STOP PROCRASTINATING! Do THIS to NEVER LACK FOCUS AGAIN! | Tom Bilyeu

remember the AMA format is much more concise so I'm going to be answering the questions one to two minutes no more we have a lot and I'm hoping you guys are going to submit a lot more again I'll be prioritizing comments in the live feed all right our first question is from Aiden o how do you stay focused in this world full of distractions I often find myself procrastinating and watching YouTube videos forever alright so this really does come down to habits and routines this is one of those things I cannot stress enough if you haven't built in mechanisms to deal with your lesser nature you're forever gonna fall prey to them some of it is identity some of it is I'm the kind of person who makes use of my time some of it is I'm the kind of person that has goals and I do that which moves me towards my goals but then some of it is reinforcing that belief with very strict rules what I'll call Bright lines so some of my bright lines are I go to bed at 9 pm period second bright line I only have 10 minutes to get out of bed so I wake up when I wake up I don't use an alarm but once I realize I'm awake then I only have 10 minutes to get out of bed as long as I've had at least five hours so look at the clock see what time it is I have 10 minutes boom I'm up and I emotionally Ward myself when I meet the deadline and I emotionally punish myself if I miss it and when I miss it by the way it's usually by seconds it's not like ever I'm just like [ __ ] it and I stay in bed for 20 minutes that would not be a bright line so but hard and fast 10 minutes emotionally reward yourself or emotionally punish yourself whether you do it or not and then just having a compelling future it is so critical that you have a compelling future that there's actually something that you're excited about and this makes me think of Weekend Warriors for most people no one has to tell you what to do on the weekend you're very excited to do it you get out of bed with some enthusiasm there's something that you want to do that day even if it's play video games read watch a movie hang out with your significant other whatever it is there is something that you're excited about and there is a way and I won't answer it in this question but there is a way to put at the center of your life and all the things you're doing to work and to build something to put that thing that you enjoy at the center of that so that you're generating income off of something that you love doing that is very very possible all right next question is from Jeff is my guess at how you say his last name how do you develop cultivate the beauty and rage concept all right so what is the actual process of Fanning the Flames of anything it starts with Focus so if you know that you want to build Beauty and rage in something and you know that you want to spend 80 percent of your time in Beauty and so what is beauty Beauty are the things that are wonderful they not only put you in a good mood and help you and hopefully put others in a good mood and help them and and really do something positive and empowering um there are also the things that are built on excitement it's you're looking forward to it you're moving towards it you're not running away from anything the rage on the other hand is the darkness also known as it is the thing that makes you angry it's the people that hate you it's wanting to prove somebody wrong it's coming from essentially a negative place it's coming from I won't let these people see me fail right that is at times when done in the right balance a very powerful motivator and so to overlook that as a mistake but how you cultivate them is once you've identified something that let's say is on the beauty side that you really fan the flames and you really lean into why you're grateful for that what it is about that that's wonderful how you think you're going to help people that reinforcing in yourself I am the kind of person that wants to help people that goes out of my way to do nice things for other people that I'm going to build a business that has something at the center of it that is World positive that isn't something that's taking away from people you literally say those things you say them to other people you rally people around those Notions you talk about them you let yourself get excited and then this is the hard part you reward yourself for being the kind of person that gets excited about something so positive okay it's a self-reinforcing loop that just starts with saying I think this is a good thing I think it's a beautiful thing it's something that I'm excited about it's something I want to move towards and make happen and it's good it's good for me it's good for other people it's positive it's uplifting and I feel good about the fact and you literally by saying it you're reinforcing that notion in your head I feel good about it on the dark side when somebody slights me when I realize that they actively want for my downfall all they maybe do me the justice of just telling me to my face that they think that I'm gonna fail that I'll hold on to that and I will at strategic moments never to exceed 20 of my time I will focus on that now we'll focus on the fact that that person thinks I'm gonna fail I will focus on the fact that I absolutely [ __ ] refuse to let that happen and I will stare at it nakedly and I will think about how it would feel to fail what that would be like to know that that person believes I'm gonna fail and then I did and in that reaction to that I'll start moving forward with ferocity and it is actually letting yourself feel angry and if you need to Furrow your brow tighten your muscles stand up strike a bold posture really put yourself in an aggressive dominant position when you're in the 20 so that you feel the power because the only point of Dipping into the rage is to have the anger that's needed to withstand suffering and to attack it and to go after it and to make it your enemy and that's why if you didn't hear in all of those words how dangerous it would be to spend more than 20 percent of your time there then you run the risk of letting that overtake you because thinking like that being in that aggressive stance is a major turnoff to people it's corrosive internally over the long run all right so the next question comes from Mario I am an entrepreneur in the design and marketing business this year I decided to stop working based on the agency model and promote myself this will also give me more time to focus on a startup project so I registered my websites and started promoting my personal brand to help this I created a series of videos podcasts where I interview other creatives around the world I talk to Marvel illustrators old school animators artists designers Etc I'm currently in Brazil finishing the last video so I can start promoting them I know I have the skills and the experience I'm curious about how should I transition from a brand to my own name should I focus on a specific Niche or Market everything I can do how did you manage to create such a strong personal brand in parallel to your business we all do a lot of things but I don't want to create a weak brand that has no Focus for example when you see someone promoting himself as an entrepreneur or a health Advocate photographer and writer sometimes it's just too much okay so I totally agree with you I think I haven't read Ryan holiday's book perennial seller but someone highlighted part of it and put it on Instagram it's another reason why I love Instagram if you're following the right people you can really get good stuff and in the quote that they posted on their Instagram is a highlighted section of the book and it said the thing that most makes people fail to create something that will last is that they try to do multiple disparate things at the same time so if you look at everything that we're doing at impact Theory all of it adds up to the exact same thing our mission is to pull people out of the Matrix and so everything that we do has got to feed into that ethos so whether that is this content where I'm just laying it out there's no real narrative to it it is just the direct ideology or whether it's a show looking at pop culture and the things you can learn from pop culture coming soon or it's impact Theory the interview show or just the traditional narrative content where it is straight up you're going to watch a movie a TV show you're reading a comic book all of that stuff all has to exist to pull people out of the Matrix it all has to be empowering content it all has to give you the same emotion for the brand so it doesn't have to sell the same exact product but you need to immediately understand how all of those products are connected so yes being an entrepreneur and health Advocate no problem there I will tell you right now that those are two areas that you're going to see me talk about but both of them are truly necessary for getting people out of the Matrix so there is an inextricable link between the mind and the body you have to understand them both to cognitively optimize you have to optimize your health in order to actually get your mind in the state where you truly can break free of all your limiting beliefs so that whether people see that as the same or not once you watch enough content you'll get why that's a necessary piece of it so it being necessary is where it becomes interesting so for instance if you want to talk about being an entrepreneur and a health Advocate your photography better center around those two worlds because if it's just random photography then that's where it gets much less interesting because now it's it's just there's no unifying theme for the audience okay next question is from Felipe I wrote a long while ago and told you I was a scientist who writes fiction on the side I have since quit my job as a scientist because I realized I was not 100 passionate about it and I didn't want to do that for the rest of my life plus I was not having a lifestyle I enjoyed now I have to figure out what I want to do next since I am not in a position where I can live off of my writing I have savings that will allow me to pursue the other interests for about a year okay so what's my advice what's the best strategy if you have a year and you know exactly what you're trying to accomplish then what I would try to do is figure out what is the fastest thing that you can sell because basically you've got a year to begin generating Revenue that's actually a really long time so you have to get a realistic picture of what can you say what is the Delta right so your writing makes you X and leaves you y amount of time how much can you monetize that remaining amount of time and what is the gap between what you're earning as a writer and what you need to live on so that's really the only Gap that you have to cover then I would try to leverage the infrastructure that is already there to help you get jobs as a writer so without knowing exactly what you want your writing to be let's pretend for a second that it's something that other people value as well so if you want to write all the time a great way to supplement that would be say creative copy or something like that to find an ad agency that's writing really interesting copy maybe narrative focused using the or leveraging the technology of something like upwork where you can work from wherever on whatever hours you want you're still writing but you're able to monetize that now I'll tell you right now you can definitely make a full-time living as a freelance writer so it just comes down to when you say you can't make a living off your writing how you're defining the writing what writing you'd be willing to take for work and how familiar you are with freelancing and making that work and if you have a science background Jesus you could be a science writer which they can charge an arm and a leg so even if you only made part of your day doing the science writing and the other part you tried to spend maybe writing for an ad