Tom Bilyeu - Impact Theory: How To Develop Your Passion & Pursue Your Purpose

Full transcript: Tom Bilyeu on London Real

2:43 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Tom Bilyeu. You might know him as the host of Impact Theory, and even the guy that sold his company, Quest Nutrition, for over a billion dollars. But most people don’t know that Tom started off with very humble beginnings.

3:07 He actually used to live in London, and he was sleeping at his girlfriend’s parents’ house. He was broke, as a joke. He had no motivation, and most of his life was a failure, and that wasn’t until he started channeling something called the growth mindset. Most of us live in a fixed mindset, where we think our talents and our resources are fixed, as opposed to admitting that they can become greater in the future. And once Tom started doing this, everything started changing for him, and that’s what his show, Impact Theory, is all about.

3:37 It’s about channeling us all to get into that growth mindset. Much of this is what we try to do here at London Real as well. And so I love sitting down with Tom. He’s so honest about his failings in the past, and to see him now at the top of his game, it’s a great lesson to all of us. So sit back and enjoy this incredible episode with Tom Bilyeu.

3:58 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Tom Bilyeu, the American entrepreneur, broadcaster, CEO of Impact Theory, and co-founder of Quest Nutrition, the billion-dollar company known for its revolutionary culture and mission. Now you are the host of Impact Theory, a mindset-focused company featuring long-form conversations with guests like David Goggins, Simon Sinek, and Tim Ferriss, with more than 120 episodes that have been viewed over 100 million times.

4:23 Last year you published Me On Future, your first comic book series, created with the two-time Grammy-nominated Steve Aoki, and you plan to release books, movies, and television shows in the future. Tom, welcome back to London Real. Thank you, man. It’s good to be here, dude. It’s great to have you back.

4:38 First of all, what’s it like coming back to London? I know you lived here back in the day, at kind of Tom Bilyeu version 1.0. You know, that was so different than you are now, and I want to talk about that more later, but what’s it like coming back to the city? It’s amazing. My in-laws are here, and I love my in-laws to death, so this isn’t one of those where it’s like I’m being dragged.

4:59 So every time I come back here, I have a great time, and I think it’s really powerful, because I’m coming back to my mother-in-law’s house, where we always stay. So we go from this, like, Beverly Hills mansion, this thing, and, like, you know, this very sort of middle-class London house, and we’re up in the bedroom that my wife grew up in, you know, on the squeaky bed, and it’s just, it’s cool to be back, man. And there’s no substitute for being around people you love and feeling at home.

5:26 I think is far more intoxicating than, like, being in luxurious environments. So it’s pretty awesome. And you’d never been the luxury guy, have you? I don’t, like, I mean, I know you. I’ve heard you have a nice place that’s also your business, you know, in LA, but, like, you’re not the guy that needs to be in the jet or the Four Seasons Hotel or anything.

5:48 Why, we’re just talking about that. So even though you could be. Yeah, I grew up in Tacoma, Washington, right? And you know, as they should say, even if they don’t, you can take the boy out of Tacoma, but you can’t take the Tacoma out of the boy. So it’s like growing up like that, like, those are my roots.

6:03 I still like chicken nuggets and French fries. Like, that’s my jam. I don’t eat it. I want to, but yeah, so for me, I do like that stuff. Like, to me a house is like a piece of art that you can live in.

6:14 I’ve always had a fetish for, like, a big house. I just knew as a kid that’s what I’m aiming at. Some people want cars and all that stuff. I wanted a cool house. But it’s not about, like, the fancy stuff.

6:23 And so for me, we were talking a minute ago, I’m not worried about losing my money. Like, if I lost my money, I’d be fine. I’m worried about brain damage, and I’m worried about losing my wife. So I think there are some people that the money is part of their identity, and that very much is not true for me. So money did not in any way, shape, or form change how I felt about myself, which I think is good, because it means that’s why I’m not afraid of losing it.

6:49 But, you know, the person you have to become to get the wealth, that means something to me, and that’s why brain damage scares me so much, because that would take that away. Right? So your two greatest assets are your wife and your, in your mind. Yes. Because, you know, now in your life, you know that with your growth mindset you can create, and you can always be in a great place, and the money will come if that’s what you want, whereas back in the day, you maybe didn’t know that.

7:15 I didn’t, and I will, I’ll take slight exception to that and be interested to hear what your thoughts are. So when people say, you know, if you just want it, you’re going after it, it’s gonna happen. I will tell a very different story. So anybody listening, let me tell you this: the struggle is guaranteed. The success is not.

7:31 The money may never come. So every great success story has a certain element of timing. There’s a certain amount of luck that goes into it. Now, you have to be prepared to be able to capitalize on that. Like, the inhuman amount of work that we did to launch Quest, to launch Impact Theory, most people just are definitely not going to work that hard, that tenaciously, for that long, or get that good, and face our inadequacies day after day.

7:53 But at the same time, for it to be the kind of success that it was, there was timing involved. So it became readily apparent to me that I may never get rich, but I could definitely do something that I loved every day. And so what I know is, even if I lost my money, that through simple things like being grateful, being willing to build from the ground up again, putting in the work, doing something that’s meaningful, serving not just myself but other people, I can live a life that’s fulfilling.

8:21 And since that’s the only thing that really affects your neurochemistry, because I’m always telling people, look, the punchline of life is not wealth. It’s not fame. It’s not admiration. It’s how you feel about yourself when you’re by yourself. That doesn’t require wealth.

8:34 In fact, wealth can’t touch that. So now becoming a badass like that will make you feel good about yourself, and that’s something that nobody can take away. So it’s like my focus is all around that. I think making money is really hard, so it’s like I’m not fooling myself. I’m trying to build the next Disney, right?

8:49 But I know that the odds of me actually pulling that off are essentially zero. So it becomes a thing of love, the process. Right? Just keep loving it, no matter what. What do you say to people who make fun of people that say pursue your passion?

9:02 Well, I think it’s actually advice pointed in the right direction. So if you’d said, what do I think of people that say find your passion, I will say they mean very well, but they don’t understand what passion actually is. So I think, because a rare breed of individual develops a passion, they’re young, they then mistake it for, I found my passion. But that’s not really true. So I’ll walk you through my own.

9:29 So I loved movies as a kid, so that is what I call, you get that first glimmer of enjoyment. You’re interested in that thing. So I was interested in films, and then it became, my dad brought home a video camera, and that allowed me to engage with it. Now, engaging with the filmmaking process made me realize, well, I’m actually not interested in this. I’m fascinated by it, and the more I learned about it, the more I wanted to learn.

9:50 And so that led me to film school, and then in film school I began mastering my craft. The pursuit of mastery. When you realize that you can not only do something for yourself but you can influence the world, and through this filmmaking I could actually have an impact on other people, that becomes the real passion, because you’re developing the set of skills that means something to you, and it allows you to do something in the world that other people cannot do.

10:17 So it goes interest to fascination, through engagement, engagement to mastery through the learning process. And if at that point you like the way it makes you feel to do it and to impact the people the way that you’re impacting them, then that’s your passion. But passion is like this. It’s like love, if I may. It has to be reciprocated.

10:36 If it’s unrequited, and you’re doing something but the world doesn’t care about it, I don’t think it will ever really be a passion. It’s got to be something that gives you this positive feedback loop and something that ultimately helps other people. I think that that’s so innate to the human condition that, yes, if you’re just serving yourself, I don’t think it will ever be quite the optimistic, uplifting, self-continuing thing that it could otherwise be.

11:01 It makes me think of the Unabomber. So, do you know much about him? Ya know? Good amount. All right.

11:06 So I get stunned, but I know exactly, I know his core thesis, which was the reason he was the Unabomber, was he was trying to kill professors, because he believed there was a sweet spot in human knowledge where it was, you’d have to work really, really hard to be able to solve a given problem, but it was within the reach of the human mind, and he felt like if it were too easy, then you could never have, I don’t think he used the word fulfillment, but you’d never have that sense of accomplishment. And if it was too hard, he couldn’t do it. So there was like this sweet spot of problems, and he felt that the university systems were solving all of the problems in the sweet spot, so we wanted to bring the institutions down.

11:39 And I thought, actually, I really get that, but that’s like a dark passion, right? That’s somebody who’s coming from a fearful place, is not trying to serve people. He’s, I mean, one, he’s mentally unstable, so let’s start with that. But you get somebody who gets into a dark energy, and then it just becomes a total mess. So when you’re serving other people and you’re doing something that uplifts other people, but it’s with a skill set they had to work your ass off to get, and it’s a skill set that you love, and you love the acquisition of that skill set, then there’s, like, a, I hate these sort of weak words, but, like, there’s a light airiness to it that feels uplifting, and if you can get in that loop, then you’re good.

12:14 Now, when you’re at film school, when you thought of all the people you could help with your films, did you realize, okay, I’m giving back? Not the way that feels good, or, don’t think it was. You were young, and you thought, I’ll be famous and direct, this is cool, because it was more but, but there may have been an innate thing in there. Maybe, I don’t know. Yeah.

12:31 I mean, so I’ll give myself this. I loved the idea of telling stories that impacted a lot of people. I was not trying to change their life or uplift them the way that I am now. I was just trying to tell a rad story. But I remember saying to my fellow students, like, one of the first decisions that we have to make as filmmakers is, are we here to masturbate, or are we here to make love?

12:55 Because there was this whole thing about art films. I don’t give a about the audience. I just want to make a film that I love. I was like, man, movies cost a lot of money. Like, if you really want to make it a business, you’ve got to think about the audience.

13:08 You’ve got to make something that’s gonna resonate with people. And so that always put me in the mindset of not necessarily serving the art, but I want to give them something that they’re gonna love. I want to give them that emotional rollercoaster, which is ultimately what people go to the movies for, is to have their neurochemistry played with, the same reason people take drugs. Right? Like, you want your neurochemistry played with.

13:26 So I was at least aware enough to want that, but it was definitely about I want to get rich and famous. And yeah. Yeah. I do the same thing. Till I was 40, I was just in this kind of American mindset of money will make you happy, and this American Dream.

13:42 And, but at 40, I finally realized, as an engineer, that the money was not making me any happier, and I just ejected, after actually learning how to meditate, and it gave me a little bit of perspective on me. And that’s why I started doing this, because ultimately I think something deep down inside me craved the connection and craved doing something for the greater good. And yeah, but it’s both of those things, I think. Maybe in what selfish way, because I was going to disrupt if I didn’t get that.

14:08 So yeah, I just want to just say what you just said, in just a quote from your Wii U on the Rituals show, which you kind of just said, but I just want to make it very clear that everybody, you said fulfillment is a universal formula: work your ass off to get very good at something that you care deeply about, that allows you to not only serve yourself but also other people, that feeling, which will survive through moments of suffering, hardship, and loss, that will make you feel good about yourself when you are by yourself. I love that last part, because I haven’t heard anyone else say that, because it’s easy to feel good sometimes when you’re around people, but when you’re alone, when you’re alone, like you said, what we all want to do is look in the mirror and just say, today you were a bad… that was badass.

14:46 That’s the only reason I do this, just to have those moments, for that, that was badass, and then I can go to bed and just, for that little smile on my face. You just give me the chills. And then the next day you wake up, and you got to try to do it again, you know, in another way. And the service to others is something that just took me a long time to understand. Like, when I was a kid, I remember reading about the Kennedys, and they were always like giving back and, like, doing all this volunteer charity stuff, and it just didn’t even compute to me as a young man, but now it’s so obvious.

15:17 It’s also so immediate on how good it makes me feel, and how it seems to rack up all this karmic, you know, collateral. So what do your in-laws think of Tom when they watch this guy who was in London in, what, oh, you, oh, five or six or so? Earlier, so I lived here in 2002-2003. Okay, so they saw this guy pre-Quest, pre-mastering his body, pre-fixed mindset. I want to talk about that later.

15:47 And now you come back, and you’re just this weird prodigal son who, who knows what they may get you now. But, I mean, what do they say? I’m sure that Lisa’s mother has pulled you aside and said, Tom, we’re proud of you, or we always love you. Or, you know, I mean, what do they say? Because, because if anyone doesn’t see Tom post a picture sometimes of, you know, old, like, out of shape Tom, or Tom Quest Nutrition starting off, and, like I said, your eyes look different.

16:13 It’s almost like they’re the fixed mindset eyes. So anyways, tell me if I’m crazy, and what, what didn’t I say? So, well, first, I’ll tell you what my own mother says about me. So she said, because when I left home, she kicked me out, so I panicked and didn’t want to leave for college. None of my friends were leaving the state.

16:32 I was one of only two people in my graduating class to leave the state, and so I was like, mom, maybe I should just stay and go to the school everyone else is going to. She was like, absolutely not. You’re gonna go, you’re gonna chase your dream. And then I’m not joking, has spent every day since trying to get me to move back home. Quite so.

16:48 One day, after getting successful, I said, you know, this is hilarious, like, why did you kick me out? I wouldn’t have left if you hadn’t kicked me out. And she said, oh, I just always assumed you were going to fail. And I was like, whoa, you were my biggest cheerleader. And she was like, of course, like, I wanted you to win, but you were so lazy.

17:04 She was like, I just didn’t expect you to succeed. And then my best friend growing up recently told me, oh yeah, I just always assumed you were gonna marshmallow your way through life. And then when I went to propose, I had to go ask my father-in-law for his blessing first, and he said no. So he was like, how are you gonna take care of my daughter? And I said, sir, look, I know what you see is an undereducated kid who’s broke at the time.

17:29 I didn’t have a job, and you’re worried. I get that, but I’m telling you, I’m the most ambitious person you’ve ever met, and one day I’m gonna make your daughter rich. And that’s, like, hanging in the air. Right? Okay.

17:41 And were you the most ambitious at the time, or did you lean on it? Yeah, no, no, I really ran that. My ambition is crazy, and it’s just one thing that I don’t like, because I don’t feel like I earned it. I’ve always been ambitious. Okay, you didn’t know what to do with it, or where to go?

17:55 A hundred percent. And more terrifyingly, I really was lazy. And still, frankly, okay, so you can be ambitious and lazy at the same time? Yes. So here’s what I want people to understand.

18:04 There is a difference between ambition, which I have always had, and drive, which is actually going to help you make good on your ambition. So most people are what I call an empty dreamer. They have a big dream, they never do anything about it, they’re twenty years later and they’re talking, they’re still gonna do it, gonna do it, gonna do it. When you gonna do it? Ah, I’m working on it, I’m working on it.

18:21 They don’t ever actually buckle down and hold themselves accountable. So, insane. That’s my father-in-law, and telling my then-girlfriend, now wife, that I’m gonna make you rich one day. It began to be this, like, shame on me, and I used to refer to my wife as a witness to my crimes. And suddenly, not getting up and not going to work, so I would lay in bed four or five hours a day.

18:41 This is my mid-20s, so four or five hours a day, I’m laying in bed all day, every day, not getting out of bed, depressed. No, like, I mean, I, I always say I was sliding towards depression, but I wasn’t depressed. I was lazy. Okay. And lazy and fearful that I wasn’t good enough.

18:56 So my whole thing is, have you seen Amadeus, the movie? Yeah, actually, don’t remember. Watch, you know, I know of the… Oh, the, yeah, Amadeus. You’re thinking of Amadeus.

