Vishen Lakhiani - How Mindvalley Is Transforming Leadership Through Consciousness Engineering

Full transcript: Vishen Lakhiani on London Real

2:46 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Vishen Lackeyani, the entrepreneur, author, speaker, and philanthropist. You are the founder and CEO of Mindvalley, one of the most successful wellness companies in the world, which you started in 2003 with just $700. You’ve recently launched Mindvalley University this year taking place in Barcelona, which is your reimagining of our education system for the future. Your best-selling book, The Code of the Extraordinary Mind, provides a 10-point framework for understanding and enhancing the human self and features interviews with Elon Musk, Richard Branson, and Arianna Huffington. I was at your A-Fest in Ibiza this year. I had an amazing time. Vishen, welcome to London Real. Thank you. I’m so excited to be here, because firstly, I’ve watched your interviews. Not only are they so high-end and so intellectual, but oh my god, you’re set. I love design. I love interior design. I love the whole steampunk feel, and this set is ridiculous. It’s so beautiful. That bulldog, I want that.

4:45 Don’t take the bulldog with you. You were typing on the vertical typewriters. Yeah, this is all right up your alley, right? This is so inspiring for me. I just love this place.

4:53 And you have a new tech space, you’re saying, in Kuala Lumpur? Yeah, we opened up a new tech office about 18 months ago. I forgot the exact date, but I’d just come back from Burning Man, and I was inspired by steampunk. IBM’s computer, Watson or Big Blue, did an analysis of what would be the hottest new design style in the future, future meaning 10 years on, and it was steampunk, which is basically this. Steampunk is if you lived 100 years ago, what would you imagine the future to be like? Steampunk is very inspired by Jules Verne. It’s steam engine. It’s gas mask. It’s British leather, British flags everywhere.

5:31 I love it. So it’s a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful style. And I love it. You’ve got it here. Yeah, I don’t know. It was a vibe we hit on right when we were redesigning our studio, and it just works for this whole space. So it’s awesome to have you here.

5:43 And I’ve actually seen what you can do behind the scenes by being at AFS. So I want to talk all about that in your last month in Barcelona. But first, tell me about London and your relationship with London, because you’ve probably been around London all over the globe. But you’ve spent much time here. Well, I have family here. And I’m a New York guy. So I like London. But I’ve always found London extremely complicated with hard to use public transport and streets that just don’t make sense because in New York, everything is a grid. So I love London. I love the people.

6:18 My wife is in love with the city. My wife, she’s Estonian. She was educated at the University of Edinburgh. So Britain is in her heart. She loves this country. And so we come to London every now and then with our kids for a holiday.

6:32 Okay. And you were born in Kuala Lumpur. I was born in Kuala Lumpur, yes. Went to school at University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. In Ann Arbor, yes.

6:38 I spent a summer in Ann Arbor, by the way. And then you went to New York City. I worked in New York. I worked in Silicon Valley. Now, Mine Valley’s operations are in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

6:50 Okay. And your wife’s Estonian. You have a lot of Estonian staff, so you know Europe. Right. But you’re all over the place.

6:55 I just became a European resident and I’m in love with this continent. Very much, right? It’s amazing. It is, it is. Tell me about this last month, because I’ve been hearing about this Mine Valley University.

7:06 And I figured we might as well do this because you just flew in from Barcelona. I was at A-Fest about a month ago in Ibiza, maybe six weeks ago, I don’t remember. And you were talking about the extension of this four or five day, you know, piece where we’re learning from all these great people, former guests on the show, like Esther Perel. She was amazing. Again, you curate these people that teach us things.

7:27 And then you were going on to do this university. And I figured we might as well start there because it’s the first time you did it. And it’s really kind of a revolutionary idea. So what happened in Barcelona? Well, I love that city, by the way.

7:39 Well, before I answer that, I should tell you the end goal, the end game of what we are trying to do, right? Yeah. So if you look at the world today, the way our society functions is fundamentally broken. Gallup did a really interesting study a couple of years back and they found that 54% of Americans hate their jobs, or the more accurate word in the study was dislike their jobs. And then Gallup did a study of school kids and the majority of American school kids, over 50%, I believe it was 51 or 52%, disliked school.

8:09 Now think about what that is saying. It’s saying that we’ve created a society despite all our technology, despite 2000 years of Western civilization, more even, where our kids dislike how they are spending the majority of their waking hours. And they are groomed to become adults who dislike the way they are spending the majority of their waking hours. Something is broken. And you’re talking about over 50% here.

8:33 Now, I mean, if you had a car at 50% of the time, you hated being in this car, you dislike this car, it was breaking down, it stank, it wouldn’t move, you’d probably want to go get a new car. But when it comes to our education, when it comes to our careers, we blindly follow. We have this idea that this is the way it has to be, and we just have to accept it. So I’ve been in those situations. I went to a really horrible school in Kuala Lumpur. I’ve worked at really horrible jobs. And I decided, well, what would happen if we reinvented this? So I got into this intense study of all of these new models of human evolution. I looked at Ken Wilbur’s work, the world’s greatest living philosopher, and he spoke about expanding consciousness. And what would human beings think about? How would they function? What would their levels of awareness be as we progressed?

9:27 I looked into Barbara Marx Hubbard’s idea of Homo universalis. I looked into Neil Donald Walsh’s work of highly evolved beings. And I tried to create a roadmap of what the optimized human being would be. And I’m talking about optimized in terms of not just spiritual awareness, but optimized in terms of your levels of self esteem, confidence, the way you follow your passion, the way you treat other human beings, the way you raise your kids. And then I looked at what the education system is doing to get us there. And the answer is hardly anything, maybe five to 10%. Instead, the education system is creating us to be cogs in the wheels of machinery. I mean, and that quote comes directly from Calvin Coolidge, I think in the 1920s, he says, the point of education is to create workers who can be cogs in the wheels of industry. And so, so much has advanced in our world, in terms of technology, artificial intelligence, robotics, we know that 10 years from now, 45% of the jobs in the world today are going to be obsolete. But we’re doing nothing to expand the human beings understanding of itself and its own nature. Human consciousness isn’t evolving as fast. What I’m trying to do at Mindvalley is to do everything I can, I guess, to collaborate with the world’s greatest thinkers to bring on millions of students onto our platforms to accelerate and build upon human ideas of consciousness. So you mentioned AFest, right? Yeah. Now, before we do that,

10:56 You started Mindvalley in 2003 with meditation, right? That’s how it started. But it sounds like as you spent more time with that, you open your mind and said, okay, I got more work to do. Yes, because I was in Silicon Valley. I’m a computer engineer. So I was going to say a bit of a geek, but no, I’m a total geek. I was a computer engineer. I used to be one. I still am. And I say that with pride. I have this. So I have all of the weird negative sides of being a computer engineer, right? I’m a little bit socially awkward. I’m probably slightly Asperger’s or something. But my mind thinks in algorithms, and I see patents sometimes. I see patents in everything. And I guess that’s one of the abilities that allowed me to see patents in life. So in my book, I call these I used the word culture escape to describe the collective web of human beliefs, ideas, understandings, rituals, religions, culture, as it it, it surrounds us. But within this web of the culture escape, there are rules that help us move forward. And there are rules which are called rules or bullshit rules that hold us back. So when I was in Silicon Valley, I lost my company. My timing sucked. I was a kid who thought I was smart. I thought I was going to build this technology. Investors were going to hand me money. I was dumb. I was an experience.

12:19 I lost everything. And I found myself sleeping in a couch. This was 2001 2002 with a dot com bubble head chest burst. I was sending out my resume to every job I could find on Craigslist. And finally, a company hires me and they want me to sell technology to law firms.

12:33 It was the only job that I could get after months of being unemployed. So the economy was so bad. The deal was if you couldn’t close a sale, you did not get paid, no base salary. So I was miserable. I was I was taking home maybe two grand a month, which is hardly enough to live in San Francisco. So I guess in desperation, I got online and I googled. I can’t remember what I searched for. Maybe it was why does life suck so bad, or please help me figure this out. And I found a class in meditation, flew took the class, and shifted in me. I came back. And I was using these newfound human abilities to be better at my job. Not only did I double my sales in one week using ideas I learned such as empathy, creative visualization, tapping into intuition, using mindfulness to remove stress. Not only that, but I was able to be so good at connecting with people as a leader to to to set proper goals for myself and my team that in the next four months, at the age of 26, I got promoted three times.

13:39 And then the boss ended up giving me two jobs in the company, I could handle two jobs that normally would require two senior managers, because my mind was so much more effective. But after staying with that company for 18 months, I realized I wanted to do more. I wanted to give back the will. And this is a really funny thing that happens, Brian, when you meditate, there’s this weird phenomenon that happens when you meditate a lot, where you start feeling connected and you start feeling connected with life with other human beings. You cannot help but get that feeling inside you that you want to give back.

14:11 So I don’t know what it is, but meditation seems to to open up this altruistic drive within people. And I wanted to give back. And I remember Nelson Mandela had once said, if you want to change the world, change education. So I thought, well, what can I do to create a company in education that could teach the world what I had just learned, that it had such a profound impact in my life? I mean, I grew up with self-esteem problems.

14:37 Even in my entire college life, I never dated a single girl, because I believed I was ugly and I was insecure. And I just didn’t know how I just had no confidence. And I wondered, what if I had learned this stuff way, way, way earlier? Who would I have been? And so I started Mindvalley to help get this out to more people. And now, I guess that’s what we try to do every single day. And I absolutely love it. It’s no longer just meditation. It’s fitness. It’s relationships. It’s teaching you all the things that can lead to you having a better life that school forgot to teach you. You went to University of Michigan.

15:14 Right. I went to MIT. You got a computer science degree then? Yes. So back when I studied in the University of Michigan, our electrical engineering and computer science department was ranked number five in the world, I believe. MIT, I think, was number one.

15:27 So damn it, you beat me on that one. Were you an engineer? I was a mechanical engineer. Mechanical engineer. That’s why I was at Ford Motor Company for the summer and I lived in Ann Arbor and worked here.

