to be better and different than what is already happening. So I want you to have a think. What would it be that would be the headline that you wish you could see in the future? Now just have a think about that, and if it comes to you, I want you to put it into the chat. So I want you to put into the chat what's the headline that you would love to see on the news in 2036, in 10 years from now. What's that big headline that you would just love to see, right? Just put some of those into the chat. So that people can get a sense as to some of the visions that are in this room, that are in this community, in this group. Be really, really great for you to share that. And something powerful about sharing that vision where it gives people the opportunity to get aligned to it. Now, if you're struggling, there is a prompt that I like to use, or you can use as well, with Claude or ChatGPT, whichever one you're using. And it says, I'm crafting a compelling vision that inspires me. In the future, I want to see the world has changed in a way that resonates with my life's work. I don't care who gets the credit. I just want to see the world has improved in alignment to my vision. My vision is big enough that many people will feel compelled to work alongside me to see this vision unfold. Ask me questions to craft this into a vision statement, right? So if you want to, you can screenshot that And you can use that prompt at a later date, right? And by the way, I'm gonna give all of these prompts to Eric as well so he can use them on Mastery and we can have, have them be a little bit of homework. I'm gonna be taking part in Mastery as well. So I'm gonna make sure that, that we, we, we all show up and we've got these, these prompts available. Now, the 10-year vision is something that you don't mind who gets the credit, but that doesn't let you off the hook. What I really wanna see as well is something that you are actually on the hook for. And this is the 3-year vision. And the 3-year vision is, I want you to imagine this. I want you to imagine that you are throwing a big party 3 years from now, and a whole team of people have turned up to the party. And at the party, you're celebrating that you did this thing, right? There's this incredible thing that you did, and people are— they're giving like high fives, and they're cheersing their drinks, and they're saying to each other, hey, we did it! We never thought we were going to be able to do it, and here we are. We did it. It's incredible. Isn't that amazing? Like, so, so good. By the way, you can tell this is an AI-generated image because this banner is somehow attached to this guy's hand, and that's how the banner is being held up, because this guy's got to keep his hand in the air for the whole party to keep it there. But anyway, this is not an AI-generated thing. This is a real vision for you 3 years from now. So I want you to imagine what is it that you did what did you achieve 3 years from now that you would be— that would be worth celebrating, right? So what are you celebrating 3 years from now? What is the big milestone that you achieve? What did you stop from happening? How many people did you impact? And I can tell you, these things have an uncanny way of unfolding. I've had opportunities where I've had to pinch myself and say, I I cannot believe that my 3-year celebration has happened. One of my 3-year celebrations was being on the rooftop in Dubai when, um, I was celebrating with one of my clients that I worked with to create a patrons program so that he could set up martial arts schools all over the world that would feed and teach confidence to orphans in, uh, in slums around the world. And we got to celebrate that together, that we had done that, and something like 8,000 kids get fed every single week. And, you know, it was something that we'd worked on together. I had the opportunity to take 30 entrepreneurs to Necker Island, amazing special entrepreneurs, and we got to spend a week having adventures with Richard Branson. At the end of the week, we had a big party together and we all were hanging out with Richard Branson and listening to music and dancing on the tables. And it was a lot of fun. And I, you know, there's, there's these moments where I pinch myself and say, how incredible that these 3-year celebrations actually happened. So don't underestimate what's possible in, in 1,000 days or in 3 years, um, if you, uh, if you, if you get clear about this. In 3 years from now, here's the prompt: In 3 years from now, I want to achieve a powerful milestone in my life and business. This milestone is important because myself and others are working together to achieve it. We made this thing happen. We will be celebrating this milestone together at a party Ask me questions and help me to craft this 3-year vision with the specific achievable goals that we'll have achieved 3 years from now, right? So that would be really, really powerful. So there we have it. We've got the origin story and we've got the vision for the future. Now we've got the past and we've got the future. In the middle, we've got what we call the mission, right? The mission is where we think, what is it that I'm meant to do today? So if you're Bruce Wayne and you want Gotham City to be free from crime, you think to yourself, well, my mission is to dress up like a bat and to go and beat up the bad guys and strike fear into the heart of baddies, right? To— that's going to be my mission, to become Batman and strike fear into the heart of the baddies. So here's the thing, I want you to imagine that your mission is a single statement that tells you what to go and do. Imagine that you've got this poster that's on your bathroom mirror and it says, go do this, right? And then it says, go and do this thing. So for, for Bruce Wayne, he's got a little Post-it note on his bathroom and says, go do this, go dress up as a bat and strike fear into the heart of bad guys. And it's like, okay, cool. So even when he's not sure what to do, he can go, I know what I'm meant to do, I'm meant to strike fear into the heart of baddies by dressing up as a bat, right? It's nice and very clear, very clear for him to do it.. So for me personally, my statement is go do this, develop entrepreneurs who stand out, scale up, make a dent in the universe. And if I wake up each day and say, what am I meant to do today? My, my job today is to be developing entrepreneurs who make a dent in the universe, develop entrepreneurs who stand out, who scale up, who make a positive impact in the world, right? That's what my job is to do. So if ever I'm confused, I just have to ask, am I doing that right? Am I writing a book about it? Am I doing a podcast about it? Am I giving a talk about it? Am I creating a product or a software company about that, right? Am I developing entrepreneurs who can make a dent in the universe? When I was with Richard Branson, I asked him what his mission is, and I said, how did you know what to do with 400 different companies? He says, oh, I really only do this one thing, which is we shake up old industries, we champion customers, we create a fun place to work, right? So Richard Branson wakes up and says, let's shake up an old industry, let's champion a customer, Let's create fun places to work. So it's very, very clear. So when we align these 3 things, we get into alignment. For me, my past was a set of stories that helps me to know that problems can become opportunities through this thing called entrepreneurship. My future is about entrepreneurs solving the world's most meaningful problems, and my present is to develop entrepreneurs who stand out, scale up, and make a dent in the universe. I want you to have these 3 things for you as well. I want you to be able to ask yourself the question that my mentor asked me when he started working with me, a guy called Mike Harris. He said, Daniel, what are you up to in the world? Right? And he challenged me to really develop my thinking around that. What is the highest value thing that you can put your time into? What is it that energizes you? And when you talk about it, it also energizes others. What should you be putting your time, energy, effort, and money into? What are you doing for other people when you get up out of bed each day? If a wise mentor was to watch you for a month, what would they advise you to start doing, stop doing, or double down on in order to have the biggest impact in the world? Right? So I want you to be thinking about that. If something comes to you, I want you to write it in the chat. What's your mission? Right? Go do this, right? I want you to— does something come to you? Does something arrive in your mind? It's like, you know what, this is what I want to write on my bathroom mirror. Go do this thing, right? And it's go and do oomph. Put it into the chat. If something comes to you, put it into the chat. Now for some people, it's the connection of a couple of things. It's bringing something together. When two things connect, that's where the electricity is. I already talked about Steve Jobs. For him, it was liberal arts and technology. He wanted to empower the creative people through technology. And it's interesting to look at everything he did was on mission for liberal arts and technology. When he went and launched Apple the first time, it was all about a bicycle for the mind. It was about creativity using technology. He got kicked out of Apple for being too radical, for being too much of a rebel and a misfit. He went to Pixar and he created animated, animated movies with technology, which is liberal arts and technology. He then came back to Apple, and sure enough, he focused on music, the music— Apple Music, uh, tools. And he focused on music and tech. And then he created the retail stores, and the retail stores look like art galleries for technology, right? So it's always liberal arts meets technology. And whenever Steve Jobs was doing anything that was the right thing for him to be doing, it was at the intersection of liberal arts and technology. I believe you've got an intersection as well. Oprah Winfrey, she was asked in the, in the '90s to take her show into the gutter. They said, Oprah, what we want you to do is to, to do a show like Ricky Lake, um, or to do a show that like makes fun of people, or that does all sorts of weird kind of, um, you know, freak show kind of things. And she said, that's not who I am. She said, my mission is to provide a daily dose of inspiration on mass media. And if I can't do a daily dose of inspiration on mass media, then I'm not interested. And whenever Oprah has been on mission, it's where she does a daily dose of inspiration on mass media. And that's the, the winning formula, uh, for her. Well, I've— over the last year, I've gotten to really know Vishen, and Vishen is just wonderful. And people resonate with him so closely. They love spending time with Vishen, um, and And it's because he's got such alignment, he's got such aligned energy. And as you get to know Vishen more and more, you discover that as a child he was pressured into getting good grades, but he didn't know why. He didn't know what these grades were for. He didn't know how it would help him to live a better life. He couldn't understand what these— what this pressure, this learning was all about. Why would anyone enjoy learning when you don't even know why you're learning? If you don't know— if you don't know how it helps you to improve your life. And he eventually evolved and he said, one day in the future, I'm going to help people to get the skills that they need to live a magical life. I'm going to give people really relevant skills and where learning is going to be so incredibly fun because the skills are going to change your life, right? It's not going to be exams for the sake of exams. It's going to be a set of skills that totally transform the way you live. And he said, in the future, I want to see a planet full of self-authored humans. I want to challenge the bullshit rules, and I want to give people the skills to live magically. I want to see a planet that is full of self-authored humans. And because he's got such clear alignment on those things, uh, you know, he's— he so effortlessly creates magnetism and energy. Recently, I've gotten to know Stephen Bartlett. And Stephen Bartlett's an incredible guy. Uh, he's, he's definitely the smartest guy you'll ever meet. He's the hardest working guy you'll ever meet. Um, really transformational person. And, um, one of the things that's amazing about Stephen is that when he's doing a podcast, he's incredibly disciplined, that he sits there and he listens, asks questions, even though he knows so much about every single topic. I mean, of course he's built a massive business, and he's, uh, you know, he sat in on 400 of his own episodes, um, at a front row seat. So he's incredibly smart. But the thing about Stephen is that he's got this energy that carries him forward, and it's based upon alignment between his origin, his mission, and his vision. So as a child, he always felt that he was an outsider. He always felt that he was excluded from the conversations that he wanted to be having, having He felt as a mixed-race person and the only person with a Black parent in, in his street, he felt that he was never included and he felt he was always excluded. And he felt that in the future he would have the opportunity to not only take part in high-level conversations, but he would share those conversations and give access to those conversations with other people as well. So he imagined a world that was open and elevated and connected, and that people globally, no matter where you started or who your background or what your background was, you would be open and elevated and connected with other people. And he made it his mission to give people access to what he would call the CEO mindset. And the CEO mindset is the person who's high agency, who's in control, who's resourceful, and who gets to have these incredible conversations. He decided he was going to give people access to that CEO mindset. So that's the power of creating real alignment, and it feels absolutely incredible, right? It feels really amazing. This is what it feels like. It feels like you get some wings, right? You've got these incredible wings that just, um, uh, pop out, uh, pop out from behind you. I also want to share another story about Stephen Bartlett because I think it's relevant to this conversation. When I first went on Diary of a CEO, it was quite an— it was quite a surprise. I was out skiing with my family on a winter holiday, and I got a text message on Instagram from Stephen Bartlett, and it said, hey, I've been watching some of your content, and I'd love to have you on my podcast. Would you like to come on the podcast? And I thought it was a scam. I didn't really think Stephen Bartlett would message me, so I thought it was a scam of some sort, and I kept skiing for a couple of hours. And then when we stopped for lunch, I showed my wife and I said, do you think this is real? And she had a look and she said, well, the account has like 5 million people, so that looks pretty real. And the account is @Stephen, so that looks pretty real. So I texted back and I said, yeah, sure, let's do it. And he said, can you come on Monday? And this was on a Friday, so I had to fly back, uh, on the next flight and go, go back in time to, to do the episode. I didn't have time to prepare. I didn't even have time to get a haircut or to buy a special shirt or anything like that. So I just had to quickly just go on the show, and I was really freaking out because I did my research and I discovered that in the, in the 2 months leading up to my episode, uh, Steven had had the CEO and founder of Spotify on the show, but the episode hadn't really performed. He normally gets over a million views per episode, and this episode it only had 300,000 views. Views, right? About 30% of what it normally would do. And then after that, he had the CEO and the founder of Airbnb, uh, and once again, only 300,000 people had watched it, and it had not been a big episode. And I thought to myself, oh my goodness, I'm gonna completely bomb if, if the founder of Spotify and the founder of Airbnb— if those two can't get massive views, if they don't have millions of views, is, what good is my story? How valuable am I going to be? I'm not going to have anything of value. I'm not going to be able to add any value. My story is not impressive enough. My story is not incredible like their story. I mean, these people are heroes. They've created, you know, unicorn businesses. Spotify, everyone on the planet uses Spotify, and everyone's using Airbnb, and I've not done anything as big or impressive as that. So I said to Stephen, uh, that I was a bit worried, and he said, don't worry about it, just, you know, just share your stuff and let's do the episode. So we did the episode, and 3 weeks later it had had 2 million views, and I couldn't believe that it had outperformed— it had done a massive, uh, job. So I rang Stephen up because I've got his number now, which is kind of cool, and I said, Stephen, I can't believe that I've got 2 million views on this. How did my episode get more than Spotify founder and Airbnb founder? I said, my story is not anywhere near as impressive as their story. And he said, Daniel, relatable beats impressive. He said, your story is more relatable than their story. And the reason I wanted to leave you on this thought of relatable beats impressive is because I know that when you're sitting there in this audience thinking to yourself, I've, you know, why would I be able to step onto a stage? Why would I be able to be on a big podcast? Why would I be able to share my story? It's not impressive enough. I've not launched a colony on Mars. I've not won a Nobel Peace Prize. I've not floated a company on the NASDAQ. You know, I've not cured a disease. Clearly I'm not ready, right? And you, you probably have this thought that you're not ready, that you're not impressive enough, that you need more achievements before you can take the stage. And I want to let you know that it's not your impressiveness that is going to be the thing that people love. It's going to be your relatability. That is the thing that people love. The thing that people are going to love about your story is that it's relatable, that it's 2 or 3 or 4 steps ahead of them, that it helps them to feel okay about what they've been through, that it helps them to know what is the next step for them to take, that they can connect with you, they can connect with your journey, your ups and downs, your triumphs and your disasters. And because of that relatability, that's what's going to be the thing that really truly makes them connect. And that's why they're gonna wanna see you. When you get alignment between origin, mission, and vision, right? You feel incredible, you get your wings, you get your Mindvalley wings, right? You'll probably end up, people will notice that you've got these Mindvalley wings on, all right? So you get the energy. And then what I want you to do is once you've got your origin, mission, and vision, I want you to work with Eric, right? Eric is gonna help you to craft it into a powerful story. See, it's not enough to just have a few sentences, or it's not enough to have an entire Wikipedia page. You know, it could be too short, too long. Eric is going to help you to craft your origin, mission, and vision into your ability to speak and influence. He's going to help you with his— him and his cohort, uh, and his faculty. He's going to help you to take this raw material of your story and your energy and channel that into success. Channel that into a successful speaking business, the ability to influence people, the ability to make things happen in the world. All of that's going to happen when you work with this wonderful man. I've had the opportunity of knowing Eric for 20 years now, and over the last 20 years I've watched his beard get grayer and grayer and grayer, but I've discovered that he gets wiser and wiser and wiser. Um, he's an amazing man who's helped people with their health, with their wellness, with their fitness, but he's also helped countless people to get their story out of their head, out of their heart, and into the world. So I want you to have the opportunity, once you've got that, to practice this in the real world. See, we don't sharpen up in our minds, we sharpen up in the market. We really sharpen our story when we go and take our story into the market and tell people about it. I don't want you to overthink this. I don't want you to be sitting there going, I have to get it perfect in my head. That's not how it works. The way it works is that we put ourselves out there. We accept that we have to be vulnerable. We have to put ourselves out there and we sharpen in the market, not in our mind. Every comedian has to get their jokes out there and see whether those jokes get laughs. Every singer has to sing their song in front of an audience and see if people enjoy the music, right? And you're going to have to get your story out there and you're going to sharpen in the market, not in your mind. So don't overthink it, right? You've got a story, you've got an origin, you've got a mission, you've got a vision. And you've got a set of mentors who can help you to take that out into the real world. Okay, I hope you've enjoyed that. Let me know in the chat what has been the key insight that made the biggest difference to you so far in this conference. What's been the one big idea so far that has really been worth hearing, that's been an idea that, uh, has stood out for you? In the chat, let me know what's been the biggest idea. Let's see some of those ideas.. And then I'm gonna hand back to Caitlin, and Caitlin and I are matching. We've both got beautiful blue shirts on, right? Blue, blue outfits. So we, we coordinated our outfits today, Caitlin. And I'm gonna hand back over to you.