19:08 Yeah, you’re right, you’re right. Right, I’m gonna assist. Yeah, it’s about what’s-his-name, Mozart. So in, if there’s a character called Salieri, who’s like his rival, and Salieri has this one moment, we was having a soliloquy, and he’s basically talking to God, and he said, why did you make me just good enough to realize how much better Mozart is. And that was exactly how I felt.

19:30 I felt like I was smart enough to understand that other people were smarter, and that they would go on to be successful, and that I never would. And so between that and being lazy, I was crippled by fear, and then didn’t want to do anything about it anyway. So I would just lay in bed. But now I have this girlfriend who I’ve made promises to in my sort of aspirational moments, that I’m gonna make you rich. I’ve prophesized to my father-in-law, who still did not want me to marry his daughter.

19:54 I left his house saying, I understand you don’t want me to marry your daughter, but I am going to propose. Full disclosure, I did propose. It ends up becoming this super awkward thing. Yeah. My father-in-law has always been kind to me.

20:05 He just didn’t want us to get married. So anyway, flash-forward, and I finally realized, oh, there’s a difference between dreaming about building a company and getting rich and all that, and actually having the skill set to do it. And through this whole time I’m reading about the brain, and that becomes my big breakthrough. I’m realizing, oh, this called brain plasticity is real. You can learn new things.

20:28 And once I had that piece of information, then it was like, dude, it’s just on you. The whole Salieri speech, let go of it. You might be too dumb right now, but you can learn. And so, are you, like, one of my favorite questions is from Seth Godin. He says, when people come and say to me, oh, I’m a terrible writer, I say, show me all your bad writing.

20:45 And he was like, they can never produce any, because they’re so crippled by the fact that they’re not yet good that they don’t do the things they would need to do to get good. And so my life became about getting good, and I just accepted that what we now call the growth mindset, which Carol Dweck had not written, her seminal book, yet. I’m very sad to say that’s why I, des, cobble this all together, but what we would now call the growth mindset, I was like, okay, I really can’t change, and I can learn, and so I have to go about it.

21:11 So I obsessively read about the brain, because I wanted to understand the mechanisms. How does this work? And so in learning, the less that we were like, game-changers. Do you remember? Yes.

21:20 Ramachandran, phantoms in the brain. That was huge. Anything by VS Ramachandran. You were always a reader? I was not.

21:26 So in high school it took me a year to read a single book, and I would read about a page a day. I’m still to this day a tragically slow reader, which is why I’m so obsessed with Audible. Triple strike, apparently. Yes, you can really do triple speed. Little speed.

21:40 I can listen so fast now. You have to train your way to it. I couldn’t do that in the beginning, right? But I can listen and assimilate information very quickly, and I hold myself accountable to actually using it. So when I encounter something that I like, I don’t use it a week from then.

21:52 Use it that day. So I begin to cement the parts of the book that are truly usable right away. So in doing all of that, I began to change. And so, to actually answer the question you asked, now my mother-in-law, who’s always been ridiculously supportive, like my own mother, just, like, either was just enamored with how good I was to her daughter. So my wife and I’ve always had a very good relationship, very healthy, so she could see that, and I think that’s really all that mattered to her, but she just always told me, you know, yeah, you’re gonna make it.

22:26 And I remember I wrote this when I was living at their house after I started feeling the shame. I started working, which at that time was to write. So I wrote a screenplay in London. When Jelena was in London, I mean, me give her the screenplay, and she signed it, and she said, one day this is going to be worth something. So that was, like, I had nothing but love, encouragement coming from her.

22:44 And then for my father-in-law, who’s a very successful businessman who clawed his way from beyond nothing to running one of the largest shipping companies in the world, it was, it is an extraordinary transformation that put an inordinate amount of pressure on me, but also allowed me to begin watching an entrepreneur and being like, huh, what is this? And he would give me advice, and I would, of course, ignore it. And I really can’t stress that enough. People see me, the after picture, and don’t realize I’m not being humble when I say that I acted in ways that were stupid.

23:15 Like, there’s no two ways about it. You have this guy who went from a tiny-ass village in Cyprus to running this huge shipping company, living in London, and he’s saying, hey, let me tell you how I did it, and you’re like, yeah, yeah, and then you just ignore it. I literally apologized to him, because probably about three years after he gave me the advice, I was building my first company, and I was like, oh my god, he’s right. So I did, you ignore it, but you didn’t think you could learn something from him, or you didn’t care about business?

23:39 The real answer is so pedestrian, but I will give it to you. So I was an employee at the time that he gave me the advice, and he said, if you want to climb up in a company, anytime you go into a meeting, you need to know more about the subject than anyone else. If you don’t see the echo of that in the way that I interview people, then you’re missing the through line, because that became my whole interview style. It was, oh, I, people told me I could never become a podcaster, and I was like, well, there’s always room for the best.

24:05 So where’s the gap? People don’t know anything about their guest. I’m gonna dive so deeply into these people that, I used that, my goal was to get them to say something along the lines of, you know more about me than my own mother, which I got people to say many times, who said you couldn’t be a podcaster. I won’t tell you, they’re on my list, you know who they are. Okay.

24:24 This I assure you, you may have even had them on your show. Okay. He’s a great human being, but, and it wasn’t the only one, but he’s, and did that help you to a certain extent, putting him on the list, or the challenge? Yeah. Where the, did the doubt, does doubt fuel you?

24:40 Yeah, I’ll finish this. I rented out, so with my father-in-law reading about the brain, I’m realizing I can’t run. So I really was stupid and making stupid decisions, but I got to the point where I could acknowledge that, because it was no longer an acknowledgement of the person I am. It’s just where I was, and that I could go somewhere else. So that became easy to start accepting my limitations and my mistakes and start moving forward.

25:06 So that’s a powerful realization in itself, one that I would say most people watching and listening probably can never get to, that they are not stupid, or they are not incapable, but where they are now is, it’s not static, and they can be wherever they want to be if they adopt the right mindset. But a lot of people are just like, I’m, I’m no good. I’ll never be good. I’ll always be lazy. Yeah, that’s, that is traumatic part of life number one.

25:30 Traumatic part of life number two: they don’t want it badly enough. So even if they believe it, they will then start going, yeah, but I’m not getting anywhere, and I’ll add to them and be like, yeah, she’s not working hard enough. So it’s like, people just have to accept, if you’re not getting the results you want, you’ve not learned the skills that you need to learn. It’s just that simple. And why don’t they want it bad enough?

25:49 Because it’s not really something that’s important to their core? Or do you think some people will go throughout this life and never want, never find anything to want bad? It’s both, because you’re never going to find deep desire. All of this stuff has to be architected. So people mistake the human animal for having these things hiding inside of them, and I will just give you the punchline: they do not.

26:09 So no one is born with a passion, right? You would imagine me saying that Steve Jobs was born with a passion for technology. What if he had been born seven thousand years ago, fifty thousand years ago? Would he still have that? Would he be dreaming of the iPhone?

26:26 No, of course not. So where you grow up is going to influence your outcomes far more than who you are. Like, this is terrifying. The greatest predictor of your future success is the zip code in which you grow up. It’s not, sure, IQ.

26:40 The Economist did a whole thing on, to terrify people. Yeah. So what is, and yeah, you have a whole thing that you talk about that, right? Is it, code? It’s all about, like, what are you going to build?

26:49 Like, at what point do you look inside the brain and go, oh, this is how it works, and so I’m going to build desire? So building desire is one of the most misunderstood things in the world. It’s like when people say, oh my god, I’m in love with this woman, and they think it’s gonna be like that forever, and when that wanes, and they break up, and they keep chasing that initial high without recognizing that’s just not the truth of human neural chemistry.

27:10 It’s never gonna be like that. So it starts, you know, with that just all-consuming drug-like quality, and then it smoothes out into something that’s long-term pair-bonding, and you have to know how to ride those waves. So desire is very much the same. You have to learn how to fan those flames. You have to take an ember of interest and turn it into a raging inferno.

27:26 So when I was at Quest, my raging inferno was to end metabolic disease. Well, now I’m doing Impact Theory, and I’m not thinking about metabolic disease anymore. I’m thinking about the you know, poor mindset, and I’m trying to save people from their zip code. That’s an easy way to think of it, and so I fanned those flames, which was something I wasn’t even thinking about when I was at Quest. So it’s like you can very much pivot.

27:49 You can decide, but it has to be something real. Like, these are real things I really did care about, ending metabolic disease, because of my family. I really do care about the zip code being a predictor, because of people I’ve loved in my life who have succumbed to that, my inability to help them up to this point. So it’s like you take that initial spark, and then you cultivate it, like you would have fire, but you found it and you cultivated it. It didn’t just, it wasn’t something that was always going to be expressed.

28:14 If you could find the right place. Definitely not. And look, if I end up realizing that this is a waste of time, or whatever, I could switch to something else, because I, I understand the human as a biological creature, and this is where I just lost half your audience, because there are some people, they just, they, they can’t get behind that. But to me, life is going to be a grand struggle until you understand that you are a chemical processing plant. And once you understand how to take control of the chemical processing, then you can do virtually anything you want.

28:43 You can create desire. You can stay focused. You can improve. But you really do have to put yourself in a position to adapt or die. Your body has to believe those are my two options: adapt or die, and then it really will adapt.

28:55 And so I put myself under that insane amount of pressure to change my body, to change my mind, and then that has, I’ve reaped dividends as a reward. And so once you got that whole brain science in your head, you were like, okay, now I can treat this as a machine, as a biochemical machine, and I’m going to start playing with it and see what I can do, and started having successes in these different parts of your life, and you became extremely focused at school, and then extremely focused on changing your body, and, like, dieting, slash starving yourself, but you also showed you could do it with the right mindset. And so you started seeing, okay, I can do this, I can do this, and I can do this, and that brought you success at Quest, to a certain extent.

29:35 Very much so. So Quest is, so we used to joke that Quest was an overnight success, 12 years in the making. So it was all the stuff that we did behind the scenes. Like, first of all, the guys who ended up becoming my partners in Quest first just hired me as a copywriter at their technology company, but they used to say to everybody, look, we’re looking for partners. We settle for employees.

29:54 So if you want to work your way up in the company, you can even earn your way into ownership. You just have to become the right person for the job. You’re gonna have to, you know, essentially break yourself in half. And like, if you see the problems that we face and you help us overcome those problems, why wouldn’t we make you a partner? Because you’re making the pie bigger.

30:09 They told you, stop thinking like an employee, start thinking like an investor, the sort of thing, like an owner. Like an owner, yeah. And then you can have any job you want. You just have to prepare yourself for that job. You have to have the skills, right?

30:21 So I ended up becoming the chief marketing officer. If you want to be the chief marketing officer, you better be the one that knows more about marketing than anyone else. Like, if we were gonna do an open call for this, you better be the right person for the role. And so I took them seriously, and I watched so many people bounce. They just either they couldn’t keep up.

30:39 It was a very intense environment, so a lot of people just couldn’t handle the intensity, and then long working hours, intense people. Intense people, maybe a better way to say it. Oh no, it’s a problem. Yeah, like your boy out there with the, the documentary, this is like challenge. Yes.

30:55 Yeah, it’s okay if an Ironman not a little hazing, hardcore. Let’s go. Quite the right kid. It’s like, all right, we’re here to do this, and either you’re in or you’re out, you know what I mean? It was just intense, and it was the perfect thing for me.

31:08 So what I needed to learn, I was very soft as a kid. Nobody told me to toughen up. I was a kid, they would get hit in the soccer, hit in the leg with a soccer ball, and start crying and walk off the pitch. Yeah, and quit. Uh, yes.

31:18 That would, that was me all day long. And so now I was in an environment where I was like, yo, nobody here respects that. So, like, you better get it together, and that was exactly what I needed, which is why, like, I have a lot of pushback with where culture’s going right now, because it doesn’t serve, especially young men, just doesn’t serve to allow people to not, you got a tough, in the up, that’s just the truth of it. Right? If you want to succeed, like, you know, have a moral obligation to be as soft as you want, but I’m just, I’m here to tell you, if you have a vision of your life and where you want to go, it’s gonna be hard.

31:48 Think about running an Ironman. You have to toughen up. Like, you literally have to change your body to be capable of doing those things, and so the same is true of the mind. You have to train your mind to be capable of sticking through working crazy long hours, learning things you don’t want to do. Like, I will tell you right now, the thing that kills entrepreneurs faster than failure is boredom.

32:07 People just can’t do boring. They can’t do it for extended amount of time. They can’t, like, have a vision of who they want to become and fight through all the that they’re gonna have to, to get there. You’re just gonna have to. So it’s like, that’s why so few people end up succeeding.

32:20 It’s just the level of tenacity you have to show is insane, to just grind it out every day with a singular vision. Yeah, yeah. So learning how to believe in what you’re doing, learning how to connect to the mission, learning how to be passionate about what you’re doing. So, back to your thing, what do I think of people that say pursue your passion? You damn right.

32:38 Otherwise you’re gonna run out of energy. You just have to realize you cultivate the passion before you can pursue it. And I love your expression, the struggle is guaranteed. So you might as well. You’re gonna be struggling no matter what, so you might as well do something that you’re going to enjoy, or there’s something that sits core into your being and what you love.

32:57 Yeah. Um, technique is a word that you like to use, and you just mentioned a skill set. So why don’t we define that, because this is kind of your entire philosophy of life? I think, because the way you talk about this word, it involves not only skills and practical things but also philosophy, purpose, and everything. So, yeah.

33:18 So, techne is an ancient Greek word that I have sort of twisted to my own means, but here’s my definition. It is a set of skills that matter to you that you work extraordinarily hard to build, so they are unique to you, that allow you to serve not only yourself but other people. So, we are a social creature. So I always want people to understand that there are certain things in you hardwired into you that, if you ignore, you ignore at your peril, and if you leverage, can really propel you forward, such as helping other people.

33:49 It feels good. You were saying, it’s so immediate when you do something nice for somebody. You feel that, right then. Man, it feels awesome. And like when you see people, like, really, like, fighting, and just, like, think of Hurricane Katrina, to use a nice American disaster, where people flew from all over to come and help and save people.

34:12 And it’s like, dude, people working more than 24 hours without stopping. I mean, it’s just like working until they collapse. It’s crazy, but when you feel like you can help another human being alleviate suffering, like, people go all-in, man. That is innate to us. We want to do that.

34:27 We’re gonna get this neural feedback loop of, this feels awesome, I feel good, I feel urgent. See, like, I, I cannot stop myself. I have to help. And that’s so powerful, and if you can make your business about that, now all of a sudden, like, the thing for me, I hate working with my hands. I hate it.

34:45 I hate grease on my hands, all that. And at Quest, that was the first of the three partners to go full-time. So the other two continued running the software company, so we had, like, the fallback in case something went wrong. And I started Quest, and I was having to repair equipment, which is something I absolutely hate. So when I was under equipment, and I’m talking, like, you’re working, it’s 2:00 a.m. on a Friday, and your knuckles are bleeding from, like, trying to fix something, and you’re thinking, what am I doing?

