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Calling all conscious achievers who are seeking more community and connection, I ve got an invitation for you.
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Join me at this year s Summit of Greatness this September 7th through 9th in my hometown of Columbus, Ohio to unleash your true greatness.
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This is the one time a year
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that I gather the greatness community together in person for a powerful transformative weekend.
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People come from all over the world and you can expect to hear from inspiring speakers like Inky Johnson, Jaspreet Singh, Vanessa Van Edwards, Jen Cinchero, and many more.
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You ll also be able to dance your heart out to live music, get your body moving with group workouts, and connect with others at our evening socials.
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So if you re ready to learn, heal, and grow alongside other incredible individuals in the greatness community, then you can learn more at lewishouse.com slash summit 2023.
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Make sure to grab your ticket, invite your friends, and I ll see you there.
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You want to stack the deck in your favor and design an environment or join groups and tribes where your desired behavior is normal, where your desired behavior is easy.
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But it s going to be so much more productive and easy to stick to the habit because you re in a space and a context that s designed to support it.
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Welcome to the School of Greatness.
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My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur.
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And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness.
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Thanks for spending some time with me today.
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Now let the class begin.
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Welcome to this special masterclass.
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We brought some of the top experts in the world to help you unlock the power of your life through this specific theme today.
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It s going to be powerful.
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So let s go ahead and dive in.
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What are three to five non-negotiable habits that every human being should, and if they could do on a daily basis, it would improve their lives and everyone s lives around them?
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What are those non-negotiable habits on a daily basis we should do?
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Yeah, three habits that would improve everybody s lives on a daily basis.
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It s so hard to give an answer like that because obviously everybody s, you know, dealing with different stuff.
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But there are a few things that I think I do genuinely think most people would benefit from.
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So the easy answer would be the easy way to frame this would be reading, but I don t think it actually has to be reading books.
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I think it just is the habit of learning something new.
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So if you, you know, listening to podcasts, reading a book, watching a good YouTube video, whatever, it doesn t matter what version of that it is.
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But if you go to bed a little bit smarter than you were when you woke up, that s going to improve your life.
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And just having this thirst for lifelong learning, having an eagerness to learn or discover something new each day, it s going to pay off in a huge way in the long run, no matter what topics you re interested in.
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Habit of some small habit of daily learning.
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Let s just call it learn something new for 10 minutes each day Some sort of physical activity, you know, this is I think an important realization about all habits, which is in most areas of life There might not be a thousand ways to do something, but there s almost always more than one way
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And, you know, I like working out in the gym, but not everybody wants to train like a bodybuilder and that s fine.
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You know, like you can kayak or go running or rock climbing or ride a bike or whatever.
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There s like a bazillion ways to live an active lifestyle.
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And you should choose the version of your habits that is most exciting to you.
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Like in a way, that s the first biggest hurdle to clear when building habits is, have you selected a habit that you re genuinely interested in, that you re actually engaged with?
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Because if it s something that you actually care about, there are gonna be like endless opportunities for improvement.
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If you re not actually care, if you don t actually care about it, if you re just doing it because you kind of feel like society s encouraging you to do it, or your parents want you to do it, or your peers are kind of subtly saying, hey, this is something you should do.
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Then, even the obvious improvements are going to feel like a chore, you know, so let s call it 10 minutes of learning something new, some sort of physical activity, whatever is exciting or interesting to you.
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And then I think the other one is a process a habit of reflection and review.
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It s very easy in life to be so busy or working on stuff heads down, um, or just have the next task come up, whether it s things you got to do for your kids or responsibilities at work that you never take even five minutes to step back and just breathe and ask yourself, am I working on the right thing?
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You know, am I directing my attention and energy to the highest and best use?
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And
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Boy, there is nothing so wasteful as working hard on the wrong thing.
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You know, like so many people work really hard, but are you directing your energy and attention to the best spot?
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And so, um, the only way to discover that, like, I know I m not smart enough to figure it out on the first time.
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Like, I can t, I can t just sit down, give me five minutes and be like, oh, this is exactly what I should be focused on.
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It takes iteration.
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It takes refinement.
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It takes a process of reflecting and reviewing and looking back on the previous day and be like, Hey, was that a good way to spend my time?
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Like, did I live a good life today?
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And the more that you do that, the more you start to course correct.
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And the other tricky thing, and the reason this needs to be a habit that you revisit consistently, I don t necessarily think it needs to be daily, but consistently is the answer changes over time.
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You know, like what you want shifts over time.
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the situation you re in or the resources you have or the time you have shifts over time.
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And so you need to keep coming back to this.
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Maybe it s every week, maybe it s once a year, but whatever it is, you need a chance to reflect and review and to try to ask yourself, is there a better way to do this?
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Am I working on the right thing?
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Am I working on what actually matters?
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Am I directing my attention and energy in the highest and best way?
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Yeah.
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And how important is accountability then in your mind when we are taking on these new habits for ourselves?
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Is it important to have self-accountability, buddy accountability, coach accountability, social accountability?
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Do those support habits, forming these consistent habits?
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And what other factors are in play there?
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They definitely support them or hinder them, potentially, depending on the people you re around and the group that you re a part of.
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Ultimately, the form of accountability that matters the most is self-accountability.
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It s almost impossible to exceed the standards that you have for yourself.
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That almost always sets the baseline.
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If your beliefs or your standards are almost always going to be the limit on what you allow yourself to do or what you accept.
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Now, it s easier to stick to high standards in a supportive environment than it is in an unsupportive one.
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So there are a lot of things that can influence whether you want to maintain that standard.
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But ultimately, the standard you hold yourself to is going to be the most important thing.
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Now, having said that, I do think that the social environment, the tribes that you belong to,
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influence your habits in a really dramatic way.
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So if I had to pick one topic that I think is even more important now than I realized when I was writing the book, I would probably say the social environment.
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You know, we re all part of multiple tribes.
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Some of those tribes are like really large, like what it means to be American or what it means to be Australian.
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Some of those tribes are small, like what it means to be a neighbor on your street or a member of the local CrossFit gym.
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But all of those tribes, large and small, they have a set of expectations.
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You know, they have a set of social norms.
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They have a set of beliefs that, hey, this is how you act in this group.
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This is what s normal and expected.
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And the more that your habits align with the expectations of the group, the easier it is to stick with them, the more like appealing and attractive they are because they signal to the people around you, hey, look, I belong to, you know, like I m part of this.
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And the more that they go against the grain of the tribes that you belong to, the harder they are to stick to because you start to get criticized for them.
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And if people have to choose between, you know what?
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I have habits that I don t really love, but I fit in.
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I belong.
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I m part of something.
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or I have the habits that I want to have, but I m cast out, I m ostracized, I m criticized.