agency or something like that that let you dive more deeply into the creative you ought to very rapidly be able to build out a portfolio of clients assuming you can actually write well and that is the hard thing to face but I'll just be really arrogant for a second it would be very easy for me to make north of a hundred thousand dollars maybe significantly more than that just as a copywriter so and that's just using upwork by the way I could do that from Bali Bora Bora Tahiti like wherever so understanding the tools and the technology that's already out there that's got the infrastructure for something like this where you have a year and you need to build up that client base while you leverage your savings all right so that's my advice um we're getting some questions coming in amazing amazing so here we go question from Brian Jacobson how much do you think your internal dialogue has to do with your anxiety depression in the beginning I think that it played a huge role and that's how the neurons began to fire together and wire together um you just but it's a little more Insidious than just the dialogue because my dialogue was possible but I would paint scenarios of something going wrong I would imagine like and a lot of times it was just what-if scenarios like I was thinking through like to protect myself so you know what if you go out there and you don't remember what you were going to say like how would you deal with that and how would you deal with it if like the audience started booing well now what I'm thinking about out is the audience's booing and the I've forgotten what I'm going to say and so all of the things that I'm thinking through are negative scenarios my brain begins to think about them and then some part of your brain goes Jesus I never even thought of that and so that gets into a pretty dicey Arena so you need to make sure that the things that you're obsessing about are things going positive that you're actually putting in all the work thinking about that today that anytime I'm going to do something like this I don't need the questions ahead of time I don't need to prepare and the reason is my entire life is the preparation for these things so there's not going to be any last minute cramming that I could do that would make even like a tiny bit of difference between what I already know and have spent the last you know 20 30 years accumulating that knowledge making the unique connections talking to people about it really establishing it is something that I I understand is an actual world view so when you obsess about something and don't prepare for the negative stuff you're not setting yourself up for failure that either happened or didn't happen based on your preparation going into whatever you're going to do so thinking about all the ways things could go wrong thinking about all the potential problems and ways you would deal with them just focuses you on the problem and you get what you focus on so if you focus on forgetting you're going to forget if you focus on things going badly your things are going to go badly you've got to be able to feel yourself confidence all right next question is from Thomas Enriquez and he says can I come work for you if I get Jay-Z in contact with you yes depends on how you define work that's the only catch um but man if you let me Define that then absolutely but that would be amazing and so if you're serious we should definitely talk all right next question comes from Mike Bryant what happens when technological unemployment affects 90 of humanity if we let that happen and we haven't put in place things like basic Universal income we're [ __ ] and there's just no long and short of that we have to find a way to create a thriving middle class even if that's with universal basic income so I am not an expert on this so I will leave it at that but that is a problem that absolutely without question must be solved hopefully by people who know a lot more about it than I do next question is from KJ norlander did Noah Galloway change your perspective on having kids at all in the future no um and I'm so hope that chase will slack me a follow-up to that as to what they thought would do that so the thing to remember about me and kids is I'm well aware that they are transformative emotionally that they are magical little creatures who change your perspective on everything who when you are on your deathbed you will think thank God I have these children I would be so profoundly alone right now if I didn't have them and the heartache and loss that one would feel at merely imagining not having children should if they did have children at that point I bet is very very profound and I bet once you have kids and the chemical change that takes place you look at people that don't have kids and you think if you would just listen if you would just understand how beautiful and transformative and Powerful it is you would do it immediately and to that I say that is neurochemical change and if you study the levels of happiness of people who have children almost universally they are lower all the way until the child leaves and they don't return to normal until after the child leaves so from a purely objective statistical fact perspective about momentary happiness children ruin it it is as far as I can tell the only impossible job like doing it right wow is a crap shoot it is it is truly one of the most noble things any human being can do and I am so grateful obviously that people do it and that it's a beautiful experience and that from the inside of it even though your happiness levels go down the sort of deep fulfillment goes up I'm very glad that people experience that I get that in other ways in my life building things is what sets me on fire but I'm I'm told that we have some follow-up uh wouldn't it be interesting to see what kind of role model you would be for a child um a it would be B I was a role model for a child and spent eight years as essentially a big brother I call it a big brother but it wasn't officially part of that program but I worked with him for eight years and it was magical and transformative and has continued to echo through my life so when I say I get it I get what it's like to have a child look to you like um your salvation that you're offering them a better life than they have anywhere else I can't tell you how many times Rashaan asked to come live with me and um yeah so I get it and and I'm saying it from a place of actually understanding it so I and I fully recognize that understanding intellectually is different than feeling it emotionally and he wasn't actually my child and so I'm well aware of that and I was very young but nonetheless I had enough of a taste to be able to understand that I desperately desperately want kids the only thing I want more than kids is to not have kids so it isn't me going oh man having kids sounds like it sucks having kids sounds like it would be amazing but it also doesn't suit what I'm trying to do with my life and so therefore not having kids edges it out and then also emotionally I exist in a place where my life is literally my dream I have constructed it Brick by Brick to be exactly what I wanted to be on a daily basis so I don't have that that sense of like man I could really fill this void with something and I have dogs um okay enough on that next question comes from Jeremy Thompson have have a great idea but barely make it paycheck to paycheck how do I start to plan and bridge the gap towards execution is there a way to access funding and would you recommend it for a first-time entrepreneur um I would say that I absolutely have no reservations if you can raise money raise money absolutely you will learn a ton in that but only raise money if you plan to sell the company and you're very very happy listening to somebody else who knows a lot more about what they're doing so if you think of it as I've got this idea for a product and I essentially want to go to business school raise money and raise money from a firm that wants to be actively involved and you should then want them to be actively involved and then work very closely with them to learn about how to do a business so the next one that you could have more control but do not raise money if you want to be autonomous you want control it will be a nightmare and also their model is between three and seven years they expect you to sell sell or IPO I guess technically you could do that but you're going to like the odds of you losing control are almost 100 so if you can go into it looking at it like business school I think it's great otherwise do the side hustle thing build it on the side just clock a lot of ridiculous hours go without a lot of sleep build this thing up learn along the way but you can retain control that way and if your product is real and people are excited about it in this day and age of social media and the ability to build communities you really can get it off the ground far enough to start to get people's attention you'd have a lot more leverage when you go to raise money if you decide to go down that path alternatively you could grow a little more slowly over time and do it all yourself so that there's no one right answer but there's also no excuses right so making it paycheck to paycheck is you know so many people live there and at some point you just have to be so fed up with that that you don't accept it anymore and that you make radical change in your life whatever that looks like all right next question is from medardus Jew hey Tom uh do you think the dark side is the only way to conquer doubts and fears thanks no I do not think that so the dark side has a very specific application it's it is a tiny minority of your time so 80 of all your problems 80 of every encounter that you have eighty percent of the time you have to look inward all of it eighty percent of the time you should be coming up with the beautiful things the things you're moving towards the things you're grateful for the awesome stuff in your life all the great things you know will come out of this if you can just get your company across the Finish Line help your children um volunteer your time be a politician like whatever your thing is it doesn't have to be an entrepreneur eighty percent of all of those problems will be solved with the Beautiful Things the rage comes in I find for me the rage is about those times where I am I'm just spent I don't have any more and I maybe I've failed and I'm just embarrassed and I'm tired and I don't want to keep going or I'm scared and it's like [ __ ] am I actually going to be able to pull this off at those moments when the beautiful things are in the throes of failing me that's when I think about the people who want me to fail and that for me I'm just I don't tolerate that I don't accept that I'm going to give them what they want I don't accept that that would feel like so much [ __ ] so because I'm absolutely unwilling to tolerate that in myself that kicks me in the ass and gets me going again but I know better than to spend a lot of time there but I leverage that that is Nature's gift it is how you're able to endure more suffering anger anger allows you to endure more suffering they've done studies on this this isn't me just saying like in a woo-woo way literally anger allows you to endure more suffering so when the only answers suffer more keep going that's when I leverage anger only after I've tried all the beautiful things and they continue to fail me anger will make you take action just true the truth is hitting your career goals is not easy you have to be willing to go the extra mile to stand out and do hard things better than anybody else but there are 10 steps I want to take you through that will 100x your efficiency so you can crush your goals and get back more time into your day you'll not only get control of your time you'll learn how to use that momentum to take on your next big goal to help you do this I've created a list of the 10 most impactful things that any High achiever needs to dominate and you can download