Thank you so much, Daniel. We sure did. We sure did. It's— we jumped into our confident self. And thank you so much, Daniel, because I really appreciate your sharing your vulnerability of this experience of not knowing, is this really Stephen Bartlett even reaching out to me? And why would he want to talk to me? And having this, this doubt almost from the beginning, because so many people— I'm sure you guys can let us know in the chat— feel like this, right? I wrote it down: how good is my story? And what you have just explained to us, taught us, and showed us most importantly is that that you— we all have stories. We all have things that only we can tell. And as you said, relatability is way more impressive than anything else. And to think you were worried about, you know, the CEOs of Airbnb and Spotify, and you've been on 8 times. 8 times, Daniel.

Absolutely unbelievable. And yeah, it was incredible to be on. For that to happen. You know, the other thing that people worry about these days is AI, and they worry about AI taking their job or their business, and they think to themselves, well, AI knows everything, it's got— it's read every PhD. But I also want to remind everyone, AI has no lived experience. There is— AI's never lived anything. It's got no conviction, it's got no oomph, it's never had a triumph or a disaster, it's never had a high point or a low point, right? It's never had any of that., and that's what people are gonna show up for. They're not gonna show up for the, for the knowledge, for the content, for the stuff that you could read in a book or on a prompt. They're gonna show up to discover their, their connection to you as a speaker, as an influencer, the stuff that you've lived through, right? It's, it's your triumphs and disasters that people will show up for.

Thank you so much for that, Daniel. Such good insights, advice, and wisdom. And as always, Thank you. We love you so much and thank you for always delivering, overdelivering. I took so many notes. You're the best. Okay, thank you, thank you, thank you, Daniel. And as we move on to our next speaker, I just wanna reiterate what he's saying. I love that because there is such a conversation about AI, but nobody has experienced what we have experienced. The question is, can you relate that to others? Do you have the ability to tell your story in a way that is engaging?. And this is what we're going to dive into. And truly, I have had such a privilege of watching Vishen so many times on stage. And every time he is on stage and not just on stage, in any room, his charisma, his ability to tell stories, and he's so phenomenal and he always is training to be better and trying different things and going to acting and going to seeking and expressing himself. And that's what makes him such a phenomenal storyteller. And, and that's why I'm so excited for him to be here. And talk about this because stories move people. The mind does not just want facts, it wants to feel, it wants to be moved, it wants to, to be, to have that human element, as Daniel Priestley was saying. So to continue on, on why stories move minds, please everybody, welcome back Vishen. Oh, we can't hear you, Vishen.

Thank you, Caitlin. Can you see me okay?

Well, you're good now. We see you and hear you.

Okay. Um, can I see myself just so I can make sure the camera is clear? Am I in focus? Okay. Could I see my— could I see my screen? Okay, great. Now I see. Now I see what you guys are seeing. Guys, it's a pleasure to be here right now. London is having one of its hottest weeks ever. There's a heat wave all through Europe. I'm not currently wearing any pants, and if my hair is blowing this way, it's because there are 7 fans blowing right at me. It also makes me feel like Beyoncé because my hair keeps blowing in the wind. But what I want to talk about for you today as I'm overheating and sweaty and drinking water just so I, I don't collapse from exhaustion. Because by the way, for those of you in America, weird thing about Europe— Europeans have not discovered air conditioning. It's bizarre. They don't have it. They are so— they feel so guilty about air conditioning because apparently it's bad for the ozone layer or something that they would rather die And the heat wave here is really, really, really unpleasant. I find myself booking Uber rides just so I can experience the air conditioning of a Honda Civic. But at the same time, for those of you who are surviving right now, I want to share with you a simple format for telling stories, for getting attention, for making a point.. And it has to do with 5 steps. And I'm gonna tell you a couple of stories, illustrate these 5 steps, and then show you how to apply this in your life.

Okay?