35:09 I kept saying, I’m here to save my mom and my sister, because they were morbidly obese, and I knew if I couldn’t give them food that they could choose based on taste that happened to be good for them, that I would literally lose them too soon. And so I was like, that’s what this is about. That’s why I’m here. I’m not here to get rich. I am here to save my mom and my sister.

35:26 Was that real, or was that the story you had to tell yourself to keep going. Both, like, if you don’t understand that, you have to create a story. You’ve almost got to mythologize it. That’s how you turn it into this, right? You know, inferno of desire.

35:37 It’s like, my mom, my sister didn’t ask me to save them. It’s not like they were an imminent peril, but it was, I chose to focus on that, because I remember thinking, all right, I’ve got one partner who’s really, really knowledgeable about nutrition, and I was like, if we’re gonna keep working together, we should be doing something around that. He wants to do something around that. How can I connect to that? Well, I can connect to that, because if we’re solving metabolic syndrome, then my family is like primary candidate number one.

36:03 So I’m just gonna think about them. And there’s a quote, it’s attributed to Mother Teresa, but I’m not sure she actually said it, but I’ll give it to her anyway, and that is, no one will act for the many, but people will act for the one. So basically, stop thinking about solving the world’s problems. Find somebody you know and love that has that problem, and solve it for them. And so I was like, cool, my mom and my sister, that’s all I’m gonna think about.

36:24 It’s people I see all the time. I love them dearly. I really don’t want to lose them, so there’s nothing that I have to fake. And then I just associate it to any metabolic disease. If I can help them, the knock-on effect does, that’ll help hundreds of millions, maybe a billion people.

36:37 So, but when I’m under the machine and my knuckles are bleeding, I was definitely thinking of them, and I had the neurochemical rule. Okay, and just quickly, aside on the machine: is there an upside to doing work that you absolutely hate? Or do you think you could have skipped that? Or does that do something, like, callous the brain? The brain is our good friend, David, if you know how to frame it.

36:55 For sure, and it would be exactly that. It’s become a super powerful story, and I was aware of that at the time. I thought, hey, you’re gonna get to tell the story that at 2:00 a.m. on a Friday, which is a real story, that you did this and you stuck through it and you won, because I was afraid we were gonna lose the product, which, back then, we could not afford. And if I couldn’t fix the wrapping machine, we were gonna lose the product. So I’m like, dude, get through this.

37:16 You’ve got this. Don’t back down, not for anything. Like, you can figure this out. And so understanding the power of self-narrative, and that I would get that cool thing, knowing that I was fighting for my mom and my sister, like getting the whole big story and telling myself over and over and over what I was doing. You hype yourself up.

37:33 I mean, you state shift, right? So you go from being pissed that you’re there at 2:00 a.m. on a Friday and your knuckles hurt, all right, I’m a stud, I will see this through, and it just changes your entire frame of reference. So it’s both real and manufactured. I can really feel you there on that night, and I used to work on my car like late at night, where I couldn’t see anything, and my fingers are freezing. And yeah, the thing about it, it’s a little bit different than what we do nowadays.

37:57 Like, if you don’t get that machine working, the company is like, it’s right, like, you got to get it working or you’re done. And whether that ball bearing is there, and your partner’s looking at you, and you make a break, the company, I mean, that’s real. Yeah, very real. When you’re in a physical product business, it’s also fun, man. Like, there is something, one, so going back to your notion of, is it a gift, have people doubt you?

38:21 It is a gift to have people doubt you, if you know how to handle it, if you know how to frame it. So I keep a list of all the people who have doubted me, and I think of them in my weakest moments. All the things that I want to do that are beautiful will not come to my aid, but thinking about the people that have doubted me, and knowing they want me to fail, that in those very short, acute moments, I want to be very clear, I don’t spend a lot of time there, but in these very short, acute moments, it is incredibly powerful to leverage the fact that somebody doubts you.

38:53 So the one thing that I wish all entrepreneurs could have would be doubt, and to have your house on the line, because when your house is on the line, all the fat fades away, and it’s like, I’m not trying to fix this machine because I really want to, or the story I want to tell myself. I’m not losing my house. And so I came to work every day like this was do or die, and most people can’t play like that. Now the real question is, can I play like that now that I’m wealthy?

39:20 That to me is interesting. Now I’ve never worked harder ever in my life. That I’m working right now, really, 1,000%. Even a question, what, never, you were working on every month. I was not being lazy in any way, shape, or form.

39:34 I was killing myself. A question, okay, but I’ve never worked harder, partly because you get better at working harder as you go, right? So you just, you get tougher, you get stronger, and so you’re capable of more. So now it’s like, I, I used to work a lot back then, but I literally now I wake up usually around 3 to 4 a.m., and then I work until I go to bed, at, I go to bed at 9:00. So like, let’s say I stopped working at 8:55 to brush my teeth, and you’re going the whole way, and you know exactly how to get the most out of every hour.

40:06 So when you look in the mirror, you’re like, yeah, I just worked all day. Sure. And there you go, and then you see the results on the back of it. Okay, did we cover the technique definition? Did we get that?

40:16 That’s my whole definition. Yeah. And so, get that skill set. That’s what, get that skill set, something that matters to you, and then that will see you through very, very difficult times. For sure.

40:27 Okay, because it’s about becoming someone. Biggest lessons from Quest, you know, when you look back, the three biggest things that you learned from Quest? That’s interesting. Number one, money certainly is not going to change how you feel about yourself. So that’s very powerful.

40:42 And it’s, they say a fool never learns, a smart man learns from his mistakes, and a wise man learns from the mistakes of others. I’ve been a fool many times, and it seems like I’m sort of trying not to figure things out. I’ve been smart a fair amount of time. I’ve rarely been wise. One thing I wish I could have been wise about is chasing money.

41:00 So I chased money for almost ten years, just all-out, every day. That’s what I said, I’m here to get rich, to make good on the promise that I made to my wife and her father-in-law, or to my father-in-law, and it was soul-destroying. This was the software company with your Quest partners, before, before the nutrition company, correct? And you even walked away from that at one point, because you’re like, I don’t like this, this isn’t making me happy. Yep.

41:19 All right, so you luckily did all that hard work on yourself, so when the money did come, yeah, you were actually well positioned. The crazy thing is, and I think a lot of people, especially today, they don’t seem to understand how wealth is typically accumulated. So it’s not like you’re making, I mean, maybe some people do this, but you’re not making 3 million dollars a year, 5 million dollars a year, and it just stacks up. You’re building a company, and the company is accruing equity, because the value is going up, and you own shares in it, but you don’t actually have money until you sell some of those shares.

41:47 So that’s what it was like for me. I was, on paper, I was worth hundreds of millions of dollars, but I was still living sort of a normal middle-class life and had no cash flow. Yeah, you couldn’t do anything in any nice, you know. Look, a few years into Quest, we were taking good salaries, so nobody should cry for me, but it was sort of normal upper-middle class. Was not wealthy.

42:07 I did not live in a mansion. It was just like a house, and then we took a small investment, but when our valuation was over a billion dollars, you can imagine, even at a small percentage, it’s a huge amount of, like, capital. Yeah. So I literally, I’m holding my phone, hitting refresh on my banking app until, because they said the money’s been wired, and so I go from normal banking account to, in one refresh, crazy commas and zeros, at most. And it was fun, don’t get me wrong, but all of a sudden you go, huh, that’s interesting.

42:36 I do not feel any differently. All of the insecurities I had are still there, and I already felt good about myself when I was by myself, because I had to work so hard to get here, and to face my inadequacies daily, to be humbled daily, to realize how dumb you can be, daily. So I never, I, in this whole process I did not come to think a lot about Tom. I came to think a lot about the human animal, and realizing, oh my god, we all have the ability to change.

43:03 And if people really knew who I was before, because they have a hard time believing it when they see me now. Yeah. But I’m like, go ask my mom, who was surprised that I succeeded. Ask my father-in-law, who did not want me to marry his daughter. Ask my best friend.

43:16 All the people who knew me the most were like, we did not expect you to be successful. My mom recently told me that when I told her I was going to get rich, that her and my aunts and uncles used to laugh at me behind my back, because they were like, bless this kid, he’s, you know, just a dreamer, but he’s never actually going to get rich. So when you realize, no, no, like, there is a process to go from hopelessly average to accomplishing something really extraordinary, and that any human who meets what I call minimum requirements, unfortunately, there are minimum requirements, but if you’re watching this show, I promise you meet minimum requirements.

43:51 So if you do that and then you put in the work, you can get the result, and I’ll say that the result is fulfillment. You’re not necessarily ever going to achieve wealth, but you can achieve deep fulfillment. Do amazing things, serve yourself, serve other people, like you can do some really, really incredible stuff. Okay, sure. That you could say you can get, but not necessarily be successful, and monetarily successful.

44:12 That I think is far more open to people than they think. I just, yeah, one, I, going back to my original line of what I was talking about, is I don’t want people focused on the money, because the money’s not gonna change how you feel. But if you focus on the fulfillment of techne, building up this rad skill set that’s letting you serve yourself and other people, and then marry it to business savvy, your odds of becoming financially successful skyrocket.

44:34 So that’s where I hope people get their heads around that. Fulfillment really is the punchline, but if you want to express that in a way that generates wealth for yourself, it is very, very real. That is a very real possibility. Imagine if you hadn’t spent those ten years, pre-Quest, grinding it out at the software company. I mean, imagine if, you know, Quest had been the first company, the first time, you, about those guys, in eighteen months later you had a big valuation.

44:59 Impact three wouldn’t exist, would it? Impact everyone. Eighteen, oh, and I probably wouldn’t have gotten wealthy myself, because that would have been their company, right? But we built awareness, as very lopsided, by the time we left. I had a very small percentage of ownership, but we started Quest as three equal partners.

45:16 Thanks. So that became just a whole different game. Okay, other lessons from Quest, when you kind of look back? Culture doesn’t build itself, man. Culture does not build itself.

45:25 That won’t happen by accident. Like, I realized you were only as good as what you write down. Because in the beginning, we were small. People could see how hard I worked, and they were there with me, and it’s like, you can’t make a withdrawal if you haven’t made deposits. And so that relationship that I had with the guys that were on the line with me, they saw, like, not only does Tom outwork everybody, but he does it with a smile, and he’s trying to uplift everybody, and he’s making this a better place to work.

45:49 He holds us to a crazy high standard, but in a way that’s very nurturing. And so I’m one guy, grown man, come to me, and he just burst into tears. This is, like, we had ex-drug dealers, gang members, guys with teardrop tattoos. So when a guy like that comes in your office and bursts into tears and he said, look, man, you care more about my future than my own mother. And I was like, because we made them a promise.

46:13 I said, look, this is Quest University. Making the protein bars is just your tuition. I’ll teach you anything you want to know. I’ll teach you how to build a business. I’ll teach you how to build a rival nutrition company, whatever it takes to get you to understand I want to help you.

46:25 And that was very powerful. So we had these amazing people, but then we were growing so fast, to fifty-seven thousand percent in the first three years in manufacturing. So that’s thousands of employees. That’s going from, you know, there’s me plus 13 people, every day, and it’s like, you know, military battalion, and we’re all tight, and we’re like fighting together, and it’s amazing. We have all this trust.

46:49 I remember one day bringing my dad to the facility to show him around. They wouldn’t let me in, because they didn’t know who I was, and I was like, whoa, that’s Gail. Dude, that’s scale fast. So I realized, okay, this is actually a problem, and people tried to warn me. You’re growing too fast, you’re gonna break your culture, and I just couldn’t see it.

47:08 I was too close to it. I’d never done it before. And so then realizing, okay, wait a second, you really are only as good as what you write down, and then reading Ray Dalio’s book, Principles, and realizing you can make a demand that thousands of people are radically transparent with each other, and that if you have a criticism, you’re obligated to say it. And so the backbone of everything we’re doing in Impact Theory is just radically different. Like, learning my lessons, trying to implement them right away, from the jump.

47:32 And that came from Quest, and putting together that was 25 company values, and, you know, building a fairly large company based around the values and transferring it from 13 people up to thousands. Yep. Okay, which, yeah, usually most Silicon Valley companies fail at, Zappos, right? If you read Tony Hsieh’s book, like, that’s how his first company failed. You know, they went from 30 to 300, and he looked around, said, I don’t know any of these people, and the culture went to, and then the company went to, on the back of it.

47:58 Or any other lessons? Better love what you do, that there is absolutely no difference between doing something good for other people and generating revenue. Like, though you don’t have to make a choice. In fact, we’re living through an era where adding value is the most potent marketing campaign you can ever run. Like, the actual marketing itself, so I think of Impact Theory, the show, as marketing.

48:24 That is me, like, the show is free. I’m just trying to get it out there so that people know who we are, they know who I am, they know what I’m about, so that when I launch a film or TV or a book or whatever, that they’re there and they pick it up. So that was the whole thing in the beginning: what can I do that’s marketing, but that’s also gonna change people’s lives? And so, when you have a business, we have about 4 million people in our ecosystem now. When you have a business where you have 4 million followers, that will come up to you.

48:53 I’ve had guys grab me in the middle of the hallway in Vegas. Had a 51-year-old guy in Vegas grab me by the arm, started crying, and he said, dude, I was going through a divorce, I lost my business, you’re the only thing that got me through. And it’s like, damn, man, like, that’s from my marketing. So when your marketing is touching people’s lives like that, it’s just, it’s incredible. So live in this, like, insane time, where, like, the whole Gordon Gekko, age of old greed is good, and all of that stuff, like, you can get rich doing that, man, but it’s not sustainable.

49:24 Like, it’s going to self-destruct, either emotionally for you, or ultimately your business is going to get found out. People gonna realize you’re predatory, they’re not gonna want to use your business, and so now when you can just do rad for people, and that builds a marketplace for your products, like, that’s pretty extraordinary. Yeah, it’s a brand new economy. And I spent time in that Wall Street economy, where it was all about you getting paid. There, I tell people, the place I worked within the city, it’s like a kilometer from here.

49:51 It’s like, you know, all day long I would try to rip off my clients, my, rip off my colleagues, they would try to rip off me. It was just like everybody was out for themselves, and in the short term you can rack up lots of money, but in the long run it’s not sustainable, personally, as a company, it isn’t anything. It’s, it, and I agree, it doesn’t work, and today is all about adding value, and it’s amazing how so many people can do it, and the winners out there are doing it better than anyone else.

50:18 Reactions, both positive and negative, from friends and family when you became rich? My family has been universally amazing, so we obviously made sure that it was amazing for them as well, so that didn’t hurt. That’s super cool. A conscious decision? Oh yes, very aggressively.

50:39 Okay, my wife and I don’t have kids, so you know, sharing that with the people that we love and care for most has been one of the great joys. Cutting your mom a big check is awesome. It’s another thing that I hope for every entrepreneur out there, you know, like that, the you know, Elvis wanting to buy his mom a pink Cadillac. It’s like there’s something about it. You know, these people, like, broke themselves in half to raise you, and my parents were so good to me, so being able to do that was really, really extraordinary.

51:08 We, we welcome our family, so they travel to us, and our house is big enough that everybody can stay there for family vacations and stuff, and so that’s a lot of fun. So they’ve been absolutely wonderful. You get people that heat you up for cash a lot, so that can get a little awkward. How do you deal with that? We just have a blanket policy that, you know, we don’t lend money to people.