15:35 I see. That explains why you’re at Ann Arbor. So do we shut down these universities? Before I want to get into your university, is there a place for that? Did you learn anything there?

15:44 Well, university has its good points and its bad points. And that’s why I created my own university, right, which we just completed and I just flew in from Barcelona. But here’s what’s happening. I was talking to Ray Kurzweil, the VP of engineering at Google. We were having dinner at an XPRIZE event and he said something really interesting to our dinner table. He says, by 2029, everyone in the world will have the equivalent of Iron Man’s or Tony Stark’s Jarvis on their phone. You’d be able to open up your smartphone and you’ll have your own personal artificial intelligence that will be as smart as the smartest human being and possibly a collection of the smartest human beings in the world today. And anything you need to figure out, your phone will be able to tell you. Now, you can move forward into the future.

16:28 Ray Kurzweil says, by 2049, that AI will be super intelligent and as intelligent as all the collective brains on Earth today. Now, as that’s happening, why are schools teaching us things that are personalized artificial intelligence, which is essentially an extension of our brain. It’s now on our smartphone. So schools are preparing us for a world that is no longer going to exist. And then there’s robotics and artificial intelligence applied to jobs.

16:59 Now, that’s a whole other thing. Even jobs such as lawyers, doctors, copywriters, algorithms, AI and robotics are taking away those jobs. Now, when this happens, what should we be learning? Because honestly, you’re a mechanical engineer. What’s going to happen with an artificial intelligence? So I remember talking to a group of scientists and they were talking about the impact of AI on the future. And they specifically spoke about mechanical engineering, right? They say, let’s say you want to invent a skateboard, right? So you can hire a team of mechanical engineers to optimize and create the world’s greatest skateboard. But 10 years from now, you could assign that to an AI.

17:38 And the AI, if it’s programmed right, could create millions of different iterations of a skateboard, put it through algorithmic tests, and boom, 3D print the ideal skateboard. Where is the role of the mechanical engineering there? Even mechanical engineering gets disrupted. Google just wrote AI that can write its own software. So where does the role of my job, computer engineering, come in? Now, this doesn’t mean that all of these skills are going to disappear. They’re still going to be necessary. But what is truly going to make us unique, what’s truly going to make us high functioning in the world is not this. It’s the skills that truly lead to happy lives. It’s learning how to be better parents. It’s learning wisdom.

18:21 It’s learning mindfulness. It’s learning how to deal with those scourges of society, anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, schools don’t teach this. And there was a Harvard study done by Sean Aker. So he looked at employees and companies, and he wanted to see what would be the things that would contribute to these employees seeing their career go up. And guess what? It wasn’t skills. Rather, it was what Sean Aker called social connectivity score.

18:47 He found that you could look at all these employees, you could rate them on their social connectivity score. And this means their ability to empathize with others, their kindness, their levels of positivity when they walk into a room, their motivation, their optimism. And if you look at the top 25%, if you’re in that top 25% in terms of social connectivity score, you are going to be 40% more likely to get a raise in the next two years than everyone else.

19:11 And it has nothing to do with the school you graduated from. So we know that because I know guys from MIT and you know guys from Michigan, including even you, by your own example, that got out there in the workforce and were probably useless to themselves, right? Because we didn’t know ourselves very well. So the answer isn’t to wipe out these schools, that is to get these schools to teach things that can contribute to social connectivity score and contribute to personal wisdom.

19:36 That’s where personal growth comes in. So Mindvalley, I predict this is going to be huge in the future. So right now, we’re assembling all of the world’s greatest teachers onto our platform, from Neil Donald Walsh to Robin Sharma to Wim Hof. Our goal is to create the best technologies, the best events, the best learning curriculums, because I believe this is what the billions of people are going to crave 10 years from now, when you have Jarvis in your pocket.

20:00 Right, right. Tell me about the university, because this is interesting, because it just happened a month ago. What is it? When did you think of it? And if I had been there in Barcelona this last month, what would I have experienced?

20:12 So here’s the problem with school. It is a bullshit idea that you pluck out a teenager from society and stick them in a bubble for four years with other teens, and then have them go through classes and to compete to get grades so that they can maybe go to graduate school, maybe go take another job, maybe go become a partner in a law firm. And it creates a really dysfunctional world. I mean, the problem in America is that most people go into university and start going for classes and figuring out how to combine and select their academic credits before they can legally buy a beer. Most people in America have to choose a career before you could legally buy a beer. And that’s kind of messed up. I became a computer engineer.

20:54 I got a job at Microsoft. I worked my butt off for five years to get that job. Eleven weeks into that job at Microsoft, I realized I hated it. And so I quit. I quit cold turkey, and I went and I followed my passion, and I did what really inspired me.

21:07 And back then, it was joining a nonprofit that allowed me to travel and do good work in the world. Now, here’s the problem. So the problem at university is you’re putting these kids in a bubble, and by the time they come out, the world has changed, and the world is changing at an ever increasing rate. Peter Diamandis said, between 2000 and 2015, we will see as much change in the world, or we saw as much change in the world, as 1900 to 2000. But here’s the crazy bit. Between 2016 and 2022, we will see as much change in the world as the entire 20th century. And then from 2022 to 2025, in three years, the world will shift as much as an entire century before. So what’s going to happen when you spend four years in a bubble with a bunch of other teenagers? So Mindvalley’s version of college is dramatically different. The first thing is, we take away the four years, we take away that bubble. You go to university for one month of the year, and then you go back into the real world and actually do things, start a company, learn new skills, intern at a company. That’s the first thing, right? So you spend a month in focused learning, then 11 months applying and doing. And because in today’s world, the best way to learn is to also apply and do because jobs are changing so fast. Now the second thing is, it’s trans generational. So we have entire families come together. I’m there taking classes, but my nine year old son is taking classes. My friend’s teenage sons are taking classes in the teenage

22:38 Track. 20 somethings are taking classes. So it’s tracks for people of all ages. And these tracks weave in together. In certain tracks, I’m there with my nine year old son. Now think about what this does to a nine year old when he’s in a room, not with other nine year olds, but with adults.

22:53 And then it gets even better in this university. So again, one of our models for this was Burning Man. Beautiful thing about Burning Man is they create a canvas and people come and build on that canvas. A lot of the students who come to Mindvalley U then teach. So we have this one 27 year old who joined Mindvalley U for a month with her boyfriend. And her name is Regan Hillyer.

23:15 And she has a business at 27 that does millions a year. So she came, she learned, then she decided to go and teach the teenagers. So now you have these 18 and 19 year olds learning about life, not from a professor, but from a 27 year old who leads an epic life. She gets to travel, she has a team, she’s built up her brand. And it was so inspiring that that weekend, some of those teenagers started their first company on Shopify. Because one of the teens we spoke to, he said, I’ve always wanted to start a t-shirt company, but I thought I had to have my parents pay for me to go to college, take some business classes, come out, get an investor, take all of these management classes and accounting classes so I know how to run a business and then start my company. Bullshit. He started it in three days, sold his first t-shirt, his entire paradigm shift. And he says, now I know I’m still going to go to university, but I’m going to be an entrepreneur as I go through university. That’s what we’re trying to do. We’re accelerating the process. We’re getting rid of the unnecessary dogma, the unnecessary bullshit rules, the unnecessary long winded parts, going straight to building a school that teaches people what truly matters, how to be a better parent, how to love better, how to be happier, how to improve your self-esteem, how to practice mindfulness so you don’t have to suffer from depression or anxiety like so many of the other people in the world, how to start a business fast, how to,

24:39 We even have classes on how to invest in Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, stuff that many universities are not picking up. But the greatest thing about this is the connections. Because people come together and we design it in a way where you have community, you have connections, you leave with six to 10 new best friends from around the world that are with you. And it’s trans-generational. We have 25-year-olds becoming close friends with 50-year-olds. And think about what that does. The older folks learn from youth. The youth have connections in big companies, in entrepreneurial ventures where they can apply to get a job. They have mentors. It is amazing to see how people of different generations can come together. What took you so long to do this? That’s what I want to know because you’ve been doing online education for a long time. Why did you finally say, I got to bring people together? Well, here’s what happened, right? It took me so long because I doubted the idea could work because everyone I pitched this to said, who on earth is going to be able to leave their jobs and spend 30 days in a city with their kids? But then the world started changing. Do you know that my HR manager was in an HR conference recently, right? And a big thing that they were talking about is that employeeship is going to disappear in 10 years.

25:57 They said everyone is going to be a free agent. Officers will no longer be necessary. I’m sure you read the news. WordPress, they just disbanded their Silicon Valley office. People are working remotely from around the world collaborating through Skype, through WhatsApp, through Slack.

26:11 Employership is shifting. Many people are becoming free agents. They stay with the company for two to three months, work on a project and go and join another company. Now, because of all of these, all of a sudden, the big doubt that I had when I was setting out this vision, will people come for a month? That disappeared. Right now, not only did we have double the many applications as seats available, but the word of mouth has been so insane that next year we’re scaling up for 400% growth. And now we’re asking ourselves, how can we put 40,000 students simultaneously into Mindvalley University on this city campus? On the city campus? Because your next one’s in Tallinn. Tallinn, we’re aiming for 1,300. Okay. But that’s still 400% growth. Our first experiment in Barcelona last week, last month was 300 people. Okay. Walk me through what Monday through Friday would have been like for me. I’m there with my 13-year-old stepdaughter and my Mrs.

27:07 Brilliant question. Yeah. What are the kinds of things? Am I in class all day? Is it part of the day? But what does it feel like? Brilliant question. So what happens is that when you come, you have a curriculum and you have a co-working space. So this is what my day looked like. I would wake up and my wife and I, well, my wife would walk my son to the co-working space. So the adults and the kids are learning in the same neighborhood. A beautiful place called Villa de Gracia in Barcelona. My kid would get enrolled in a class for 90 minutes.

27:35 An entrepreneur or a teacher would come and teach these kids. So the kids were learning everything from mindfulness to kindness. They had a class where they had to roam the streets and speak to homeless people to develop their sense of empathy. Amazing, right? So my wife would drop the kid off. Then she would go up to the fifth floor where the co-working space is and work with her team. My wife has her own company, her own division of Mindvalley. She flew her team down.