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I mean, the desire to belong will often overpower the desire to improve.
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You know, belonging will, the loneliness will lose to belonging.
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And so you need to get those two things aligned and join groups where your desired behavior is the normal behavior.
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It is so true.
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And it doesn t mean you can t make it happen.
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There s a great example that came up this week.
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Someone on my team,
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on our team call said, uh, I asked, I asked everyone on the call.
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I said, what is one thing you want to let go of next year for your life?
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Like, what s one thing that s not serving you right now that you want to let go of?
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And this person said, I want to let go of drink.
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drinking alcohol, or at least drinking as frequently as I do with the social circles that I m in.
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And I thought that was interesting, because I ve never been drunk in my life.
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I don t drink.
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It s not a part of my identity.
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I never did it from sports, and then after sports, I was just like, why?
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It didn t make sense to me.
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Nothing good or bad about it.
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It just wasn t fitting my values, personally.
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I have other problems, which is sugar.
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It s like, I ve got that.
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That s my vice, right?
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So no judgment here, but I was just like,
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This never stopped for me, until maybe the last four or five years, where anytime I d go out in college, after college, then the business world, restaurants, networking events, all that stuff, people would always try to influence me to drinking.
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And so I had to be so firm in my beliefs and really just not even care at all about it.
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I just knew that people were going to try to influence me.
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They would try to say a joke.
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They d be like, I can t believe you never drank.
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All these different things.
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Try to get me to drink for the first time.
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All this stuff.
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I knew it would happen every single week.
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And I just realized, okay, this is going to happen no matter what type of circles I m in, unless I find people that do not drink, which is very rare.
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And which is one of the reasons why with my girlfriend, when we started dating, I was like, listen, it s not going to work.
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If you like to drink, I don t think I can date you.
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Like, it doesn t mean you re a bad person.
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I just don t want to be in that environment for the rest of my life.
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with the person I m choosing to be with.
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And so I had to make a conscious decision.
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And she was like, well, I don t really need it.
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Maybe I ll drink a glass of wine once a month.
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I m like, okay, that s fine.
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But if this is a weekly thing, it s just not gonna work because I ve chosen this to be a high priority of my value for my life.
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And it s very challenging if there s something you want to do and the people around you are influencing you the other way in terms of accountability.
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So I think it doesn t mean you can t do it, but choosing to be around people or groups or tribes like you mentioned that are supportive, even if it s the local CrossFit gym or whatever it might be.
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Find those communities as much as possible.
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If your family isn t as supportive, find these other micro-tribes to support you in that habit form.
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There s this whole chapter in Atomic Habits.
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It s called The Secret to Self-Control.
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And one of the surprising things that I came across when I was researching the book is a lot of these self-control studies
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We typically will like kind of the standard story we all tell is, Oh man, I wish I had the discipline of that person.
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Or I wish I was, you know, as consistent as this professional athlete or whatever.
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But in fact, um, the people who exhibit the highest self-control are often the people who are tempted the least.
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That s like the predominant pattern that is common across those different contexts is that they are just cookies in your house.
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You re not going to eat them.
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Yeah.
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And so, you know, you want to stack the deck in your favor and design an environment or join groups and tribes where your desired behavior is normal, where your desired behavior is easy.
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And if you do that for yourself, sure, you ll still have to put effort in, but it s going to be so much more productive and easy to stick to the habit because you re in a space and a context that s designed to support it.
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And that s maybe one of the biggest
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hacks or strategies for building better habits is worry a little bit less about having superhuman willpower and worry a little bit more about designing an environment where you don t need willpower at all.
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You did something really smart, which I think a lot of people aren t willing to do.
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You spent 10 years writing every week in an incredible article or articles that were so detailed, so thought out, so researched.
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And you said, how can I serve the maximum number of people in my niche and then start branching out into space as well and do it consistently over a decade without really making a lot of money, you know, selling other things.
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And then you came out with a book.
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And now this doesn t happen for everyone, but then you came out with a book.
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And it became, you know, a one of the best selling books of the year of the most selling book of last year on Amazon, like you said, top five, I think this year as well.
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And it just continues to add value to people.
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And I think it s a testament to what you created for a decade plus of adding value.
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So congratulations on everything, man.
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Yeah.
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Thank you.
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That s very, very nice of you to say.
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It s been a wild ride.
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There are a couple of things going on there.
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Like I do try to operate with this core value of always give value before you ask for value.
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And if you think about in any business, but like in my business at writing books, the amount of
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What it costs a reader or what it costs a customer is not just how much they have to pay for the book.
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It s also how much time they have to spend reading it or finding it and so on.
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And whatever that total cost is time plus money.
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That s like the amount they have to pay.
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And then whatever I get paid is what I make.
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But what they get in return should be like well in excess of that.
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So like the value they get minus the time and money they spend, there s some surplus there.
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And we could call it whatever, but I like think about it as like goodwill.
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And I always want to have a surplus of goodwill.
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And so everything that I create, whether it s an article or a newsletter or the book, I want people to be to have this feeling that it s like, oh, my gosh, I get so much out of this.
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Of course, I would want to open the next email or of course, I would want to buy the book.
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It s like such an obvious win for me.
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So I always try to give value before I ask for value.
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And I don t think that there s any one way to do this.
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Like you could start with the book and not have an audience, for example, but the way that I did it is I wanted to focus on building the audience first, building the platform first, give as much value as possible, get the audience as large as possible.
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And then I was able, you know, I didn t have any credentials, right?
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Like I don t have any background for, and there was no reason for me to get a book deal.
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I was just a guy with a blog.
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And the only reason that any of the publishers in New York met with me is because I spent that time building the email list and developing the audience.
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And then that got my foot in the door and got the book deal.
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And then, of course, you have to execute well on that and create something valuable.
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And then ultimately, the book being a hit
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was sort of just all this potential energy that had been built up for two years or five years or whatever.
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And then it being released when the book came out.
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So I to a large degree, I kind of think that s the hardest thing about writing books is all the work is up front.
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You know, you have to build the audience and write it and edit it and make the marketing plan and start to record interviews and execute on that.
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You have to do all of that stuff before you sell a single copy.
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And most people are just not willing to delay gratification that long.
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You know, I mean, it s probably.
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Depending on how you measure it, atomic habits took somewhere between like three and six years, definitely at least three years, because that s how long it was from when I got the book deal.
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But I was doing a lot before I even got the book deal.
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So, you know, it s just a long time to work on something without making a cent from it.
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And so if you re willing to do that, then you can get a great result.
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You will set yourself up for so much more financial peace over financial pain in the future.
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But you ve got to be willing to face the fear of judgment of what people think about you in order to do this, especially early on when you make these tough decisions.