51:33 That I mean, we don’t lend money. We do business. You know, we might buy equity in a company or something like that. We don’t lend money, and that causes, you know, some people may be a little bit of discomfort, but otherwise, dude, it’s people come hot and fast. I think for money.

51:49 Yeah, I can imagine. Right. Okay, all right. So that’s good. Let’s get into Impact.

51:55 Three years in now. What has surprised you the most, good and bad, about doing what you’ve been doing the last three years, being in this business, media business? Now you’re in the media business. Before you weren’t. Tell me because last time you were here was 2 years ago.

52:10 You’re like, a year in. Yeah, now you know, your cut your seasons. What is surprised me, bad, is that Hollywood has a reputation for a reason. So there is a certain level of that. Like, just has served them well, I guess.

52:28 People tend to use the strategies and techniques that work, right? So I’ve got to imagine there’s some benefit to it, but I am. I’ve come into Hollywood and said, look, I’m gonna earn my reputation in exactly one way. You’re always gonna know exactly what I think and exactly where I stand. And so I just tell people I’m not interested in that.

52:46 So people come again all the time, like, hey, fun, this, fun that, and it’s like, if I’m in, I’m in, cool, let’s do it. And if I’m out, I’m like, look, thank you so much for thinking of me, I’m super honored. This isn’t for us. This is why I think you might have a problem here, there, whatever. And I just, I tell them, and I said, the reason I’m being honest with you now is I hope later that we do find a project that works, and you know you can trust exactly what I say.

53:08 And I don’t, and also, dude, I’ve just had enough success I don’t have to deal with anymore. All right, so at some point you get to the place where it’s like, I’m only willing to do business the way that I’m willing to do business. Right? And so honesty’s like a thing to me. Being forthright is the thing.

53:22 I want to trust people. I want to like the people that I work with. So that’s a big thing for me. So it’s hilarious when you meet people who are like, just slippery and slimy, and you’re like, am I really not supposed to understand, like, what’s happening here? It’s ridiculous.

53:37 So there is a lot of that. So I, I would say that Hollywood has earned its reputation. Now, having said that, there are amazing people in the industry that are straight shooters, and so I’m just trying to collect all of those people, and so that’s extraordinary. Why do you think Hollywood became that way, because it obviously became that way for a reason? I will give you my best guess.

53:57 Okay. Like, these artists are very sensitive, and if you don’t lie, because you haven’t established a relationship with them, you haven’t helped them solidify their own self-esteem outside of the outside world telling them that they’re good. It is a delicate place to be, to be a writer, to be a director, to be an actor. You are putting yourself out there naked, literally, and the whole system is built around exploiting talent. So if you want to exploit talent, you can’t be fired, because they’re the real juice.

54:23 So it’s like, how do you not get fired by somebody who is, you know, who has a fragility that I don’t mean as an insult. It’s like, that’s hard to write something naked. I know, I’m a writer, so it’s like, to write it and put it out there, you have to have done so much work to not be tied up in that, like, your identity, to where you give it to somebody and they say, and they’re right, this is garbage. That hurts, man. And so when you’ve got a group of people that have not done that work, and you need them to make your living, so all the infrastructure around the talent is, they have to be manipulative.

55:01 Is the truth, because it’s not even just being a yes man. It’s like positioning them where you need them, for their sake, for your sake, you know, for the film’s sake, the producer’s sake. It’s like you’ve got to get them into the right position to be where you want them to be. So deceit becomes the order of the day. And, like, God, at the risk of speaking on Jocko Willink’s behalf, I do not want to make him look back.

55:23 That man is extraordinary, but I recently had him on Impact, and I asked him, like, basically, what’s the difference between manipulation and leadership? And he’s basically said context. Like, if your leadership is where you want what’s right for them, you want what’s right for the team, and you want what’s right for the mission, but you’re going to do whatever you need to do to position them to succeed in that. And he said, manipulation uses the exact same techniques, but it’s for your own selfish ends.

55:51 He said that’s the only difference. So it’s like, ah, the techniques themselves make me deeply uncomfortable. So while I may learn the powerful lesson that I have to position people, I am trying to learn the Ray Dalio lesson, which is you only have to do that if you haven’t built a relationship on candor. So that’s the experiment that I’m running now. I’m running the, I tell people exactly what I think, even when it’s super hard.

56:19 So when I tell you something and you want to believe it but you’re not sure if you should, you know, if Tom said it, I can believe it, because he tells me the hard things. So that’s my hope. But not Ray himself says 30% of the world cannot adapt to it. They just can’t, like, being told all the time exactly what you think. They just can’t hang.

56:38 Ya, Jocko talks about flanking people when, you know, when you take extreme ownership, you’re going to start affecting people to have power over you, like your boss, and he’s always like, flank them, so find a way, you know, of going around them, like in the battlefield. So it’s a good point. So I mean, I guess from the outside, maybe Hollywood is doing the right thing if they get the right result for the right reasons. But yeah, and maybe they’re being manipulated for their own selfish sake, and that’s probably why it feels so gross, but it, it’s, it strikes me in today’s day and age as a really dumb way to go about it.

57:10 But I’m an outsider coming in, then. So it’s like part of me wants to stay naive, so I can break the system without getting lost in it, but I fully understand that things like that happen, because, I mean, they’ve built the industry that they’ve built, right? It’s massive. So, ya know, I think it’s a good observation about artists and being sensitive, and that’s why there’s such great artists. And yeah, there’s a whole strange culture.

57:34 I always thought it was because everyone ultimately ends up bumping into each other over a 20 or 30 year career, and people will remember the nose, whereas in business, maybe that’s not the case. That’s interesting, but they’re also gonna remember the sheisty behavior. Total. So it’s like, remember, a tech entrepreneur here, I used to do a tech show called Silicon Real, and I had about a hundred of the top CEOs in tech in London, and I remember one of them said, you know, there’s nothing worse than when you’re pitching a tech company for an investment or whatever, then getting it, and getting no answer.

58:02 They’d much rather, respect, just a no, not right now. That’s what, like, the real smart guys at Sand Hill Road do, and all that. They just, they do what you’re doing. No, not right now, this is why I hope I see you in the future, and knowing that industry, they will see you in the future, and then you’ll be Zuckerberg one day. But they’re really good about that.

58:19 So I remember I took that on early around here, and some people aren’t ready to hear that, but it’s a great way to build the rep. So I agree. Okay, so that’s been one of the realizations. What, okay, that’s Hollywood. What’s something surprised you about, okay, 120 shows in?

58:33 Are you surprised at who you might become? Are you surprised at some of the things that the show might bring or make you see, make you realize? Um, that I would say I am surprised at how much I need to change very things to stay interested. So with the show, when I started, I thought, oh my god, I could do this until the end of time. And then over time I realized, me, my need to change the way that I interview.

58:58 I need to change the type of questions. I want to change the type of guest. I want to introduce a new show. And that has been a lot of fun. So finding new formats, you know, where I now have three different formats of show.

59:10 I have Impact Theory, Health Theory, and Conversations with Tom. And it was just, who are the people that I want to interview? I don’t want to stop interviewing this type of person, but I also want to do an interview that’s super laid back, right? Where, like, you and I are now, right? We don’t have a sense of there being other people around.

59:24 It’s just you and me. Yeah. And getting a format like that, where there’s no one around us. But even, like, I’m known for my hyper-formal intros. We’ve got like 12 cameras, we’ve got 20 crews standing around, so it’s like, you feel like you’re on a TV show.

59:40 And I thought, it puts people in a certain place, which is great, because I get people’s game, man. They come, their material is prepped, but they’re also like buttoned up. They have their points, they know what they want to say. And so I thought, I want to do another show format. I want to get rid of that one, but I want to do another show format where, if somebody’s coming back on for the second time, or there’s someone like Eric Weinstein, you don’t bring Eric Weinstein on and have an ultra-formal interview.

1:00:04 You, like, go where it goes. And so we go in, basically, like our little downstairs set. There is literally nobody in the room. It’s a rolling start. I’m like, I’m just here, you know, Brian Rose, and today we’re gonna be, I don’t even say today, anything.

1:00:17 I’m just like, hey, Brian, what’s up? You know, we’re here, and we just start going. And making that informal has been so fun for me. Like, what, where I began to see the schism was, for a long time the people coming on the show were the people I was naturally researching in my own life, regardless of the show. Yeah.

1:00:32 Then it became, well, there’s a lot of people I’m reading their books and stuff, and I’m not bringing them on. I’m not talking about that topic, because it doesn’t fit the format. So I’m like, let me get a format that does fit it. So that I didn’t see that coming. I felt in the beginning, like, I’ll just do this forever, and that’ll be that.

1:00:47 And then something that I found in being a media company that I didn’t expect: we are now almost entirely focused on kids. So I thought for sure we were gonna make movies and books and comics and all that for adults, and then I read a book called, “You Ready, Brian?” A Billion Wicked Thoughts. Oh my god, really? That book is incredible.

1:01:10 I heard Jordan Peterson throw… it was during one of his lectures, and he starts laughing, and he’s like, oh, you want to read an interesting book? Read A Billion Wicked Thoughts. And I was like, huh, let me go check that out. I read that. Dude, game-changer for any media company.

1:01:23 It is a game-changer. So I read that and realized, whoa, when you make a piece of content, know who your audience is and go all the way in. That pointed me to Japan, what they’re doing, which is why I now traveled to Japan a lot, and I’m working out some deals in Japan, because they get storytelling. They export their anime, like, into a worldwide penetration level that even American cinema doesn’t see. It’s just the rest of world laps it up, because it’s so archetypal.

1:01:53 If it’s aimed at a girl, it’s aimed at a girl. It’s aimed at a boy, it’s aimed at a boy. If it’s aimed at a six-year-old, it’s aimed at a six-year-old. A fifteen-year-old, of 15, or like, they know exactly who they’re going after, and they don’t care if people think it’s politically incorrect. And I’m gonna give… which is why, like, so many people in a Western audience will freak out over what they see in anime, because they’re like, but I know a fourteen-year-old boy wants to see exactly this.

1:02:16 Yeah. So we’re given exactly that. My daughter loves this crazy… Dude, I was like, what? And she’s all over at the websites and stuff.

1:02:22 And when you go into, so if you go into a comic book shop here in the US, you’re looking at guys probably 40 and over. Guys 40 and over, period. That’s it. You go into a manga shop, which is their version of a comic book, there is everyone there. There are old ladies, there are young girls, there are boys, there are old men, nerds, business guys.

1:02:42 It is surreal to walk into a manga shop and to see that diversity, and everybody knows what their section is, and they go right to the thing. If they like sci-fi, they go there. If they want, you know, pinup-type girls, they go there. Girls, a huge thing. You read about it in A Billion Wicked Thoughts, a big thing is girls who read stories about homosexual relationships between two main male characters.

1:03:03 I never would have guessed. So, utterly fascinating. So they just, they segment themselves out, and they go for that stuff. So anyway, reading that book, A Billion Wicked Thoughts, I realized, yo, age of imprinting is real. If I really want to impact people, I need to hit them at the age of imprinting.

1:03:18 So there’s a guy named, I know I’m all over the place, this is so important to me and my thesis. So, right, there’s this guy named Geoffrey Canada. I want Geoffrey on the show. Geoffrey, he basically, this guy grows up in Harlem in the ’80s during the crack epidemic, and goes, I’m gonna go get a scholarship to Harvard, I’m gonna get into education, I’m gonna change the education system. He does it, gets a full-ride scholarship to Harvard, goes, comes back, spends, like, ten years or something in the school system, realizes it’s broken, I can’t do anything about it, and his punchline is, you have to give up on adults.

1:03:52 And he becomes obsessed with getting mothers who are pregnant or about to become pregnant. He realizes that the biggest predictor of your success, and the reason that your zip code predicts your success, is kids who grow up in the inner cities. Here, like, I think it’s 20 million, sorry, 20 million words by the time they’re five, seventy percent of them are negative, thirty percent positive. Whereas kids who grow up in the middle-income areas hear 50 million words by the time they’re five, and it’s 70 percent positive to 30 percent negative.

1:04:26 And he said it totally influences the way that the language centers in your brain develop, and that has, like, this huge knock-on effect to the rest of your life. And so, and I was like, oh, I hate that. I am an adult. I think about adults. I want to help adults.

1:04:38 Like, it’s, you know, I just have so much empathy for somebody who makes it like 30, and, like, they’re just, they feel trapped, and they’ve tried, and it’s like everything just seems so hopeless. Kids at least usually have a sense of, I can do it. There’s optimism. And then I just realized you can help adults. Absolutely, they can change.

1:04:54 No question. Well, let me tell you, you want a disproportionate reward on your efforts, go after a kid. So 11 to 15 is now our obsession. Why 11 to 15? Why not earlier?

1:05:06 So what we will ultimately get there, okay, the reason we started there, it’s what the Japanese call the shonen years. So shonen translates literally as the few years. So from 11 to 15 is like this hardcore age of imprinting, where you’re trying to rebel against your parents, you’re coming into your sexual being. So it’s this really fascinating window. Now, ultimately, will skew even younger and do 6 to 12, which is another sort of globally recognized breakout, but most people think of it as 6 to 9, 9 to 12.

1:05:34 I’m not good enough there yet, which is the reality. I just don’t understand it well enough. Even when I was a kid, I wasn’t into kids’ entertainment, so it’s gonna take me a while to wrap my brain around that, or to hire the right people. But 11 to 15, that’s when I got into it, so I already have an innate understanding of what will pop there, and that shift has been incredible. So giving people the book as an adult, of one of our books aimed at adults, you get, oh man, so cool, thank you so much.

1:05:59 Giving it to a kid, they get obsessed. We had one woman write us. We have this new book out called Hexagons. We had a woman write us, she’s like, dude, my kid makes me read Hexagons to him every single night. This kid’s obsessed.

1:06:13 And I thought, well, it’s crazy. Another parent sent in their kid doing drawings of hexagons. Another one was like, my kids were playing a game called Attack on Hexagons. I mean, it’s just like, this is so crazy that they’re like, kids imbibe it in a way that adults just don’t. And Hexagons is aimed at the 11 to 15.

1:06:30 Yes. Okay. Wow. Now none of Impact Theory content is consumed by under- 17s on YouTube, yeah, right? I mean, we get some 16 URLs, but no.

1:06:40 We’re gonna start doing an Impact Theory kids Okay. So we see it, there’s a graduation system. So you start, hopefully, in our film and TV. So we’ve got some things cooking now, but hopefully will be coming out, tastes like three years. It’s crazy, but you got some things cooking.

1:06:53 They’re just the right to play, no, to find and actually get them made. Okay. So the writing you can do relatively quickly, but then getting it optioned, and then getting it into production, and uh, so that we hopefully will have some stuff coming in future years, but that’s the, like, biggest part of the funnel. So that’s the audience, for any audience, any audience. So that is, you’re hitting people at a limbic level, it’s emotion.

1:07:17 Okay, hit people at Olympic level, you can get them to take in things like Yoda, and Yoda’s teachings are real. If you take, you out his advice, your life will actually be better. Okay. Dramatized versions of your ideas in a series or movie or something, like, correct? Okay, then it’s graduating to the interview series, like what we’re doing now, and then from there we have actual curriculum that we call Impact Theory University.

