538 Brendon Burchard: High Performance Habits

"The journey to greatness often begins the moment that challenge and contribution become more important than comfort and ease." - Brendon Burchard If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes, video, and more at http://lewishowes.com/538 Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 538 with number one New York Times bestselling author Brendan Burchard.

• 0:07Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:33Lewis Howes?

  William Shakespeare said, "Be as great in act as you have been in thought." We have a powerful one today, my friends. Brendan is widely considered the world's leading high performers coach. He is also one of the most watched, quoted, and followed personal development trainers in history. He is a top 100 most followed public figure on Facebook, and his videos have been viewed more than 100 million times. He is a number one New York Times, a number one Wall Street Journal, number one Amazon, and number one USA Today bestselling author. And his latest book is High Performing Habits: How Extraordinary People Become That Way.

• 1:18Lewis Howes?

  Success Magazine also named Brendan as one of the top 25 most influential leaders in personal growth and achievement, along with Oprah, Joel Osteen, Arianna Huffington, Dave Ramsey, Deepak Chopra, Tony Robbins, and Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg. Wow. I have seen Brendan's work for many, many years and seen all the incredible things he's done in the online marketing, online business world, but also as an author, speaker, trainer. He's just really impacted so many people with his message. And today, we talk about why creativity is not strongly correlated with high performance, which is something that Brendan originally thought was.

• 2:01Lewis Howes?

  Also, the six habits of high performers. So if you want to be high performing in any area of life, these are the six habits you're going to need. Brendan's three questions he asks himself every single morning and why that's important. Why you don't have to be cool to gain influence in the world. Also, the first thing that Brendan coaches Fortune 50 CEOs to do every time. That and so much more, you guys are in for a special treat. Make sure to click a screenshot on your phone right now and share this out on your Instagram story. Tag me at Lewis Howes and Brendon Burchard. Post this on Twitter and Facebook right now. I connect with everyone who tags me on your Instagram story. I'll send you a DM back. If I can see it within 24 hours, I will connect back to you.

• 2:46Lewis Howes?

  So message me right now and let Brendan know that you're listening as well. I want to give a shout out to the review of the week. And this is from Rising Health, who said, I'm just blown away time and time again at the level of greatness that each guest has to offer. And for Lewis's ability to connect and bring out the true essence of his guest message. Bravo. Well, thank you so much, Rising Health. I appreciate it. And if you guys want a chance to be considered for the review of the week, make sure to go to iTunes right now on the podcast app and leave us a review for the School of Greatness podcast. All right, guys, prepare yourselves to unleash your greatness even more.

• 3:29Lewis Howes?

  Let me introduce to you the one, the only Brendon Burchard.

• 3:37Lewis Howes?

  Welcome everyone back to the School of Greatness podcast. We have an exceptional human being, Brendon Burchard, in the house. My man. Such an honor to be here. I'm very excited for this. Me too. This is one of the, you said, this is one of the first interviews you've done in years. You've got, you know, at the time this is coming out, you'll have tons of interviews, but we're doing this well in advance and I'm excited to talk about your new book, among many things, which is called High Performance Habits, How Extraordinary People Become That Way. So if you haven't already picked this up, I've already been talking about it. Make sure you go get it right now on Amazon. You can go to Brendan.com, you can go to Barnes and Noble, you can go anywhere where books are sold. Get this book. You spent the last two, three years researching.

• 4:19Lewis Howes?

  Consistently, constantly on how people become extraordinary.

• 4:23Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah.

• 4:24Lewis Howes?

  And I'm, I'm obsessed with greatness.

• 4:26Brendon Burchard?

  I know, you love this stuff. That's why I knew this interview was gonna be amazing. It's like, we could vibe on this all day long.

• 4:30Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. I probably haven't done the in-depth research, like the scientific,

• 4:35Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah.

• 4:36Lewis Howes?

  you know, Harvard-backed studies, the way you have.

• 4:39Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah.

• 4:39Lewis Howes?

  So I'm excited to, to tap into this and really understand why and how people can become great at anything that they want to do in their personal life, their relationships, financially, whatever it may be their dream is. And I know you've paved the way with this, so I'm very excited about this. But you've written three number one New York Times bestsellers, or two?

• 4:57Brendon Burchard?

  Uh, three New York Times bestsellers. This is the sixth book. And, uh, all, all five previous books were number one on Amazon or Barnes & Noble or something like that. So we've, we've been at it. And this is, you know, people will say, well, you're the YouTube guy or you're the Facebook guy. I'm like, I'm a writer. I only learned marketing or, or doing stuff like this so I could support the writing.

• 5:16Lewis Howes?

  Of course. Well, you've done, you've done a great job of marketing yourself. You're, I think, one of the top, what is it? Top 100 most followed public figures on Facebook. Uh, how many millions of followers do you have on your personal page now?

• 5:27Brendon Burchard?

  Five million on my personal page, 10 million across all of our pages. So we have pages like motivation for smart people, you know, which is not my face on it, but that's my page for motivation. So yeah. Yeah, it's kind of, it, it's, it's been surprising, but this is the first in-depth interview I've done in probably four years.

• 5:44Lewis Howes?

  Amazing.

• 5:45Brendon Burchard?

  And so we talked about that a little bit, you know, this morning at breakfast. It's just like, this is not what I usually do, because I'm usually the guy out there teaching. Um, and I'm learning to step out a little bit more and share a little more of my personal background and stories, because that really hasn't been the thrust of my books and work. So that's been a big part of,

• 6:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 6:04Brendon Burchard?

  you know, wanting to do this. And I love your show so much.

• 6:07Lewis Howes?

  I appreciate it.

• 6:07Brendon Burchard?

  I was so excited for this because you're one of the few guys out there doing podcasts who's talking about holistic greatness.

• 6:16Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 6:16Brendon Burchard?

  You know, it's not a tactic or a hack here. Yeah, it's relationships. I mean, you, you talk about relationships, you talk about making a difference. And there's a lot of podcasters that never say the word service, which drives me insane. They never say the word love. And like, that's real life. You know, even with high performers, we'll talk about some of the research behind it. But a lot of people think it's lonely at the top, or they think that high performers are, you know, obsessive crazy maniacs. What we found is high performers have extraordinarily positive emotions and positive relationships.

• 6:48Brendon Burchard?

  So it's a complete myth that the top, you know, 5%, 10%, 15% somehow have, you know, are lonely or more divorced than other people, or it's just not true. They cared about relationships, which is one reason I love your show, is that, I mean, what would high performance or achievement or greatness be if you didn't have somebody to share it with, or you didn't give back? But that's what a lot of the podcasters talk about, is this tactic. Or it's, I'm talking about world-class performance, but I'm not going to talk about marriage or relationships. I'm like, try to have world-class performance without a supportive spouse. Go for it, dude. It's not gonna happen.

• 7:23Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, powerful. I'm excited about this, man. Before I kind of dive into about all the habits and the stuff you learned and what you're gonna share today, I got a confession.

• 7:32Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah.

• 7:32Lewis Howes?

  Confession.

• 7:33Brendon Burchard?

  Love it.

• 7:35Lewis Howes?

  I-

• 7:36Brendon Burchard?

  You can't have your money back.

• 7:38Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. No, here's my confession, I'm gonna be honest for a second, because I don't think I've ever done this on the show. I judged you for many years, when I first learned about you. And it's, I think it's because I didn't meet you and I didn't hear about you from other people, and I'm glad you're doing more media right now.

• 7:55Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah.

• 7:55Lewis Howes?

  And opening up and having the vlog come out here, because I think because I didn't know enough about you personally, besides what you shared was like the stories, the same stories.

• 8:04Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah.

• 8:05Lewis Howes?

  I was like, I don't know enough about him to like feel him out, to feel comfortable yet.

• 8:08Brendon Burchard?

  Yes.

• 8:09Lewis Howes?

  To have like a positive, I was kind of neutral. I was like, I don't know if I like him or I don't like him.

• 8:13Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah.

• 8:14Lewis Howes?

  So I wanna, I wanna say I apologize for judging you, because it's, you know, you're completely opposite of what I had no clue what I was thinking about in my mind for, for, for some time. And, you know, everything that you've done has exceeded the expectation of so many people, and you continue to serve at a high level. And I think that's what's powerful to talk about, is service.

• 8:37Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah.

• 8:37Lewis Howes?

  Is, sure, we have our own stuff we're all working on all the time, but you have stepped up to serve so many people, and you've committed to learning the things you need to learn to reach more people with powerful messages.

• 8:48Brendon Burchard?

  Yes.

• 8:49Lewis Howes?

  And I usually acknowledge my guests at the end, but I want to acknowledge you now for your level of commitment to putting yourself out there.

• 8:55Brendon Burchard?

  That's funny.

• 8:56Lewis Howes?

  Serving people, giving great- Spending two years in the dungeon to research like how to help more people.

• 9:03Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah.

• 9:03Lewis Howes?

  And yes, you're benefiting me as well. You run a business just like myself. So we're all going to benefit.

• 9:07Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah.

• 9:07Lewis Howes?

  But I think your level of commitment to your mission is what really stands out to me. And the more I get to hang out with you and know you, it's like, I really enjoy our time together. So I hope we get to spend more time.

• 9:17Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah, me too.

• 9:17Lewis Howes?

  Hope you accept my apology.

• 9:19Brendon Burchard?

  I don't think.

• 9:20Lewis Howes?

  Even though you didn't know I was doing it.

• 9:21Brendon Burchard?

  But I get that all the time. So you know, our, our, our great example, our, our seminars, you know, 2000 people from 40 countries around the world. Half of them show up and they're like.

• 9:30Lewis Howes?

  Who are you?

• 9:31Brendon Burchard?

  Like I've watched his YouTube.

• 9:32Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 9:33Brendon Burchard?

  Or I've seen his Facebook, but I tell people, I would say my most vulnerable place is usually on stage. So people have seen me on stage. They always go, oh my God, I didn't know you were like that. And part of that reason isn't because um I'm, I'm like scared of sharing my life. It's because of what I do. Like I said, my first move, I'm a writer. My second move is I'm a coach. Both of those things are kind of behind the scenes. And so when it comes time, when Instagram came out, everyone was like, why aren't you on Instagram yet? I'm like, dude, because I'm not, I don't really show that part of my life. Or I don't have a lot of pictures with a lot of the celebrities that we work with because I sign NDAs and I sign, you know, confidentiality agreements.