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And that s so hard.
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So hard.
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And you re so right, because we ve all been there, every single person.
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And I remember, I was supposed to be a doctor, like I was saying.
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You re such a failure, man.
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You re such a failure of being a lawyer and a real estate agent and an investor.
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Imagine hearing that, though, when you don t have anything.
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I know, man.
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It s scary.
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And before I got it, in between, I also started the sock company.
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The only way I learned was by doing things.
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And I was supposed to be a doctor.
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And now people know me because I m selling socks.
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And people have these high expectations for you.
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They re like, oh, Jaspreet is going to be a doctor.
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I was a sock salesman?
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And now imagine going to these parties, right?
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And Indian aunties, they have this like, the gossip culture in this poor boy.
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And so, you know, and they ll say it to your face.
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Oh, so you re selling socks now?
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And then they don t just tell you, they tell your parents, they tell your grandparents.
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And you know, it s a, and now you start hearing from every single person around you.
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Why are you throwing away the sacrifice that your parents made?
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Your parents gave up everything to come to this country so you could have a chance to be a doctor and you re throwing it away because you want to do this dumb thing called entrepreneurship?
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Oh man, the shame around that.
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It must be tough.
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And now you have nothing to show for it.
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And you re failing at the thing that you re trying.
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And you re screwing up and you have no idea.
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Like you just have this vision that like, you know, when I m 65 and I look back at my life, 75, 85, whatever year you want to put on, let s just say 100.
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Hopefully we can make it there.
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We look back at life.
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What are you, like, are you gonna be upset that you tried and failed?
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Or are you gonna be upset that you never gave it a shot?
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And I remember, that was like what I kept telling myself.
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I was like, look, I m gonna be old one day, hopefully.
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And I m gonna look back at life.
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And that s when I m gonna say, you know, am I happy that I tried and screwed up?
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Or am I happy that I never tried?
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And here s the thing, pain is the price of admission for greatness.
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And we just have to ask ourselves, what type of pain do I want to experience?
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Do I want to experience pain of not doing anything?
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And then feeling unhealthy and sick and you know bankrupt because I didn t take action and I was afraid And the pain comes to me later or do I want to put myself through controlled pain?
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Yeah by facing the insecurity by facing the fears by doing the the challenging things consistently with my health with my finances To set myself up for more peace in the future.
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Yeah, either way.
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We re going to experience pain 100 but the controlled
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Conscious, daily consistent pain is the price of admission for greatness.
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And we ve got to be willing to lean into that if you want to have something in your life that feels like peace.
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But you know the biggest drug that holds us back from doing that?
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Comfort.
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I know, man.
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We get comfortable.
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And it becomes a drug.
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And we get addicted to this idea of, I need my healthcare.
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I need my steady salary.
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I need my 401K.
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I need these things to feel safe.
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I need my lattes every day.
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And those are the things that then hold us back from then following and doing something else because we can create a million excuses.
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It s easy to make excuses for why
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I had this side hustle idea, I had this business idea, I wanna go start investing, I wanna do something.
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It s easy to make excuses.
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Oh, I don t have a million dollars, my parents didn t give me a million dollars.
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Oh, I don t have rich parents.
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Oh, I look a certain way.
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Look, man, excuses are easy.
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And this is where now, look, sometimes we go to real problems.
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Mental health is a real problem.
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If you are struggling, you can t get up because you re depressed, you re anxious, okay, let s start with that, right?
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You can t build a business when you can t even get out of bed.
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So you break it down.
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Okay, if I m struggling mentally, you gotta get that taken care of first.
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Go spend whatever it costs, do whatever it takes, start working on that.
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Pain creates purpose, right?
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SPEAKER_00
And now you can then start to work towards something else, and then you start work.
2
SPEAKER_00
But you gotta get away from that comfort drug.
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SPEAKER_00
Understand, you know what, sometimes you gotta be willing to be uncomfortable.
2
SPEAKER_00
I had this talk with me.
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So it s kind of, this is funny.
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I don t think I ve ever talked about this publicly, but I, I remember I used to go through like the worst case scenario.
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I was like, worst case, worst, worst case.
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My parents kicked me out of the house.
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SPEAKER_00
I make no money.
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SPEAKER_00
I m homeless.
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SPEAKER_00
Yes.
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What s the big deal?
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Okay, I can make that work.
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I m like, can I make it work?
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SPEAKER_00
And so a funny kind of segue from that is later on, I even started a, I co-founded a community service organization.
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And we did a lot of, or do a lot of help.
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SPEAKER_00
We call it SEVA, which is a Sikh word.
2
SPEAKER_00
I m from the Sikh faith, S-I-K-H.
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That s the name of the religion.
2
SPEAKER_00
And SEVA is a fundamental tenet, which means selfless service.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so one of the things that we do was we would do a lot of things in the city of Detroit to help people there, primarily homeless people.
2
SPEAKER_00
And kind of as a joking idea, kind of as like a serious thing, I told a core founders, I was like, hey, you know, we re doing a lot of things for homeless people here, but we don t know what they re going through.
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SPEAKER_00
Why don t we try being homeless?
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And I like doing kind of different things and putting myself through it.
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And so a couple of guys were like, yeah, let s try it.
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And so, you know, I know I can never experience real homelessness because I know I have a home.
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I have a family.
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I have that comfort that I knew I was going to go back to.
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SPEAKER_00
But for four days, we slept on the streets of Detroit.
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We had $15 a person.
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and we re gonna figure it out.
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And to kind of prepare myself, I didn t shower for a week leading up to it, and we just tried it.
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SPEAKER_00
And this is where now, you put yourself in uncomfortable situations.
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For me, I kind of try to do that because it gives you new perspectives, new ways of thinking, and people call me crazy and all this stuff all the time, but I kind of,
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It makes sense to me now because I don t do things the way everybody else does.
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I don t see the world everybody else does.
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And I want to try things the way I can see the world from different places.
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Like we were talking about before, people with different opinions.
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I look for that.
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SPEAKER_00
Most people, especially in this political climate, if you disagree with me, block, turn you off.
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Talk to me, I wanna hear what you have to say.
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We don t have to agree, but I wanna learn from you.
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And that s where wisdom comes from, is when you can listen to two different points of view and then come up with your own analysis.
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Like when we talk about stock market investing, I m gonna tie this back to finances.
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When people talk about how do you know if it s a good company to invest in, like one of the things that we talk about is, and I talk about it on YouTube, is listen to people s opinions about a company.
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But don t just listen to one side s opinions.
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Listen to people that think that the stock is going to the moon.
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Listen to people who think that the stock is going down.
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And now you have both perspectives.