it for free by clicking the link in today's description alright my friend back to today's episode okay um next question comes from Siddharth Kapoor I'm good at communicating and arguing law can be a good career option for me but I am late for it which other careers can be good for me I'm late for it I'm assuming that means you think you're too old and I would say that's a bad reason not to do something so I would say the reason you should either do or not do it is whether you think that you will fall in love with it whether it will really be a deep passion for you whether it will make you come alive and whether or not it's the thing that you would love doing every day even if you were failing if that's law then get into it I will say that lawyers have the highest rate of depression and may I may be wrong about this but may also have the highest rate of suicide that part I could be making up the depression thing I'm sure about um because being a lawyer you have to be negative you have to look at all the things that could go wrong and like I was saying before when you obsessively focus on all the things that could go wrong you're just living in negative land so maybe weigh that and I wouldn't worry about um whether or not you're too late for that so the last part what other careers could be good for you being persuasive and communicating well works everywhere so there literally isn't uh an arena where even if you're a solo writer being able to write persuasive arguments is still monetizable so I would say that that's Universal applies everywhere all right next question from Aaron Elias what is your take on energy upgrades and waves sweeping the Earth what is your take on ascension I have no idea I've never heard those words put together in that fashion before I fear I'm going to fail you entirely I have absolutely nothing but ignorance on this topic forgive me all right next up Carolina Wilk Tom what do you think about Dr John D Martini's teachings two in a row totally ignorant I have no idea who Dr John D Martini is forgive me uh next question Jessica terrazia how do you find your audience once you have a passion I want to speak but I can't help everyone at once I was told I need to find my audience did you do this and did you find Value in this all right let's deconstruct this a bit so in the world of social media the easiest way to begin to build your audience and so there's a difference between social media and speaking with speaking you need to put together a reel that shows how you can speak you need to pick a topic that you're very good at that have speaking opportunities and then start small start with local groups get up and speak make sure you're recording yourself so that you get this reel of people make sure you post it on your own channel so people can see it and that you're showing up for certain keywords so when people are searching for that they're going to see you partner up with other people especially and this is easy if you're in the world of motivation if you're in the world of motivation then there are all kinds of accounts that are desperately looking for content and if you're able to speak very powerfully that you could start sending them your content getting a partnership going with them so that you're able to get them pushing you out maybe they have a small audience to start but let's say if they only have a thousand people that's a thousand people that otherwise wouldn't have seen you so building those relationships going on being valuable to their Community just building this up Brick by Brick getting more and more people exposed to your ideas create a high value add social accounts whether that's Twitter whether that's Instagram Facebook all of it do Facebook lives maybe only a few people show up in the beginning but if you're adding value to their life they're going to tell somebody about it so this all comes down to how good are your talks how much value do they really add to people and if it adds a lot of value then you'll find that people just keep coming back and and if you're not growing here's the hard reality if you're not growing you're not adding enough value so one of the most powerful things that I learned from Reading Disney's biography was that every time the company wasn't where he wanted it to be he refocused on making the product better the product better the product better it's not about making the marketing better marketing better marketing better it's about really really focusing on the product and in this case the speech is your product so making sure that you get your product great and somebody that's done a really good job of talking about that process is Lewis Howes so I would go hit him up I would check out what he's done what he did his whole thing with going to Toastmasters and starting out like he was reading off sheet of papers hands were trembling he couldn't even look up from the piece of paper and then you know however many months or year later he's getting paid to speak so putting in the Reps getting better practicing and then also in a group like that you're meeting other speakers who may be getting gigs and they may be asked to do a gig that they don't want to do but then they think of you and so they pass it on to you I've gotten a lot of my speaking work that way it's just word of mouth so get out there get after it uh next question comes from cage hits cage hits really cage hits that's amazing that's so amazing I'm tempted to think it's a screen name but cage it says you say you are building this community uh for later down the road to build the studio what skills would you recommend we cultivate now in order to provide you with value down the road questions like these make me want to like cuddle the camera or the microphone or something like you can't imagine what it means to me and everyone else here when you ask a question like that dude anybody that says social media is like destroying the fabric of society they've built the wrong Community can we just agree on that thank you just first of all for asking that question that's so amazing um I will say this pursue your truest and best life whatever makes you come alive whether it can be useful to us or not like don't worry about that we're gonna be here we are going to remain providing content for free uh so don't think you have to help us to be an amazing contributor to this community just asking that question is [ __ ] amazing and I'm so grateful for it the skill set that we will need the ones that we're really focused on now we need writers and artists that's a really really big deal for us so writers and artists we're building out contests where hopefully partnering up with I guess I won't say until it's real we're partnering up with a very large company that is just amazing at attracting writing Talent very excited about that I really really hope we close that um but yeah we're starting right now on comics and so we need writers for Comics we need artists for Comics ultimately we'll also be putting together so the whole notion of impact house is meant to get creatives here whether screenwriters whether traditional authors whether comic book writers and artists bringing people together to meet each other to bounce ideas to get things going we'll present people with ideas that we're trying to get into production so if somebody is gradual or not graduating gravitating towards that and they want to latch on to one of those projects and and go into our development cycle then that's also something so I guess watch will be making announcements around that you can also ping us at connect one of the contracts that I'm working on now is our submission thing so you guys can submit it know exactly what your rights are who retains what all that good stuff uh so but anyway to the first part I'll just reinforce that live the life that makes you feel most alive and if that aligns with us that's really really amazing but you can still be a really vibrant contributor to this community without that um okay next question Davis sarret how besides speaking for free a lot do you build a career and and a following as a speaker how do you self-publish your book effectively all right those are two very different questions um one I'll let me just go through them all right so how do you build a career and a following as a speaker so you you're sort of discounting the one thing that I would say is the right answer and that is speak for free a lot and the reason that you're going to be doing that is just like interning you're going to be getting your name out there you're going to deliver value there's no barrier to entry to bringing you on other than they need to vet to make sure that you can actually do it but if you can do it you're getting what you want it's not the money the money's not what you're after the money or sorry the the short term money is not what you're after the long-term money only comes if you're able to build a reputation and really improve as a speaker get out there and absolutely crush it right so don't lose out on the opportunity to make a hundred thousand dollars a speech later because you want five thousand dollars of speech now okay way better to say you know what I am going to do this one for free you know what my normal fee is ten thousand dollars a speech but actually I'm I'm gonna waive this one and I'm gonna do it for for free you can even do that so that you're letting it be known that like that's your normal fee but your job if you're trying to build a following especially you've got to get out and do it it's literally shaking hands kissing babies it's letting people know you're there to be of service to them and that you're not just trying to be a rock star if you Swagger out on the stage do your thing drop the mic and then peace the [ __ ] out like you're not gonna build a following so in the beginning like dude let me tell you when like I'm going tonight if you're in the LA area 7 P.M downtown L.A Boom Town baby look it up meet and greet and despite the fact that I have a 9 pm bedtime I will stay there and answer every question that people have period period why because I want you guys to know that I'm serving you and I want to do that because ultimately I'm going to need your help I'm going to need your support as we're building the studio and there are going to be things that hopefully I can create that are valuable enough to you um that you would rather have that thing than the money but the only way that you're going to feel that is if you recognize what this company really stands for who I really am as a person um that's that's my silver bullet and so we've built what I think is one of the most rapidly growing organic audiences and take organic lightly we do a lot of cool marketing [ __ ] some of which we throw money at but it's all real people it's not like bot farms in India or anything so we've got to be one of the fastest growing and the reason for that is this company every human being that touches any aspect of this company is just dripping a desire to help so as long as people feel that and you're willing to go the extra mile I think you can really build something special all right next question and I did fail you on the the self-publishing thing but um I went a little long on the first part and I don't have I've never self-published the book before so I'd just be um giving you sort of best practices of marketing anyway uh question from David Daly if humans are truly malleable and capable of achieving anything why must we put in thousands of hours to master a skill why can't humans Master skills much more rapidly than this all right this is actually a fascinating part of um Evolution and the trade-offs that we have done so if you look at other animals take ants for instance there's a certain type of ant to forget their name but they can build as a unit complex structures they can pick things up they can hang from things they create shapes they turn into Towers it's insanity and all of that is pre-programmed nobody teaches them anything from the