28:01 So her entire team was super excited because they got to work together in a new city, bond and connect in new ways. Now, at 11 a.m. we have a class. So we have often so many famous teachers and celebrities decided to come down and teach. Everyone from the NFL icon, Tony Gonzalez, to Wim Hof, right? The superhuman Guinness record holder whose picture I see on your wall. To legends like Lisa Nichols, Marissa Peer, who’s Britain’s number one coach.

28:28 So at 11 a.m. they’d be a class. And then we had formal classes with celebrities, with great teachers that we arranged. But we also opened up slots for the students there to teach. So students would apply. So one guy, Andrew Petoshnik, he’s made millions investing in Ethereum and Bitcoin. I didn’t even know what Ethereum was. He did a class on Bitcoin and Ethereum that blew everyone’s mind, right? So we have classes at 11, a class at three and a class at five. Each class is 90 minutes and it’s optional. So you have a co-working space where you’re connecting with people, you’re grabbing coffee, you’re taking beautiful walks in the city. There are three different classes every day and this goes on for about a month.

29:06 And in the evening, there are organized parties. You go for a flamenco show, you go for an organized party, you can sign up to go on a trip to see the Sagrada Familia, all with fellow students. And this is where the greatest thing that university gathers, community and friends, this is where that comes in. So when people leave, they’ve learned something. But the crazy thing is, it’s not about the agenda. We bring in the great teachers, but that’s never number one. Number one are the friendships and remarkable friendships are created when you experience moments that fill you with emotion with someone else.

29:44 When you experience a mind-blowing idea, or when you gaze upon the Sagrada Familia, the most beautiful church in the world with people next to you, or when you go out for a night of drinking of tapas and cava in a beautiful suburb of Barcelona with five or six other students. And those friendships are what carry people through. So we found that… Because that’s what I remember about university. It’s those moments.

30:08 Friendships, yes. But as we become adults, you know, there was a study done that shows that especially it applies to men and women. After we turned 40, the amount, our social connections start going down. We spend more time with our spouses, our kids. And that’s great, but it’s not enough. Men especially, after 40, start getting lonely.

30:25 I created this because I was getting lonely. My life was work, gym, meditation, kids, spouse. And I loved all of it, but I had no room to hang out with my friends. I think I remember one month went by and I realized I had turned down five friends who asked me to go out for drinks. Not because I didn’t want to, because I was so damn tired. After work, I want to come back. I got to spend time with my kids, help them with their homework. And I created this so that all of us have a chance to escape from the day to day. And we still get to work, but we get to be in experienced life in a new world, in a new society, in a new city with beautiful new friends and do it with our children and our families. So you’re not leaving them aside. And when I did this, I realized, I woke up in Barcelona one day and I was cycling on my rented bicycle to my coworking space. And I realized that this is not just a new form of education, it’s a new form of living. It’s the closest you can come to reincarnation. At home, I have my beautiful blue merch that I drive to work. Here, I’m on a freaking green bicycle that costs 300 euros, but I’m loving every minute of it.

31:32 It’s the closest you can come to reincarnation because you’re in a new city, but not as a tourist. You’re dropping your kids off to classes, you’re attending classes, you have your meetings to get to, you have your coworking space, and you have a community. And it’s so enriching and so beautiful. And I can’t wait to go back one year from now. Is this the new family vacation?

31:50 Yes. Because, funny enough, I was in Barcelona a year ago and we took the family and it’s two weeks and you can’t wait to go and it’s this beautiful city. But some of you, part of you says, after three days, what do we do? Exactly. It is the new family vacation.

32:05 It’s the new family vacation, especially for people who are creators, who are entrepreneurs, who love doing stuff that matters. I’m one of those people. When I go to a vacation, after two or three days, I get bored. I’m like, all right, this is like the 15th church I’ve seen. What can I do next? And then while I’m spending time with my kids and my wife, which is great, after three days, sometimes you long for… I long for the company of men, of my peers. You want to talk about ideas, you want to create things, you want to…

32:37 And that’s what happens here. So what was really funny is a lot of people moved to Barcelona thinking, oh, we’re going to see all of these different museums. They never had time for that because they were so busy and so enamored by the beautiful talks. And for me, the greatest thing was every single night going to a new Spanish restaurant, because I freaking love Spanish food, and having meaningful conversations with new friends. Okay. Wow. This is very interesting to hear and for you to report back. Two things, biggest surprise, positive, biggest thing that you didn’t see come in that you’re like, I’m going to fix this next time. Right. Well, the first thing is we thought people cared about a co-working space. So we had 600 applicants, a co-working space had room for 300. We turned down 300 people. So we had a 50% acceptance.

33:23 Right. Because you’re a tech guy. So tech guys, we love our co-working spaces. Nobody gathered them about the co-working space because people would come there and they would think, okay, I’m going to work for four to six hours, but then they would find the class is so interesting. And they would find they got so much out of the conversations because they are there with other brilliant people that they decided to forego work in many cases, or work one or two hours a day. And instead go for masterminds, go for coffee house chats, go for walks with other people in the industry. And I did that and I got so much more out of it than about simply being in front of my computer and being on Slack or email. That was the first big surprise. Okay. So you wanted to give people the option to work. So they wouldn’t be thinking that 30 days, I can’t not work, but you found out that people actually use that time to connect with others. They found the connection far, far, far more valuable. Okay. And, um, and the second thing that happened is we initially created a pop-up school for kids under 14 so that parents didn’t have to worry about these kids, but the pop-up school was so incredible, so brilliant.

34:27 Educators from around the world, some of the world’s leading educators flew down to see what was going on. We had Phil Moore from the upland school. It’s a school for gifted children in Michigan. He flew down all of these incredible educators flew down. One flew 35 hours just for two days to see this experiment. And because parents were coming to us, kids were coming to us going, Oh my God, this is incredible. Teenagers were saying, I learned more in one month in the last two years of school. And so we decided that we were going to expand this particular thing.

34:55 The pop-up school was done as an experiment. So parents didn’t have to worry about their kids. It was so successful that we now have, um, we, we, we have a education program from Houston that’s bringing a hundred teenagers next year because their founder came, checked it out and was mind blown. So next year we are launching mind Valley schools and we’re going to create tracks, like more structured tracks for teenagers and for kids under 13. Okay. Mind Valley schools is specifically the university targeted for exactly. Exactly. So it’s 30 days. It’s 30 days. It’s a summer program. So the adults are there learning, but now your teenage kids and your younger kids have tracks for them as well. Okay. This is fascinating. And also I was at a fast, so I got to learn a little bit more about you and a little bit of the history of mind Valley. And I’m starting to put some pieces together because you started doing a fast in 2010 and you started bringing these people together for these amazing experiences with each other. And I’m thinking this is when you started to see what happens when you bring people together.

35:57 Right. And later you said, wow, wow, wow. Okay. Now we have to do it in this university. Maybe, but maybe you could walk me through maybe your path with mind value. They got me where you want to go. And then I’d love for you to talk to me a little bit about your mission because you dropped the mission on everybody in the a-fest. And quite frankly, I was taking notes. I was really inspired with your mission. And I think that’s really important to talk about. So talk to me about the start of mind Valley first. Well, my money started that I said, because I wanted to spread meditation to the world and it, but, but there’s a lot more to it. Meditation is one thing, but there’s a second value that I hold really dear to my heart. And that’s human unity.

36:40 And the reason I hold that so dear to my heart is because growing up as an Indian kid in Malaysia, where I look different from everyone else, I went through a lot of racism going up. When I was in the United States, starting mind value over there, I ended up, you know, it was the post September 11 world. And if you look at me, I could be Middle Eastern. And I ended up for whatever reason, being on a Muslim watch list, which existed back then. President Obama ruled it as unconstitutional in 2008. It was, it was ended. Trump wants to bring it back now, but I was added to this watch list and I’m not judging it. I’m not judging it. I’m just sharing what I experienced. My wife is European. And all of a sudden living in the United States, we, I found that every 30 days I had to report to the government to be fingerprinted, to be photographed and to be, and to have to hand them my credit cards so they could see all my purchases. And sometimes I had to wait in line for hours just for my turn to happen. I couldn’t board certain planes. I couldn’t use certain airports before getting on a flight. I had to go for a two hour interrogation.

37:41 Getting off a flight, I had to be, go for another two hour interrogation. So I felt that I don’t want that in the world in the future. My wife is white. She’s Estonian. So, you know, Estonians are like finished, very blonde, very blue eyed. My, I’m Indian. So if you look at my children, my children are somewhere in between. They could be, they, they look Syrian or Lebanese or Israeli. They look Middle Eastern, right? I don’t want my daughter or my son ending up on such a list because of how they look. They look different. They are these beautiful mixed kids.

38:15 And so I thought that as I build up Mindvalley, while education is important, there’s an important aspect to human growth that is often not looked at. And it’s called world centrism. Ken Wilber says, you can look at human development on an axis that looks like this. For the longest time, we thought that human development involved taking people into different states of consciousness. So there’s a state of consciousness path. And, you know, you can have these moments of awakening through meditation, through psychedelics, through neuro training. You can have these moments of awakening. I guess one of the, the highest levels would be the Samadhi experience where you feel a feeling of oneness with all life.

38:58 But 20 years ago, they discovered that that wasn’t it, that there’s a second level of human awakening. And it’s called, and if this is waking up, this is called growing up to use Ken Wilber’s terms. It’s called growing up. And growing up means this, it means understanding that your compassion, your connectedness with other human beings can expand beyond just your religion or your culture or your nation state. So in the most simplistic sense, people can fall in around four different stages of growing up. There’s about the 1% of the world that would be at the egocentric stage, which means that their level of kindness and compassion doesn’t go beyond their body.

39:38 These people can be psychopaths, they can be murderers, they can be dangerous. Fortunately, it’s a tiny percentage. 70% of the world is at what you would call the ethnocentric stage. These are people who believe that their country is the greatest country in the world and others have it wrong. Or their religion has all the answers and others have it wrong.