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Because if you just listen to people that say, nothing is going to go wrong, you re going to be in this euphoric state of, I m going to buy everything.
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But you have to put things in perspective and understand there s two sides to everything.
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Being willing to, again, it s uncomfortable, right?
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Especially when you firmly believe something.
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And then you hear somebody telling you that you re completely wrong, that you re an idiot, that you re a fool.
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makes you a little uncomfortable.
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SPEAKER_00
But being willing to make yourself uncomfortable can teach you a lot.
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SPEAKER_00
So that s, we re talking about saving money, but it all kind of ties in together of knowing now, being willing to handle that judgment, because that is hard, man.
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Huge, man.
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It is hard.
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Huge.
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Which then brings us to then protecting yourself, which, you know, there s a few different things here in protecting yourself and protecting your money.
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And what s the fourth one, spend, grow, save?
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SPEAKER_00
Oh wait, we completely skipped earning.
2
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Earning.
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SPEAKER_00
Oh my God, we can t skip, that s the most fun one, man.
2
SPEAKER_00
Wow, I m sorry for that.
2
SPEAKER_00
So earning now is, you built a system, 75, 15, 10.
2
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Every time you make money, some of your money is being spent, some of your money is being invested, some of your money is being saved.
2
SPEAKER_00
Now it s, I kind of like this financial education stuff.
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SPEAKER_00
How can I amplify the system?
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You ve got to put more fuel on the fire.
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How do you do that?
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You need to earn more money.
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Now, this is where, unfortunately and fortunately, a lot of people look for that quick and easy way.
2
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I mean, who doesn t want to get rich quick?
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It s very appealing.
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SPEAKER_00
The problem is most people who try to get rich quick end up losing, and you end up paying somebody selling you a get-rich-quick service.
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SPEAKER_00
And unfortunately, it s very unfortunate, but that s, I mean, it s very easy to sell this idea of get-rich-quick.
2
SPEAKER_00
And this is where now understanding that, you know, we could go over systems of do these five things to build a million dollar business.
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But everything, everyone s gonna be different.
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And sometimes you just gotta be willing to put in the work.
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SPEAKER_00
And there s no bypassing that.
2
SPEAKER_00
But now it s understanding how you can work hard and work smart.
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Most of us are taught that hard work is rewarded, and it is.
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But you have to complement this hard work with smart work.
2
SPEAKER_00
If the hardest people in America were compensated by their level of work, construction workers would be the highest paid people in America.
2
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But they re not.
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Teachers would be making way more money.
2
SPEAKER_00
They re not.
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We re compensated completely differently.
2
SPEAKER_00
And this makes a lot of people angry, because you say, man, I put in 20 hours, I put in 12 hours, I ve been putting a break in my back, and this is all I m making?
2
SPEAKER_00
And this is why we need to be taught how our financial system works, because we re all a piece of this puzzle.
2
SPEAKER_00
But most of us are only consumers.
2
SPEAKER_00
We re never taught how to benefit from the way the economic system works.
2
SPEAKER_00
And so you have to be able to work smart instead of just working hard.
2
SPEAKER_00
And now the question is now, first, you have to be willing to work hard.
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SPEAKER_00
When people tell me, hey man, I want to start a business because I don t want to work that hard, I can t even talk to you.
2
SPEAKER_00
It s a completely different language.
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SPEAKER_01
You ve got to obsess over something if you want it to do well.
2
SPEAKER_01
You have to be obsessive and a business owner
2
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doesn t get to turn it off.
2
SPEAKER_01
You don t get to clock out at five and say, well, I m done for the day.
2
SPEAKER_01
I don t have to worry about anything.
2
SPEAKER_01
Time to go home and chill and relax and just watch the money flow in.
2
SPEAKER_01
You ve got to, it doesn t shut off.
2
SPEAKER_01
You re thinking nonstop about your employees and making sure they re taken care of about am I gonna be able to generate enough money to take care of them and the expenses and running new initiatives and launching your products and making those better and dealing with customer acquisition.
2
SPEAKER_01
It never stops.
2
SPEAKER_00
I know my dad used to joke around we had to talk the other day my dad worked very hard and He joked around about me because he saw this article on the internet and he was like laughing.
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SPEAKER_00
I was like, what s so funny?
2
SPEAKER_00
He was like work-life balance.
2
SPEAKER_00
I was like what he was like look at this article you young generation People are asking for a work-life balance and I was like, what are you talking about?
2
SPEAKER_00
He s like
2
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There is no concept of a work-life balance when I came to this country.
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SPEAKER_00
It was work.
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SPEAKER_00
If I didn t work, I don t have money to feed you, right?
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SPEAKER_00
And it s like sometimes you got to be willing to put in that sacrifice.
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SPEAKER_00
And obviously, look, we live a life and you want to, you know, you got to balance this.
2
SPEAKER_00
But sometimes
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You ve got to be imbalanced to have more balance.
2
SPEAKER_01
It s a season of life that you ve got to be imbalanced in order to get to balance.
2
SPEAKER_00
Right.
2
SPEAKER_00
And, you know, when I like I work a lot, but I don t work as much as I used to.
2
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
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SPEAKER_00
And I have... You re getting comfortable, man.
2
SPEAKER_01
You re getting soft.
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SPEAKER_00
A little bit, man.
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SPEAKER_00
I seriously got to go back through something that s going to make me uncomfortable.
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SPEAKER_00
Well, the economy might put you through that, so don t worry.
3
SPEAKER_00
If you re not disciplined with your pain, the world will bring pain to you.
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SPEAKER_00
100%, you re 100% right on that.
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But it s a matter of now understanding when is the sacrifice worthwhile, and when are you gonna be willing to do that?
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So it s now, okay, I gotta be willing to put in the work.
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The second thing is now, where am I putting that work?
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SPEAKER_00
Now, some people are born with the entrepreneurial bug.
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Some people are not.
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SPEAKER_00
Some people can t handle the risk.
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That s okay.
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Not everybody should operate a business.
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Not everybody should be an entrepreneur.
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I know the internet makes it seem like that s not the case.
3
SPEAKER_00
Look, there s nothing wrong with working a job, okay?
3
SPEAKER_00
Just understand now what are the different ways that you can earn more money.
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SPEAKER_00
Can you work to get a raise?
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SPEAKER_00
Can you work to maybe change careers if you don t have that much
3
SPEAKER_00
upside potential?
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SPEAKER_00
Can you get new skills?
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SPEAKER_00
Can you get new skills?
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SPEAKER_00
A certificate?
3
SPEAKER_00
Can you do something to earn more money?
3
SPEAKER_00
And it s much more accessible online now.
3
SPEAKER_00
There are so many skills you can learn online that can help you earn more money.