drop the moment they come out they're ready to go they can build these structures it's all just instincts it's all built in now when you build stuff in what you're trading off is flexibility so the reason that it takes so much time and energy is because we have said you know what don't pre-build much in but instead be a canvas that can respond aggressively to its environment that you can go in virtually any direction that you need to go in and that flexibility giving us the opportunity to thrive in Crazy environments to specialize in something over time to change our specialization to to adapt to changes dramatic changes in the climate that we otherwise would fall prey to that's why we've survived long enough to become the apex predator things that wiped out other people didn't wipe us out because we could adapt so it's a trade-off for maybe complexity of skill set from day one and flexibility of skill set over the long run so that is why all right next up from Cameron RN any new books you would add to your 25 must release I I uh is grit on there yet we need to add grit so I'll just tell you grit 100 um some of the other books are more sort of fetishy for me like homodeus rocked my world but I wouldn't put it on the 25 the 25 aren't just the best books I've read They're the most foundational to building an empowering mindset and so there are many many many amazing books that I'm tempted to just keep making that list longer and longer which is why we did the knowledge Trail but right now I would say with the exception of grit which does need to be on the list I don't have anything that I think is foundational enough uh to add but I think we've listed something roughly like the last Chase last hundred books I've read something like that so take a look at that moving excuse me moving forward we're going to be posting my notes that I take on the book uh bear with me I take the notes for me so I don't write them uh worried about whether they'll make sense to you sorry uh it's very selfish I know but we thought people might enjoy seeing them anyway so we'll be doing that moving forward all right uh Corinne Davis how do you differentiate between when it's time to Pivot or dig in alright so this is the grit or quit question which I find really interesting and Eric Barker covers this in his book barking up the wrong tree and in that he talks about whoop w-o-o-p and whoop is the device you're going to use to figure out whether you like something enough to push on or whether it's something that you should quit so it goes like this the W is for wish what is your wish what do you want to make come true O is for obstacles so what is the um sorry oh the first o is an obstacle it is oh God is it objective I'm gonna say it is somebody's gonna need to look this up I'm failing myself right now um objective like how do you actually plan to get there what is the path to that then the next one so basically making your wish concrete so that's the important uh part even if I'm not getting the right word the second o is um obstacle wow so what is the obstacle that you're gonna have to overcome in order to get there and then the last the p is you're looking this up by any chance plan all right so I think I need to look these up I should have fast access to this oh god let's see how fast we can get there because I've just muddled this one up I'm too terrified or horrified with myself um so wish outcome obstacle plan all right so wish the outcome so making it specific and concrete so the wish I want to be rich one day the outcome I want to be rich by Building A nutrition company okay obstacle what's going to stop me uh there's 1600 protein bars on the market so how we differentiate ourselves we're going to have to become our own manufacturers create something new and Market it in a whole different way plan okay how do we actually take over social media what is a thousand screaming fans look like and you just back into that you've all heard me I assume at this point heard how I backed into why we're creating a studio and all that so I won't do that it's also very long but that's whoop all right so if when you do your whoop you sit back and go man I'm ready to go after this is amazing I'm so glad I did it I now have my plan I know exactly what I'm trying to do that's something that you should pursue you should grid it out and keep going even if it's getting hard if when you lay out the plan you're like dear God that sounds exhausting I I'm not sure I want to do that then that's something that you should quit and move on to something else all right found that pretty fast Chase thank you for your help um next one Chris Berry do you think glyphosate is behind a lot of the health problems associated with the microbiome being damaged all right so this is one of those where I'm early enough in my research that I know the word glyphosate but I don't remember what it means so I'm going to look it up really fast and then I will tell you what I think is behind glyphosate uh oh the pesticide so this is that thing yeah that everybody is um super freaked out over I think it's in Roundup um and people just are not happy about this [ __ ] uh I don't know I think that environmental toxins is part of it and there's this whole concept called pops persistent something pollutants and I don't remember what the O stands for I'm really I'm not doing well with my acronyms today but persistent pollutants the exposure that we get BPA is one that people talk about a lot I think that you're probably getting that's one of the things that either disrupts your endocrine system disrupts the microbiome itself one thing that I'm I'm testing like if you're really paying attention my Snapple is now see-through and the reason that I do see-through Snapple now I'm cutting it about two-thirds water and a third Snapple is I want to see if I notice any difference from significantly reducing and maybe ultimately completely cutting out all artificial sweeteners from my diet I don't want to see my for so long just relied on the fact that I don't feel any difference that that doesn't mean that I'm not edging towards catastrophe every day so I'm going to try it and give it a real legitimate shot let's call it 60 to 90 days with right now I'll commit to with highly minimized amounts of artificial sweeteners I won't go all the way because there's some things in my diet that God to be hard to get the level of fat in my diet that I want in a pleasurable manner without artificial sweeteners and since I'm not convinced yet the artificial sweeteners disrupt things as much as they might so anyway um glyphosate it's bad clearly we should get it out as fast as we can any toxins that cause any sort of disruption in the body they all stack so I doubt the glyphosate is like the end-all be-all but I bet it ain't helping so yeah that's uh that is the microbiome man that [ __ ] is fascinating you want to talk about something I I have to stop myself from putting on the 25 list and and I might one day just because the the connection between your gut and your brain is so powerful you just can't get your mind where it needs to be all right uh Nathaniel Nathaniel Rarity man oh that's as close as I'm gonna get all right when are you coming to Indonesia uh I need to share a lot of things I have no plans to come to Indonesia yet I would love to have a reason to go to Indonesia you can certainly share here I know this can be uh very um nerve-wracking to share something vulnerable you can also DM me that may be a way to get something across a little easier than me coming all the way to Indonesia next question Avi ad you've talked about depression and the indisputable benefits of exercise there's also research building on the therapeutic use of psychedelics do you have any experience with any so I'm super intrigued by what's going on in the areas of psychedelic research on that and if you read Jamie wheel and Stephen Cutler's book stealing fire they go into that really intriguing and I'll be watching very closely over the next several years I've never experimented with psychedelics because I am a chicken there's no reason and other than that I'm just afraid that something will happen and I guess my identity for so long has been that of the guy that doesn't do drugs um and yeah so I drink occasionally alcohol and my wife is um gotten me to try weed I think three or four times ah it's just not my bag man so anyway it's funny though that I still consider myself the guy that doesn't do drugs even though I drink occasionally and I have smoked weed a few times and that Likens back to Dan ariely's whole thing about people will he says in the context of lying people will lie um right up to the point where it forces them to change their identity and that's where they stop and so I guess I do the exact amount of drugs that I can do and still feel like I'm a guy that doesn't do drugs to be consistent with my identity uh fascinating the way the human mind works so I can't help you with psychedelics but find it very very intriguing um and honestly it's one of those things the more data that comes out like I might have to try it if for no other reason than to see if it has an impact on my anxiety which would be utterly fascinating all right um akalan Ananda sivam wow I want to hear that said well hi Tom I'm a music composer studying composition and writing music for advertisements and soundtracks for short films how do you recommend I build relationships with agencies to receive more scoring work as well as promote myself through Snap as it's a closed platform let me know if you can thanks all right dude being in the game of creating music right now in this day and age is unbelievable so right now my friend there are hundreds if not more motivational accounts they're so desperate for music and I'll count us in that so every week we put out impact quotes we have to find music somewhere somehow that we're not going to get a copyright flag for using if you write Amazing Music there are so many people that would desperately want to get a hold of that music write something for them give them you don't even have to give them exclusive rights just let them use it if you let them use it they will tag the life out of you so you get a tag you start finding big accounts and you can write really powerful music remember this all comes down it's how good are you really so you actually have to be good so I'm I'm basing this all on the desperate hope that you don't just think you're talented that you're actually talented but if you're actually talented my friend in this day and age with social media with YouTube people are desperate for music desperate so go forth and prosper you should be pinging them all every morning you should start with hours of Outreach telling people that you write music and that you want to give them music they'll flip out they will flip out all right Chris good what's your thoughts on the best ways to overcome the apathy or lack of drive when it comes to depression in order to get the momentum you need to start making progress again okay depends on where on the depressive Spectrum you fall so I'm going to say that you're all the way over here like catastrophic can't get out I've been in it for a year or more like this is just bad news I don't want to get out of bed nothing all right that is a brain chemistry imbalance it is also almost certainly tied to your gut so the first thing I would do I'm not bullshitting you the first thing I would do is read the gut brain connection is the name of the book that talks about the two-way communication the neurotransmitters that are signaled and received the fact that I think it's 70 no it's 95 of the serotonin in your body is stored in your gut anybody else hearing that 95 it's not all made there but 95 of the serotonin one of the things that makes you feel good elevates your mood in fact ssris selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor it basically stops your serotonin from being re-metabolized so serotonin is the name of the game when