• 10:14Brendon Burchard?

  So I can work with them and get in their personal lives. I've always been the guy who gets into people's personal lives and helps them through it. Never then like turn it to selfie and say, well, this is what I'm going through.

• 10:25Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 10:25Brendon Burchard?

  And in some ways though, that was a mistake. Because I think I was just, I've always believed in a role like mine. I'm a writer, I'm a coach and I'm a trainer. My job is to share things that are relevant to the teaching point. So it's what am I trying to teach? Now I'll share case studies about my life or some research. But it's pretty limited to words, only what I'm teaching. And people sign up for me to teach a very specific thing. So they're not seeing the whole picture of my life. They're just learning that specific thing. So I think it also left a lot of people going, okay, he's super successful, but I don't know anything about.

• 11:06Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 11:06Brendon Burchard?

  And that created.

• 11:07Lewis Howes?

  It's hard to trust people you don't know anything about.

• 11:09Brendon Burchard?

  Yes. And or you read the motivation manifesto, right? There is no Brendan in that book. The publisher turned famously turned down the book. We had a $2 million book deal. I turn in the book and the editor goes, what the hell is this? You wrote it like it's, you know, seventeen seventy-six. You're not, there's not one story of you in here. Your audience wants to know about you. I'm like, yeah, but that's not what I'm writing for. I'm writing for the art. And so they said, we can't publish and we can't, this book is unmarketable.

• 11:40Lewis Howes?

  So you wrote a two million dollar check back.

• 11:42Brendon Burchard?

  Wrote it back, which is painful because I already spent it. But uh.

• 11:46Lewis Howes?

  But then you went and sold a million copies.

• 11:47Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah, then we went into thirty weeks, thirty-two weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list after they turned it down.

• 11:54Lewis Howes?

  With no publisher. Well, I guess you had like a.

• 11:56Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah, we went to Hay House and they supported it and distributed it and did a great job on it. And I love them and their community really got behind the book because they knew I wrote it for the art, not for the, I didn't sell out on the book. It was, this was my artistic, my art has never been like, talking about Brendan. My art has been, I want to teach, but I want to teach in a way that really hits you in the heart and gives you habits that you can implement in your life. But that also took me out of the picture a little bit because I didn't want to be the guru. I didn't want to be, you know, I'm from Montana. We're pretty private there. And one of our main sayings there is, you know, the time to have the map is before you enter the woods. So I just wanted to hand people the map. I didn't want to hand people like, look at me.

• 12:37Brendon Burchard?

  Um, I also had a, a big influence from my high school journalism teacher. And she said, there's two kinds of people. One who walks into a room and goes, here I am. And the other person walks into a room and goes, there you are. And so I've always been more like, kind of like you. I want to ask people questions and curious. So my focus has always been outwards and not in. I think that did cost me some trust in the marketplace because people were like, I just don't know him. So I'm hoping with the book, I added some more stories. I also know the number one criticism of this book is going to be, when he talks about extraordinary people, really the only stories in here are about himself. And I let the data and the research and the strategies speak for themselves. Yeah, because I don't think.

• 13:22Brendon Burchard?

  Um, I even say it in the book. I think if you want personal profiles of extraordinary people, I'm like, go listen to podcasts.

• 13:29Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 13:30Brendon Burchard?

  You know, they should listen to yours. Mine is more, this is very strategic. This is what to do. And I think there'll be some criticism because I do share a lot of my habits in here. But I also hope that gives people a little more insight into my life.

• 13:44Lewis Howes?

  Let's get into some of the habits. What are, what are some of the key habits then? That you, that maybe you thought were like the habits of really extraordinary people, but actually they weren't them. And then the new ones that you're like, oh, I didn't realize that that was actually

• 13:57Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah.

• 13:57Lewis Howes?

  a key habit. Yeah. I always thought it was something else, but it's actually this thing.

• 14:01Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah. Uh, I was wrong.

• 14:05Brendon Burchard?

  So background of the book, this is the world's largest study of high performers ever done. We have data from 195 countries. We surveyed and found, the data set we pulled was from first my audience. We know, which is over 10 million fans and followers, but also a lot of people don't know, I've graduated over 2 million people have registered for my online courses or video series.

• 14:27Lewis Howes?

  Crazy.

• 14:28Brendon Burchard?

  And over a hundred million video views. Well, we scraped all of the comments, scraped all the user feedback, did a huge data set of just what are people struggling with? What do they say works? What helps them break through? That gave me an initial kind of data set of like, I think this is what really works. I've been teaching this, most of the stuff for 10 years too, and I've been coaching it. So I had, I had my personal opinions and I had about probably 20 or 30 from that data set. And 10 years coaching, I was like, it's probably about these 15 or 20 habits. And I thought it was, by the way, all of them.

• 15:00Lewis Howes?

  Right. And there's also a lot of other books about habits out there.

• 15:03Brendon Burchard?

  Yes.

• 15:04Lewis Howes?

  There's Stephen Cubby's book, there's the power of habit. There's lots of books on habit. So this is a whole nother thing. It's like, why another book on habits?

• 15:11Brendon Burchard?

  But there was always a big hole. Either there wasn't research into which habits empirically proven to move the needle. Or it was just kind of, you know, because it was shared from a personal perspective, or it was just about how to set habits. The question is, which habits have proven to move the needle towards high performance over and over? Because high performance means succeeding beyond standard norms consistently over the long term. Well, you got to measure that to know. Yeah. And so there's six of them, and that's what this book is about. There's it's split, which I didn't plan on into personal habits and social habits. And there's things in there, and I'll get to those, but to answer your question of like, what I thought would be, I thought things like, oh, this will, this one will piss you off, piss me off.

• 15:55Brendon Burchard?

  Creativity is not strongly correlated with high performance. And if you told me that seven years ago, I would have fought with you for like two or three hours. But then in one interview with one of the world's largest CTOs, Chief Technology Officer, he said, Brendan, you know, they're, they're a top 10 brand in the world. So we, we don't, he said, my team, he said, I'm not creative. My team's not creative, but we know how to execute and scale. And execution and scale is really important to long-term high performance. Creativity might get you in the game, but a lot of people are creative, but can't work their way out of a bag. And I was like, I would argue that forever because I'm a creative, I'm a writer and a coach. I would have never thought that.

• 16:36Brendon Burchard?

  Age, nationality, ethnicity, and here's a big one, compensation. Here's a big one, personality. Here's a big one, strengths. They are not correlated strongly with high performance. Some of them have weak correlations and all those things, by the way, because if academics are listening to that, they're like, no, he's wrong. And this is tied towards high performance. It's not that those aren't important. Those things can shape your mood. They can shape, you know, lots of important life outcomes, well-being, health, happiness. But when we're talking about high performance, those are less important than these six. And what I keep telling people is, I'm not saying those aren't important. These just happen to be more important. So the six habits, you want me to do those? Sure. Yeah. So the personal habits, and these are the ones that move the needle the most.

• 17:19Brendon Burchard?

  Number one, high performers, you like this one, high performers seek clarity more often than their peers. And what that means for them is every situation they go into, they're seeking clarity and setting intention. And it's not like once in a while, they're doing it way more often. It's like, you know, I've been blessed to work with Oprah Winfrey. When she has a meeting, at the start of every meeting, she asks, what's our intention here?

• 17:48Brendon Burchard?

  What's the intention of this meeting? Not what's the agenda, what do I, what's the intention? That's every meeting. So she's seeking clarity at the beginning of every meeting. That's why she's so amazing. Right? If you think about her whole career, she was always trying to have people seek clarity on who they were. So they could be themselves. That's what high performers are doing. They just do it more often. They seek clarity before they shoot that video, before they have the podcast interview. But specifically, we found three practices help you get better at seeking clarity. Number one, they are seeking clarity in what we call the future four. So you've probably heard that successful people are more future minded. It's true. And specifically what they're looking at, if you talk to a high performer, they're more clear about who do I want to be in this upcoming situation?

• 18:33Brendon Burchard?

  And by the way, it's not about who I am. It's about who do I want to be? They're more future oriented. They're more intentional about who they want to be in social situations. So it's like, I want to have this type of interaction with Lewis today. That, that's intentional. They're more clear about what skills they need to develop to reach their next level of success.

• 18:54Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 18:55Brendon Burchard?

  Here's how you really know an underperformer. Open up their calendar and look for any evidence that they have planned their own curriculum for greatness.

• 19:06Brendon Burchard?

  If they don't have classes or courses, if they, if they're not actively skill building, there's no chance of high performance. I mean, maybe they can dumb luck into it for initial success, but high performance is long-term success. You gotta be building your skillsets.

• 19:20Lewis Howes?

  Growing, constant learning, constantly growing.

• 19:22Brendon Burchard?

  Being aware of it. And the last of the future four is, I know the service I want to provide in the future. Talk to any high performers, I'm sure you've interviewed, they kind of know the service and the difference they want to make. Maybe not precisely, but they're asking the question. So that's some of what we know. They, they seek clarity. And that's kind of the first practice is asking questions in those areas. And the other two real fast is, when you're seeking clarity, they're more clear about the feeling they want to have. Like an Olympic sprinter who's won gold is more likely to have said before he went or she went on the track, how do I want to feel out there? Not like just the result, like when I, when the foot's in the block and arms down,

• 20:07Brendon Burchard?

  like what do I want to feel? Like they're very aware of the feeling they're trying to get.

• 20:11Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I don't want to feel nervous and stressed. I want to feel calm and

• 20:14Brendon Burchard?

  Yes.

• 20:15Lewis Howes?

  Clear and smooth and

• 20:16Brendon Burchard?

  Yes, and they're, they're doing that self-talk, which is seeking clarity. And then the last one, which is really important, they're, they're clear about what's meaningful to them now. And what might be different in the future, which is something I didn't know until we did a lot of the interviews or the conversations is

• 20:33Brendon Burchard?

  a lot of people kind of know what I like now. They know what their passion is. But it's like, what's going to be meaningful to you later? Like in five years, they've thought about that. Then, you know, I would say they, you know, they've done the work. So that's just the first habit. And so the book kind of opens with, with that story of like finding what's we all have to decide who we are and what we want and how to get it at this stage of our life. And when we don't know that, you know, reaching high performance can be really hard.