3
SPEAKER_00
Maybe get a second job, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
If that s not the case for you, maybe now you can create your own side hustle if you have an idea.
3
SPEAKER_00
Maybe that can become its own business.
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SPEAKER_00
The one thing that I would say about side hustles is a lot of mistakes, the mistake that a lot of people make is you try to do too many things and then you end up doing nothing.
3
SPEAKER_00
So it s focusing down on what is it that you want to do and working to scale that and really just being willing to learn and being willing to fail.
3
SPEAKER_00
If you have the discipline, you have the work ethic, you re willing to learn and you re willing to fail, there s really not much that can stop you.
3
SPEAKER_00
because now you have the recipe to actually go out and make it happen.
3
SPEAKER_00
But it s very difficult, and you re gonna go through a lot of tough times, and most people give up after the first or the second or the third, and that s where, you know, the people that keep standing are the ones that can then have the chance to succeed, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
If you re not, I forget who said it, it might have been Kobe, but you can t beat somebody
3
SPEAKER_00
who doesn t stop getting up.
3
SPEAKER_00
That s true, man.
3
SPEAKER_00
Right?
3
SPEAKER_00
And it s just one of those things where you just got to keep coming back and keep trying, keep learning, and keep studying, and goes back to the judgment.
3
SPEAKER_00
Which then brings us now to how do you protect your money?
3
SPEAKER_00
Protect that money, baby.
3
SPEAKER_00
Right?
3
SPEAKER_00
Because now as you build more wealth, as you start to do more of these things, now you start to achieve more success.
3
SPEAKER_00
You don t want to lose it.
3
SPEAKER_00
You don t want to lose it.
3
SPEAKER_00
And now, you know, this is where the first thing I would say is taxes, because this is probably the most interesting thing about this.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s tough, man.
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SPEAKER_00
And as an attorney who spent a lot of time studying the tax code, what I can tell you
3
SPEAKER_00
is not all income is treated the same.
3
SPEAKER_00
In general, the IRS has three different categories of income.
3
SPEAKER_00
You have earned income, or your ordinary income.
3
SPEAKER_00
This is the money you make from your job, your W-2 salary.
3
SPEAKER_00
You have your portfolio income.
3
SPEAKER_00
This is your investment income.
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SPEAKER_00
So if I sell a stock for a profit, that is my portfolio income.
3
SPEAKER_00
And then you have passive income.
3
SPEAKER_00
This is the money you make from something like a rental property.
3
SPEAKER_00
Something that you re not operating, but it s generating you cash flow.
3
SPEAKER_00
Out of these three different types of income, the income that comes with the highest tax rates and the lowest tax write-offs, the lowest deductions, is your earned income, your ordinary income, the money you make from your job.
3
SPEAKER_00
Now again, this makes a lot of people upset and angry because they re like, wait, what?
3
SPEAKER_00
I m working so hard to make my money.
3
SPEAKER_00
You re telling me that if I made this money from my investments, which doesn t require as much physical labor, where I can make even more money, I pay less in taxes,
3
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
3
SPEAKER_00
And again, we re never taught this.
3
SPEAKER_00
And that s the first frustrating part is the reason why people are upset is because they don t know how to take advantage of it.
3
SPEAKER_00
And you can t take advantage of something you don t understand.
3
SPEAKER_00
So the first step is now understanding, look, this is the rules.
3
SPEAKER_00
You can hate me for telling you, but I m telling you what the rulebook says.
3
SPEAKER_00
The IRS rulebook says this.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s over 2000 pages long.
3
SPEAKER_00
And all that really says is here are the different categories of income.
3
SPEAKER_00
Here are the write-offs.
3
SPEAKER_00
Do you know where these write-offs apply?
3
SPEAKER_00
They don t apply for your W-2 income because most people are just taking the standard deduction
3
SPEAKER_00
that will apply for your investment income, your portfolio income, or your passive income.
3
SPEAKER_00
So now the question is, how do you optimize that?
3
SPEAKER_00
How do you take advantage of that?
3
SPEAKER_00
Because the IRS rule book is a rule book, it s a guideline.
3
SPEAKER_00
Like it tells you what you can do and what you can t do.
3
SPEAKER_00
So now your goal is to understand this and say, huh, based off of this rule book, I should be doing this, or I should have been doing this.
3
SPEAKER_00
And this is where tax planning comes into play.
3
SPEAKER_00
If your accountant,
3
SPEAKER_00
Your CPA, if you have one, if you have a business or invest in real estate, I 100% recommend you have one.
3
SPEAKER_00
Always have a good accountant on your side when you need tax advice.
3
SPEAKER_00
But if all they re doing is filing your taxes, you are leaving a lot of money on the table.
3
SPEAKER_00
And that s where it becomes so important to understand that for many Americans, your taxes are your biggest expense because it s money that s taken out of your paycheck before you even get to see it.
3
SPEAKER_00
And now if you can understand how you can utilize certain things, and you talked about the real estate professional exemption.
3
SPEAKER_00
If you re investing in real estate, real estate has some of the biggest and best tax write-offs that our tax code has to offer.
3
SPEAKER_00
People like investing in real estate for three reasons.
3
SPEAKER_00
One, you get cash flow.
3
SPEAKER_00
Second, you own a hard asset because now you re taking your paper cash to a physical piece of bricks and windows and real estate land.
3
SPEAKER_00
And third, you get tax breaks.
3
SPEAKER_00
Real estate is one of the best tools out there to use a tax code, because with real estate, you get paper write-offs, which means I can show the IRS, yeah, I made $10,000 worth of profit, but my taxable income is maybe zero, because I can show them a property is one year older.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s called depreciation.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I get to show the IRS, hey, my property is one year older, so I don t have any real taxable income, even though you have some money in the bank.
3
SPEAKER_00
And that s gonna depend on now how valuable the property is.
3
SPEAKER_00
But now you can make money and pay $0 in taxes.
3
SPEAKER_00
In addition to that, you could potentially, there s a lot of restrictions on this, but if you lose money, or lose money on paper, meaning you make a profit, you tell the IRS you lost money, depending on how much money you make and how much money you lose, you could take some of this money, offset some of your job income.
3
SPEAKER_00
There s a lot of rules against this, but you can do that.
3
SPEAKER_00
Then, if you sell your real estate property for a profit, small or big, you can use all that money, go buy another property, and pay zero dollars in tax today.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s called the 1031 exchange.
3
SPEAKER_00
So all these things are available, but you have to now understand that you have to want to understand it, then how do you do it?
3
SPEAKER_00
Now, the first issue that people have is, how am I supposed to invest in real estate?
3
SPEAKER_00
I can barely buy a home for myself.
3
SPEAKER_00
Well, you have to plan for it.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s not something that happens overnight.