So when we started today, just before Eric got on, I told you how the founder of eBay, okay, when he was talking about eBay and why eBay was gonna be the next billion-dollar startup, He didn't talk about how he was building a marketplace for people to trade collectibles. He spoke about how his wife collects Pez dispensers, which is a tiny little like toy in America and it dispense candy. And he wanted to find a way to help his wife with her Pez collection. And there were no websites where you could buy and buy Pez dispensers. So he decided to build a website where anyone with any weird fetish could buy and sell strange objects. And that's how eBay started. The story wasn't about building a marketplace. The story was a man who loved his wife so much, he wanted to help her with her strange obsession. And he ended up by accident building a billion-dollar company. We hear these stories all the time. And these stories matter because human beings are 22 times more likely to remember a story than to remember a fact. It's really interesting, but we evolved this way. We communicate life lessons. We communicate— in the days before writing, we communicated how to survive in the world through stories. And these stories were how we passed knowledge, how we passed wisdom, how we passed survival. So our brains pick up on these stories. Okay, imagine A caveman trying to warn another caveman not to walk out at night without a spear because he might get eaten by a saber-toothed tiger. The caveman isn't going to say, "Orc, when you go out outside this cave at night, carry spear because there's a 57% chance, statistical significance, that saber-toothed tiger eat you." Instead, he would say, "Orc, remember." Garak, Garak, big chief. Garak die. Garak stupid. Garak go out, no knife. Garak pissing in dark. Sabertooth tiger eat Garak. Garak's wife very sad. Now I am dating Garak's wife. The story. The caveman communicated survival through story, not through facts. And because, you know, like writing, we've been around for about 2 million years or so. Writing has only existed maybe for like 1 or 2% of our existence. So we evolved to communicate through the language of stories. Now, how do you tell a story? Laughing at those of you who are fascinated by Garrick's wife and wondering how she's coping. See, don't you want to know? You want to know how that story ends, don't you? Okay, so I want to share with you this simple framework. I use it all the time and I use it to make points. And part of this framework, credit where it's due, I actually learned it from Eric. See, I'm a I'm not a computer scientist by training. I'm an engineer. So before when I was teaching my talks, and you can Google me from pre-2016, my talks were always, okay, 7 ways to do this, 22.5 ways to optimize your productivity. And it was boom, boom. And it was good stuff, but people would forget it. The nerds loved it. Most people, I was talking way over their head. And one day Eric sits me down. Eric says, Vishen, Nobody needs to learn 22.5 ways to be productive. Pick 5. But I want you to do this before every one of these points, tell a story. So I tried that and it was game-changing. So now my speeches actually have less facts. You don't have to learn 22 points. You learn 5, but they stick with you longer. And that's what we're gonna do today. I'm gonna teach you 5 principles. The hook, the stakes, the turn, the scene, the shatter. And you're gonna start to understand why stories resonate so much. Daniel Priestley told a story about Steve Jobs. He told a story about Steve Jobs, the famous Stanford commencement address where Steve said, always listen to your heart and intuition. They somehow already know who you are to become. But why that Stanford commencement address was so beautiful was Steve started each of his points with a story. The story of going to a tiny college called Reed College and discovering calligraphy and how that later led to him creating a laptop with such beautiful fonts that the Apple became a hit with designers. The story of him sleeping in ditches in India and how he learned to do the Indian concept of prana, or to listen to intuition. At the start of this session, Eric Edmides told the story of how he got to sit next to George Lucas. I've heard that story 9 times because I'm a Star Wars geek, but every time I stay and I listen because that story is told so beautifully. So how do you tell stories like Daniel Priestley, who's been on Diary of a CEO 8 times, the most, the most popular guest ever on the show, or like Paul McKenna, who captivates you with his voice, or Eric and Miedis? 5 things, okay? Hook, stakes, turn, scene, shatter. Now, every storyteller has their own unique method. This is what I found works. Now, to remember hook, stakes, turn, scene, shatter, I'm going to give you a simple memory device. And the memory device is, "Holy shit, that's so smart." Hook, stakes, turn, scene, shatter. Holy shit, that's too smart. And those of you who are covering the ears of your kids right now, going, Vishen Lakhiani, there might be a 17-year-old on this. All I'm going to say is, it's 2026. Your kids have probably heard worse. Have you listened to modern rap songs? Okay, but if that's too insensitive for you, you can try Heroes Start Their Story Somewhere. Again, H-S-T-S-S. Heroes Start Their Story Somewhere. Okay, so let's start with the H, the holy, the hero. The H stands for the hook. Okay, now we establish this. Facts make people agree. Stories make people change. Okay, stories make the body experience something, and experience changes you without asking permission. So the first way you want to start your story is the hook. Now, before I go into this concept, hook, stakes, turn, scene, shatter, I actually want to tell you a story and you're going to observe how this story works. And I want you to remember, holy shit, that's so smart. Okay? Because you're going to be applying this in your storytelling. I moved to Silicon Valley in 2002, like, with really big dreams, but my timing, in a word, absolutely sucked. Within months of me getting there, the dot-com bubble exploded. And I remember it was April 2001. 14,000 people were laid off. Now, I had borrowed $30,000 from my dad. I graduated with a computer engineering degree from the University of Michigan. I was— I had invented this new type of software, and I was convinced I was going to get investors. I was going to get it out to the world. Well, instead, within months of being in Silicon Valley, I burned through that $30,000. I had bought a beat-up car, no brakes. I ended up crashing the car because the brakes didn't work. And I'd run out of cash, so I was renting a couch from a college student. And this was the lowest point in my life. I was practically homeless. Now, this is what happened. I was handing out my resume to like every job that I found available on Craigslist. And finally, this one, this one company hires me.. And they say, we're looking for people who can sell software to lawyers. You have an engineering background. Do you understand software? I go, yeah. They go, well, can you pick up the phone and talk to lawyers? I go, sure. I don't know anything about sales, but I'll try. So I joined this company, but the economy was so bad in San Francisco at that time. The company said this, by the way, we're not going to pay you any money. We don't need to because there are so many people applying for this job. So there's no base salary. Basically, you show up, we give you the phone, we give you a chair and a desk. You bring your own computer. If you can close a sale, great. If you don't close a sale, we don't have to pay you. And if you close a sale, you know, we give you $600. So I said, how many sales do people close a month? They go, you know, if you're lucky, maybe you'll close 2 or 3. So that was barely just above the poverty line. But that was America in 2001 when the dot-com bubble burst. Now, what did I do? Okay, so let's, let's stop for a moment. I gave you the hook. I moved to Silicon Valley, dot-com bubble burst. I gave you the stakes. I was homeless. The only job I get, no base salary. I have no experience closing sales, but now I have to close the sales. So now you're wondering what happens next. Now I wanna double down on the stake. Okay? So I'm gonna double down on the stake. So the stake is the danger, the, the, the thing that's about to eat the hero. I wanna double down on the stakes. So sometimes when I'm telling the story, I will add this. They paired me up with this Brazilian guy called Rodrigo. And Rodrigo said, hey, don't worry, I will teach you everything. You know, you'll make at least 2 or 3 sales today. You'll be able to pay your rent. It's all good. One week later, Rodrigo was fired. So I asked my boss, what happened to Rodrigo? And my boss goes, well, Rodrigo couldn't make any sales. He got evicted from his apartment. He had no place to stay. We found him camping under his desk. Basically Rodrigo had decided that after the office closed down, rather than go out in the streets where he'd been evicted, he was sleeping under his desk in a sleeping bag. The founder showed up early one day, saw Rodrigo there half naked, kicked him out. That was it. My mentor was gone. Now I was desperate. There were no other jobs. Okay, so you see what I did there with the story of Rodrigo? I emphasized the stakes. Now I go on to the turn. So the turn is this. The turn is the turning point. The turning point where there's suddenly like the sun is rising over a horizon. Something is about to shift. So at that point, I'm desperate. And I get online. And Google had just been invented. This was like the early days of Google. And nobody really knows how to use Google. Google felt like God to us. So I remember asking Google, dear Google, I need you to help me understand why my life sucks so bad. And what I could do about it. And all of a sudden, these, like, listings pop up, and one of these listings is this little mention of a seminar called Silva Ultramind, and it's in Los Angeles. And I remember Silva, you know, the Silva Method books. I'd read them when I was a kid. LA was not a very long trip away, so I decided, okay, let me go attend this seminar. In that page, it was being taught by a lady in LA. I can't remember her name. This was 2002. And the seminar said that you will learn to master your inner state. And there was a little line there on the website that said that it was especially good for salespeople because sales was such a psychological game. So I show up for the seminar and I learn many amazing things, how to go into altered states of mind, how to speak to your mind. And one of the most powerful things I learn is tapping into your intuition. And I learned that all of us have intuition. Now I go back to work on Sunday and I remember I, with a little bit of money I had, I took a cheap flight from LA to San Fran. I landed at SFO Airport. I got into my beat-up Honda Accord and I was driving home that day and I see a shooting star and I have this belief that every time I see a shooting star, my, my life is about to change. And so I just felt something good was going to happen. The next day I show up at work. Now back then we used the Yellow Pages. Okay. So the Yellow Pages phone books. If you are over 40, you know what the Yellow Pages are. If you are under 40, please ask grandpa. Okay, the Yellow Pages are a phone book, and my territory was San Antonio, and I had to dial every lawyer in San Antonio A to Z and hope that they would pick up the phone and let me pitch them on this software. Now, the thing you got to understand, okay, so now I'm, I'm I'm going into the turn, right? The thing you got to understand is that lawyers don't like to be disturbed in the middle of their working day. And this was a brutal job, but I had a unique ability. While everyone else was calling A to Z, I understood the power of intuition. I understood what Steve Jobs meant when he gave the Stanford commencement address and he said, always listen to your heart and intuition. They somehow already know who you are to become. Now, this is what I did. I did the Silva Method. I counted down from 10 to 1. I got into a restful alpha level of mind. I ran my finger down the Yellow Pages and I would listen to an impulse, a little feeling inside. Yes or no? Yes or no? Yes or no? And I only called the names on which I felt a yes. Overnight, I doubled my sales. Then I decided to apply a different Silva technique. I would visualize myself confident, visualize myself closing the deals. Again, I doubled my sales. My boss came to me. My boss said, Vishen, what are you doing? Like, how did you suddenly get so good? And I said, I think they call it intuition. And my boss says, nah, that's bullshit. But can you keep doing it? And so I continued. I would move my finger down the Yellow Pages and I would call only the lawyers I felt an impulse. And in 4 months, I got promoted 3 times. I was made VP of sales for that company. That is how I fell in love with meditation. I stayed at that job for 18 months. Then I decided to quit and start a little tiny website selling Silva Method CDs. The name I found for that website, mindvalley.com. And that's how I started on this journey. Okay, now notice what I did there. I did the turn. The turn was the discovery, but then I didn't stop. I painted the scene. I made the scene so visual you could feel it. I said, did you notice how I used my fingers? I moved my fingers down the Yellow Pages. Now the beautiful thing about the turn is you can also bring in humor. So in the turn, what I did is I brought in humor such as things I brought in humor, such as concepts like, my boss asked me, what are you doing? And I said, I think they call it intuition. And he said, nah, that's bullshit. Can you keep doing it? That's the scene. You can feel the scene. You can hear the scene. You are in there in the scene. The beautiful thing about the scene is this is where you can bring in emotion. This is where you can bring in humor. And then you wrap up with the shadow. And the shatter is the point. The shatter is the awakening. And the shatter for me is this. I realized that so much of what we think life is about, so much of what we think success is about, toil, hard work, luck, pushing it, grinding, is absolute bullshit. We are all blessed with an inner power that if we can tap into, that if we can listen, We are so much more powerful than we imagine. That's what I learned from José Silva. That is what changed my life. That is what gave me the fortitude to become the number one employee in my first company and then quit, start Mindvalley and scale that to become one of the biggest personal growth companies in the world. That's the shadow. And the shadow can end with a question to the audience. Are you listening to your intuition? Are you choosing to go on an adventure of learning? Are you making the effort to learn new ways? Or are you stuck in the old paradigm? Okay, so Cook, Stakes, Turn, Seam, Shatter. So shatter means to break a paradigm. That's why we call it shatter. You're shattering a false belief. You're shattering ignorance.