• 21:04Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's all about clear vision for me. It's the first chapter in my book is

• 21:07Brendon Burchard?

  Yes.

• 21:07Lewis Howes?

  The greatest leaders in the world have a clear vision.

• 21:10Brendon Burchard?

  Love that.

• 21:10Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 21:11Brendon Burchard?

  That's it. And they got that vision by seeking clarity.

• 21:13Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 21:14Brendon Burchard?

  That was the habit that gave them the vision. They were consistently seeking like, how do I, what do I, I mean, they ask themselves more questions. That's one of our findings. They literally are doing more of the self-talk, asking more of the questions, which is so important.

• 21:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, awesome.

• 21:28Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah.

• 21:29Lewis Howes?

  And, and I love how you talked about this. You say the world cares less about your strengths and personality than about your service and meaningful contributions. Then why does so many of us focus on our strengths and personality?

• 21:40Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah. Oh, that was a huge finding. And I would, that's another one. I would have completely freaked out on anybody.

• 21:46Lewis Howes?

  Strength finders, all these other books out there, you know, it's like

• 21:48Brendon Burchard?

  Yes.

• 21:49Lewis Howes?

  Focus on our strengths.

• 21:50Brendon Burchard?

  And then fortunately, one, that's In the history of personal development, that is the greatest false dichotomy there has ever been. Focus on your strengths, or it's like, you have to do both. You have to do both. But what we found in our research, which surprised me, high performers do not report working on their strengths any more than regular people. So that's not what gives them the edge. Uh, one of the chapters opens up with this guy, he wrote this email, really highly successful guy. And he wrote this email to me, says, you know, and I'd put him through all this, I put him through StrengthsFinder, the Berkman, the Colby, the Myers-Briggs, put him through everything. This was one of my first coaching clients ever. I knew everything about him. We knew all his background, he did all the, I mean, he did all the homework, had his peer review, you know, his 360s assessments from work. And then I watched him fail for two years.

• 22:34Brendon Burchard?

  And he wrote me this email and he said, Brendan, stop telling me like what successful people are like because we know my strengths, I'm not getting ahead. And start telling me what they do.

• 22:48Brendon Burchard?

  And that's what this book became out, it's like, what do you need to do? Because

• 22:53Brendon Burchard?

  and in this email, he wrote this, which is where that finding came from, he said, this was so good. Listen to this line. He said, as a leader, I have to be honest with myself.

• 23:04Brendon Burchard?

  That my mission and vision should never be made to bow down to my limited human strengths. I should have to rise up to my mission or vision. The strengths aren't the relevant thing is, the question is, what is necessary for me to develop into to reach that mission? It's like, your strengths are great, and it's like, yes, of course do your strengths, but that's kind of like, what I tell people is like, uh, if, let's imagine you have a bear. And that bear wants to go on top of this cliff over here. And it's never been on the cliff. And he wants to get that new honey up there, right? Telling the bear to focus on the strengths, to go somewhere it's never gone before and do

• 23:48Brendon Burchard?

  something it's never done before is stupid. It's like saying, hey, you know what? Just try being more of a bear.

• 23:53Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 23:55Brendon Burchard?

  If I just, you say, Brendan, I got this big new vision. I just say, just try being more of Louis. I mean, at a spiritual level, that feels good. But you and I both know you're gonna have to develop far beyond your comfort zones. And strengths are typically comfort zones.

• 24:10Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 24:10Brendon Burchard?

  We gotta overcome that and go to the next level.

• 24:12Lewis Howes?

  And develop new skills and overcome certain fears and all these other things that are gonna help us get to the next level.

• 24:16Brendon Burchard?

  Yes, yeah, yeah. The whole conversation of beyond the comfort zone really requires us to go beyond our strengths. It really requires us.

• 24:23Lewis Howes?

  That is our comfort zone.

• 24:24Brendon Burchard?

  That is our comfort zone.

• 24:24Lewis Howes?

  What we already know, what we're good at.

• 24:26Brendon Burchard?

  And the problem with the strengths finder and all of the strengths based movement is the assumption, and they're all written academically this way, based on what are called innate strengths. An innate strength is the assumption that you had that from birth. And that those innate strengths are what you focus on. And I'm like, well, if you had it at birth, you probably had it when you were 15 years old too. So if it's innate, you had it at 15. Are the strengths you had at 15 sufficient to serve you at 50? Hell no. You need to develop beyond what's innate and go to a whole other level. And so I take on strengths in the book in that way. Because, but I also say, it almost doesn't matter. Because a lot of people have strengths and they suck at work because they're not doing these habits.

• 25:10Brendon Burchard?

  Oh, I mean, how many people do you know who are amazingly strong? Their strengths finders are amazing and they don't do anything all day.

• 25:16Lewis Howes?

  That's it, yeah, a lot of people. I mean, in the sports world, there's a lot of great talented people who have the greatest gifts, but they still weren't able to win.

• 25:24Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah.

• 25:25Lewis Howes?

  Or they were lazy, or they wouldn't, you know, hustle or sacrifice their body because they just relied on their talents, their strengths.

• 25:31Brendon Burchard?

  Yep.

• 25:32Lewis Howes?

  And so they were never able to get to the championship game or get on the best teams because, and they had all the talent in the world and you're just like, if I was as gifted as this person, I would be incredible, you know?

• 25:41Brendon Burchard?

  And that's the whole thing about the talent code or a lot of new, sort of newer research in performance, it just says, What's more important is what you do with what you got to develop into the vision of the mission you need to serve. And so the book kind of lays out a lot of the science behind that and then goes into, you know, obviously, most of it's oriented towards the six habits.

• 26:03Lewis Howes?

  So in terms of clarity, what is that habit that you take on on a daily or monthly basis with habit with clarity? What do you think about? You're like, every morning, what am I clear about? Or, you know, how do you apply that habit to your life?

• 26:16Brendon Burchard?

  I apply it a couple of ways. First, for me, every situation I go into, I'm consistently asking like, what, what's the feeling I want to have here? If you ever see me teach, it's often I would say, bring the joy. So I have joy triggers that I've set up in my mind that makes me more intentional about things. So for example, I have a door frame trigger. Whenever I walk through a door, I say, bring the joy. So when I walk through that door right there, it's like, bring the joy into this room. It's just, it's just a mental trigger that I've set up for myself. Every morning in the shower, I ask myself three questions. And not that I shower every morning, but the first question I say, what can I be excited about today? So it forces me to be clear about what's going to draw

• 27:00Brendon Burchard?

  joy enthusiasm from me. Number two, I say, what might trip me up today? Because usually I know what's going on today. I'm like, what, what might mess me up? What might, where I might not perform well? What might bother me? And number three, I say, what can I do to surprise somebody today? To give a gift of appreciation or acknowledgement today? And so I think through that in the morning. So I think that helps me begin my day pretty clear. Then when I sit down before I do work, I literally look at my calendar of the day. This is morning. And I look at whatever's going on the day, and I think about it for 20 minutes. It's one of my 20 minute routines in the morning. I literally think about my calendar for 20 minutes a day. People think that's crazy. But what I'm thinking through

• 27:44Brendon Burchard?

  when I'm looking at the calendar, like, okay, I'm going to have that call. What do I want to have on that call? You know, what's my intention for that call? What's my goal for that call? What's the feeling for that call? How do I want to end that call?

• 27:55Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 27:55Brendon Burchard?

  You know, I'm gonna have that time with Louis. Like, how do I want to be there? And, and, and how can I make sure I enjoy it? Because it's a big deal. You know, I love your show. I want to do a good job. I want to share something good for the people, even though I have no idea what you're gonna ask.

• 28:10Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 28:10Brendon Burchard?

  And I just, I want, I want to be present for that and, and make sure I, I, I'm, I'm really there, even though maybe I have a head cold today. You know, it's like, it's like just thinking through it. I think that helps me. It keeps me asking questions. Every Sunday, I do a life arenas assessment. That just means I think there's 10 areas of our life, and I score myself in them. And this is about my 11th year of doing this.

• 28:33Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 28:34Brendon Burchard?

  So each area of my life, you know, from, from emotional quality to happiness, to relationships, to time, to hobby, et cetera. I just give myself a score of one to 10. And one means I suck. And I, I was horrible in the previous week on that. 10 means I did a good job. And then I ask, how can I do better? It's my Sunday routine.

• 28:53Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 28:53Brendon Burchard?

  And it just keeps me clear. And it's not like I don't, sometimes like everyone else, you know, wonder what's going on or what I'm doing. But those habits, those were my habits. You have to establish your own for seeking clarity. But when you have them, you weaponize your life.

• 29:09Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm. Absolutely, yeah. Clarity, powerful thing. Without clarity, it's hard to achieve a dream.

• 29:14Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah.

• 29:15Lewis Howes?

  It's hard to, to get better. It's hard to grow and be a high performer.

• 29:18Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah, no clarity, no change.

• 29:20Lewis Howes?

  That's it.

• 29:20Brendon Burchard?

  No goals, no growth.

• 29:22Lewis Howes?

  That's it. Uh, the second one that I see here is energy.

• 29:25Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah.

• 29:26Lewis Howes?

  What do you mean by energy?

• 29:27Brendon Burchard?

  Uh, so in the way we-

• 29:29Lewis Howes?

  Peak energy, high, high energy all day long?

• 29:32Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah, no, it's not caffeinated energy, but uh, it, it, it's, it's, the, the habit is generate energy.

• 29:38Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, okay.

• 29:39Brendon Burchard?

  Not necessarily have energy.

• 29:40Lewis Howes?

  Create energy.

• 29:41Brendon Burchard?

  Create energy. And what they do, the way we measure that was kind of academic. Mental energy, which is tied to your focus and your stamina, and your ability to manage complex tasks without too much mental stress. Number two is emotional energy, which is just the quality of your positive emotions. And number three is physical energy. High performers are 40% more likely to work out five times per week.

• 30:07Brendon Burchard?