3
SPEAKER_00
You re going to have to work towards it.
3
SPEAKER_00
And if you can t find any property in your area, maybe you look in a different area.
3
SPEAKER_00
Second is if real estate is completely out of the picture, either you tell yourself you can t do it or you don t want to do it, you don t have to.
3
SPEAKER_00
You can also invest in stocks and still get some of the tax advantages because now your portfolio income
3
SPEAKER_00
has lower tax rates.
3
SPEAKER_00
And so now you can invest in stocks, you can generate cash flow from stocks, you can pay less taxes.
3
SPEAKER_00
You might not have the same tax benefits as real estate, but you still get a lot of tax benefits.
3
SPEAKER_00
And you can start with, I mean, I like to say as little as $100, but literally you can start with as little as $1.
3
SPEAKER_00
There are platforms out there that will let you start with $1.
3
SPEAKER_00
But again, it starts with that education.
3
SPEAKER_00
The second thing, when it comes to protecting, so first you gotta understand the taxes.
3
SPEAKER_00
I would 100% recommend getting a good accountant.
3
SPEAKER_00
Second is protect yourself.
3
SPEAKER_00
If you have a business idea, protect yourself.
3
SPEAKER_00
Because the reality is there s people that want to come after you.
3
SPEAKER_00
People, in America, you can sue anybody for anything.
3
SPEAKER_00
And we are the most litigious country in the world.
3
SPEAKER_00
I ve seen this far and this is where now you wanna protect yourself, protect your idea.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I ll give you a quick story because when I started the minority mindset, I know the value of trademarks.
3
SPEAKER_00
So I trademarked the name.
3
SPEAKER_00
It costs a little bit of money, but I trademarked the name minority mindset.
3
SPEAKER_00
Little bit after, I was a nobody.
3
SPEAKER_00
Minority Mindset was still a nobody at this time.
3
SPEAKER_00
But then I got these messages and then I got a potential lawsuit against me because somebody claimed that they owned the rights to the word Minority Mindset.
3
SPEAKER_00
And I looked at why.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s because 10 years prior to me starting the Minority Mindset, this guy wrote one blog post with the words Minority Mindset in it.
3
SPEAKER_00
So he s like, I own the rights to this name.
3
SPEAKER_00
And me and my attorneys looked at this and we re like, well,
3
SPEAKER_00
We have a federally registered trademark on the name Minority Mindset.
3
SPEAKER_00
So no, there was nothing that they could do.
3
SPEAKER_00
So you want to protect yourself.
3
SPEAKER_01
When people are looking at failure, one of the reasons I think failure is so daunting for people is because they think that a choice is binary.
3
SPEAKER_01
So I think there are two things that you need to do if you want to get out of failure mindset.
3
SPEAKER_01
First of all, you have to get out of this idea that you have one shot at glory.
3
SPEAKER_01
So we fear failure because we think whatever decision we make is what Jeff Bezos calls a one-way door.
3
SPEAKER_01
I go through this door, there s no coming back.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s going to define me forever.
4
SPEAKER_02
Bezos in the letter to Amazon shareholders said, very clearly said, most of the decisions we make at Amazon are two-way doors.
4
SPEAKER_02
You go through, doesn t work out, you come back.
4
SPEAKER_02
So I think that most people have the perception that failure is the result of a binary choice.
4
SPEAKER_02
You make one choice, it fails or succeeds.
4
SPEAKER_02
Now, if you believe like I believe, that actually between you and a reward is probably not one decision, but 30, 40, 100,
4
SPEAKER_02
Does the first, should you really overweight the importance of the first decision?
4
SPEAKER_02
I would say you should overweight your ability to keep choosing.
4
SPEAKER_02
If you can keep choosing, you will find a path.
4
SPEAKER_02
It may not be, you may not end up where you started, but you know, where you wanted when you started, but there will be a path.
4
SPEAKER_02
But you have to dismiss this myth that failure is a bimodal binary one-way door.
4
SPEAKER_02
It isn t.
4
SPEAKER_02
It s just the first choice in a series of choices you will inevitably have to make.
4
SPEAKER_02
So first of all, stop thinking about failure as like a one-choice circumstance.
4
SPEAKER_02
It s just not.
4
SPEAKER_02
Then number two, and I ll say this, supposing the decision you re contemplating is in fact bigger and it is a one-way door.
4
SPEAKER_02
I make it up.
4
SPEAKER_02
You mortgage your house.
4
SPEAKER_02
You re starting a company.
4
SPEAKER_02
You can t take back the mortgage.
4
SPEAKER_02
You quit your day job.
4
SPEAKER_02
You go to zero salary and you mortgage your house.
4
SPEAKER_02
Okay, we can agree that s a big risk.
4
SPEAKER_02
In that mode, I always say to people, like, OK, well, if it s a big risk, then as opposed to planning for all the upside that s going to happen, I said, plan for the failure mode.
4
SPEAKER_02
Plan for the failure mode in order to get yourself to act.
4
SPEAKER_02
And people are like, what do you mean?
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I m like, OK, if something s really a big and scary risk, I want you to tell me the five choices you d make after the choice.
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And then I bet that you will find two, three, four recovery paths.
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But actively think about that now.
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Park all of your imagining of the upside.
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Okay, that s great to get what I call your FOMO going.
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You ll get really excited.
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Fear of missing out is like, you know, you want to act, you visualize the positive.
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But when you re trying to overcome failure, I m like, visualize a failure.
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work it through, understand all your contingencies, and then you re probably far more likely to get into action, because what you ve done is reduce your failure, because you can actually, you re actively imagining the choices after the choice, when it fails.
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That s interesting you say that, because I was interviewing a UFC fighter, George St.
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Pierre, and it was one of the greatest of all time, and he was talking, I think it was him or another UFC fighter that I heard, I can t remember which one it was, but talking about how
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they train to be in the most uncomfortable situations like I m on my back, my arm is behind my back, I ve got a hand here and a guy is just punching me in the face.
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How do I get out of this?
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How do I get out of it?
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How do I stay calm?
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How do I not pass out?
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If I m in the worst position possible, every bad position I train for and I train to get out of it.
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So that when it does happen, I m like, this sucks and it s uncomfortable, but I know I can get out of it.
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And if I can just get back on my feet and stand up again, then I can take the next step.
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Yeah, right.
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Exactly.
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And I think for people who are like, I fail.
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Let s say you pick a new job and you left your old job and you cut your ties and it fails.
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I m like, okay, what then?
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So play through.
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You lose your relationship, you lose your kid, everything you lose here.
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Yeah, yeah.
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Then you re like, okay, well then what would you do?