Okay.

Okay, so now shall we break it down so you guys see bit by bit how it works? Let's start with hook. So hooks are about 3 seconds. Now, if you want to go viral on Instagram, the rule is the 3-second rule. I learned this from an interview I did with Jay Shetty. People are scrolling and scrolling. The first 3 seconds of what you say has to make them stop the scroll. Okay, and so So when you're creating any type of content or speech trimmed for Instagram, you want to take the most important sentence and put that in the first 3 seconds. So for me, in that entire story, I wouldn't start with, I moved to Silicon Valley and then the dot-com bubble burst. I would start with the most important sentence, the hook. Now, again, this is just for Instagram. On stage, you have a little bit more time. People are in their seat and you have a captive audience. On Instagram, you don't. So on Instagram, if I was doing this, I would actually take the most important sentence, slice that out, put that to the front, and then do the story. And what is the most important sentence? See if you can type it in your chat. What do you think that is? The most important sentence is this: my boss asked me, what are you doing? And I go, I think it's called intuition. And he said said, now that's bullshit, but can you keep doing it? That's how I would start. Then, okay, so now you would, you would do that for YouTube, you would do that for Instagram. You put the most important sentence first, then you go to the full story. Okay, so you're just taking out that part, sticking it to the front. Now, on stage, your hook, you have a little bit more space. So on stage, it's a little bit easier. Okay, now, an interesting thing about the hooks on stage There was a famous study by a guy called Tetlock, and he found that the most confident people are the ones who get blown up on social media. They make confident statements. Now, unfortunately, those statements are also frequently wrong. But the nature of social media is it amplifies confidence. We actually have a crisis right now in the world where the smartest people are not getting exposure because smart people, real scientists, real engineers, real doctors never speak with absolute confidence. They never say, and this is how you end, and this is the number one supplement for ending diabetes. They would say, well, research shows this, but there's also a body of research that says this. But the people at the institute in Japan believe that this might really be the key. Now, my view is that you got to connect this to to this, and people go, boring. But what's happening on social media is actually not good. Real scientists are being diminished and hyperconfident people who may not be right are being amplified. This is a massive issue with podcasts right now. The people who are coming on many podcasts whenever— and this is especially true in the longevity field, in the biohacking field— are often the one that are significantly confident, but not necessarily right. The correct way is to do both. Make a bold statement and then go into clarity. So, for example, if I was making that bold statement on intuition and I had a longer speech, I would go on to talk about the science of intuition. I would say, now, I know some of you in the audience may be wondering, is intuition scientifically validated? Well, here are the studies I found. Dr. John Michalowski, University of Newark College of Engineering, did a study called Executives and Intuition. And this is what he found. University of Edinburgh did a study called the Ganzfeld Experiment. This is what they found. We don't know how it works, but we know that something is happening, right? So I bring in the studies, but you don't do that at the start. You do that deeper within your talk. So the hook is important. And if you're a real scientist, I acknowledge you. If you're a real expert, I acknowledge you. The beauty about the people who are the true expert is, you know that nothing is certain. You know that science is always updating itself. But I need you to get the right information out. So learn the hook and then clarify. Okay? Now we go on to the stakes. If you're telling your story, one of the things you have to do is build up the stakes. All movies have the stakes. You see, you remember that point when the hero is captured, when, when the villain is about to win. There are high stakes at play. The stakes are the glue that make the story hold together. The stakes are what is at risk. For me, it was becoming homeless. I'd lost all my money. I couldn't tell my parents that I was renting a couch. It was all of those things adding up.

Okay?

And in my story, I said I was broke in Silicon Valley. I'd borrowed $30,000 from my dad. I was watching it disappear. The only job I could get was cold calling lawyers in Texas, getting told off all day. I was losing my dad's dad's money, and I was failing at the one job I had. Notice it's specific. Not I was struggling. It was a number, a borrowed sum, a father, a humiliating job. I'm bringing details into the stakes. If the details can't be filmed, meaning you can't see it in your mind's eye, it isn't doing any work. So when you're talking about the stakes, you bring in the detail. Notice when I mentioned my mentor, Do you remember my mentor's name? The guy who was caught sleeping under his desk because he couldn't close a sale because it was that hard? Rodrigo from Brazil. Okay. You even— some of you will even remember where he was from. If I could do a Brazilian accent, I would even do a Brazilian accent. But the Brazilian accent is one of the cutest accents and one of the funniest accents, and I haven't learned it yet. But that— but you remember Rodrigo because that's human beings. We are really good at remembering people. Okay, now you go on to the turn. The story pivots on a moment the audience didn't expect. The turn is the discovery, the door you didn't know was there. Okay, now one simple engine drives it. Connect your beats with but and therefore, never, and then, and then this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened. It's called a turn because you're making a turn. And you can say it in following ways. You can say, and then— oh, sorry, don't say, and then. Say, I wasn't expecting what was about to happen. Or something strange happened. Then I discovered Google. You can say, and then, but you don't say, and then this happened, and then this happened, and then I discovered Google, and then I was Googling on Google, and then I found this thing called Silva Ultramind. You got to slow down when you make the turn. The turn is really beautiful. It's elegant. It's like you're a waiter serving an incredible dish. You don't go, "Dai!" You open the dish, you put the cloth on the patron, you put the knife and the fork, you say, "Enjoy your dish." You do that. The turn is unveiled elegantly. Okay, so this is where you bring in that turn. Now, The beautiful thing about the turn is this is where you can bring in humor. So when I'm talking about the turn, I often bring in humor, and I like to use a simple technique, and it starts with turn. It's called turns out, the turns out technique. So for example, if I was telling the story of my boss, okay, going, going, Intuition is bullshit, but can you keep doing it? I might say, turns out bosses in Silicon Valley in that era were very skeptical of anything that was non-science. But you know what they were not skeptical of? Money. They believed in money. And therefore my boss came to me and said, intuition, that's bullshit, but can you keep doing it? Okay, turns out. So I I tell a story about Marie Diamond and Marie Diamond changing my life. And I tell a story about how— so I want you to see how I use humor in the turn. Okay. So I tell a story about meeting Marie Diamond. She's coming to speak at Mindvalley University. By the way, it's happening next month. I hope you guys are coming. Mindvalley.com/you. And I meet Marie Diamond there. We're about to get in the boat. Mindvalley University is happening in Croatia. And Marie Diamond was just mentioned by the hip-hop superstar Big Sean. You guys know Big Sean? He wrote this incredible poetic song called Ass, Ass, Ass, Ass, Ass. Okay, um, a wonderful song. But Big Sean is also a really, really, really, um, a spiritual man. And his mother learned about Marie Diamond in an interview I did with Marie and said, Big Sean, you gotta, you gotta Talk to this lady. So Marie comes to consult Big Sean, and she does this thing with him, and Big Sean shares it publicly on Jay Shetty's podcast where she helps him. He's about to release a track, and Marie Diamond, using intuition, says, don't release it, wait a few days. And he goes, but it's got to go out. And Marie says, no, wait a few days, release it. Um, I believe the date she gave was September 6th. Okay, this was maybe 2021 or something. So he convinces his publisher to really wait till September 6th. They wait a week. That week, Taylor Swift releases a song. Obviously, Taylor's song goes all the way to number 1 on Spotify. If Big Sean had released his song on the same date, he would have been buried by Taylor. But around September 6th, Taylor's song drops. He releases his song, number 1 on Spotify. So he becomes this incredible student of Marie Diamond. He's talking about Marie Diamond everywhere. And Marie Diamond is now on a boat facing me in Mindvalley U. So I go to Marie Diamond and I'm thinking, you know, I want to, I want to congratulate her. I'm so proud of her. She's a Mindvalley author. Vishen Lakhiani discovered her on my masterclass. So I explain it this way. Okay, watch the turn. I say, I go up to Marie Diamond and I'm thinking, wow, wow. And I asked Marie Diamond, Marie Diamond, congratulations. Like, you're blowing up. You were mentioned on Jay Shetty's podcast. We should really work together more. And in my mind, I'm thinking Marie is going to say in her beautiful Belgian-French accent, Vishen, I'm so honored you asked me to work with you. You are a genius of personal development and we will do amazing things together. We can change a billion lives. We can make many other rappers become superstars. And that's what I'm thinking. But Marie Diamond, when I say let's work together, she instead says, yes, I can absolutely work with you, Vishen. You have a lot of shit I can clean. And I go, what? She goes, you, you have a lot of a sheet in your aura I can clean. And, and, and that's the turn. So I say, Marie, what do you mean? She goes, sheet. I go, I have sheet? She goes, yes, you have a sheet. I can clean your sheet. Okay, so now I pivot the story to how I ended up working with Marie Diamond, how I go into a 2-day retreat with her in the south of France, meditate with to clean the shit in my aura. But you see the turn, you see the humor. That's the turn. Okay, so the turn is the light coming at the end, at the, the, the, the, the light coming at the end of the tunnel. And this is where you can bring in humor. This is where you bring in a twist. This is when the movie starts getting interesting again. Okay, now we go on to the scene. The scene is where you make it so visceral the person can feel it, they can laugh at it, they can visualize it in their mind. By the way, did you notice something when I mentioned meeting Marie Diamond? What country did I meet her in? What was the scene? On a boat. In Croatia, right? Croatia and a boat. Notice I mentioned the boat. I mentioned Croatia. The scene— you want to set the scene. It makes the story a lot more visual. The mistake many writers make, the mistake many storytellers make, is they don't set the scene. You gotta set the scene. Okay, so the scene is really important. Now, by the way, guys, do you know my book, The Code of the Extraordinary Mind? I wrote that book in 2016. Do you know my book became the number 1 book in the world on Amazon? For 5 days, it sold more than the combined works of Tolkien and J.K. Rowling. I was the number 2 author in the world because there was another Mexican author who had several books. But Hillary Rodham Clinton was number 3, J.K. Rowling was 4, Tolkien was 5. I was number 2. My book hit number 1 in the world. And you know why? Amazon Kindle counts a book as read if you get past the first 11 pages. Now, in my book, The Code of the Extraordinary Mind, what happened is every month or so Amazon had this like this service where they take X number of books and they make it free for, I guess, Amazon Prime Premium Kindle readers. And many people pick up a book, they read the book, and then they read the first few pages, they put it back. But mine, the largest number of people read past page 11. Why? Because in the opening of my book, I told a story about getting on stage with the Dalai Lama. And the story was about how I was so nervous getting on stage with the Dalai Lama. Before going on stage with the Dalai Lama, we were in Calgary. I went to the bar and I took a shot of vodka. Then I took another shot of vodka. And the story is so ridiculous because here's a guy getting on stage with a spiritual teacher. He is so nervous, he's trying to drown his anxiety with vodka. But that story hooked people. The book became number one in the world. Now, you don't need a story that— that is a pretty cool story. But you can see that story could be in a movie. People want to know, what did I do? Did I embarrass myself on stage with the Dalai Lama? Did I pass out? Did I go— why didn't I take— some of you are asking, why vodka? Why not tequila? Those must be the Mexicans in the audience. But I got the number one book in the world because of that story, because you couldn't stop. Okay, now this is why you gotta paint the scene. So the scene, you bring in humor. The scene, you, you, you, you make it visceral. And you can use this in book writing. You can use this in storytelling. I was interviewing Naveen Jain for a podcast yesterday. Okay. And this is what happened. Naveen Jain was talking about how he built his company, Bio. And one of the things Naveen said is he was talking about how they're about to launch a new technology that can help detect pancreatic cancer. And he says when he explained that, most people don't care. Most people don't care about pancreatic cancer. So how does he explain it? In it, he paints a scene. He says, my father died of pancreatic cancer. I owe so much to my father. I love my father. But when they discovered that cancer, it was stage 4. It was too late. Starting next year, my company can detect pancreatic cancer because of our new AI at stage 1. That's millions of fathers who will still get to play with their grandkids. That's millions of fathers who don't die before their time. That's why what we do is important. Notice how we tied it to that. So the scene is something that becomes absolutely vivid. Okay, now the final part is the shatter. The shatter is the paradigm shift. It is the bullshit rule that you break. Okay, it is that old idea that is no longer necessary. The old idea for me that is no longer necessary is hard work is the means to success. The new idea is God has given us altered states. God has given us intuition. God has given us abilities that our traditional schooling doesn't teach us to use. When we tap into these abilities, like the Silva Method, we can do so much more. That story that I shared of the phone book, that story helped sell $40 million worth of Silva Method courses in one year. Okay, that's how powerful this idea is. So let me just change my camera. Okay, so I hope you enjoyed this technique. Eric, is my time up?