39:57 70% of the world. Now, there’s this awakening happening where 30% of the world has moved to what is called the world-centric stage. And the world-centric stage is where we need to move more humanity. The world-centric stage means you understand that, look, your religion is beautiful to you, but it is not the only way. It is merely one way. Your nation is great, but you can enjoy and learn so many things about other cultures and your country doesn’t have all the answers. And so when people move from ethnocentric to world-centric, we create a much better world. We are more tolerant of things such as gay rights, mixed marriages. We’re less likely to fight each other. We’re less likely to create things such as a watch list. As Jeremy Corbyn said yesterday at Glastonbury, he said, we in Britain need to build bridges. We are not going to build walls. That’s a world-centric attitude. Now, there is a level above that called cosmocentrism. That’s really a far more advanced stage. That’s if an alien landed on this planet and he stepped out of a spaceship and he was green and had tentacles emerging from his mouth and slime dripping over his body.

41:07 We’d give him a hug. We’d give him a hug because we can extend our levels of compassion to all sentient beings. So personal growth is about two things. It’s about getting people into these enlightened experiences, but also getting people to expand their circles of compassion to wider and wider circles until you can encompass all of planet earth. Now, here’s what’s interesting. The guy who first put this idea around was Charles Darwin in 1872.

41:34 He wrote a book called The Descent of Man and Sexual and Natural Selection in Sex Up. I can’t remember the title, complicated title, but it was an 1870 book, 72 book. Darwin spoke about this idea called diffusion of sympathy. Sympathy back in 1872 is simply what we would call compassion today. He said, as man understands that they can unify in tribes and have sympathy for other tribes because it is advantageous to them, they soon realize that they can extend their sympathy to all members of a nation. And as soon as this point is reached, they realize they can extend their sympathy to groups of nations. And as soon as this is reached, these levels of sympathy will extend further and further and further. And occasionally, we’ll hit hiccups. It’s harder to extend your sympathy to people who look different from you, say Syrian refugees, right? But this too will happen until man’s levels of sympathy will extend to all sentient life. And it was astonishing that Darwin wrote the word sentient life. Amazing. He used those exact terms. And so I think it is one of the singular, most powerful paragraphs ever written in any book. And it’s just about 400 words. It’s really, really, it’s a tiny section of that book, but it’s powerful stuff. Darwin didn’t just predict where we’re coming from, he predicted where we’re going. Now, back to Mindvalley’s mission.

42:54 Personal growth is not just about expanding your awareness of yourself. It’s about getting you to become a change maker, to expand your levels of compassion beyond yourself, to not to your community and later to the wider world and all human beings. It’s about training people to be as concerned about people starving in Venezuela as people starving in their own country. It’s about training people to look beyond borders and religions and skin color. That’s really one of the overriding value systems at Mindvalley. It’s why in our office, we have 40 different nationalities working together. When you came to AFS, you would have noticed a huge number of different countries represented. We want to help expand people, both in terms of waking up, but also in terms of growing up, in terms of their diffusion of sympathy, to use Darwin’s language. Those are two different axes. Just because I can meditate and become more aware of myself doesn’t mean that I’m growing as well. That’s when you’re growing. You can have someone that’s very, very in touch with themselves who still has that me-centric view. I’m a meditating psychopath. Yes, and we call this the Asshole Guru Syndrome. You’ve read about these gurus who have these big followings, but they are assholes, and they are being accused of sexual predatory behavior and manipulating people. They achieve high levels of waking up. Now, I met one of these asshole gurus. He and his team, they were being investigated by scientists because he was

44:29 Able to do some crazy stuff. Science was showing that he could hold seeds in his hand and accelerate their growth. He was doing a tour of the United States, and they approached me to build a website for them, to build a brand in marketing. I was super excited, but I was in a meeting with this guy, and one of my staff walked in. He had asked for a private meeting with me, and I gave it to him. One of my staff walked in, a dear, dear, dear member of my team, someone I absolutely adore. He turned to that guy, and he goes, who the fuck are you? The guy goes, I’m part of Bishop’s team, and he said, get the fuck out. Get out. You cannot just walk in.

45:04 This is my meeting. I’m like, whoa, whoa, whoa. That guy works with me. He’s like, I don’t care. I asked for a meeting with you. The next day, I canceled that deal. I lost $50,000, but I didn’t want that level of energy in my life. That’s the asshole guru syndrome.

45:20 High levels of mental ability, of spiritual ability. You can see auras. You can heal with your hands. Scientists can even study this phenomenon in you, but you haven’t grown up. You’re at the egocentric, ethnocentric level. You’re too much into yourself. You cannot extend your levels of compassion beyond yourself, so you got to grow in both axes. Mindvalley sometimes gets accused of being political, because in our education, we sometimes will release a video that talks about how to look at a political leader and understand if they are holding humanity back or pushing humanity forward. Especially because of what’s going on right now with Trump.

46:06 You made some early calls when he was running for president, and you said, look, this is how we feel about it. I made some early calls, yes. Firstly, when you get to higher levels, when you get to the cosmocentric level, you never judge anyone. If Trump was here, I’d want to give him a hug. I definitely want to take him out for dinner. His book was an incredible book. I learned so much from his writing. He’s a good man, but I disagree with his approach, because his approach is ethnocentric.

46:31 Again, notice, I said he’s a good man, but he’s certainly not qualified, in my opinion, to be a leader, because the world doesn’t need ethnocentric leaders. Ethnocentric leaders are very prone to come up with ideas such as, let’s build a border wall to keep out the Mexicans, or let’s create this Muslim watch list. That’s not the forward progression of the human race. I mean, Darwin predicted this 150 years ago. What we want to do is teach people, teach our audience to look at leaders who are inclusive. You can be right, you can be left.

47:00 That doesn’t matter, but don’t vilify other human beings, because that’s tapping into this reptilian part of our brain, which causes the fear of the other. It’s an easy way to get votes, but it isn’t the natural forward progression of the human race. How do you write out that bad press when you start making calls that you feel you have to do as a human, as a leader, and yet it’s not good for business all the time? Well, who says it’s not good for business? I don’t know.

47:26 So a lot of people, I speak to a lot of personal growth people who were against Trump, were against Brexit, and I said, well, why didn’t you say anything? If you felt this strongly, they’re like, well, I don’t want to get political. And what I explained to them is like, no, you missed a point. You see, political is when you cannot see the other side. It’s when you are pissed off at your aunt, whom you call racist. It’s when you set these labels. It’s when you get up and say stupid things like Johnny Depp just said something really stupid about Trump, completely disgusting.

47:58 He talked about, you know, assassination and stuff like that, completely uncalled for. That’s political. That’s stupid. But how I see it is to be able to love and respect the other and recognize that they have a valid viewpoint and to be able to sit down and have a discussion with respect. Now, when you can do that, you can, you’re not, you can state your beliefs, but you are not alienating people. So half my friends voted for Trump. They’re still my friends, and I love them. And when we go out and we have dinner, we may talk about, you know, American politics, but we talk about it with respect. And I learned from them, and they learned from me. And if people can collaborate like that, we can solve many of the world’s issues in a far more holistic way without being extreme left or extreme right and vilifying the other side. So when we, so for example, I released a video talking about my feelings on the Muslim watch list. It directly affects our company because we’re doing our biggest event ever in San Diego in two months. And the person from my team who’s organizing it was born in Sudan. Right now, after the recent Supreme Court ruling, I don’t know if she’s going to be allowed in. That’s a massive issue for me. So we just recorded a simple video expressing how we feel. We didn’t vilify anyone. We may not have all the answers, but by being able to share the opinion of this Sudanese-born woman and allow other people to see

49:22 What she’s going through, maybe we can create a more holistic conversation so we can come up with a solution together. So I encourage people to be political, but to be political while truly respecting the other side. Look, the problem with millennials today is that they think politics is dirty, but if we think politics is dirty, good people won’t go into politics. Dirty people will. So we got to make politics something that we understand is part of our natural responsibility as a creative human being. Neil Donnell-Wall said, politics is your spirituality expressed.

49:57 And that’s really what we try to do with our Mindvalley community. Yeah, I’ve had a lot of people in here talking about politics and, you know, they say it’s almost an embodiment of our ego to a certain extent. It does a lot of the things that maybe sometimes that we don’t like about ourselves. And it puts these rules out in society that we might not always want to believe in. Sometimes it’s something that shows us who we really are.

50:21 If you had 15 minutes right now, and I could get the whole world to tune in, and you could teach seven billion people something, what would you teach them? You know, I’ve got all the IP in your book. I got the stuff you talk about on Mindvalley, all these things. But right now, what’s going on in your mind and what you feel in the world, and you had those 15 minutes. And who knows? This could be possible.

50:41 You know, I just did. I answered this question once. What’s the most important thing you can teach your child? And it was that scale of awareness. You see, once you can see a scale like that, you can ascend the scale. So if you can understand that human beings can be egocentric, ethnocentric, world-centric, or cosmos-centric, it’s a roadmap on how you can think. And a lot of the issues in the world, from misogyny, to racism, to an intolerance for gay people, is coming from the ethnocentric level. But Ken Wilber says that there is no right or wrong. I mean, let’s look at ethnocentrism, right? If your nation was not ethnocentric 100 years ago, if your nation wasn’t protecting its own borders, your nation would cease to exist.

51:23 Your culture, your language would disappear. It had its time in place. But as we become more connected through Facebook, through social media, we’re moving into a different world where we are no longer individual human beings. So it’s teaching this idea and teaching that we have a responsibility to level up our levels of compassion. That’s the most important lesson. Now, let me go a little bit deeper there because there’s something else I want to share, which I think is really interesting.

51:49 And I was talking about this with Wim Hof recently. Tim Urban, the famous blogger, he has a blog called Wait But Why. You ever heard of that blog? Beautiful blog, Wait But Why. So he writes these 50,000-word blog posts to explain complex issues. Elon Musk calls up Tim Urban and asked him Urban to explain Tesla, SolarCity, and Elon’s newest company, right? So Tim Urban is a phenomenal, phenomenal, phenomenal genius at explaining complex ideas. So he was writing a blog post about Elon Musk’s newest invention, the neural lace, the brain machine interface. And he said, there’s something very unique about us human beings. If you look at the world 10,000 years ago, and you look at the world today, you’ll notice that human beings are essentially the same.