  Then the rest of their peers. So that means the top 15% most high performing people in the world tend to work out five days per week and that workout could be defined as you know 45 minute brisk walk or you know hit intensity or whatever it is but 40% more likely that's a huge finding and what we found is high performers just have better well being and happiness and physical conditioning than everybody else. Um, one stunning finding was uh CEOs, senior executives and business owners. They report expending as much energy as athletes who are competitive now.

• 30:47Lewis Howes?

  I can imagine. Yeah.

• 30:48Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah, I kind of, I was surprised by that. I would have thought, you know, athletes would be 10% more.

• 30:52Lewis Howes?

  I mean, the emotional and mental energy they have to the decision making, the conversations, the big deals, the stakeness.

• 31:00Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah.

• 31:00Lewis Howes?

  It's a lot of energy.

• 31:01Brendon Burchard?

  It's a lot. And that's why, I mean, if you really want to achieve your dreams, you have to care for your body.

• 31:07Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 31:07Brendon Burchard?

  Your mind. It's why all these things, you know, finally resonating in the marketplace because the science of meditation or taking a break or, you know, uh, managing your own energy. Sleep is everything. Um, and I think all of that is really important. And we say generate energy because there's this myth that, you know, some people have happiness or they have, it's like, no, you generate. You don't have happiness. You generate.

• 31:32Lewis Howes?

  Create it. Yeah.

• 31:32Brendon Burchard?

  You create it. And so the quality of your energy you have to create, like you and I both, I mean, if most of our audience knew our schedules, your schedule, the last five days is like, how is Louis even able to focus right now?

• 31:45Lewis Howes?

  And how are you able to get here and do this as well?

• 31:48Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah, but it's because we say, well, this is our mission. Show up, man.

• 31:51Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 31:52Brendon Burchard?

  You know, there's plenty of times I got to imagine you walked on the field and you were like, I'm spent.

• 31:56Lewis Howes?

  Exhausted.

• 31:57Brendon Burchard?

  You know, I remember when you like flew down to compete in South America.

• 32:01Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I still play with the USA team handball.

• 32:03Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah.

• 32:03Lewis Howes?

  Uh, team. And a year ago, I flew down to. I remember I did an interview in Miami and then flew out from Miami and then went and just went running to training camp and then played against Brazil, which is like, you know, Olympic, Olympic qualifiers and

• 32:18Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah.

• 32:18Lewis Howes?

  got our asses whooped, but it was fun, you know, but I had to have clarity and energy to show up, even when I was like, oh, we're gonna lose.

• 32:23Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah.

• 32:23Lewis Howes?

  Like, there's dear a chance.

• 32:24Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah.

• 32:25Lewis Howes?

  It was like the worst team in the NBA playing like the Warriors and we were just like, we had no chance.

• 32:30Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah.

• 32:30Lewis Howes?

  But I had to show up and give my best and

• 32:32Brendon Burchard?

  And you have to set all these routines, I mean, you know, the, the amount of routines that Tom Brady has in his life so that he can generate energy.

• 32:39Lewis Howes?

  It's unbelievable.

• 32:40Brendon Burchard?

  Stuns most people.

• 32:41Lewis Howes?

  It's unbelievable.

• 32:42Brendon Burchard?

  And that's just, that's

• 32:43Lewis Howes?

  That's what it takes if you want to be at that level. If you don't want to be at that level, you don't have to do it.

• 32:46Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah, you don't have to do it. I mean, everybody can just like, well, I'm gonna go, you know, hit the Cinnabon, but it's like, it's like, how do you want to feel at three o'clock?

• 32:54Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 32:54Brendon Burchard?

  If you want to feel amazing at three o'clock, don't end lunch with a Cinnabon.

• 32:56Lewis Howes?

  You know, it's crazy. Gosh, it's crazy. Like, I'm 34 now and I would, I could eat like sugar and bad food for

• 33:02Brendon Burchard?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 33:03Lewis Howes?

  all my twenties, right? And now, when I go off of sugar for like a month and then I just binge for a day, it's like I literally can't walk then I say, my back is like so stiff, oh my gosh, like my whole body is exhausted.

• 33:14Brendon Burchard?

  Inflammation.

• 33:15Lewis Howes?

  So much inflammation. Once I cut it out and then I bring it back, I'm like,

• 33:18Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah.

• 33:18Lewis Howes?

  Oh, I feel so old.

• 33:19Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah.

• 33:20Lewis Howes?

  And, uh,

• 33:20Brendon Burchard?

  Dude, I'm the same way at my seminars. Like, I, you know, we do four day event and it's just me. I usually have one or two big names come in, but it's me 12 hours a day, four days, and I never sit down.

• 33:33Lewis Howes?

  High energy.

• 33:33Brendon Burchard?

  I never sit down on stage. And super high energy. I mean, really going for it. A lot of just the clapping, the jumping, but really just spending heart. You know how hard it is?

• 33:41Lewis Howes?

  Of course.

• 33:42Brendon Burchard?

  And, uh, I had to about the same time. When I was 35, I had a, a, a famous strength and conditioning coach backstage. He works with me in Usher and, and he, uh, he's like, what do you eat back here? And, you know, another guy came in strapped the heart rate monitor machine. He goes, I'm equivalently burning, uh, equivalently working out at the marathon level every day.

• 34:04Brendon Burchard?

  For four days.

• 34:04Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 34:05Brendon Burchard?

  They're like, you're not eat. I was losing on average 11 pounds in my seminars. Every and I do eight events a year. So I was losing 88 pounds a year. You know, it was like, it's horrible for your health. So I had to learn how to eat. I had to learn that I do ice baths every night at my events.

• 34:19Lewis Howes?

  Which. Smart.

• 34:20Brendon Burchard?

  No one loves to do that.

• 34:22Lewis Howes?

  I, here's the thing. I used to do it every day in football, like during the season.

• 34:25Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah.

• 34:25Lewis Howes?

  And we, it sucks for the first month, but then you start to love it.

• 34:28Brendon Burchard?

  Yes. Yeah. I have to do it.

• 34:30Lewis Howes?

  You know what I mean? It's like, you just start to, ah, it feels so good.

• 34:32Brendon Burchard?

  Feel so good. After stage, you know, it's like 12 hours. So those are, no one says I want a habit of taking an ice bath at the end of the day. But if I want to be high performing on stage, that's the choice.

• 34:44Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 34:44Brendon Burchard?

  Now, obviously people listening, you know, consult your doctor.

• 34:46Lewis Howes?

  Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And only do it for 10 minutes. Don't stay in for a half hour. Yeah.

• 34:50Brendon Burchard?

  Right, right. So, but all those things you have to, so what are your habits for energy? And the funny thing is you sit down with high performers, they know them. They can tell you that. I do this, this, this, this. And you're like, man, you're on your game.

• 35:00Lewis Howes?

  You got it down. Yeah. And they're always probably looking to improve it.

• 35:02Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah, totally. Yeah. They're always, but they're very aware of it and they, and they, what I found was they get pissy if they're off it.

• 35:11Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, of course. I didn't meditate this morning and I was like, ah, you know, I was kind of frustrated a little bit. Someone asked me, we were at our meeting today at the So House. He was like, how was your meditation? Cause he knows I like to meditate. And I was like, you know, I missed this morning. I did yesterday, but I missed this morning. It's agitating when I miss one of my habits.

• 35:25Brendon Burchard?

  Yes.

• 35:26Lewis Howes?

  It's like, ugh, I need to get up earlier and yeah.

• 35:29Brendon Burchard?

  That is exactly what you just said. It, it, it, it just, it really agitates high performers when they're off their energetic habits.

• 35:38Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 35:39Brendon Burchard?

  The, the third big per, uh, personal habit, which by the way, I've been teaching high performance for a decade. Uh, we have the number one seminar on that and, uh, the number one online course. And I was wrong. I never knew this was the thing and you're going to laugh. He's like, duh dude, I could have sat you down. But I just didn't know. I, I knew, I taught it as like a subtext, but I didn't know it was the thing. And that is high performers raise necessity. And what that means is they raise the necessity of performance in their mind before each performance. They say, I gotta do great.

• 36:18Brendon Burchard?

  And they give themselves reasons why. So they're connected to their why. But it's different than just giving like, know your why is nice. Know your why and give yourself edge for it. What do you mean? Let me give you an example. Two guys walking out on the track field. Who's gonna win? Well, equal quality of experience. Similar times, maybe they've raced before. The guy at the blocks who I'm gonna bet on is the guy who came out and said, gotta do this for my mom.

• 36:46Brendon Burchard?

  They have a reason to perform at heightened levels. And they have connected to that over and over. Now, again, some of this, duh Brendan, but the finding, the research is they just do that more often than underperformers or even, you know, good performers. They're more connected to their reasons why and they're stirring it, man. It's like, and they do it from two angles. One angle is your, your, your, like your internal standards. Like my values or my self expectations say, I gotta crush this because that's who I fricking am. Yeah. Like when you walk out, you're like, you're not gonna, you know, screw around on when you're playing handball. You're like, this is who, I'm loose, I'm an athlete. Yeah. I'm gonna kick some ass here. Yeah. It's that self expectation. Okay?

• 37:31Brendon Burchard?

  Then though, they pair it with external obligation. Like my team needs me to do this. The deadline says this time, there's, there's some kind of external, they don't call it pressure. My family, something bigger than themselves. Something bigger than themselves. Yeah. Yeah. And that's what, that was another thing I was surprised by. They don't say, they, they rarely use the word pressure. Because they want it. Like people who use pressure, they, they, they don't want it. But high performers, I found they want, they like, they're connected. I'm doing this for a bigger cause, a bigger reason, a team. Or yeah, there's sometimes just like deadline, like I'm, I'm an unbelievably high performing writer. When there's a deadline, I'm a weapon, right?

• 38:13Brendon Burchard?

  Before that, you know, I'm, I'm not always on my game. So, but if you have those reasons, so you gotta have your internal reasons and your external reasons. And then your job is remind yourself of that more often. That's what's called raising necessity. And we were the first ones to kind of prove that with the data. And I was pretty stunned at that. Remember, these three aren't like my opinion. You might say, yeah, yeah, these are whatever. I'm like, but these ones are more important than everything else we measure. Really? Over a hundred different habits. These are the ones that move the needle. So if you want to move the needle in your personal life, number one, seek clarity more often. Number two, generate energy with more consistency and will. And number three, raise necessity, raise the stakes before you go into any performance situation where that's that next sales call. Because you know, it's easy. I think what

• 38:56Brendon Burchard?

  high performers do, because of those three things, they're not going through their motions. There's not. There's more intentionality, more exerting of will, certainly more discipline.