You have a little more time if you want to, Vishen, or we can move on to Eric.

Okay, no worries. I saw Eric come on, so I, I, I wanted to make sure I was respecting— I was respecting, uh, time. Okay, so that's how you bring in the shadow. So let's put all of this together. Okay, the same story, walk through the 5 lenses. Hook, stakes. Okay, the hook: move to Silicon Valley, dot-com bubble burst. I didn't know it, but I was going to lose everything. The stakes: my mentor was fired. What hope did I have? I was running out of money. I was about to become homeless. The turn: then on Google, I discovered this weird thing called Silva Ultramind. I show up for the seminar, and they tell me that we all have this ability called intuition. The scene: my boss comes up to me. What the hell are you doing? How are you closing so many sales? I say, well, I think it's psychic ability. And he goes, nah, that's bullshit. But can you keep doing it? The shatter. What I learned is that school doesn't teach us what truly matters. So much of what truly matters is an art form of the soul. Steve Jobs said, always listen to your heart and intuition. They somehow already know who we are, who you are to become. What if all of us tapped into our intuition? That story Doesn't that make you want to do the Silva Program? Right? Most of you are in Mindvalley membership, so you already have it. So, you know, there's nothing we're trying to sell you. But that is how this story helped build a company doing hundreds of millions in revenue, helped take Silva Method. We revived that program from— it was basically, you know, disappearing from the world. We made it popular again, all because of the story. So imagine what a story can do for you. Okay. And again, you can take a screenshot of that and I'll publish this on a web page and I'll email it to you guys. One thing I want to say, guys, is I just, you know, I've helped a lot of authors become, blow up on Instagram, on YouTube, from Jim Quick. I've worked with Eric Edmeades. I published even Elon's mother, Maye Musk's online course. I've been in the director's chair. And I really love sharing this with those of you who love storytelling and getting your knowledge out. And I want to dedicate a lot of my life to it. I just launched a YouTube channel, @vishenlakhiani, and I put up a really interesting video over here called Rapid Fire. Okay, the most common questions that I get on speaking, on sharing. This whole channel is completely free. It'll mean so much to me if you guys went and you just click subscribe and followed me on this new YouTube channel @vishenlakhiani and watch this one. Okay, rapid fire. What I did here is I answered the biggest questions you guys asked me on speaking, getting on stage, becoming an authority, publishing courses, becoming a world-class expert. I'd love to have you on my channel. Thank you. And back to you, Caitlin, Eric.

Vishen, thank you so much. Thank you, Thank you, thank you, thank you. I think one of the best things that you not only taught us but demonstrated is this ability how stories can really make us feel. And throughout just that time with Vishen, he made us feel like, oh my God, from the beginning of like he moved to Silicon Valley at the wrong time and that everyone knows that gut feeling that you feel. And then from that all the way to laughing with Big Sean and his theme song and even the whole topic of this. Holy shit. That's so smart. So I hope that you guys are able to take notes on this. I'm gonna repeat it for you. The hook, the stakes, that turn— don't use 'and then'— the scene, and then of course shatter. And just a reminder that we all have these stories inside of us. As Daniel was saying earlier, it is what separates us from AI. It is what makes us so special, is that we all have such unique lived experiences. It's just our ability to communicate it and the structure to do that. So to continue our day and end on a high note, thank you for being back with us. Everybody, please welcome back the absolute master at speaking himself, Eric Edmies.

Hey, Caitlin, thank you so much. And I have, I have a variety of pieces of good news for everybody about this. First of all, I'm wearing pants. I'm actually wearing pants. It's It is warm here, but not that warm. And, uh, but anyway, I, I'm, I'm really glad to be back, and we're going to do something really special here. Um, we're going to talk a little bit about natural storytellers and people who are not natural storytellers. So are you guys ready for this? Are you guys ready? So here's what I need to know in the chat. How many of you feel like you might be a natural storyteller and you're feeling expressed, or you feel like you might be a natural storyteller but you're feeling repressed? Repressed, or you do not feel like a natural storyteller. Uh, how many people are— let me see where you are. I'm looking at the— not me, I'm me, I'm repressed, me maybe, yes, no. Okay, wow. So there's a lot of different experiences here about what that happens, and a lot of people that feel like it's not them. Now here's the challenge: if you feel like you're not a natural storyteller, then this, this whole summit's got to be a bit of a drag for you, really. I mean, we're talking about the power of story, the power of acceleration, the power of attraction, that it's dearly magical in its capacity for changing your life and creating great opportunities for you. But if you don't feel like a natural storyteller, then that's got to be pretty frustrating. So I want to share something with you that I hope changes your self-identity in a major way. So just listen to what I'm about to say, and then I'm going to try and prove it to you. You and I am talking to you. No, no, I mean you specifically. You were born a natural storyteller, born a natural speaker, born a natural communicator. You were. There's no question about that. You were. Now, some things happened after that. Some people said some shit, they did some stuff, and slowly they trained it out of you. They told you that you should use your indoor voice. Or that you should think before you speak, or that children should be seen and not heard. And these little comments and these little adjustments took amazing natural storytellers and made them feel afraid and made them feel a lack of confidence. And I, I really, I want to try and prove to you what I'm saying because I feel like this: if I can prove to you how true this is, then when we ask you to try and do stuff, when we ask you to like put yourself out there and, and tell some stories, you'll realize that your discomfort isn't because you're not a natural storyteller, it's because it's a skill that you need to wake up. And I mean wake up. It's not a skill that you so much need to develop, it's a skill you need to wake up happen. And so let's, let's get to that right now. First example, how many of you have ever been on a plane with a 2-year-old? Has anybody here been on a plane with a 2-year-old? Just, I'd like to know. And I'd like to know, was the 2-year-old afraid of public speaking at all? Did you wish that maybe the 2-year-old was afraid of public speaking? Maybe a little, right? No, the 2-year-old was not afraid of expressing itself at all. And they're not, right? Kids come out, and if they don't express themselves, well, they go hungry, or they're uncomfortable in their wet diaper, or whatever, or worse, right? Like, the, the kids are very able to, to, to express themselves. It starts with little noises and facial expressions. And kids quite literally make slightly different sounds depending on what their need is. They make a slightly different sound when they're hungry, a slightly different sound when when they, when they, when they're about to, you know, release some materials. They make different sounds at each of these stages, and if you really become attuned to them, it's really fascinating that you can even translate it. And, you know, you know, there's elimination training where they can— where you can actually, like, train a baby that you never even have to put them in diapers. They were great communicators, but we did things like, well, we'll just throw them in diapers and we won't listen to their communication, right? And, or, or Well, they just keep whining about that thing, so we ignore them, and then they whine louder and louder and louder and louder. And, and by the way, if you want to— you've seen the videos online about the Karens and the Kevins, you know, the people that are having temper tantrums as adults in public. If you want to know how that happened, I can tell you how that happened, is that those kids were repressed and repressed and repressed, and the only way they ever got anywhere with their parents or the adults in their lives is through temper tantrums. So they learned that temper tantrum is not only acceptable but it's effective, right? Now, we, we all have our version of that. Some of us, you know, went that way where we learned that, you know, being angry is the way I get what I want, being manipulative is the way I get what I want. And some of us learned that being quiet and holding ourselves back, holding ourselves back. And so I really want you to get that wherever you feel on that spectrum of the natural storyteller, you are— it is a genetic reality as a sapien that you were born capable of, with the hardware for, with the capacity for effective communication.

You were.