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Because I think that on small failures, it s enough to know that if you act once, you still have 10 more choices.
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On something that is truly a one-way door, there are very few decisions that truly you can t come back from.
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And those things, you re like, okay, then what are my contingencies?
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What do I do?
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So I believe that this risk-taking equation guides all of us, which is fear of missing out is worn with fear of failure.
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Whichever one is, fear of missing out is greater than fear of failure, you ll take action.
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If fear of failure is greater than fear of missing out, you won t.
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But most people only want to work one side of the equation, which is think about the positive.
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And I m like... No, you ve got to think about both.
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Yeah.
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It s a real... It s... Yeah.
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One of my coaches, Chris Lee, years ago, probably like seven years ago, I had been training for years already to overcome the fear of public speaking.
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Oh, really?
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And I d been speaking for, I don t know, at this point...
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10 years professionally and I d made good money on stages and spoken in front of 20,000 people.
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And I remember saying to him, I was like, gosh, I don t know why but I still feel like kind of scared and nervous like the day before I go on.
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And I don t know why and I remember calling him like hours before and I go, I don t know why I m still nervous and a little afraid.
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And he said because one of the things is you re afraid of how you re going to look.
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You re afraid of being embarrassed or not saying the right thing or messing up.
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You re still afraid of that as opposed to being of service to the audience and knowing it s not going to be perfect.
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And he put me through an exercise.
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well, like a what if or what happens next exercise.
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Just go, okay, what if you forget your words?
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What if you forget that story?
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Then what?
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Then what?
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Then what?
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Then what?
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I call that the choice after the choice.
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Then what?
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Then what?
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Then what?
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Well, then I ll be like embarrassed.
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Well, then what?
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Well, then what s the worst that could happen?
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I don t know.
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Then I just walk off stage and I forget the whole thing.
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And then what?
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And then what?
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Well, everyone laughs at me.
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Okay, and then what?
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And then I don t want to come out for a week because I m so embarrassed.
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And then what?
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It s like eventually you re like, okay, I m down here and I,
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I ll pick myself back up and I ll be okay and I ll start again.
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So.
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Yeah, I think that that s sort of the point.
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Like the then what, then what, then what.
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We sort of have trained ourselves to think that it has to be, you know, that it, like I said, it s bimodal.
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I m like, it s not bimodal.
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It s like, what will happen is you ll discover the five choice after choice.
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So think those through now.
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Yes.
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Because in there is comfort.
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It s so good.
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It s so good.
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What is the thing that you re most proud of that most people don t know about you?
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What I m most proud of career-wise is I have had a career of working with exceptionally talented people where I feel like I got to be part of accelerating their journey.
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That is what I m most proud of.
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I ll look back on my life and say, regardless of the companies or what, I just look, I ll say to people, do you know how amazing it is to work with tribes of great people who are by and large
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great human beings as well, and then be like, oh yeah, I will look at my journey and be like, I got to intersect with these amazing people, and maybe for a few of them, or hopefully some meaningful number of them, I was an accelerant.
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So that s what I m most proud of, kind of business-wise.
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What am I most proud of that people wouldn t know about me?
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Maybe that I think I wake up every day both fully empowered and also
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pretty clear that I m pretty far from the center of the universe.
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I m proud of the fact that I think that most people would think that I wake up thinking I sort of must rule the roost.
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And most days I m like, no, I wake up pretty empowered, but I m really grounded and clear that, you know.
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Life is a blessing.
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I m here for a reason.
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I m living my impact.
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The world is a much, much bigger place than just me, yet I feel very stable within it.
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I don t feel like many, nothing s gonna shake me.
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Yeah, because I have a sense for why I m here and what I m meant to do without thinking that it s all about me.
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So I m proud of that.
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I m proud of that.
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I m like, I m good with it.
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That s great.
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The book is about risks and you said most things won t shake you, but when people take big risks, sometimes it shakes them a lot.
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What s the biggest myths around risk-taking that we tell ourselves?
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Yeah, and by the way, of course, if you read the book, you ll know that many risks I took shook me, which is the whole reason for writing the book, because I m like, okay, don t let it shake you.
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This is what happened to me.
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So I can t say I ve never been shaken by risk, but I think I keep coming back to that singular point.
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Like, I know it sounds so simple, but it is the point of the entire freaking book.
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The book is about how, but the point of the book is about
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you know, let go of this myth of the single choice.
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Stop believing that outcomes are binary, that risk and reward is a singular linear game like, hey, I take a big risk, I get a big reward, you know, or I have an epic fail.
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It s just not like that.
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Yeah, it s either I win big or I lose it all.
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Exactly.
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That is this bimodal issue.
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I think that is the biggest myth around risk-taking and it s the whole reason I wrote the book.
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I m like, you have to keep choosing.
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Stop over-weighting the first choice.
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If you are willing to keep choosing, there are a thousand choices between you and success.
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And I cannot promise you that the success you ll get at the end is the one you originally thought.
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It may or may not be.
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But I can tell you that if you keep aiming for impact in every single choice, cumulatively, you will have an outsized career and you will have an outsized life.
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What is the one thing, the main thing that you feel from all the interviews you ve done that makes great entrepreneurs great?
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There s a bunch of answers to that question.
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And some of them are predictable, like resilience or a strong sense of optimism, the ability to get back up when you get knocked down.
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And those are all true.
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You have to have that.
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But the one thing, like,
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Because not every person I ve interviewed has gone to college or is educated.
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They re not all book smart.
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They re not all charismatic.
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They re not, you know, they re different.
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They re like us, right?
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But the one thing that binds every person I interview is they ve all, they all either have naturally or have learned to develop the ability to withstand rejection, to accept, to basically accept
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that lots of people are going to say no and keep kind of grinding through it.
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One of the hardest things is to deal with rejection, deal with people judging you, deal with people saying that like, this is bad, this is horrible, this isn t going to work.
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It s because you want that confirmation.
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We want confirmation when we re doing something like, yes, you re amazing, go do it.
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But when everyone s saying no, and you can go through it, because at some point, great entrepreneurs are going to get people to say no.
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Yes.
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You ve got to learn how to get through it.
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I interviewed this guy, Topio Watana, a couple of weeks ago, and he founded this company called Calendly.
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Have you ever used Calendly?
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It s really great.
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I mean, everyone, for podcast interviews, it s like all we do is schedule.
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Right, it s the best.
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Yeah.
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So he started this, I don t know, like six or seven years ago, and his first job, while he was a college student, was selling ADT, home monitoring services, door-to-door, right?
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So he s in Athens, Georgia,
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And he s this kid who s from Nigeria.
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He came to the U.S.
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when he was 16.
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And he s going door to door in Athens, Georgia, knocking on doors, trying to sell people home monitoring systems.