• 39:11Brendon Burchard?

  That's what's, that's what's happening. That's why there's magic starting to happen. And then we compare it or combine it with the, the social habits, uh, which we can walk through. And it was like, that's what makes it all coming together. So what's the first social habit? Uh, increased productivity. It's kind of like no duh. High performers are productive dudes. Um, but what, what the uniqueness is, they've, they're not just pushing more paper or checking more boxes. Cause you know, I both know a lot of people who, you know, their busy work isn't their life's work. So they don't feel fulfilled from their productivity. High performers are fulfilled from what they're accomplishing, which is a big, big, big measure. And here's

• 39:51Brendon Burchard?

  what they did. They identified their primary field of interest, which is a big deal. Then they identified what we call P Q O, prolific quality output, which is what's the outputs that matter and get recognized and rewarded the most in this primary field of interest. And then they went all in at it. They became almost singular focuses. Like, you know, when, when Jobs came back to Apple and got rid of all the product lines that these are what we're doing. That was prolific quality output. We're going to be prolific quality output on these things, not those. So it's important. Like for me, I thought for, there was a period of my life where I thought my primary field of interest was personal development.

• 40:33Brendon Burchard?

  And that's what most of the world knows me for. I've never posted any marketing on my Facebook page in terms of like, marketing advice. I teach that, that's way down in my funnel. My front, my YouTube, my podcast, Facebook are all just personal development. So I really identified with that. And then I launched my first book, Life's Golden Ticket, which was my life's message. And it kind of bombed. It hit bestseller and then it died, you know, bam, pow. And it really bummed me out. And I realized why. I said, you know what? I've been thinking my primary field of interest is personal development. And so I did all the book, I read all the books, I went to all the seminars, I, you know, studied with the gurus, I became friends with, you know, Wayne Dyer and

• 41:18Brendon Burchard?

  Tony Robbins, the big names. That's what I thought it was. And then I had to make a shift. And I'm shifting my primary field of interest to how to share a message. And it completely shifted. When I started learning, I was like, you know what my primary field of interest needs to be is how to share a message. Cause I already got the message. And then I said, well, what's prolific in this area? Well, what's prolific is what's recognized in this particular area, right at that time, this 2006, 07, online video was just coming in. I mean, YouTube and Facebook were young. YouTube was like 2004, I think, or 2005 or something. Young. And, but what's mattering now is video. And I went all in. You know, I've created 13

• 42:01Brendon Burchard?

  online courses. Because in my primary field of interest, sharing that personal development message was everything. So I learned how to share everything. And I went from, you know, kind of a busted first book, to in 18 months, 4.6 million in revenue. Wow. Cause I learned how to sell. And I learned that sharing and selling a message was just as important, because if you don't make the money, you can't sustain the message. I had the message, but I wasn't making any money. I was the poor, broke writer dude. And I was like, so I shifted my primary field of interest. And I went, I gotta understand marketing. I gotta understand business. And what's going to be prolific in those, in what I'm doing now. And that's creating products to sell.

• 42:44Brendon Burchard?

  Oh, I gotta create my products, higher quality products. I showed you like my brochures and Yeah, beautiful stuff. Just like super branding, you know, all my books, you know, I created, I did all the covers of all my books. And I obsessed about, I was like, the, the look and the feel and stuff I didn't care about before. And that changed everything. So what I tell people is if you want to increase, don't just get more stuff done. Get more of the right stuff done and really go in on it. I mean, super obsessed about the quality. And really focus, you know, it's that old saying, the main thing is keep, is to keep the main thing, the main thing. Exactly, yeah. But you got, you bear careful what your main thing is. That's tough. Cause it, you know, and I especially more abundance, high performers really struggle because you have, I mean, 50 doors.

• 43:29Brendon Burchard?

  Opportunities. 50 doors and you want to take all of them, but you have to cut yourself up into 50 places. Yeah. So you gotta really identify what that means. The book helps people figure out what is that prolific? What's my primary field of interest really at this stage of my life? What's the prolific quality output I need to do here? And then teaches them the habits during the day, you know, like block time. Like how to set intention and release tension, how to know when to quit on stuff, all that's in, in that book as well. Powerful. So productivity, they know how to be productive on the right things. Yeah, yeah. Awesome. This one, surprising, the next habit is high performers develop influence more than those around them. It's not because they're cool. It's not, I mean, look at me. I'm not getting ahead on my cool factor here.

• 44:14Brendon Burchard?

  I just got these, these new Nikes. I walk in the store, I, I walk in the store, I was like, what's your newest shoe? They're like these ones. I'm like, I need that. And they're like, why? I'm like, because Lewis has sneaks, man. I got, I, I, I wear suits or like, I'm either on stage in a suit or, or at my, you know, studio, kind of like, you know, kind of formal too. Sure, sure. Um, I was like, man, I gotta get some sneakers. They look good, man. I said, give me your newest sneak. So I'm not getting ahead on the cool. I don't develop influence because I'm cool. It's not your personality that gives you influence. It's how you treat other people. And specifically the way that people, high performers gain influence is, is this way too much? No, I'm loving it. Yeah, get it. Here's how you, here's how you develop influence. If you really want high level of influence, obviously you gotta do all the basics.

• 44:58Brendon Burchard?

  Treat people nice, be kind. And in the book, what I do is with each habit, I say, here's the basics. But then I go, here's what the needle mover practices are. The highest performing influencers, what they're doing, often they don't know they're doing it, by the way. The first thing they're doing is they're teaching people how to think. A lot of your show gained influence, I really believe, because you're really good at teaching people how to think.

• 45:20Lewis Howes?

  Thank you.

• 45:20Brendon Burchard?

  You're shaping their mindset, but high performers are really doing it explicitly. And you do this too, where you say, here's how to think about that, guys. Or high performing leaders tell their team, here's how we should be thinking about ourselves. Here's how we should be thinking about the competition. Here's how we think about the future of the company. They're saying it, they're explicit more often. Here's how to think. I mean, the, what is it? The seventh most read book in the history of the world is Think and Grow Rich.

• 45:47Lewis Howes?

  Crazy.

• 45:48Brendon Burchard?

  It became that way because he taught people how to think about money. We have to tell our audience how to think about things. The second thing they're doing is they're challenging people. And they're challenging in a specific way. If you listen to great orators, great speaker, the pros, the one I know, I'm like, oh, this person's studied speech before. Is they challenge the audience in three ways. They challenge the audience's character. Then they challenge the audience's connections, their relationships. Then they challenge the audience's contributions, what they're giving. You hit all three of those, the audience is like, I have to listen to her. I have to listen to him because not only are they shaping how I should be thinking, because maybe I was thinking wrong. But now they're pushing me because, you know, it's just like a great coach.

• 46:33Brendon Burchard?

  The greatest coaches, they're not just saying throw the ball better. They're like, Louis, you're a better man than that. Come on, man. They're saying, look, you're treating your team like crap. They're like, look, you're not contributing to the team here. That's a different challenge than just throw the ball faster or catch, you know. So I studied that from them, but those are the primary things. And the third thing, of course, is role modeling, you know, standing. I mean, if I'm the bring the joy guy, or I'm the honor to the struggle guy, or I'm the high performance guy and I'm off my game. People are gonna know that.

• 47:04Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 47:05Brendon Burchard?

  So that's, I'm always trying to role model what I do, which is hard when you talk about high performance. Cause everyone thinks, well, don't you have a bad day? I'm like, dude, I, I have bad moments. I wouldn't say bad days, cause I don't wanna go to bed and feel like the day was bad.

• 47:21Brendon Burchard?

  But at the same time, I think that's why they're developing influence. And so much of this, when I talk about habits, I talk about it in a different way than other people. Most people talk about habits like they just want the tricks to make it easy. This book is full of deliberate habits. Meaning you have to consciously think about these and consciously will them consistently. It's not, I mean, this book, I think will be kind of something people return to life over and over and over. Cause it's not ever gonna be, I didn't want to write an easy book. I want to write a book that said, this is the hard stuff, but if you do it, the payoff is there.

• 47:56Lewis Howes?

  Right. Yeah. No, influence is one of the most powerful things. And if you can't influence or enroll people in your vision, then it's gonna be hard to make the vision come to life.

• 48:04Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah, that's it.

• 48:05Lewis Howes?

  So there's certain elements of how to gain that influence and how to be a role model and be effective and step up on all these different things you need to do.

• 48:12Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah.

• 48:12Lewis Howes?

  To continue to be an enrolling machine in your vision.

• 48:16Brendon Burchard?

  Yes, yes.

• 48:17Lewis Howes?

  Whether you're working on a team, it's your business, it's whatever it is, it doesn't matter. But you've got to be supportive and enrolling to, to influence people.

• 48:25Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah.

• 48:25Lewis Howes?

  So I firmly believe that.

• 48:26Brendon Burchard?

  And for, I mean, we have a lot of friends who, probably listening, who do social media or they're in marketing positions or they're trying to grow their business or their brand. And I tell people, I always say, you want, you want to make this podcast powerful? Look at the last six months and ask yourself, how strategic have I been in telling my audience what to think? How strategic have I been in challenging my audience? How strategic have I been in role modeling the actions, thoughts and feelings I want my people to feel? And if you've been surviving and growing without that strategy, you're friggin awesome and lucky. Now your next level of high performance is let's get more strategic. That's what's going to change the game for a lot of people, you know, generating their influence. Cause people are like, how do you have five million on Facebook?

• 49:10Brendon Burchard?

  I'm like, I'm strategic about those things. It's a lot of like how to think, a lot of challenge. Like I'm constantly beating those because I also want people to do that for me. It's why I listen to your podcast. You do that for me. I listened to somebody, I was complimenting you, your Sarah Blakely interview was just outstanding. And that inspired me to think many ways differently.

• 49:33Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 49:34Brendon Burchard?