1:07:38 Correct? Okay, all right. So this has all been a change in the last 12 months. When you said, oh, younger is what we’re getting, where we need to go, right? Like Disney.

1:07:46 Yes, which I rejected in the beginning. I was like, and I remember saying to the team, all right, we’re basically gonna be copying Disney’s model, and I said, we have one Achilles heel, which is we’re not focusing on kids, and I knew it was an Achilles heel, but my passion was adults. So I was like, yeah, like, we’ll do stuff for kids, but first we’re gonna focus on adults. But then when I, it just hit me in the face, that because of the age of imprinting, because you have this window where kids are just, they’re never going to be more pliable, that you can really give them some powerful mindset.

1:08:19 It just made sense. It, I’m still haunted by Geoffrey Canada’s words about giving up on adults, and I really am not prepared to do that. But focusing, say, 80% of our energy on kids, that’ll be our future. That’s fascinating. Then maybe you need to adopt a kid for a case study.

1:08:35 You know, is interesting. So our big brother for a kid for eight and a half years now, and that really shaped my thinking around a lot of this, and is also partly why I wanted to be able to help adults. But in the end, I think I get it enough that I don’t need to go all the way to adopting. Two, too crazy. Yeah, it would affect your life too much.

1:08:54 It would. And if we had wanted kids, we would have had kids. And my wife and I have been very diligent. We always ask ourselves the real questions. Like, I know I will tell you right now, on my deathbed, I will regret not having children, but if I had children now, I would regret it.

1:09:12 So my thing is, understand your frames of reference and how they change, and how they will instantly change your values. Like, if you found out you were dying in a week, your values would change instantly. Sure. So my thing is, why would you live for a future frame of reference that doesn’t make any sense? Live in the frame of reference that you’re in, with awareness of how it’s gonna change.

1:09:30 So it’s like, okay, I get how I’m gonna feel, sort of, as I get older and as I begin to lose mobility. I’ll want to be surrounded by the people that I love, and then as I’m dying, I will really hunger for some sense of something living beyond me. Cool. I know that that’s all gonna happen, but right now I really feel like I am doing my life’s mission, which is to see how much of my potential I can translate into actual, usable skills that help other people, and the children will get in the way of that right now.

1:09:59 Yeah. The best advice I ever got about kids was, Tom, have kids, don’t have kids, it doesn’t matter, but whatever you do, do it all the way. And I thought, yeah, I want to build a business. I want to do it all the way. I don’t want anything that makes me wish I was somewhere else.

1:10:15 So I’m never thinking, and I even founded the company with my wife, so I am literally never thinking, oh, I wish I was at home. All right, literally, my business is my home, so it is. I’m all in, and I love it, and that’s why, another reason I say you better love what you do, because to be as in as I’m in and not like it would be a real problem. I could imagine. Uh, your place is your business, your home.

1:10:41 Have you ever thought, I want to change that? Like, you kind of addressed it there, but is that, and why did you do that in the beginning? Because you didn’t have to do that. I’m sure it was maybe easy at first, path of least resistance, or not? Yeah, and that’s exactly what happened.

1:10:53 So we were looking to buy a building, and we were, we had a ticking clock. So Michael Strahan, who was our first interview, had a date, and it was locked, and we’re like, we’re shooting on that date whether we find a building or not. So we were looking and looking and looking, and I just got to the feeling like, yo, man, we’re gonna drop, you know, twelve, fifteen million dollars on a building, and then be like, this wasn’t perfect. And so I thought, oh, that’s a bad idea.

1:11:18 Let’s just build the set in our house, shoot three or four episodes. That buys us a little bit of time to finish finding the building, and then when we got the set in, and it was like, whoa, this worked out really well, and this is so easy, and the guests, it’s like, man, thank you for inviting me into your home. So it was like this whole thing, and I was like, hmm, this has, like, ancillary benefits, not the least of which is that I don’t have a commute, and for me, like, I give my wife credit.

1:11:44 No one should give me any credit for being like, oh my god, how are you able to do that? It’s like, I don’t give a, like, I’m building my company exactly what I want to do with my life. I could do anything I want. I never have to work another day in my life, and so the reason that I’m doing this is because I have a deep passion for what I’m doing. So for me it’s very easy.

1:12:02 My wife, on the other hand, she is a woman, and she would like a home to herself and to not have them overlap, and so she’s been a trooper and just said, yeah, this makes sense for the business, so let’s do it, but in no uncertain terms, within the next two years we will separate the two, for sure. Okay, all right. How many people are in your house? I give it 25. Okay.

1:12:21 And they all come over, or they stay over? Does they, they come over? Okay. So, but, but right now it works, and it’s intimate. What do you do when you’re having a tough day?

1:12:32 Like, I know you changed formats to keep yourself interested, but if you’re having a day where I’m just like, okay, this is repetitive now, but I know I have to do it, like, what do you do on those days? I look for change. So my thing is, don’t ever act like you’re helpless. So if something isn’t right, fix it. Don’t whine about it.

1:12:47 Fix it. So on days like that, I’m like, okay, what, what is wrong? What is it that’s bothering me? So, like, for the over the last week I had just been to Tokyo, and I was gonna be in the office for one week, and then I was coming here to London. So it was like, okay, I’ve got a lot of international travel, so my team booked the most absurd amount of, for me to do in a single week, and it was eight shoots, plus all the normal things that I have to do.

1:13:12 Two of those shoots for Impact Theory University, each of which require me to prep for an entire day, because I write the actual curriculum. I’m not winging it, so that was like, okay, this was not a fun week, and physically, I was like, yeah, I could do this forever. I have no problem working the hours, putting in the energy, the effort. That’s not the problem. The problem is I had to shut my mind off to the creative, and so I wasn’t thinking about this.

1:13:35 I wasn’t thinking about the art or impacting people emotionally, and so I was like, yeah, no, I would not continue to do this. And so that’s going in and realizing, okay, how do we make sure that this never happens again, cuz I don’t want to be in this position again. So just knowing at all times that you can make change and make things different, always, because I feel in control, which, man, if I could give people a gift, it’s to understand that you can always change things, that if you take ownership of it, realize, ah, I’m in this position because of something I did, and therefore something I can change, and things will be different.

1:14:07 You never feel helpless. And so you said, emotionally, in storytelling, you feel like you want to be there a hundred percent and be engaged in the story, and maybe you weren’t that week because it was just so much work. What you can physically show up to do, but you’re like, am I fully emotionally involved? Correct. Yeah, that there are going to be, and this is why I say, like, whatever you turn into your passion has to start as something real.

1:14:29 So for me, the reason I got into filmmaking is because story really affects me. And when I see, like, Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson argue, I’m like, can you guys just not see that Jordan has an innate passion for stories? You’re never gonna be able to get him to stop using them. He feels something in his viscera, yeah, when he encounters a story, and Sam doesn’t. And so some debate in London, and you’re just like, guys, like, it’s very simple to realize.

1:14:56 Like, so I have that visceral feeling when I hear a story. I’m like, the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and I’m like, holy, like, I’m just moved, man. I’m moved to my core. Stories make me cry. They make me laugh.

1:15:08 They tie me to things. Like, I’ll remember something from a story. Like, I still to this day will quote Yoda in my own life, like, to myself, right? If I’m like, Ollie, I should try that, you know, “Do or do not, there is no try.” Like, yeah, you’re, you’re right, like, it’s so real in my life.

1:15:23 So I just, I have that, whatever that gene is, or life experience, whatever gave me that, I have it in spades. So when I come back to that, I have that natural neurochemistry. It leaves me in a sense of awe. Awe is such a potent thing that propels people forward. So when I’m playing in that arena, and I’m looking at visual imagery, like, I will tell you, I bet there is a gene you can isolate for movement, and the Japanese have it in the extreme, which is why they’re so good at anime, which I think is one of the reasons that they’re able to export it.

1:15:57 And I remember, as a kid, I used to make my G.I. Joe figurines flip over and over, cuz I was obsessed with just the way the human body looks when it moves. So there’s something about that. So, like, moving images, they capture me, because just watching a human move is fascinating. So you get stuff like that, and then you go, ah, I have this area where I get more energy than is taken from me.

1:16:20 So every bit that I’m working on a script, or working with an artist, even though it might be hours and hours and hours and hours and hours, it’s giving me energy. It’s feeding me. So you want to find those things, but it’s not as simple as saying, do what you’re good at, because I used to suck at that, but I was getting this neurochemical reward. So it’s like, you chase that and develop the skills in areas where you have that wind at your back. Okay.

1:16:41 And yeah, it’s just in how you talk about, cuz sometimes I’ve had these crazy-ass weeks where, yeah, it’s like, you’ve got, like, five shows, and then I have Academy students, and they come in for graduation. I’ll literally have, like, sixteen of them that I’ll interview back to back in, like, 20 minutes, lots. And then we got a master class here, and then we got a dinner, and then maybe there’s a movie premiere, and, like, I’ve had times where I go to the gym in-between for like 30 minutes, and I’m sitting there like but it gets to a point where I’m like, alright, this, I can’t do this extreme every week, because there’s a point where I’m just not going to be present for someone, and that’s not cool.

1:17:15 And in the media business it’s obvious, right? And if someone’s over and you’re interviewing them and you’re not there, then it’s kind of like a disservice to them and the viewer. Right? Alright, so you got to watch yourself on that, even though you can physically and mentally do it. Yeah.

1:17:28 Last, I have to watch myself more. That, like, I am very attentive to. I want to live a life that I love, the day-to-day reality of my life. And so, you know, what is it I’m really trying to do? Am I really, you know, using the highest and best use of my time and my talents?

1:17:46 As much as I want to live forever, I fully accept that I am currently on a collision course with death, and so making, you know, the most of my time is deeply gratifying. So just auditing, and being willing to say, I wasted my time today, I didn’t do the right things. And most people, they spin out, because they take that as, like, a permanent state of failure, or some black mark on their record. And for me it’s just like, okay, I’ll do better tomorrow, but I first have to figure out why today wasn’t what it could have been.

1:18:14 Yeah. I always tell my team, if I’m ever sitting in this chair and I’m talking to someone I don’t want to speak to, then I might as well go back and be a banker, and it is that’s the same thing, because I’m doing something I don’t really want to do for the money. So that’s my decision. I got to really want to talk to that person, period, and that’s what makes me different than someone on the BBC or Channel 4 who has to do this thing every day. Is that I literally, genuinely want everybody in that chair, and I say no to a lot of people.

1:18:41 So that’s what keeps me coming in every day. You mentioned the dying thing, and I think of something you talked with Rich Roll about, and I’d love to go a little bit deeper on this. How do you feel about death? Are you gonna die? I know, right now it looks like you will, but would you like to live forever, and how does that figure into your mindset, how you live your life?

1:19:00 Yeah, so I really would like to live forever, and I actively don’t understand people who would not want to live forever. So that one doesn’t make sense to me, although you’ve heard all the arguments, like, I have, but I don’t resonate emotionally. Yeah, I guess so. I don’t understand. Even if I were the only one who lived forever, I would still want to live forever, and I get it, like, the cycles of loss, but it’s like people never had a dog?

1:19:28 Like, you get a dog, you know, this dog, I’m gonna outlive this dog, and then I’m gonna get another one, and when you get that puppy and you’re so in love, you know, I’m going to outlive you, but at the same time, that doesn’t diminish the joy that you experience with them. So if somebody told me, hey, by the way, your wife, you know, is gonna die a year from now, but you could go back right now and have picked somebody else who lives longer, do you want to do that? No, I don’t want to do that.

1:19:53 Like, what I’ve gotten out of being with that woman and sharing that life has been so extraordinary. Like, yes, I’m devastated that I’m not going to be able to go on without her, but that’s not, like, a suicide event for me. So yeah, I want to live forever. The only reason I wouldn’t is if I was in pain. So I’ve recently become obsessed with this.

1:20:14 So I think euthanasia should be legal. I think people should be able to die whenever they want, on their terms, and I watched somebody die of cancer. Dude, it is, it’s not pretty, and like, I would go down kicking and screaming all the way until there was no quality of life, and I knew that this was a one-way street, and there is that point, and it may only be the last two weeks, whatever, but watching someone whose sole existence is gasping for breath, nope, like, that’s just not interesting to me.

1:20:45 So at that point, I would say, yeah, this, like, you started earlier saying, you know, am I doing this just to prove that I have the discipline, or am I doing it because it’s really right? And it’s like, at some point, as much as I pride myself in discipline, I’m not, I’m not trying to, like, hang on to, like, the bitter, bitter end. So I want to live forever with quality of life, quality of health. I’m gonna guess that I live a long life, but I think we all still, I mean, look, man, it is possible.

1:21:14 It is possible if you can live to 120. It’s possible that they can solve the biological problems, but uploading your consciousness doesn’t, it’s not really the same. You still have to deal with the meatsuit, death. So unless they work something out, and this is some risky, if they worked something out where they basically upload your consciousness and anesthetize you at the same time, somehow, so that your body just never wakes up, and then you wake up in the digital space, that might feel like you’ve continued on, but even that is still a transfer.

1:21:44 It’s not actually you living forever. So I would personally like to somehow just replace enough of these parts to keep going. Cyborg my way to immortality. So you think 80 more years, they probably will have it figured out? It may be, certainly, no, certainly, at the rate of change right now, I think we will hit escape velocity, meaning I don’t know that 80 years from now people will be immortal.

1:22:09 What I think they will be is, for every year that they live, they’ll get at least a year in a day of added life. So you’re just always, medical science, to give you always enough to get one more year, one more year, and then in that infinite one more year, then technology gets better and better and better, and I think the only thing that would stop that, man, is like, if AI freaks out, takes over the planet, or nuclear catastrophe, or biological, or something. So, you know, something could very much send us backwards, but barring that, I think if you can hit 120, you’re probably gonna have a good shot at, you won’t be immortal, but you’ll live forever, minus a violent end.

1:22:47 And you have access to some great minds out there. Are you also, like, scoping where you want to go with this? Like, the stem cells are this way, and I’m doing this, and are you preparing yourself to be, you know, I’m way apathetic compared to what even I would think I would be, so partly because I live such a healthy life, so I feel like I’ve got some time. But the more time I spend, like, Ben Greenfield, the more I think, oh god, maybe I should be banking my stem cells.

1:23:15 So there certainly are things that I probably should start doing to ensure that I’ve got, you know, my own blood, my own stem cells, and that kind of thing on at the ready. What do you do to stay in shape? To stay, people, most people wouldn’t, didn’t know that you have a default, chubby guy, or the fat guy, but chubby guy, nobody’s fairy guy. How do you keep that at bay? What is your routine like?

1:23:41 Because I know that’s really important to you, because, yeah, it’s one of the big things that defines your reality and proves to you that you can take control of your life. Yeah, I am, I’m psychotically disciplined. That’s the moral of the story. And so the magic tool for me is something called bright lines. So it’s binary.

1:23:58 It’s yes or no, and this drives my team crazy. So let’s say we’re working on a piece of artwork for one of our pieces of intellectual property, and I’ll show it to him, and I’ll say, is this awesome or as a, and they’re like, terrible. I’m like, is it awesome, or is it, like, nothing else helps? So I need to know. And if it’s not awesome, then it is so, and it’s not the other way.