52:33 You take a baby today and you put him into earth 10,000 years ago, and that baby will grow up learning how to maybe hunt with a spear, make fire, maybe rudimentary farming. But if you take a baby 10,000, born 10,000 years ago, and you put him on earth today, that baby could grow up to be an engineer or a doctor or a lawyer. You see, the brains are the same. But why are our world so different? It’s because as we get more connected as a human species, we are building what Tim Urban calls the human colossus. The human colossus is a giant, meta human, which is the collective consciousness and communication and wisdom and knowledge of all of us combined. In other words, we are becoming unified into one giant colossus. And the more we get connected with our smartphones and Facebook and Skype, the stronger this human colossus becomes. I mean, just through this interview, my knowledge is being shared thanks to you with hundreds of thousands of people helping strengthen that human colossus. So all of us are in fact, cells, seven billion cells in a larger being. But here’s the thing. Are you a healthy cell or are you a cancer cell? Because many of the outdated algorithms of the world still govern some of these cells. And so back to your question, what are the key ideas people can learn, right? First thing is, it’s no longer just about you. Your life is about what can you do to serve the mothership, the human colossus.

54:09 When you think about life like that, I believe you open yourself up to so many more possibilities. Now the second thing is, you got to understand that the way the world is constructed, there are algorithms that lead large groups of human beings to function as cancer cells and not healthy cells. Let me give you an example, a straightforward example. I have a friend in Silicon Valley who’s a brilliant mind, right? And companies come to him and they ask him, can you help me innovate on this and innovate on that? And a cola company came to him and the cola company said, hey, we need your help.

54:41 We are facing a problem. Teenagers are learning to drink water. And so we need your help to figure out how to get our cola to teenagers. So he said, are you freaking kidding me? You want to get teenagers to drink your cola? And they go, yeah, yeah. And he goes, but do you know your cola is associated with diabetes? And they go, oh, you know, well, our scientists who studied it said that it’s not necessarily true. There are many different courses for diabetes. There is no hard evidence. And my friend who is a scientist said, actually, there’s irrefutable evidence that your drink is unhealthy for the human body. But those people from the cola company kept going, no, they refuse to see it. So my friend explained it to me like this. He said, it’s interesting to observe the cognitive dissonance, but I can’t blame those people.

55:25 There are jobs, there are paychecks, there are families all associated around the identification with this company. You see, their algorithm had been programmed. They were pushing a product that was poisonous to the human colossus. They would justify it. They would say, well, you know, a cola isn’t really causing diabetes. In fact, our company was the first company to show a gay couple in an advertising, the first company to show a mixed couple in our advertising. They were justifying other things, using other things to justify the fact that they were basically creating a product that had no social good and was basically doing nothing more than creating shareholder value that was, in essence, a product that didn’t need to exist. It is a product solely, there’s a word for it, a craptastic product, a product where marketing makes it necessary, but it’s literally poison.

56:19 Those are examples where human beings have fallen for companies that have reprogrammed them and turned them into cancer cells. Right. And there’s pockets of this everywhere. And they can go on for years and years. So, companies can be humanity plus, which means serving the human colossus, or humanity minus, which means making the human colossus sick. We got to check this on ourselves and ask ourselves, what are we doing? And I’m sure you asked that when you decided to leave banking in some way. So the important thing is, it’s not about you. I was just reading a book by Neil Donald Walsh and he says, the greatest thing that you should learn about life is that life is not about you.

56:56 It’s about who you touch, what contribution you make, how you serve. When you get that in your head, your life is going to be so much more glorious and you get to become the greatest version of yourself. So as you move to world-centric ideals, when you understand that you are a cell in a 7 billion cell human colossus, when you understand that companies can be humanity plus or humanity minus, you open yourself up to truly living life in a way where you are a force for good and you’re helping take all of us. And by all, I don’t just mean the people of the United Kingdom. I mean, 7 billion people forward. So this is a theme that continues to come up on London Real, time after time after time, whether I’m talking to Vision or Dorian Yates or the Wim Hof, the Iceman, L.A. it holds. I mean, it goes on and on. And people with some wisdom that have been around, had some success, had some failure. We all come back to this, we are all one. Doing things for others is the ultimate power. And so I’m here having a nod fest, right? But it’s still a hard concept to get into. For example, Brian the banker seven years ago, you know, I’m in this reality. You know, I grew up great. I was the MIT education.

58:07 I’m in this little loop, like you said, where I’ve told myself or my culture has taught me that my success is my money. And when I make my money and get my status, I will be successful. I’ll be happy. And I’m sitting there in a loop and it took me about six or seven years to figure out it wasn’t making me happy. And funny enough, I credit actually meditation with snapping me out of it. And when I look back, it was three months after I started my meditation practice that I walked away. And then this was created. And I don’t even now that I’m looking and listening to you, I’m saying, okay, there’s a lot of patterns here. But for the average person, isn’t it hard to get that message across? Because your job now at Mindvalley is pretty much getting this message to people, right? And getting them on different parts of their journey. How do you do that as a CEO of a media company, which is kind of what you are at this point, because that’s our touch point at first. How do you do that? There are a number of tools which are highly effective to change the way you think about you and the way you function with the world.

59:05 Now, I’ve mentioned Neil Donald Walsh and Wim Hofelow. The reason is because they were two of our top teachers in Barcelona. So I just came back from spending a great deal of time with them and attending their classes. But the first technique is actually from Neil Donald Walsh. And it’s a technique I tried. And it’s a really powerful technique that just expands your sense of self. So I used to live in New York. And that’s when I discovered this technique from Neil.

59:28 And there was this homeless guy near my apartment. And I was disgusted with this guy. I would have to pass him every time I wanted to get to the subway on 14th street. He reeked of alcohol. He would be yelling out bullshit in the middle of the night, waking people up. And I never liked this guy. And I never gave him money. Because in my mind, I just told myself he’s going to spend it on drinks. Now, then one day I read this book by Neil Donald Walsh. And he suggested this technique. And in that technique, I had to walk the streets of New York. And every time I saw someone doing something which I judged or did not like, I would have to mentally tell myself, there I go again. There I go again, lying down on the street, passed out, drunk. There I go again, playing my boombox too loud on the subway. There I go again, using foul language, crossing the street in the presence of kids. There I go again, dressing like that.

1:00:24 And as you do that, something interesting happens. All I know is that 30 minutes later, there were tears streaming down my eye. Because I was seeing how much I was judging other people without truly understanding what was going on in their lives. I remember going to that homeless guy. I sat down with him. And I asked him what was going on. And I realized that his wife had left him, hadn’t seen his kids. He had developed an alcohol addiction to cope with depression.

1:00:51 And he was really, really, really trying to give it up. But he couldn’t. I understood his goals, his motivation. And I gave him 20 bucks. And I never viewed him the same way again.

1:01:01 My level of compassion for others had expanded because I was mentally running a new algorithm, looking at everyone and trying to understand who they were and using a statement. There I go again to remind me that at a spiritual level, them and me, we’re not too different. So that’s one really profound technique that I found really, really, really worked. And meditation is another technique. But as you run these techniques, the way you function in the world fundamentally changes. But here’s the surprising thing. Your levels of stress go down. Your levels of anxiety go down. Because so much of our stress and anxiety comes from this reptilian impulse in our head that makes us fear other people. And when you start seeing other people as being primarily good, and I genuinely believe all people are primarily good, you start to see yourself living in a safer world. You start to trust more.

1:01:56 And you start to fear less. There’s a psychological concept called fundamental attribution error. It states that when someone cuts you off on the highway, you will attribute it to their character. But if you cut someone off, you attribute it to a situation. You were in a circumstance. You were in Russia. You had to get your kid to a hospital. Fundamental attribution error starts to disappear when you do this. Because if someone cuts you off, you’re like, oh, there I go again, cutting someone off. Maybe I had to drop my kid off at an important class. Maybe I am late for a meeting and I might get fired. You start to understand. And when this happens, even being stuck in traffic, you stop getting stressed out because you start seeing the beauty in every individual. So I’m a big fan of these techniques. Another really powerful one is from Sean Aker.

1:02:42 So he studied companies. Remember earlier we talked about social connectivity score. If you’re in the top quartile, you are 40% more likely to get a raise in the next two years. Turns out there’s a two-minute hack you can do that will put you in the top quartile within a year. And all it involves is when you show up to work, set your iPhone timer for two minutes. And in no more than two minutes, write a note of appreciation to someone you work with.

1:03:08 You could say, Linda, I’m so grateful for you because you brought me coffee because you noticed I was passing out at that meeting and you knew I needed a cup. Or Bob, I’m so, so grateful that you helped me out with this keynote because I’m so computer illiterate and this really made my presentation go so much smoother. Simple notes like that. Well, he did this in companies. One company was in, I believe it was in Omaha, First National, right? And they went in two years from doing this exercise. They would have their managers do it, their employees do it, they would come to work, set a timer for two minutes, write a note of appreciation.

1:03:41 The company was stagnant. In two years, they went from 650 million to 950 million, according to Sean Acre. The number of applications of new employees who wanted to join the company went up 237%. Turnover went down, all because the employees were learning this trick. They were learning to expand their compassion, sympathy, empathy, love and kindness to another human being.

1:04:09 And I think that’s what our schools get wrong. Our schools don’t teach us that if we want to hack happiness, it’s not about our title or bank account or the next promotion. It’s about a connection with other people and how we feel about people. There was a study in Harvard by Ed Dina called the Very Happy People Study. They looked at all of these different things to see what directly correlates with happiness. Only one thing did, the strength of your social connections and had a 0.7 correlation. And it all goes back to this. It really, it all comes together.

1:04:41 It’s about expanding your compassion, your appreciation for fellow human beings. And when you can understand that maybe this is because we are all in it together now, we’re all part of this human colossus. And if you are a cell, one cell out of billions, and you can learn to cooperate well with the other cell, not be cancer, but be a healthy, functioning cell to give, to understand, maybe we feel happier because we are genuinely doing the job our soul set forth to do on this planet. What’s your biggest challenge right now as the CEO of Mindvalley? Well, my biggest challenge is dealing with my own drama, my own bullshit.