  You know, and you know, I both do your friends with Tony Robbins and Robbins made his entire career on challenging people. I mean, your first hour at his seminar, you've been challenged more than you've probably been challenged the last decade of your life.

• 49:47Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 49:47Brendon Burchard?

  And so, you know, be strategic about that. And if your leader's in the room, uh, stop placating your people. Like leaders, especially today, they want to be so popular with their people. And I say, popular is good. And that will come from kindness and role modeling away, but challenge your people more strategically. That's why I get to work with, you know, I work at the Fortune 50 CEO level as a high performance coach. Those guys, they don't mess around.

• 50:11Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 50:12Brendon Burchard?

  When they write that check to me, it's a quarter million dollars. They, if I don't get the result, I mean, in two weeks with them, if I don't start shifting them, I'm screwed. When the first thing that I do with them, by the way, is I come in, I open up their calendar. And we just start obliterating things on their calendar, stuff that's not the main thing anymore. And I'm constantly challenging them to return their focus to what matters. I'm constantly challenging them to challenge their teams. I'm constantly challenging them to be more optimistic or powerful or present, whatever it takes for that person. I get paid because I challenge people more. That's it. So that's what led me to be a high performance coach. If I didn't, and by the way, that's not comfortable for me. I'm from Montana. Many of you guys listening who's been to my seminars, you meet my mom there. My mom's at my seminars.

• 50:57Brendon Burchard?

  We are like the most laid back, like happy-go-lucky family you ever saw. Like my mom is, you know, what is she, 70 this year? Yeah, 70. And she's just, she's a spark plug. She's amazing. Jess is, she's amazing. Uh, so, but super la- la- you know, like, my family would never challenge somebody. I, I didn't come from that. I had to learn that because if I didn't do that, I wouldn't have the influence. I wouldn't achieve things.

• 51:22Lewis Howes?

  I think we need those challenges for ourselves. We need a challenge. It's like, kind of like in a big game. You need a challenge to be able to see how, how great you can become.

• 51:29Brendon Burchard?

  Yes.

• 51:30Lewis Howes?

  You need a competitor or you need something that you feel a little bit scared about or a little bit unsure about to see how you can rise up to that challenge. And if there is no challenge, we're never going to perform at the highest level.

• 51:43Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah.

• 51:43Lewis Howes?

  I think it's we gotta constantly challenge ourselves if we want to step into something new. Otherwise, we've developed a strength and a comfort zone of what we're comfortable with. So.

• 51:51Brendon Burchard?

  I looked at my, my quotes. I was like, have I written much about greatness? And I found this quote, um, that said, you know, the journey to greatness often begins the moment that challenge and contribution become more important than comfort and ease.

• 52:08Lewis Howes?

  That's a good one.

• 52:10Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah.

• 52:10Lewis Howes?

  It's really good.

• 52:11Brendon Burchard?

  And so we have to challenge ourselves, but the habit here, the social habit is develop influence and you develop influence. Teach people how to think, role model away. And then make sure that you are challenging people in those three areas. Challenge their character. You gotta do that delicately. The book teaches you how. Make sure you challenge relationships because that's so important and challenge people's what they're giving. And if you do that strategically enough, you know, part of your message in, in greatness is challenging people to follow their dreams. You say it all the time. It's one of the reasons I love your show. You're constantly challenging people to follow their dreams and not just like, hey, follow your dreams. Like, hey, do this.

• 52:44Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 52:44Brendon Burchard?

  I love that, you know? So I think it's one of the reasons that the show is so awesome.

• 52:47Lewis Howes?

  Thank you. Appreciate it. Appreciate it. So that's the fifth one, right?

• 52:50Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah.

• 52:50Lewis Howes?

  And the sixth and final.

• 52:52Brendon Burchard?

  Sixth and final one, demonstrate courage.

• 52:57Brendon Burchard?

  And I think all personal development people, of course, you know, but they actually, high performers do demonstrate courage. Like, we can measure it from peer feedback. We can measure it from their self-assessments. We can measure it from, uh, we have this thing called the high performance indicator assessment. You take it, you get scored on all six habits. It's free on the internet. Um, on the interwebs. Um, but this one peaked when we did the research and I didn't know it. And it is, high performers are more willing to share their ideas, their thoughts, their feelings, what they need, what they want. And they do it more consistently than their peers. Even when there's risk or uncertainty. You do a great job. I know you have the books coming out for you. Talking about men and being vulnerable.

• 53:42Brendon Burchard?

  That's demonstrating courage. That's, you know, when you're not conditioned that way, or you're not used to that. You know, that it might not seem like a big deal, but it is. Yeah. You know, when you talk about me doing this interview, that was like, it might not seem like demonstrating courage to go on Lewis Howes, but it is because I admire you. And I also, I'm not used to sharing a lot. You know, you just let the work speak for itself. Yeah. So I had to like, okay, I need to share, you know, be willing to share this in different and unique ways. But I think for most people, it's, when you were in your last meeting. Did you share for your ideas and fight for them? Do you share for your ideas? Did you share your ideas and fight for them? When you wanted to post that video and you were scared to death because people are going to make fun of you.

• 54:27Brendon Burchard?

  Did you do it? And when you wanted to tell your spouse that you're not getting what you need. Did you say it? Because all those are demonstrating courage. It's not just, you know, courage, we think you're pulling someone out of the river or something. And that's part of it. And we talk about the different kinds of courage in the book. But the ones that matter the most, move the needle the most is sharing for and fighting for ideas. But also that vulnerability of sharing your wants and needs. I mean, high performers really communicate what they want. And you've probably seen this in networking opportunities. You meet somebody and they're like, I'm trying to meet this person. I'm trying to get that done. And they're not pushy with it. They're just clear. They're like, this is what I'm trying to do. And this is what I want. This is what I need.

• 55:10Brendon Burchard?

  The highest performing relationships and marriages, we correlated marriage and demonstrating courage. And they stay together longer. When you're willing to tell your spouse, I don't like that. And work it through. That's hard for people. It's, it's, you know, it's scary to put yourself out there or follow your dream or start a podcast or, you know, start the biz. That stuff is scary. Telling your boss something's wrong. You know, high performers report being whistleblowers more than anybody else.

• 55:35Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 55:36Brendon Burchard?

  Cause it takes a lot of courage to go, my boss is doing something wrong.

• 55:40Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 55:40Brendon Burchard?

  Um, so we teach how to, how do you get to that without all the hype? Like, what do we know actually moves the needle in, in psychological courage, which has been actually measured a lot in academics?

• 55:49Lewis Howes?

  Hmm, I love it. I love the habits and I know you guys should go get the book because there's a lot of research that backs all these and also steps and practices they can follow. Uh, so make sure you guys are getting this book. Um, I'm curious, I want to ask you a couple of personal questions.

• 56:05Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah.

• 56:06Lewis Howes?

  What's the fear you have the most right now in your life?

• 56:11Brendon Burchard?

  The fear I have the most, um,

• 56:15Brendon Burchard?

  probably just, you know, anything ever happening to my family. You know, I'm a very, very, you know, I'm a great son, I hope. You know, I lost my dad in 2009 to leukemia and he was like my big mentor and he got diagnosed on Mother's Day. Kind of woke up and walked in the hallway and, you know, his back felt funny and he kind of leaned against the hall a little dizzy and mom's like, what's wrong with you? He said, I don't know, it's kind of swollen back here. And they go to the doctor and his, um, his spleen was enlarged, which is bad news. It usually means, you know, uh, your body's kicking off stem cells that aren't good. Um, so he got diagnosed with AML acute myeloid leukemia and they said, you have a week to live.

• 56:59Brendon Burchard?

  Now he made it, uh, 59 days.

• 57:02Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 57:03Brendon Burchard?

  Um, the most important interview of my life was I called him and I wrote down all these like 30 life questions. Uh, and I interviewed him, it was the first time I ever called somebody and recorded anything. It was my first interview, still my most valued interview. So I called him and I asked him all these questions, uh, was he at the hospital? Cause I was at a seminar and I didn't know, and I said, Dad, I'm going to cancel the seminar, I'm going to fly. He goes, don't, just finish the seminar, come over.

• 57:27Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 57:28Brendon Burchard?

  Finished, so like day two or three of the seminar, I call and I interview him for, you know, I think 60 minutes that first night, another 60 minutes. And then I flew over there, but I got that recording and, uh, it just, I had such a great dad, a great mom. People say, you know, you're so lucky, Brendan. I'm like, I, you know what? There's a lot of things I didn't luck out on, worked hard, but I lucked out on the parent train. You know, we grew up with nothing, parents, you know, raising four kids, um, broke.

• 58:01Brendon Burchard?

  But we had abundance, you know, we had love and they believed in us and my dad, uh, his seven messages to me in his life, which I try to share all the time. Actually, it's my most, uh, uh, shared Facebook post ever. Hmm. Um, this, this particular post, every time I put up, it's been viewed thirty million times. Wow. Uh, and just my dad's thing, he said, be yourself, be honest, do your best, treat, uh, I'm sorry, take care of your family. Treat people with respect, be a good citizen and follow your dreams.

• 58:36Brendon Burchard?

  Pretty good for me. Like, there it is. So, uh, but losing him really made me connect with the rest of my family. Right. And so fear is just, you know, family. So I just wanna, I don't wanna lose people that I love. Um, you know, my whole story began when I learned that I, that life is precious. You know, car accident, nineteen year old kid. I know you know the story, but

• 59:00Brendon Burchard?

  I've had, uh, sort of mortality motivation

• 59:06Brendon Burchard?

  my entire life since, I mean, I was lucky, nineteen years old kid, realizing I'm gonna die. And I'm standing on the hood of a car bleeding out after a car accident. I got death. Another time in my life, and it was the book, I would talk about the book, The Charge. I had a brain injury, recto ATV, going thirty eight miles an hour, got taken to hospital. Internal, I didn't know if we were internal bleeding. I'd snapped my wrist, broke my ribs, throughout my shoulders, massive concussion. And, uh, which I didn't know until later, caused a lot of troubles in my life with my brain. And, but I sat in the hospital for three hours because no one spoke any English there and I didn't speak any Spanish. Wow.

• 59:47Brendon Burchard?