it comes to depression 95 of it is stored in your gut so if your gut is [ __ ] up you can imagine that your serotonin levels are in real danger so that is something that you really have to just become an expert in so doing the hard work unlike the the chemistry of your problem I bet you thought I was going to say start with positive thoughts or some stuff which you do want to do but those are they have to be in addition I don't think you're going to think your way out of clinical depression so you're gonna have to get way more hardcore about identifying the chemical imbalance that you have getting the neurotransmitters right ideally without drug intervention but if you need it use it 100 percent that is way better than not doing anything but anytime you're taking taking an exogenous Source you should be trying as rapidly as you can to get off of it now let me tell you if I needed drugs I would use drugs I'm just saying it's not the greatest long-term strategy so um move away from it if you can all right uh questions from Barry Hannah you have had the chance to sit down with some amazingly impactful individuals both with impact Theory and inside Quest how do you feel impact who do you feel impacted you the most how has this impacted your business and personal life the most what is up my friend Tom bilyu here and I have a big question to ask you how would you rate your level of personal discipline on a scale of one to ten if your answer is anything less than a ten I've got something cool for you and let me tell you right now discipline by its very nature means compelling yourself to do difficult things that are stressful boring which is what kills most people or possibly scary or even painful now here is the thing achieving huge goals and stretching to reach your potential requires you to do those challenging stressful things and to stick with them even when it gets boring and it will get boring building your levels of personal discipline is not easy but let me tell you it pays off in fact I will tell you you're never going to achieve anything meaningful unless you develop discipline all right I've just released a class from Impact Theory university called how to build Ironclad discipline that teaches you the process of building yourself up in this area so that you can push yourself to do the hard things that greatness is going to require of you right click the link on the screen register for this class right now and let's get to work I will see you inside this Workshop from Impact Theory University until then my friends be legendary peace out he's my favorite so you were saying Goggins right he's my favorite and he had a big impact on me but that's really about suffering and the honest answer is Tim Ferriss but he impacted me with his book and I don't think people know how much that book changed the course of my life I read the four hour work week and it made me see Marketing in a whole new way and that whole new way ended up becoming Quest Nutrition I was looking for my thousand screaming fans which is he got from Kevin Kelly I think but I read about it in Tim Ferriss um never checking my email I got that from the four hour work week and what that is done to my the demands of me to always control my own company and where I'm going and not let not be reactive to other people but to have a plan and to be disciplined in my execution against it um all of that is critically important so it wasn't from the interview but him and Tony Robbins probably have had the biggest impact on my life and as they've both been guests so the person that in real time maybe had the biggest impact on me actually two people and one of these is going to surprise me so Goggins yes um and then the other was Blake Leeper and Blake Liebert changed this show and if it wasn't for him it was somebody back at inside Quest at inside Quest we were in our formative years we didn't really know what the show was I thought it was going to be all business all the time I didn't want people who hadn't like accomplished just crazy things in their life and they were pitching this kid really hard who was like trying to make a comeback like he'd been gotten in trouble for drinking and then he um got like kicked out of a competition or something because he tested positive for cocaine and they're like but he's a double amputee and he can run and I was just like God is where does this go and they the brilliant people behind the show Christopher Courtney Lisa and I'll just assume Casey was in on it as well they were just like you really have to give this guy a shot and so I did it and halfway through the interview I realized this this his human interest story his overcoming the obstacles his imperfections his willingness to be raw and vulnerable and my um willingness to reciprocate and and go there with him is the show at its finest and so then it was like oh my God you guys are so right like we need more guests like this and that really became the new paradigm for the show all right that feels a little indulgent there's not a lot you guys can take away from that so I'll move on um Carolina Wilk asks what do you think about the law of attraction it's 50 awesome and 50 total [ __ ] so the 50 that is awesome is you get what you focus on and so if you're thinking about I can make these positive things happen I can do this um it's going to give you the sense of confidence and belief that allows you to take that first step that first step is everything the part that's total [ __ ] is um I can will a parking spot I still can't believe that was actually an example they gave I can will a parking spot into existence it's called waiting around long enough till somebody in a parking spot that you want leaves like so anything that inspires people to not take action to just sit there and think about something that that winds me up so Massive Action is the only thing that works so if you're thinking about positive things all the things that you want to make come true all of that and it's forcing you to take Massive Action you're going out and you're executing you believe that you can do it you focus on that you can do it and then you actually learn the skills acquired ah and go and execute then that's [ __ ] amazing so when I watch the secret I loved it and I just shut off my brain to the parts that I thought were Madness which by the way is a very good technique don't throw the baby out with the bathwater just because half of it doesn't make any [ __ ] sense doesn't mean that the other half isn't amazing so use what makes sense discard what doesn't that's how you become a unique person all right next up uh Miriam tufani how do you deal with disappointments along the way when you've started a new business Okay so this one for me the thing that I use to combat disappointment disappointments is twofold one I believe I can learn anything so the failure the disappointment okay what did I learn what can I do better next time um and then also I'm viewing myself on a very long timeline so I'm messing up uh I have failed I missed a huge opportunity let's say and there's an awesome quote from Jim Carrey he said until you have had somebody come up to you and say hey there's so and so out in the audience tonight and they're they're make or break if you do well tonight you're gonna make it if you do poorly tonight it's never gonna happen for you he said until you [ __ ] that up five times you haven't even started yet and I loved that so much because people are gonna think oh my God it's all riding on this one thing [ __ ] no NBA career rides on any one shot never rides on any one game it doesn't even ride on any one championship series at the end of the day is about showing up consistently day after day month after month year after year decade after decade relentlessly acquiring skills relentlessly learning from your mistakes so that all of this is adding up to something so I'm on Joe Rogan today that interview goes so many [ __ ] weird places and it was really fun because on many of them not all of them but on many of them like yeah I've thought a lot about this I've read about this I've oh wow like here's a topic I never thought we were going to talk about but I can go there because I've been out of just a desire to learn I've been reading about a lot of different topics to find out which one stick which ones are exciting for me which ones really add up to something that's usable so when you take yourself over a long timeline and you just repeat these behaviors over and over and over and over like the obstacles they fade into the distance it just becomes one more learning experience and when you remember that all of life is but practice and nothing is ever performance there is no big day there's only one more time to practice dealing under a high stress situation or under the bright lights like whatever the case may be but when you know this is just one more opportunity to practice and I will get another opportunity again because I'm willing to get great I want everyone to listen to the following words these words are oft repeated and so they become cliche and so people stop to hear the real power in the words if you want to be successful there is one path get so good they can't ignore you if they can ignore you you have not yet gotten good enough and once you just accept that [ __ ] hard core truth that if they can ignore you you have not yet gotten good enough go watch dragon the Bruce Lee Story that that is an awesome [ __ ] tale of a guy who got so [ __ ] good they could not ignore him they wanted to at every turn the amount of racism that that guy ran into is [ __ ] insane he created um the show oh God what's it called where he's the Hmong traveling land grasshopper kung fu he created Kung Fu about himself a Chinese man it was played by a [ __ ] white guy I've got to imagine that was very troubling for him but did he just flip out shut down and say this is unfair no he kept getting better and he started making movies [ __ ] him if they won't let me on TV then I'm gonna make movies and I'm gonna make martial arts films that are unlike anything else anyone has seen he used to take challengers in um martial arts competitions he would get in the ring and say hey anybody want to fight if you want to fight come in right now I will fight you and just to show people I'm the best [ __ ] martial artist there's no one else that can touch me and because he was that good he went as far as he went you got to get so good people can't ignore you all right that's when I can just [ __ ] keep going about all right uh Jimmy Allen and by the way I saw a minute ago somebody doing a driving symbol are we running out of time well so we can add them all to the 24-hour thing 24 hour live coming to you live next Wednesday so the reason that we're doing the live by the way is we are about to cross over to 100 000 likes on Facebook and to show my deep and unending gratitude to this amazing do you guys know how different you are than most communities this is [ __ ] crazy the only advice anyone ever gives people don't read the comments don't read the comments don't read the comments when I need to be cheered up I read the comments you guys are so supportive of each other you're so supportive of the show you're so supportive of me and the ideas that we're trying to get out there it's unbelievable I am deeply grateful I feel compelled to do an active service and so as a thank you and a sincere sign of my appreciation for 24 hours I will not sleep I will not do anything but bring you entertaining information that you can use we're going to have a bunch of guests we're going to have new shows that we've never done before we're going to do live versions of shows that you're used to we're going to do super intimate q and A's and I will answer every single no matter how long I have to stay up we'll answer every single question that gets submitted by 6am on the 24th so only reason that I'm capping it there is I don't want to be trolled that's the truth so as long as it's submitted by 6 a.m um