1:05:26 I’m still learning and growing. Growing up as a kid, I had big self-esteem issues. I thought I was ugly. I had difficulty connecting with people. And I’m still dealing with those things. These things can take years to work out. There are times when, even in my life, I certainly feel worthless. I doubt myself. I feel afraid. All of those come. But what I try to do is to learn the tools. You see, life is not about always being up. We all have our ups and downs, not ups and downs. To me, it’s about you go up and you go down, and you go up and you go down. But you got to learn to expand the amount of time you’re in your up using tools like mindfulness and positivity and the two-minute appreciation.

1:06:10 When you’re down, learn to shrink those times so you can bounce back quickly. I still go through this like everyone else, but I know I have these tools from Mindvalley, from these great teachers I connect with, that help me. In a way, you kind of scratch your own itch, maybe as the evolution of Mindvalley. I know even this one-month university is stuff you used to do with John and Missy Butcher and take your kids and go for a month and learn with these people. Is the company kind of a manifestation of Vision’s journey to a certain extent and the things that you see? Maybe, maybe. But I know I try to solve, like all great entrepreneurs, I try to solve my own problems. When I was on that Muslim watch list and I had to move to Kuala Lumpur, boy, that was hard because I had lived in the United States for nine years.

1:06:51 I’m more American than anything else. Most of my friends are American. My company is American. I pay US taxes to this day. And so all of a sudden, I was cut off from everyone and everything that mattered to me. And so I started A-Fest because that was an excuse where I could get hundreds of my friends to come and hang out with me on a beach in a beautiful location and party and bond and connect and learn in the process.

1:07:17 And that was really how A-Fest started out as this massive personal growth festival. I was solving my own pain, the pain of boredom, the pain of loneliness. I’d love to say it was a brilliant business idea and I saw that this was going to be a future trend. But no, I was just bored and lonely. And what is A-Fest today for people that don’t know?

1:07:36 Explain to them what happened. Well, you attended A-Fest. So I love learning. So I look at an aspect of human life that I feel is filled with brutes, with bullshit rules and dogma. And I bring in the best thinkers into this aspect. Thousands of people apply to come and watch. It’s a bit like TED. We choose about 200 new people every year. So it’s about a 20% acceptance rate. These people come together and they have the most amazing TED Talks and discussions. So the last one that you attended obviously was a loving relationship. We brought in Esther Perel. We brought in Dan Savage, John and Missy Butcher. So we had the number one TED speaker. We had the number one author, the men are from Mars, a woman from Venus guy. And they explore and discuss with the audience revolutionary new ideas of love, monogamy, marriage, sex, and so on. And so we inspire all of these entrepreneurs. They go forth and the way they approach their love life changes.

1:08:32 But we video everything and we put it free on YouTube for millions of people to watch. So our goal is to come together, connect, have fun, generate a ton of content, but look at an aspect of human society that people have ignored and blow it up and shine a light on dogma. So the next one is on expanded consciousness. We’re looking at everything from neurofeedback, to psychedelics, to meditation, in terms of getting people to understand that they can exist in different states of consciousness and access these states for different abilities.

1:09:06 And of course, as we do this, as I’m sure you could tell, the most epic parties. APS is about connection. So we taught some of the most insane parties and bonding experiences in the world, because I enjoy that. And because that’s what gets people to connect, make new friends. I was about to say, why are the parties so important?

1:09:24 It’s connection. Learning is one thing, but the greatest thing people come away from when they become part of the Mindvalley ecosystem is new friends. And as the Harvard study said, the only thing that has a direct correlation with happiness, 0.7 correlation, is the strength of your human connections. So we want to go straight to the source. It’s about connections.

1:09:47 And you knew this, and you still underestimated how important it was at your university, right? People really wanted the connection. Right. Well, no, we knew that. We knew that. What happened was that, but even then we underestimated it. Right. Because it’s so powerful.

1:10:00 It’s so powerful. Yeah. And the parties are epic. And you really try to make them just, I think you try to make these crazy parties so people can be different versions of themselves in different places and then just open up and make these new connections. Right. And again, just for the audience watching, when I say crazy party, if you’re not talking about people doing drugs and alcohol, that’s not the case. In fact, I love sparkling water, right? But it’s about fun. It’s about performance. I used to be a former actor.

1:10:25 I actually even did a little stint with the British, with the Royal Shakespeare Company. And so our parties might have a hundred performers. The last one was in partnership with Cirque du Soleil. So we had trapeze artists and dancers and performers, but it’s beautiful. It’s stunning. It’s awe. And people connect when they have a shared emotional experience, a moment of awe. That’s what it’s about. But yes, often costume parties. Now the reason for that is because we get celebrities, we get rockstar entrepreneurs. We have guys who just sold a company for a hundred million. And then we have a 21 year old college student who’s just getting started, but it’s a business, a brilliant individual. And AFS, it’s not about who you are or what you do. It’s about your heart. And this way we bring everyone to the same level and we allow richer connections because it’s not about the business card or your ego.

1:11:15 Fifty years from now, great grandpa vision is cruising around. Maybe you’re running around. I don’t know. What does Morning Valley look like 50 years from now? Fifty years from now, if we have our way, we will have a billion people on our platform.

1:11:30 We’ll have a roadmap for human consciousness development, taking into account ideas from many of the greatest philosophers and thinkers in the world today. We’ll have a billion people going through this new form of education that does not rely on any of the current models. We are looking at how school can be different, how kindergarten can be different, how early infant learning can be different, how colleges and adult learning can be different. And by 50 years, we would have launched our entire model of education all the way from newborn babies to adults. And it’s going to be beautiful and it’s going to be fun. And it’s going to be about wisdom and love and compassion and in unifying the world and teaching people that it’s not about you. It’s about how can you be the grandest, greatest version of yourself so you can give your gifts to the world and help bring forth other people with you.

1:12:24 That’s a great vision. Tell me about vision. Tell me about you. What is your day like? Tell me, you know, what are the things that you do after all this, these years of wisdom you’ve picked up from some of the greatest. I mean, as you and I both know, part of the great things about doing things that we do is you get such great exposure to the greatest minds in the world. And so, what are some of your daily habits, daily routines that keep you on point?

1:12:48 The number one thing I do is something called a six-phase meditation. Yeah, tell me about that. So, the six-phase meditation, so again, I think I was teaching meditation for five years here in London and in New York. And this was before I really started building Mindvalley. And as I started interacting with so many authors, I think Mindvalley has published over 1,000 courses in our history. I started identifying the models that had the best results. And I developed a new form of meditation that’s quite unlike what’s out there. There’s a lot of dogma in the meditation industry. You think you’ve got to go for these 10-day classes where you’ve got to sit in silence and clear your mind. Then you’ve got to meditate for hours a day. It’s bullshit.

1:13:25 It’s obsolete. It doesn’t work. It’s a waste of time. And it’s the reason why most people who start meditation never continue. Six-phase is different. It’s based on six different concepts.

1:13:35 The first is a thought process for increasing your levels of compassion and connectedness with the world. The second is a thought process for raising happiness. The third is a thought process for forgiveness. And the reason why forgiveness is so important is it has a high correlation with health and with lowering levels of stress and anxiety. Now that’s phase one, two, three. Each one takes about two minutes. There’s phase four, which is about using credit visualization to see your life three years ahead. Phase five, which is about designating and planning your perfect day.

1:14:09 And phase six, which is about feeling supported. So the six-phase meditation is six different exercises stacked together, done in about 15 minutes. And it optimizes you as a human being. Over a million people do it globally right now. And it’s free. You can google it. I just have a talk on this at Google HQ, in fact, in Dublin. So you can google this. Vision, six-phase, and you’ll find it. My Dublin talk, I think it’s on YouTube, just put in wisdom 2.0, vision, and you’ll find it. Okay. And you do this practice every morning. I do it every single morning. It fundamentally changes my life and the lives of the million or so people around the world who do this. And I sometimes don’t call it meditation because meditation has so much stigma around it. Really, it’s a thought model that has been scientifically proven to optimize the way you perceive the world and how you function in the world. Okay. How do you parent?

1:15:05 Well, there are many, many, many, many different ideas in parenting that I’m studying. But the biggest one is understanding the child’s meaning-making machine. Understanding that as children, our brain has a meaning-making machine. And every little thing that happens, we designate meaning to it. And so I’m really careful in terms of what meaning my son may be taking away from my actions. So for example, right, I was in a car with my son once and he asked me a question. And just as about to answer my CFO calls, and I know when I CFO calls, it means shit’s gone wrong. So I pick up the phone and I talk to my CFO and I turn out, okay, it’s not a disaster after all. But I realize my son could have observed that and he could be going, oh, that doesn’t care about my questions. His work is more important. But that, you see, but those simple judgments stick with you. And as we grow up as adults, we start having these feelings that we’re not enough, that we’re unimportant, that we’re unloved. And it comes from these little interactions that happen as kids. So immediately I turned to my son and I said this, I’m like, Hayden, I want you to know you’re so important to me. I had to take that call because that was my CFO, who’s the guy who runs the finances in the company. I had to make sure nothing was broken. But now I’m going to give you my full undivided attention. Ask me your question. That simple thing autocorrects the meaning-making machine, because I established that

1:16:32 He was important to me. So my style of parenting is to be really honest in those circumstances and to make sure that I’m not blindly allowing my kid to come up with meaning, but I’m helping them understand just how important they are to me, how loved they are, how unique they are. And I think if you do this, you end up with less adults who feel so broken. And on that same note, when it comes to parenting, that’s one thing. What do you do as far as your physical activity? Because you mentioned this in AFest, you have a whole new routine. As we know, as you kind of get a little bit older, it gets harder each year. And you’re putting a lot of this in your Mindvalley courses as well. Yes. So WildFit, WildFit’s a program for Mindvalley.