  So they couldn't, when they, you know, the first thing when someone treats you is are you allergic to any of the painkillers? Right. They, I couldn't answer the question. Like, I don't know. So I lay there for three hours. This is sixteen years after my first accident. And I was, you know, laying there and the lady keeps coming in and pressing on my chest cavity and that's checking for internal bleeding and I knew that. And I'm like, I'm thinking, I'm like, okay, if this is.

• 1:00:12Brendon Burchard?

  If this is my time, did I live? And did I love? And did I matter? Which was my intention after my first car accident. And I was happy with all the answers, but the number, so I'd lived my life, I was happy. But the number one thing I thought about that moment was, you know, my wife and just family. I just didn't, you know? So I think my, my, it's not like I have recurring fears or debilitating fears, but I just don't want to lose anybody I love anymore.

• 1:00:36Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:36Brendon Burchard?

  I've lost a lot of people. Two, two days ago, Jess and I were actually here over at the hotel and I got a text from your high school friend who just got diagnosed with pretty severe breast cancer and that stuff, you know, I just want to lose people.

• 1:00:49Lewis Howes?

  It's tough, but it's gonna happen for everyone, right?

• 1:00:53Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:54Lewis Howes?

  That's the thing that's challenging.

• 1:00:55Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah, my dad's loss was huge. That was just awful, you know, because it was so fast.

• 1:01:01Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:01Brendon Burchard?

  And he'd been healthy, but AML just, you know, it just takes you. And so, uh, I'm good with it because I've, so many people know my story of the second chance. And they share all around the world. They're like, man, I, I was in an accident, I lost somebody too. And I hear all that and I'm, it's, it's one thing when you're hearing it and you're coaching or advising it, it's another one when it's your dad, you know, or somebody you care about.

• 1:01:25Lewis Howes?

  Yeah. What about your mission to the world? What is your mission? And what would you like to achieve over the next?

• 1:01:33Brendon Burchard?

  Uh, you know, it's funny, it's one of the things you said probably made you like, I don't know about this guy because I'm always hammering home one message. And some people are like, all he has is that story. I'm like, it's not that all I have is that story. It's I tell the story because that's my message. My message, when I tell my car accident story, the message that comes out of it is, at the end of your life, you're gonna wonder if you lived a good life. And so you're gonna ask yourself questions to evaluate, did I live that good life? My message is find out what those questions are for you.

• 1:02:07Brendon Burchard?

  That's it. Because if you can identify, if you can think like, what, what would I ask? How would I know if I lived a good life? You'd ask yourself questions. What questions would you ask? Because if you know your questions, then you get to wake up every day. And you can live intentionally. So when you have to answer those questions, if you have a moment of cognition before you die, and you ask the questions, you can answer them from a place of, you know, connection, pride, heart, be like, I did, I, I am, I, I, you know, I want to affirmatively answer at the end of my life, I lived fully. And I loved fully. And I made my difference. That's what, that's what I asked that second time after the ATV accident. And so I learned I was gonna ask at the first accident.

• 1:02:52Brendon Burchard?

  Take my passport away. Well, all every, every time I'm out of the country, at least one of these accidents happens.

• 1:02:59Brendon Burchard?

  I'm a little too adventurous sometimes, but I, I, I've learned that maybe sharing that message too often, people go, yeah, yeah, but I'll go, that's it, man. You can't live with intention unless you know the questions you're actually gonna ask at the end of your life. People say, well, how, how do I know what my purpose is? Know how you're gonna gauge your purpose at the end. You gotta know the questions. Well, as I tell people, identify four, five, 10 questions you'd ask at the end of your life to see if you're happy. And then wake up, look at those day in questions.

• 1:03:26Lewis Howes?

  Do it every day.

• 1:03:27Brendon Burchard?

  So I do. Tonight, when I go to bed, it's the same thing. 21 years, I've never missed. I go to bed, my head, my head hits the pillow, I go, did I live today? Did I love today? Did I matter today? And it's not like I can be like, hey, Louis, every night, I'm, you know, I'm friggin awesome. And the answer is yes. I mean, there, I have bad days. But enough of them are yeses that I feel pretty good about my life. And so that's the message I want people to know. Find out what your questions are, live intentionally, so you're happy with them at the end.

• 1:03:53Lewis Howes?

  That's great, man.

• 1:03:58Lewis Howes?

  What are you most grateful for right now?

• 1:04:01Brendon Burchard?

  Well, one tactical one. I'm so happy to be in that book, dude.

• 1:04:06Lewis Howes?

  It's the best in the world.

• 1:04:07Brendon Burchard?

  Oh, I'm so happy that book is done. I'm super grateful that that is, you know, because I, you know, a lot of my friends and family are like, where did you go? I mean, literally three years. We manage research teams, the largest study ever. I'm not an academic. So to to put together a book like this, you know, thirty pages of resources and citations to prove everything out with hardcore data analytics. Honestly, it wasn't my strength, so it was exhausting. But it was what was required to serve at the next level. Because I wanted corporate audiences to be able to take this assessment and go, this is more rigorous than anything we've ever done. I wanted academics to love it. I wanted people who are entrepreneurs to go, I see what I can do. I just, there are so many moving things I wanted this book to hit on. But it also exhausted me because it was just constant. So I'm super proud to have that done.

• 1:04:51Brendon Burchard?

  And grateful for that, having come to, you know, coming to a book I'm proud of. I'm extremely grateful for the patience and love of my family. In this particular project, it took me away more than anything else. I'm actually really grateful that I've gotten to know you better. And getting this to be the first like in-depth conversation with it.

• 1:05:13Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it's fun.

• 1:05:14Brendon Burchard?

  Because I think that you're very talented at holding a space for people, your team too. About holding a space for people to just be like, this is me, this is what I, you know, about.

• 1:05:23Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:25Brendon Burchard?

  And then I would also, you know, I'm always grateful for God for the second chance I got. From the standing on the hood of the car, like I got it. Like, knowing that each day you get up and you, it's not, you know, self-help. Psycho babble, it's like, knowing that life is limited and you get a second chance every morning of like, showing the world more of who you are. You know, breathing, taking that walk with your love. Just having that every day, that kind of new beginning. I feel that in my career, I'm sharing that with you now. And by the time this comes out, you know, I'll have a new show out, The Brendan Show. I've never done that before, it's a new opportunity. I'm grateful for the new opportunities.

• 1:06:07Brendon Burchard?

  I think right now you and I have the ability to share our messages farther and wider than we've ever had before. I'm super grateful that we're alive, like right now, at this time on the planet, when I think our messages really need to be heard. When we're, you know, surrounded sometimes by a culture, society, politics is so negative. To have a platform to share something good right now, I'm so grateful for that.

• 1:06:32Lewis Howes?

  What's the habit that you realize you need more work on? Or that you can improve on yourself?

• 1:06:38Brendon Burchard?

  Definitely raising necessity. I think the challenge.

• 1:06:46Brendon Burchard?

  You have when you're good is that you're good. Yeah. So. You're like, I'm doing pretty good already. Yeah, it's easy. The better you get, the more expertise development you get, the easier it is to show up and go through the motions. Yeah, you don't have to prepare as much. You don't have to practice as much. Yeah. You get results. Whatever you're gonna do is good enough. Yeah. But what happens with high performance, it eats at them because they know they got more in the tank. And they're like, you know what? That was good, but I could have gotten another. And it's not that they're dissatisfied. We take on that myth in this book. High performers are not dissatisfied. So people who say never be satisfied, they gotta look at why they're saying that because it's not true. Because high performers are satisfied. They're striving satisfied. Doesn't mean they're not striving for the next big thing, want to become better.

• 1:07:28Brendon Burchard?

  But they're happy. High performers are happier than all of their peers. I mean, by significant, almost double digits. So it's really significant. But I think for me, I need to constantly be reminding myself like, okay, what is the reason you need to perform really well right now? And I need to be more consistent about that question. So I set up triggers in my life to do that, you know?

• 1:07:54Brendon Burchard?

  From every time I stand in line, I have a line trigger, I have door triggers, I have phone triggers. Smart. You know, so when I stand in line, I always say, what level am I right now in terms of my presence and energy? Scale one to 10. One, I suck. I'm dead. I'm not even alive. Not even feeling grateful. 10, I'm like, I'm vibrant. I'm joyous. Here I am. And I rate myself consistently on that. And it just retouches me like the knee. I want to feel it's necessary to be grateful. I want to feel it's necessary to be great. I want to feel it's necessary to do my best, but you don't get that without reminders. So you gotta set up alarms or triggers or some, you know, note cards around that, whatever it is it takes for you to have that.

• 1:08:32Brendon Burchard?

  But I know for me, raise after the research, I didn't get how, I mean, I mean, you're talking from every athlete to every high CEO. This is what they did. They're, and I didn't find this. You'll see all the questions I asked them in the book. I really had to dial in their psyche. And when we found that, I was like, is that a thing? That they'd really, that's, I mean, but they all do. And so it inspired me to level up. I'm like, I'm gonna raise my necessity. And I'll, I'm gonna practice everything in the book to get that up a little higher. I like that. Yeah. What's the first thing you're gonna raise in the necessity? In terms of your business or relationships or health or whatever your life? I would say.

• 1:09:12Brendon Burchard?

  I'm gonna raise necessity on probably at this point in my life, sharing more. And we talked about that this morning, because I never, it never, it wasn't necessary.

• 1:09:23Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:23Brendon Burchard?

  I, I made my whole career training. Here's a problem, you, you're dealing with disappointment, you're dealing with stress, you had a fight with your, you know, lover. You don't feel fully charged, you don't feel connected, you don't feel like you're contributing. Here's the answer. Steps one, two, three, and four, because I knew that from the research or from my coaching experience. But I didn't share a lot into that.

• 1:09:41Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:41Brendon Burchard?

  And I probably need to read your book, masculine, masculinity, maybe, maybe there's something there, I don't know. So I just didn't feel like it was necessary to share Brendan. So I'm demonstrating courage, I hope, by making a show called The Brendan Show. Cause I feel like for me to be able to pull that off without feeling like I should be punched in the face. I'm gonna have to like demonstrate the courage of like, I'm, I'm gonna raise the necessity to share more.

• 1:10:06Lewis Howes?

  You're gonna own it, yeah.