1:24:18 If it’s not, that doesn’t mean it’s awesome. So it’s like, I need you in one of these two camps. And so with my food, with what time I go to bed, with what time I wake up, with going to the gym, with taking a cold shower, it’s all binary. You do it, that’s it. And in doing that, I’ve been able to stay in shape.

1:24:36 I lost 60 pounds, what, 12 years ago, something like that, maybe a little more now. So, but around there I’ve kept it off, and it’s not even, like, it’s not been a struggle. It’s like I put bright lines in place, and that’s that, and you just adhere to it, and you make it your identity, and you’re the type of person that, you know, and intermittent fasting has been huge for me. That one has made it, if it’s close to easy. I don’t say it’s easy, but intermittent fasting, if you get that dialed in, and you know how to go in and out of ketosis, it’s about as easy as anything could get.

1:25:09 So my average fast, for a week, I’m always aiming for 20 hours. With my average, users usually ends up being somewhere around eighteen point seven, something like that. Daily, daily? Yeah, it’s only the weekends, because I’ll dip down on the weekend. I might do a sixteen or even a fifteen, but then the rest of the time I’m 20, 21, 22 hours a day.

1:25:29 So you’re up really early, like 3:30 early, or you go straight to training? I used to. I haven’t been recently. Okay, something else first? Journal, meditate?

1:25:38 Meditation. Okay, that’s new. That is new, because you hadn’t been taking meditation as seriously, or as regulated before, but now you do it. Now I started taking meditation very seriously about three years ago. Okay, but I was always doing it after I worked out, and I thought it was quite powerful to go from, like, exertion to as calm as I can, as fast as I can.

1:25:58 But then it started being, I don’t know, I just got out of bed, and I was like, I just, I want to sit for a minute, breathe in. I found I was super creative first thing in the morning, and so I started meditating for about 20 minutes, and then I work out, and I have really liked that. That’s been maybe not as effective for learning to control my nervous system, but because I’d already learned how to do that, it’s been far more pleasurable, like, if that’s more in line with my biorhythms, because then even my first set is ready to rock, whereas before, like, my first few sets were like me just trying to wake myself up.

1:26:31 I don’t do caffeine in the morning or anything like that, so that gave me a chance to, like, take advantage of that calm, creative space that I wake up in, and then just let my sort of system boot up, and then at the end of the meditation I’m feeling good, and feeling calm, creative, and then I can go work out. Yeah. Meditation wakes me up in the morning. It’s counterintuitive. I’m like, boom, I do 20 minutes.

1:26:54 I’ve been doing 30 minutes now on my weekends, and it’s just, I, it kind of wakes me up. Yeah, very strange that way. So you work out, and then it’s intermittent fasting. Why, I will have been intermittent fasting since 2 p.m. the day before. Okay, so I have two meals a day.

1:27:07 My first ones usually about 9:30, 10:00, and then my last ones 1:30 to 2:00, and I do that every day, day after day, and then obviously it fluctuates sometimes, if I spaced out or whatever and don’t end up eating till 11:00 or something, but that’s my normal routine. It’s right about there. Okay, yes. From Impact Theory, that have had the biggest impact on you personally? If you had to name three, you know, ones that maybe changed your life or your personal life?

1:27:35 We’ve got VS Ramachandran, who taught me more about the brain than anybody else. You have David Goggins, who, in that, it was more researching him that really changed me, and I, I thought I was a pretty tough guy, and then I read that, and I was like, ah, there’s levels to this. So really inspired me, the whole notion of, when you think you are burnt out, spent, you’ve got nothing left, you’re only 40 percent of the way to your max. Like, that’s crazy. You’re not even halfway there, and that rings so true.

1:28:08 The second I read it, it’s like, okay, word, I can get behind that. A third person, I am inevitably going to forget somebody incredibly important, but I will default to, well, be cheesy for a second, I’ll tell you, because this is actually true. The person who’s influenced me most my life is my wife, and we did an episode of Health Theory together, so I will say that for sure. She’s the biggest influence on my life. That’s a little cheeky, so I will give you that David Eagleman, who’s also a brain researcher, has taught me the second most, behind my boy VS Ramachandran, and learning about the brain is the single most important thing I’ve ever done in my life.

1:28:48 Okay. You mentioned you got Jocko on recently, which was important, because I know you had him on before, but then that was when it was Quest in side quests. Ah, yeah, he does children’s books as well. Yes, which is interesting. I was going young.

1:29:01 I have both of his children’s books. I know he’s got a third one. I know he’s got a coloring book. I’m gonna get on a Taco, but, um, yeah, I was a big fan of the Warrior kid right up early on, and my boys still aren’t really reading yet. So look at there.

1:29:12 What did you learn from Jocko? One, it’s been utterly fascinating to watch Jocko change as a human, and so I’m like, is he flanking me here? Like, the guy that showed up for the first interview, and the guy that showed up for the most recent interview, really is different. Three years, Bao, or three years. Yeah, three, maybe three-and-a-half.

1:29:33 Yeah. And that was really cool to see. Like, he’s, he’s really getting good at being a communicator, and that’s very impressive, but the thing I learned most from him is extreme ownership, and I talk about it all the time. So I have a book list of my most important books that I’ve read that really impacted me. In fact, Carol Dweck was also a guest on the show, that transformative, that was insight, quest, and then his book is number two on my list of important books to read.

1:30:00 So I think that that concept of, take ownership for everything, is, is right behind the growth mindset. It’s the single most important thing each human being can learn: to just stop looking outwardly for the problem and start saying, what can I control? What can I do to change this situation? Because there’s always something, and if you’re looking outward and playing the victim and allowing yourself that, ah, man, it doesn’t do anything good for you. Like, I’m not like on my high horse about, oh, kids today.

1:30:26 I’m just like, yo, if you’re not taking ownership, if you’re not saying, how is this my fault, what could I have done differently, you’re not going to get where you want to go. You’re always going to feel that you were at other people’s mercy. And the second you believe that you can change something, then you’ll take the actions you need to change it, and then all of a sudden, real interesting happens. But when you feel like, ah, man, it just is what it is, the system is holding me down, then it’s like, you’re not gonna do the right things.

1:30:52 You’re just not gonna do the right things. I love the concept so much, man. When I first met Jocko, I actually went deeper on his stuff after the first episode, and it just became our whole mindset around here, and now it’s actually in the first module of all of our courses. I teach it to all my students. Like, you’re taking extreme ownership.

1:31:09 And we stick, juggle in the screen, everyone just takes it, and it’s been a massive game-changer for people that don’t understand the fixed mindset versus the growth mindset. How would you just summarize it right here, steal Carol Dweck’s words? Okay, so a fixed mindset is somebody who believes that their talent and intelligence are fixed traits, set at birth. Somebody with a growth mindset believes that their talent and intelligence are malleable traits that will change with disciplined practice.

1:31:38 And once you go from the fixed to the growth, then all of a sudden everything changes, because you realize, oh, I suck at that now, but I could get good at it. So she says, he used the word yet. I’m not good at that yet, and just by putting that pending word on there, you realize, okay, so if I wanted to put energy into that, I could get extraordinary. So if you start using that word, you’re actually prepping yourself to jump into that growth mindset. What percent of humans on this earth are in the growth mindset?

1:32:07 Oh, that’s a good question. If you say who never falls prey to a false growth mindset, as Carol Dweck put it, I’ll say basically nobody, but people that can avoid getting trapped too frequently. And the false growth mindset, you’re probably looking at, you know, maybe 10%. Like, you can really meet people, especially in, like, high-level business, you’re gonna meet a lot of people who have embraced the idea. They’ve gotten ahead not just because they were naturally good.

1:32:37 They’ve gotten ahead because they’re like, yo, I used to suck at that, and I just had to get good at it. There was no two ways about it. So I feel like, and you know, maybe that’s, I’m slightly delusional, because I’ve, you know, surrounded myself with people who think like that, and to be employed at Impact Theory, you have to think like that. Yeah. That seems about right, about 10%.

1:32:54 And what is the false growth mindset? So the false growth mindset is where you go, a growth mindset is good, everyone should have a growth mindset, and because you think it’s good, you naturally think you have it, even though you are routinely actually stopping at something, like, oh, I couldn’t do that, it’s not my fault, oh, that’s too hard, whatever. You’re blaming other people. That’s the system’s fault. That’s this out in the other, and not realizing that you could indeed get better at that thing.

1:33:20 You just have to be fully willing to take it on. That, yep. I’m not good enough. Yeah, but I can get good enough, and to really catch yourself when you’re saying things like, well, you know, I mean, easy for you, Brian, you know, where you grew up, and I don’t have the background, I never did heroin, so I don’t know what it’s like to overcome something like that, but you have that advantage, you know? And see other people, where it’s like, well, okay, I can learn another way, I could figure it out, or I could go do heroin myself.

1:33:47 I figured out what it’s like to really come out from under it. So it’s like, you know, really getting into that space and accepting that you can learn it. It’s funny, when I watch you turn into that guy, it’s, it’s just so not you. Very much not. It’s funny, though.

1:34:01 But did it used to be you, aggressively okay, is everybody else’s fault, nothing was my fault? And I really believed it, by the way. Yeah. So it was like, it’s just self-evident that people are holding you back. It is self-evident that that’s somebody else’s fault.

1:34:14 It’s self-evident. Like, and that’s what’s scary about a fixed mindset: it seems so true that it, it’s almost beyond counterintuitive when you hear it. And the only reason I adopted it in the beginning was, I remember somebody saying to me, they were talking about growth mindset, that didn’t have those words, but same ideas, and they were like, don’t you hope I’m right? And I was like, I actually do hope you’re right. I do hope I can get better at anything, at any time, just by putting in energy and effort.

1:34:43 And that notion of, why would you shut the door on something you want to, to meet, true? Like, go explore it. Don’t just offhand say, no, it’s not possible, it’s not like this, not what it is. You don’t understand, you’re smarter than me, that’s why you can do it. Like, how is that helping you?

1:35:01 And that’s where I was. Everyone was smarter than me. You’re just smarter than me, man. I can’t do that. I’m not as smart as you.

1:35:07 Oh God, even saying that out loud takes me back to feeling like that. I used to feel like that all the time. Yeah. When you say it, I kind of see 20-year-old Tom in it. Yeah, cuz you go right into it.

1:35:18 So it’s nice to know, though, that it’s that close, and that’s what I really want people to understand, and that’s why I, I do not try to posture, because my real hope is that people go, oh, I can be whatever I want. Let’s go into some dangerous waters, maybe not for you, but for me. I don’t like to talk about this, but the culture wars, and all that stuff, which freaks me out mentally, brings out the worst in people, please. But I’m really getting scared that people no longer believe in class mobility, and if you don’t believe in class mobility, that is a shitty life.

1:35:50 Like, to think I’m just wherever I was born, I’m stuck. And that’s not to say that there aren’t problems that have to be solved. There are. There’s a reason that that mentality has gripped so many people, because, let’s say, I don’t, I don’t understand the problems well enough to say that I fully get them, but let’s just say, okay, there they’re set up. Maybe it’s the education system, and the debt is just too crushing, and, okay, so that gives people this level of insecurity that makes it feel like I can’t take the risks that I would need to take in order to move up.

1:36:16 Okay, so we need to solve that problem, for sure, but if you’re adopting a mentality of, I am stuck, it isn’t possible, class mobility is not a real thing, there’s rich people, and they oppress everybody else, and we’re all just stuck. If you think that, it’s like having a fixed mindset. If you don’t believe that your talent and intelligence are malleable traits, then why would you ever go to work trying to improve them? You know that it would be fruitless.

1:36:43 So why would you try to start a business? Why would you try to start a second, or a third, or fourth business, which is what most people have to do before they finally have their success? The only reason you do that is because you believe, oh, I can, I can change classes. Like, I believe that I grew up lower-middle class, but I believe I could be rich, and because I believe that, like, doing wrong, I graduated college with tens of thousands of dollars in debt.

1:37:03 I think the average now is 35,000. I graduated with 25,000, so I wasn’t exactly, like, in some great position. My parents did not help me with that. The day I graduated college, they cut me off, 100%. I had no money coming in.

1:37:16 I had to find a way to provide for myself. There were times I couldn’t pay my bills. I was sleeping in a closet on an air mattress that deflated, but the whole time, Brian, I believed I could get rich. I just had to figure it out. And so I just kept on trying this and failing and looking stupid and trying that, looking dumb, and try, I just kept trying, trying, trying, trying, trying, because I believed that I can do it.

1:37:34 And then once I found the real thing, dreaming isn’t enough, you have to have discipline. Oh, boom, it clicks, and then it all takes off, and I spend 20 years getting good. So I, I really, really want people to understand I was dumb and broke. I wasn’t just broke. I wasn’t some super genius broke.

1:37:53 I was dumb and broke. I did every stupid thing you can ever imagine doing. I was wildly insecure. I had, I was so frustrated, so lost, a deep sense of hopelessness. I used to come home and lay on the carpet.

1:38:06 Why the carpet? You asked. Because I couldn’t afford furniture, so I was just lay on the floor with my face squishing into the cheap-ass nylon carpet and think, what the am I doing with my life? I’ve already graduated college. I have no idea how to break into the film industry.

1:38:21 I thought I was gonna get senior thesis film that would get me my three-picture deal, and I was gonna be the next Spielberg, and here I am. My senior thesis was an absolute failure. I’m so embarrassed. I stole the master. I will never let anybody watch it.

1:38:33 I don’t know how to make a film. That’s too expensive. I don’t know how to raise money. There’s no YouTube, that doesn’t exist. So I’m literally selling insurance door to door, coming home and laying on the floor and being like, I don’t know how this ever gets any better.

1:38:47 And I go from that to where I’m at now, and what I want people to understand is I was there, and that whole time, sitting under $25,000 in student debt, I’m having to renegotiate with them, because I know I can’t just get rid of it, and I can’t pay it. And so what do you do? And so I was unemployed at one point, and I had to call them and say, look, can I defer for a couple of months? Which they’ll actually let you do. And, like, I’m having to pay this bill this month, that bill the next month.

1:39:18 Like, that’s where I started. People see the now. People don’t see like one video I want to do is to go to the actual apartments that I lived in and be like, I lived here in a closet on an air mattress. I lived here with a bed that someone gave me for free. I lived here and had a couch that I wouldn’t sit on, because it was so shitty, but I would lean against it.

1:39:39 So I had a couch finally, but I had to sit on the floor and lean against it. And, like, really show people what it looked like for me for a very long time. I got married to this girl, and she had to clip coupons. Like, that was our life. And but I believed I can do it, and because I believed I could do it, I put the time and the energy into figuring it out.

1:39:58 Now people are just throwing up their hands, and I’m not saying it’s not hard. I’m not even saying it’s not harder than it was. Great, you, you have it twice as, are three to four times as hard as I do. Five times, ten times. What number would you like it to be?

1:40:09 Let’s say it’s ten times harder for you now than it was for me. Don’t you hope I’m right, that it’s possible, that even though it’s harder, it’s still possible, because once they become hopeless, once they give up, then it, Venice gnarly. So the only thing, kinda tendency to do that out there, it feels that way, right? There is a general sense of malaise shared by, I don’t know what percentage, because how much is just that, that’s the news that pops off?