1:17:18 It’s a very effective program that uses NLP to reprogram your attitude towards food. So I went on WildFit before it was part of Mindvalley, and I lost five kilograms. So we partnered with Eric Ed, he’s the founder of it, and we now put thousands of people through it. So it’s 90 days, it’s down on our Quest app. It’s a challenge. It starts two times a year, and you join it with thousands of people. And from day one to day 90, there’s a little video that you watch, not every day, but a little video that you watch that changes your relationship to food.

1:17:49 And by the time you’re done, you’ve reprogrammed your body. Diets fail. Diets are not good. Cheat days are rubbish. There’s so much dogma in that whole industry. WildFit uses NLP so that it’s not about going on a diet and telling yourself, I can’t eat that dessert. God, I’m not going to eat that pizza. You don’t have a craving for stuff that’s bad for you.

1:18:11 I used to take my coffee with, I used to go to Starbucks and order mocha, filled with sugar, filled with milk. I love that. Now, and I used to hate Americanos. It was too bitter. Now, after WildFit, my mind has just flipped. I love Americano. I can’t take sugar.

1:18:24 And so I’ve been able to maintain my body and lose a lot of weight and stay healthy. And my CTO did it. He lost 51 pounds. It’s an amazing transformation. So you can look into that.

1:18:36 Now, after I’ve lost my excess fat, imagine me with five kilograms of fat around my torso, right? That’s what I was. I couldn’t wear t-shirts like what I wear right now. I had to wear baggy shirts. All of that is gone. Now I’m proud of my body. Now I’m doing a new program that we’re developing at Mindvalley. And it’s based on strength training. It uses optimized models of working out to rapidly grow your muscles because muscular training, muscular growth strength training has one of the highest correlations with longevity of any exercise out there. So we’re able to grow someone’s strength by about 50% in 30 days, working out one hour a week, four workouts in 30 days, 50% increase in your strength, 50%, sometimes 75%. When people join Mindvalley U, they have an option to sign up for this. So we have beta testing this out on so many people, right? Four hours total workout in the month, 50% strength increase. Wow. Are you a technology company or a media company or what are you?

1:19:38 Because all of those things seem to be important to you. And I saw all of those at work when I saw your presentation. So which one? Well, we use technology, but we’re not a technology company. We use media. I guess you could somewhere say a media company, you could somewhere say we’re an educational company, but ultimately Mindvalley is a community. I guess you could say we’re a lifestyle brand, right? It’s people who associate with Mindvalley and fall into this ecosystem.

1:20:05 They get very inspired by our values. And because they meet so many close friends at our events, at our festivals, we become part of their life. For the longest time, people needed religion because religion gave people some direction, allowed people to come together as a community, allow people of shared values to connect, make people feel safe. I think we’re closer to a religion than we are to a business. Now, I’m not saying we are religion.

1:20:32 I certainly don’t believe in religion. I don’t believe in dogma. And I like what we do to continuously evolve. But what I mean is that people gravitate towards us because they align with the mission, because they love the education, they love growth, but also because we give people a community. When you come to our events, you are never alone again for the rest of your life because of how we bring people together. Tonight after this interview, I’m actually, I’m here in London and there’s a Mindvalley meetup. I already have 20 people coming in, just hanging out with me at this bar. And I just posted a Facebook post 24 hours ago.

1:21:10 Any city I go to, I’m never alone. And these are such beautiful, amazing people. When you think of the word successful, who comes to mind? These success secrets are only available on the London Real Academy. Become a member and get access to live shows, exclusive courses, my webinars, bonus content, meetups, live events, an amazing community and much, much more. Now back to the rest of the show.

1:21:44 What keeps you awake at night? I sleep really, really, really well. But the problem is getting to that billion. That’s the question I asked myself. What do I have to do next to touch as many lives as I can in the most effective way? It’s tricky, right? It is. Because if you really want to make that happen, and I believe you do, you have to be very intelligent about your time, your brain, everything. I mean, you said you’re coming off a month of not checking email.

1:22:14 That sounds like a really intelligent move if you want to reach that billion people. Right. Or it may be a really stupid move. I have no idea. Right? But I was busy creating because I was creating this university and I wanted to do that. I was busy creating. And that’s what I love doing. What scares you?

1:22:34 Okay. I think recent world events, and I wonder, they did scare me at least. Now I can see that it’s not really a regression. It’s just a temporary blip. Recent world events, what I mean by that is

1:22:54 Populist leaders running. Fortunately in Europe, all the populist parties lost, and we had Macron win and not Le Pen. But I’m a big fan of the EU. I’m a European resident. My family is European. I was very saddened by Brexit because, as you know, my wife studied in the UK. English is the only language I speak. And I grew up in Malaysia. My parents grew up in the British Empire. I went to a British school. So I’m very, I have a strong affinity to this place. Now super excited when I became a European resident, actually not this year, but last year, because I thought, wow, maybe I’m going to move to London with my family.

1:23:29 Then Brexit happened. And so that kind of scared me. Then Trump happened. And as you know, I left the US because of that Muslim watch list. He wants to bring it back. And so that scares me.

1:23:41 But it also inspires me. It lights a fire under my ass. It made it very clear for us at Mindvalley that we had to stand up for unity and that we should be a company that isn’t afraid to stand up for what we believe the future direction of humanity should be, even if it means stepping into politics. So it scares me. But it also fuels me. And it’s made me work harder and be more inspired. And it’s made my team more inspired than ever before. Yeah. And I admire that you went and did that. And I think this is the new age of companies in the world. I think you have to be an honest, sincere voice and be real about who you are and be true to your core values.

1:24:22 And you had to do it with understanding by not vilifying the other side. That so frustrates me sometimes about people on the far left. Yeah, exactly. There’s a huge nuance to how you say it. I guess it could be political, or it can be hate, or it can just be something that tries to include.

1:24:37 You know, I’ve taped some videos after the recent terrorist attacks in London. And these days, there’s one every few weeks. It’s been a little crazy here. We were really kind of immune for years. And now we’ve had Manchester, London Bridge, and then this thing that happened near the mosque. But it’s crazy when I put these videos out and talk about how I feel. Like you said, this is my art, and this is an extension of who I am. And so I don’t have a problem with saying how I feel. But it’s hard for people to take that in sometimes. And also, it’s also a lightning rod for hate. And I don’t know if you find this. But when you put something out there, especially on the social media platform, it’s also a place where a lot of people who are in an ethnocentric place can go to have a chat about it. And so it’s just something I think you have to make those hard decisions going forward and just say, OK, we have to make a statement about this. We have to talk about this. And there’s a way we can do it, a way that people like you and me and the audience watching can do it. There’s this great book I recommend people read. It’s called Righteous Mind, How Religion and Politics Divide Good People. And it talks about how we don’t make our decisions based on rational choices. We make our decisions based on intuition. So I have many dear, wonderful friends. And they love Trump because he’s an entrepreneur. Because in their intuition, entrepreneurs fix all the world problems.

1:25:52 My intuition is unity is my hardest drive. So I was excited when Trump was running because I’d read his book. And his book actually, I learned a lot from it, his book on goals. But then when he said things about Mexicans and Muslims, that was against my intuition, which is unity is important. So I stopped liking him and I started seeing him as being dangerous.

1:26:10 I could be wrong. My entrepreneur friend could be wrong. The point is our intuitions are what make us cast these votes. It’s not rationality. But if we collectively can come together as a human species and agree on certain intuitive impulses, world-centrism is where we want to go.

1:26:29 Entrepreneurship is neither right nor wrong because you can start a humanity plus company or a humanity minus company. If we can agree on these things, we can make better decisions as a human species. So often it’s simply understanding that. So when I’m sitting down with a friend of mine who is a hardcore Trump supporter, we don’t get into any fights. We’re just totally chill about it because I get that he loves America. He wants what is right for the world. He loves entrepreneurs and he believes entrepreneurs fix problems and he sees that in Trump.

1:27:00 And his intuition is all cool by me. But what we can do is debate that and go, okay, entrepreneurship, you can be humanity plus, you can be humanity minus. Where would Trump be? How do we analyze? And then what would our decisions be? So when we can have rich decisions like that with mutual respect and convey that in our videos, I think we help move everyone forward together. Talking about forgiveness because I watched a video of yours, I think you were in Mykonos about a year ago for AFS and you talked about this whole concept of forgiveness and how, and I’ve talked to a lot of people at the top of their game, including Dave Asprey, who I think you were talking to about that. It’s something we teach in our Life Accelerator course in week five, it’s like get this forgiveness thing done because it’s holding you back in many ways that you don’t know about. What’s been your experience with forgiveness and are you going to be trying to teach that? Actually, we do. I just did a seminar in Barcelona and we spent about an hour on forgiveness. It’s one of the most important skills. If you do my meditation, the sixth phase meditation, phase three, is about forgiveness. So here’s the crazy thing about forgiveness, right?

1:28:02 Studies are showing that it affects the human body and mind in crazy days. Your vertical jump goes up after you practice forgiveness. Another study, this was done by a Dutch university, endurance, your endurance levels go up after endurance. Your heart health goes up after forgiveness. So all of these weird things are happening when people learn to forgive.

1:28:23 But I was with Dave Asprey at a program called 40 Years of Zen where our brains are hooked up to machines. And we’re using biofeedback to train our brains to go into states that typically Zen monks go into after around 20 years. And they found that the quickest way to get the same states as these monks, which implies two things, alpha wave amplitude and whole brain coherence, the number one way is forgiveness. So we were in these chambers with our brains hooked up five hours a day, five days straight. And the number one thing we had to do was forgive, forgive, forgive, forgive, forgive, forgive everyone in our life. But after we step out of that, it’s insane. Like you see life in a whole different way. Things that used to bug you before, no longer bug you. Issues you had with your mom and your dad or your kids and your spouse or your coworkers, no longer bug you because you’ve forgiven everything or almost everything in your life. So forgiveness is a really powerful tool. Every single day, I try to practice forgiveness. Sometimes it may be someone else. It may be a guy, maybe a waiter who messed up my order and I was slightly furious. It’s about removing every single charge. But often, I also forgive myself. I’m still working on forgiving myself for a bad business decision 10 years ago that cost me millions of dollars and was just stupid, stupid, stupid.