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And I said to him, I said, didn t you ever get discouraged with all those doors slamming in your face?
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Didn t you tired of hearing people saying like, no soliciting?
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And he said, no, because I knew that
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that there was a hit rate and, you know, eventually one of those doors would open and the person would say yes and I would make a commission on that sale and that was more money than I ever had in my life.
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So it was fine.
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I mean, it s a similar story with Sarah Blakely who founded Spanx.
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Like she sold fax machines door to door.
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It was, she describes it as torture, you know.
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She, but it steeled her when it came time
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to starting her business, she had to find a textile manufacturer that was willing to make a prototype of these undergarments that no one had ever seen before.
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And all these textile plants said no until one finally said yes.
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But she was ready for that process because she had gone through rejection exposure therapy.
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Exactly, yeah.
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She had a PhD in rejection.
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I think it was six or seven years she was doing door-to-door.
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Do you think it s harder to get successful or to stay successful as entrepreneurs?
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Is it easier to like, okay, I made something work, this was a success, or is it easier once you get there to maintain?
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It s a great question.
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I mean, I haven t put a lot of thought into it, but here s what I would say.
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I think getting to a place where you have found some success, it s sort of like finding lift.
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It s like when an airplane takes lift, and then you hit cruising altitude at 35,000 feet, and there will be turbulence.
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But I think that in general, in my experience, I think once you have achieved some level of success, it s easier to build on that because people have seen you succeed in some fashion or form.
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Like what I do, what you do.
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I mean, 25 years ago when I started out on radio before I was podcasting,
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I couldn t get on the air.
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Why would somebody give me a chance?
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I had no track record.
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No one knew who I was.
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Nobody knew if I was any good.
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And I sucked, by the way.
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You suck when you start.
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You suck, and then you suck less, and then a little less, and a little less.
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But once I started to go on air,
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It was like that s that domino falls and other people s like, oh, yeah.
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Oh, yeah Yeah, you can you can you can do a story or are you sure you will we ll take your your your pitch and it s the same thing with I think with entrepreneurship, which is Once you you know, it doesn t mean that you re gonna if you start a bill like is kevin sister I m gonna be able to found another billion dollar instagram probably not I mean that but but
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Will he continue to be successful in any endeavor he does?
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Yeah, and he ll also have some failures, but he has that sort of, and most entrepreneurs who have achieved something, who ve created something and built something, even things that have failed, they have that lift that keeps them flying.
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And do you think anyone could be a thriving, successful entrepreneur?
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I mean, like sustainably making money and having a business with customers?
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Do you think it s possible for anyone or some of us just not wired?
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Because when I was a kid growing up, I was never into baseball cards.
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I didn t do the lemonade stand thing.
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I never made any money.
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I was like an athlete and I didn t know the concept of here s a value, here s a skill, go sell it, try to get some money.
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I didn t know that concept until I was 25 and I needed to make money, until it was a necessity and there was no other way.
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and 2008 happened, there was no jobs, and I was like, well, I gotta figure out what I m gonna do to survive.
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Is it a thing that people can learn, or is it kind of you that got it, or you don t?
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I m a thousand percent believer that,
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Virtually every skill that entrepreneurs have are acquired.
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Now, there are some people, like Mark Cuban is a good example of just a freak of nature.
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When he was in his teens, he read a book called How to Retire at Age 35.
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He was determined to become a millionaire by age 30.
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He picked a college program where he could graduate in three years to save money.
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He instantly went to Dallas because he thought there were opportunities there.
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He got a job bartending at night because he knew it would stuff his pockets with tips.
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And in the daytime, he started selling computer software.
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I mean, he was a millionaire by age 30, like he, but he s a freak of nature, right?
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In that sense, I think most entrepreneurs acquire these skills over time.
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I mean, let s go back to rejection for a moment.
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So some people are just naturally easier with it, right?
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Like you remember, you probably knew like that guy in high school who would just ask a hundred people out on dates and he wouldn t care if 99 of them said no, because he knew that one would eventually say yes, right?
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Yeah.
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Now I was not that kid.
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You might not have been.
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I was not that kid.
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I was terrified of girls.
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I was terrified, right?
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I was terrified of people saying, like, no.
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So, it s sort of a weird kind of example, but, you know, the idea of going door to door to sell something or pitching people on your product, going to investors, it s really hard.
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It requires the ability to hear no and to keep fighting.
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And, you know, one of the insights that I gained from, that I learned from
5
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at the show is just in this weird, it s like this weird thing that s happened, which is that I have ended up interviewing a significant number of Mormon entrepreneurs, okay?
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Now Mormons are a tiny percentage of the American population, like 2%, okay?
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And they have a pretty significantly high rate of entrepreneurship.
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in their community, in their culture, and also business success.
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So what is it that they re doing differently?
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Well, they re doing something very different than pretty much every other population in America.
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They re like door-to-door salesmen.
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They send their 18-year-olds to a country around the world, and they say, go live somewhere for two years and get as many converts as you can.
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you re going to have to knock on a thousand doors to get five, 10 people to accept the book of Mormon.
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And you have to learn the new language and speak a different language out of your comfort zone.
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Perfectly.
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And you ve got to pay your own way.
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And by the way, you have to be polite and gracious and friendly.
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You can t be like, why are you slamming the door in my face?
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Like you are a Mormon missionary.
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You are, you re representing the church.
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Like you ve got to be really polite and friendly and kind.
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So, those kids go abroad for two years, they come back to the U.S., Utah or wherever, they start college, they re way more equipped than your average 21-year-old to start their lives and also to start a business.
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And it s a story that I ve heard from David Neeleman, the founder of JetBlue.
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It s a story, you know, I ve heard from Joel Clark, the founder of Kodiak Cakes, you know, the protein powder pancakes.
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he got back from his mission in Australia and he started this company, this business.
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He had no fear of going door to door to sell pancake mix.
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And so it s, I m not, you know, I m not suggesting that everybody become a Mormon.
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I m saying that what I m saying is that it s a really interesting kind of case study.
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You know, I don t think the church deliberately, you know, setting it s, it s young people up to be entrepreneurs, but it s setting them up to be independent and,
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And so that s a learned skill.
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I mean, Mormons are not more preternaturally more gifted in rejection of the ability with standard rejection.
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They just had two years of it.
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So they re better at it.
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And I think all of us can kind of replicate that in a sense.
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I hope you enjoyed today s episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness.
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Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today s episode with all the important links.
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And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our greatness plus channel exclusively on Apple podcasts.
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Share this with a friend on social media, and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well.
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Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review.
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I really love hearing feedback from you, and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward.
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And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately, that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter.
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And now, it s time to go out there and do something great.