1:40:38 So if you go on Reddit, you’re gonna see this all the time. You’re gonna see negative sentiment left, right, and center, front page, all day, every day. What percentage of the population are they? Maybe they’re tiny. Maybe this isn’t as rampant as I fear it is, but I see it in my own employees, whereas there’s a sense of, like, they’re not even sure why it’s harder, because when you ask them individually, it’s like, well, your situation, you’re actually making more money than I was at your age, so what’s the problem?

1:41:03 But there’s still the sense of, I can’t move. So that’s the one, like, real problems need real solutions. I’m not in any way, shape, or form denying that. I’m just saying you, you have to believe that the problems can be solved, and that you can rise up, that you can do something interesting. So yeah, I worry about this, the sense of helplessness.

1:41:25 Okay, seems to be. What else do you worry about? You mentioned earlier about the coddling. I mean, I just had Jonathan Haidt down here, and this post, Coddling of the American Mind. Yeah, are you worried about that, coddling?

1:41:36 That’ll be phonetically okay. Talk about that. Well, so, anybody who believes anything other than this is all my responsibility, that I can extreme own, that I can change and get a different result. If you believe anything other than that, you’re never going to reach your full potential. Now, this story I used to tell people, and it gets me in trouble, so hey, I’ll get myself in trouble here really fast, is, let’s say that you’re in your car.

1:42:04 You pull up to a stoplight. There’s a car in front of you, part of your left, car to your right. You look in your rear-view mirror, and a drunk driver is barreling down on you. You go to honk your horn, the car dies, doesn’t make any noise, the guy plows into you. Whose fault is that?

1:42:19 Everyone’s gonna tell you that that’s the drunk driver’s fault, including the insurance company, by the way, even the insurance company. She’s gonna be like, yeah, that was his fault, and they’re gonna pay out, and everybody’s gonna say, what an, and all that, and I’m gonna say, without feeling badly about myself, yes, well, it’s his fault. I still could have done something differently and gotten a different result, and that’s what I want to focus on. I want to focus on who now should take responsibility so that this doesn’t happen again.

1:42:44 Should I turn to him and hope that he and everybody else never drinks and drives again. That’s one option, and a lot of people spend their lives there. The other option is to say, well, I could have done something differently. I could have not gotten in my car. I could have not pulled into a kill box, so that if I saw somebody coming behind me, I could have had an escape route.

1:43:01 I could have made sure that I kept my car up, so that I could have at least honked to try to warn him. You know, there are a lot of things that one can do. Now, when I first wrote an article about that, I thought people would be like, oh my god, Tom, this is brilliant, thank you so much. And of course they flipped the, and they were like, you’re victim shaming, and all that. And I’m like, what?

1:43:18 I’m not victim shaming. I’m saying if it were me and I were hit by a drunk driver, I wouldn’t spend time thinking about the drunk driver, because it doesn’t help. So my thing is, what are your goals? The only thing that you should believe or do is that which moves you towards your goals. So if lamenting and feeling broken inside because I was victimized by somebody is gonna move me forward, then I will do it.

1:43:41 But my gut is that will take me to a dark place. It won’t put me in a position to think and act and try to be strategic and make more useful decisions in the future. So I’m just always trying to put myself in a position where I’m like, how do I get out of this problem, rather than the problem is overwhelming. It’s like, this problem is solvable. And if people always start with, this problem is solvable, now we may disagree about how to solve the problem, but we’re at least in the right frame of mind.

1:44:06 There’s not the hopelessness. There’s not the, this is forever, we’re stuck. It’s, okay, cool, what can I do? How do I improve, how do I get myself out of this? And so when they talk about in The Coddling of the American Mind, that whatever the six things are that are leading to them, a generation of people that were raised with really good intentions but really horrible outcomes, it’s like, for them it becomes just a quest of mindset.

1:44:33 Like, you just have to change your mindset. I had an equally dysfunctional mindset when I was young. I changed it, and everything in my life changed. And so without blame, or, you know, I mean, look, I haven’t had kids, so I don’t know that I can be blamed for passing that on or not, but people have been given sort of a general sense of how to think culturally that I don’t think moves people towards their individual goals. So to me it’s about breaking down responsibility into the smallest subset, which is the individual, and then there’s so much power and joy to be had out of that.

1:45:06 Yeah, I agree. It’s not popular, though. Yes, I’m not going that way either. It, I don’t know, it’s interesting. I feel like more and more people are speaking up about it, and so you’re seeing people that gravitate towards, oh, I just want a solution.

1:45:19 Like, I don’t need to be right. I just want this to be rad. Like, the outcome that I desire is fulfillment. I want people to be fulfilled, and I just know that fulfillment requires you to do something hard and to build yourself, to become stronger, to become more resilient. So now I’m just talking about, there are innate things in the human animal, and part of why what they talk about in The Coddling of the American Mind will never win long-term is it’s at odds with what is true of the human animal at its deepest place, which is you have an active species that desires mastery.

1:45:54 You can’t have an active species that innately desires mastery and then say the way to victory is to hobble everybody else, because that’s not mastery. That’s crabs in a bucket. So that doesn’t feed into the lighter side, the joyful sides, the lifting people up, the helping, the celebrating, the, you know, the joy that comes from risking your own life running into a burning building to save another human being, because you’re a badass and you know how to do that.

1:46:20 That’s, you know, to mean, like, that is one of the ways that a human being can express from being a teacher and being like, I’m gonna dedicate my life to making sure the next generation, like, get something and lives beyond me. Like, that’s sort of, I’m gonna get so good at this thing and I’m gonna work myself to the bone so I can pass something off to other people. That feels good. That’s the human condition, to want to lift other people up. By the, about us.

1:46:43 That’s the thing. It’s not by, like, sitting back and getting handed to you. It’s about saying, no, send me into the wilderness, let me become something, then I will come back, and then I can do something. It’s the hero’s journey. If people haven’t read The Long Walk to Freedom by Nelson Mandela, read that first.

1:47:02 Of all things, it, at 14, in front of the entire tribe, homie has to sit there with his legs splayed, buck naked, a guy walks up with a really sharp rock, cuts his foreskin off in a single slice, and he has to yell the warrior’s prayer. That’s some, and then, of course, needless to say, ends up going to prison for 27 years for his principles. And he said, how do you make it through something like that? Don’t let your principles weaken for one second. Know you’re fighting for something.

1:47:32 Stay true to it. Fight to the bitter end. Never get lazy. Never take your eye off the ball. Go, go, go, be a hardcore, and, and when he got out, what did he do?

1:47:42 He wasn’t trying to pit one side against the other. He was like, yo, we’re gonna work together. This is, this is, like, he, there was no bitterness. There was no whining. There was only, like, I know what my goal is, and my goal is for people to, and now I’m putting words in his mouth.

1:47:55 Everything else I would say is pretty accurate. The way it made me feel was, my thing is to bring people together, to have them live fulfilling lives, to have meaning and purpose, and it’s like, at the end of the day, that’s it. That’s what we got. That’s the, that is it. It’s just hardwired into us, man.

1:48:09 Like, we, we are hard-wired to experience joy when we have meaning and purpose, and that we had to work hard for a set of skills that allow us to serve other people. It is innate. You’ll never be able to get somebody to not feel good about that. So if we know that’s an innate path, get people on that path, right? Know what your goal is, and then do and believe things, and move people towards that goal.

1:48:32 Where did the other thing come from, to be cynical, to be pissed about what somebody else has? It’s a dark place, man. It is a dark place. It does not lead humans anywhere interesting. Yeah, no, I totally agree.

1:48:42 Our latest film is about my ayahuasca ceremonies last year in Costa Rica, it’s probably, Reconnect. How do you feel about psychedelics? I’ve never tried them. That’s a lie. I’ve microdosed.

1:48:54 Okay. I’m microdosing psilocybin. It felt very much like a pleasant buzz from alcohol, but without the sort of after-grogginess, so I was cool. I had hoped it would make me more creative. It did not.

1:49:07 I am definitely going to do a ritualized MDMA session with my wife. I’m really looking forward to that. I think that would be super rad, with the therapist, or just, yeah, this will be okay, with the therapist. Okay. I think that will be super cool.

1:49:24 I cannot wait to do that. I am intrigued by psychedelics, having a full-blown psychedelic experience, but I’m just chicken enough that I haven’t done it yet, because you value your brain so much. I do, and I also just wonder, like, how arduous of a journey will it be? So there’s no truthful answer other than, I have fear, and there’s just enough fear that’s like a microdose. But for now, that’s where I’m stopping, but I want to do the MDMA for sure, because neurologically I understand where that’s going.

1:50:02 I might be more likely to do a DMT trip, where I’m not gonna find myself in twelve hours of screaming hell, and it just seems like it’s too influenced by sort of where you are in that moment. But I don’t know, it could be amazing. Maybe exactly the thing that I should do, but I’m just chicken enough that I haven’t. Yeah, fair enough, and some of that’s very healthy. You know?

1:50:24 Yeah. DMT is a pretty low-risk proposition. It’s about ten or twelve minutes, and you come back, although you do go to a very strange place, depending on who you are, but also, I don’t get anything long-lasting from it. I don’t get any lessons. But for ayahuasca, I mean, for me, like, three hours later I am back to a pretty much conscious state.

1:50:44 You know, I don’t know if anyone’s ever actually died on ayahuasca, but it can be very challenging mentally and physically, and I’m always scared before I go in. Always. I haven’t been back in 18 months. Before that, I haven’t been back in six years, so there’s a reason I don’t seek it out, even though I know I should probably go back every now and then just to check myself, on my own. That’s usually what it is for me, and to see if I’m really, if I’m really living my life congruent with what my values are and what my mission is.

1:51:13 Is this the dissolution of self that you learn the most from? You know, visions. It’s a good question, Tom. What, when I first, I don’t know if everyone has their, I went to Amsterdam and ate a bunch of mushrooms, experience, but I had one about when I was a banker, still about 10 years ago, 12 years ago, and at that time I wasn’t ready for my ego to be taken away from me, as most of us are not, and that was really hard, and I fought the whole time, and then when I did my first ayahuasca experience, I kind of knew that this might be happening.

1:51:43 It’s still not nice, because it shouldn’t be, but there I was a little bit more of just kind of a breathe and go with it, and go with it, and go with it. So now I’ve done about six ceremonies at this point. So now when I go in, I can at least be like, alright, I know this is gonna happen. I’m just gonna breathe. But what it usually does is make me face all sorts of things that I haven’t been facing.

1:52:03 It makes me look at the way I’ve been treating people in my life, the things I haven’t been living up to that I know I should. Sometimes a lot of memories. I usually get hit with a lot of emotions that I’m usually able to not engage with in life, you know, and I’ve, I feel a lot of pain and other people’s pain, and all these things that I was like, oh man, wow. I managed to go a year without feeling that. So it can be really grounding in that sense, and it also shows me that my role in this species is super important, and also with the planet.

1:52:34 It can just be a real reminder that, hey, wait a second, there’s these other people that are super important, even though what I do is acknowledgement of that. But this, this makes it a little bit more important. So, so yeah, but yeah, the setting matters, and you never know what you’re gonna get. As they usually say, you don’t get what you want, you get what you need. So yeah, there’s a ton of, and I’m not pushing it by any means.

1:52:56 I used to push it. That’s what all the newbies do. They push it on everybody. But yeah, at some point, but the MDMA sounds really interesting for sure. If I were to ask five of your friends, what is Tom’s superpower?

1:53:07 What would they say? That’s a good question. So one thing is definitely to come back. I have an inhuman ability to deal with stress, so I can stay laser-focused and not eat it. Me, and a big part of that is meditation.

1:53:23 That’s one. The other is that I, I see things through. So when I say I’m going to do something, I do it. I don’t stop when it gets hard. I stop when I’m done.

1:53:37 And then does that hurt you sometimes? No. Okay. Now, that, Brian, there is so much joy in that, and I worry that people look, this is a jock, a moment. I’m gonna channel Jocko for a second.

1:53:50 Discipline equals freedom, man. Like, when you’re prepared to go all the way, and you say to yourself, I’m going to do this, and I know I won’t stop, there’s so much power, there’s so much self-respect. And here’s another thing I want from people: self-worth. There are so many people that have no sense of self-worth. Now, here’s the bad news.

1:54:06 I can’t just tell you to love yourself. It won’t work. You have an intrinsic compass for whether you’re doing something that is worthy, that you value, not me. I think just being alive gives you value, but people cannot find self-worth until they do something they believe is worthy, and that’s just the hard facts. So getting into a space where you say, I’m gonna do this hard thing, and I’m gonna stick through, because it matters to me, and I’m not gonna stop until it’s done, like, that’s self-worth.

1:54:35 You, you will get a sense of self that no one can take away from you, and that’s the power, man. You become impervious to what other people think. So they would definitely say that they would also say I’m very intense, and not in a good way, that I am, I’m I’m gonna drive people for it, especially if they are working on something with me, like, very high standards, very intense. I’m pushing through, and I can sort of lose sensitivity to where other people are at.

1:55:05 It’s like, I’m just like, we’re here to get this done. So that one can be a double-edged sword. And then those closest to me would say that I’m very, very playful, but the rest of the world would never see that, because I’m, I used to be like that all the time with everybody, and now I’m only like that with a very select few. Like, my wife will laugh sometimes. She’s like, if the rest of the world saw you right now, they would literally be like, who the is this guy?

1:55:34 But that’s, yeah, with a very, very small group of people. Okay, what was the best day of your life, and the worst day of your life? Mmm. The best day of my life, I think, the best, if I really stopped and thought, this might not be the memory that I chose, but the best day is gonna be something around my wife. So I will give you the one that has become so important in my story.

1:56:03 It was rad when it happened, and it’s rad now as a part of a story, and I love when my wife is at speeches when I tell this story, because it stops being a story that I tell and it starts being a memory again. And it’s the night that I proposed to her. So I knew I was gonna propose, and I’d had a terrible day, and I came home, and she knew I’d had a bad day, and so we were dirt poor, and she made a bedroom picnic, and so just there on the carpet, and I came home, and we’re living in her mom’s house here in London at the time.

1:56:38 I come home, and she’s got this, like, meal laid out, and candles, and she was just so kind, and it just shifted my chemistry so rapidly. We sat down and we ate, and it was like my favorite. I don’t know, I can’t remember if it was like pizza or chicken, or something. It was something I loved, and had that. It was like, oh my god, like, I can’t believe you did this, and to be thought of, it was amazing.

1:57:03 And then, so I used to write a lot of poetry, and so we were naked and in lipstick. I write this poem on her body, just as I’m thinking of it, and it was awesome, and she’s like, I’m a god, this is so incredible, and I was like, this isn’t gonna make sense, but I have to leave right now, and she was like, okay, and I get dressed and I literally run out the door. Now, I’ve been trying to ask her father’s permission to propose for weeks, and he kept dodging me, kept canceling the meeting, because he knew what I was gonna ask it.

1:57:40 And so I ran to his house, and the the story where he said he didn’t want me to marry his daughter, but I knew that regardless of what he wanted, I was going to propose, and I was very confident she would say yes, and the next day, or the day after, I actually proposed, but that night of, like, being that connected to a human, and feeling that loved, and feeling like, alright, we’ll make it through anything. And that’s really been the story of our life. There was a study that came out that said the people that take the greatest risks are the ones with the strongest home life.