Now, notwithstanding that, some stuff might have happened. And, you know, for some of you, it was an overbearing father, and some it was an overbearing mother, and some it was a school teacher, it was a group of friends, or whatever the case, you know, it may be. Other, other things influenced. And then you have this sort of natural personality quirks, like are you an introvert or are you an extrovert? And I wanna be really clear about this. Introversion and extroversion has nothing to do with ultimately the way you communicate. I, I, I really mean that. Introversion and extroversion, in my estimation, is really simply about where you get energy. You know, so some of you, some of you get energy by being with people. You, you, if you're feeling a little low, you wanna get out and do some networking, you wanna go to a party, you wanna connect with people. You gain energy by being around people, connecting people, talking with people, and sharing information. That's extroversion. And then some of you are a little more introverted, and that doesn't mean you can't tell stories, it doesn't mean you can't be a speaker, but what it means is, is that when you're running low on energy, you don't want to walk into a room full of people. You probably want to be on your own or in an intimate connection with one person or a small group of people. That's introversion, extroversion. But I'll tell you something though, Extraversion or ambiversion, you know, people who can do both. What, what's really fascinating is, is that they find it a little easier to put themselves out there. They find it a little easier to put themselves out there. But here is the great hack that I want all us introverts to unite around. So are you guys ready? I want to see a bunch of people saying introverts unite when I tell you this important thing. Extroverts are generally more comfortable speaking to strangers talking to people, breaking the ice. They're generally more comfortable at that than, than introverts, or, or worse, introverts with a little social anxiety. They get— they're, they're generally better at that. And so I want you to know right now that the shortcut around that is public speaking. The shortcut around that is public speaking. If you have a little bit of stranger danger, you know, if you, if you have a little bit of, uh, uh, you know, apprehension walking in a room, then the ultimate hack Introverts unite is public speaking. And here's how I know, because I not only am introverted, but I also used to be really shy and have quite high levels of social anxiety. I didn't like walking into a room full of people, a combination of those things. But then one day I got invited to do some speaking, and the energy of the room changed completely. The energy of the room changed completely, and all of a sudden I didn't need to go up and introduce introduce myself to people. They were coming up and introducing themselves to me. How many of you, especially if you're on the introversion scale a little bit, how many of you would find your whole life a lot easier if the people you wanted to meet were looking for you, were reaching out to you, saw you walk into the room and came up to you? How many of you would like that to be the case? Yeah, well, I can tell you right now, being effective at communicating and, and speaking and presenting is the ultimate shortcut for making that happen. Luckily, you were born with it. It just got trained out of you. So now, how do we, how do we wake it up? Now, you are definitely going to learn a bunch of skills. There's no question about it. Over the course of this 3 days, you're going to learn strategies and step-by-step skills, and I'm going to share some really powerful stuff with you. And that stuff is great, but I want to check something with you. Imagine that you're at a conference and there are 2 speakers. 2 speakers. One speaker is unskilled. They're they're just up there doing their thing, but, but they're comfortable about it. They're, they're just authentically present to the moment. Their emotions are showing and they're just sharing with you, and that's the way it is. The other one, we'll call this Speaker B, is really skilled, dialed in. They got it going on. Now let me ask you, which speaker do you think you're going to prefer? Are you going to prefer the— there you go, you guys have already got it. For speaker A, speaker A, speaker A. A few of you are saying speaker B, but I'll tell you, in your heart, you're going to connect with speaker A more than speaker B in that situation. And here's why: human beings have a fundamental instinct, and that instinct is to be attracted to authenticity, because authenticity leads to predictability. Nobody wants an inauthentic friend. In fact, if you have a choice between, you know, being locked in a, in a cabin or on a desert island with an authentic enemy or an inauthentic friend, you're going to take the authentic enemy. I know that sounds odd, but an inauthentic friend is bloody dangerous. I will tell you that in the political arena, we've seen a bunch of this. A perfect example of this is that when Donald Trump was originally running, uh, for president the first time around, I was on tour in Europe Europe, and people were asking me my opinion. I don't know why my opinion mattered. I'm not even American, I'm Canadian. I know, why does my opinion matter? Well, as somebody who has coached some of the best speakers on the planet and worked with many, many, many of them, I have opinions about presentation skills. So people ask me, who's going to win this next election? And I told them Donald Trump is going to win, and he didn't even have the nomination yet. And what was crazy about that is people got mad at me for making the prediction. I'm like, look, I'm not saying he should, I'm He's gonna. And then the next time I was on tour in Europe, guess what? He had won. And many of the people in the audience were actually mad at me. Like, actually, like, like my predicting it on my tour is what made it happen. Like, clearly no. But people then wanted to know how I made the prediction. How did I know? Now listen, the American electoral process is complicated, and I'm not going to break down gerrymandering of districts and how the Electoral College works. But I am gonna say this: Donald Trump never used teleprompters, rarely ever used teleprompters. I'm not even sure he can read. I'm kidding, I'm kidding, I'm kidding. I'm just saying, I don't think he used teleprompters hardly at all, which meant that he simply spoke what was on his mind. And a lot of people didn't like what was on his mind. But I'll tell you what happened is that he aligned in a way where people were like, well, I don't like what he says, but I believe him. I, I don't like what he says, but I, I believe him. Whereas Hillary was very often— Hillary Clinton was very often saying the thing that people wanted to hear, but she was reading it from a teleprompter and breaking connection with the audience. Now, isn't that interesting? And by the way, I am not making a political statement here about who should have won or who's more honest or any kind of stuff. In fact, if you want my opinion, neither of them should have been running and neither of them should have won, and both of them were lying. So I don't— I'm not— there you go. Now I've offended everybody. But the point here is that authenticity is unbelievably valuable. And if you look at the people that have won major elections around the world that have become world leaders, often it's come with great public speaking skill. And so again, I want to put to you a very relieving thing here, and that is is you were a natural-born public speaker. And so now, quite aside from the 2-year-old example, I'm going to really show it to you. So how many of you become a better golfer once you've had 2 or 3 drinks?

Anyone?

Anyone become a better golfer with 2 or 3 drinks? No, nobody. No, you guys are lying. No, you might have more fun with your golfing after your 2 drinks, but you are not a better golfer. Offer, and you're not a better tennis player, and you're definitely not a better driver. You're not really better at much at all. But you know what you are better at? And this is tough, but you are better at public speaking. You've all seen it, you've maybe experienced it. Somebody who's normally quiet, reserved, not a great storyteller, and all of a sudden you get a couple of drinks into them And what happens? Suddenly they're sparking, they're using their physiology, they're raising their voice, and maybe even too much. Now, the problem with this is that people who use alcohol to get to that state often don't realize that after the third drink they become useless and their stories are terrible and they can't listen to anybody. And that's my opinion about the matter, but, but the initial one or two drinks loosens people up Now think about that. That's not them drinking one or two drinks and learning a bunch of skills. That's drinking one or two drinks and the skills coming out. In other words, they were already in there. I hope you're getting me on this. They were already in there. And if they were already in there, then we can get them out. And, and that means that you don't You don't have to look at this whole speaking, communication, and influence thing like a martial art that's going to take you 10 years to get to a black belt. Many of you could spend a few days and have a black belt immediately because you already earned it. You already have it. It just, it just a little bit got trained out of you. I, I, I— does anybody— you guys with me on this? Does this make sense to you? I hope so. So, because if you begin to understand this, then it gives you one of the most important things that I can give you, that we can give you on this summit, and that is hope moving toward belief. Hope moving toward belief. I will tell you categorically, if you had come to me at the age of 21 or 22 years old and told me that I was gonna have a career with public speaking, I would've laughed at you. In fact, fact, I had a girlfriend when I was 22. She was a bit older than me. I think she was 6 or 7 years older than me. And she had worked with Tony Robbins, and she'd worked in Hollywood and what have you. And, and we're dating, and we went to a Tony Robbins seminar once, and I ended up, you know, speaking for a small group of people, just, you know, at a meal. And at the end of it, she came up, she goes, wow, you really should be a speaker. And I'm like, are you insane, woman? Are you insane? And she's like, no, I mean, you really could. She goes, I already see it for you. I go, you see what? She goes, I see you sharing the stage with Tony Robbins. Like, whatever, lady. Like, I, I mean, I'll tell you, she was so flaky. I mean, you know, what, what could she possibly be talking— there was no chance that I could believe in that. And so what I want you to know is that you do not need to fully believe in this yet. But what you do need to do is to start with doubting your doubt. That's where we just have to start doubting your doubt. Whatever your doubt is, we just gotta start putting some doubt in there and slowly start creating some belief. And I'm gonna share with you a very life-changing conversation that I had. And some of you will have heard this story. Maybe it's on YouTube or you've been to a live event and I've shared it, but it's, it's unbelievably important. I was sitting speaking with a friend of mine about wanting to get back into speaking. I had done some speaking for a while.. And I had taken a break. I bought a film studio. I wasn't doing any speaking, and, and I wanted to start again. And I, I, I said to this friend of mine, I'm like, you know, I just, I really wanna get, I wanna get back into it, but I don't wanna start all over again with, you know, 6 people in the room and fighting to get people there and all that. Like, I just wanna show up and teach. I just wanna show up and teach. And so my friend said, well, I got a great idea for you. Why don't you partner with other people that have platforms? I mean, seems like a reasonable idea, right? And so this friend of mine, I was married to her at the time, she says, well, why don't we create a list? We create a list of the people you could partner with. And I'm like, that's a great idea. Let's brainstorm a list. And so I start putting the list together and I, I put some names on the list. And then she, she looks at the list and she goes, you can't, that's, that's not it. No, not to that list. No to that list. She says, And I go, why? Why no to that list? And she goes, cuz they're good.

Thanks.

I bet. What a pep talk. Appreciate that a great deal. Then she goes, no, no. She says, they're good. They're only good. She says, you have the potential to be outstanding. You need a bigger platform. Now, I, I have to acknowledge this is a sweet thing for her to say, and it was kind of nice. But it did start to become unsolicited coaching, frankly. And I don't know if you women know this about us men, but we don't like that. We don't like unsolicited coaching. If I'm driving the car and you tell me I have to turn right, I will find another way. Like, no, we don't want— we don't want unsolicited coaching. So she starts doing the unsolicited coaching, and I'm like— and then she goes, you know what, Eric? She goes, on that whiteboard right now, I want you to write a better name a bigger name. And now she's like coaching me and cheering me on, and I'm just annoyed, and I'm gonna find another way. And I thought, no, you know what, I'll show her. And I go up to the board. Now think about this, at 17 years old, I'm listening to Tony Robbins on cassette tapes. Half of you don't even know what a cassette tape is. And I'm listening to Tony on these cassette tapes. And so I walk up to the board and I write Tony Robbins, and I expect, I expect that she is now going to say Okay, get realistic, Eric. I mean, you know, get realistic. No, she doesn't say that. She goes, good start, add another name. And I'm like, well, fine, you know, Tony might be the most phenomenally successful speaker in the world, the most famous one, but you know who might have the biggest seminar company is Harv Eker. And I write Harv Eker on the board. And then, and then she goes, great, write one more. And I go, this game is just annoying me. Like, I don't need this coaching. I don't want that. And I go, fine, who sold more books than anyone? I think he might have sold even more books than the church. Jack Canfield. I wrote Jack C on the board. And then she goes, well, there you go, now that's a better list. And I'm like, this is insane, this is insane, silly exercise. Or is it? Because writing on the board told my nervous system that while I regarded it to be impossible, that it was at least a dream. And that means that it might even be 1% possible. If all I'm able to do is add 1% to your scope of possibility, if all the team that we've assembled can just add 1% to your possibility, you can totally change your life. And I'll tell you what happened. I, no kidding, get a letter in the mail and it says, hey, listen, you know, Eric, we've been keeping an eye on you. And Jack Canfield has a private mastermind called the Transformation Leadership Council. This is not a product. This is not something his clients can buy. This is a group of speakers and authors that he assembled that get together twice a year to just let their hair down. I mean, I don't have that much hair, but to let their hair down and, and, and to chill out and put their egos at the door and brainstorm and network and stuff together. And they were inviting me to become a member. I become a member. Jack becomes a dear friend to me, an amazing father figure. I end up becoming great friends with John Gray, the other members. I mean, you've seen the movie The Secret. They shot most of The Secret at one of the TLC meetings. And suddenly I'm in that room, and I'm like, what am I doing in that room? You know what I'm doing in that room? Believing. I'm starting to believe. And then, and then, and then I'm, I'm, I'm in the grocery store store. I mean, the IGA— Canadians, you guys know what I'm talking about— but it's in Turks and Caicos. I'm in the IGA grocery store in Turks and Caicos, and I can tell you that when you live in a place like that, you don't even see tourists anymore. You don't even see them. They come for their season and then they're gone. You don't make friends with them because that's just heartbreaking. They just leave anyway. And so there's a guy in the line in front of me, and I suddenly realized that seeing through his tourist groceries and his tourist sandals and his tourist shirt and his tourist shorts He's, he's, he's got Taurus sunglasses, but I suddenly realized it's Harv Eker. It's Harv Eker standing there in front of me. Now I have a, I have a question to ask you. Do you guys understand that if I hadn't put his name on the board, I might not have seen him because he wasn't dressed in a way that you would recognize? Do you guys get it? I wouldn't have seen him, but because his name was on the board, I saw him. And now here's another one. How many of you have ever seen somebody out there famous? You've seen them in the airport or in a mall or wherever, and you were like, God, I'd love to go say hi to them, but you didn't, right? Like, very often we don't go and say hi. But can you imagine— I just want you to imagine— I go home from the grocery store and I go explain to my then-wife I saw Harv. I mean, look at that. I wrote his name on the board and then I saw Harv in the grocery store. And she goes, well, did you speak to him? Can you imagine what would have happened if I said no? Can you imagine? But that would have gone very badly. And so I turned to him and I go, Harv, uh, my name is Eric Edmeades. I live here in Turks and Caicos and I just thought I'd say hello. He goes, you live here?