I will answer every single question in that 24 hour period so um join me it's going to be very special I know some of the team here is going to stay up even though they don't have to to be a part of it God I love them for that uh this team is unreal they're unbelievable I want to hug the ones that like to be hugged which we broke down doing the Captivate research and uh wave at the ones that don't uh yeah it's amazing I'm insanely grateful so I asked that we're doing a live event tonight otherwise I would just stay here until all questions were answered this is amazing how many questions you guys are submitting I'm really grateful for that as well if you're in the LA area we are going tonight 7 P.M Boom Town Boom Town confirmation please Boom Town Brewery going to Boom Town Brewery I will be answering questions live and In the Flesh I will stay until they kick us out and then I'll answer questions out in the parking lot if I have to but I will stay until every question has been answered no matter how long it takes um so meet me Boom Town brewery Downtown Los Angeles tonight at 7 p.m and so how long do I have right now to answer questions before we have to leave and I need like a 15 minute buffer uh so probably like five Okay so we've got about five minutes left all right so Jimmy Allen I forever have been an extremely ambitious person the pr the past months I've been attacking as many podcast books and everything from yourself and suggested people I have now become an extremely habitual person and the changes have been dramatic I own a successful business that I devote everything to how do I balance my home work life more efficiently my partner and I are extremely happy but I can't help feel her life is on hold so I achieve my goals thank you for the person you are wow thank you that's very kind okay um there is no Universal answer to this so the truth is I have no interest in Balance none whatsoever so one of the reasons that I don't want to have kids is I don't want something pulling from my attention so the reason that my wife and I founded the company together was the more we became ourselves and pursued our goals we wanted that to be driving us together we wanted to be sharing things we wanted to automatically know what the other person is doing just because we're so entrenched we're so in it together we're building something side by side so that is how we have found what my wife calls Harmony which she got from um Lisa Nichols very amazing and talented Lisa Nichols I don't seek balance I seek Harmony um so that's something to really think about at the end of the day you should be trying to live the life that makes you feel most alive and finding the way to engage your partner in that is very important and I love how thoughtful you're being about your partner and that you're thinking about her that's uh uh that is a great sign that great things lay ahead for you you guys need to find what that way is for her to get the time that she needs it's going to start with communication ask her flat out like what do you need is it um if like half of Saturday is just you and me nothing else no phones no email no matter what like that is our time and there are going to be some awesome moments where something in your company is burning to the ground and you're going to show her that she's more important that that half of Saturday is you and her and you're going to ignore it and you're going to wait until the end so moments like that I think is just very very important to figure out what those important things are okay time for one more um this is from Audrey Sutherland how can I have a good relationship with my boss you're gonna have to know a lot about your boss you're going to have to figure out what it is that makes your boss tick what's their communication style what is their um their value system literally read Captivate it will really help you what's their ocean score so that you understand how they perceive the world you understand the things that mean something to them so that you can communicate in their language and then at the end of the day like if you know what they want you've had them lay it out you know exactly what they expect you know what their language is how to communicate back then it's about just an obscene level of performance for your own Reasons by the way don't do it to impress your boss do it because you want to be a linchpin do it because that makes you feel good for yourself do it because that level of skill that ability to play at that level is marketable you can go anywhere but I find that one and some of this does depend is your boss um insecure or they've gotten to a good place in their life um if they're insecure then unfortunately things like flattery can go a very long way and there's some very distressing studies about how even when somebody knows that the flattery is insincere that they still like it so understanding that if there's politics in your company figuring those out what are ways you can make your boss look good helping other people shine is always a pretty great way to get ahead but if I had to boil it back to everything that's Universal communication understanding their communication style understanding their values and really getting absolute Clarity with what they want and then deliver on that and surpass all expectations in this next clip I discussed the difference between belief and delusion all right first question without further Ado is from plastic funnel that's quite the name is your answer to coping with the feeling of being a fraud uh in your answer that makes a lot more sense in your answer to coping with the feeling of being a fraud you sound like a madman and you're hunger to learn on a long on a long enough timeline you will win but where do you draw the line between a self-reinforced delusion that is strategically useful and not useful it's a great question um so this is something that you have to get really good at being able to hold two competing ideas in your head at the same time being able to feel like I really have this I've got it I know what I'm doing I'm moving forward full steam ahead and checking yourself and making sure that that confidence isn't spilling over into destructive delusion I won't even say to monitor it just to make sure that it's not spilling over into delusion because almost certainly if you've never done something before to believe that you can is pure delusion to believe you can learn on the other hand is not but that's where you've got to have that balance you've really got to believe that you're going to pull this off you're going to figure it out that somehow some way that you're going to be the one that figures out when nobody else could figure out and I'll say that really is delusional statistically speaking certainly and you have to then check that against okay where where is the the borders of usability here it's good that I'm thinking like that it's good that I have the energy it's good and this is the most important part that I have the willingness to act decisively which is where most people fall down but you really do have to then check yourself and say okay where are my points of weakness and what I find is a lot of times what you need over here on the I can do this side is a quiet self-belief that's inside you you don't have to trumpet that a lot but you need that quiet self-belief what you need to get other people rallied around you is they need to see decisiveness they need to see certainty there is so much intoxication to certainty so now we've got those things we believe in ourselves our ability to learn and adapt cool our team believes that we that we believe we know what we're doing awesome and they can get excited by that certainty the clarity of vision they know exactly how to execute there's no ambiguity there's no confusion those are the things that kill teams then on the other hand we have an ability to very clearly articulate to ourselves if nobody else but oftentimes I do involve the team on this to articulate to ourselves what our weakest points are and what the parts in the puzzle that we're trying to solve for now the reason I'm able to involve the team in that is because they can see that I'm not wavering on my certainty of what to do so I'm saying do this go here talk to this person say this get that think about it like this then over here I can say okay and now we're going to flip it over we're going to look at the underbelly of the strategy and see if we're actually right and I'll walk people through my logic now this is where if your logic isn't sound your team is going to revolt so my thing is by the time I'm talking to the team and certainly by the time that I'm revealing my soft underbelly I have thought about this so much that I really really have the issue conceptualized and as long as there's a logical through line in my plan that the team can hold on to they'll go okay I dig it his logic makes sense and the punchline of his logic is go do this for now we're going to revisit it we're going to come check back so there's a cell phone awareness in the process of knowing I could be wrong I'm always going to be checking myself I'm going to be looking to see if those things that I'm telling team to go do if they're actually revealing or giving us results or not and if they're not then we're going to adjust strategy and because I've told everybody where we're at but I've kept everybody focused with the certainty the clarity the decisiveness then other voices can be heard we're constantly looking and checking at that but this process of doing what they call Red Team blue team where you're actively trying to pick holes in your the way your plan what you're actually executing those voices have been in the mix they feel like they're being heard and that's another critical part to keeping the team going okay so there it is all right Ray paulus how do you limit yourself especially to New Opportunities oftentimes they get overloaded with the responsibility of each new opportunity okay 80 of business is knowing what not to do that's the really hard part most people have no dearth of opportunities and I think that that has certainly been true in my life I think that that's certainly true for most people the real hard part is being in that room with a thousand doors and knowing which doors to close so you have to get really good at creating certainty at being decisive at being willing to take a step and when it comes to that honestly the thing that I've noticed most is just a willingness I'm trying to survive the tail end of an illness here the willingness to make a decision even when you don't have all the information that's really where we separate the people that go on to win from the people that just stand still because remember the most data Rich information stream is action whether that action is a win or a loss is somewhat irrelevant the whole point is you have to be moving forward you have to be acting decisively because that gives you that data Rich information stream most people are so terrified to make a mistake they're so paralyzed by indecision because they don't know which is right that they never make a decision they never hit that data Rich stream and they don't learn very fast and so they move 10 times 20 times 100 times more slowly than the next person who's willing to act who's willing to make mistakes who's not afraid to look stupid so that's the key as I'm sure you've heard said the only thing we have to fear is fear itself I will modify that and say the only thing that we have to fear is indecision man this cough is like really messing with me all right I had to give a talk today at Google and for the first like 10 minutes I sounded just like this like I'm dying and then it wears off so let me just bear with me I'll make sure I give you nuggets of gold yeah Conor is gonna hate his job today all right next question David beer I have a question about how you research people you God you mentioned how deep you go understanding their world but how deep do you