1:58:12 I thought, that’s exactly why I’m able to take the risk that I am as an entrepreneur, because I know if it all goes away, as long as I have her, I’ve got everything I need. And that’s so real. Like, that’s so, that’s not a flowery sentence. That’s, that is the most viscerally real statement in my life. As long as I have her, man, I’m good.

1:58:32 So that is, yeah, that’s my best. What’s my worst? I mean, it was the honest answer. I don’t know that there is a single day, but there was a period in my life that was just dark, sliding towards depression. It was to come home, laying on the floor with my face smashing into the carpet, and just being like, that sense of, imagine being in a bad place and believing there’s nothing you can do about it, that this is your life, and being like, I’m staring at, cuz growing up in Tacoma, everybody used to say, life’s the sandwich, and every day is just another bite.

1:59:17 And I was like, god, that’s dumb. Why do they repeat that? And then I started feeling like, oh my god, they’re right. Life’s the sandwich, and every day is another bite. And that got a little scary, and that was why I started reading about the brain, because I was so scared about where, like, that goes, because I could just feel like getting, like, heavier and heavier and heavier.

1:59:39 Like, as a specific acute day, it was a pretty bad day when my dog, who was essentially like my child, went missing. That was rough, but that was, like, that put me in Rambo mode, and it ended up being a rad day, because I, it was like, out of, I told my wife straight up, my wife was like, bro, I literally had never seen her like that. So I want you to imagine. People don’t have kids, so you have these little dogs, and they become like your kids, and the door, we were having stuff moved in, and we had a dog locked up, she’s like a little escape artist, and she got out.

2:00:13 Nobody knew it, it’s like an hour, and she gets out, and we start running around trying to figure out where she went. We realized she’s gone. We run up and down the neighborhood, nothing, nothing, nothing, and I come back, and my wife is just in hysterics, and she’s not like that. She is tough, and I said, I’m telling you right now, we’re getting this dog back. And everyone, part of the reason she was crying so much is because where we live, there’s, you know, it’s like up in the hills overlooking Los Angeles, and so there’s like coyotes everywhere.

2:00:44 People are like, lady, your dog’s already been eaten. That’s why she’s missing. Like, she got eaten by a coyote. Just forget about it. I was like, that, I called a K-9 unit in like San Diego, and I said, I need you to come up, and they’re like, oh sorry, we’re not gonna be able to make it tonight, and I was like, very determined, and I managed to convince them to come up, and that night we went out for, like, three or four hours up and down the hillside scouring them, and we found this one sort of random spot, and to make a very long story short, the dog signified that the trail ended right at that one spot, and so I put crazy reward signs up, and the next day, sure enough, guy, I think I have your dog.

2:01:29 So it was, like, it was intense. I slept for 45 minutes that night, went back out canvassing, like going crazy, making sure that the signs were in the right place, all that stuff, and we got her back. So it went from, like, this, for real, for real. I think my wife may be emotionally broken. Like, I’m not sure she’d, obviously, like, get back into life, but there, there was, she has even said, I wouldn’t have never been the same.

2:01:53 The sense of loss she was like, I’ve never experienced in my life. And I know some people, if they don’t think their dogs like kids, are not gonna get it at all. They’re in, a thing that sounds so trite, but that’s how it felt. Batman, that’s, that’s heavy. So, but yeah, we got the dog back.

2:02:09 Besides things like dog, what else scares you? What scares, there’s only two things that scare me. Not even losing my dog, not unlike a real level. I was worried about my wife in that instance, so for me, brain damage is number one, and losing my wife is number two. Like, without my wife, I would go through a gnarly period.

2:02:30 There’s no question. Like, I don’t even know, my identity is so intertwined with her, and she’s helped make me who I am, and I have helped make her who she is, and it’s, we found each other when we were young. I mean, it’s just like our lives are so intertwined, and we’ve been so good to keep everything on fire. Our sex life is still rad. We’ve been together for 19 years, but we’re still, like, super on fire for each other, and we founded the business together, and we work well together.

2:02:56 I mean, it’s just like, we are what we say we are: independently codependent. So we’re both our own person. We both have our own thing, our own dreams, and, you know, doing our own thing, but, like, we, we really do live life as an entity. Wow. What would we be surprised to learn about Tom Bilyeu?

2:03:15 Um, what you do in your spare time? I talk so much on camera. What would people actually be surprised by? I play video games, like, and I take them seriously. Yeah.

2:03:26 So, yeah, I play to win. Favorites. I only play one game. I play a game called Destiny. Okay, so Destiny, too.

2:03:33 Technically, okay, anybody else out there? And, um, when do you play, and how much do you play? That we play on the weekends, because Monday through Friday, if I’m awake, I’m, um, working or working out, and then on Saturday and Sunday I play a little on Saturday, and then we play quite a bit on Sunday, and my sister comes, who also lives in LA, and the three of us play there in the same room together as a fireteam. It is a lot of fun. That might surprise people.

2:03:57 I read a lot of Japanese manga, that might surprise people. When you play, you play to win. Do these, do these games where you’re talking, you’re talking to me, where, you don’t, because we’re sitting together. Okay. Yes, if we were in different locations we would, but you’re like, yeah, go around this way, get them there, I’m gonna go behind, like, it’s, you know, you’re using military strategy and all that.

2:04:15 And why do you love that? Is that a way you can shut your brain off? No, it’s a, it, one, it’s a bit like dancing. So there is the coordination of your hands and your eyes to the rhythm, and having to, like, find the rhythm of the movements, and there’s no better way to explain it than you either find the rhythm or you don’t. And when you’re in a rhythm and you’re just, like, you’re always at the right distance from people, getting the kills, and all that, which, I feel silly talking about all this, but it is very fun, and it’s deep bonding for the three of us to be on a team, cooperating, trying to get a win.

2:04:46 And so there’s elation when you get the win, and there’s, you know, frustration, you want to throw the controller when you lose. So yeah, it’s a, it is a lot of fun, and to push yourself to get better and better and better is a lot of fun. Gonna do video games in the future? Oh, absolutely. Sure.

2:05:01 I mean, video games drive so much of culture, especially now with Twitch and everything, so that is inevitable. Okay, what keeps you awake at night? Typically, what keeps me awake is really just, I am trying to build the next Disney, but I’m not playing it. Building the next Disney, I’m, I am actually trying, and so I’m holding myself accountable to sincere pursuit. So whether I do it or not won’t change how I feel about myself, but whether I showed up every day and really, really, really tried to play to win, to figure it out, to figure out where I’m weak and what I don’t understand, and shore up my weaknesses, and to improve, and so that I can actually get there and do it.

2:05:41 That is exciting for me, but it is, it’s, it’s overwhelming, in the sense that everywhere I turn, an aspect of it is there. So whether it’s, like, oh, I need to evolve the interview show, or, you know, I want to launch Impact Theory University, and then how are we gonna find other teachers for Impact Theory University? It can’t just be me, and how do we get these films made? You know, we’re creating this world-class IP, but, like, what’s that look like? Who do we have to partner with?

2:06:09 So the, the problem is so big, and it’s gonna take, I tell my staff, this is a 70-year plan. This is multiple generations of people, you know, and especially now that we’re aiming at kids, it’s like, you teach the kids, and then they’ve got to grow up, and then teach their kids to be into Impact Theory, and then their kids have to grow up, and that’s really the only way that you’re really gonna permeate culture, because I’m trying to change culture in the way that I know how to change culture. So I can’t do music, which is a far more real-time way to influence culture, and temporary, to me, but yeah, so you’re sticking to what you can do, and you’re good at, what’s, another, nothing, what I’m good at, what I’m passionate about, right?

2:06:45 So I’ve spent decades building a passion around film and storytelling in that particular art form, so I want to be there, and it’s, it’s something I’m so into, and it’s so much fun for me. So do you worry about the world, the planet, or that we’re fighting or killing ourselves? Oh, we are, and I’m very grateful that there are people for whom that is their primary consideration. My primary consideration is human thriving. Now, if there weren’t people making sure that there is a planet for humans to thrive on, then what I’m doing would be utterly useless.

2:07:20 But I think that you have different people with different passions and different personality types, and I think is a good thing. So I want to give people the ability to thrive, and to set them up mentally to take on any challenge and to make their dreams come true, and to give them the skills that they’re going to need to actually do that. But I’m all about the individual minds of people. That is my playing field. Yeah, yeah.

2:07:45 I always ask a few questions at the end. I’m gonna ask you, if you could pick up a magic phone and call up twenty-year-old Tom, give him some advice based on everything you know now, what would you say? It will probably be, if you ask me this question last time, probably be the same, and that is, that one, you have to have a growth mindset, like, just first and foremost. So your talent, intelligence are malleable, so spend all of your time trying to improve your skill set, and the key around skill set is that skills are not about checking a box.

2:08:42 Love that line. Best advice you’ve ever received? Could have come from any, my father-in-law. This is way easy. Tom, when you walk into any business endeavor, make sure you know more about it than anyone else.

2:08:52 That has about three years after, and I finally realized that was the best advice I’ve ever received. It has remained the best advice. It’s so powerful. Like, just go learn. Here’s the greatest magic trick anyone can pull.

2:09:06 The funniest thing, do you know the thing I get credited for all the time? Tommy’s got such a good memory. No. My memory is an absolute dumpster fire, but I read so much, and I use what I read as fast as I can, so frequently that it creates the illusion that I actually have a good memory. It’s just that I’m willing to work so hard and read so much that people would rather believe that I have a good memory, that I just must remember most of what I read, rather than to believe I read ten times what they think I read and only remember some small fraction of it.

2:09:38 But I just read and read and read. I’m reading in the shower, I’m reading in the car, if I’m cooking, I’m reading. All audible, of course, but I’m just consuming information as fast as I can. I’m reading Audible sped up. I’m getting the information in, and then when I learn something usable that day, I’m putting it to use, and that gives you that edge.

2:09:56 Yeah. It creates the illusion that I have this tremendous memory, but it’s like it’s magic, like real magic, which I studied for a while. Real magic is that it is easier to believe that that person is defying the laws of physics than to believe that they spent seven years learning how to move their hands and speak in such a certain way that you don’t notice what they’re doing, because you’re like, there’s nothing. No one would spend seven years learning how to vanish a coin.

2:10:21 Yes, they would, and that they’ll practice it for hours, and then still, even though they have it, at an airport doing it over and over and over. / It’s easier to believe that than to believe they went to the basketball manufacturer and had them insert a card into the basketball, and then they got very good at getting you to pick one of three cards, and they have three basketballs all with different cards, and then they remember which card is in which basketball, so depending on which one you pick, they know which basketball to tell you to get and jab. And then, well, my god, there it is. And you do a similar trick.

2:10:49 I love it. Last part to that twenty-year-old that’s watching or listening to us, some advice to them that maybe is different from the advice you wouldn’t give them, to your, to your own self. What would you tell them, young person today? So, first, I’ll say the advice that I just gave myself is definitely where you want to be, but you can do anything you set your mind to without limitation, but you’re going to pay an extraordinary price. And if you get yourself psyched up so that you’re passionate enough about what you’re doing, you believe enough in it that you’re willing to pay that price, what you can do in this world is, it is so close to unlimited.

2:11:29 You might as well just say it’s unlimited. And if I could get people to believe that, the level of joy in that, when you love the pursuit, it’s just tapping into the innate things about the human. The desire for mastery is real. So as you’re getting better at something that is inherently joyful, and then it’s actually giving you skills, and those skills have utility, and they let you serve, and now you’ve got this deep sense of fulfillment, and that is the punchline.

2:11:52 Hmm. Do you think, say, 50 years from now, if we keep doing the kinds of things we’re doing, that we’ll be able to look at the world and say, things are different than they were when I started doing this? I think they all cycle. So yes, I think we’ll be able to usher, and I think we already are, if I allow myself to be optimistic. I think that the, the whole, oh god, what do they call it, the, the underground, Eric Weinstein.

2:12:21 It has a name, and I’m kind of like, intellectual dark. Yeah, the intellectual dark web, which, you know, obviously we’re, is it, certainly outside of that, but when I think about that movement, podcast, video podcasting, successful people going on camera all day, every day, trying to give away every secret that they have. I’m Brian, I’m trying to give away everything I know as rapidly as I can, and that is going to influence a massive number of people.

2:12:48 And I think without that, the dominant narrative was going in the coddling of the American Mind direction, and I think now people have somebody like Sam Harris or an Eric Weinstein or a Brett Weinstein, or you know, whoever else, Sammy at seminars, that guard said that likes giving people like these counterpoints to hold on to and to think about. Jordan Peterson, another one, is really giving people a counter-narrative that is incredibly powerful, and if I can play some small role in that, about really being the tactical guy that’s going to say, think like this, do this, believe this, these, this is the package. Like, this package is the universal package, and download it into your mindset.

2:13:27 It’s the foundation, and from there you can go do whatever you want to do. So that is really what I think we will see reflected. I think it’s multi-generational. I don’t think the change happens in one generation, but it would appear that generation cycle is about four. So you get four generations now.

2:13:45 I happen to think that generations are gonna start to get shorter, so it’s gonna probably end up being something like eight, but it’ll be roughly the same time period. So, and if we can get this cycle moving in a positive direction, I will be ecstatic. Yeah. I saw Jordan Peterson debate Sam Harris here at the O2 Arena, the same, same stadium that Beyoncé had played like a few months earlier. I took my wife, and Jordan said that wouldn’t have happened without podcasts.

2:14:10 He said we wouldn’t have known that there was a demand for people to have these nuanced conversations, or, as Jordan would say, people aren’t as stupid as we thought they were, right? So I agree, it’s a beautiful thing, and I think the kind of things we’re doing is showing everyone that they have a desire for this stuff. And, yeah, it is the opposite of, you know, the cat video and the, you know, the Instagram clickbait. It’s this long-form, nuanced lessons, and I do think it’s making a difference, for sure.

2:14:36 So I, I suppose, say you’re doing amazing work, Tom, and I really appreciate everything you’re doing with Impact Theory, and you know, it’s, it’s just all you. It’s such a signature you piece, and all the decisions you make, and I really appreciate it, and I appreciate everybody in the space that can get up every day and do it, because it’s easy, but it’s also a beautiful ride, and those of us that do it know it’s also just super, it’s, it’s like an almost an honor to be able to sit in the seat. And, you know, like you said, I mean, sometimes when I’m preparing for a guest, I’m like, man, I got a lot of things to do, but then I get, I get, my job is to learn, which is just a beautiful thing, and I would have never learned this much, even if I was at the University, or even 10 universities.

2:15:15 I wouldn’t have had to get inside Jocko’s head, and your head, and David Goggins’s head, in a hundred people’s heads every year. So yeah, it’s beautiful journey as well. So yeah, I’m super excited about all your new ideas, and this, this whole thing with kids, and I think it’s really fascinating, and I’m gonna let you take that lame thick, but it sounds really interesting. I want to watch what you’re doing. So yeah, man, thanks so much, and come back and see us over a couple years, and then let us, need to do it.

2:15:41 Thank you for having me on. Cool, man. All the best. Yeah, thank you. Thanks.