Yeah.

He goes, I have a house just down the beach. He had a house 5 minutes away from me. And then he invited us over for a barbecue. We were over at Harv's house having a barbecue, and no kidding, I couldn't tell anybody this at the time because it was under secrecy, but at the time he was trying to sell his company. He ended up selling it, but then he offered to sell it to me. He tried to recruit me as a speaker to teach his Millionaire Mind Intensive, you know, once a month for 2,000 people. Can you imagine? I wanted to go from being a speaker that had no audience to suddenly 2,000 people every single time I spoke, or maybe I could even just buy the company from him. It was outstanding. But it didn't stop there, because then one day I arrived home from Europe in Turks and Caicos, and I got a phone call. And the phone call was, hey Eric, sadly our mutual friend Chet Holmes has passed away, and he was scheduled to speak at Tony Robbins' Business Mastery program in Fiji in 11 days, and we'd really like you to do it. What? What do you mean you'd really like me to do it? Yep, we'd like you to do it. What did Tony say about this? Someone doesn't even know who I am. No, Tony wants you. I don't know. Mitch, Mitch, here's what's really going on. Chad passed away. It's only 11 days away. And you can't find anybody. You've asked everybody. You've asked Gene, you've asked Scott, you've asked them all. They've all said no. You even asked that crazy dude who does the religion on the corner of the street, and he said no. And after everybody said no, you're asking me, and you're hoping I'm going to say yes. And then when I say yes, you're going to call Tony and spend an hour begging him to let me come and do it because you need somebody in that slot. And then Mitch goes, well, yeah, but I know I can convince him. And so, um, I said yes. And 11 days later, I flew to Fiji, and I delivered a 3.5-hour presentation. Every second sentence was being translated in Chinese on stage with me. Tony Robbins stayed in the room for the entire 3.5 hours and then immediately invited me for lunch and then booked me for a year and a half of business mastery events around the world. World, and my speaking career went from zero to 10 million in a heartbeat. What I want you guys to know is that it starts not with your 100% belief that it's going to happen. It starts with your doubt of your doubts and a 1% belief that what's available to you is bigger than anything you can think is possible. It really is. Now, related to this, when we talk about, you know, storytelling and, and, and the natural capacity for storytelling, it really is there. So I want you to imagine for a moment two little exercises. One works like this: I want you to think of a story. I need you to tell a story, but it can't be true. You— I want you to imagine that you were late for an event and you have to come up with a really good story for why you were late. A really good story. It can have some truth in it, but it can't be the whole truth.

It—

you need to come up with a really good story. So now, as you think about that, I want you to tell me in the chat what you would do or what you would add to the story to make it real, to make sure that people believed you. So you're late. Now tell me What story— not— you don't have to tell me what the story is, but what would you add to the story to make it properly believable? That's what I need to know. Let's have a look here. I want to see in the, in the, in the chat what you guys are saying. You'd have to add emotion, drama, authenticity, details. That's right, internal personal dialogue. Um, humor, relatability, facts, something authentic, feeling, senses activated. You'd have to add a detail like what actually happened, humor, texture. Yes, excellent. But I want you to really think about what it would really take to make it believable, because here's the kind of exercise I want you to think about. So many people, when they're telling their own stories, don't add all those ingredients. They take their own story kind of for granted, and they just tell it like this. How many of you have heard somebody tell a story like this? Well, you know, we're on our way to the airport, and there was a lot of traffic, and then we got to the check-in counter, and the lineup was so long, and then we went up to the counter, and the woman was really grumpy. Have any of you heard somebody telling a story like that? You know, they, they're they're, they're, uh, they, they, they have this kind of like, um, sing-songy attitude that says, hey, you know, um, I'm not really present to the situation. And, and, but if you had to tell a story that was real, if you had to tell a story that was like believable to people, then all the ingredients you just said should be added to them. They should be added to your real story. So I wanna give you a little exercise on how to do this and then kind of explain what I think can really transcend a difference for you here. When I'm telling a story, what I like to do is I like to make it so unbelievably real for the audience that they're left in a sense with a memory, you know, with a memory as if they lived through the experience like I did. And so years and years ago, I was at an event in Copenhagen,. And I had a very good friend of mine, actually a mutual friend of mine and Lisa's and Vishen's and so on, Janet Atwood. She's the author of The Hidden Riches and The Passion Test, and she's a phenomenal, phenomenal speaker and a great author and a great friend. And she comes running up to me at this event. She goes, Eric, I'm going on stage soon and I need your help. I go, what can I do? And she goes, how do you do that thing? What thing? I don't know. I don't understand. What do you mean? What thing? She goes, that thing you do. What? How do you do that thing? And I'm like, I don't understand what thing. She goes, the thing where people just sit there at the edge of their chair and they pay attention and they don't leave. I go, oh, that thing. Well, do you really want to know? You know, because if somebody's want— it's coaching, you want to know if they really want the coaching. And I said, I said, well, do you really want to know? She goes, yes, I really want to know. And I said, well, I tell stories. And she goes, I tell stories. I go, well, yeah, but on stage you often helicopter your story. She goes, what do you mean? I go, well, you tell them at a very high level. You don't, you don't give us the detail. You don't get— you're reporting, you're giving the facts of the story, but you're not storytelling. And she's like I don't understand. Like, how would that work? And I go, can I tell you your story back to you? And she goes, okay. I said, I need to ask you some questions. And I asked her a few detailed questions about it, cuz I, I heard the story on the stage, but it wasn't, you know, super emotional. So I wanted to dive in. And she told me a few of the details. And I said, oh, when, when you ran down the stairs from the, from the building and you jumped in your car, what kind of car was it? She goes, I don't, I don't remember. She said, it was the '60s, Eric. I, I don't remember. I go, no problem, I'm going to tell you the story anyway. So now I told her the story like it happened to me. I go, so I was, I was in my teens and I was in that rebel stage, you know, and the hippie movement was going on. All the best music was up in Northern California. I was living in LA with my folks and I got into yet one more disagreement with my parents and I decided to take my pocket money and run away. I ran away and headed off to San Francisco and it was happening. I mean, the music scene was incredible. The party scene was amazing. It was just happening all around money, and I loved it. But of course, I only had so much money, and as I started getting close to the end of the money, I started— you know, you can only surf so many couches. And then I'd be out for dinner with friends, and I wouldn't know if I should order food because I didn't really have money to contribute to the bill. So sometimes I would say, oh no, no, I'm not hungry, I'll just have water. And then, you know, the worst thing would happen— one of the friends would just pick up the whole tab, and I could have eaten. It was a really tough time. And then some of my friends rallied around, and they could see I was in trouble, and they got me job. And they, uh, they told me I didn't even have to interview. They'd already set it up. I just had to show up for the first day of training. So I, I jumped in my car and I drove to the address and got out, went up the stairs, got to this office. And it was kind of your typical office with cubicles. And, you know, they— I introduced myself, they walked me over my cubicle, gave me a bit of a training. It was, you know, selling some technical medical equipment or something. And I sat there and I just— it was icky.

Icky.

The, the vibe was icky. The, the energy was icky. The voices were icky. The, the wallpaper was peeling from the walls. It was like, it just, it was icky. And I just, I couldn't do it. I, I needed to, I couldn't do it. And I just jumped up and I ran down the stairs and I jumped into my car. And at that point, Janet says, red Ford Escort. What happened? Emotion is the glue that causes your memories to stay anchored, but emotion can also trigger the memory to come out. I so associated her to her own story that guess what? Her memory came back, completely changed. And if that doesn't get the point made well enough about the detail and the texture and the storytelling and the tone of voice— a couple of weeks after that, I was on a podcast, and the podcast was all about storytelling. And so I, I started to tell the story, but at that stage, I hadn't spoken to Janet, and I didn't want to use her name without her permission. So I just told the story generically. I didn't say who it was about. And I started telling the story and I came to the end and I go, and then I came down the stairs and I jumped in the car and she stopped me and she said, and then the guy from the interview goes, red Ford Escort.

What?

How did that happen? I don't— my brain was very confused. I said, what? How, how do you, how do you know that? And he goes, well, we had Janet Atwood on the podcast about a week ago and she told the story. And of course, what I knew from that is that she told the story really, really well because he remembered the detail. So I want you to think about storytelling as you go through the course of this summit and pick up the various skills, the body language skills that you're gonna get from Linda, the charisma that Shade is gonna share with you, the storytelling architecture you're gonna get from Prince Ea. Like, every component of what you're gonna get is gonna help you to create that experience. And I'm gonna I'm going to give you an environment to create it in right now. When I prepare to tell a story to an audience, I develop a holodeck. I create a holographic feeling around myself about the, the environment, the, the setting where the story took place, and I create it around me. And then I look around and I can see it and I can feel feel it. And when I've got that, when I've got that feeling, then I can begin describing it to them like I'm in the room with them. I can bring them into the room. And I'll tell you where I got this idea from. Um, many years ago, I was listening to Jim Rohn, one of my favorite speakers in the history of this sort of personal development movement. Just a phenomenal giant. And in fact, I think Tony Robbins' initial biggest influence as well.. And he was telling a story about building his dream house and how real he had made it. And he took some friends up to the forest where he bought this piece of land and he was going to be, you know, he gave them a tour of the house, but he wanted it to be so real. It was Jim Rohn. I saw somebody asking about that. It was Jim Rohn. And he, so he took his friends up there and he goes, okay, here you are at the front of the house. You can see the house is here. This is the front door. And he reached forward with the doorknob knob, and, and I'll switch to telling it like him. And he goes, I reach forward to the doorknob and I open the door and I walk them into my house. Now you understand the house was only there in my imagination, but pretty soon the house was there in their imagination. I walked them through the front hallway. I showed them the paintings that were going to be hanging on the wall. I showed them the huge picture windows. They were really easy to see. They could see the view around them. But you know when the story, when the tour got really interesting, is when my buddy leaned down and bumped his head on the fireplace.