really go specifically what is your step-by-step process I'm laughing at myself here and how much time do you spend on it all right so I really do go deep and I spend probably average 10 to 12 hours on a main episode guest that's reading their book it's watching all of their videos hmm and doing all of that the key thing that I do and this is where there's really two things that I do that I think really separate my style number one I follow my Fascinations and oftentimes my Fascination will lead me to look up something really obscure and in doing that I stumble upon oftentimes like a real piece of humanity and that's where people really really end up connecting with the guests and certainly that's where the guest ends up connecting with me and don't underestimate the power of the guests connecting with me and then being willing to lower their guard and that's why a lot of times people say that I get something out of people that other people don't because the guest feels very safe and that that's a really critical part of my interview Style so um one example of this was with Seth Godin and I came across this tidbit where he said I once cried when um Leonard Nimoy died and I thought whoa that's so weird like what would make him cry about that what is that and so going down that rabbit hole and trying to figure out what his relationship is reading some of his blog articles around that around characters narration the difference between Star Wars and [Music] um and Star Trek and you really start to get an understanding of where he might go now I don't always live by the following Maxim but this may be one of the most important um things if you're trying to copy my interview Style one of the most important things to know is I try never to ask a question to which I don't already know the answer now hopefully it doesn't feel that way hopefully it feels very spontaneous on set but the reality is I'm trying to take the interview somewhere and when it's something that really fascinates me I want to understand why they say that and the reason I understand why they've said the saying that fascinates me the reason I need to understand that excuse me is because I need to know if their answer is going to be valuable to you the audience that's that's huge right my obligation is to you guys my obligation is to figure out how do I take this person somewhere where they a haven't already said this that thing a thousand times and then B that when you hear this new piece of information that they have that you're actually going to be interested so I'm always looking for things that you guys can adapt into your own life and whenever something is an operational level belief system then I'm really excited so in a nutshell those are the things that I'm really trying to do I'm trying to follow my own Fascination to make sure that I'm really interested in what they're saying so that I can be super authentic on set that they will feel that they will feel really heard and understood Connor you're gonna have to cut all these out man it's just getting [ __ ] crazy not yet um so I want them to feel heard and understood I want there to be a real connection I want to be going a layer deeper than anybody else and I want to know I know how they're going to answer that question so that I can follow it up with another question or if they say something um and it takes us into new territory maybe even my response catches me off guard on set to something they say and now we go somewhere new um then I know how to bring it back because I know all the areas that I want to touch on because I really have a 360 degree view of the person all right so I think that's enough on that Jenna Robinson I'm currently reading Mastery and there's a part where Robert Greene says in your 20s you should go through an apprenticeship phase does this contradict your idea of having a super specific goal where you can map out every zigzag how would you do that when you're in this experimental phase of your life when you're trying to figure out what career you want so it doesn't contradict it there are just different parts of your life different times in your life and the one of the most powerful parts of the Mastery phase is that you've I really identified what you want to do and once you've identified what you want to do going and working with the master is one of the ways to really rapidly gain the skills you need so there's two parts there's the exploratory phase where you're not sure what you want to do and I wouldn't try to prematurely optimize by going down the path of a gaining Mastery I would just try to experience a lot of things I would play with them I would dabble and see which one really strikes your fancy once you know which one really strikes your fancy you're super interested that's the path you want to go down you maybe even begun going down the process of getting Mastery already and you realize I love this I love this enough to put in the work I believe in what it's going to bring to me in terms of what mission it's going to allow me to accomplish then you go and engage with the master and you pour yourself into that study and working with them and in doing so they're going to shorten your learning curve which is incredibly incredibly powerful so spending your 20s in that phase if you've already gotten to the point where you know that's what you want to do then that's amazing invitation to your 30s so be it but before you start optimizing which is what you're doing with the master you want to make sure that you first know that that really is the area that you want to go down all right Day Day many people do not execute on their goals because they lack a Clear Vision of all of their Pathways to success how did you go about finding options C and D instead of just choosing a and b um it's not really how I think about it if I'm honest so what I do is I play a game called No [ __ ] what would it take and I try to work backwards from success and I say that I'm working backwards in a slightly different way than I normally mean it what I'm talking about is I find a path where anybody you tell would be like yeah well 100 that would work no one would do it it's crazy it's not technologically feasible whatever thing they say then after that but yes if you could do that that would work like if I said you had to commute um you know 20 miles in LA and you had to do it in less than 30 minutes at rush hour well what would you do you would have to fly in a helicopter everybody would say yep that would work you can't afford it but that would work and then you can work backwards from there and you see people doing things like building drones now they carry a single person they worked with the FAA to actually get them legal so that's how something like that is really going to work is somebody started from well I know what success looks like now it becomes how do we make a feasible version of that rather than what most people do which is Think of where they are today and think how impossible it would be to get there in their car they first started a car and then they started thinking maybe they would do a motorcycle okay that's working from failure and trying to work forward instead work from success something you know guaranteed home run it works and then look at what are the things that stand in your way and if some of the things that stand in your way in the case of a helicopter cost then it becomes a question of can you reduce the cost of that method so we talked about this before we started Quest how would we end metabolic disease well we knew if we could make food that people chose based on taste and it happened to be good for them then it would work because we'd be leveraging people's own behaviors against them their desire to eat hyperpolatable Foods packaged convenienced well-marketed all that stuff that's what's driving eating Behavior so if we could take advantage of that and then just slide in something that was actually good for you then we really had a shot doing the same thing here at impact Theory I know to get the average person to adopt an empowering belief system it has to come in the form of entertainment has to be somewhat invisible it's got to be baked into the cultural subconscious and that over time people just begin to think like that so um that's why we're doing it that way so more than I'm you know I'm thinking uh oh here's path number one I'm thinking what's the most real um what's the most realistic plausible path and then does it meet other criteria can it be monetized am I going to have fun am I passionate about both the path and the goal so all of those things play into it as well all right Josh moranian I realize that I don't have a super specific goal but I have a clear vision of what my goal looks like I know I am going to be leading a team company in an industry I'm passionate about my question is how can I specify my goal without limiting my past to get where I want in my career how can I specify my goal without limiting my paths yeah so the the problem is you don't actually know what your goal looks like so this is the the quintessential question I get asked is somebody who says that they have a clear vision of their goal but then what they describe is something as super vague as I know I'm going to be leading a team company in an industry that I'm passionate about okay please understand that is a hopelessly vague statement like that is vague in the most aggressive way possible and it's the vagaries of that that then create the problem so because you don't know what to execute against you don't know what kind of products to make you don't know who your consumers are so when doing a business we're doing anything in life you you really have to get down to the level of just absolutely ridiculous hyper specificity so the example that I always use is of the Olympics the uh the goal that you have is as vague is saying I want to win a gold medal so first of all you want to win a gold medal in what the Olympics okay cool you want to win an Olympic gold medal winter or summer okay summer tennis swimming like what is it swimming okay great do you want to do the breaststroke do you want to do the medley like what exactly is it until you know the very specific event in the sport in the games that you want to play you're not going to know how you should train and at the end of the day it's the training it's the acquisition of skills that's really what you're trying to get down to that's why you need the hyper degree of specificity because without that you can't a drive forward you can't acquire the right skills and B if you don't know exactly where you're going then you'll never know if you're making progress so when you have a goal that's super vague like I want to drive around in my car okay great like you're driving around in your car now what you don't know whether you're going in the right direction you don't know if you're making any progress so you really have to pin this stuff down to a just an insanely clear and specific Place once you have that then you'll know what you should be training in and whether or not you're making progress Stephen schrembeck I've been working on Ray dalio's radical truth principle for two months now but radical transparency is a huge hurdle how do I practice radical transparency without pissing off everyone in my life who doesn't get it do I need to ask permission to be honest is that good enough I will say that this is near impossible to do with everyone in your life if people don't buy into it it is absolutely not going to work one Ray dalio's principles is written within the context of people who have agreed to be a part of a team so whether it's at a job I think you can get people to agree there if it's in your immediate family you can get people to agree there but once it starts going farther than that like unless you have a soccer team or something where you can actually get people to come together you can present the idea and see if they buy into it it's pretty hard to abide by Ray dalio's