• 1:10:07Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:08Lewis Howes?

  Okay, final question, final couple of questions. Well, before I ask them, is there any question you have for me? Or anything you wish I would have asked you so far?

• 1:10:15Brendon Burchard?

  Anything I wish you, no, man, this is awesome. Now, question for you, which, which of those, you know, habits would you work on?

• 1:10:25Lewis Howes?

  I mean, every one of them, but I think courage. I think it's always being courageous to say what I think, to do the, the things that are the right things and not hold back in any way because I'm afraid of hurting someone, I'm afraid of upsetting a situation, or I'm afraid of looking bad, or whatever it may be, whatever the fear may be in that moment. So I think courage stands out for me the most right now.

• 1:10:52Lewis Howes?

  I would say, and then I think necessity would be the next one. It's like constantly like challenging myself to be more prepared in situations. Cause a lot of times I just go on stage and I just like, I really haven't prepared anything on 10 minutes before I'm like, what do I do? And then I just, I figure it out and I go and, because we've had so many reps.

• 1:11:12Brendon Burchard?

  Yes, yes.

• 1:11:13Lewis Howes?

  You know, you're way better than me on stage, but it's like, I've had, you know, eight years of reps now of training that I'm like, I can do good, I can do 80% and it gets a great result.

• 1:11:21Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:21Lewis Howes?

  You know?

• 1:11:21Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:21Lewis Howes?

  But then afterwards, I'm like, I just know I didn't give everything that I should have.

• 1:11:25Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah. I got a tip for you on that one.

• 1:11:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:29Brendon Burchard?

  Knowing your work, legacy. Here's your challenge, your back, your backstage trigger. Every time you walk on the stage, go, if this footage is the last of me ever.

• 1:11:42Lewis Howes?

  That's a good one. I like that one. That's a good one.

• 1:11:44Brendon Burchard?

  Is there recording?

• 1:11:44Lewis Howes?

  How are you gonna show up?

• 1:11:45Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah, if that I do that every time.

• 1:11:47Lewis Howes?

  What are you gonna say? How are you gonna show up?

• 1:11:48Brendon Burchard?

  This is if, if, even if I, because sometimes I'm not prepared, just like you. I mean, I hit five cities, but you know, here's 20,000 people in this arena. Here's 2,000 at my event, you know, thousand bucks a ticket. The expectation's insane, so I gotta be prepared for sometimes, but sometimes I don't have to be prepared because, you know, it's something I'm doing is for somebody else. Uh, so it's easy to show up and not give, so it's like, because legacy is so important to you.

• 1:12:10Lewis Howes?

  It's big.

• 1:12:11Brendon Burchard?

  I'm like, even if you're not prepared, if it was the last footage ever.

• 1:12:17Brendon Burchard?

  Boom.

• 1:12:17Lewis Howes?

  That's good. Yeah. You give your best, you know, you do your best. So those would be for me. Um, cool. Well, final one, two questions. The first one is called the three truths. And you've written many books already, number one New York Times bestseller. You've sold millions of copies. You've done the Brendan show now. You've done everything you've ever wanted to do. You've created it and this is the last day, 70 years from now for you, right? Theoretically, you've done everything, any dream, any reason, necessity, you did it, achieved it. Like nothing else you could do.

• 1:12:54Brendon Burchard?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:54Lewis Howes?

  You've conquered whatever you wanted to conquer and everything's been erased for whatever reason. Every piece of content you put out there, all your followers have nothing to see of yours. No books.

• 1:13:05Brendon Burchard?

  Sci fi novel.

• 1:13:06Lewis Howes?

  No photos on Facebook or Instagram. You have a piece of paper and a pen to write down your three final truths. So this would be your last message to the world.

• 1:13:14Brendon Burchard?

  Yes.

• 1:13:14Lewis Howes?

  And the only thing that's recorded, or what you write down is three truths back to the world. I kind of have an idea what you might say, but what would those three things be?

• 1:13:24Brendon Burchard?

  Well, I'll tell you what you know I'm gonna say, but then I'll answer it in a different way too.

• 1:13:27Lewis Howes?

  Perfect.

• 1:13:29Brendon Burchard?

  For me, it would be live, love matter and it'd be something around those truths. Like, because at the end of your life, what I found, uh, you know, It's hard to give perspective to this, but for 20 years I've been telling people to find those questions. And no matter what, and I don't know if you know this, but I volunteered in hospices for a decade. I've been with a lot of people in their last moments, weeks and months. I've been, I've been around a lot of that in my life. Because I wanted to see if what I experienced on that car was what other people experienced. In some ways it was. In some ways, at the end, we all wanted to know, did I live and how that was and did I love and did I matter?

• 1:14:08Brendon Burchard?

  But hopefully that wouldn't be erased. But, uh, you know, if it's related into greatness, I say number one, like the truths are knowing that, you know, outside of those. The truth is, life will never be joyous unless you bring the joy. I really feel like that. So many people are waiting to have happiness and they're just, they're waiting to like, well, maybe when my boss loosens up, I'll loosen up. Or, you know, when, when, when, when she's vulnerable, I'll be vulnerable. Or it's like, we're waiting for something. I'm like, it's not, your life will never be what it's going to be unless you bring that thing. You know, for me, I wanted to be, I want to be more bold in my life. That was one of my goals because I wasn't that, you know, I wasn't that guy who would just like go out and do the things I do now.

• 1:14:53Brendon Burchard?

  So I made gold like, I was like, bold is an intention. I set it as an alarm on my phone. My alarm would go off three times a day and bold would pop up. And I conditioned myself over seven years to be more bold, which is a big deal for me. And because I wanted, I wanted that, I had to learn how to bring that. So whatever you want in life, you got to bring it. I would say the number two, honor the struggle.

• 1:15:18Brendon Burchard?

  Like so many people bemoan the hardship and they hate it. And I would say, you know, anything, you, anything you apply hate to quickly dies. You got a dream and you're hating the process, you apply hate to the process, the dream's going to die. You know, it's like, don't, don't, you know, be very, be very careful of what you put hate or things to. And most people do that with hardship. And I've always seen hardship as like, I'm going to honor this process. Sort of it's a little samurai mentality, you know, it's like, I'm going to honor that this is difficult because that is precisely what's needed.

• 1:15:50Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:51Brendon Burchard?

  And then the last truth would be, you'll never feel good about life unless you serve and connect with other people. Because you can do the first two. But if you're not serving and connecting with other people, you'll never feel good about life. You might have a good life, have the good life, you could make a lot of money, taking advantage of people, people do that. But you'll never feel good about life unless you serve and connect with other people. And a lot of, and one of the things in courage just came to my mind that we found from the research, we kept digging down about courage. Courage ultimately comes from curiosity, which is such a weird thing. I didn't know that either. But you don't, you can't courageously connect with other people unless you're like, I'm curious to what they would think about this, or I'm curious about them. You'll never

• 1:16:36Brendon Burchard?

  try something new unless you're like, I'm curious to how that turned out. You wouldn't go for the, you know, the gold, the stars, unless you're like, I'm curious if I can do it. Like, you have to, you have to wonder, like, is that possible? And so, part of, I think, people's next development is being more curious about what happens if you did serve at a bigger level. Because the truth is, you're never gonna feel good about life unless you do.

• 1:16:59Lewis Howes?

  Wow. There you go. Make sure you guys get the book, High Performance Habits. Go get it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or brendan.com, correct? brendan.com, is that the best place?

• 1:17:12Lewis Howes?

  At Brendan everywhere, or Brendon Burchard?

• 1:17:14Brendon Burchard?

  At Brendon Burchard everywhere.

• 1:17:15Lewis Howes?

  At Brendon Burchard everywhere on social media. You are taking over the world, my friend, and it's, it's good to be connected and learn more about everything you're up to, and I'm here to support. So, final question is, what is your definition of greatness?

• 1:17:31Brendon Burchard?

  I hate that question. I've heard so many of your guests do it, and I was like, man, I'm not sure what I would, what I would say about that. But I do think, I wrote a little about this in the Motivation Manifesto, because I was really like, what is that thing? And I think it's achieving your own sense of personal freedom. Well, that is, I define personal freedom is the ability to be oneself fully and the ability to pursue things that are deeply meaningful to you. I think that's when you find freedom. Now, that's my definition. But I think when, if you get to the end of your life, like, I, I lived freely, you know, or I loved freely, or I did my thing. It's like, when you feel that you're, you're, you're living your own personal freedom, whatever

• 1:18:14Brendon Burchard?

  that means, I think that's magical. So I don't know if I have the, the answer for everybody else, but you know, for, for me, it's when I feel free in life, it's I'm being myself fully, and I'm doing things that I deeply care about. Like this right now, I feel free right now. This is great. Right? That's how I would say, if I'm being myself, and I love what I'm doing right now, I feel great.

• 1:18:34Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure. There you go. Brendan Burchard. Thanks so much.

• 1:18:37Brendon Burchard?

  My man.

• 1:18:39Lewis Howes?

  There you have it, my friends. I hope you feel greater after listening to this interview with Brendan. As much as I have learned from him, I hope you guys continue to learn from him as well. Make sure to pick up a copy of his book, High Performing Habits, How Extraordinary People Become That Way. And if you enjoyed this episode, please share it with your friends, lewishouse.com/538. You can also watch the full video interview, behind the scenes, photos, resources, links, at lewishouse.com/538. Go there right now. You can tweet out all the quotes from Brendan and all the other stuff that you missed or didn't take notes on. It's all back at the show notes. Make sure to tag me on your Instagram story, at Lewis Howes,

• 1:19:23Lewis Howes?

  and also Brendan Burchard. Let him know what you thought about this as well, as I'm sure he'd love to connect with you on social media. Again, I hope you guys enjoyed this one. You have the power to create the life that you want. You have all the tools available for you. This podcast, use it as a resource. Use it. It's completely free, guys. I'm bringing you the most inspiring and helpful individuals on the planet to help you optimize your business, your relationships, your health, your life, your mindset, spirituality. It's all right here. So if you enjoyed this, please share with your friends. And as William Shakespeare said, be as great in act as you have been in thought. Thank you again to Brendan for

• 1:20:04Lewis Howes?

  being on here, and thank you all for listening. And as always, you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.