Place.

That's how real I made it for him. I always found that really charming. But that's kind of my goal. My goal when I'm telling you a story, or when I'm sharing a story in a video, or I'm giving a— I'm just chatting with my friends, is to give them an experience. It's to, it's to leave them with a feeling like they were really there, like they could remember it. And so I want to give you one more story. And I want to use it to make a really important point so that you really, really understand the value of stories. But it's going to require a little personal honesty from you guys first. All right, so you guys, all of you, at some point you've been given the advice that you should put your own oxygen mask on before helping others. Just confirm that for me, raise your hand. You guys have all heard this advice. Yes, on the plane, you've all heard it multiple times. Put your own oxygen mask on before helping others. And so now I have a question for you. And, and by the way, mothers, I want real honesty from you. Men too, but I'm just saying mothers, you'll understand in a moment. Here's the real honesty I want from you. You're on a plane and oxygen masks drop from the ceiling and you're traveling with your young children. How many of you would actually be tempted, hey, let's just quickly get the mask on to the kids first and then I'll take care of me. I want in the comments some honesty, like who might be tempted. There it is, look, me, me, me, me. Yes, kid first, me, me. That's kind of funny, but it's true. Me, me, me, me. Look, it's not— if this is not a handful of people, this is a big number of people. You have been on planes, you have heard them say it over and over and over again, and yet here you are admitting, screw that, I'm helping my kid now. 2 years ago, Kirstie and Simona, our middle daughter, about 15 years old at the time, we were on a plane. We were flying across the Atlantic Ocean. We were about an hour off the coast of Ireland. And something happened that I didn't really like. You guys, you ever get like there's a loud noise on the plane, but you go like, yeah, but I've heard that noise before, right? You feel okay if you've heard the noise before, right? How do you feel about new noises? Anybody, anybody feel good about new noises on the plane? Anybody like the idea of new noises? Nobody likes new noises, I can tell you right now. And suddenly we heard a new noise, an alarm blaring. We'd never heard this before. Then the plane went into a dive straight at the planet. Oxygen masks dropped from the ceiling. Cabin crew went running through. It was frightening enough before the captain came on and made this exact announcement. We have no idea what he said, because he was shouting so loudly into the microphone that it was distorted. And the plane dove like that for 6 minutes. It was terrifying. I looked around. The girls were about 4 rows behind me. I couldn't go help them. When the plane's in a dive like that, you cannot unbuckle and go. It'd be dangerous to everybody. So I'm stuck where I am, and they're stuck where they are. And I just start watching people. Actually, the truth is the first thing I did is I put my shoes on, and that was a weird thing to do. The couple beside me, they looked at me putting my shoes on. They're like, why is dude putting his shoes on? I'm like, very— this is clear to me. I'm putting my shoes on because I've seen the movie Die Hard, and if we land, shoes are going to be important. I don't want to be walking around with broken metal and glass everywhere. Like, I know it's a crazy thought to have, but I put my shoes on. But then once I got my shoes on and I got the passports in my pocket and I started looking around at what was happening in the cabin, and I saw all kinds of different reactions. I saw people that were catatonic. I saw people screaming. I saw people sobbing. I saw people sniffing. But what I really want you to hear about is the family that was sitting in the row in front of me. It was a mother and a father and 2 kids. And the father reached up and he grabbed them the, the auction mask and he immediately put it on his own face. And then he grabbed the next mask and he went to put it on his 4-year-old child's face who had been sleeping. How do you suppose the 4-year-old reacted to having this plastic placed on his face? He tried so hard to tear it away. He tried so hard to fight it. He didn't want it anywhere near his face. The daughter was no different. Thankfully, these parents had put their own oxygen masks on first. And were able to help their children. Because I can tell you what would happen if they didn't. While they fought with their children to get the masks onto their children, they may have passed out and maybe even died, and then their children wouldn't have had masks either. Now I want to ask you a new question, and I want the honest truth, every single one of you. How many of you now know that if an oxygen mask, if they deploy and they drop from the ceiling, that you will— I wanna know what percentage chance you will put your own mask on before helping your kids. What percentage chance? Look at this. 100, 100, 100, 100, 100, 100. Absolutely, definitely me, me, me. That's called transformation. We just took a group of people who admitted they might not have been doing it that way. And with the power of a very quick story, a very true story, a very emotional story, change their behavior forever. Some of you will even have the experience that you're on a plane and you feel some turbulence, and you'll think to yourself, you remember that story Eric told? If oxygen masks drop, I'm putting mine on. And more than that, if God forbid any of you are ever in that situation and the oxygen masks drop down, You will put your mask on because your neurology has been affected by the emotional response of the story. That's what we're here to do for people. It doesn't matter if you want to be a speaker, an author, a coach, a leader, a CEO, a founder, an educator. I hope some of you want to be educators. I hope some of you want to be politicians. I really do. Listen, They're— a politician is not a bad thing. It's just some of the people that are in that role right now aren't the right people. But when you find your voice and you start being willing to share your life experience, then everything begins to shift and we can put the right people in the right places with the right power and the right influence. In fact, one of the talks that I'm gonna be doing for you guys during this summit is called Sell Without Selling. It's how to tell a story that actually moves people to a point of decision without having to persuade them. So you guys are in the right place at the right time, and you are all, every one of you, natural born storytellers. And we're gonna start to release that from you and provide you the skills to layer on top of that for real transformation. I'm so thrilled about today. I think it's gone unbelievably well. I loved Paul's session. I think Vishen was incredible. And Daniel, I mean, He doesn't, he just popcorn great ideas the entire time. And tomorrow is gonna be just as good or better. Thank you guys all so very much. Your attention has been rapt, and I love the interactivity. You guys have taken the advice I offered. I wanna ask one last question before I turn you guys over to Caitlin. How many of you guys are already ready to teach some of these ideas to other people? How many of you are already ready to teach these ideas to some other people? And I wanna ask one more question. I may as well throw in another one.. You remember what I said at the beginning? This event shouldn't be free. It's free to open the doors for everybody because we're all at different economic situations at different times of our lives. But forget your economic situation. In reality, I'm curious, how much is a day like today worth across 3 days? If any of you wanna put a price estimate in there, I'm curious to think, or I'm curious to know what you think. For now, I will say good night. I think I'll be connecting with some of the VIPs a little bit later, but for now, I'll say good night. I'll say thank you, and I will compel you all to show up here again tomorrow. Tomorrow is action-packed. You guys are ready for a new— like, it, it's even better. I'm sorry, Caitlin. I know I'm, I'm now actually gonna go a little— I'm gonna say one more thing. I use a system called behavioral change dynamics when I'm designing courses, when I'm designing for Mindvalley or designing my retreats, that kind of stuff. And one of the principles is that you start off slow and you accelerate. It's called the frog in the hot water principle. The idea is that you don't give too much right away You build upon it so that people can be more receptive to it. Now, it's really tough to do that across a 3-day event. You violated the rule a fair bit today. You got a lot of stuff today, but the rule maintains because the velocity of information and the value of the information only gonna climb from here. So thank you guys all very much. I will see you tomorrow. Tell me in the comments if I'm gonna see you tomorrow.

Caitlin, over to you.

Eric, thank you so much. I love how you're like, thank you for our— your attention. As if we could look away during your storytelling. It's like, I don't have to sit here. I choose to sit here because I'm taking notes and I'm so in it. I'm so in it. I'm so in your emotional arcs and everything you're teaching and the way that you're teaching it and the way that it resonates. And reading the chat with everybody, I know that you guys understand what I'm saying. I know that the value is here and that lives are changed, even if it's just an oxygen mask mask, but we know it's so much further than that. So Eric, thank you for such a dynamic day. We're so excited to see you tomorrow. And on that note, guys, as Eric said, there are going to be so many incredible speakers. Eric will be back tomorrow. He mentioned briefly, um, about being able to tell stories with your body language. Linda Clements, she is the master of body language. She has taught Victoria's Secret models to ex— to, to C-suite executives about the power of, of our body language. Then we have Prince Ea. He's gonna talk about the power of presence. You know, when someone is present with you, you know when you are in the presence of somebody and the way that they're speaking to you and how they're speaking to you and how that makes your soul feel and how that makes you feel seen and heard. And we're gonna go through that tomorrow. Vishen will be back as well. Eric will be back. It's going to be an incredible day. But I truly hope that, that you got as much value out of this as I did. I truly hope, as Eric said, that maybe you came in not knowing if your story even meant anything. Daniel Priestley talked about he didn't think his story— why would anyone care about his story? And I hope that you're reminded that your story matters, that every single person on here has a lived experience that nobody else on this planet has experienced except for you. And if you do not communicate that with the world, if you do not express that with the world, if you do not tell the world about this, they're never going to know. And think about all the lives that will not be impacted because of that. We learned about— about— holy shit, you know what? You know what Vishen said? I still feel weird saying that word as an adult. I don't know why, But just the hook and all the way through his, his anagram that he has for us to remember and how to create these captivating stories, how to tell all of this. Um, Daniel Priestley, right? The origin, the mission, the vision. All of these takeaways today, if you just got those, could change your life. But I want to encourage you to come back because to miss a little is to miss a lot, and there is going to be so much more tomorrow. So thank you from the bottom of my heart for joining us today. Please, please, please remember what Eric said. If you tell somebody else about this, if you teach somebody else about this, it gets more ingrained in your brain. And when you tell somebody else about this, invite them to come tomorrow and Sunday. It is so great to have people on the path with you changing and growing and speaking and influencing and inspiring. So I encourage you all to do that. If you are a VIP with us, I'm going to let you know that we have a 10-minute break Eric will be back on for a Q&A session, so get your questions ready. For everybody else, thank you for joining us. Go make some amazing content. Go share your story with the world. Remember that homework assignment that Eric gave us. Really think about that, and we'll see you guys so soon. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Goodbye, everybody. VIPs, we'll see you in 10 minutes.