principles without people actually buying into that so that's first and foremost it's got to be applied to a group that will actually buy into it it really won't work it'll be totally dysfunctional for you to just try to do it now you can live your life by principles and you can be read radically honest and transparent about yourself you can even decide that you want to be radically transparent with other people and you can train them to only ask you questions if they really want to know the truth but what you've got to ask is what do you hope to get out of that because if people haven't bought in to radical transparency you will come across like a jerk it won't be read well chances are they're going to diminish the frequency with which they invite you to be a part of their group but if you're okay with that if it's not groups that you want to be a part of if you only want to be around people that are living in principles then maybe that's perfectly fine but you need to really think through exactly what it is you're trying to get and I would say that ultimately Ray dalio's principles are specifically for people who are in a group that will all Buy in all right Mischief Co I started an online business a year ago and things were going really well recently sales have dropped to the point where I'm quickly eating my way into my savings every month I don't know if I should quit this business and start a new one go back to a nine to five or stick this out what advice do you have for someone who's struggling with a rough time in their business to me this all comes down to none of those are wrong answers so this all comes down to what do you really want like what's your identity what's your mission in life what are you really trying to accomplish so if that business is just a path on a way to a bigger goal that you believe in with all of your heart and soul then it might be worth shutting that one down and starting something new it might be worth buckling down and figuring out where you're going wrong using austerity measures in your company cutting off every ounce of fat getting super lean figuring out what's happened in the marketplace pivoting like finding that solving that problem if you're not emotionally hung up on the money and having to step backwards financially like if you can really hunker down and solve that problem could be beautiful maybe some of the most powerful lessons that you'll learn in business on the flip side if you've didn't notice the changing in sales fast enough that there's just a tsunami of debt on the business or something and you can't get out from under it then closing that business down and starting something new with the fresh knowledge maybe that's the way to go but it really all comes down to what exactly it is you're trying to accomplish I know none of these are easy and I know especially if you have debt in the business or you took money from friends and family or something like that this can be incredibly incredibly stressful I'm not downplaying that but just make sure that you're looking at yourself on a long time Horizon that you're not judging yourself through the lens of a moment and that you know what your ultimate goal is and so if this business is a failure but it teaches you something that you needed in order to actually get where you're ultimately going and just to differentiate like for instance with impact Theory my mission is to pull people out of the Matrix to give them an empowering belief system I think the way to do that is through social content and traditional narrative content should I find that that isn't right or that I'm not good at it and that I'm not able to do what I want from a business perspective with those two paths and I have to Pivot at some point and and do it another way hey so be it I'll take my losses I'll figure it out I'll regroup and I'll move forward again but that all comes down to me knowing where I'm ultimately trying to go I'm not ultimately trying to build the studio that's a very fun way that I happen to think is the right way but it's very possible that over time I learned that that's not true and that I have to Pivot and do something different and it just so happens that I'm more passionate about the end result of pulling people out of the Matrix than I am the struggle of building a studio so building the studio is only worth me risking my fortune and all of that because I so believe in what I think it's going to let me do on a cultural subconscious level embedding an empowering belief system so if it didn't have that then I wouldn't be doing it so that's where that plays out so um none of those are bad like going back and taking a nine to five there's no reason why you shouldn't like if that feels awesome right now and you're like so tired carrying all the responsibility on your shoulders and it sounds awesome to go find a company that you really believe in they're really doing something you're passionate about and they're good people like go plug-in man that's amazing this is a know thyself moment and so just really take careful assessment of what your um what your identity is what you want it to be have compassion for yourself and really plan for long-term fulfillment don't worry about whether that business was a win or a loss on a long enough timeline it's just really not going to matter all right next up Ryan Jacobs hi Tom you're doing an amazing job with the show especially your communication skills thank you how did you learn to communicate so well were there any certain books or people that helped you learn how to use appropriate language and effectively communicating explanations or ideas to others um first yes I mean I've just read so many books it'd be impossible to list them out here but you can find my top 27 now I think that it is at impact theory.com head there and by the way today's episode is brought to you by the impact Theory logo shirt so head to shop.impacttheory.com right now to pick yours up and remind yourself through self-signaling of what this whole ecosystem and way of thinking is all about but yeah a lot a lot a lot of books like I said the 27 are there in order that I think people should read them beyond that just an insane amount of practice and being willing to hear feedback so I've been doing speech and debate since I was like 14 years old maybe 13 started in high school and just really threw myself into that and you're actually getting judged and critiqued and you're getting feedback and from the beginning I just had to take that feedback and then as I've gotten older as a leader really accepting your losses accepting things you really mess up allowing yourself to hear from employees how you could be doing it better just always lowering your defenses lowering your ego hearing the hard things being hungry to adjust and grow and get better all of that is super key so when you really want to know the truth when you really hunger to understand what you're doing wrong how you could be doing something better that's when you're really going to start to win so make sure that you actually want to know the truth because the thing that you have just forced into your life the thing that lights you on fire emotionally is actual Improvement when you're lit on fire by actual Improvement and all your dopamine and serotonin come rushing in as a result of actual Improvement suddenly a hunger to hear the truth even when it's harsh that's how you get better just practice practice practice all right Anonymous how do you go about removing people from your life who you feel are not in line with your principles and lifestyle how do you wean them out of your life without being a total [ __ ] about it so my thing is honestly I just let space happen naturally and space usually does happen pretty naturally like everything in your life if you want to build something new don't focus on tearing down the old old focus on building the new so rather than worrying about eliminating old friends from your ecosystem focus on building new friends into your ecosystem go spend time with those guys fill your life with that with awesome stuff and then it's up to you like exactly what you want to tell people Vanessa van Edwards says that she thinks people should actually break up with friends and actually have the conversation to sit down with people and just say look I think we're in different places in our lives and I don't think this friendship makes sense anymore that never hit me well and I think she is brilliant but this is one place where she and I agree just seems super awkward to me and unnecessary and maybe this is a super dude thing but the friendships in my life that have evolved into something else I've just let them evolve into something else the reason that I do that is I never know man we could evolve back in the same direction again and having made some big thing about breaking up with them just seems super weird to me so I like leaving it open and maybe we'll reconnect and plus hopefully at least in the people in my life the vast majority not all but the vast majority of people still have love for and so if we were to find Common Ground again it'd be awesome so yeah I just let time and space do its work all right time for one more question Daniel Breeze hey Tom did you hey Tom you mentioned that you finally figured out how to read while working out how so the key for me on this is there's only certain types of things that I can read while I'm working off I need to be taking a lot of notes I can't do it um so it needs to be something like uh when I'm reading for somebody coming on the show because I read in swarms so I'm not so worried about taking every little detail in so if I'm doing a set and the set's Really intense and I miss you know 10 or 15 seconds of the book not a big deal because I'm going to listen to eight videos or you know 15 videos on them talking about the book anyway so I'm going to get that information from a thousand different angles so it's basically anything that I can read podcast work for this where it's like it's a flowy conversation so as long as you're getting say 80 you're getting most of what you want to get versus what I'm really trying to read like raid Elio's principles I would never read at a first pass while working out it's just two and information dense and I want to take notes and you know I want to make sure that I'm really focused on it and really writing things down so it really comes down to things like biographies where it's not like I'm taking a lot of notes per page or when I'm prepping for somebody and thusly I'm reading in swarms or when I'm um listening to a podcast which is more conversational all right there you have it all right guys thank you so much for joining me for today's episode forgive me the beginning of this was really weird Cadence because I was coughing to death hopefully we were able to edit a lot of that out I'm at the tail end of a really weird sickness that's been sort of light emotionally hasn't been super destructive but come with some pretty heinous coughing so nonetheless thank you for joining me again I'm traveling uh this Friday which is why we had to do this now if there are any comic book fans that are interested in what we're doing it is [ __ ] heating up over here in the comic book side I'm super stoked we're about to sign our first writer very amped gonna be making an announcement about the first book in July dropping in in October it's all going to be good stuff revealing the celebrity that's involved all of it gotta be amazing uh so if you're going to be in Chicago at the Comic Con be sure to uh hit me with a DM ping me be great to connect all right guys if you haven't already be sure to subscribe and until next time my friends be legendary take care click on this episode here to learn how to become 50.2 times better at anything what is up everybody we're going to talk about how to hone in on the things that are going to make you way more powerful now the key is you cannot let yourself get sucked into bad habits that will be