1:29:45 I forgot myself for having such low self-esteem in college that I hardly had a social life. And so it’s about learning to forgive yourself for these things that disappointed you. And in the process, loving yourself more. So forgiveness is a powerful tool and a powerful hack. And it’s so counterintuitive that letting someone else off the hook is a better thing for you and for them and for the world. And a lot of people don’t do that because they think forgiveness means pardoning. They are two different things. I had to forgive a guy who had put in charge of my operations in Malaysia. And I found out two years later that he had swindled me out of $100,000 fake deals, right? Horrible. And then threatened my family when we busted him and called the police. I had to forgive him. And it doesn’t mean I pardon him. I still have a court case coming up. I’m going to have to testify against him. But that forgiveness means that when I see him in court, I don’t feel angry.

1:30:47 I don’t feel upset. I don’t feel hate. I can understand that he made a bad decision. And yes, it was a criminal act. But he is not going to bring up any negativity in me. I’m just going to go in there, testify, do my job, and let the police deal with the case.

1:31:04 Yeah, nice. Talk to me about the phrase unfuck withable. So unfuck withable is after I completed this forgiveness program with Dave Asprey, one of the other students that we were doing it with sent us a WhatsApp message. And he’s like, hey, you got to check this out. And it was an internet meme. We don’t know where it came from. I don’t know who first coined it, but the word is unfuck withable. When you are confident and secure in your own self, that nothing someone else says or does can shake you. Unfuck withable. And when you practice forgiveness, it helps you get there. It helps you get there because you heal your relationship with yourself. You heal your relationship with others. But even if something happens that jars you, you know you’re going to be able to heal that. So when you’re unfuck withable, you no longer feel swayed by someone else’s. You no longer need someone else’s praise to keep you going. And at the same time, you no longer are turned off by someone else’s criticism. So you’re immune to criticism, but also rightfully immune to praise, because so many of us need that praise. And therefore you can live your best life on your terms and do what you need to do without relying on validation or support from other people.

1:32:21 Powerful. Yeah, you’ve got a great video on that as well out there. Vision, I always ask everyone here a few questions at the end. And I’m going to ask you, if you could pick up your phone and ring the 20-year-old vision. That young man, probably in Ann Arbor, Saturday night, maybe home coding. I don’t know what he’s doing. I’ve been there before.

1:32:40 Yeah. And give that young man a bit of advice. What would you tell him? I would say start studying everything happening on the internet right now. Back then, that 20-year-old vision would not even have known what Google was, because he was probably using AltaVista, that old search engine, was probably just seeing an early version of eBay. And I would say, even if you have to drop out of school, drop out of college right now and start working in an internet business. Because that was the future at that point.

1:33:12 Right. What year was that? That was 1996. I was 20 years old in 1996. Do you know in 1996, the top 10, my university website, umich.edu, was one of the top 10 websites in the world.

1:33:27 The internet was a completely different space. Yeah. I tell the story when I got to MIT, it was in 1989, and they gave me my first email account. It was called Project Athena, and it was that MIT.edu. And I just didn’t know what to do with it.

1:33:39 Yes. I was the first freshman batch in University of Michigan that had email. Yeah. And at MIT, there was no computer science based on the web, because there was no web. So, yeah, back in the good old days. Right. On that same note, best advice you’ve ever received could be a mentor, or a business partner, or a close relationship. If you had mentors.

1:34:01 Yeah. It was actually Richard Branson. I had the pleasure of visiting Necker Island once. Of course, when you’re there with Richard Branson, everything is fun and parties, and he’s a really sweet, wonderful guy. And I happened to, my wife and I happened to sit down with him, and my wife is beautiful, and he loves beautiful women. So, there were all of these entrepreneurs over there. I happened to bring my wife. I was too nervous to talk to Branson, but he decided to sit in front of her and chat with her, and then I was there as well. And so, we had a wonderful time with him. And I asked him, Richard, you’ve started 300 companies with 300 different partners, and you’ve been successful. But if you could say it in one paragraph, one tweet, what would be the secret of your success? And he says, well, it’s about hiring good people, people smarter than you, and then getting out of the way, and focusing on the vision. But here’s the thing. You must also make these people see their job as a mission. And so, I took that advice. Hire smart people. So, Mindvalley is obsessed with attracting smart people. Focus on the vision. So, I’m constantly focusing on the vision, and make people see their job as a mission. We always emphasize the mission of what we do. That advice has really helped me grow as an entrepreneur.

1:35:21 Tony Hsieh, founder of Zappos, says that the customer experience is a lagging indicator of the company culture. And he was all about delivering wow at Zappos. Tell me about delivering wow inside of Mindvalley, because you’re very proud of your company culture, and you just mentioned it, and I thought I’d ask you about it. How do you develop this culture, and how do you lead if you just take it a little step deeper than what you just talked about? Right. So, somewhere in 2011, we were an online publisher, and we had a customer support team, and their job was to do things such as, if a customer asked for a refund, give them a refund, if all else fails. Answer emails in the most efficient way possible. And then, I assembled the team, and I said, how can we go beyond? I think I was actually inspired by Zappos. So, it may have been Tony who was the first inspiration. I’m like, what can we do to be the number one customer support company in the entire publishing education industry?

1:36:19 And our team started working on all of these models, and one of the models is personalized replies. Another model is answering every question with love. Every person on my team would have a funny little one-liner in their signature. So, they would answer the customer’s question, then they would sign off with love, peace, and unicorns farting sprinkles. Sorry, love, peace, and unicorns farting skittles. Something completely bizarre, but customers would love that. And we started getting higher and higher and higher customer satisfaction scores, and there’s a company called Nice Reply, which ranks customer support teams, and we won number one customer support team in Asia, which was a huge, huge, huge deal.

1:36:59 So, that was where we took customer service, but it comes from love for the customer. You know, people in our team, they have an Amazon budget. Sometimes a customer will write to us and say, hey, I’m going through a depression, what course do you recommend? I can’t afford your current course. The team will say, don’t worry, I’m going to buy you a book and send it to you to help you with your depression. And our staff members have a budget where they can go and buy a book, a $20 book, and give it to a customer for free. We had someone show up at Mindvalley University. She was an entrepreneur, and she said, look, I signed up for this, but I didn’t feel this was for me, and my funds are very limited, and I think I may need, can I get a refund, maybe even like a 10% or 20% refund? I’m like, what are you going to use that money for? And she goes, well, I really need it to build my business. I’m like, well, then we want to support you. Here’s a full 100% refund. Now, that cost us money, but that lady went from disappointed to beaming and became a raving fan. In everything we do, one of our measures is not just fulfilling the contract, but it’s how is this person going to walk away with the impression of Mindvalley? So Wim Hof came and spoke at our event, and we delivered everything that we had in the contract. But at the end of it, Wim Hof walks away, and he’s like, I want to work with you guys all the time, because you guys felt like

1:38:20 Family. We treat everything like family. Last night was my last night in Barcelona. You know what I did? I emailed my customers, and I’m like, hey, I’d love to hang out with you guys in a bar.

1:38:29 So I went out and I took 20 customers out to dinner. And I get to know them, and they get to know me. And so I’m continuously experimenting with breaking down the walls between company, community, and customer. The three C’s, they all intermingle in Mindvalley. That’s fascinating. That’s good stuff. Last part of that question, to that 20-year-old that’s watching us right now, and they could be anywhere in the world, South America, Malaysia, New York City, Silicon Valley, and they want to grow up and maybe be like you, or maybe grow up and be this great version of themselves. You know, stuff we’re talking about today.

1:39:07 You know, being part of this human colossus, you know, where they’re this active contributor and not in this cancerous loop over here making the wrong decisions. What advice do you give them, something they can do right now, to get them on that path? Because we all know it’s easy to go back off of it. Well, I would definitely say, read my book, The Code of the Extraordinary Mind. I don’t want to say there’s a simplistic answer. I’ve shared so much advice over here, but the code outlines 10 different mental models that you take on in sequence that shifts your mind. The mind is a very hackable tool. I used to hack computers and hack computer games to give myself high scores when I was a kid. You can do the same thing with the mind. The mind is a hackable tool. The Code of the Extraordinary Mind gives you those hacks, but it goes beyond many books in the sense that it then gives you access for free to courses I put up, which are worth hundreds of dollars, but it’s free with the book that will guide you through things such as the six-phase meditation and the mental models that I teach, so you can integrate that with your life. That’s 13 bucks on Kindle. Right, so make some move and take some steps. Good stuff.

1:40:11 Vishen, thank you so much for being here. It was great for me to be at AFest, because I got to see your vision. A lot of people were there to talk about loving relationships, and you got up and you’re like, I’m dropping the vision on you. I was taking notes, because for me, I think it’s super powerful to have that long-term vision. I know as an entrepreneur, as a CEO, sometimes it’s hard to equate the vision and the quarterlies. Sometimes it’s like, okay, but the CFO is ringing you when you’re with your son for a reason, because it’s like, okay, the vision’s great, but we also got to make this happen. Having that long-term vision and knowing that you’re part of this colossus is what I feel when I hear you and see Mindvalley and see all these things that you’re doing. When you tell the stories of you and John and Missy Butcher and the university, how it’s inspired, and by you taking your kids away, I can see all these elements and everything you do.

1:41:01 I hope everybody else can start to see this and do this. Super excited for your university next year in Estonia. It’s in Tallinn, right? I’ve been there. It’s a beautiful town, beautiful women. I’m taken, but it looks like an incredible experience, so I might come and join you for that one. But I love everything you’re doing, and I just wanted to thank you for just being bold enough for this long-term vision, because you’re what, 14 years in now on this company. God, it’s been long. Jesus, it’s been long. And you’re what? Since 2010, with A-Fest, and you’re obviously a super busy guy doing all these crazy things, but it’s great to see you putting all these things together in a vision. Thanks for doing this. As we say on London Real, it’s about the journey, and I really wish you all on yours in the future.

1:41:45 Thank you. Thank you, man. I really appreciate this. Thank you.